A Brutal, Bloody Business...

Just back from the US where we were visiting for the last week or so. We like driving there: it takes almost as much time as flying when you count the wait at the airports and the drives to and from them, and add that to the flying time. And one gets to see the country, which is vastly better than looking down at sky and clouds, however satisfying those often are to gaze at. Immigration, the officers on the ground at the border, are in our experience good-natured and helpful. (It may be to our advantage that we are old and gray and always on our way to visit our granddaughter.) Which brings me with an ugly jolt to the topic of today's post, and to a determination that I'll be more faithful up here on this blog. I have a play that's currently in workshop at Lorraine Kimsa, the wonderful children's theatre here in Toronto. It's called "El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot" and is set in the Caribbean. In one of the scenes, a Jonkanoo masquerader named Policeman declares that he's going to arrest another one of the characters. The leader of the Jonkanoo troupe reminds him that he's not a real policeman, observing (aside): "That is why me don’t like uniform. Is like it have a powder (sic) inside it that make the wearer want to manhandle people." One wishes it were that simple. My older son just sent me a deeply disturbing report from The Guardian that everyone ought to read. Called "The bloody battle of Genoa", the article appeared on Thursday July 17 2008 on page four of the Comment & features section of the paper. It describes what happened to many of the 200,000 anti-globalisation protesters who came to Genoa, the Italian city that hosted the G8 summit in 2001. All but a handful of the protesters came to demonstrate peacefully. Instead, many were not just manhandled, but so badly bloodied, battered and beaten by riot police that they required hospitalization. (Their treatment by the police medical services also makes ugly reading.) Thanks to a determined public prosecutor, Enrico Zucca, the affair has finally made it to the courts. There is unlikely to be very much by way of redress there, but at least something resembling an accurate account now exists of the abuse of citizens by "lawmen" – people whose duty it is uphold the peace, protect the common person and maintain law and order. (According to the report, politicians like Tony Blair swallowed the official rendering of events, which blamed the protesters, hook, line and sinker. But then, he's proved a gullible one, hasn't he?) And there's the rub. How is it that human beings – each of them someone's child, someone's brother, father, husband, loved one – bring themselves to behave in this way? And in the name of upholding the common good? I won't attempt to characterize it this time around. What I'm immediately interested in is how it can be accounted for, since it is behaviour that's impossible to justify on any grounds. Sure, the article suggests that many of the carabinieri have fascist loyalties. That doesn't help me. I want to know how come in the twenty-first century, our recent history being the bloody business it has been, the upholders of right order and the law in a country that's a member of the European Union are able to have loyalties of any kind that can result in actions like this. These are not hungry people scrapping for scarce resources, nor people in an oppressive regime that orders murder when it sees fit. Or am I mistaken? I have some ideas, but before I hang them up here, I'd be glad to know what people think. Meanwhile, be safe. Stay far from carabinieri!