Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Digital technology is proving a more powerful weapon for protest than anyone
could ever have imagined, as witnessed at last week’s World Trade Organization
meeting in Seattle. Protests that put the WTO’s allegedly corporate
globalisation agenda at the top of newsroom running orders around the world were
coordinated on the Net and by mobile phone. Catch the WTO director general’s
statement at www.wto.org/wto/new/press157.htm, and a view from
protesters in London at www.urban75.com/Action/news095.html.

Even media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is on record saying that authoritarian
regimes have everything to fear from the new digital communication technologies.
And in Seattle—where US president Bill Clinton urged the WTO to become
more open about its activities—this was certainly shown to be the case.
Protests began discreetly, with stickers appearing recently on London tube
trains advertising the URL of Reclaim The Streets, at www.gn. apc.org/rts. This
site pointed to www.bak.spc.org/N30london/intro.html where a virtual train
ticket (keep clicking on the graphics) announced a meeting at London’s Euston
Station—which turned to confrontation and many arrests in the evening.

Ironically, people seeking info about the Electrohippies’ virtual sit-in on
the WTO site managed to jam the servers at their own provider, Green Net.

Earlier this year, protests erupted simultaneously in Strasbourg, Athens,
London, Moscow and the Netherlands when the Turkish authorities apprehended
Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. The Kurdish pan-European satellite TV station,
MED-TV, was said to be coordinating the protests—many of which were
violent—and was subsequently banned in Britain for incitement. Catch the
station’s reaction at www.ib.be/med/. So it’s not only the Internet that’s
globalising agitprop—but that’s the way things are going, as phone lines
and disc drives are a lot harder to ban than TV broadcasts.