You Are G8, We Are 6 Billion: The Truth Behind the Genoa Protests

Description

Here Jonathan Neale has attempted two books in one - a personal chronicle of the Genoa protests, and a scholarly examination of the issues they were protesting. The former works a little, and the latter doesn't work at all. As a participant among the whopping 300,000 protestors at the Genoa G8 summit, Neale's story from the trenches is an occasionally valuable account of the beliefs of a movement that has been denigrated and belittled by the mainstream press. Especially terrifying are his eyewitness accounts of police brutality against individual protestors, who are given a human face through Neale's support. However, he tends to criticize the various social movements and interests that have come together into the anti-globalization effort for not cooperating and integrating their beliefs, but offers absolutely no organizational or social knowledge that could offer potential solutions to that problem. Meanwhile Neale tends to add a sappy human focus to the protest movement, adding unnecessary descriptions of his personal issues, and for some reason following the love life of a fellow protestor named Nicola. About half the book is dedicated to globalization itself, and this is where things really falter. Chapters are dedicated to attempted analyses of issues of concern like world poverty, oil politics, and global warming, but merely present warmed-over history and lists of complaints with absolutely no citations or references. This highlights Neale's lack of true political and economic understanding, as well as his weakness for squishy conspiracy theories of the corporations-trying-to-control-the-world variety. His attempt at an economic analysis of globalization overall betrays absolutely zero understanding of international economics (see the works of Joseph E. Stiglitz and Thomas L. Friedman for competent examinations from both sides). The closing chapter about a better post-globalization future is just a stream of socialist pie-in-the-sky utopianism like universal daycare and an end of sexism. Neale's book is a potentially valuable study of the important and growing anti-globalization movement, but the passionate protestors and thinkers involved deserve a far better showcase than this. [~doomsdayer520~]