The globalisation of the anti-globalisation movement

"Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?" - Harry Lime, The Third Man

In the last year of the last millennium, protest groups gathered in Seattle to demonstrate against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference meeting there.  Erupting on 30th November (soon to be monikered 'N30' after the Global Carnival Against Capitalism on 18th June of the same year became 'J18'), the massive street protests - and the police response - had their effect on overshadowing the negotiations.  With even the lowest estimates stating the crowd at 40,000, it was far larger than any prior reaction against those organisations considered agents of economic globalisation.  Over the next two days, with police using pepper spray, tear gas and stun grenades and the National Guardsmen being called in to intervene and a renegade group of 200 protestors engaging in a rampage of destruction on shop fronts and cars, while the peaceful majority disrupted WTO delegates reaching the conference centre, the events became known as the Battle of Seattle.
This was no flash mob, with planning for the demonstrations beginning months in advance to bring together a loose coalition of disparate participants - NGOs focusing on the environment and consumer protection, labour trades unions, students, religiously based groups seeking debt relief for poorer countries and anarchists.  The last group viewed the Seattle WTO protests and riots as a positive outcome, highlighting 'anti-globalisation' dynamics for the American and international media and forcing the journalists to ask why anybody would oppose the WTO.
The progeny of this genesis has, ironically, gone global.  The latest outbreak of campaigning against the Establishment and The Man occurred in Frankfurt am Main.  As the new European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters was due to be officially opened, in the hours leading up to it violence broke out close to the city's Alte Oper concert hall, starting with tyres and rubbish bins being set alight and evolving to police cars being torched and stones thrown against law enforcement (the prevalence of 'stones' in hitherto pristine urban streets in the developed world suggests those attending come prepared for trouble).  These 'Blockupy' activists are a Europe-wide spin-off of the Occupy Movement, formed largely of trades unions and the far-left political force Linkspartei and are vehemently against the prevailing European mantra of austerity.  Its rallying cry is, "They want capitalism without democracy.  We want democracy without capitalism."  Democracy can be a fluid term though and fighting for it shouldn't automatically lead to violence.  Dozens were hurt and 350 arrested.  The police said roughly 80 of their officers had been affected by pepper spray, stone throwing and, a worrying development, acidic liquid.  Nevertheless , the police have a duty to show restraint to legitimate expressions of free speech, more important than ever as more and more public spaces become commercial no-protest zones.  In earlier disturbances, riot police used water cannon to disperse hundreds of anti-capitalist demonstrators who had gathered around the new double tower skyscraper base for the ECB.  Constructed at a cost of 1.3bn euros and at 185m high, its central banker occupants can have daily moments from the film The Third Man, where Orson Welles' Harry Lime sneers at the 'dots' far below him.
Actually, of the 'troika' of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the ECB, the latter may be the least responsible for the back-breaking economic conditions dictated to the European Union's southern rim.  As Mario Draghi, the ECB president, said in an inauguration speech away from the tempestuous scenes surrounding the future HQ, "it may not be a fair charge" to charge the ECB as the driving force behind the imposition of austerity.  As an Italian himself understanding the situation in his own country, the subtext was look to Berlin, not Frankfurt.  He added, "Our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy.  But as the central bank of the whole euro area, we must listen very carefully to what all our citizens are saying."  It could just be cynical public relations but Draghi has already pushed through Quantitative Easing (QE) in the teeth of opposition from the Reichstag.  Having helped out big business through QE, his message is for the governments of the Eurozone to start thinking collectively rather than nationally about those who are sinking further into poverty for a flawed, though not necessarily doomed, project.