The History That Gets Written

The Seattle WTO demonstrations, the historic "Battle in Seattle," continues to echo down the corridors of time. It has been most recently manifest by a Hollywood movie being filmed in the downtown area starring Charleze Theron produced by Charleze's boyfriend, (she has the money), and even more recently by the court cases growing out of accusations by people who claim to have been treated in an illegal manner by police personnel.

I've pretty much given up on the hope the "Battle in Seattle" will ever get any balanced coverage, especially by the Seattle media.

It is already passing into the realm of mythology whose images will forever distort the full range of what really happened.

We will always be shown the several dozen black clad window breakers and dumpster arsonists, but not the many thousands of peaceful, responsible demonstrators who kept order and had permits from the city.

The reasons motivating the dissidents and demonstrators will never be discussed.

We'll always be shown the lines of cops and the tear gas wafting down the streets, and the brutal police actions, and the breathless alarmist video editing of the TV stations pimping for violence and counting their revenues.

All we will ever be shown is the knee jerk violence porn of the media and how the coverage is engineered so that violence and anarchy is always associated with labor unions, political dissidents, and others who find themselves outside the small corporate circle of insiders who will benefit from WTO.

What the media will never willingly show is the low wages of so-called "free trade", the enforcement of poverty, union busting, and the over-riding cancellation of local and national labor and environmental laws by domestic and foreign corporate and related interests using WTO as their tool.

Partly because of WTO influence, free speech is no longer the rule in America but is treated as a threatening and suspicious act which must be controlled and guarded closely by police in special zones surrounded by fences.

I'm sure the Hollywood movie being filmed in Seattle will reflect the carefully crafted mythology, and the film makers will gladly employ a boatload of cliches as long as they can profitably highlight the pretty faces of their actors.