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by eamonn C. Tue Dec 03, 2002 13:40

Review: Berlusconi's Mousetrap

Berlusconi's Mousetrap is a feature length documentary produced by Irish Indymedia about the events in Genoa. The film is based on footage shot by Irish Indy media and some film culled from the International Indymedia archive. It is obvious watching the documentary that considerable effort has gone into the selection and editing of the footage as well as the sourcing and translation of Italian material for the film. The result is an intelligent, complex and accomplished documentary that undoubtedly captures the spirit and atmosphere of a city where a political carnival degenerated into a police riot.

The footage of the G8 leaders, the demonstrations and the street battles is supplemented by numerous interviews with protestors, politicians, Genoan residents and media types. Throughout the film various testimonies and analyses written about Genoa are read by actors and used as a voiceover. More general musings about the world and the state we are in come courtesy of recordings of speeches from those old warhorses of the left John Pilger and Tony Benn. The film also liberally quotes from Guy Debord's critique of modern consumer capitalism "The Society of the Spectacle".

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And also his later book published in the 1980’s – Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. It was written with an obvious input from Sanguinetti – an Italian Member of the Situationist International – and with the various state strategies used against the generation of 1968 in Debord’s mind. It is a fantastic piece of writing and much less theoretical than Society of the Spectacle which was published in the late 1960s. Sanguinetti is also the author of the seminal pamphlet – ‘Is the Reichstag Burning Again’ which correctly saw the hand of the state behind terrorist spectaculars attributed to, and used as justification for systematically repressing, the new left in Italy. This strategy is generally referred to by Italians as the ‘Strategy of Tension’.

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The film begins with the build up to the protest and the transformation of Genoa City centre into a fortified military zone, the so-called red zone, to protect the G8. We see protestors arrive from all over the world and take part in a large march in support of immigrant rights; an event that was characterised by a joyful sense of possibility and solidarity. But as an interviewee remarks in the film "when power exerts itself it creates a desert" and the next day the police moved against the demonstrators with unbridled ferocity as they marched towards the perimeter of the red zone.

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Early on in the film I concentrated on trying to map out the strategy of what I refer to as the Military Entertainment Complex in the days immediately before the demonstrations. Images of Naples and Gothenburg were used in an extremely selective manner over and over again on most of the Italian Channels I could get in the Hotel. The idea of the ‘Black Bloc’ as destructive hooligans out to destroy businesses, property and even cultural artefacts was in the week before Genoa (was there for 8 days before) drilled into the Italian population and used as the basis for pre-justifying a pseudo-military response to the protests as a whole.

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The film documents the police brutality in gruelling detail. It is with this extraordinary footage that Berlusconi's Mousetrap really comes into it's own as a compelling piece of filmmaking. In one almost nightmarish sequence the film is slowed down, showing the police repeatedly pummel and kick people, sweating from exertion, while the voiceover narrates the testimony of an Irishman who was attacked by the police and then arrested. In custody this Irishman endured beatings and death threats and relates how delirious and jubilant cops beat, threatened and pissed upon other detainees while forcing some of them to sing fascist songs. Again and again we see the police gassing and attacking people without provocation.

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A few notes about this. Most of the footage in this section comes not from Indymedia but from a ‘Rogue Corporate Media Operative’ who managed a hack of one of Berlusconi’s National TV Channels. Basically the voiceover continued on it’s law and order discourse without noticing that ‘someone’ somewhere had switched tapes in the machine connected to the transmission of pictures. Raw unedited footage streamed out to the whole of Italy which began with the arrest of two Irish Protesters and continued to show the Italian Anti terrorism unit of the Police rampaging through mostly quiet empty streets just beating people at random. Italians have told me that this ‘glitch’ was at least as significant as the shooting of Carlo Guiliani in undermining the story the Military Entertainment complex was trying to tell about what was actually happening in Genoa.The Irish Protester’s account is an excerpt from a letter to Brian Cowen sent to him in the days after Genoa.

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After the shooting dead of a protestor and two days of street battles the police launched a nightime raid on some of the demonstrators sleeping quarters in Scuola Diaz and the IndyMedia Centre. Ostensibly, the police were searching for rioters but as the film makes clear the intention was to terrorise the demonstrators and destroy any evidence they might have of police brutality. Berlusconi's Mousetrap proves in an effective and shocking way that their efforts were in vain.

However, I do have some reservations about the film. Berlusconi's Mousetrap isn't just a straightforward account of what happened in Genoa. It poses the question- were the events in Genoa part of a trap; a series of events engineered to divide and demoralise the anti-capitalist movement?

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I think this is an important question to ask. I do firmly believe that Genoa was a trap but the title in a way is meant to bring to mind the usual scenario of ‘Tom and Jerry’. The trap did not work – witness the upsurge in the opposition movements in Italy since – but Genoa was an attempt to build a better mousetrap. It is naive in the extreme to think that the Multi State forces planning the policing of the event did not study in detail events in Gothenburg, Prague, Seattle etc etc and adjust and refine their tactics on the strength of such study. Do you seriously think the police did not study the Black Bloc phenomenon absolutely inside out before Genoa? I mean all you have to do, to do that in a thorough way, is look through the archives of Prague Indymedia and maybe visit Infoshop.org and a couple of other easy to find sites. If anyone has any doubts about this then they should type ‘ Emerald City – Rand – Seattle’ into a search engine and read the results. This stuff is open and public and about 1999. Imagine the level of analysis that is not made public. In fact – don’t imagine – type ‘Operation Garden Plot’ into a search engine and see the whole deal.

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It also asks to what extent the Black Bloc, a section in the demonstrations made up mainly of anarchists, was infiltrated and manipulated by the Italian state into providing a pretext and an opportunity to attack and criminalise the movement as a whole.

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I was trying to ask to what extent the appropriation of selected and endlessly rebroadcast images of the Black Bloc were used by the State as a pretext for a crackdown. I don’t really thinks it makes much of a difference whether there was infiltration or not. I personally believe there was infiltration on a pretty alarming scale by police and fascists. It’s not like it is something new in Italy. In the 1970’s in Italy it was proved conclusively on a number of occasions that those SHOOTING GUNS at police from inside demonstrations were police infiltrators. Just like Kissinger in the US, those who planned the tactics used in the Strategy of Tension have not gone away. Many Italians I spoke to during the making of the film told me they thought the events of Genoa seemed to be a type of reprise of the whole of the 1970’s in Italy in fast forward – and that it seemed to them that the forces of order were communicating a message to the new Italian Social Movements through a type of shorthand based on the shared history of a previous generation of dissidents and state forces. The basic message being – we will shoot and gas and beat you without compunction in the streets if you oppose us – no matter what tactics you adopt.

The IMAGES of chaos live and immediate from Genoa were what was needed by the State and they got them early on in the Direct Action day. I stood around and watched a couple of banks being systematically thrashed while hundreds and Hundreds of Carabineri stood by and did absolutely nothing to stop this going on. I saw mainstream Journalists being herded into the area. This footage and incidents similar were basically on a loop all day on the Friday on National Italian TV. No attempt at balance whatsoever which is hardly surprising given that Berlusconi himself owns 90% of the TV media in Italy.

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This is where I think the film is at its weakest and least convincing. The film suggests that the political decisions that shaped the course of events in Genoa are shrouded in mystery and a lot of time is devoted to vignettes and stories that validate the idea that what happened on streets of Genoa was part of a grand and secret conspiracy. This is reinforced by the use sound effects, music, and surveillance camera footage.

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Why say conspiracy? Is it a conspiracy theory to suggest that the G8 countries security forces did not spend at least a month for every day we spent on making elaborate plans for how to discredit their opposition in the course of what was always going to be a global media event? I don’t think it was a grand and secret conspiracy – I think it was a ruthlessly executed plan that got out of hand at the Diaz school where they went too far for the population they were trying to manipulate to stick with the story. That story being that the GSF and Black Bloc were one and the same organism – ‘They shielded and provided cover for them’ is how Berlusconi put it on the evening of the raid.

As for Surveillance camera footage. Berlusconi owns copyright on all footage from the Traffic camera System in Genoa which was unveiled a couple of days before the Protest. Police helicopter footage was used extensively in Italian TV coverage of the event. That is where I copied the police camera overlay that is used throughout the film. Berlusconi’s TV companies also have an exclusive deal for broadcast rights of Police footage all over Italy on an ongoing basis.

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It is not that the Italian state is incapable of conspiracy and intrigue. On the contrary Italian history over the past forty years proves that the Italian elite is endlessly drawn to Machiavellian plots that serve their own ends. It is simply that in this case the "conspiracy" is an open secret. After all, well before Genoa anti-capitalist protestors had been batoned in Seattle and Prague and shot at in Gothenburg and police forces and governments had begun, quite publicly, cooperating and pooling information in order to neutralize and contain the growing anti-capitalist movement. There was, or is, no doubt that they intend to do this through repressive police action and black propaganda.

Berlusconi's Mousetrap pays a great deal of attention to the role that the Black Bloc played in Genoa. The Black Bloc is depicted as an inexplicably destructive horde, a tiny minority who were infiltrated, given free rein to go on the rampage and used by the state to break up the movement. I am sure there was police infiltration and some agent provocateurs amongst the Black Bloc but this kind of thing is just ordinary statecraft. Nor is it a surprise that the mainstream media and the Italian authorities made a fuss out of the bank burning and looting of supermarkets by the Black Bloc as well as some of the more stupid and counterproductive actions such as burning small cars and the like. The film makes too much of all this and at times seems to be scapegoating the Black Bloc for what happened in Genoa. We certainly have to be able to rethink and criticise the strategies and methods we use but Berlusconi's Mousetrap doesn't really ask why these people chose to engage in direct action or what alternatives we have. The film comes close to representing the Black Bloc in much the same way as the mainstream media does. This crude and banal stereotype of the "sinister and violent" Black Bloc serves only to help criminalise the movement as a whole that is often portrayed as a mindless, traveling rent-a-mob.

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I don’t see the scapegoating. I think the film makes clear that what happened in Genoa is down to Berlusconi and his Allies. Black Bloc members speak throughout the film and at least some of them recognise that the highly visible and in a way standardised tactics they used allowed them to be ‘instrumentalised’ and used. It’s not like Black Bloc followers do not realise that the tactics they adopt are often (always?) used by Mass Media to demonise these protests in a blanket way. Those who used the tactic in a way that proved more successful in Seattle and Prague should have seen this intensified use of Images of the Black Bloc coming and modified their strategy. They didn’t and I would say more than a few have regrets about the way this turned out.

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This general tendency in the film to see things in a conspiratorial light, I believe, risks emptying things of their proper significance; in the twilight all cats are grey. Genoa becomes, when viewed in this way, a pristine moment manufactured in a laboratory of power rather than part of an ongoing and shifting battle between the powerful and the disenfranchised. This might also explain why the film spends very little time examining differences within the anti-globalisation movement or does little to situate the events within a broader history of the left and state repression in Italy and doesn't mention the widespread demonstrations against Berlusconi's government held across Italy after Genoa. If the events are being manufactured and the outcome is a foregone conclusion then the details are fairly irrelevant.

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‘A pristine moment manufactured in a laboratory of power’. Nothing pristine about it. But the day (Friday) itself, if you view it through the lens of one hundred hours of mass media footage from Spain, USA, Italy, UK, Ireland, Sky TV, was a pristine example of co-ordinated and planned propaganda with a few glitches that can only be found if you tape and review the whole dammed lot like me and my Italian and English IMC buddies did. Diaz collapsed the story in on top of those constructing it. By then however, most of the attention of the mass media had shifted elsewhere (except for Italy) and the job was done. The film does not spend any time examining differences within the Movement? It spends most of its time examining the differences in tactical approaches in Genoa within the Movement. It is for and of the Movement and I take for granted that those watching know the difference between a member of ATTAC France and a Black Bloc Anarchist. I also take for granted that they know about September 11th and the growth of the movement in Italy afterwards.

I think and will argue till my head falls off that the film is about tactics rather than conspiracy. Is it conspiracy theory to point out the lengths power will go to to protect it’s own interests? No – it’s a sensible reaction to an incredibly powerful opposition who are paid to study, disrupt, discredit, split, repress, terrify and confuse the Movement.

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It is also unclear how Guy Debord's incisive dialectical aphorisms, that are used at regular intervals throughout the film, fits into the filmmaker's analysis of events in Genoa. Within the vaguely paranoid atmosphere of the film this citation seems more like a stylistic device rather than a theoretical underpinning for historical analysis.

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Oh C’mon. Read the stuff. It is an analysis of the oldest Imperial tactic to distract the masses from their exploitation – like the Roman Emperor said – ‘Give them Bread and Circuses’. Society of the Spectacle is all about how the mass media promulgates views of the world that have less and less relation to the actuality of the way the world is organised. The quotations point out that over and again what is done by individuals and groups can be reshaped in an editing room or on a typewriter and that this reshaping – because it is seen by the masses – BECOMES the reality of what has happened.

Here’s a quote from Comments on the Society of the Spectacle:

‘Never before has censorship been so perfect. Never before have those who are still led to believe, in a few countries, that they remain free citizens, been less entitled to make their opinions heard, wherever it is a matter of choices affecting their real lives. Never before has it been possible to lie to them so brazenly. The spectator is simply supposed to know nothing, and deserve nothing. Those who are always watching to see what happens next will never act: such must be the spectator's condition. People often cite the United States as an exception because there Nixon eventually came to grief with a series of denials whose clumsiness was too cynical: but this entirely local exception, for which there were some old historical causes, clearly no longer holds true, since Reagan has recently been able to do the same thing with impunity. Many things may be unauthorised; everything is permitted. Talk of scandal is thus archaic. The most profound summing up of the period which the whole world entered shortly after Italy and the United States, can be found in the words of a senior Italian statesman, a member, simultaneously, of both the official government and the parallel government, P2, Potere Due: "Once there were scandals, but not any more."

From: http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html

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These criticisms aside Berlusconi's Mousetrap is a well made and astute documentary that tells an important story and proves once again the relevance of the Indymedia project and reminds us that "our weapons are imagination and unpredictability- the things they don't have".

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Why Thank You Wu Ming. Wu Ming 1 (Roberto Bui) of the Wu Ming Foundation is quoted at length in the film.

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Original Article: Wu Ming (Commentary on review by Eamonn who edited film)

BERLUSCONI'S MOUSETRAP
Producer: Irish Independent Media Centre
No Copyright
Available from IFC bookshop or contact [email protected]

by Ray Tue Dec 03, 2002 15:12

I have to say that, while there was a lot I enjoyed in the film, I do think it addresses too narrow an audience. The situationist quotes don't really work unless you're already familiar with situationism (and even then I did sometimes wonder what the connection was supposed to be between some of the quotes and the surrounding incidents), and some of the people I've talked to were pretty confused about the different groups involved, or the timing of some of the events.

As a film, I thought it tried to cover too much ground, between the events of the protest days, the media coverage of those events, and the argument that Genoa was a 'trap' for the protesters. That's fine if you're addressing people who lived through it, and only need to be reminded of what happened and how it was covered, but is a bit alienating/confusing for people who aren't already familiar with the subject. There's some value to a film that preaches to the converted, but I'd have preferred a film that was more focussed, and more open to people who don't know so much about the topic already.

Finally, I'd really disagree with some of the conclusions the film draws. In particular, the allegation that the Black Block was systematically infiltrated by the police and/or fascists. This allegation has been made over and over again since Genoa, but there hasbn't been a single scrap of evidence for it. Undercover cops infiltrating the protests as a whole, sure, and no doubt some of them were in the Black Blocks. But I've no reason to believe that the Black violence was orchestrated or directed by the police.

The police may have been (probably were) happy enough to let the Black Block vandalise the city centre, as long as they kept away from the Red Zone. That's not controversial. But the simple explanation is that they have some understanding of PR, and they prefer to pick on easier targets - not that they were directing the BB actions. In general, the impression is given that the police were _actively_ controlling the protests, and not just setting up a path of least resistance. I think that, without any specific evidence to point to, you should go with the explanation that doesn't imply the police are behind everything.

Anyway, I still enjoyed the film, and there's some great footage in there, stuff that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.

by Eamonn C. Tue Dec 03, 2002 20:07

Don't think the film in any way says the cops were leading the black Bloc Direct Actions. They were I would say diffusing them by targeting anything that would piss locals off.

Though I do think a few provocateurs gave the cops the excuse they needed to start into everyone on the 21'st. This happened/began live on Sky news as did the police response and I have the tape and I'll show you it sometime - it smells something absolutely rotten. Ramor (who I'm sure you or some of your comrades know wrote an account of this.

None of the burned cars on Sat near turning point of march were ever claimed or claimed against for compensation which I also think is interesting

by Ray Wed Dec 04, 2002 10:31

I don't know if it was a thesis of the film that the cops were running the BB, but it was something that people came out with afterwards, and I think some of them were shown in the film, so the idea is put out there. As for the cars - well, I didn't see all of them, but myself and some of the other people in the Irish group saw some cars being set on fire, and the people doing it didn't look like cops. To be honest, given the mix of nationalities and ideologies present, I don't think there was much need for provocateurs. I don't know what Ramor saw, but I saw protesters trashing banks as soon as they reached the city.

by Andrew Wed Dec 04, 2002 11:29

A couple of useful links for people interested in what happened in Genoa written afterwards by Irish activists.

Rays long account of the lead up in Genoa and the actions of one of the Black Blocs is at
http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/news/2001/genoa.html

Ramors account of the Tutte Biance (white overalls) is at
http://www.struggle.ws/global/genoa/ramor.html

Eamonn its worth noting that Ramor was with the white overalls and not with any of the Black Blocs. As such like all of the other claims of heavy police infiltration his is based on hersay rather then on stuff he witnessed on the day.

Personally I think this is a weakness of the film as well, it relies on CP sources claiming to have seen footage of lots of cops disguised as BB rather then the footage itself. Given the way the CP in Italy and elsewhere used this sort of slander against the anarchists for over 70 years it would seem sensible to take such claims with a very large pinch of salt indeed!

by Eamonn C. Wed Dec 04, 2002 14:13

Is not the same Communist party that ganged up with the right on the movements in the 70's in Italy.

Police themselves (600) and Forza Nuoava (30) (sic) a far right group admitted afterwards that they were infiltrating demonstrations. They quoted the numbers involved as above.

The Senator you are reffering to mentions a group he saw going in and out of the stadium headquarters of the police - he does not say it was BB exclusively - he sees dressed in Black/ Dressed in GSF t-shirts - dressed in White (here he seems to mean Tutte Bianche).

Ramors account - I know he was with White overalls on Friday as I met him on it. His account of the start of Troubles on saturday I felt was backed up by the Sky TV footage showing exactly what happened that gave the signal for the police attack. Three or four people who were left alone went up to the police line hurling stuff - it was not a mass action in any way and the police immediately began to attack the crowd in general - The small group were provocateurs whether police or not.

In any case the film is meant to ask questions as much as awnser them. I refuse to accept that it scapegoats the Black Bloc. They are one of the strongest voices in it and repeatedly engage in auto-criticism.

I point out in the stuff above thayt I believe the forces of State - relying on really good knowledge of the Black Bloc Tactic - used the black Bloc for their own ends and that this - rather than the level of infiltration of same is the important point.

by Andrew Wed Dec 04, 2002 15:54

I'm aware RC is a not identical to the CP but its core came from a CP split and it very much carries on at least some of the old CP methods.

In so far as you suggest that the cops used their knowledge of what the BB were likely to do in order to engineer an excuse for thier acts I can agree. But this is a different accusation to the one reported (and unquestioned) in the film of a lorry load of BB disguised cops being driven around the city. Saying you were simply reporting such is not good sufficent, all the more so because no one in the film was heard to question these 'facts' or suggest the historic context in which they were made.

The long interviews with the BB person in the film appeared to be there in part because he agreed with your analysis. Otherwise there was no real analysis of the role of the BB beyond the usual spectacular images. You used the same technique in the post Prague film, spectacular images of petrol bombs flying coupled with disturbing background music. This tends to suggest the events being shown are fuelled by primitive rage rather then rational thought.

A simple example of another way of doing things is the footage of the prison being set on fire. An obvious context to this would be to talk not only in general of the role the prison system plays in this society but to use the specific examples of the criminalisation of people, including many BB particapants post-Genoa.

The problem is that without this what we are left with is a mystification of events, different in some ways but broadly similar with that put forward by the mainstream media. In terms of tactics within the movement it doesn't help us reach any conclusions. Quite the opposite in fact, it actively shuts down communication that could exist. The strength of moustrap is that it manages to partly break with this mystification, its weakness is that this is an incomplete break. (IMHO)

I wasn't in Genoa but following the lead up from afar it was obvious that the attempts by the GSF to isolate and exclude BB type activity was going to cause problems on the day. Rather then, as in Prague and Quebec, setting aside a militant direct action zone it was declared that no such zone would exist. The result of course was that wherever the BB tried to create such a zone it did so in an area where other protesters were also trying to create something else. It is hardly surprizing that some saw this as creating excuses for police intervention, in particular when they did not understand why someone might feel smashing a bank window or setting a prison on fire is a more effective form of protest.

The film looks at one agenda going into Genoa, that of the state. The problem I think is not that your analysis of the agenda of the state is wrong but that it is the ONLY agenda discussed. There were many others from that of RC to the Tutte Biance to the SWP/GR leadership to the Black Bloc to ATTAC. And each of these groupings when confronted with 'defeat' in terms of the agenda they wanted spun what happened in their own way in order to explain that 'defeat'.

For most the BB played a very handy scapegoat for this explanation, all the more so because they were able to link it to generalised attacks on 'anarchism' and the movements suspicion of 'leaders'. But in turn this has allowed those who think the BB is the best thing since sliced bread to avoid confronting it's failure in Genoa. If all your opponents are calling you cops then there is no need after all to engage with their ideas, you can just be satisified that they are liars repeating some very old slander.

There is an extent mousetrap gets beyond this debate which is why despite the problems being discussed it is being circulated in BB circles here and N. America. And this is due to the fact that it does allow some people involved in the BB to talk at some length about how they came to see events.

Finally I'm certainly not an uncritical admirer of the BB - if anything I think this tactic which was useful in Seattle, Prague and Quebec had run its course by Genoa. The absence of any serious BB in Seville this summer suggests that most of those who have particapated in previous BB's drew similar conclusions. I broadly agree with the discussion on the bloc found at http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr6/black.html

Anyway the above criticism are intended in a positive way. I may not think BM is the best film that could have been made about Genoa but I do think it is the best that has been made. And as in many things at the end of the day HAS counts for a whole lot more then COULD!

by Eamonn Wed Dec 04, 2002 18:14

1. Agnoletto in the film indeed does talk about a van full of bars etc driving round unharrased which was shown on Rai TV - He does not say they were cops.

2. Prison Thing - I used Tactical Media Commentary on this (Ricardo Dominguez) which pointed out that real time and space tactics are too localised and limited when, as they refer to it, 'The Apparatus of Punishment' (Mainstream Media) can change the meaning of an event after it has happened. This is the heart of what I was trying to say about the BB and I suppose about the mediated nature of these protests. Their aim in a way is to thrive from conflict and to make it onto TV and become a globalised event - they give up the chance of self definition in doing so and accept that they (the people groups tactics reasoning) are taking long odds on any part of the message being heard clearly.

Similarely with Bank Sequence the voiceover is Debord pointing out the same kind of thing - that the 'spectacle' thrives on repetition and a flattening of the meaning of events so that they seem all the same. The Bloc Feeds into this and I think you know yourself how proud the Oregon heads in seattle were of making it onto tv. Fair enuff but making it onto tv can be very double edged thing as the tv can say what they like over footage.

3. Ital BB heads actually supplied and selected for this and genoa Red Zone the clips that are used to let the BB express themselves - all the green nightshot ones and the guy talking about the fact that they were live in a big brother show for the whole of friday - and similarly a big crowd of us talked for two weeks about what had happened and what needed to be said - I learned a lot during the discussions and I think in a way because of the extremely authoritarian nature of Italian media the Italians were critical and auto-critical of the way the bloc was used as a scapegoat and regretted that this had not been foreseen.

4. I don't believe the GSF sucessfully turned the Bloc into scapegoats which in a way was one of the states aims. The main chant at the anti-repression protests in Italy recently was 'we are all subversives'.

5. I agree with your general critique of these tactics - old old old - and there is a sequence in the film ( militaristic Black bloc Drummers with star trek plastic heads and bike padding)where I use a quote from SOTS to say that once economic organisation is strong enough it can commodify anything including rebellion and I think the Bloc is a symptom of this - repetition of something makes it commodity-like and a commodity becomes something that it is possible to trade with on the level of images and ideas in the mass media.

by Andrew Thu Dec 05, 2002 14:47

Thanks for the further responses Eamonn. Just one further comment based on this. Perhaps part of the problem is that you have 'created' a single BB ideology which has become part of the film while in reality all the BB's I'm aware of have been formed from very different groups working together on the day. Not only would they have no common ideology there would often have opposite views on some of the questions above.

One simple example is the Seattle BB. It's true that the Oregan component got very excited about being on TV and made a big deal out of this. This meant the media and many activists assumed they were the BB at Seattle. In reality they were one minor part of it. A more major part was composed of the groups that went on to form NEFAC (you met one person from this at the Wicklow camp). They did quite the opposite, choosing to make their BB involvement almost invisable and rather they hyping it to concentrate on some very serious and unexciting organisational work across the North East US and Canada. See http://nefac.northernhacking.org/ for more details

The BB's in Quebec and Gothenburg saw a significant maoist involvement, and there is very little in common between anarchism and maoism. That in Prague actually decided to exclude the Leninists grom its ranks, called itself a 'red and black block' and included many 'platformist' groups from all over Europe (incl. me) amongst its ranks as well as insurrectionists from Turkey and Greece and syndicalists from Spain, France and Sweden. All of these groups would have very different views from each other on the whole BB idea.

You may be right with regard to Italy that the GSF project of scape goating the BB has not been succesful. But in Britain and Ireland the major trot groups (SP and SWP) have happly continued to do so. The British Socialist Worker for instance after Genoa contained a bizarre claim that the BB had been allowed to operate with impunity. This despite the killing of one obvious BBer and the multiple arrests of others we are aware of. Of course such a claim is hard to answer, one can after all hardly say 'but Joe Smith was in the BB and he was arrested' because Joe Smith is facing charges and will hardly be helped by you pointing this out! (Joe Smith being a made up name).

I guess part of the problem is the complexity of the whole discussion and what happens when you try and put this is a relatively short film that tries to deal with Genoa over all. And as I already said Moustrap is at least succesful for creating a space around which these sort of debates can happen.