The systematic arrest of protesters (in particular "internationals") which went on in Genoa, and is still going on in Italy wherever the police can be sure that they have come across a group of activists, has many purposes.

They wish, first, to criminalize those who have experience of participating in and organizing extra-parliamentary politics, with three results: (1) as political activists become "criminals" they can then be legally, or in the eyes of judges, be denied many civil rights-- the presumption of innocence in future encounters with the law, the right to travel to other countries to offer solidarity (English to Italy, Americans to Europe, Europeans to America etc), the right to privacy (wiretaps, and all the other kinds of surveillance at the disposal of the state become easy to justify) (2) operational: the state can then target its surveillance on the most active people, it might even hope that being brutalized by policemen and the state will break the activists will to resist or discourage others from becoming activists; (3) propaganda: past or future violence against such people or others who share their causes becomes justifiable to public/international opinion; at the very least the issues for which they are struggling can be pushed off the agenda.

Most of those arrested will often be released quickly, with prosecution dropped or sentences suspended. But what the state keeps (despite the nominal protection of "Section 60", honoured as we know in the breach) is their names and photographs. All of which is fed into national and international databanks (intelligence sharing is one of the few things the G7 were actually good at doing) and they can thus be better informed about those they presume to be their "enemies".

The problem for the state is that we are genuinely a heterogenousand international community of opposition, motivated by and large by our morality and values, and not disciplined by any one organization: there is no "conspiracy" which it is possible for the police (nationally or internationally) to get to the heart of, there are too many leaders, too many people with shared commitments and extraordinary energy and toughness, for us to be "broken". While it is not true that "the people united will never be defeated" (if governments are willing to kill and imprison enough people they can stop popular movements for change for one or many generations-- see Guatemala etc ), there are simply too many people alive to the issue of global injustice for this movement to wither. And (this is for you agents of the state who are reading this, as you read everything we write ...) we are, in the vast majority, generous peaceful principled law-abiding people: our friends, family and neighbours, and those we meet in our workplaces, schools, universities, churches know us for who we are. We will not stop fighting for what is right, and surveillance and repression can only strenghten us in our sense of purpose.