Sir, - The article "Single-track vision of G8 unacceptable," by Michael D. Higgins (August 2nd) was welcome and timely, and a convincing antidote to the certainties of the Berlusconis, Blairs and Bushes of this world.
My abiding impression of the Genoa protests is of the unsubtle villainy of the state suppression of the protesters. Carlo Giuliani was shot dead. As far as I know at least one person, Roberto Sarlo, received "forced sanitary treatment". If I loosely term such treatment as an abuse of psychiatry you can guess what it means. Joe Moffat is today still confined in an Italian jail on trumped up charges and I am reliably informed that there are also dozens of innocent Italian protesters in jail charged with organising the riots.
To me the body language of Blair, Bono and Sir Bob Geldof betrayed them as people who failed to appreciate the profound authoritarian and anti-democratic stance they shamelessly adopted. If I were Irish leader I would religiously keep my distance from Blair and Blairites in the future no matter what the consequences were for Anglo-Irish relations or things like "the peace process" in the North. - Yours, etc.,
Seβn Crudden, Secretary, Irish Mental Patients'Educational and Representative Organisation, Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth.