G8 Update

The local feedback from acquaintances, friends and family from Monday. The police have had a deliberate policy of picking out and coralling at all costs 'anti-capitalist anarchists' (anyone dressed in red or black, with hoodies and/or bandannaed faces, clowns and fairies), provoking violence and thus perpetuating their power and the myth of the good state and the bad people.

This viewpoint, of deliberate riot police provokation (sp?), was even covered in some depth by Newsnight Scotland last night, to their credit. See also the Herald's letters today. Needless to say Scotshit declined to publish my letter. Even Newsnight's pro-policing advocate (a lawyer called Ogg) admitted that there was little legal basis for detaining people in an indiscriminate mass, as the Met and now G8 police are adopting. Firstly, demonstrators have individual rights to non-violent protest that can't be subsumed to 'crowd control'. Secondly, riot police had little evidence of any 'violence' before they've taken offensive action.

Amongst the witness accounts that inform this are:

• A taxi driver who told of merely wearing black on Monday and being stopped, searched and photographed by cops desperate for 'action'.
• A talk with the manager of the Human Be-in on Tuesday, who confirmed there had been little trouble on Saturday (as reported below) - just some Black Bloc walking through the outside tables. He showed me the card of the Scotshit reporter who interviewed him- Scotshit's wine correspondant (ironic smiley. Riot cops stormed across before you could say Bob was your uncle. My friend Nick has promised shots he took of the cops in vans on South Clerk St at this time, stripping down to their underwear to get into riot gear. I'll post these if I can get'em.
• SW and my mum were in Princes St Gdns on Monday when the 'Battle of Princes' St' ©Scotshit occurred. They were just off-shot in the Herald's photographs, which show cops violently arresting a bloke who was sitting with friends doing nothing when attacked from behind. His friends then started using turf clods and flower clumps to try to free him, which apparently succeeded. Then things got much nastier.
• The cops asked all the shops of Princes St to close-up and have lock-ins by mid-afternoon, after they'd corralled off Canning St Lane and Princes St Gdns, entrapping both protesters and members of the public. R took some pictures from Jenners, where she was locked in, and reports running baton charges by phalanxed riot cops telling corralled crowd to 'move it' when they had little room to shrink back, being boxed in on the other side. She felt the policing was heavy-handed, to say the least.
  
  View from one side, advancing to the east
  
  
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There's now much worse reports of pro-active provokation by cops and violence from the Weds Auchterauder protest, and battles at the Stirling eco-campsite both today (Thurs)and yesterday. I hope some legal cases come out of these events at G8. More injuries and arrests both days. See Herald letters for last 2 days too.

One of my colleagues who was active in MPH through her church is outraged, upset and betrayed by people protesting G8. I commented that some of the trouble might have been provoked by police, and received a quite personal tirade about troublemakers undermining MPH, her hiked taxes to police anarchists and replace flowerbeds in Edinburgh, her fear of violence (she felt menaced when surrounded by protestors driven by riot cops from the Sheraton hotel, Weds morning). Mostly that if she got her hands on violent protesters, she'd beat them black & blue. Her retort also included that she disagreed with my possible interpretation because 'she hadn't seen that on the news'. Ironic smiley.

DoDo had been booked to go with a friend and friend's Dad to Climate Change demo on Fri, but for once I and DoDo's Dad agree this is no longer a good idea.
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Meanwhile we just hear of multiple explosions in London, but the Met force is busy up in Scotland, kicking in the heads of peaceful protesters. Radio Scotland is reporting that officers seconded to Scotland from London are being sent home. Too fvcking late.