At the G8 Protests

Tweet "Some hours later, a huge truck rebuilt into a sort of two-storey techno van begins leading the protesters out pied piper style, as they dance along behind it. It is a scene that one would more likely expect from a very lame music video or an American TV commercial for Mountain Dew. But as we were dancing into the sunset, we heard fire engines and turned to see smoke behind us. Cars set ablaze, rocks flying, pepper spray and flailing batons, it was everything most of us had hoped to avoid. It seems that our friends dressed in black– the police and their lesser-armed but equally angry rivals — had started to fight after all. I would later be surprised to read that the German press was careful to point out that only a small group of those assembled had taken part in any violence, and that the police were also partly blameworthy.

"Thinking of these clashes, disturbing though they may be, I can only wonder; a few burning cars and thrown stones? Is this the awesome danger that required the complete recall of democracy, the total secrecy in place of transparency, the gagging of the press in place of open information, the 12 million Euro fence that did more to provoke than to protect? Is this what European democracy has come to? But the answer is already known; just as the G8 has trumped article 8 of the German Constitution (freedom of assembly), our European democracy has been trumped by a new, American style “democracy,” also called authoritarianism and government by the corporate “elite.”

Dissident Voice via Cursor.org