[Onthebarricades] G8: article on undercover police

[Andy]

http://studentpa.info/spip.php?article196
Who are these "blacks"?
by Irene Sacchi
27 June 2007

G8 demonstrations were disrupted by violence -- but not always from the 
most expected origins.

Friday, 8th of June, 16.00: the Rostock-Berlin motorway is packed with 
police cars. The busloads of Special Forces and plainclothes police 
stand out a mile. The line of vehicles seems endless -- there must be at 
least a hundred of them, maybe more. And this is only a small proportion 
of the 16.000 policemen that are in operation in and around Rostock and 
Heiligendamm this week during the G8 meeting.

Now everything is over, the high-security fence around the conference 
location is being taken down -- with the utmost care, incidentally, 
since it has already been sold to a private investor. This way the 
government can cover the costs of its expensive adventure in hosting the 
controversial event.

The week's big winner is without a doubt the German chancellor Angela 
Merkel. The yellow press even crowned her MISS WORLD (Bild-Zeitung). 
Such tributes are not only due to her exquisite sense of fashion but 
also to her leadership, which has seen the only female in the pack 
dominating her guests like a real Alpha wolf. As for the results of the 
event, we can now apparently look fearlessly into the future: by 2050 
the climate change problem will be half as bad as foreseen, Africa 
(against all statistical indicators) will be twice as rich (do they mean 
poor?) and global terror will have been wiped off the planet by an 
international counterforce. The other topics treated (the nuclear crisis 
in Iran, the independence of Kosovo, the political tensions in Sudan and 
the problems of emerging economies) produced equally clear results -- 
namely none at all.

What was left of this year's G8 conference was harmony. Enough time for 
the big guns to address their private issues -- the US-missile shield or 
the cell phone of the freshly elected French PM Sarkozy. Meanwhile, the 
rest of the world was succesfully protected from itself.

The crackdown on private flats and alternative cultural centres at the 
beginning of May, the restrictions and modifications of freedoms of 
speech and assembly, the across-the-board criminalisation of ordinary 
Joes has known no limits in recent weeks. Neither did the Big 8. No 
wonder that in both camps there was a lot of fuss and plenty of hot air. 
Yet the hot air, which soon vanished into smoke, could not make up for 
the one thing that was lacking: content. Rostock in flames and nobody 
knew why. But what is this growing "Black Block" of autonomous 
anarchists, who throw restaurant chairs and stones? If the Black cloth 
is their only real characteristic, then half of Berlin and most of its 
artists would be members!

However, there is another even more sinister element in the Black Block. 
This was brought to light by the case of a police officer from Bremen, 
who got caught by his own colleagues -- also dressed in black -- while 
trying to turn peaceful protesters into ravaging rioters. After the 
press spokesman of the "Kavala" Special unit had repeatedly denied it, 
he had to admit on Saturday the 9th of June that there had been an 
incident of this kind. The masked civil servant was gathering 
information about criminal elements and intents, but ended up being 
caught in his own trap. Now the officer is facing charges from the 
district attorney of Rostock.

In fact, cases like this are not rare in recent German protest history: 
look at the incidents at Anti-Nuclear-Plant protests or the Springer 
Blockade in 1968 at the Frankfurt show. On that particular day, 
policemen amusingly recognised and thus exposed their own colleagues, 
who were fighting in the lines of the demonstrators. All this in the 
name of provocation and escalation, just to justify mass arrests of 
protesters.

At this year's G8, the same questions were raised again. Some of the 
protestors may well have asked themselves, stuck in their cages: "Who 
was that loud guy next to me?" Maybe it is time to move away from mass 
protests in the streets, because they are too transparent and easily 
abused by others. In an economic world like ours it might be time to 
think about different ways to protest. That means hitting them where it 
hurts -- in their wallets.
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