The German police force has admitted sending undercover officers to other countries, including Scotland, during a parliamentary hearing into the controversial deployment of an undercover British policeman in Germany.

Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that MPs sitting in a confidential meeting of a parliamentary interior affairs committee were told at the end of last month that undercover German police officers were routinely sent abroad to infiltrate suspect groups.

The hearing was prompted by the revelation that British undercover police officer Mark Kennedy had been working in Germany, as well as in other countries, infiltrating environmental and leftist protest groups.

Von Peter Nowak

Vom Sturm auf die Gipfelorte zur Blockade – der libertäre Teil der globalisierungskritischen Bewegung

Während die globalisierungskritische Bewegung in der Flaute ist, scheint das Interesse an der Zeit zu wachsen, als internationale PolitGipfel von länderübergreifenden Massenprotesten begleitet waren. So hat der Laika-Verlag gerade einen Film von Verena Vargas wieder ausgegraben, die den Sonderzug von Globalisierungskritikern zu den G8-Protesten nach Evian im Juni 2003 begleitet hatte. In »evainnaive« zeigt Vargas auch, wie in zahlreichen Plena in einem speziellen Waggon die direkte Demokratie auf die Probe gestellt wurde. Für den israelischen Sozialwissenschaftler und Anarchisten Uri Gordon sind diese Versuche von Selbstorganisierung Beispiele für aktuelle anarchistische Theorie und Praxis.

04 November 2005

"How do you manage to switch off and get a good night’s sleep?" It's a question we've probably all wanted to ask those who are in power – from world leaders to Chief Executives of multi-national companies who make potentially life-changing decisions on a daily basis.

Today, this was one of the most revealing questions posed by business leaders from across Scotland as they met with Peter Wilson, the Fife Police Chief Constable best known for his pivotal role in co-ordinating police arrangements at this summer’s G8 summit.

By Michael Howie

THE Ministry of Defence has intensified a row over unpaid bills for equipment used to police two international summits in Scotland, claiming the money is needed to fight conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The MoD is demanding nearly £400,000 from Tayside and Fife police forces to meet the cost of helicopters and other military facilities used during the G8 and British-Irish summits.

But the police forces have refused to pay the bills, insisting it is a matter for the Scottish Government.

However, the Scottish Government insists Scotland should not have to pick up the bill, as the summits were UK affairs.

Instead of going into a complete history, we have concentrated our discussions on two main areas relating to our experiences over the past few years, these are confrontation and anti-media(tion) which encapsulates the ideas of autonomy and self-organisation. This, as well as our G8 analysis, we think will add to the debate surrounding the anti-G8 mobilisations.

The inevitable conflict

Confrontation starts with questioning and defining your own life and what you want from it. Confrontation is refusing to accept the limits of what the state defines as acceptable in order to manage and maintain power.

Introduction:

The following article is written by an academic at a British University who specialises in the study of crowd behaviour, and has done participant observation studies into crowd behaviour from the activist perspective, giving her experience of public order policing at demos. While this is not intended to be a definitive account of the tactics the Police will use during the G8 summit at Gleneagles, it is hoped that this may be useful in showing those going how the Police see crowds in general and how their perspective can affect the way they attempt to police them. It will also be argued that this perspective is fundamentally flawed and also counter-productive in that it often causes the disorder that they claim to be there to prevent. Several references follow at the end which should be available in any University library.

CHARGES against five protesters arrested during Edinburgh’s G8 demonstrations have been thrown out of court after two years.
The prosecution case collapsed amid claims police failed to provide video footage said to have been taken at the protest in July 2005.
The five defendants today hit out at the cost to the public purse, which is likely to be tens of thousands of pounds.
The case against the four men and one woman was brought up in court on 12 separate occasions, but eventually dropped on Monday. Solidarity campaigners John Wight and Kevin Connor were arrested on July 6, 2005, with three others, following an impromptu march along Princes Street.
The demonstration started after buses due to take protestors to the official G8 demonstration in Auchterarder were blocked from leaving Waterloo Place.
The march reached Edinburgh’s West End, but was turned back by police.
The protesters headed back towards The Mound, where four now-released coaches were leaving the city. However, because the buses were full, the marchers were not allowed to board.
Police decided to invite a delegation from the demonstration to inspect the coaches to prove they were full.
Mr Wight, who had organised the transport, and Scottish Socialist Party’s Nick Eardley were the first to be selected.
Mr Connor and his girlfriend Vanesa Fuertes were also picked to accompany police officers.
The four said they were separated from the crowd and once hidden from view, were “pounced on and arrested”.
They were charged with public order offences.
Raphie De Santos, an SSP member, was also arrested and faced the same charges of taking part in a public demonstration without having given notice and failing to desist when ordered to do so.
Mr Wight, 39, said: "The police stopped us from taking part in a legal demonstration in Gleneagles, so we had no alternative but to protest here in Edinburgh.
“I had been organising the buses from the start, so the police saw me as a leader. They wanted to take me out, so they used the excuse of the buses to get me away from the crowd.”
Mr Connor, 37, a taxi driver from Meadowbank, said: "It was the first time I had been arrested, and we were really scared.
“We were shocked at having been arrested simply for doing something that the police had asked us to do.”
He added: "What happened since has been a complete farce and absolutely shocking.
“Two years and 12 court appearances later, after spending many tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money, the case concocted against the five of us was dropped.
“The two-year delay resulted from the reluctance of the police to supply relevant video footage.”
Cameron Tait, Mr Connor’s defence lawyer, said today: "There was an ongoing difficulty obtaining video footage allegedly taken by police on the day.
“The Crown discontinued the case by not calling it in court on Monday, May 14.”
Police declined to comment on the video footage.
A police spokeswoman said: "As a result of demonstrations that took place on July 6, 2005 in Princes Street a number of individuals were arrested and reported to the Procurator Fiscal in respect of public order offences.
“The cases were thereafter progressed by the Procurator Fiscal service, which has responsibility for decisions around the prosecution of criminal cases.”

[http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=759312007]

Andrew X,Y,Z

There it was then. After almost two years of planning and a suggested figure of £200,000 spent by the 'anti-authoritarian' movement, the appeals to and protests against the Gleneagles G8 summit came and went in the space of a week.
200,000 people walked a caged route around Edinburgh at the Make Poverty History march, replete with Ukranian-democracy style branding; 5,000 that managed to get there, despite illegal efforts against them, took part in marches on Gleneagles; and hundreds took part in blockades. Was it all worth it?

The challenge

Dedicated Micros delivered two of its resilient RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) high capacity systems to Tayside Police to help support the Force's security commitments for the G8 summit, which took place from the 6th to 8th of July 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland.

The solution

The simple to install RAID units were used in the Tayside Police's custody suite at the Force's District Headquarters in Perth for the duration of the summit, providing extra capacity for the secure storage of CCTV images of those being held, supplementing that offered by the hard disks on the Force's existing BX2 digital recorders.

Getting arrested is no joke. It’s a serious business.

All convictions add up: eg. if you’re done three times for shoplifting, you stand a good chance of getting sent down.

If there’s a chance of you getting nicked, get your act together: know what to do in case you’re arrested.

Unless you enjoy cells, courtrooms, prisons, you owe it to yourself to wise up.

The third edition of No Comment, the Defendant’s Guide to Arrest is now available on this website.
It has been updated and reprinted by former members of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) in conjunction with the Legal Defence & Monitoring Group (LDMG).

No Comment is an invaluable guide for anyone at risk of arrest.

Download unter www.gipfelsoli.org/rcms_repos/Antirepression/No_Comment_3rd_Edition.pdf

G8 SUMMIT Blair says leaders ‘hate’ conducting talks behind security cordon

GLENEAGLES, Scotland (AFX) – Leaders of the world’s richest nations ‘hate’ having to conduct their talks behind a security cordon designed to keep out protestors, said Prime Minister Tony Blair. In an interview on Sky News, Blair said most leaders ‘would be happy to be in a modest little place where we can mix with lots of people in a town and be able to meet the people who’s concerns we’re talking about’. Blair was speaking after several hundred protestors broke away from a march and tried to storm the summit venue perimeter fence before being beaten back by police. ‘The problem is you get these small groups of international anarchists who just wreck the place and therefore you have to have the security,’ he said. ’It’s a common myth that the leaders all love the fact that you’ve got to have a fence of steel around us. We hate it. Most of us would prefer to be in a situation where we could engage with people.’ ‘If you were to hold this in Edinburgh, which would have been fantastic, it would have brought the whole city to a halt,’ he added.

After a month we had an internal weekend with the aims of debriefing and looking into group dynamics, and then evaluating our work in order to draw lessons for other people who might want to do this work.* The general consensus was that all of us enjoyed doing the work: it felt useful, appreciated and it is rewarding to feel that somebody actually feels better after talking to you.

Internal group dynamics are often complicated and this is especially true if people have been traumatised in the past, as all of the people in the working group had in some way or other. Summits are stressful situations at the best of times, they “trigger” people’s memories and remind them of previous traumatic situations. Additional factors were that a lot of the people did not really know each other beforehand and had very different personal and professional backgrounds and attitudes.

We concluded it would be better for a future trauma support group to really try and get to know each other beforehand and put effort into trust building and group bonding, since we need to be able to draw strength from the group rather than having to deal with internal conflict. It might have been a good idea to have an external supervisor on site who was independent of the group and could provide support for the supporters and group facilitation if necessary.

Activist-Trauma Support was started in 2005 in order to provide support
especially during and after the G8 in Scotland. Previous experiences have
shown that while self-organised medical support for victims of police violence
was quite well organised, there was a serious lack of assistance on a
psychological level.

Working during the G8

For some, the idea for ATS was born from
experiences from the Aubonne Bridge Action
against the G8 in Evian 2003
(www.aubonnebridge.net). In Aubonne one
person was seriously physically injured – and
got lots of support. However several others
suffered from various degrees of psychological
trauma but did not get the support they
needed or deserved. This was when we
realized the pressing need for organised
awareness raising, information and support.
In preparation for Gleneagles a 6-day training
was organised with a professional trainer from
a charity focused on trauma care called ASSIST
(www.traumatic-stress.freeserve.co.uk .

Alex Smith

‘We are the network, all of us who resist.’
– Subcommandante Insurgent Marcos

News that the 2005 G8 Summit would be held somewhere in the UK (at this point none of us knew where) was first discussed in a workshop at the 2003 Earth First! Summer Gathering near Ripon, North Yorkshire. A second meeting, which actually became a series of meetings, took place at the Anarchist Bookfair in London in October later that year. Amongst those who attended each of these events, there was a general feeling that the radical movement in the UK had been in decline since the hugely successful day of action in the City of London on June 18 1999, and that the G8 Summit could potentially provide an opportunity to reinvigorate, broaden and develop the movement in the UK, and allow for the development of more meaningful relations with groups and movements elsewhere.

This article has been written by a few individuals who spent a lot of time working within the CounterSpin Collective (CSC). As such it purports to reflect the view of ourselves as individuals, and does not claim to represent everyone’s opinion. It contains personal reflections as well as objective critique.

It would be impossible to begin this without first establishing the invaluable and essential role that people from outside Britain had in assisting us to put together a media response group. Analysis of the work done by activists in Dublin around Mayday2004, their support, sound advice and experiences shared, gave the fledgling group the confidence it needed to exist in the first place. Their workshops helped enormously in building the practical knowledge of people intending to facilitate media engagement.

Business chiefs seeking compensation over the disruption to trade caused by G8 protests have criticised the Scottish Executive's "hard-nosed" refusal.

The Forum of Private Business (FPB) wrote to ministers claiming the demonstrations had been a "disaster", costing firms in Stirling alone £1.2 million.

But finance minister Tom McCabe has rejected the plea and said disruption could have been worse had it not been for the major policing operation.

MIKE J WILSON

EXPECTED benefits from the G8 summit at Gleneagles failed to materialise, partly because tourists thought Scotland was effectively "closed" as it tackled violent demonstrations.

While tourism and leisure facilities witnessed a tail-off in trade, numerous contracts were also placed outwith Scotland, leaving contractors and service providers empty-handed.

The then Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace said on announcing Gleneagles as the G8 venue in June 2004: "We and the enterprise bodies will be working very closely with all the business organisations to secure the maximum economic benefits for Scotland from the summit."

The UK Presidency of the G8 - Justice and Home Affairs

[...]

Work on Transnational Organised Crime

After the 1995 Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a group of experts was brought together to look for better ways to fight international crime. In 1996, this group (later known as the «Lyon Group») produced Forty Recommendations to combat international crime that were endorsed by the G8 Heads of State at their Summit Meeting in Lyon in June 1996. «Subgroups» of the Lyon Group thereafter were formed to address specific crime-related issues (e.g., legal processes for evidence-sharing, high-tech crime, and immigrations fraud and human trafficking). In December 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno hosted the first-ever meeting of her counterparts from the G8 countries and the Ministers issued their first joint Communiqué which endorsed the work of the Lyon group. The last three Presidencies of the G8 have hosted meetings of Justice and Home Affairs ministers. The Home Secretary will host a Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial meeting in Sheffield 15-17 June.

Changes following September 11, 2001

In October 2001, senior representative of G8 Justice and Home Affairs Ministries met in Rome to discuss steps for the G8 to take to combat international terrorism and decided to combine the G8’s Lyon Group (fighting transnational organised crime) and the G8’s Roma Group (fighting international terrorism). Since that time, the Lyon/Roma Group has met three times annually in joint session. While continuing important work to combat transnational organised crime, the group uses its resources to combat terrorism through such avenues as enhancements to legal systems, transport security, and tools for investigating terrorist uses of the Internet.

Part 1

This article examines the G8 mobilisation in 2005 from an anarchist perspective. Part 1 gives a full description of the mobilisation, the Carnival, the Black Bloc, the Ecovillage, and more...

Reinventing Dissent: The Unabridged Story of Resistance against the G8 Summit in Scotland, 2005
by Alex Trocchi, Giles Redwolf, and Petrus Alamire

Zu Beginn ihrer Arbeit hatte die Berliner Vernetzung G8-KO noch das Ziel formuliert, auch auf Leute außerhalb der anarchistischen, linksradikalen usw. Berliner Szene zuzugehen. Die Anti-G8 Arbeit sollte offen gestaltet werden, wir wollten einen Dialog mit Leuten aus anderen sozialen Milleus, also z.B. aus attac-, Kirchen-, Umweltgruppen oder auch aus Gewerkschaften.