True, true true, violence is no way of achieving anything, however, the number of violent people at tuesday's protests was very small, the police could easily have taken out any real troublemakes who probably numbered a couple of hundred easily. Instead they were aggressive to everyone, including the peaceful protesters. It is time to rid the police of the racists and idiots and have some sensible policing. The police were the main troublemakers on Tuesday, and I am sure some people will go back next year for retribution after being hit for no reason by police. Turned to violence by pain, anger and a sense that the police really are against us, the people, and against us having a say. I am truly disgusted. In my whole life the only people I have been physically assaulted by are policemen, I think that speaks for itself,

About 3pm November 30th 1999 was the turning point for many American activists. In Seattle many people had prepared for a violent police response to our huge demonstration and human blockade of the Convention Center. We had planned to prevent property damage. We had many peacekeepers who trained to prevent any destruction. Long after the tear gas and rubber bullets were flying a few people lost their cool and started breaking a few windows of some of the more vile corporate criminals with storefronts downtown. The police ignored the window smashers, and even refused to arrest a young guy some steelworkers had caught breaking a window. As the day wore on and after thousands of people had been attacked with gas and rubber bullets people started letting the vandals have their way, and by 4pm people were for the most part cheering as the hooded figures smashed up Nike Town, and decorated the place with spray paint. In the end the only "collateral damage" protesters or agent provacatures caused was one smashed window of a jewelry store. All the rest of the storefronts smashed were large corporations that employ slave labor somewhere in the world. Aside from attacking thousands of peaceful law abiding protesters, hundreds of downtown shoppers and people comming home from work were gassed and a number were even shot with rubber bullets, several in the head. Also a number of windows were smashed by rubber bullets. Down at the Pike Place Farmers Market all the produce the vendors had out on 1 December had to be thown out because the police fired tear gas at peacefull people in the market. The ruling class does not loose very gracefully. The important thing is that any action should be well directed so as to avoid giving the media any ammo for BS stories like samuri sword weilding protesters attacking passersby.
In solidarity with the people of the world.

I heard Monbiot talk before about how direct action was only legitimate if it was:
a) non violent (except in a repressive regime such as Burma. Okay a lot more shit happens there but how anyone can say that the UK is not repressive to even the most peaceful demo shows ivory tower syndrome to the extreme)
b) acting as a "stunt" to illustrate a "wider public debate" - presumably by people like him conducted in the media.

This was never going to be easy. The fat cats aren't about to roll over, giggle guiltily and hand back their accumulations like a guilty child caught with her fingers in the biscuit tin. That's where the state comes in.

Not wanting (nor being eloquent enough) to reiterate excellent descriptions of the relationship between capitalists and the state it goes something like:
"Taxation and business controls bad, provision of adequately educated and reasonably healthy workers good. Oh, and we don't want them crossing borders or causing any trouble either"

The only reason that the UK is not as nasty as Burma (or northern america for that matter) in terms of protesting is because workers fought tooth and nail for the small "rights" we have. If we trust in the "democratic process" which Monbiot insists on we will lose again and again. Representative democracy and the corporate media are about putting filters and controls between the people and real freedom as well as access to information.

Monbiot makes no seperation between violence to humans and property. It is also important to reiterate that violence to a group of well armoured tooled up people whose sole stated objective and historical role is to beat the crap out of us no matter how peaeful we are is SELF DEFENCE. We did not go looking for the police, they came uninvited to where they knew we would be. We would NEVER attack a shop worker, it is the police who do that when they form picket lines.

We do attract a minority who either because they are paid up members of HM's finest or they are genuine tabloid "thugs" (who were actually also on oocasion attacking some of our brothers and sisters inside oxford circus) but just because a few football hooligans use the cover of an England math to have a barny doesn't mean the game gets cancelled or politicians call for genuine fans to not go!

The argument about violence is a distraction. Despite the media and some of our sweeter hippier elements scare stories the spikies are not alienating "the public" (not quite sure when I stopped being "normal" but they do so like to divide and rule and encourage us to think of differences, often merely temporal).

I was talking with all sorts of people from pensioners to friends of my parents and once I mentioned what McDonalds et al were doing compared to a few broken windows or the violence of the police they were pretty cool.

If it wasn't for the threat of property destruction we wouldn't have managed to cost them 20 million squid in lost business etc. We would have been ignored and the argument would have been about what we could do to get some attention!

That's enough from me anyway, I could go on all night, but that would be about as effective as handing a petition into paliament ...