I arrived in the city centre at 4 p.m. The streets are full of little green men. These are not aliens from outer space, but riot cops - hundreds of them. A small group of likely lads has mobbed up on the Marienplatz, but the cops soon surround them and force them to produce identification. Anyone who looks remotely like a protestor is subjected to police searches and harassment. Nothing appears to be going on here, or on the Odeonplatz, five minutes walk away. However, on the platz der Nationalsozialismus, I walk right into a major bundle. Several hundred protestors are fighing with the cops for control of the road. The protestors succeed at first but are driven back by the sheer number of cops. Two groups are surrounded and violently pushed away. I suceed in avoiding entrapment, which has more to do with luck than superior tactical awareness. There appear to be two kinds of cop - ones in green helmets and ones wearing black. The green helmets are not so violent and some are actually quite friendly. The black helmets are all vicious bastards, lashing out at anything that moves.

The fighting continues for about two hours as more protestors appear on the scene. Wave after wave of black helmets attacks the crowd, for no discernible reason. A tiny woman kicks a riot cop repeatedly up the arse. A man in an electric wheelchair pushes forward to get nearer the action. Amazingly, not a single object is thrown, in spite of the provocation. It seems as though two groups of protestors are kicking seven bells out of one another in the middle of the crowd. As I get nearer, I see that it is a group of undercover cops trying to arrest a man. The man is dragged unconscious from the crowd to boos and jeers. The riot cops drag him away like a sack of potatoes. More skirmishes occur, but now the tempo of the action is dying down.

The ring road has been closed to allow the NATO scum to get back to their hotels. The traffic is at a standstill. About 5,000 riot police remain in the city centre. More action is sure to happen on the main demo tomorrow afternoon.