did they come to their senses, or did they merely achieve what they aimed at - harrass a group of people, who then, they'd hope, either go home and watch TV in apathetic fear or become radicalised in a manner that, recursively, justifies the violence against them in the first place?

in any case, the time and energe lost is much more valuable to a social movemement than it is to the police... at least, i'd say..

Point taken, but there was always the chance that we'd be charged, then have our court dates strung out until after the main G8, with the bail condition that we weren't allowed near a G8 meeting. So I am pleased with the result, although of course I'm deeply unhappy with the police intimidation and abuse of power. As far as I know, none of my fellow arrestees have been harrassed out of anti-authoritarian politics and I know for sure that a few (myself included) have been fired up by such latent injustice. So I'm still going and the others are too, and my criminal record remains reasonably unclean. See you 15-17th June, I trust.