interesting memoir written by an black-bloc anarchist type who was in Switzerland for the last round of G8 protests. I guess this is scary story

5. Let Me Light My Cigarette on Your Burning Blockade:
Crimepens?e Eyewitness Account of the Anti-G8 Demonstrations and Anarchy in the Alps.

the main players are the blac-bloc, the pigs, and the locals and you can probably guess what happens. The Bloc engage in their usual anti-property violence and the pigs engage in their usual anti-bloc violence and the locals look on in bemusement (or offer rides to the train station). The details are interesting and fun though. Sounds like they had a good time. I’m pretty skeptical about the claims that the Bloc “gave them a taste of the hell their political policies were inflicting on the rest of the world”. More likely the delegates at the convention came no closer to ‘hell’ than reading the newspaper headlines on their inflight complimentary copies on the way home. The unfortunate people who owned the smashed gas stations were the only ones experiencing hell, and while I have a long-standing policy regarding Shell, I really doubt if the franchisees in particular where bad people. Ignorant maybe, but then aren’t we all. Anarchist demonstration violence seems to me to be a big buy-in to the ‘might makes right’ attitude of the capatilists they are trying to oppose. Tactically it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. The police states are full-time 24hr a day 365 day a year operations, and the demonstrations only get big enough to realistically take on the police once or twice a year. You’re just not going to out-gun The Man, sorry.

Black-bloc smash-ups may be distasteful to me, but I have to admit they bring reporters, and reporters bring headlines, and headlines, even unwelcome ones, bring attention, and ultimately, it may be attention that the anti-globalization movement really needs, at least to get started. So I can’t condemn them out of hand. But I’m sure not about to participate. At least not in the smashing part. The border-opening march was a great idea, I wish I could have been there. And the beach party part sounds pretty fun.

After deciding to stick together, the Franco-Germanic Bloc sent a delegate down to the Pink and Silver Bloc (which liked dressing up in outrageous pink and silver outfits and dancing to the latest in anti-capitalist samba music). At the inter-group meeting, it was decided that the Samba band would lead the march into Lausanne, and a spokesman from ?the Dark Grey Bloc? announced that ?we embraced heterogeneity and dancing, and no-one was going to be forced to commit acts of violence they don?t approve of. ?