Re: anti-capitalism protest?

Who organised it? No one really - that was sort of the whole point... 

Good article in Guardian, 24/06/99, IT section (Thursday regular pull out) 
pointing out how this had been largely organised using internet linkages, 
and hence "ringleaders" have been very hard to find...

Police are apparently in a state of high dudgeon about this, as it caught 
them out and didn't really know what to prepare for, and in fact within 
conventional policing terms there is little they can do about it without 
resorting to blanket bans and total sealing off of areas, and for more 
extreme efforts to put a stop to civil dissent, extensive attempts to pin 
conspiracy charges upon those they can identify as having influence over 
events, and attempt to conflate violent elements with non-violent direct 
action people.

However, "downside" of not having formal organisation and demonstration 
stewardship (like, for example, "disciplined" non-violent direct action) 
is that some aggressive/violent elements took advantage of the situation 
and had a good go at various targets. Police as per usual weren't too 
particular about which heads they cracked, and this would seem to have 
precipitated the violent reaction of elements which may have been more 
restrained otherwise and so forth in usual spiral. Numerous reports of 
bystanders, including some in suits (i.e. the copper's friends and not the 
anti-capitalists) and more seriously people with kids in buggies (who were 
hardly going to be looking for violent action!) allegedly assaulted by 
riot police wearing unmarked armour.

Interesting times ahead. Downside is that the logical response of the 
state is to increasingly indiscriminately blanket criminalise anyone in 
the vicinity of civil protest, violent or not, and seek to use widespread 
covert intelligence gathering intruding into all aspects of citizens 
rights (and use of conspiracy etc. as above) if they cannot target 
selectively their attacks upon clearly identified "organisers".