Seamus' G8

It's been a pretty insane few days for me. On Tuesday night I arrived in Prestwick airport outside Glasgow which had a heavy security presence as George W Bush was to arrive there the following day. I'm a little confused as to why this was the case, perhaps, like Tony Blair he was flying with Ryanir to show how man-of-the-people he is.

Over the years I've read so mush bush-hating literature that I feel I've gotten to know the man quite well and even found out that we have the odd thing in common, like liking the thrills and disliking tidying the house, but this week we did have one common objective, and that was to reach the G8 summit, even if some police officers suffered in the process.

It seems he accomplished that Goal a little better than I did, although it seems to be me and the peoople I'm sharing the eco-village here outside Stirling that are being victimised. Yesterday, we were blockaded in here by the police as we tried to reach a vigil for those arrested the day before, even those who were trying to get to the airport and brandishing airline tickets, which seems harsh and according to legal advisors is illegal.

It didn't actually bother me all that much, as I kind of like it in here. I was lucky to reach this place, arriving on Glasgow with nothing other than an out-of-date printout from G8 Alternatives, I met 1 Kiwi and 2 Austrian girls who told me of this place, a self-contained commune where protestors from all over the world are gathered.

There's a part of me that would love to live like this all the time, the only difference between this and a proper hippie commune is that most of the food has to be brought in, though it is all vegan so I'm happy. I love that all the meetings are consenual in contrast to the stiff formality of the G8 negotiations. I love the way that it's mostly women that are in charge, like in Brehon or Amazon times or some Hellenic Thesmophorae.

Yet I hadn't been here for more then a few hours, exhusted from a long air and ferry journey from Patras in Greece, before I was on the road again, with a large group trying to blockade the motorway where the G8 cavalcades would be passing. We left at 3 in the morning, when I really should have been asleep, like a mob of witchunting peasants from a Frankenstein movie, except the monster that global capitalism has created is far more terrifying than anything that Bram Stoker concieved.

At first our endeavour seemed doomed as there was a massive police presence outside, granite faced Scottish coppers dressed up in jackboots and protected by petrochemical shields, backed up from the air by helicopters, one of which is still hovering around as I write this.

It seemed at first that they were pushing us back, though masked members of the black block launched a scorched-earth strategy against the outposts of global capital, thrashing a Burger King and Shell station. There's a part of me that admires their willingness to risk imprisoment for their beliefs and nearly all of me believes that it's corpartions like Shell that should be indicted for their crimes against humanity and the Earth, though there's another part that wonders what any of the destruction really accomplishes.

After we'd got through the industrial estate, I started to become paranoid and thought that the police were leading us into a trap, which was exactly their plan, and I was almost certain that I was going to be arrested at one stage. But we found a narrow path that led to a small village where there was only a minor police presence. It was like Fallujah without guns when we got there, masked protestors breaking through the police cordon with nothing more than sticks and stones.

From the village we could see the motorway to which we made our way through a golf course and a couple of muddy fields, followed all the while by the boys in blue overhead.

I'm still amazed, giving the overwhelming odds, that we made it to the motorway at all, or that I had the courage to stand with only three or four others and block articulated lorries from passing through a link road, or to try to block the cops from trying to get down another road and break up the main blockade. It was at that point that I got seperated from the main group and had to take part in a tactical retreat through the muddy fields, though thankfully I wasn't one of those pushed over a barbed wire fence by the cops.

I was so tired and wet by that time that I decided to make my way back to the campsite with a few others. On the way back I was passed by half a dozen copcars who made didn't seem to bat an eyelid when they passed which lulled me into a false sense of security, though I've heard that there are still arrests being made and there's a possibility that I might still be arrested, but I'm not wearing any black so I should be OK.

I hope I've accomplished something other than just annoying a few motorists and getting a blurry picture of myself into the Scottish Sun. Most of the people in here are people who really want to change the way the world works in favour of people rather than corporations, the ecosystem rather than money, but how far we've advanced those goals remains to be seen. At least I know that if in 50 years time if all the world's resources have been used up, which they will if present trends continue, that I fought as much as I could to prevent that happening.