n 40 left wing centres, bookshops and flats searching for “proof“ of the “formation of a terrorist organisation“ against the G8.

This vicious onslaught on activists planning demonstrations against the G8 is an onslaught on the social and anti-capitalist movement in Germany. It gives a bitter foretaste, of what the German imperialist state will do when faced with a developing movement of struggle and resistance. Clearly, the aim was to criminalise activists, intimidate larger strata of people wanting to protest against the G8 and isolate the movement by branding it “terrorist”.

But the governments and the state’s plan backfired. Thousands and thousands took to the streets, more than 5000 in Berlin, around 4000 in Hamburg. In at least another 20 towns or cities hundreds if not thousands angrily demonstrated against this outrageous assault on democratic rights. Political groups, anti-war, anti-capitalist, antifascist organisations and trade unions from all over Germany issued protest statements, press releases and called for joining the actions that evening. Demonstrations and pickets are also called in other European cities, like Vienna (today) or in London and Edinburgh (tomorrow).

And these were a big, big success. They showed an important way to combat state repression and intimidation – massive solidarity action, taking the streets, turning the criminal, repressive onslaught into a political defeat for the ruling class.

Arbeitermacht, German section of the L5I, and REVOLUTION participated in the demonstrations, calling for an end to all the repression and intimidation, the immediate release of all those arrested, the return of all material taken by the police, the withdrawal of all charges against the activists.

Resistance against the G8 is not criminal, but a democratic duty. The GB leaders, men like Bush, Blair and Putin are war criminals and terrorists on a truly mass scale. The German government are also “terrorists” engaged in attacking our movement, supporting imperialist occupations, promoting racism; fostering neo-liberal attacks on our jobs, pensions, and social welfare.

Thus when they meet in June in the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, behind the usual perimeter fence and exclusion zone, guarded by a vast array of military, naval and air forces, it is just laughable to think that it is they who are the potential victims of terrorism. Rather it is those people trying to exercise the democratic freedom to assemble, to demonstrate, who the state forces will try to terrorise. The answer to such threats is to turn out in even huger numbers to combat them. The state has, by its clumsy and brutal raids, reported right across the German media, inadvertently conducted propaganda for the Anti-G8-protests from 2 - 8. June. Millions who scarcely realised that the G8 were coming now know. Let’s give the exploiters and warmongers both a reception and a send-off they will long remember, with militant demonstrations and blockades!