> HS:
 an opportunity for the local police to
> > try out their anti riot tactics, local CCTV monitors, tear gas, and
> > (Swedes only, ....so far) target practice with live ammunition).
>
DW. Okay - but why do you think State security organisations  are
> wheeling out all this  stuff? It isn't because they just like to do
> it. It is because they have real worries about what the protesters are
> doing and saying. Surely that in itself says something.  The one thing this
does do is demonstrate that the
> progress of capitalism is not some invisble and inevitable force but a
> directed (and vulnerable)  process which needs to be protected from
> all us dangerous anarchists, lefties and other inconvenient people.
HS reply..Yes, demos have the State worried, I guess the main worries are damage to MNC's property,
and the threat that the MNCs will see the country then as a hazardous place to operate and shift
elsewhere, taknig their Min wage jobs with them. But the State will always win because they will always
 have superior 'firepower'. It may be quixotic, even heroic, to imitate the Charge of the Light Brigade, but
wars are better won with tactical retreats and advances elsewhere.
You can shoot at an elephant with a small pistol, and anticipate
the result...a better way to kill the elephant is for a million
mosquitoes to bite it.
HS> >But then the only
> > weapon the consumer has against the megacorps is withdrawal of
> > financial support/custom.
DW> If this was true then we are in big trouble - consumerist
action only
> 'works' in combination with other tactics - even your example
> demonstrates this:  a threat of exposure and the use of the rather
> unusual powqer availbale to you as an academic - and it only works in
> quite limited ways because  it doesn't challenge anything
> fundamental.
HS reply. I am not sure that consumer power, if used en masse, or
even threatened, changes nothing fundamental. Look at consumer
resistance to food developments in the UK, eg GM food, scares on
eggs etc. Sales of these things plummetted. Also boycotts of
certain petrol companies. Even if sales dont actually fall much, the
share price can fall if there is a mere threat, That not only
diminishes considerably the chief executive's 'earnings' ..if one can
call any income up in the £millions 'earned'..but facilitates that
dreaded hostile takeover. City sharedealers are quite ruthless,
sharks, lets harness their energies for our ends.
HS> > That's the funny thing about globalised
> > corporations. its not just them. its US too, for buying from them
>
DW..You really can't blame people for buying from corporations.
For many
> there is no choice. Of course there is for us reasonably well-paid and
> educated lot, and there is no excuse for us, but for most people there
> are a whole host of financial, economic, cultural and social reasons
> why choices are limited. Freedom of choice is one of the great
> illusions of our society.
HS reply...But this just closes the vicious circle. We have no
choice becvause the big corps are so dominant, eg big 5
supermarkets control some 75 - 80% of UK grocery sales - and the
big corps are so dominant because we all have to buy from them
because they have, through illusory price cuts (illusory because
costs are externalised) exterminated most of the competition. So
the more WE buy from the big MNCs the more we close this circle.
It's only going to be broken if we make a conscious effort to buy
from somewhere else, whilst others are still selling.

DW... I don't rule many things out. There are days when I feel a
> high-powered rifle, a large clip of  ammunition and a good viewpoint
> over the G-8 summit would be a start. But then I'm a pacifist on most
> other days.
HS reply..I fear that even if all G8 summiters, major political
leaders, big fatcats of industry, the lot, were suddenly vapourised,
a new breed would re-emerge quite soon. Globalisation, if
unrestrained, is in one sense an inanimate, almost inevitable
proceess - dictated by certain physical/economic laws such as
economies of scale and the subsequent emergence of transport
links and huge buying powers. Bujt I did say 'unrestrained'. And
large companies do have some uses. For example lower prices at
supermarkets can benefit the poor, access for disabled is better in
supermarkets than small shops,  smkts can provide electric
scooters and free buses, to help acceess for rural poor and
disabled, snall shops cant do this. But there are ways we can have
these benefits without alowing the disbenefits of MNC quasi -
monopolies. e.g, (supermarkets again) put supermarkets next to
small shops so the pulling power of the smkt helps the small
shops - So long as the pedestrian flow is from the car park, PAST
the small shops, THEN to the smkt.It is the quieter issues,
planning p[ractices and laws, consumer habits, etc, that may well
change more in the long run than smashing a Mcdonalds window
or throwing a rock into a Swedish cashpoint machine.

Hillary Shaw
Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds