Battleangel

A small note in today’s papers acknowleged that the protests during the EU summit in Gothenburg 2001 almost ended in tragedy as the police turned to the military for assistence. Now that would have been a pretty picture for sure.

Obviously, back then, it was still illegal to use the military for crowd control and suppression, so the military turned to the prime minster for advise. To his credit, he waited the situation out, but with the latest changes to accomodate fears of “terrorism,” one can wonder how a similar protest would turn out today. As it stands no one was killed during this protest turned riot, but looking back at the Ådalen incident of 1931 one can imagine that this, still chilling, example of state brutality would have been repeated.