Fragmentation and patchy organization provided the leitmotif for the demonstrations against the G8 Summit that took place in Evian at the beginning of June. Given the spatial decentralization of the actions between Annemasse (France) and Lausanne and Geneva (Switzerland) such a situation was predictable. This account derives from my experience in Geneva as part of the Geneva03.org live stream and is necessarily coloured and partial.

Swiss borders were already tightly controlled several days prior to the summit. Due to the time required to set up the studio we arrived on May 26th, but not before being subjected to extensive search and questioning by the zealous Swiss borderguards. White lies were repeated each time they sneakily tried to have us admit that we were going to the G8, but no dice, we denied all! Eventually they let us on our way and we took the road to Lausanne. There a small demonstration organised by high-school students was in course and the police made manifest their enthusiasm for overkill by posting a cop on the corner of literally every street in the centre of the city. But the demo was a serene affair and concluded on the central square, home otherwise to both the town hall and the incipient indymedia centre. Whispers suggested that Lausanne would be the focus of action for the more radical groups although local dynamics were to upset this prediction somewhat. Local authorities had put an official campsite at demonstrator's disposal, but it was essentially boycotted. Instead a rather beautiful lakeside location was selected, a campsite cheerfully called 'Oulala' autonomously installed, and a small media centre established.

Geneva is a mere half hour journey by car from lausanne so we moved on to rendez-vous with the others from our group. 'L'Usine' cultural center hosted our base of operations. Originally squatted in 1985 during the wave of struggles over space that swept Switzerland, l'Usine was subsequently purchased by the city council and legalised. A vast space the centre contains two large concert halls, a theatre, a beautiful cinema, restaurant, bar and numerous studios and offices, some of which are used the city council.

Thursday That evening we began the live stream with the broadcast of a public meeting organised by the No Border network on the joint themes of freedom of movement and freedom of information. The purpose was to promote the discussion of new political themes and attempt to tease out possible analogies between the application of management and control methods in these two very different areas. Practically the meeting also set out the reasoning behind the organization of the first International demonstration in Geneva, scheduled for the following day. This unauthorised demo targeted the institutional zone on the city's right bank, where the United Nations organizations are quartered, visiting the institutional homes of the World Trade Organization, the International Organization on Migration and the World Intellectual Property Organization. The meeting/broadcast outlined the background behind these institutions, discussed the relative autonomy of migrants and independent communications infrastructures, the political economy behind intellectual property expansion and its impact on everyday life. The centrality of migrant subjectivity, the force of their creative movement, was emphasised in opposition to traditional perceptions of migrants as victims to be sympathised with or ostracised.

Friday Shortly after 11.00 on friday morning we made our way to the Place Wilson which was the departure point for the demo. Several hundred people were already there and their numbers grew quickly with the arrival of large contingents from Annemasse and the Genevan campsites, swelling the numbers to a couple of thousand.

The WTO HQ was the first stop, the scene at this holy place for economic fundamentalists was quite surreal. Fenced off from the street the building is set back from the road with a lawn in front. The gates were closed and lines of police stood before the building itself. Two vans of cops were also stationed behind grills in what seemed like a small garage. This thin mesh was all that separated them from the demo and it seemed that they were placed there for sheer provocation, but apart from taunting and insult they were left unmolested. Speakers addressed the crowd on the delinquent urge to commodify everything that defines the WTO, and specifically attacked the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights annex to the GATT. This treaty is the basis upon which patents, copyrights and trademarks are coercively enforced worldwide with the threat, to those who do not abide by its cannon, of retaliatory trade sanctions on the agricultural and textile products that form the central part of developing economies. Using this mechanism, these countries are compelled to participate in the reinforcement of the system of structural economic injustice that keeps them in their abject poverty and dependence. As the speeches came to a close parts of the crowd bust open the gates of the WTO and began to attack the police and throw bottles and stones at the building. The No Border network however had been clear that the objective of the demo was not the physical assault on the buildings themselves but rather to develop the intelligence of our critical assault in general. Appeals were made to people to rejoin the demo and as the first volleys of tear gas drenched the air people regrouped and moved on to the next destination.

The International Organization on Migration, despite its typically technocratic title, is the foremost international institution treating migration as a 'management question', tweaking migrant fluxes so as to contain them within the demands of the economy and the power of the state. Their activities range from running seminars to discourage migration in some places, recruiting desirable labour in others, organising forced deportations, the erection of new border control posts in places such as the Ukraine and the administration of prison colonies such as the little known Island of Nauru in the Pacific. This tiny state otherwise devastated by phosphate mining is the location for what is styled a 'detention' and 'processing center'. While their work was being described windows were smashed at the back of the building bringing on another attack by the police, more gas and a couple of arrests.

Thus we made our way through the desolate but verdant roads to the final destination which lay on the fringes of downtown: the World Intellectual Property Organisation. After TRIPS had been rammed though the GATT, business interests together with their allies in the US, EU and Japanese governments shifted their focus to WIPO as a vehicle for the advancement of their interests. WIPO administer the Berne and Paris Treaties that govern copyright and patents/trademarks respectively, and it too is a UN organisation. Notwithstanding the numerical superiority of developing countries WIPO has only ever functioned to push the interests of the elitist cabal. Whilst supposed to provide 'technical assistance' to developing countries in the area of IPL law, they in fact see their mission as the expansion of private property interests everywhere. An example of this is their failure to encourage countries to take advantage of compulsory licensing provisions in patent law. The concrete effects of this can be seen in the area of pharmaceuticals; patents last 20 years during which time the manufacturer can charge whatever price they like because competition is ruled out. Compulsory licensing allows production despite the patent, and has been the means by which countries like Brazil have been able to tackle the AIDS epidemic. Anti-retroviral treatment - the main reason why the numbers dying of AIDS in the west have plummeted - originally cost 10-15,000 dollars a year under patent, but under compulsory license the same treatment can be acquired for $300 a year. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean this is the difference between life and death for tens of millions of people. Elsewhere, WIPO's 1996 copyright treaty mandated the introduction of laws to forbid the evasion of copyright management systems, electronic locks that seek to control our every use of media and condition it upon payment to the owner. Breach of these laws is to be punished with criminal sanctions.

At WIPO the speaker described the way that intellectual property laws consist in alienating workers from their own immaterial labour just as happens in the factory. What's more he stressed that the tendency to obscure the functioning of production through trade secrets and other forms of IP saps workers potential to be able to self-manage production themselves. The example of the occupied Zanon factory in Argentina was evoked: if the workers don't know how to keep the machinery turning, how could they ever take back control over production. He finished with a call for 'an army of ideas' to re-appropriate knowledge and turn it to good use - for our side.

The demo then continued through the city towards the Parc des Bastions - informal site for many discussions during these days. On the way a car showroom, petrol station and the offices of the International Chamber of Commerce had their windows broken in a rather systematic way, but things remained controlled and oddly calm.

I have described this event in some length as it has been overlooked in the accounts of others. As stated above, the purpose of the action was to introduce people to some new ideas and make them aware of less obvious sources of political power. All involved agreed that it was a great success, but in order for its ramifications to be the reasoning and content needs to be inserted into the communications circuit of our struggles.