[Itse]

...man, all the global stuff has started to make me forget all the basic European stuff. In my defense not a lot has changed there so it's easy to forget it's still going on.

A quick word about Hamburg.

Hamburg is home to one of Europes strongest far-left / anarchist autonomous movements. They have their own semi-legendary 2. Bundesliga club and everything, with something like 10-20k members. I'm sure many here know European soccer clubs often do double duty as political extremist movements, so that's a big, well organized block of trouble makers. Same groups also raised hell in 2007 G8 meetings, (also in Hamburg obviously).

So while there's probably plenty of "tourists" involved too, what's going on in Hamburg is really mostly local stuff suddenly brought to boil and given a spotlight. Most of the time far-left/anarchist groups tend to spend their time bickering amongst themselves. (This is the same everywhere, it's an inherent feature of these types of political movements.)

Their local fights with local the police normally only get local media coverage. A G20 meeting provides a common enemy and a ton of global visibility. Now you suddenly have thousands or tens of thousands of those troublemakers working together, with an axe to grind with the generally hated local riot police. (Hamburg has a pretty strong left-leaning / alternative culture beyond the autonomists.) Combine that with a zillion out-of-town reporters who understandably know nothing about Hamburgs specific situation, and you get what you get; a media coverage that is just completely out to lunch with what's going on.

Many in Germany also feel the Hamburg police has never been able to handle these situations well, meaning they both provoke people unnecessarily and are unable to react when things inevitably go bad. In other wrods, putting the G20 meeting in Hamburg was a stupid idea.