The future is here and it's scary

The corner of Germany hosting the G8 throws together three tribes, watched over by thousands of police. It looks like totalitarian science fiction but it is happening now.

Here is a vision of a future world. Three tribes share a verdant land of fields and windfarms, watched over by police on every corner.

The decision-makers reside in a palatial white resort behind a fence of steel and barbed wire. The scribes - identified by yellow tags around their necks - faithfully report every word from their Legoland-style homes just outside the barricades. A third, scruffy and colourful clan of ordinary people are herded by police into tent cities, where they bang drums, ride bicycles and march against the decision-makers who they say have no legitimacy.

This is, of course, the world right now, in the corner of Germany hosting the G8 summit. The numerous windfarms and the scary cleanliness of the spa resort of Heiligendamm and the nearby Baltic beach resort of Kuhlungsborn - where they've put the media centre - should simply reflect well on the civility of German society. But this admirable orderedness appears more sinister when there are police on every corner.

I've never seen so many: police with Alsatians, police with horses, police with binoculars, police with cameras, police on flash chrome BMW motorbikes, police in green vans, police in helicopters, police on bicycles, police in unmarked cars, police in grey riot vans and police at the helm of water canons. Police have commandeered service stations, pubs in forests, car parks and streets. There is currently a police officer for every one of the 16,000 people the protesters estimate will take part in an attempted blockade of G8 when the leaders of the eight most powerful nations in the world arrive tomorrow.

At the moment, it is a game of cat-and-mouse in the roads around Heiligendamm and in the streets of Rostock, the nearest city some 15 miles away. Every day the protesters come out of their camps and attend demonstrations; police man roadblocks and practice manoeuvres to prevent them getting too close to the handsome homes of Heiligendamm. Everyone is under scrutiny: yesterday a police car tailed me and Graeme Robertson, the Guardian's photographer, for 20 minutes as we drove around the lanes well outside the 12km fence. Clearly our rented Opel Meriva 1.4 could be a Trojan horse for the anti-capitalists.

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