Trains Full of Terror

It was a case of speed and overwhelming numbers. Some 15,000 police officers in riot gear swooped down at dawn on 2,000 antinuclear demonstrators who were trying to block a truck convoy carrying nuclear waste from reaching a storage center in northern Germany.

The officers closed roads for miles around Dannenberg and ripped down protest banners. They detained 780 protesters briefly and arrested 45 others. "They didn't allow us even a small, low-profile demonstration," complained Sven Teske of the environmental group Greenpeace. "It was a democracy-free zone."

Antinuclear demonstrators are hardly new...