In the photos, Perthshire looks beautiful. A stand of trees offers an elegant backdrop to a golf green. Pines shade dark, needle-strewn earth behind a weather-worn fence.

The website, of a group called Dissent!, calls them 'random pictures'. Perhaps they're there to calm the nerves of this 'network of resistance' against the G8, or perhaps not. The photos are of the landscape surrounding Gleneagles, the Auchterarder hotel where the leaders of the world's eight richest nations will meet on 6 July.

The last few weeks have seen much made of the arrangements for the summit. Reports have told of halls of residence in Edinburgh and Stirling being set aside for drafted police. Water cannons have been called in from Belgium. Judges have been told to keep their days and their courts clear. Authorisation has been sought for the use of rubber bullets. The RAF base at Turnhouse is ready to become a 'mini-Guantanamo'. No-go areas have been mapped out.

Meanwhile in Germany, of all places, a strategy session for protester groups is under way this weekend. Smaller meetings are taking place across Britain as objectors are told how to avoid arrest and to argue their legal case. 'There is also growing concern that two weeks of protests planned across the country in early July, including an expected 200,000-strong anti-capitalist march in the capital, will trigger chaos and rioting across Scotland', said the Sunday Herald last weekend. You can almost smell the perspiration on the brows of McDonald's staff.

Meanwhile, those organising the Edinburgh march have been blinking in the glare, astonished by the thought of the march, scheduled a few days before the summit begins, turning into a riot. The dark and sinister forces who have put together 'Making Poverty History' reveal themselves to be Save the Children, Unicef, Care International, Christian Aid, even the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust, among scores of other similarly wild and anarchist institutions. Those water cannons will play havoc with the Church of Scotland's blue-rinses.

Of course, the photographs on the Dissent! website do show that there are others at work, those who want to disrupt the meeting and see the G8 disbanded. No doubt holding such a meeting in a setting like Gleneagles will encourage some people to sneak about in the woods. But I think we need to regain a sense of perspective.

On Thursday, when asked about the summit at First Minister's questions, Jack McConnell did not rule out taking part in the Edinburgh march. He certainly made his support clear for Make Poverty History's campaign for trade justice, dropping debt and increasing aid. 'Its three objectives are crystal-clear and they are right for our time', he said.

The subsequent activities around Gleneagles offer a trickier conundrum for the authorities. Mark Ruskell, a Green MSP, asked if a 'safe area' would be provided for the protesters who wanted to continue on and protest outside the venue itself. The First Minister dodged the question.

The problem is that the police don't want to encourage people into the area by offering facilities, but by failing to do so, protesters will arrive in Perthshire with nowhere to go.

Perhaps the government and police should adopt a more proactive stance and facilitate some sort of fringe event near the venue itself. McConnell talks about how it is 'vitally important that the voices of Scots and others from around the world are heard at the G8 summit'.

Some sort of camp would reduce the number of people disappearing into the woods. More to the point, alternative discussions should be heard within easy travelling distance for the delegates and journalists covering the summit. Mark Ballard, another Green MSP, points out that the policies that will be discussed at Gleneagles itself, like climate change and debt relief, were once fringe ideas and that, this time, the things 'discussed on the outside will become central to politics in 20 years'.

If we get too wound up about what might happen, especially at the march, then trouble will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If people keep reading they are going to be dragged off by riot police, then they will be less likely to take the family for a walk around Edinburgh Castle to protest at how selfish we in the richest countries are. Declining numbers will offer the stage to troublemakers.

Similarly, if the only alternative response reported from Perthshire is angsty youths in gasmasks getting chased around the woods by FBI agents, then the chance to push novel ideas, however kooky and prescient they turn out to be, will be lost.

We should stop being obsessed by the potential for violence, because it will only bring it on. Instead, we should prove we are capable of doing for politics what we do for the arts with the Edinburgh Festival. Find a way to get the voices of those outside heard, and then Scotland could redefine G8 summits for ever.

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