Pittsburgh G20 Summit

[mulebone]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090924/u ... 9192561100

One thing they won't likely encounter are citizens. Fear of protesters is the talk of grocery and bank lines. At one point, local media was filled with reports of surreptitious foreigners training in a vacant building (they turned out to be a Swedish punk band on tour).

Damn those Swedish punk rock terrorists and their "practicing for a tour" cover story.

So, I'm getting the impression that Americans are pretty much afraid of everything & everyone except the folk they should actually fear.

Kind of strange.

[mulebone]

There's also much to see here:

http://indypgh.org/g20/#k-1a33fcbd90053c17

[marmot]

...

[marmot]

...

G-20 opponents, police clash on Pittsburgh streets



PITTSBURGH - Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins and throwing rocks.

The march turned chaotic at just about the time that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived for a meeting with leaders of the world's major economies.

The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held.

The protesters banged on drums and chanted "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people don't stop."

The marchers included small groups of self-described anarchists, some wearing dark clothes and bandanas and carrying black flags. Others wore helmets and safety goggles.

One banner read, "No borders, no thanks," another, "No hope in capitalism." A few minutes into the march, protesters unfurled a large banner reading "NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM" with an encircled "A," a recognized sign of anarchists.

The marchers did not have a permit and, after a few blocks, police declared it an unlawful assembly. They played an announcement over a loudspeaker telling people to leave or face arrest and then police in riot gear moved in to break it up.

Protesters split into smaller groups. Some rolled large metal trash bins toward police, and a man in a black hooded sweat shirt threw rocks at a police car, breaking the front windshield. Protesters broke windows in a few businesses, including a bank branch and a Boston Market restaurant.

Officers fired pepper spray and smoke at the protesters. Some of those exposed to the pepper spray coughed and complained that their eyes were watering and stinging.

Police were planning a news conference to discuss their response. Officers were seen taking away a handful of protesters in cuffs.

About an hour after the clashes started, the police and protesters were at a standoff. Police sealed off main thoroughfares to downtown.

Twenty-one-year-old Stephon Boatwright, of Syracuse, N.Y., wore a mask of English anarchist Guy Fawkes and yelled at a line of riot police. He then sat cross-legged near the officers, telling them to let the protesters through and to join their cause.

"You're actively suppressing us. I know you want to move," Boatwright yelled, to applause from the protesters gathered around him.

Protesters complained that the march had been peaceful and that police were trampling on their right to assemble.

"We were barely even protesting," said T.J. Amick, 22, of Pittsburgh. "Then all of a sudden, they come up and tell us we're gathered illegally and start using force, start banging their shields, start telling us we're going to be arrested and tear gassed. ... We haven't broken any laws."

Bret Hatch, 26, of Green Bay, Wis., was carrying an American flag and a "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

"This is ridiculous. We have constitutional rights to free speech," he said.

The National Lawyer's Guild, a liberal legal-aid group, said one of its observers, a second year law student, was among those arrested. Its representatives were stationed among the protesters, wearing green hats.

"I think he was totally acting according to the law. I don't think he was provoking anyone at all," said Joel Kupferman, a member of the guild. "It's really upsetting because he's here to serve, to make sure everyone else can be protected. ... It's a sign that they are out of control."

The march had begun at a city park, where an activist from New York City, dressed in a white suit with a preacher's collar, started it off with a speech through a bullhorn.

"They are not operating on Earth time. ... They are accommodating the devil," he said. "To love democracy and to love the earth is to be a radical now."

The activist, Billy Talen, travels the country preaching against consumerism. He initially identified himself as "the Rev. Billy from the Church of Life After Shopping."

The G-20 summit was beginning Thursday evening with a welcome ceremony at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden and ends late Friday afternoon after a day of meetings at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Dignitaries were arriving in waves and were heading to a city under heavy security. Police and National Guard troops guarded many downtown intersections, and a maze of tall metal fences and concrete barriers shunted cars and pedestrians.

Hundreds of police in riot gear were seen massing at Phipps, but only a handful of demonstrators were there.

[wordspeak2]

I was at the '99 Seattle WTO protests (it changed my life), as well as follow-up protests of the World Bank/IMF and other major protests around that time.
When 9/11 happened I thought- this was an inside job designed, in large part, to kill the energy of the global justice movement manifesting on the streets of everywhere that the global elites try to meet.
And I still think that. What's amazing is how much 9/11 has erased our collective memory of these huge street battles. You gotta believe the global elite were concerned about hundreds of thousands of people upwards showing up on the streets every time they try to have a global economic meeting.
Now it's changed. Police outnumber protestors. I'm not there in Pittsburgh. Part of me wishes I was. People need to be out there. But somehow we need to get more advanced and creative about it. The banner-hangers have the right idea; I just wish these Ruckus Society-influenced people would hang a banner about the core economic issue, instead of global warming.
Both media coverage of these types of protests and the raw police brutality, as well as the agent provaceteuring, has become so formulaic, scripted.
But, still, people need to be out there. Just somehow we need to be more creative about it, get that spark back, put corporate globalization on the mass front burner again. Somehow...
Anyway, my empathy and support goes out to people getting the shit kicked out of them on the streets of Pittsburgh to take a stand against global fascism.

[American Dream]

I'm with wordspeak- was at the '99 Seattle WTO protests, and they profoundly affected my life. However they weren't using acoustic weapons as they have now begun:

The LRAD Acoustic Cannon has been used for the first time against US Citizens

BE WARNED the system is loud so turn down your speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/user/HorseofPaul ... c2t-bvmBRA
http://www.youtube.com/user/HorseofPaul ... tGQq6llad4

[marmot]

<<Video of CNN reporter hit with chemical agents and Police Issuing Dire Warning>>

you can hear the acoustics of the LRAD in the vid



Times Online
September 24, 2009
[url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6848176.ece]
Police embroiled in violent battles with G20 protesters[/url]


Anti-G20 protesters rampaged through the city centre of Pittsburgh tonight, smashing up shops and throwing rocks at police, as officers used tear gas and baton-charges in an attempt to bring them under control.

In riots which continued through evening rush hour, about 300 protesters were reported to have remained from an initial crowd of 2,000 in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy.

Frustrated in their attempts to reach the venue where world leaders are meeting the crowd, many of whom wore face-masks and armed themselves with rocks, broke windows at fast-food restaurants, a BMW dealership and a bank in the area, about a mile from the fenced-off convention centre.

Police in body armour and armed with plastic shields threw pepper gas canisters to disperse the protesters, charging in to make

Some reports also suggested that rubber bullets had been used, but police tonight confirmed that they had fired pellet-filled “beanbags” to combat the rioters.

“In response to having sticks, bricks and rocks thrown at them in the Shady Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh, police responded with bean bag rounds and dispersed the crowd,” Bill Crowley, an FBI agent, told the AFP news agency.

So-called bean bags - or flexible baton rounds - are fired from an officer’s riot shotgun. Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard said they were “softer” than rubber bullets. “The police had sticks, rocks and other instruments thrown toward them so in defence of that, that was their way of dispersing the crowd. They had trash cans thrown at them, all kinds of different things,” she said.

Anti-capitalist protests have marked major gatherings of world leaders on the economy for years, sometimes turning violent and forcing summit organisers to use fortress-like security.

Earlier, police dispersed the 2,000 people who had gathered during lunchtime for a march. “You must leave the immediate vicinity regardless of your purpose,” officers said, and warned that gas and other “non-lethal force” would be used.

The main clashes took place in the Lawrenceville neighborhood. Protesters threw bottles and police responded by sending up to 10 canisters of tear gas into the crowd. The sharp smell of the gas irritated the eyes and throats of protesters, some of them vomiting as they ran.

“We have seen police use rubber bullets, batons and gas,” said Noah Williams, a spokesman for the anti-capitalist Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project.

Leaders of developed and developing economies are meeting in Pittsburgh for a gathering to discuss how to improve financial reforms to avoid another global economic crisis.

[marmot]

[marmot]

This video should blow your socks off!
military guys in camouflage grab kid, car pulls up and they stuff him in, while a police officer with an assault rifle points his gun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfhZ4qSdQo

[Project Willow]

I was at the '99 Seattle WTO protests (it changed my life),

Absolutely transformative was N30 for me. I had not known a feeling like that before, a sort of instant connection with hundreds, no, thousands of strangers, it was like a joy drug. PTB have to keep that kind of thing in check, it's far too powerful.

Thanks for the thread marmot.

[Penguin]

Damn those Swedish punk rock terrorists and their "practicing for a tour" cover story.

So, I'm getting the impression that Americans are pretty much afraid of everything & everyone except the folk they should actually fear.

Kind of strange.

It is called the "Stockholm syndrome". The hostages start to feel empathy for their captors...

Re Seattle 99 - those were the hopeful times...I wasn't there, but the European demonstrations were equally large and succesful, until we all were made into terrorists and malcontents after you-know-what happened. They've taken off the gloves since - with all means used at every turn - provocators, pre-emptive arrests, walls of steel, tear gas, batons and now acoustic weapons.

[marmot]

Yesterday was a pretty tame day - 66 arrests all told. Most happening after eight at night in Oakland (the University of Pittsburgh area) where protesters smashed windows of FedEx, Kinkos, McDonalds,,, Apparently the riot police surrounded them employing tear gas, stun grenades and a type of rubber bullet. I'm looking at video (from youtube of last night) and there seems to be an overwhelming presence of SWAT police.

This is four and half minutes of video footage from Thursday afternoon of the anarchists vs the riot police:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq56TVm-5sw

[mulebone]

It is called the "Stockholm syndrome".

Nah, it's more like The House Negro Syndrome, where the slaves take on the values & concerns of their masters.

[marmot]

Cop shoves girl on bike. Girl throws bike at Cop. Cop takes her down. Now the rest of you all: MOVE IT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzOG7yghNvQ
http://www.wpxi.com/video/21110533/index.html

[ShinShinKid]

The more I know about the upcoming light technology; the less magical the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, and Indian writings seem.
I imagine the PTB will start using the less than lethal light weapons on protesters soon. Weapons that blind, or heat up the surrounding atmosphere to very uncomfortable levels; invisible weapons. There'll be no pretty laser light show a la' Star Wars; no, just a very loud hum, and a very ugly picture. You see, blinding an opponent is just about the most terrifiying thing that you can do. Most people, once they are blind, are helpless...and unless you have the light key to restore vision, you will remain blind. Show up at an E-room blind, and guess what? Now they know where you've been, and will most probably arrest you; after restoring your vision as quickly as they took it.