G20 in Pittsburgh

[Ed Jewett]

There was a time in the past when a similar phalanx was used in LA to clear the streets of some exuberant crowds at an Hispanic civic event drawing large crowds, some of whom seemed to want to express themselves vociferously and en masse. A rolling blockade of police cars and massed centurions also encased in armor did the job. Others argued with my historical use of the word phalanx. As much of the preparatory work for martial law in the US came out of the hard right wing in LA, and the Reagan/Meese/Ollie North/FEMA business, it was clearly practice for the future. Recently I've seem some discussions about our being psychologically conditioned as a viewing audience to accept all of this over time so that when the big moment comes we'll yawn and switch channels.

[Ed Jewett]

[Got it, Magda, thanks.]

G20 Protests and the New World Order Centurions

Police Scanner recordings:
http://snardfarker.ning.com/group/pittsb...cording-of

http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=7519

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/46374

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/...-honduras/

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/solida...burgh-g20/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8umfwG0SSKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNyV7UQJpyY

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5339009n

[Ed Jewett]

G20 Post Mortem / Open Thread

September 27th, 2009 A few people seem surprised that the U.S. is a police state.
Oh the cops. Oh the poor students. Oh boo hoo, we just want to wave our signs.
The don’t taze me bro generation is obviously going to have to figure this one out the hard way.
My position has always been that people who wave signs at fascists are clinically nuts; holy roller, speaking in tongues, batshit crazy nuts.
Sign waving is not resistance. Sign waving is part of the problem in the same way that voting is part of the problem. How’s that Change working out for the Obama supporters? (Some of those bozos are already talking about how they’re going to get it right in 2012…)
In the few video clips of the G20 protests that I watched, I saw a bunch of zombies with iPhones, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the Legion of Doom tested out its new sonic weapons and tear gas lobbing skills.
WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him? Maybe a few, “Fuck the police” tweets will do the trick? Send out invites to join revolutionary sign waving groups on Facebook?!
The Twitbook aspect of this is, frankly, bizarre. Maybe I’ve been out here in the bush too long, but it looks like powerlessness is manifesting itself into a sort of flaccid, me-too technophelia, crossbred with a hamster wheel. This is more embarrassing than anything else.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town. If waving signs at the company’s goon squad just makes people look stupid, what does twitbooking about it amount to?
Here are some other ideas:
Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don’t need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don’t produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don’t tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it’s crossed. Don’t wave a sign about it. Don’t twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.


9 Responses to “G20 Post Mortem / Open Thread”

1. sevee Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 6:26 am ..that’s a good word right there~
   spot on Kev.
   
2. Miraculix Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 10:29 am Kev said: “WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him?”
   That’s about as succinct a description of the phenomenon as I’ve read. As another US ex-pat who’s spent the bulk of his life avoiding blind faith-based affiliations, my wife and I didn’t wait for the door to hit us on the arse on the way out when departing the USSA a few years back.
   Nothing is more frustrating than attempting to communicate with what you’d otherwise assume are intelligent and reasonable people still addicted to their favorite flavor of Kool-Aid.
   And yes, as the gloves come off, there seems to be an equally brutal flavor of denial taking root among the faithful, still clinging to the oh-so-comforting triumphal American mythology hammered into them literally from birth to death.
   As for “Twitbook”, that’s a f**king brilliant conglomeration. Yours Kev, or sourced elsewhere? Need to know who to credit, as I intend to adopt it as part of my own vocabulary — and it’s 100% certain to raise such questions… =)
   
3. jburke6000 Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am I went to school there. On any Friday night, there was that many students hanging out all around those streets. No protests, just kids haning around.
   Those kids didn’t really seem to get the idea of what protesting was all about. It was pretty strange to watch.
   Fakebook and Twitbook are just another form of masturbation, but it makes more money for the Corp. State.
   
4. FRLVX Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 11:27 am Love the twitbook term…hope it sticks. You really have to wonder, who is behind organizing these protests…who makes the signs, specifies what they say, where they will be. Could it all be a engineered fiasco by an outsourced provocateur services consultancy to honeypot and psycho engineer the whole scene? See who the sheeps are and who else pops up, that may be a real threat. Twitbooks indeed.
   
5. Kevin Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 11:30 am @Miraculix
   As I went to type “Facebook,” “Twitbook” just appeared on the screen. I think apoplexy and touch typing combined to form a bit of automatic writing.
   I’m definitely not the originator of the term. It’s in use out there on the interwebs already. I don’t know who originally came up with that one.
   This abandoned Twitter page was last used in 2007:
   http://twitter.com/TwitBook
   
6. Kevin Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 12:52 pm @FRLVX
   From The Crowd by Gustave LeBon (free ebook online):
   …all the world’s masters, all the founders of religions or empires, the apostles of all beliefs, eminent statesmen, and, in a more modest sphere, the mere chiefs of small groups of men have always been unconscious psychologists, possessed of an instinctive and often very sure knowledge of the character of crowds, and it is their accurate knowledge of this character that has enabled them to so easily establish their mastery.
   A knowledge of the psychology of crowds is today the last resource of the statesman who wishes not to govern them – that is becoming a very difficult matter — but at any rate not to be too much governed by them.
   
7. ltcolonelnemo Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm What the media call “protests” used to be called “demonstrations.” One rarely reads or hears the terms “demonstrators” or “demonstrations” these days. I wonder why. Could it be that the media do not want people to make a few semantic connections in their heads? When one protests, one merely espouses disagreement, but one DOES nothing. When one demonstrates, on the other hand, well, what does one demonstrate? What is meant by the term? To show, to display, and so on and so forth. But what does an organized crowd of agitated people demonstrate? That they are numerous, organized, angry, and willing to show up somewhere.
   In my opinion, the purpose of demonstrations has always been to threaten force to lawmakers. Demonstrations always precede an escalation in tactics. Groups demonstrate first, then they resort to more drastic measures. In the past, demonstrating crowds and their organizers have been more than willing to escalate to violence, although with mixed results.
   By contrast, the people who demonstrate today do not really understand what is it at stake. They may also labor under the belief that policies are undertaken out of moral ignorance when the opposite is often the case. They think they are demonstrating primarily to inform, or to shame, to protest. The state has a longer memory, hence it sends the police, who are always prepared for violence, whether to receive or inflict it.
   With all due respect, I must say that individually drawing lines in the sand can prove as worthless as flaccidly waving a sign with no intent to escalate beyond that. If Darth Vader is really after you, it doesn’t matter that you hide out, or don’t seek attention, or passively avoid his debt-slavery tactics. If Darth Vader wants to kill or enslave you, he’ll come find you and do it to you, at which point you have to run or fight. If you fight, you’ll be made an example of, in which case, Darth Vader wins; if you run, well, with globalization, running holds less and less appeal. People could run from Nazi Germany because it was relatively local; resisting it any form, even passively, proved so risky that one may as well have engaged in the most violent acts, as opposed to merely hiding people or circulating dissenting pamphlets, in which case you were painted as a terrorist. The point is, you cannot “resist” Darth Vader, you have to incapacitate or eliminate him, or else die or be enslaved.
   The answer of what do is not easy because it does not provide instant gratification. What is the point of winning a few temporary battles if one loses the war? The people who wield power over our lives did not get their overnight. They got their over a period of hundreds of years. It is difficult for most people to think in terms of one year, let alone several hundred, or even several thousand, yet the groups who wield the most power, such as religious groups, often do so because they take the long view. Any real gains made in terms of civil liberties took place over hundreds of years, and costs millions of lives, whether martyrs, or in wars.
   One possible solution on how to handle the issue of police repression is to co-opt, infiltrate, or become the police. The so-called right wing always seems to understand this better than the so-called left wing, at least in recent history. Acts of violence don’t seem to “succeed” politically without tacit police support, such as with the JFK assassination or the 9/11 bombings. Part of what ended the Vietnam War was the fact that elements of the antiwar movement infiltrated the military to the extent that officers were fragged and equipment was destroyed, something rarely discussed publicly. Other solutions would fall under the category of organizing to send a more effective message than merely gathering to wave signs. The people that rule do so through a variety of organizational strategies and tactics; one can readily research them and have one’s group adopt them.
   
8. Zuma Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 2:01 pm hitler analogy in doonesbury
   one key point that terence mckenna repeatedly hammered home was ‘culture is not your friend’. (i daresay he wouldn’t have objected to anyone taking him on his word and stop listening to his opinions and go off and do something.)
   dave letterman caught my attention in the past year when it seemed he actually might have gotten a tad riled at all what was going on, as if his bank balance somehow took a hit from the ‘recession’. seemed he suggested as much. he was mad as heck and wasn’t gonna take it for a few shows, and so on. i was curious to see how far he’d go. seeing him pally pally with obama recently though curdled my bile enough to push me to stop watching his insipid show even idly.
   doonesbury likewise was something i’d long to come to see as having a line of it’s own vested existence it wouldn’t cross and so neutered blatantly while still trying fill it’s niche market of accepted mainstream ‘edginess’.
   has american culture, that tip of the spear of the age-old drive of global westernization/americanization, finally fully begun to unravel? sure. imho. traditional offline culture anyway. mayhap simply the public’s present lack of time and money has as much to do with it (or more) than disgust. i imagine too though that a tipping point’s approaching when they’ve gotten enough online of huffpo, C&L, DN!, alternet, et al as well. self-vested interests are getting publicly stodgy. imho…
   doonesbury *has* managed to maintain some of my attention of late, but this latest installment (that i catch online via livejournal) said it all and is enough for me.
   i’m at the point that the only entertainment i’m interested in is by private folks online that i’ve known for years and enjoyably and comfortably converse with. about art mostly at that. i’ve my own endeavors to preoccupy me and those again of art mostly as i’ve ’said’ enough and fully and bore myself in repetition. bantering in the comments of such sites as mentioned above is fruitless and does amount to sign-waving…
   i’ve ceased supporting and contributing to fruitless endeavors (sorry, sean-paul) and have come to viewing only my livejournal friends page (i love the russian artists output), cryptogon, cryptome, and matrixmasters. issue-wise, cognitive liberty concentrates it all for me. (i submit that the fate of south america determines much of the nut of the future. of earth herself. that it is her mouth…) the only real honest effort i see online is here. -in all this big planet.
   every month is financially worse than tight for my wife and i but we have a higher quality of life than we’ve ever known before. even a token financial contribution here is gallingly tough but in all conscience *must* be made. hopefully before the dollar must give way to the amero or whatever.
   i miss comic books, books, newspapers et al but oh well. but this, here, *must* *must* *must* be supported by me even tokenly. (lorenzo’s work at matrixmasters likewise.)
   i won’t miss doonesbury. or dave. or even bob dylan for that matter…
   
9. prov6yahoo Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 3:51 pm I see the question as “how do we get away from the people who join the military or the police, or work for a defense contractor?”
   

[Ed Jewett]

Street Report from the G20

By Bill Quigley

September 27, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.

What no terrorist could do to us, our own leaders did.

Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.

For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was a turned into a militarized people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.

In many areas, there were armed police every 100 feet. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Tens of thousands were unable to work.

Four thousand police were on duty plus 2500 National Guard plus Coast Guard and Air Force and dozens of other security agencies. A thousand volunteers from other police forces were sworn in to help out.

Police were dressed in battle gear, bulky black ninja turtle outfits - helmets with clear visors, strapped on body armor, shin guards, big boots, batons, and long guns.

In addition to helicopters, the police had hundreds of cars and motorcycles , armored vehicles, monster trucks, small electric go-karts. There were even passenger vans screaming through town so stuffed with heavily armed ninja turtles that the side and rear doors remained open.

No terrorists showed up at the G20.

Since no terrorists showed up, those in charge of the heavily armed security forces chose to deploy their forces around those who were protesting.

Not everyone is delighted that 20 countries control 80% of the world's resources. Several thousand of them chose to express their displeasure by protesting.

Unfortunately, the officials in charge thought that it was more important to create a militarized people-free zone around the G20 people than to allow freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or the freedom to protest.

It took a lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to get any major protest permitted anywhere near downtown Pittsburgh. Even then, the police "forgot" what was permitted and turned people away from areas of town. Hundreds of police also harassed a bus of people who were giving away free food - repeatedly detaining the bus and searching it and its passengers without warrants.

Then a group of young people decided that they did not need a permit to express their human and constitutional rights to freedom. They announced they were going to hold their own gathering at a city park and go down the deserted city streets to protest the G20. Maybe 200 of these young people were self-described anarchists, dressed in black, many with bandanas across their faces. The police warned everyone these people were very scary. My cab driver said the anarchist spokesperson looked like Harry Potter in a black hoodie. The anarchists were joined in the park by hundreds of other activists of all ages, ultimately one thousand strong, all insisting on exercising their right to protest.

This drove the authorities crazy.

Battle dressed ninja turtles showed up at the park and formed a line across one entrance. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Armored vehicles gathered.

The crowd surged out of the park and up a side street yelling, chanting, drumming, and holding signs. As they exited the park, everyone passed an ice cream truck that was playing "It's a small world after all." Indeed.

Any remaining doubts about the militarization of the police were dispelled shortly after the crowd left the park. A few blocks away the police unveiled their latest high tech anti-protestor toy. It was mounted on the back of a huge black truck. The Pittsburgh-Gazette described it as Long Range Acoustic Device designed to break up crowds with piercing noise. Similar devices have been used in Fallujah, Mosul and Basra Iraq. The police backed the truck up, told people not to go any further down the street and then blasted them with piercing noise.

The crowd then moved to other streets. Now they were being tracked by helicopters. The police repeatedly tried to block them from re-grouping ultimately firing tear gas into the crowd injuring hundreds including people in the residential neighborhood where the police decided to confront the marchers. I was treated to some of the tear gas myself and I found the Pittsburgh brand to be spiced with a hint of kelbasa. Fortunately I was handed some paper towels soaked in apple cider vinegar which helped fight the tears and cough a bit. Who would have thought?

After the large group broke and ran from the tear gas, smaller groups went into commercial neighborhoods and broke glass at a bank and a couple of other businesses. The police chased and the glass breakers ran. And the police chased and the people ran. For a few hours.

By day the police were menacing, but at night they lost their cool. Around a park by the University of Pittsburgh the ninja turtles pushed and shoved and beat and arrested not just protestors but people passing by. One young woman reported she and her friend watched Grey's Anatomy and were on their way back to their dorm when they were cornered by police. One was bruised by police baton and her friend was arrested. Police shot tear gas, pepper spray, smoke canisters, and rubber bullets. They pushed with big plastic shields and struck with batons.

The biggest march was Friday. Thousands of people from Pittsburgh and other places protested the G20. Since the court had ruled on this march, the police did not confront the marchers. Ninja turtled police showed up in formation sometimes and the helicopters hovered but no confrontations occurred.

Again Friday night, riot clad police fought with students outside of the University of Pittsburgh. To what end was just as unclear as the night before.

Ultimately about 200 were arrested, mostly in clashes with the police around the University.

The G20 leaders left by helicopter and limousine.

Pittsburgh now belongs again to the people of Pittsburgh. The cement barricades were removed, the fences were taken down, the bridges and roads were opened. The gunboats packed up and left. The police packed away their ninja turtle outfits and tear gas and rubber bullets. They don't look like military commandos anymore. No more gunboats on the river. No more sirens all the time. No more armored vehicles and ear splitting machines used in Iraq. On Monday the businesses will open and kids will have to go back to school. Civil society has returned.

It is now probably even safe to exercise constitutional rights in Pittsburgh once again.

The USA really showed those terrorists didn't we?

[Peter Lemkin]

I just listened to WBAI Radio via internet - their show by the CCR [Center For Constitutional Rights] recorded just before the events of the weekend....their lawyers fighting to help various persons get permission to BE in Pittsburg and do such nasty things as [one example typical]: give free food to incoming protesters, park their vehicles [police gave tickets and towed one group's bus multiple times - either for being more then 12 inches from the curb or wheels on the curb - then raided their bus without warrant and just towed it away....etc.....finally appearing before a judge, the judge said they could sue for damages after the event - but at this time could do nothing and he could offer no remedy]. So, it is clear it is no longer when America becomes a policestate....only the academic discussion of when it DID become a policestate....maybe it can even be a party game.:bawling:

[Helen Reyes]

2,500 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen Deployed for G-20 Security

September 23rd, 2009 Via: Lebanon Daily News:
...
During the mission, dubbed Operation Steel Kickoff, the Guardsmen will fall under the direction of the U.S. Secret Service and will support local, state and federal agencies. Guard members will serve as a regional response force, augment law-enforcement personnel, provide crowd and traffic control, and help with security.
“Everybody is excited and honored to participate in such a global event,” said Lt. Col. Dale Waltman of Cornwall.
...
Also in Pittsburgh for the summit are several members of the Fort Indiantown Gap public-affairs office. Capt. Jay Ostrich of Cornwall said the public-affairs specialists’ primary mission is to do news features on the Guardsmen taking part in the mission.
“Basically what we’re doing is helping to tell the Guard story here,” he said.

Are they feeling their mission to "get the Guard's story out" was successful? Apparently no one mentioned the National Guard was even there, much less they used Active Denial System weapons on civilians including local residents and children. Operation Steel Kickoff was undoubtedly successful; they were inaugurating martial law in America.

[Ed Jewett]

Peter, perhaps we should begin developing some variants in advance...
maybe a Deep Politics version of Trivial Pursuits?

A brother-in-spirit has suggested that a campaign be mounted to get the media to ask more about what was going on when one individual was rather unceremoniously --- what is the phrase? -- oh yes, -- made to be the focus of an "extraordinary rendition", what the charges were, where he was taken whom pushed him into that car, who the car belonged to, where he is now, when the court case will be heard, etc., etc..

I called the bubble-headed bleached blonde at KDKA but she said her mead was a little runny last night and when I mentioned habeas corpus, she thought it was some parlor game of murder mystery and suggested that it Mr. Green and Mrs. Peacock were involved somehow, and undoubtedly Colonel Mustard was involved, since there were uniforms of some sort. Anyway, she demurred, noting that she was sure to get a press release from someone on the matter.

[Peter Lemkin]

Peter, perhaps we should begin developing some variants in advance...
maybe a Deep Politics version of Trivial Pursuits?

Now there is a seriously GOOD idea! :dancing2:

[Ed Jewett]

Fourteen Minutes of Internet Press Service (IPS) video

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/pittsburgh-g20/

[Ed Jewett]

More G20



http://www.infowars.com/provocateur-cops...ts-at-g20/

http://www.nostate.com/3240/g20-riots-in...a-twitter/

The Militarization of the Police (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5y3fBH9Og

http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=7551 (video) and



Robocops Come to Pittsburgh
…and bring the latest weaponry with them

by Mike Ferner

No longer the stuff of disturbing futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of “crowd control munitions,” including one that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was deployed with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last week’s G-20 protests.
Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups charged the many thousands of police (most transported on Port Authority buses displaying “PITTSBURGH WELCOMES THE WORLD”), from as far away as Arizona and Florida with overreacting…and they had plenty of weaponry with which to do it.
Bean bags fired from shotguns, CS (tear) gas, OC (Oleoresin Capsicum) spray, flash-bang grenades, batons and, according to local news reports, for the first time on the streets of America, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).
Mounted in the turret of an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), I saw the LRAD in action twice in the area of 25th, Penn and Liberty Streets of Lawrenceville, an old Pittsburgh neighborhood. Blasting a shrill, piercing noise like a high-pitched police siren on steroids, it quickly swept streets and sidewalks of pedestrians, merchants and journalists and drove residents into their homes, but in neither case were any demonstrators present. The APC, oversized and sinister for a city street, together with lines of police in full riot gear looking like darkly threatening Michelin Men, made for a scene out of a movie you didn’t want to be in.
As intimidating as this massive show of armed force and technology was, the good burghers of Pittsburgh and their fellow citizens in the Land of the Brave and Home of the Free ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Tear gas and pepper spray are nothing to sniff at and, indeed, have proven fatal a surprising number of times, but they have now become the old standbys compared to the list below that’s already at or coming soon to a police station or National Guard headquarters near you. Proving that “what goes around, comes around,” some of the new Property Protection Devices were developed by a network of federally-funded, university-based research institutes like one in Pittsburgh itself, Penn State’s Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.
· Raytheon Corp.'s Active Denial System, designed for crowd control in combat zones, uses an energy beam to induce an intolerable heating sensation, like a hot iron placed on the skin. It is effective beyond the range of small arms, in excess of 400 meters. Company officials have been advised they could expand the market by selling a smaller, tripod-mounted version for police forces.
· M5 Modular Crowd Control Munition, with a range of 30 meters "is similar in operation to a claymore mine, but it delivers...a strong, nonpenetrating blow to the body with multiple sub-munitions (600 rubber balls)."
· Long Range Acoustic Device or "The Scream," is a powerful megaphone the size of a satellite dish that can emit sound "50 times greater than the human threshold for pain" at close range, causing permanent hearing damage. The L.A. Times wrote U.S. Marines in Iraq used it in 2004. It can deliver recorded warnings in Arabic and, on command, emit a piercing tone..."[For] most people, even if they plug their ears, [the device] will produce the equivalent of an instant migraine," says Woody Norris, chairman of American Technology Corp., the San Diego firm that produces the weapon. "It will knock [some people] on their knees." CBS News reported in 2005 that the Israeli Army first used the device in the field to break up a protest against Israel's separation wall. "Protesters covered their ears and grabbed their heads, overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10 seconds...A military official said the device emits a special frequency that targets the inner ear."
· In "Non-lethal Technologies: An Overview," Lewer and Davison describe a lengthy catalog of new weaponry including the "Directed Stick Radiator," a hand-held system based on the same technology as The Scream. "It fires high intensity ‘sonic bullets' or pulses of sound between 125-150db for a second or two. Such a weapon could, when fully developed, have the capacity to knock people off their feet."
· The Penn State facility is testing a "Distributed Sound and Light Array Debilitator" a.k.a. the "puke ray." The colors and rhythm of light are absorbed by the retina and disorient the brain, blinding the victim for several seconds. In conjunction with disturbing sounds it can make the person stumble or feel nauseated. Foreign Policy in Focus reports that the Department of Homeland Security, with $1 million invested for testing the device, hopes to see it "in the hands of thousands of policemen, border agents and National Guardsmen" by 2010.
· Spider silk is cited in the University of Bradford’s Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Report #4 (pg. 20) as an up-and-comer. “A research collaboration between the University of New Hampshire and the U.S. Army Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center is looking into the use of spider silk as a non-lethal ‘entanglement’ material for disabling people. They have developed a method for producing recombinant spider silk protein using E. coli and are trying to develop methods to produce large quantities of these fibres.”
· New Scientist reports that the (I'm not making this up) Inertial Capacitive Incapacitator (ICI), developed by the Physical Optics Corporation of Torrance, California, uses a thin-film storage device charged during manufacture that only discharges when it strikes the target. It can be incorporated into a ring-shaped aerofoil and fired from a standard grenade launcher at low velocity, while still maintaining a flat trajectory for maximum accuracy.
· Aiming beyond Tasers, the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, (FY 2009 budget: $1B) the domestic equivalent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), plans to develop wireless weapons effective over greater distances, such as in an auditorium or sports stadium, or on a city street. One such device, the Piezer, uses piezoelectric crystals that produce voltage when they are compressed. A 12-gauge shotgun fires the crystals, stunning the target with an electric shock on impact. Lynntech of College Station, Texas, is developing a projectile Taser that can be fired from a shotgun or 40-mm grenade launcher to increase greatly the weapon's current range of seven meters.
· "Off the Rocker and On the Floor: Continued Development of Biochemical Incapacitating Weapons," a report by the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre revealed that in 1992, the National Institute of Justice contracted with Lawrence Livermore National Lab to review clinical anesthetics for use by special ops military forces and police. LLNL concluded the best option was an opioid, like fentanyl, effective at very low doses compared to morphine. Combined with a patch soaked in DMSO (dimethylsufoxide, a solvent) and fired from an air rifle, fentanyl could be delivered to the skin even through light clothing. Another recommended application for the drug was mixed with fine powder and dispersed as smoke.
· After upgrades, the infamous "Puff the Magic Dragon" gunship from the Vietnam War is now the AC-130. "Non-Lethal Weaponry: Applications to AC-130 Gunships," observes that "With the increasing involvement of US military in operations other than war..." the AC-130 "would provide commanders a full range of non-lethal weaponry from an airborne platform which was not previously available to them." The paper concludes in part that "As the use of non-lethal weapons increases and it becomes valid and acceptable, more options will become available."
· Prozac and Zoloft are two of over 100 pharmaceuticals identified by the Penn State College of Medicine and the university's Applied Research Lab for further study as "non-lethal calmatives." These Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), noted the Penn State study, "...are found to be highly effective for numerous behavioral disturbances encountered in situations where a deployment of a non-lethal technique must be considered. This class of pharmaceutical agents also continues to be under intense development by the pharmaceutical industry...New compounds under development (WO 09500194) are being designed with a faster onset of action. Drug development is continuing at a rapid rate in this area due to the large market for the treatment of depression (15 million individuals in North America)...It is likely that an SSRI agent can be identified in the near future that will feature a rapid rate of onset."
In Pittsburgh last week, an enormously expensive show of police and weaponry, intended for “security” of the G20 delegates, simultaneously shut workers out of downtown jobs for two days, forced gasping students and residents back into their dormitories and homes, and turned journalists’ press passes into quaint, obsolete reminders of a bygone time.
Most significant of all, however, was what Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, told the Associated Press: “It's not just intimidation, it's disruption and in some cases outright prevention of peaceful protesters being able to get their message out.”

Mike Ferner is a writer from Ohio and president of Veterans For Peace.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=15453