Robocops Employ Scary Crowd-Stopping Technology at Pittsburgh Protests

This is the distinct impression I got from the videos where the LRAD was "demonstrated".

So the Long Range Acoustic Device, Mounted in the turret of an Armored Personnel Carrier, was used against pedestrians, merchants, journalists and residents.

Was the hearing of any of these innocent people including children in their own homes permanently damaged?

Does anyone in "authority" care?

Or is everyone in authority in the US, a ruthless fascist pig who considers the general human population in the same was as animals to be controlled on the way to the slaughter house.

The message is quite clear. Don't you dare protest. Don't you dare challenge our authority. We have got everything we need to control you.

Heil Hitler / /

Tony

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mmm, soma...

So I think we're gonna see more of this non-lethal technology, and frankly it's frightening. It has severe implications for the public's ability to protest at all. Once this stuff starts getting used en-masse, it'll be pulled out right away as soon as people start gathering - just the way tasers seem to be used so easily nowadays. The use of these weapons on citizenry needs to be made unconstitutional, lest we end up in a real Brave New World.

Mark my words, we'll see a day where a privatized militia use this tech on the public in order to break up protests over corporate actions. All the ingredients are there already. Want to protest the latest coca-cola plant which is destroying your community by taking away all your water? Forget it, your ass is getting soma'd or your skin is getting fried, by a blackwater-esqe company your own tax dollars helped pay for.

Then again maybe it's a good thing. Maybe this is what it will take for the american public to actually do something about all the crazy shit going down in your police state right now. If that happens, then my thoughts are with you.

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Blasting people with noise levels that can make one deaf or cause skin burns and who knows what else in turns of body damage are forms of torture. So-called 'non-leathal' devices are to extort people to beheave in certain ways by threating or actually causing pain. That is the purpose of torture.
Making these devices worse it that innocent people as well as pets can be injured. Who knows what other enviromental affects are to beneficient animals. I hope protesters and innocents sue the hell out of the local government for injury including hearing losses and other injuries to themselves and their pets.

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"disobey your orders" Luke Rudowski has his lines right in the face of great intimidation. Luke is the founder of WeAreChange.

Would Ghandi and his demonstrating supporters have had their success with the Robocops and arsenal of crowd control techniques from hell (1984, Brave New World) at ready to stop the message?

Mainstream media controls the minds and hearts more subtly--with few alternatives (even AlterNet steers and biases subjects like 9/11 Truth) for public expression of dissent. Street & parks protest is an honored venue of expression in free countries throughout the world.

Goodbye First Amendment if we let this continue. Goodbye Constitution if we wimp out.

READ Cindy Sheehan's letter from Pittsburg WATCH video footage at WorldCantWait.org

SIGN this letter of outrage, to be sent to federal and PA authorities. Deadline 10-1-2009

CONTACT these officials:
Luke Ravenstahl: Mayor of Pittsburgh 412-255-2626
Nathan Harper: Chief of Police, Pittsburgh 412-323-7800
Ed Rendell: Governor of Pennsylvania 717 787-2500

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...when confronted with the most powerful offensive weapon of the weak: Non-compliance.

The general strike epitomizes non-compliance as a kind of tactic. It causes damage by the majority opting to not be where they, as individuals, ought to be.

Naturally, it always helps the many to defeat the few when military personnel refuse to follow barbaric orders!

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No one ever asked us if we wanted this violent militaristic society. The government has always been at risk from the entitled monarchists in its midst and in the last 30 years they have been dominant.

Hope and change. Not unrealistic. Not impossible. But very difficult and frightening. Good for the guy in the blue shirt with the loudspeaker. And for the two girls who were thrown to the ground. And for the people with the courage to film.

Agreed that there may be times when crowd control is necessary, but where are the humane even pleasurable devices? Vanilla foam, anyone? Simple human decency is called for. Hope and change.

Making money is often a legally-sanctioned crime.

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Our freedoms are evaporating right before our very eyes. Government stormtroopers are keeping us in line. Is anyone worried yet???

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Every taxpayer funded agency, university and manufacturer who plays a part in these weaponries for use on foreign or domestic soil is a MAD TERRORIST. Pretty soon they will have a weapon that senses critical comments coming from a keyboard and send a charge that burns the offender's fingertips to a crisp. One less protester.

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the students were "loud and spilling out into the streets."

www.post-gazette.com/pg/09270/1001201-482.stm

So the response to a loud crowd is ear splitting noise?!

Wow.

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1873-1877: UNITED STATES. The so-called Panic of ’73 plunges the U.S. into depression. Triggered by a railroad-connected bank failure, the underlying cause was the previous decade of fraud carried out by railroad interests as the continuing genocide against native Americans opened up ever more land for railroad construction.

Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt. A total of 18,000 businesses failed in the first two years of the depression. Wages were cut, workers went on strike. Federal troops were used against workers and more than one hundred people were killed.

1874: UNITED STATES. When unemployed workers demonstrate in New York's Tompkins Square Park, mounted police charge into the crowd, beating men, women and children. Hundreds are injured. New York Police Commissioner Abram Duryee, is quoted as saying, "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw."

"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." - Ian Williams Goddard

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Gas masks are available on-line and in military surplus/equipment specialty stores. There is a rather cheap but effective civil gas mask (that uses the very same canisters as NATO military masks) made by Israel for their own population. It will protect from virtually all biological, radiological, and chemical weapons a soldier might face but will also work against mere tear gas and pepper spray.

Surplus flak jackets are protection from rubber bullets and beanbags (at least for your torso). Knee pads, elbow pads, arm protectors, shin guards are also available and would offer much protection of those vulnerable areas (both "tactical" style or the type used by motocross and X-treme biking etc). As for the "pain ray"...a fine mesh metal screen (that you can see through) would offer protection. You could even get fancy (though uncomfortable) and patch up a jacket/raincoat and pants with the mesh (make sure to have something to cover your head/face).

Not sure what could be done about some of the goo weapons...possibly not much - avoid taking a full load and when in a situation that sees deployment of that crap, carry a lightweight chem defense suit (available cheap online!) and don it as the goo makes an appearance and avoid taking a full-on direct hit. You can then peel out of the suit...or carry a large rain poncho and dump it when nailed. You keep your "running" and movement clothing mostly clean with a disposable, protective, cheap outer protective shell.

Ear plugs PLUS sound protective ear muffs are enough to protect your hearing from 170db range jet engine noise (ex-military: been there) - it will also go a long way to squelching the effects of the various noise weapons.

One CANNOT allow the authoritarian goons have the final say nor last sadistic laugh. Be prepared to protest and disrupt REGARDLESS of their anti-democratic, anti-liberty, anti-freedom fascist toys.

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They had to have tested some of these things on our own population before they came out with them publicly. Except they fooled people into believing they were Satan.

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... to shit their pants, to be rendered immobile, and to feel intense physical torment, then they should use recordings of Sarah "Pain" Palin's screeching voice!

Now, THAT IS torture!

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( and let Lou Dobbs have his say, as well!)

The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Where was Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Ed Rendell in this? Did countenancing Philadelphia's Mayor Wilson Goode's aerial drop of C4 and Tovex, military explosives, on residents during a stand-off in the 80's pave the way for him to allow these inhumane random tactics?

Shame on PA for allowing it. Shame on Penn State.

I hope the author is able to contact the visiting participants to let them know about the tecnologies used so that they can at least lodge protests after the fact.

There neeeds to be more coverage of this story, and attention paid to federal funding of
torture to withhold dissent.

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Having a wary public which feels already very much threatened and out of control over most aspects of their lives which actually matter (e.g. big picture stuff, climate, economy, governance)...this article, while informative, also serves to fuel the dysphoria intended to be created by the development of these weapons and their potential deployment for crowd control. This direction of policing is a direct result of their anticipating having to enforce the implementation of the increasingly grotesque trangressions of capitalism against the average person under it. Perception of being rendered helpless meshes well with the law enforcement meme of resistance is futile. Resistance on terms acceptable to LE/ and the powers they serve is futile. Some of the people in power know where all of this is going, and they are readying for the inevitable.

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PEOPLE:

YES, WE NEED TO PROTEST, WE NEED TO SPEAK OUT.

THAT SAID, OBAMA HAS NOT LET US DOWN.

WE HAVE LET OURSELVES DOWN.

WE VOTED FOR THIS ELITIST, HARVARD, RHETORIC-SPEWING, LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH, MONSTER.

FOLLOW THE MONEY NEXT TIME 2012.

BOTTOM LINE IS THE PRESIDENT HAS THE POWER.

LET'S GIVE THE POWER TO THE RIGHT PERSON WHO WILL STOP THIS INSANITY.

VOTE FOR DENNIS KUCINICH NEXT TIME.

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Heat exposure that burns the first 1/52" of skin: very harmful to someone like myself with an inflammatory disease with many skin presentation. Lupus inflammation has already caused me to lose most of my hair, and that's from exposure within.

Many people are allergic, some fatally so, to opiates and the anti-depressants.

For those with any kind of inner-ear syndrome, the loud horn tactic could really make them drop in the streets. It would me.

To call these tactics "non-lethal" is, bottom line, a lie. How diverse has their "medical testing" been? Included a typical downtown street, say, in Manhattan?

Please, let's not buy the "non-lethal" language. Some did with "enhanced interrogation." These "non-lethal" tactics are far from that in large typical crowd, replete with children, elderly, ill. And also think "long-term effects." And when it comes to insurance, think 1) what would be covered if treatment is required and 2) what would be a "pre-existing condition?"

And would you take your child to a "peaceful protest" if these were around? Trust me, they wouldn't be around to sock it to the "birthers," "deathers" and those others who somehow managed to steal an existing word for a sexual act and turn it into a legitimate phrase that 1) I won't use but 2) the media happily prints/says everywhere.

Non-lethal? Prove it. With data. As in real data and medical studies. And take this list to your doctor and ask if any of these are good for you if you happen to be caught in these chemicals running out for a quick sandwich during your lunch break.

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What this article and most others fail to say, is that NYC loaned and sent 5 choppers and a personnel carrier, filled with NY National Guardsman to Pittsburg, for the G20, all whom were under the direct command of our blessed Democratic Governor, Ed Rendell.

What our state and many other states do not advertise, is that our resources are depleted, non-existant or in Iraq and we have nothing of our own for the Guard to use, if we truly had a legitimate state emergency. My Brother, before his retirement, was in charge of one of our largest armories here in PA. He faught for over a year about the fudged numbers and lies that were being sent up about readiness, to the Commander in Chief and when our unit was deployed to Iraq for a second time, we had to borrow troops and equipment from 3 other states to have enough men and resources to send one full unit.

Why then, I would have to ask, do we waste these expensive resources, in an overkill display of force to terrorize a college campus, where the many videos available clearly show no violence? The riot squads trapped college kids into stair wells and blocks from both ends, leaving them unable to remove themselves to safety, then commanded them to disperse, all while shooting them with rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas. Videos clearly demonstrated several students injured and bleeding. One elderly woman, who was simply walking on a sidewalk, was bitten in the arse by a police dog, bloodied and injured, completely unprovoked!

I used to chuckle when I would read articles about the upcoming police state that America was on her way to becoming. I no longer find them humorous or an exaggeration. If this can happen in PA, it can and will happen anywhere. Our tax dollars are being used to confine us to "our place" as working slaves to support the will of the corporate fascism that has become the USSA. No more expectation of privacy, safety in your own home, freedom of movement and speech and no more peaceful demonstrating. We have few freedoms left in this country. How did we sit back and permit this to happen? How did we not see what they were doing with the Patriot Act and in the name of security for our homeland? It seems to me, the only thing they are protecting, is themselves and their corporate controllers, rendering us entrapped pawns only here to finance their will and domination!

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There is no other solution because the entire game is rigged against us.

The wealth gap is exploding at an exponential rate. That means that even if we educate ourselves or our children and try to make something of our hard work and intelligence it will simply be stolen from us by teams of lawyers from the big corporations, or simply outright stolen. Meanwhile:

Corporations will continue to drive down the standard of living by ever-increasing "worker productivity" efforts, which is a euphemism for more work for less pay.

Our militaristic security state is being turned against us and that will continue to regress as things get worse. Virtually all research dollars now are funneled through DARPA to target military technological advances that are being used to stabilize our corporate state. Meanwhile:

Our military budget is exploding into the stratosphere. Basically all federal dollars not being spent on Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security are being sucked dry by the military industrial complex. So they will grow in power and seek new "threats" to neutralize - that would be us.

Our Congress and President are so corrupted by corporate power that we are not even a part of the process anymore.

We have to slowly, but methodically extract ourselves from this corrupt capitalistic system of exploitation and violence. We have to substitute dogged resistance to everything the system stands for. We have to dedicate ourselves to becoming that "goo" that they are using on us!

We have to stop having children that we can neither afford nor can we give them a decent life.

Personally, I am turning away from the militarized, possessive University corporate scheme toward the open Freeware Community. This will give me the exposure and credibility I need to advance my career without being "owned" by crooks or greedy corporations. It will benefit everyone and ultimately I will be able to support myself by helping others.

Meanwhile I do what I can, writing Letters to the Editor (everyone contributing on this site should be doing this, it is very important) and participating here on Alternet.

Maybe Alternet could do a story on the Freeware Community model?

peace,
Paul

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In all their research I wonder if they even consider the damage to innocent people who get hit by one of these weapons and are affected adversly by the chemicals or sound or heat put out. As with tasers, the police will want to play with these new "non lethal" safe weapons. Look what happened when police were given tasers, they went nuts because they started using them even when the situation didn't call for them and people started getting killed becaue of heart conditions and the fact that the cops thought the tasers were so safe that they could taser a child numerous times without consequence. Real bad idea. They give cops these weapons without the training and warnings that should go along with them and it's a recipe for fatalities and lawsuits.

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there are all kinds of alternative weapons. this company (http://www.atcsd.com/site/content/view/34/47/)makes hypersonic devices, including for military applications, of exotic nature. for consumers it offers the highest end audio quality and the ability to have multiple persons in a room each listening to different sound, piped right into the head, inaudible to the others... or blow a jet pilots brains out remotely.

certain old synthesizers can be preset to infrasonic and ultrasonic levels. in fact, in the early 1970s, there was a CIA plan for assassinations, such as castro, via siply amplifying a preset roland SH-1250, i think it was. french sound-weapon studies as far back as the 1950s were disintegrating tanks...

tasers can be purchased by citizens, too. multiple-tentacle tasers, too.

then there's HERF. i first read of a herf gun in the early 90s. it was said that a fellow with a home-made herf gun put together from items to be had at a large hardware store had successfully fried the hard disk drives of an office just by walking through it. as this page and any google of the topic shows, these have a range of uses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon)

defenses? well, gasmasks in the event of chemtrailing. sheesh. run for the hills.

with governmental insolvency, food riots and martial law looming, it is imperative for citizenry to consider and act accordingly for their own protection. the rightwing is and has long since been doing so and they are another element for us to be concerned about. it is easy to imagine attacks on gay communities, blacks, hispanics, artist's ghettos and simple takeovers of regions in which we live.

that indian-killer george washington rightly said, "a democratic society cannot long exist in the presence of a standing army." and that was 220 years of standing army ago...

looking on the bright side, an honorable death is generally hard to come by. that might not be a problem in this future scenario.

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Nobody cares about any of this. They think it will be done to somebody else.

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Just waiting for the USAmerikan Empire's corporate-capitalist masters' domestic war machine to screw with me?

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this string of posts is surely watched with interest, eh?

as the government sees fit to wage war on the citizenry to protect the world-devouring oligarchs of such as WTO/IF/WorldBank/G20 (not to say that it hasn't been waging war on the citizenry since andrew jackson was president and ever since...), the proper, constitutionally correct, citizen response is to attack back in spades.

the current picture is increasingly dire. i won't do teh whole story here, but on 7/11/06, i was kidnapped, beaten, injected with god knows what multiple times and dropped at a hospital. the last thing i saw before being knocked unconscious from behind was a black van with flashing lights. 13 hours later i came to. suffice it to say that my health hasn't been the same since. they could more easily have killed me, being pros. no, just a message.

at first my wife and i thought this was due to some people we were suing over a stolen, very valuable business, an endless lawsuit now that they're enriched. but last year i learned that a fellow who'd supervised our early 2006 work on antiwar and war-crimes websites and related antiwar activities had been identically picked up when leaving the massive antiwar protest at the UN during the same period when i was attacked.

we learned through a friend of ours that NYPD is rife with moonlighting cops and shortly thereafter, a report came out about there being hundreds of aryan nation thugs and the like on the NYPD. some of these pros would do attacks for kicks, not even needing to be paid.

the terrible truth is that there are literally millions of these folks out there and the government is its core. time is running short til the food riots start in a nation bankrupted by warmongers and corporatists.

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Fresh from the cobwebs of my childhold, LRAD... kind alike the water cannons pummeling demonstrators in city squares all over Hungary and Czechoslovakia back in the day.

Expect only more of this as the owning-class step up their war on the rest of us.

Yay, Pittsburg, land of the fuckhead Western Pennsylvanian neocon horde. I'm so glad I got outta the fucked up feudalist state.

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Sure the demonstrators got hurt but more, these tactics hurt our freedom. They threaten future legitimate demonstrations because of the terror they cause ...

Are people with legitimate grievances more or less likely to use their right of free speech to express their opinions when threat of violence and pain are likely?

These weapons are an abridgment of our First Amendment Rights ... Furthermore the meting out of collective punishment is a War Crime.

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I, too, was on the ground in Pittsburgh documenting the mayhem. This was clearly an exercise in Marshall Law. The same amount of military and para-military occupied Kabul in 2001, which covered 16 square miles, while in Pittsburgh the occupied zone covered only 7 square miles.

Marshall Law is being practiced for a reason. The National Guard was deployed and attacked civilians for a reason.

The government must be expecting something in our future.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

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I see your point -- votes are fixed, as in both Bush elections.

However, it is worth taking Dennis Kucinich all the way because he will fight unlike John Kerry or Al Gore.

Then people really have a reason to riot in the streets.

It takes money and support of the people to get him elected. He cannot do this alone and the majority of his donations are from the people which is what we want and what he wants.

What are our alternatives really??

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