The Toronto G20 Police State Crackdown

It appears as if the G20 summit in Toronto is shaping up to be a showdown between anarchists and police. Caught in the middle of the security circus are local residents. If there is violence and property damage, peaceful protesters will also be demonized. The recent bombing of a bank, perpetrated by a so-called anarchist group, has given an excuse to enact more police state measures during the summit. The curious timing of the attack emphasizes the threat of terrorism and further justifies the huge security apparatus being assembled.'

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Police Officers Must Face Trial by Jury

I don't think I'm the only one gawping in disbelief at yesterday's acquittal of Delroy Smellie, a sergeant in the Territorial Support Group of the Metropolitan Police. He was accused of assault after hitting Nicola Fisher at a protest in London on 2 April last year. She had gathered with others to commemorate Ian Tomlinson, who had died after being pushed over by police at the G20 protests the day before. Sgt Smellie hit Fisher across the face with the back of his hand, then twice on her legs with his baton, knocking her to the ground.

The judge, Daphne Wickham, said, "It was for the prosecution to prove this defendant was not acting in lawful self-defence. I have found the prosecution has failed in this respect and the defendant has raised the issue of lawful self-defence and as such is entitled to be acquitted." There was no jury.

In other words, Smellie was acquitted on the grounds that he was acting in self-defence. All I have to go on is the video evidence, but, having watched it several times, I find this verdict amazing.'

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Big Brother: Secret State USA Monitors Protest, Represses Dissent

As social networking becomes a dominant feature of daily life, the secret state is increasingly surveilling electronic media for what it euphemistically calls "actionable intelligence."

Take the case of Elliot Madison. The 41-year-old anarchist was arrested in Pittsburgh September 24 at the height of G20 protests.

Madison, a social worker and volunteer with The People's Law Collective in New York City, was busted by a combined task force led by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) and Pittsburgh's "finest." The activist was charged with "hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime," according to The New York Times.

Did the cops uncover a secret anarchist weapons' cache? Were Madison and codefendant, Michael Wallschlaeger, a producer with the radio talk show "This Week in Radical History" for the A-Infos Radio Project, about to detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" during last month's capitalist conclave that witnessed the obscene spectacle of our masters avidly conspiring to impoverish billions of the planet's inhabitants?

Hardly! In fact, Madison and Wallschlaeger's "crime" was to set up a communications center in a hotel room that alerted demonstrators to movements by the police, who after all, had viciously attacked protesters--and anyone else nearby--with heavy batons, tear gas and a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a so-called "non-lethal" weapon.

Kitted-out with police scanners, computers and cell phones, the intrepid activists used a Twitter account to assist protesters eager to elude a thrashing by some 5,000 heavily armed camo-clad cops who had sealed-off downtown Pittsburgh to keep the area safe--from the First Amendment.

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Wearechange Schools Pittsburgh Police on Constitution at G20

Military Attacks American Citizens With Sound Weapons & Tear Gas At G20

National Guard, police, and other military units attacked American citizens with tear gas and deployed sound cannons today in response to an “unpermitted protest” as bedlam hit the streets on the first day of the G20 summit in downtown Pittsburgh.

The First Amendment is officially dead in the United States. If this isn’t martial law then we don’t know what is. Associated Press photographs show National Guard troops in full fatigues with active duty military running checkpoints that make the roadblocks in Iraq positively friendly. Like Iraq, America is now a conquered nation occupied by troops whose primary function is to oppress anyone who tries to express the freedoms that they once enjoyed.

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Iranian Protest vs. London Protest

European and American image-consumers love such feisty expressions of democratic discontent; burning cars, throwing bricks, beating the crap out of riot police unlucky enough to come off their two-stroke motorbikes.

Because dissent is laudable overseas: At home it’s undemocratic.

You see, self-righteousness and anger as engines of change are exported, projected, displaced. In Iran we can admire the passion of Tehran’s glamorous youth (Playboy magazine is currently running a feature on Iran’s “Lipstick Revolution”); abhor the conservative clerics and watch the cars burning with a frisson of detached admiration.

God forbid such a thing happen on the streets of London.

Not so very long ago, there was a protest in England’s capital, as far as I recall. It wasn’t very violent: one window of one bank was smashed; no cars were burnt, no policeman beaten and the only things thrown were juggling balls. And not in anger.

The protestors largely rather politely demanded that the bankers who had run our financial institutions into the ground return their multimillion pound bonuses. Please. And that the leaders of the G20 push for jobs, fair distribution of wealth, and a low-carbon future.

For their pains, they had the crap beaten out of them by London’s Metropolitan police, who covered up their badge numbers, backhanded women across the face, punched protestors, dragged teenage girls backwards across the street by their hair and killed an onlooker after slamming his head into the pavement.

Britain’s political establishment praised the demonstrators for their civic mindedness and engagement in the democratic right to protest, and called roundly on the police to be accountable for their murder of an innocent bystander.

“Oh? Hold on a minute?” (Checks earpiece…) “They didn’t?”

No, sorry, they did nothing of the sort. They roundly praised the police for doing a “difficult job in tough circumstances” and smeared the protestors with all sorts of unsubstantiated allegations. Not a single senior figure stood up to condemn what amounted to manslaughter of an entirely innocent man. Not one.

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You Cannot Have Pre-emptive Justice

It seems that terrorism and activism have been conflated in the minds of the police and we saw that with the over-aggressive policing of the G20 protests.

There is a difference between stopping disruption if there's violent protest, where people are going to be endangered, and police infiltrating a legitimate demonstration before it takes place.

It is the police's job to police protests, not to manage them so they do not happen. They need to accept that people have the right to choose to break the law and take the punishment which comes with that.

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Man Who Died of a Heart Attack During G20 Protests 'Was Violently Attacked by Riot Police'

A newspaper seller who died after suffering a heart attack during the G20 protests was attacked by police, witnesses said yesterday.

Ian Tomlinson, 47, was hit with a police baton and shoved to the ground by officers in riot gear, according to statements received by the police watchdog.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is examining several accounts which allege Mr Tomlinson, a married man who lived alone in a bail hostel, was struck and pushed by police.

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Notice how they have to put in that he lived at a Bail Hostel, therefore making a link in the publc's mind that he was a criminal! Mind control!