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@theali

That adds little context.

Basically, what I saw in that second video, was right at the beginning they say "If they ask us to disperse, move away calmly in groups"

when asked to move back, people sit like lumps.

Then, we mysteriously lose a lot of footage at the 7:17 mark, and come back to riot geared cops suddenly standing on the front lines.

The guy on the bike who was tackled, I'd like to know what he did, he was unfortunately off-camera, but I doubt he deserved that. The rest of them though.. until I see what they did to make the cops bring out riot police, I'm siding with the police. You generally don't edit footage that dramatically unless you're hiding something.

The only thing which could even in theory explain why this was happening is that the burned-out police car was in the vicinity. Still - they don't need a riot police charge to deal with that - they need their underused watercannon!!!

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/26/adam-vaughan-warned-it-was-a-bad-idea/

"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has something to answer for tonight. It is hard for this writer to escape the feeling that this summit was designed with every possible star aligned for ugliness to occur. The summit is held on a summer weekend, after university and high school exams are over; all the students are out and free and have time on their hands. Summer weather is perfect for a march. The summit takes place in the heart of Toronto: everybody in Canada has a friend in Toronto where they can stay during a protest.

And can we not say that assembling the greatest number of police in one spot in the history of Canada, and spending more on fences and security than Canada has ever spent before, has a provocative effect?

This writer is not condoning violence. I stood for an hour on the steps of Old City Hall today and looked down Bay Street at smoke and flames rising from burning police cars. I walked up Yonge and saw all the windows smashed. I saw the hundreds of black riot police massed at Queen’s Park. I saw the dozens of plainclothes police get out of unmarked cars and mix with the crowd, ready for trouble.

The city we know and cherish and love is on her knees tonight. There is nothing to cheer about. Many have something to answer for: the protesters, for behaving poorly, the media, for egging them on, and Mr. Harper, for choosing to have his summit at this place, at this time."

You mean that neanderthal degenerate? Yeah, that's me >> ^gwiz665:

@Hybrid was that you in the white trunks..? Don't lie to me now.

I don't really think the world has anything to learn from American policing and law. They aren't exactly model examples if all the clips of US police brutality and incompetence are to be believed.>> ^joedirt:

fuck your cops seems like such pussies.
You still have much to learn from brown shirts across the pond.

Alright, people. One of my best friends goes to the University of Pittsburgh and he was in the middle of the whole thing. Most of the "protesters" were just students curious about what was going on. He wrote this about it all:

"This note is for my friends who are not in Pittsburgh and have not yet been given a fairly comprehensive version of what has been going on here. If you have been seeing my wall posts, you'll know that something bad happened in Pittsburgh, but if you want my story, here it is...

On Thursday and Friday September 24-25, the G-20 World Leader's Summit occurred in Pittsburgh. The summit involved the leaders of the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of the summit is to have a forum for the major world leaders about the global economic crisis. Pittsburgh was chosen to be the location for the summit in order to highlight its economic recovery after the city's manufacturing industry collapsed about 40 years ago.

The G-20 is always met with protesters for various causes, including global warming awareness, socialism, peoples' rights in other countries, anti-free-trade, and anti-war, and anarchy. The city of Pittsburgh was required to bring in police forces from all regions of the state of Pennsylvania and other nearby states.

On the evening of the 24th, the summit began with a dinner in the Phipps Conservatory, a plant exhibition hall (really quite a nice place) just under a mile from my dorm in the borough of Oakland. The University cancelled classes after 4:00 PM that day in order to ensure that students did not have to be outside if they did not wish to. During the day of the 24th, several protests had been broken up by riot police. At about 7:00 PM a small protest began at the Schenley Plaza. (from this point on, I will be referring to locations on campus, please refer to the map I posted at:< http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs209.snc1/7620_178174626232_559501232_4081545_8066324_n.jpg>)

I went there to investigate myself at about 8:00 PM. The protest itself was fairly small, only about a hundred or so people total, with only a handful of protesters. There was some live music and dancing, courtesy of the Hare Krishna. Despite the fact that the protest was fairly small and peaceful, there were several hundred police forming a perimeter around the plaza, which is under a quarter-mile from the Conservatory. All of the Police were in riot gear, which covered any form of identification they may have had; they were also all armed with lethal and non-lethal weapons.

Around 9:00, I decided to return to my dorm. At 10:15, I overheard someone saying that they saw fire on Forbes Avenue. I decided to go out and investigate. At this point, the street had been flooded by curious students, and would remain that way until the police removed them. Several dumpsters had been pushed into the intersection of Forbes and Atwood by anarchist protesters. The next intersection had a overturned dumpster with flaming garbage spilled on the street. Several shop windows had been broken by a protester from California, however the media initially implicated that it had been students who were responsible.

I reached the lawn of the Pitt Union, and at about 10:45 the police began to multiply rapidly. They also brought in several scary-looking trucks with large dish-shaped things on them. This turned out to be a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), which emits a loud, scary noise which is physically disabling within a certain radius. At 11:00 PM, the trucks began playing a pre-recorded message declaring that the people in the streets had become an "illegal gathering" and that the crowd was to disperse, or they could be subject to arrest or attack with "less lethal" weaponry (does that mean you're less dead when you get hit?)

At this, I decided to retreat to Forbes Hall. Other people were not fortunate enough to get out of there as quickly as I did, and became exposed to a hail of "OC" gas, rubber bullets, mace, LRAD blasts, and nightsticks. The University unfortunately decided to lock down the residence halls as the police approached, giving the retreating students nowhere to go to escape from the police. One of my friends was arrested while holding open the doors to the Litchfield Towers residence hall lobby so that escaping students had somewhere to go. She was dragged outside of the doorway, beaten to the ground, not given any rights, held for five hours, and released without any charge as of yet.

At the time, I was unaware of this, but I watched the police advance through the lower campus (residential area, mainly between Forbes and Fifth avenues) via the live feed on the local news. When I noticed that they were three blocks away from Forbes Hall, I went to the patio on the second floor of the hall (out of reach of anyone who didn't live there or have a friend there). At about midnight, the cops were in front of the hall, still chasing a small group of protesters despite being nearly a mile from the original protest ground and being practically at the end of the campus. Without any real warning, they threw several canisters of "OC" gas onto the patio. Unknown to me at the time, several also entered the lobby and threatened to mace several students who were unable to enter the hall due to the lockdown.

OC gas is for all intents and purposes the same as tear gas. When you inhale it, your lungs and throat itch and you can't do anything but cough. If it gets in your eyes, you become partially blind and it feels like your eyes are melting. I was several feet away from a grenade and was directly exposed to it for several seconds as my fellow students and I tried to escape. I ran to my bathroom on the sixth floor and flushed my eyes and choked for five minutes. The third floor had window open out of which the students had been looking, it was filled with gas, and the students living on the third floor became refugees for several hours while it cleared.

Shortly after passing Forbes hall, the police attack ended. They left Oakland with 42 arrests (most were let go that morning), and a large number of unfairly treated, assaulted, and pissed students. The university itself has yet to make any statement regarding Thursday night, but the Mayor of Pittsburgh and Chief of Police have stated that they are "proud of how well the police handled the situation". They are apparently not fans of students either.

I will save my personal commentary and descriptions of the aftermath for another note. However, here are a few links that you will find interesting.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeD4rHUF4A> a compilation of student-made videos from 9/24.
The videos are of varying quality and contain some harsh language and violence. These will give you an idea of what the students here experienced (I know the person being dragged away at 2:35)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6aRrQz7224> This video was not taken by me, but it was taken from my vantage point when Forbes Hall was attacked
<http://www.pittnews.com/> Pitt's student newspaper, featuring independent coverage of the G-20 (and some rather good photography, the ones I took came out terribly)
<http://www.pittbriefly.com/> A blog on which many videos of the G-20 'riot' have been posted. Some of these cannot be found on Youtube.

Thank you for reading this,
......."

I've noticed that too but u took the words out of my mouth.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
^ I've noticed that too. Crackpots with AR-15's go to where the President is to threaten violence over universal healthcare, and cops don't do shit.

Anarchists show up to peacefully protest globalization, and jackbooted riot police come with sound cannons, nightsticks, tear gas and god knows what else.

If you were a police man, who would you rather beat up - a guy with an AR-15 and thirst for statist blood or some kid who likes yelling in a megaphone and maybe throwing a trashcan through a window? I would think that easier prey would be obvious.

"Take my gun from my cold, dead hands" vs. "Peace man, don't harsh my buzz"

>> ^NetRunner:
^ I've noticed that too. Crackpots with AR-15's go to where the President is to threaten violence over universal healthcare, and cops don't do shit.
Anarchists show up to peacefully protest globalization, and jackbooted riot police come with sound cannons, nightsticks, tear gas and god knows what else.

^ I've noticed that too. Crackpots with AR-15's go to where the President is to threaten violence over universal healthcare, and cops don't do shit.

Anarchists show up to peacefully protest globalization, and jackbooted riot police come with sound cannons, nightsticks, tear gas and god knows what else.

Amazing that it takes trying to provide goddamn health care - not the hijacked bailout, not tax breaks, not endless defense of corporate pillaging of America and the environment, not expansion of the roles of riot police and use of military-grade weaponry, not corruption in government and incredible levels of military spending, loss of privacy and not unjustified wars and torture - HEALTH CARE - that has brought this troupe out in force.

I'm against bloated, inefficient, pointless spending as well. But hell, if we're going to spend some tax dollars I'd prefer to see it spent on things like education and healthcare - not helping out the corporations that got themselves into financial messes this past year.

THIS is DEMOCRACY? If violence erupts, they should call out the riot police, and do to these people what right wing governments in the past have done to peaceful protests, bean bag guns, batons, pepper spray, and tear gas. By allowing people to show up at these events, and challenge the whole nations democratic foundation right to it's very core, tolerating the shut down of political discussion through anger and violence, then they should be treated like any other person would be at any political event, and should be dragged out by police, possibly arrested, or even tazed. How is it fair that when someone shouts at a politician at one event, that one person gets electrocuted, but when you're in an angry mob literally unraveling all the progress that the American nation has made in terms of a representative democracy, they are left alone, or, worse, allowed to continue to disrupt these meetings in a non inclusive, and nonconstructive fashion.

This is Nazi Germany before the concentration camps, before the war. except the "protesters" are the ones stifling dissent. She says that it's better for this group or that, and buddy stands up and yells "BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!"

Tags for this video have been changed from 'johnny cash' to 'johnny cash, riots, police, state' - edited by EndAll