Tag Archives | G20 Protests

Agents Provocateurs in London and Pittsburgh

By on April 3, 2011 in News 38

Spy Vs SpyFrom so_very_doomed (LiveJournal):

Note: The truth is the last thing anyone wants to hear. I’m expecting to get abuse for this, if certain people end up reading it.

The march 26th demonstration was … interesting: Very dull, very boring but very neccesary. There was a desperate, depressed atmosphere in the crowd. They were led along, often corralling themselves behind arbitrary barriers in the road. Several times I went into the unoccupied side of the road as it was becoming dangerously overcrowded in the main march. They were just so depressing.

Then there were the anarchists. At first I liked the cut of their jib as they had a bit more life to them; while the criminal damage seemed fairly minor and tokenistic, but then after I got home I saw the footage. I noticed, not for the first time, the way the so-called Black Bloc were always surrounded by camera crews and strangely inactive police officers, and I thought: SET-UP.

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What Is The Black Bloc?

By on June 28, 2010 in News 16
Photo: The Schumin Web, September 24 Protests

Photo: The Schumin Web, September 24 Protests (CC)

At this weekend’s G-20 summit, small bands of protesters wearing black clothes broke off from the main protests to rampage violently in what is known as Black Bloc tactics. Kristen Chick reviews just what that means, for the Christian Science Monitor:

The Toronto Star reports that the tactic, common in international protests, involves protesters dressing in black and moving as groups to perform violent acts, then removing the black clothing to blend in with the larger protest crowd to avoid apprehension by the police. On Saturday, dozens of such protesters huddled together in a park to change into their street clothes, leaving the black garments behind and disappearing into the crowds.

The Star reports that many of the “Black Bloc” protesters Saturday were anarchists. Many have attended protests peacefully throughout the week before their rampage Saturday, reports the Star.

Expressed through an assortment of chants, the group’s causes are many: They’re anti-capitalist, anti-police, anti-colonial.

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Feds’ Search of Twittering Anarchist Upheld

By on November 7, 2009 in News 4

Ryan Singel writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:

Federal authorities can resume combing through the notebooks, memory cards and computers of a twittering anarchist being investigated for violating an anti-rioting law, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled Monday.

U.S. district court judge Dora L. Irizzary found no reason to throw out the government’s search of the home of a 41-year old social worker who used the micro-publishing service Twitter to help anti-globalization protestors at the recent G-20 convention, clearing the way for the feds to look through the evidence they collected. Madison and his attorney sought to have his possessions returned unexamined, on the grounds the search violated his constitutional rights to free speech.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force raided Elliott Madison’s house in a dawn raid on October 1, seizing myriad computers, unpublished manuscripts, phones and books from the social worker, his urban planner wife and his housemates. The materials were seized as evidence in a federal grand jury investigation of whether Madison violated a rarely-used federal statute that makes it a crime to help rioters.

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Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) Makes Debut at G20 protest

By on September 29, 2009 in News 2

From the New York Times:

The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up, then threw tear gas canisters that released clouds of white smoke and stun grenades that exploded with sharp flashes of light. City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly. “Other law enforcement agencies will be watching to see how it was used,” said Nate Harper, the Pittsburgh police bureau chief. “It served its purpose well.”

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