Why the draconian measures at the G-20?

[Nikki Stone1]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090921_globalization_goes_bankrupt/

“The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong,” said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. “This is what this meeting is about.”

The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world’s wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

[MercutioATC]

1. Protests at G20 meetings have been heating up, internationally.

The U.S. doesn't want to be the country where a foreign leader is shot. It's that simple.

[DJ13]

2. This is important

From page 2...........

“Obama is in trouble,” Holmes went on. “The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can’t be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster, not only for Obama but the Democratic Party. It is only groups like ours that provide hope. If labor unions will get off their ass and stop focusing on narrow legislation for their members, if they will go back to being social unions that embrace broad causes, we have a chance of effecting change. If this does not happen it will be a right-wing disaster.”

[glitch]

3. "The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save

a criminal class" perhaps they think we are better informed than we actually are.

Excellent article, thanks for posting.

[Nikki Stone1]

7. You're welcome.

I think this is crucial.

[MadHound]

4. Can't have our corporate overlords criticized now, can we. n/t

[G_j]

5. "business as usual"

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/10-5

Published on Thursday, September 10, 2009 by Inter Press Service

Speculators Undermining Recovery, Report Says
by Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS - The current economic meltdown will continue for years if the world community does not take firm and coordinated action to regulate the flow of capital, say researchers who have just concluded a new study for the United Nations.

"There hasn't been much achievement in regulating the financial markets," says Heiner Flassbeck, one of the study's authors associated with the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). "The world is still mired in deep economic crisis."

The UNCTAD "Trade and Development Report" points out that despite a professed commitment to tackle the recession, many countries in the developed world have failed to rein in the financial industry's indulgence in speculative investment.

According to the report, this crisis reflects the "predominance" of the financial markets over the real economy.

Flassbeck lashed out at governments of the most industrialised countries for not doing enough to rein in the powers of the financial industry, saying that they had let the financial sector continue to do "business as usual".


..more..

[Luminous Animal]

6. To frighten the crap out of us.

To quash dissent before it happens.

[Kievan Rus]

8. Protesting the power elite gets a response...

And don't even THINK of raising their taxes!

[Mist]

9. Seems to me that kind of over-reaction (of TPTB at the G20) indicates a guilty conscience. nt

[earth mom]

10. Those rich elite bastards are covering their asses & protecting their assets.

How much more proof does anyone need that they do not care about the majority of us?

They can and will do anything to destroy those who stand up to them.

We are in a Class War. I've been saying that for years now around here.

Wake up DU and stop thinking that Obama gives a damn about you!!!

You are just a means to an end!

If he cared, you would already have health care paid for by your taxes instead of the hemming and hawing Obama is doing to placate the insurance industry!!!

[blues90]

14. No argument from me , nt

[starroute]

11. I don't buy it

Yes, it is overkill, but no, some kind of Freudian speculation about guilt and fear is not the answer.

I'm not quite sure what really *is* going on -- but I suspect that stupid sound cannon may be a clue. I think they're expecting genuine civil unrest a notch or two further down the road, as things get really bad, and they're using this as a sandbox to test out their new toys.

If that's true, then the military is almost certainly who's really behind this. I'm quite sure they're furiously war gaming this stuff at the Pentagon and have been planning out their scenarios -- along with encouraging the ridiculous militarization of local police departments.

Or make that the military-industrial complex as a whole. Just as surveillance and data mining were the hot tech five years ago -- as you can tell by which small firms were getting gobbled up by the big defense contractors -- I'll bet crowd control and related items are what's hot now.

[Nikki Stone1]

15. You response makes incredible sense.

Thanks.

[annm4peace]

12. Remember the RNC protests last year, that was a lead up for Northcom

Activist are charged with Conspiracy to commit acts of Terrorism.
Their hearing (not even the trial) has been pushed out again.

http://www.terrorizingdissent.org /

[Nikki Stone1]

13. Northcom?

?

[annm4peace]

16. Google it, seriously.. find out what you can

or you can check out how it related to RNC

http://rnc08report.org/archive/415.shtml

http://rnc08report.org/archive/538.shtml

[Nikki Stone1]

17. Thanks.

.