Police charge anarchist over G20 protest network A New York man is out on bail after being arrested for monitoring police movements around the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh and disseminating intelligence to protesters on the ground. Elliot Madison, 41 - a social worker and self-described anarchist from Queens - was arrested in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit on September 24 …
surely you mean 'illegal order to disperse', as the right to assembly is guaranteed in the united states constitution. add to that the illegal detention of uninvolved students in their dorms and the intimidation of other uninvolved people trying to get home or pass through (constitutional right to free movement) including criminal assault of all the above through use of batons and tear gas (a chemical weapon no less) effectivly an illegal imposition of martial law as the governer of the state nor any acting official in government or the supreme court of sufficient standing declared a state of emergency.
its not some wannabe anarchist with a laptop and a mobile phone that should be in court.
"posters of a cat and another of Curious George, photographs of Karl Marx and Lenin".
Since when were Marx and Lenin anarchists? Not sure about the cat and I haven't a clue who George is.
Methinks our friend needs to learn a little more about politics. Write out 1000 times "Communists are not anarchists."
Anarchist does not equate to violent yob. People should read the Wikipedia article on anarchism for some background - it's one of the longest and most in-depth articles I've seen on there. Particularly for a non-IT subject. Of course anarchists do believe that we can get by without a large, centralised authority which with modern communications technology and social networking tools, we're closer to being able to do than ever, so you can understand why a large, centralised authority regards anarchism as a terrible enemy. It is - but not necessarily to me or you.
Anyway, how does this apply to other attempts to monitor the police as well. If I report that the police are beating up protesters in such and such a place, would I be arrested for undermining their control efforts too? The police should be there for arresting criminals, not for opposing civil unrest and particularly not opposing protests just because a government finds them embarrasing.
Paris, because I can't find an Emma Goldman icon, and a revolution without dancing is not worth having.
Hey mate, anarchists and communists have long had an alliance, especially at protests. These hardcore Marxists rely on anarchists to bring down society and create chaos, and then along comes communism as a solution to the disorder (with capitalism and liberty taking the blame for letting things run wild, when in fact the chaos is planned.) It's called subversion.
So are communists anarchists? No, but many anarchists are communists. And many greens are communists. And many polar bear savers are communists. There's nothing they won't latch on to in order to further their agendas.
The police work for us. We pay for them out of our taxes to protect us. So its very interesting how they no longer want to be watched by us. But worse still, its got very scary how much the law can now be used to prevent anyone watching them. It shows they have twisted the legal system to prevent anyone watching them. That is proof of corrupt self interest to protect themselves from scrutiny which means they are now beyond scrutiny by normal people. Thats just wonderful, because now how can their corrupt self interest be stopped from getting even worse if we can no longer watch over them!
This has all gone way far than enough. What is needed is a national campaign and flash mobbing (say in a month from now) to educate the police they still work for us. I suggest getting everyone on a certain day throughout the entire day to relentlessly photograph all police with their phones where ever they are seen. That'll shock them and the MPs back into listening or they will try to silence all cameras in which case, public anger will make them back down. They work for us. Enough with this self interested corruption. We need the national news papers behind this as well. With millions of people behind it they can't punish us all. Its time to show them who they work for, before we are all silenced by their growing corrupt arrogant self interest. We are not supposed to be living in a police state so they cannot be allowed to get away with this.
Maybe The Reg could champion a call for a national day of “watching the watchers” (say in a month from now). It'll give time for a massive campaign to build up (especially via social networking sites) . (Plus throughout this time it'll also have the side effect of drumming up a lot more publicity for The Reg ;) ... IT people needs to lead the way, because we see how technology is changing faster than others, so we see the dangers of the new technology first. Its time we all made a stand and a massive passive protest like this is something long over due. This has gone far enough. We need to act now before it gets even worse. The UK is leading the world into a police state. Its time we all made a stand against it.
Of course, most bankers are Communists as well, notice how they are carefully subverting the Capitalist system, bringing it to its knees while laughing madly into their vodka. Many IT people are also Communists, they want to bring down "big business" and replace it with something they call "Open Source". Then there are the lunatic fringe of anarchists led by the evil Freetard faction, they want to give it ALL to the masses. Crush them's what I say and send them to be re-educated in the dreaded Microsoft "Campus".
...make for some interesting viewing.
The police were out in force (thousands of them) and equipped with full riot gear, tear gas, gas masks, plenty of plastic handcuffs and truck mounted LRADs barking out canned messages form the chief of police.
Other than that the city was deserted. It was surreal.
The cops outnumbered the protesters in most places, and no one managed to get anywhere near the actual summit (which I suppose was the overall goal of the protesters)
It almost doesn't matter that someone with a scanner and a laptop was giving them tips, they were outnumbered and outgunned.
I won't comment on whether or not either group had a right to be doing what they were doing because I really don't know. I'll let other people speculate on that.
They are protesting, democratically.
If you do it in the UK you get "Kettled" and the crap beaten out of you when the riot police decide to charge through you batons flailing. If you try to avoid them with any kind of organised presence. That too is a big no-no.
Crowds are easy to control, individual people are smart, crowds of people are stupid and very predictable. That is why they don't want any (even a hint) or real time protest direction.
You want to protest about something?
OK, here's how you do it......
You contact the police to let them know you are planning a protest about something
The police assess your plans and decide if the protest is allowed to go ahead legally.
You turn up at a time designated by the police, who are waiting for you in hugely superior numbers, weapons at the ready.
You and your fellow protesters literally hand yourselves over to the police who take complete control of the "protest" and ENFORCE strict adherence to the plans discussed. Any deviation from the plan is met with zero tolerance (I'm sure I don't have to paint a picture here).
You think you live in a free country? You think this isn't a police state?
A protest that is organised is an interesting thing, a protest that is organised in real-time is a scary thing to the authorities which is why the authorities are going to ram both fists down this guys neck with no mercy.
"Of course anarchists do believe that we can get by without a large, centralised authority which with modern communications technology and social networking tools, we're closer to being able to do than ever"
So I guess you're saying: The structure required for anarchy... is finally in place.
These central planners of anarchism must track the press too. It seems there is always a TV crew around, when the garbage can goes through the window (but no cops).
"Errr...anarchists believe there should be no government. Communists believe in strong centralized government (think Big Brother)."
You prove the point completely. Anarchists do the dirty work of bringing chaos and disorder, communists then appear to offer the solution to the chaos. This is what has happened in Greece. Anarchist terrorist attacks, riots and bombings have helped the socialists to power even though they were allied.
Erm...
Marxism != Communism. That's a classic mistake in western thinking! Karl Marx himself was a critic of communism and certainly not a fan of the idea. He even praised capitalism as the best method for achieving a socialist society, for without the infrastructure of capitalism we cannot afford to be socialist in our thinking.
Communism, on the other hand, tries to achieve "social equality" without the infrastructure capitalism provides and ultimately is doomed to failure at a socio-economic level, and when your economy and social order begins to collapse you are left with no choice but to use draconian laws and, ultimately, force to retain your 'control' over society.
We are a rich nation (the west in general is) and that gives us the luxury of financial freedom to be altruistic and progressive in our political and social thinking. When you're scrabbling for your next meal or to survive another day such high ideals are beyond your ability to afford and are certainly of a low priority. I believe that captialism is the right vehicle for socialist thinking and that socialism is the next logical step in the evolution of government. I condemn communisn as a failed form of government, but the 'corporate republic' that unregulated capitalism drags us towards is unlikely to be much better.
"The measure of wealth is not how much one has stored up, but how one uses that wealth to better the lives of others and yourself." ~ Voltaire.
"To each according to their needs. From each according to their ability." ~ Karl Marx
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"...hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime."
Fluff charges that will be dropped later. i.e. they have nothing on him. He should file a counter claim for false arrest.
Doesn't this sound like Iran suppression of protests? It just smacks of Iran suppression of protest, the use of the anti-personal sound devices, the officer shoving the cyclists, the beatings.
It's all very Mullah like.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/21/iran.protests/index.html
"Security forces dispersed a crowd gathering to protest the country's regime Tuesday at a square in Iran's capital. Scattered clashes and arrests were reported in the early evening, but CNN was unable to determine the extent of them."
Boingboing and many other blogs ran coverage of the officers 'enforcement', I bet it's that coverage that's upset them. Which is why they're trying to target the people monitoring them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JySzR9G5KNc
Once again, Indymedia performs it's duty of being the one and only source posting video on this.
Quite shocking to see how agressive the police are.
Greece? What are you talking about? Greece elected a socialist government, not a communist one, and it was in response to economy woes, the blame of which seems hard to pin but is certainly nowhere near anarchists. Are you one of those Americans who think that every major left-leaning party in Europe is communist?
That's quite possibly the biggest pile of steaming gibberish I've ever seen here, well done!
IF everyone sold cocaine and everyone else did cocaine (aside from the fact that the 2 are juxtaposed) you'd be burying your head in the sand if you thought that participation in either should remain illegal. Maybe you should pull your head out of your (sandy?)buttocks.
"Everyone else sells cocaine, everyone else does it, is it perfectly legal?"
No, you stupid idiot. That's not what the quote said. Go back to second grade. He didn't say everybody is doing it, therefore it's legal. He said it's legal, and everybody else is doing it too. Huge different that anyone with an IQ higher than a chimp's would promptly spot.
Now, whether what they were doing was legal or not is another, completely different story.
You guys have no clue what you are talking about, apparently.
Lack of a government, in an anarchist ideal, does not mean "chaos and disorder", stop projecting your behavior on others.
The big problem is that anarchism (and it's close cousin, American libertarianism and its unbridled free market) is impossible in practice due to human nature.
...would be for those directing protesters in this manner to do so from outside the jurisdiction in which the protest is occurring. Ironically, they would use the same technologies which enabled the outsourcing of many of our IT jobs to protest the actions of those who are, directly or indirectly, perceived as responsible for it in the first place.
Of course we will undoubtedly see areas of "limited mobile phone service" at the next G-<whatever> summit, intended to preclude just such a possibility.
The black helicopter - because this can only escalate further as time goes on as more and more angry people have less and less to lose.
I think you'll find a lot of those protesters were pure capitalists, their "no to bailout" banners are pure 100% capitalism! The same you'll read on many ultra-capitalists blogs.
Carnegie Mellon University' (the one the police marched on) is famous for its computer dept. Hardly a bunch of commies or malcontents!
If you agree with Bernanke's purchase of bank 'assets' for undisclosed sums of money, then you're in favour of mock auction fraud, which is what that is: getting a patsy (the tax payer) to overpay for assets (worthless expired mortgage betting slips), using fake bidders (the bidding banks who bid up the price without actually buying the asset). Demanding enforcement of the mock auction laws is hardly anarchist!
Bernanke's trying to stop Congress seeing what he's bought, because the law says he cannot buy crap to back the dollar and he's bought crap. Expecting Congress to do it's job and force the Fed to protect the dollar is not an Anarchist theme either.
Dollar has slid 14% since March and continues to go down, because the rest of the world aren't idiots and know he's bought crap and it's all unravelling. This is 100% pure capitalism, US failed to let the Goldmans & AIG fail and now US is taking the hit on its currency.
They have a right to protect these frauds.
Yet capitalism will prevail, because the guys in the university will be the ones earning the money to pay the pensions of the officers who smack them down... or not, because when those officers have retired, they'll find their 401ks have been given to a bunch of investment bankers who made bad choices and demanded a bailout from their buddies Paulson Cheney & Bush in the Politbureau.
"The big problem is that anarchism (and it's close cousin, American libertarianism and its unbridled free market) is impossible in practice due to human nature."
Exactly. But that doesn't make the libertarian end goal of "anarchy" pointless. A 100% efficient engine is not a poor goal just because it is impossible. The engineer works towards maximum efficiency, knowing that it simply isn't going to happen. In the same way, a good conservative works towards zero government interference, knowing that his representative will be selling out his ideals to the highest bidder, and then redefine "conservative" to mean something completely different. Ugh.
So the point is that as an /ideal/, anarchy does not equate to blowing up buildings for fun, any more than capitalism equates to secret police organizations orchestrating the blowing up of buildings to give the government additional mind share when starting a war. As an ideal, anarchy is good; it is the is the ultimate "100% efficiency" goal of conservatism, even though we know it is really impossible (because people are such amazing asshats).
Of course, to many people anarchy means "destroy the government with no plan for what happens after". This is clearly not a good thing. I'm pretty sure Curious George would not approve, although he might do it by accident without meaning to, and end up soaking wet and shivering outside in the cold, somehow learning a valuable lesson about why you should read about the issues before you go to the polls to vote.
(Jolly Roger, reminding you that you can't break the rules if there aren't any.)
surely you mean 'illegal order to disperse', as the right to assembly is guaranteed in the united states constitution. add to that the illegal detention of uninvolved students in their dorms and the intimidation of other uninvolved people trying to get home or pass through
You need a permit to protest.
Does that make Chris Williams a 'self-declared journalist' ? It may sound more liberal prose than 'self-confessed anarchist' but the implication is the same. You don't after read here about Bush being a 'self-declared republican' or Thatcher being a 'self-declared tory'.
The word 'democrat' was at one point in history a vague insult in the western world, during the reign of kings. The words 'dirty democrat' would have ran together like poison in wine. Today the word 'anarchist' is taken to be demeaning, despite high profile anarchists like Noam Chomsky being voted the worlds favourite intellectual and most quoted living author.
Anyone here who has broken the most minor law, when they knew it wasn't sensible to abide by it, dropping litter or speeding or whatever, you are all anarchists too. We are the majority.
AC 14:53 was right; this is right out of Iran's playbook. What's more, the entire Western world decried Iran, and the U.S. State Department went so far as to request Twitter to delay a maintenance window to keep the information channels open.
Of course, when it happens over here, it's just time to bust open some more heads. It makes me sick.
-d
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