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G20 Protesters Blasted By "Sound Cannon"
aaandre sends word of the use of a "sound cannon" on G20 protesters in Pittsburgh. Only a few hundred protesters took to the streets. The NY Times notes: "City officials said they believed it was the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly." The device projects a narrow beam of extremely annoying sound, at levels that can reach 151 decibels, over a distance of a mile or more. The Guardian notes, "It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms." Officials of the company that manufactures the sound cannon say that ear damage is only possible if someone manages to stand directly in front of the device for an extended period.
If you want to understand why the are protesting then I suggest you read "The Mystery of Banking" by Murray Rothbard, "America's Great Depression" by Murray Rothbard. There are dozens of other great books and articles available at mises.org.
Fundamentally what G-20 is doing is coordinating their monetary inflation policies so that they can monetize their debts on pace with each other. If they did not then countries would be at risk of financial collapse. They have no intention of doing anything to actually solve the problem with global economy.
Rather than allowing the required process of price decline, wage decline, and general financial depression they are pumping inflation into the game to artificially keep prices high so no one notices the prices are changing. This is price control. But salaries effective buying power is plummeting. Need proof? Check the price of hard commodities like Gold, Silver, and even Mac & Cheese (up 14% in 2 months).
The G-20 is trying to coordinate all of this so that everyone's effective buying power falls in unison to help stabilize prices and trade.
Left to our own devices, the US would become a export nation because of falling wages. But first we need the industrial infrastructure to do this -- which we have largely lost over the last 50 years. Which means we probably won't really recover during most of our lifetimes.