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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.
Our weapons are only deadly if you stand in front of them!
You have the right to freely assemble, everyone knows that. But nowhere - in no so-called constitution - does it say you also have the right to hear when you're assembled. Nor do you have the right to leave the assembly retaining all your ability to hear.
Once we learn our civic rights, and what we're not entitled to, we'll be a much happier and easier people for the government to govern.
Already there.
It's interesting that there's a Geneva Convention on weapons specifically designed to cause blindness , but apparently nothing about deafness.
Ever seen the results of a panic in a crowd?
They can't maneuver to save their lives, literally.
Extended periods in the area of effect is going to be absolutely unavoidable.
I know the people pushing for these weapons show "examples" of targets getting out of the way quickly and efficiently. Of course, these are rigged. The targets are trained individuals (often military or police) who are in limited quantities (never seen more than a dozen at once) and are not panicking because they know exactly what's going to happen, exactly what to do, and how to evacuate the test area. That is as much of an unrealistic situation as using the film work of a Hollywood stuntman to show that it's safe to fall down stairs.
Why not now during the Obama administration?
Because you're the 5th poster and you've apparently gotten the cognitive dissonance down to an art, since you're complaining about nobody complaining about "Obama doing it" in an article complaining about it being done.
The police who used this? Yeah. We don't need police driving around inflicting pain on any individuals or groups that they or the government disapproves of. Now what law or part of the constitution does this contravene and what steps are necessary to bring a prosecution?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Umm. This article is pretty much about just one of the ways that lots of people are stopping you.
Yep. 3dB doubles the sound. You know that, I know that. The OSHA exposure limits (which are, by far, the most permissive of the three in my link), however, are graded by 5dB.
Plus, seems like some $0.50 earplugs would be a good defense against this,
Not really. There's something called bone conduction, and it actually accounts for around 70% of your hearing. Your skull literally conducts the sound to your inner ear. This is also why your voice always sounds weird when you hear a recording of it played back to you.
So the 150 decibel annoying noise would probably only be around 95 decibels with earplugs, but even that is pretty loud. Especially if, as another poster noted, they were playing Celine Dion. Then it would be past the pain threshold.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And like the WTO protests in Seattle, and protests during the Vietnam war, chances are these acts are done by plain clothes officers to give them an excuse to disperse an otherwise peaceful protest.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We don't need police in plain clothes instigating acts of violence and vandalism.
What's sad is that they get away with it, and it's all blamed on people legitimately concerned about the future of their country.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Shouldn't that be 141 decibels, given that the unit is logarithmic?
Obama and the Congress have nothing to do with this. To try to equate the Democrats and the Republicans is absurd, when you see cases of Bush protesters being arrested for wearing a t-shirt, or being harassed by police for a bumper sticker, but Obama protesters showing up with assault rifles and being left free to do so (and before anyone points out that it's their 2nd Amendment right, I agree, but it's also their 1st Amendment right to wear a t-shirt, and of the two, it interesting that Republicans fear words to a greater extent than Democrats fear guns!)
This G20 summit is not being defended by the President, or by Congress, but by the city, and by the wealthy. And if you want to make any equivalencies between Republican administrations and Democratic administrations, that equivalency should be that in either case, the rich are still going to use force and violence to get what they want, and the media is going to side with the rich.
Is the government just trying to provoke violence to justify more totalitarian actions? Is the supreme court taking a nap and won't hear cases that would limit the amount of intervention that can occur with a protest?
The Supreme Court doesn't need to care about jack shit. The civilian population is completely toothless, at this point.
a) No more than 15% of the mainstream population cares about the political situation, tops.
b) As long as a) remains true, the government can slaughter whoever it wants, with impunity, and the ovine majority will not care as long as too large a number are not killed at once, and it doesn't interfere with the source of the majority's distractions.
As long as the majority get their iphones, their McDonald's, and the latest info about what Paris Hilton is doing this week, any totalitarian behaviour is barely going to register to them as background noise. Even if it does, all the government has to do, for the most part, is have the media play the anthem and wave a few flags, and they'll promptly go straight back to sleep.
Here is the clip. YouTube is processing it now (might take a few minutes). The HD version should also be at the same link in an hour or so (again, YouTube processing time).
The footage is a bit rough since I just threw it together now. However you kind of get the idea. People were standing around just watching and the police decided to disperse the crowd with the sound cannon. Apologies for the bad camera work - we weren't filming anything in particular and the police refused to let us set up near the major news networks. Interestingly, they also pushed back another Japanese news network.
Decibels are logarithmic, base 10 (meaning for every 10+ it is 10x stronger).
115 for 15 minutes
125 for 1.5 minutes
135 for 9 seconds
145 for .9 seconds
150 for some small number I don't feel like calculating but you get the point.
There are a few destructive nuts out there among the protest groups, and there are also black-hats pretending to be protesters who are hired to start trouble and thus give the authorities the excuse to hammer down control measures, as well as allow the media to spin anti-establishment people as fringe-dangerous. All you have to do is drug and wind-up one borderline loon to make an entire legion of well-meaning and responsible people look bad. It's an old, easy and as it happens, well-documented system. Do a Google around for it. The term "COINTELPRO" will come up. There is a lot of fascinating reading you can do on the subject.
The objective is to keep the little people from forming groups of any power and to keep people like you misinformed and afraid of, (and in love with) the wrong parties.
Remember; it wasn't protesters who trashed the economy and made off with billions of YOUR tax dollars with no repercussions. It was the people being protested against.
-FL
Now it's tanks and armored cars, military fatigues and terrifying weaponry for the sake of... what?
Your question contains the answer. Modern police uniforms are designed to incite fear. Similar to the uniforms of the storm troopers in Star Wars, only in black.
In demonstrations all over the planet, the dudes in the ski masks are usually undercover pigs inciting violence. This is so old it ain't funny. They do it all the freaking time. They've gotten caught at it not once, but *numerous* times. I've seen it several times back in the nam protest days, and it continues. The "battle of seattle" has plenty of evidence on it, just effin google it (anyone), just tons of witnesses who saw the official cops in uniform and darth vader gear IGNORING the "black ski masked anarchists", either pigs or military pigs, who were allowed to rampage along, then beating peaceful people just walking or even just sitting someplace because of the "excuse" they got from their own guys. You want even worse? Google for "operation gladio", 100% proven verifiable fact, they freaking blew folks up and stuff like that, hits, assassinations, terrible "false flag" operations. This was POLICE AND MILITARY doing it to their own people, so they could blame it on..others. Phony "terrorists".
And I also know some cops *personally* who have been ORDERED to do this shit. It's COMMON. I know military veterans who have done this in war areas, commit massacres on villagers then plant evidence so it looked like the "bad guys" did it. They told me about it, they didn't like it, but close to getting a pension, you do what you are told, and the younger ones dig it, they love it, they are violence freaks. That's all they hire as cops anymore, steroid popping violence freaks, mostly with military combat experience where every one they see is a "target" or could be.
Now, I wasn't at this latest protest deal, but I'd bet something similar is going on, because it is their standard modus operandi. Not to say it is always that case, but it is WAY more common than not.
How is it that I get the distinct impression that if a bunch of whiney, bitchy Mexican hippies were to cross the border because of police oppression and decide to settle in the US, you wouldn't exactly cheer about it?
We are already screwed. Congress and friends have already got control of a disturbing amount of power in the US and no one really did anything about it as it is.
Well, the soviets had a disturbing amount of power, and they collapsed. There's an event rapidly approaching, which will drastically reduce the amount of power the federal government wields, and that is the collapse of the dollar. If nobody will take your bad checks, it's kind of hard to hire goons.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It isn't done to give an excuse to disperse. They don't need any. It is done to clearly mark the movements as "unlawful" in the media and in peaceful protesters and to prevent any kind of massive public support.
A very mainstream reporter for the Guardian (a major national UK newspaper) documented her direct experience of an undercover police officer agitating for violence at a protest in London. He was showing people how to unhook barriers and trying to persuade people (unsuccessfully) to charge the police. Even a little common sense indicates some of the more violent protestors in London were undercover police. For example, in a protests involving thousands, lasting from morning into the night, suddenly a few people in balaclavas kick in a window whilst coincidentally surrounded by photographers. And were they arrested? No. There were proven police agitators masquerading as protestors at a city in the US, but I'm afraid I don't recall what the event was. The UK police have also engaged in what is now called "kettling" where they push as many people together as possible and keep them there in a confined area. There's no actual reason for it, but it does make for some good photos and a better chance you'll get to arrest someone for trying to get out of it.
You say that the legitimate arguments of the protestors are obscured by "these cretins". To that I point out that police forces have been proven quite willing to provide these people for exactly that purpose and secondly, its the media that are the problem. After all, is it natural or logical that three people kicking in a window should grab all the media coverage rather than the thousand-times that number of people peacefully protesting and making intelligent cases for why they are protesting to anyone who'll listen? No, it doesn't make sense, so why do the media focus on these minor and outlying cases? Honestly, in London, there's a window being kicked in somewhere on any day you care to mention. So can you really blame some bloke in a ski mask that there's so little actual interviews and coverage of the hundreds, often thousands, demonstrating about an important issue? No, you have to blame the media for that.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I don't see any "anarchists in ski masks committing acts of violence and vandalism" in any footage of this weapon being used. There are people standing around peacefully. A loudspeaker orders the peaceful crowd to disperse, "by order of the Pittsburgh chief of police", as if the Pittsburgh chief of police has the right to override people's right to peaceably assemble. Still nobody does anything violent, and then the police fire a weapon at the protestors.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You ever actually look into what it takes to immigrate to another country? It's not near that simple.
Having lived in Seattle, and known people who were in the WTO Seattle protests, I'd have to tell you that you are full of crap. The Seattle PD is one of the best in the country. Our former police chief is even more making marijuana legal. The groups that caused the trouble in the Seattle WTO protests were already very active. They weren't incited, they came with the intention of causing trouble. Normal people weren't incited, as you suggest, into literally destroying specific pre-targeted downtown businesses. It's actually somewhat insulting you'd suggest so.
Please note that OSHA does not permit ANY intermittent exposure, for any duration, above 115 dB(A), and also limits impact/impulse noise to 140 dB(A) even when wearing hearing protection
150 dB(A) in the presence of non-protected individuals is off-the-charts ridiculous and in the workplace would (a) get you shut down by OSHA and (b) get your (easily, successfully) sued by your victims.
This is one case where I hope an ambulance chaser finds a few good victims and sues this police department back to the stone ages.
We're guaranteed the right to assembly, but not the right to unharrassed assembly *g*
Or maybe we're guaranteed the right to assembly, provided we own rebreather gas masks (for pepper spray), bullet vests (for tasers), body armor (for rubber bullets), silvered full body suits with Peltier coolers mounted on heatsinks with large fans (for infrared heat guns), and earplugs rated for 60dB reduction (for sound cannons) at frequencies up to at least 60kHz (for ultrasonic pain generators). Until, of course, that type of body protection is considered a military-grade weapon and heavy penalties are given to a citizen for owning or using these banned items...
"What good is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?"
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
There should be a requirement for ANY use of "non-lethal" weapons to be investigated as if it were the same as a lethal weapon.
Unless the cop would have used lethal force IN THE SAME SITUATION if "non-lethal" weapons were not available then the use of the "non-lethal" weapon should be enough to get said cop suspended.
Instead of being a "safer" alternative to lethal force, the cops are using them to threaten and torture anyone who does not immediately obey the cops' orders.
As has been explained elsewhere in this thread, given that the slightest amount of violence becomes the focus for all media attention, overriding all legitimate concerns expressed by peaceful people, it's quite clear that the most direct way to suppress any dissenting voices it to create violence and blame it on dissenters.
The balance would come at the point where certain individuals no longer have the power to act (or coerce others to act) in any way they see fit under the guise of acting in the public interest.
This pattern if offensive in its simplicity and the extent to which it occurs; "Hey people we have a common enemy - allow us take control and we will keep you safe."
Requiem for the American Dream
Ahh yes, the fiction of choice within a competitive marketplace. Have you tried switching to a mobile operator that doesn't screw you? Hint: There's no choice if every player colludes.
Requiem for the American Dream
If it's just a minority of people who are doing it, I have a suggestion: turn those people over to the cops and tell the cops that you want peace.
"those people" are usually undercover policemen. The cops generally do not want peaceful demonstrations, since they reduce control options. You can hand-carry each individual non-violent protester from the ground to a waiting van, or you can get one of your guys to throw a brick from within their ranks and bust out the tear gas and water cannons. It's easy to do, effective, and practically impossible to stop.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
SO now protesters need to cover themselves something tasty but only 1/64th of an inch thick. That way the pain ray won't work on them but they'll get a delicious microwave meal instead!
Is there anything bacon can't do?
There's actually video of this happening in Canada. Several masked "demonstrators" got identified as cops by real demonstrators, and eventually went through police lines to escape being unmasked.
The video is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow, and you can get more details here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/08/22/ot-police-070822.html - the old guy in the video who tries to get their masks off is a union leader.
This is treason, pure and simple. Any government agent who behaves in this way is knowingly betraying their country, along with any superior officer with knowledge that this is happening.
It is a more significant crime than murder.