UPDATE 6:15pm 9_25 below the fold
Mac is out of the city of Pittsburgh and on the way back to Cleveland to visit his family. He promises to write up a full report of his experiences and analysis later this evening and I’ll be posting that as soon as I get it. Just finished looking at the G20 Conference accord and the first thing that strikes me is that they claim they are interested in re-regulating the financial sector. Well, yeah. That’s the smart move based on the collapse of the global economy and the political pressure. BUT, they also say that the what’s known as the Doha Round of the WTO, their last meeting that ended in failure, should be adopted. The Doha Round called for total deregulation of the financial sector. I’m sorry, but those two positions are mutually exclusive and they cannot be inhabited simultaneously. They may be able to close down an entire American city, ship in 5,000 cops from all over the country and deploy a combat hardened National Guard battalion to stop like 6,000 kids from annoying them, but they can’t be for continued deregulation of capital and re-regulation of capital. More later…
The Ojai Post is lucky enough to actually have a person on the ground with the protesters. My good friend Mac Lojowsky has arrived in Pittsburgh this evening and he will be updating me with photos, and his impressions from the scene. Mac Lojowsky is a freelance journalist who has covered and participated in the global justice movement since 1999. He is a graduate of the Evergreen State College and makes his living as a carpenter. After the break is his first dispatch from Pittsburgh from earlier this evening.

UPDATE 3:15pm 9_25

This is a good shot of the marchers before they were marched across the bridge to East Park on the other side where people like Cindy Sheehan spoke.
UPDATE 2:00pm 9_25

Gee! Sure am glad we don’t live in a fascist police state or anything. WTF!
Just spoke to Mac, he says there’s between 5,000 and 7,000 protesters in the permitted march. They’ve reached their furthest Southern destination. There are several un-permitted marches and actions taking place all around the area, and the police scanners are saying that the LRAD(I had it wrong yesterday, it’s LRAD not IRAD) audio weapon is being moved into position to assault the peaceful, permitted protesters. The effects of the audio cannon are varied, but for some it is severe and induces vomiting.

Photo by AmyCNN
UPDATE 11:30am 9_25 below the fold

This is actually a video from yesterday, but check this out. Three soldiers in an unmarked sedan grab a protester right off the street. WTF? Pretty sure kidnapping by military personnel isn’t legal.
Apparently big happenings at the University of Pittsburgh last night. The President was in the area having dinner at a place called Phipps Conservatory next to the campus. Special thanks to another person I’ve been following on the scene at the G20, @infernoenigma. He’s a student at the University, this is his account of what happened:

My campus was invaded by armored police officers. They threw actual tear gas into crowds of students. They SHOT students with rubber bullets. They beat slower-moving students with a baton. I saw a group of cyclists being herded down the sidewalk. A cop reached out and pushed a woman on a bike. She turned around and pushed her bike at the cop. Next thing we knew, he grabbed her by the face and slammed her down on the concrete.

They used sound cannons on the students on their own campus then they drove all of the students back inside their dorms. More from infernoenigma:

Here is the part where I felt most violated — The riot cops then ENTERED our dormitory and shouted that students needed to return to their rooms immediately. Anyone arrested, they said, would be expelled from the University of Pittsburgh, no questions asked.

Here’s a video of that from last night:

Anyway, just spoke to Mac and he is on the site of another protest march this morning. This march is permitted and Mac says there are a lot more people there already. He also says the riot police and soldiers are out in ridiculous force. While I was talking to him via SKYPE and his cell phone, he counted NINE K-9 units. Great, Alsatian Hounds to intimidate the peaceful protesters.
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UPDATE 4:00pm 9_24

Just spoke to Mac for the first time since the police and military opened fire with tear gas, sound weapons, smoke, concussion grenades and there have been reports of microwave weapons known as IRADs. Mac got a snootful of tear gas and went with many of the peaceful marchers parallel to Liberty Ave. which appears to be where the military and police have fences and no intention of letting anyone South toward the Convention Center and the G20. The police shouted for the marchers to disperse and that they didn’t have a permit. They then opened fire and the peaceful protesters ran East mostly into what Mac described as the warehouse district. The protesters were the surrounded once again and fired on with tear gas and sound weapons that Mac said were very disturbing indeed. Mac successfully got out of the closing loop of military and police and is going to try and get back North across the river to regroup. He said there were upwards of 500 protesters surrounded and pinned down in the warehouse areas above Liberty Ave and bordered to the West by 32nd St.
This was all happening as Obama’s plane was landing in Pittsburgh. Tear Gas, Sound Weapons, Concussion Grenades, Smoke and IRAD microwave radiation weapons being used on peaceful marchers. Definitely the CHANGE I had in mind when I volunteered during the campaign last year.
UPDATE 3:00pm 9_24

The police are demanding dispersal and there are reports of microwave cannons down the street that are to be used on these peaceful protesters. From one person on twitter:

Police on megaphones- YOU MUST LEAVE THE VICINITY. IF YOU REMAIN IN THE VICINITY POLICE ACTION WILL BE TAKEN.

Mac just told me it’s getting kind of crazy because the cops have fenced in the streets leading South and they are surrounding the marchers.
UPDATE 2:30pm 9_24

This is what the scene looks like in Arsenal Park where reports are that about 600 people are surrounded by riot police with grenade launchers. I just spoke to Mac there.

Now, I’m being told that the police and soldiers are going to let the peaceful protesters out of the park, but they have closed the 40th street bridge which was the only way to get to the South side of the river.
UPDATE 1 pm 9_24:

Reports on the internet are that the National Guard has effectively sealed off the city and are not allowing anyone in to the downtown area. One protester equated Pittsburgh during the G20 with the Chinese totalitarian crack down and silencing of all protest in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics. Same tactics.
UPDATED 11:00am 9_24: Mac is trying to get to Arsenal Park where the first big protest is scheduled to start, but the entire south bank of the river, aka Pittsburgh, is blocked by armored personnel carriers, humvees and about 20,000 federal troops. When I spoke to him a he was wondering if there are even 20,000 troops in Kabul. There are reports of Black Hawk helicopters everywhere.
Here’s Mac:
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Why I’m Going to the Pittsburgh G20 Summit
by Mac Lojowsky
I.
On Tuesday, September 22, Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an editorial by David M. Shribman, the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, entitled, “High Stakes in Pittsburgh.” In this editorial, Shribman discusses the importance of the G20 summit meeting of the 20 world leaders as well as the heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)and the World Bank (representing 85% of the world’s economy), to restore the public’s faith in globalization:

“What the world yearns for is a sense of stability and confidence, two elements that have their utility in the emotional world but that also provide the oxygen for the commercial and investment worlds. Nothing moves in a positive direction- not the stock market, not consumer goods, not the overall economy- without those two things.”

One of the key organizers of the G20’s opposition, the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project has a downloadable poster on their website that reads:
“Capitalism isn’t in Crisis- Capitalism is the Crisis.”
II.
Ten years ago about 50,000 people from all walks of life gathered on the streets of Seattle to defy the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). There were unionists, environmentalists, students, musicians, farmers, immigrants, indigenous peoples, even the Raging Grannies showed up and shut down the meeting.
The opposition’s message then in Seattle is the same today in Pittsburgh- corporate globalization ruins homes, communities, nations and the planet.
Everything that the global justice movement was saying then and warning the world about in terms of corporate globalization- mass loss of jobs, weakening of environmental standards, weakening of unions, growing poverty, increased militarization and destruction of local economies has come to pass. None of the touted “benefits of globalization” those neoconservative pundits, bankers, and economists promised ever arrived.
So, when Mr. Shribman says “High Stakes in Pittsburgh” he is indeed correct. There are high stakes for the global justice movement to remind America and the world that institutions like the G20, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are not the solution- they are the problem. It is these organizations and trade policies which removed trade barriers, gutted our manufacturing sector, pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into speculative credit schemes and emasculated the American people into an economy of consumers of cheap plastic junk and expensive metal “toys.”
As the global justice movement has now been loudly stating for over a decade- there is no solution to be found within the G20’s closed doors in Pittsburgh or wherever else they choose to hold their meetings. The solution to America’s and every nation’s problems lies within the communities who have to deal with them on a daily basis. Continued corporate globalization is only going to further hurt this country and others across the planet.
III.
When these large international summit meetings happen, it also provides a summit meeting for the peoples on the streets. Pittsburgh provides a venue for us, the large and diverse mass which make up the global justice movement, to demonstrate to the world our dissent.
At no point in the past decade has the time been more ripe to stage our grievances with corporate globalization. And the powers that be are well aware of this; the city if Pittsburgh has completely closed off a three block radius of downtown (surrounding the David L. Lawrence Convention Center), guarded by 2,000 National Guard troops, 4,000 Pennsylvania State Troopers, 1,000 Pittsburgh City Police and an undisclosed number of federal law enforcement agents.
They clearly anticipate our public disagreement.
Thus the “High Stakes” are even more so upon us. Groups including the Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh Indymedia, CODEPINK, Pittsburgh Organizing Group, Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project, Amnesty International and a host of other clusters have been spreading the word and preparing actions for months.
Will activists heed the call?
Big marches and actions are planned all over the city Thursday, the 24th to coincide with the Summit’s opening and on Friday, the 25th. Soon enough, we’ll see the state of the global justice movement.
Let’s pray we’re still singing loud with our fists raised.
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In future dispatches over the next few days from Mac, I’ll mostly keep my comments and screeds short, but on this first one, here is my(SPK’s) take on the issues and importance of this meeting of the G20. The economy of the United States has essentially collapsed with the real estate bubble, the oil bubble and the self inflicted destruction of the financial system through casino capitalism. Since last September The Fed has printed upwards of $8 trillion in a effort to shore up the financial system in the US. This is many times more than the $700 billion bailout with the TARP funds first extended by Bush and seamlessly continued by Obama. Don’t believe me? Take it up with Nomi Prins, HERE’s her report on how much they stole and from whom.
The G20, the 19 largest economies in the world and the EU, are meeting in the ultimate Rust Belt City – PITTSBURGH. They will be meeting to discuss how to hide the fact that their entire economic system and theory has failed utterly. They will not be seeking ways to help average people and to seek justice, economic or social. Instead they will be attempting to maintain the failed status quo of globalism and to protect the power of transnational corporations. To that end the United States and President Obama will be violating, if not directly certainly in spirit, the Posse Comitatus Act which

prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States. – Wikipedia(emphasis mine)

A National Guard combat battalion that has recently returned from the Iraq war will man a perimeter around the center of an American city to keep protesters from exerting their 1st Amendment rights. It has been called de facto Marshall Law. This is a total disgrace for Obama.
To date, almost nothing has been done to help the individual mortgage holders in this country. Obama’s mortgage assistance programs are operating at between 7% and 19% capacity depending upon which numbers you use. The banks that service the mortgages are not even answering the phones when people call in to get information on the assistance programs, they would rather foreclose because as the servicers rather than the note holders they stand to make more money that way. Foreclosure rates are higher than last year in just the first eight months of 2009. They are close to highs during the Great Depression, yet the Zombie Banks are posting profits and giving out bonuses.
The Banking sector has been consolidated and every weekend the FDIC closes more and more small and medium sized banks that did not get the handouts that banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, CitiBank, and Goldman Sachs did. These banks are actually insolvent if not for the vast sums of money that has been printed just for them. They are able to get money free from the taxpayers and that is keeping them alive. The smaller and medium sized banks cannot get this sweetheart deal, so they go under. In fact, the FDIC itself is now totally out of money and they are seeking a bailout from these very same zombie banks. Of course, this all leads to these “too big to fail” banks getting even bigger and more powerful. Consolidation.
Meanwhile the entire country is being treated to a farce masquerading as Health Care Reform where, despite vast majorities of citizens support for a single payer, medicare-for-all type system, there are actually questions as to whether or not there will even be a “Public Option”. Forget single payer, it’s not even “on the table”. The one thing that is most certainly on the table is Mandates. Under Sen. Baucus’ plan, middle and low income Americans making more than $32,000/year will end up having to buy insurance, private insurance if the Congress fails even to get a Public Option passed, to the tune of $7,000 a year. If they don’t they will be fined something like $3,500 by the IRS, presumably with all of the interest and fines for which the IRS is known. This is nothing more than a multi-billion dollar giveaway to the failed, private insurance leaches. I have been saying NO PUBLIC OPTION/NO MANDATES, now I think I’ll just switch to just NO MANDATES.
Our trade deficit in this country has actually gotten a little better, as a result of the more then 10% collapse in consumer spending that most economists say is both permanent and liable to get worse. Realize that in 2008 consumer spending made up more than 70% or our entire GDP. Of course, our trade deficit is still the worst there is because, as the people of Pittsburgh are all too aware, we no longer manufacture anything in this country anymore. To make matters worse, when we passed the Stimulus Bill last winter, fully half of the $780+ billion will have no real positive effect thanks to the Democrats’ irrational and quixotic attempt at bipartisanship where they allowed the Republicans to load up the bill with tax cuts. The other portion of the stimulus bill was originally supposed to go to projects that were “shovel ready” and that used American goods and services exclusively. A whole lot of noise came from our number one creditor, China, on that issue and the Congress and Administration caved and took out the “buy American” stipulation in the bill. As a result, much of the money, when it is spent, will end up going to our trade deficit with China and others.
There has been no serious talk of revamping our insane trade policy and doing away with or at least rewriting our agreements with the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT. Clearly these free trade, globalism theories and policies have failed utterly. Like that strange little man with the big ears said in 1993, there has indeed been a vast sucking sound and this country is now completely hollowed out. I wasn’t a supporter, and it doesn’t make me happy to admit it, but Ross Perot was right.
I won’t even go deeply into the environment, but here’s this from the Department of the Interior last month:

Scientists detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in 291 streams across the country, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study.

Realize that most of this mercury comes from the burning of coal. Either coal domestically or, increasingly coal in China where all of our manufacturing has been offshored. What’s the G20 got to fix this problem? They plan to focus on “clean coal technology”. I wonder if they have discussions of unicorns and other mythical creatures on the agenda too.
Here is the local television news’ take on the impending arrival of the G20 delegates and the protesters. Keep a close watch and you’ll see one of those National Guard combat battalion humvees.
From Monday: