US cracks down violently on peaceful Pittsburgh G20 protesters; Twitter arrests made!

October 4, 2009

Injured demonstrator {Guardian.co.uk}
Injured demonstrator {Guardian.co.uk}

NewsRescue- The United States Pittsburgh security forces violently cracked down on peaceful protesters at the September 24-25th 2009, G20 summit in Pittsburgh, USA.

A lady student demonstrator in the University campus is heard in the video crying:

help officer,  Sir, stop! Please I am bleeding“.

Student protesters were severely beaten and hundreds injured, and over 200 arrests made including arrests for demonstrators for using ‘twitter’, a public information sharing tool to assist others evade police brutality and capture. In another part of the video a man can be seen being hit in the groin by US security forces.

Iran violent demonstrations {Aljazeera}
Iran violent demonstrations {Aljazeera}

Double standards?

This violent crack down on peaceful demonstrators reminds us of the recent events in Iran during the contested elections riots. The US main stream media agencies were all over those stories, reporting the use of force to control demonstrators and accusing the Iranian administration of dis-allowing peaceful demonstrations.

The US president himself, Barrack Obama gave a speech in which he condemned what he called the crack down of ‘peaceful’ demonstrators by the Iranian security forces.

The President is yet to speak in this case of brutal clamping down on the freedom of assembly and protest under his Government.

See: NewsRescue- How Rice and USA in 2006 invested in potentially bringing about the current election chaos in Iran

The difference in this case is that the main stream US media and other ‘one world media‘ companies like CNN and Fox news have been flagrantly silent on this very violent crack down and use of brutal force and tear gas to severely harm peaceful student protesters in Pittsburgh, USA.

Another main difference is that, as is seen in the image to the right, in the Iranian case, the demonstrators were actually violent, setting fires to and throwing rocks at public property and security agents. In this Pittsburgh case the demonstrators were very peaceful.

More Pittsburgh brutality video clips:

Twitter arrest

In another very stunning development, the FBI has arrested Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist and New York social worker, for using Twitter to assist protesters evade the police at the G20 summit.

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Madison, 41, and his partner, Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were put on a $30,000 bail after they were tracked down at their hotel room, Carefree Inn motel, using computers, police scanners and the networking site Twitter to instruct the protests “and to inform the protesters and groups of the movements and actions of law enforcement” on September 24 and 25.

This arrest is in stark contrast once again to the US principle and media position on the Iranian riots, where more dangerous inciting comments were freely posted on twitter and this was promoted directly by the US media and Government to the extent that when twitter was to go down for scheduled maintenance, the US government sent a special request to the public social network to delay scheduled maintenance to allow so-called ‘freedom of protest’ messages, continue being sent.

See: NYTimes

Yet on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

“This is completely consistent with our national policy,” Mr. Crowley said. “We are proponents of freedom of expression. Information should be used as a way to promote freedom of expression.”

CNN promised during those riots to serve as a means to assist rioters on how to evade capture so as to continue the illegal, violent riots for which a permit had not been given by the Iranian administration.

At the time, a NewsRescue contributor prepared this impression to illustrate the active role the US media played in inciting and re-categorizing the very obviously violent, illegal demonstrations:

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