G20 Summit In Pittsburgh Today

Well today I wish I worked in Downtown Pittsburgh. Why? I'd have the day off today. Downtown is pretty much shut down today because of the G20 in town today and tomorrow. I'm not much on political or economic discussions, but since it's "close to home" and newsworthy, I thought I'd bring it up.

"Why Pittsburgh?"



http://www.g20pittsburghsummit.org/?gcl ... 5QodWHfD7Q

Hopefully activists dont damage parts of your city like they did during the G8 summit just north of Edinburgh a few years ago.

Well there are a lot of Irish and Scots in Pittsburgh lol. Among many other nationalities. But they've got the downtown area sealed up pretty good. Right now there's only one exit ramp open into downtown area and you can only get to a parking lot

It's kind of a weird irony that to have an altruistic meeting of world leaders you have to commandeer an entire city.

http://postgazette.com/pg/09266/1000288-53.stm

Hmm. I was suppose to take part in the Yes Men fake New York Post (http://nypost-se.com/) event here on Monday to coincide with the UN summit. Except I didn't know what they were doing, we just had a location to show up at 4-6am, I figured it could be a rally or a "flash mob" or something.

When I got there there (Columbus Circle) there were like 50-100 Marines in fatigues doing a drill. Plus an NYPD command and control center with paddy wagons. Very suspicious coincidence considering I have never so many Marines here in one spot, right downtown, at 6am.

We were supposed to receive text updates by cell phone, but since I don't have one I decided there was no point running around trying to figure out where to go next.

Turns out they were there, distributing the paper quietly. I never buy the NY Post so I didn't pay that much attention! :facepalm:

Apparently the leader, Andy Bichelbaum*, later got arrested for trying to float into the summit meeting in a "Survivaball" with some others, then was released the next day. If you don't know what a "Survivaball" is, see the youtube info-mercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1Bm8Wrwe8

My fav is the "ice age" survivaball. Now picture 20 people trying to use those to get into the UN Summit by floating them down the East River :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

* check Andy's wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Servin
He's a former programmer who worked on SimCopter to notorious effect.

Why am i not surprised...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8274046.stm

That's kind of funny. I wouldn't know whether to laugh at them or poke them to deflate them.


Ugh, sad isn't it. If it goes full-blown chaos, those people, regardless of what they claim, have no respect for their host cities. Ridiculous that they think destroying everything around them and forcing security into desperate situations makes a good impression.

ATNO? You survive it? I see from a first-person account that the University was siezed. Granted, it's probably very biased, but still, that sounds pretty serious. However, calling it anarchy and using brand new weapons (sound cannon) on top of the usual rubber bullets, tear gas, etc. Sounds like a case of we're of the police deciding that they were prepped and ready so they might as well go for it, but like I said, who knows if they're being completely 'truthful'.

Well apparently the gas thing is a certainty now. CNN reporter got gassed right along with them:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnykLMpbJgI