of tear gas kept wafting over, and the sounds of stun grenadesand rubber bullets were loud and constant.friends in the thickof the protest told us later that, although the cops were doing their best togas and beat everybody into submission, they seemed to be making an especiallyconcentrated effort to go after journalists. jason ohara, acanadian documentary filmmaker, was beaten up and hadhis camera stolen, and at least nine local journalists had their equipment brokenor confiscated by cops. cops alsopursued protestors and a large number of totally uninvolved pedestrians(including several little kids) into a subway station, which they tear gassedthoroughly. presidente, a homelessactivist in his 60s, apparently bore the brunt of it. the tear gas died downonce the chanting had stopped and the protestors were sufficiently scattered,but the police barricades just grew. no one could leave or enter the roughly one-mile radius cops had cordonedoff, so all of us who hadnt left the area at the very beginning of the march pedestrians and protestors alike were essentially under temporary house arrest in the streetssurrounding praca saens pena. without else anywhere togo, we congregated around the one bar that was open within the safety zone,occasionally breaking into chants, but mostly chatting in small groups, andtrying to guess when the police would finally let us go. we stayed that way forover three hours; once the germany-argentina game ended, the barricades slowlybegan to open. (the bar, of course,was showing the game on two big-screen tvs. it was almost as though part of the punishment forprotesting the cup would be to have to watch the final game with no chance ofescape).an sos for basic rights during our semi-imprisonmentits becomingincreasingly clear that rios cops have protests mapped from the start: they decide in advance when the teargas will start to fly and when protestors will be allowed to leave, and then makearrests and use all available pretty much at random. first, though, theyre working to break protestors andprotests before they even begin. preventative arrests is just a euphemism for taking political prisoners,and targeting journalists is an especially ugly and brutal way to make yourpower felt. ironically, even the traditionally right-wing mainstream media which has traditionally pretty much any police actionagainst protestors has started tocriticize the excessive use of force, especially against itscolleagues, as "martial law." but its also clearthat cops dont care about bad press as long as theyre controlling andintimidating protestors. this is not a questionof public safety: given the numbers, yesterdays march could never have reachedmaracana stadium, but it could easily have ended without the tear gas-heavyspecial effects show. the newrules in rio seem to guarantee free speech and physical integrity only forprotests conducted on the beachfront in copacabana during daylight hours;assuming, that is, that there are enough tourists nearby to keep make excessiveforce seem uncommonly newsworthy.a camera belonging to the independent site linhas de fuga, destroyed by copseveryone in rio hasbeen hearing about the legacy of the world cup for years. it was sold as the crowning achievementof years of economic growth that would show off brasil as a world player. at the ground level,