Provocateurs

A very interesting video where it appears the police tried to plant rioting anarchists in the crowd as an excuse to charge in and start beating heads.

Problem is that someone in the audience, on video, accused them of being cops. At which point they "charged" the police line and were summarily "arrested" and taken away.

Aside from the video, an interesting point is the still photo, showing that the purported rock throwing anarchist were not only wearing the exact same standard issue boots as the police on the site, but they were all shiny, new boots with a pretty poor attempt made to look them old and well worn.

There is no record of any of the men in question being charged with anything.

This event happened in Quebec City, but it is important to note that in some other reports, the self-styled anarchists in the Twin Cities this week were chasing after the window smashing, dumpster burning members trying to stop them, some of them even stopping to clean up garbage cans that had been upended by them.

Though nice to see the coverage in the Twin Cities is getting a little more even handed, more clearly differentiating between trouble makers looking to incite violence and concerned citizens upset enough about something or another to consider it their duty to protest. A change of tone from what we were seeing earlier.

On a side note, I should point out, I have some good friends who are anarchists. What they mostly do is sit around over some coffee or wine and discuss how the world would be a better place if we could have a fully participatory democracy, and how would be going about doing that in a way that would work. Most of them are old, left wing academics ranging from Marxist to Libertarian in where their stances are coming from. Hardly the type who throw rocks (might strain something) or burn dumpsters (who knows what potential hazards are in there you don't want to be inhaling) or even marching about shouting about things (bad for the old ticker).