RNC Protest (2)

My earlier post about protests at the RNC included this photograph:

Over at Making Light, they found a reverse of the same shot:

This illustrated a guest post about the protests that is well worth a read – particularly for the reminders of the propensity for law enforcement agencies to insert informers and agents provocateur into protest groups. (NZers will be well-acquainted with recent embarrassments to an energy company where protest-group infliltrators were exposed; ML links also to this photograph, which suggests dirty pool – and down in comments you see the suspicion of infiltration was later confirmed.
It all just makes a messy story messier. I doubt you need police agents to get Black Bloc vandalism – Occam’s Razor would suggest “young men + testosterone” is a better route to that outcome. And I furthermore am convinced that many in the Black Bloc are very thoughtful and insightful people, who would disagree with me vehemently when I say much of what they do is strategically disastrous. Add in the points made by commenters to the previous post, and it is clear there are no simple answers here.
Luckily I’m just a blog, so I don’t need to do “answers”, I can just claim that my entire purpose is to make you think, or at least, to entertain you. And to that end, here (courtesy again the Knifeman) is Rage Against The Machine putting on a show a capella after being refused permission to play at the RNC protests…