It was probably a fifteen-year-old with a dry ice bomb (fifteen-year-olds are the ones who like to make dry ice bombs) but nonetheless.
I've tried to talk my father into Occupying Westchester. If anyone sees reports of an elderly man with a sign objecting to the deductibility of advertising as a business expense, and calling for the standardization of consumer packaging and the reintroduction of generic products, that'll be him.
It couldn't have been a fifteen-year-old without a dry ice bomb, except after the fact.
3: coulda been if it wasn't a dry ice bomb.
The Occupy Pittsburgh people got some kind of solar/bike combo to recharge their Mac's batteries. Plus, the steelworkers brought them nice portable toilets. Both of those seem like good signs.
That's an even better quote restored.
RedState blames the victim. You have to admit, too many OWSers for comfort tote guns and talk incessantly about how the Second Amendment is a guarantor of the right to violent revolution.
I would have thought it was one of those Drano-aluminum bombs. Those have been pretty popular recently.
Maybe. But if OccupyMaine's press release is accurate (I withhold judgment), it lifted a table a foot off the ground. Which isn't the effect my 15-yr-old self achieved with dry ice bombs. Admittedly, 15-yr-olds are more savvy these days.
Are links to DailyKos disabled? Why does my link keep getting stripped out on preview? test
Oh, I guess it needed the http added.
The table generally requires 2 people to lift and move.
Generally. But sometimes when the moon is full and the stars are half veiled by the mists from bog, it's been known to wander the hills and howl for the blood of those who wronged it.
8: Yeah, I remember dry-ice bombs being just forceful enough to pop the bottle loudly. I suppose you could hurt people with a glass bottle or something, but a plastic bottle you could probably hold it in your hands without injury when it went off.
That's an even better quote restored.
The full:
If a Union of one hundred thousand members can be organized in three years like has been so wonderfully done here by your leaders and by your officers and your membership, my friends, anything is possible. Education is possible, and the winning of strikes is possible.
Let me close just now by giving you a little story that I have given you once before. I close by telling you the story, because I think it explains better than anything else, at this time, the great possibilities which can come to labor. There is a story told about the making of the first railway. There was an old man, it is said, whose name was Stevenson, who made the first locomotive. You know, just like in the labor movement they said locomotives were impossible. You had to have horses or cattle to pull a train; that nothing would go without something being attached to it. There would be no locomotion.
And when old man Stevenson proposed at train - something to be run without the aid of horse or oxen, he was ridiculed. One day a test was made, and they laid two pieces of wood, and upon these two pieces of wood they placed some thin sheets of metal, and upon that crude arrangement was placed the first locomotive.
And it is said in this story that thousands of people were out to see the first test of that locomotive, and of course the people all shouted, and pointed to their head, and said the man was crazy, and they said the locomotive was out of question: it was impossible, and the crowd yelled out: "You old foggy fool! You can't do it! You can't do it!" And the same everywhere. The old man was in the cab, and somebody fired a pistol and the signal was given. He pulled the throttle open and the engine shot out, and in their amazement the crowd, not knowing how to answer to that argument, yelled out: "You old fool! You can't stop it! You can't stop it!" (Applause.)
And my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
I don't remember seeing the word "IED" used outside the Iraq context before.
13: Then they move all your jobs to other states and then other countries, and they won't even let you wash windshields on street corners.
I don't understand why people feel the need to stop my scientific studies. Crocodilians that can survive in temperate climates aren't going to evolve themselves.
12: see 16. You can make them pretty intense.
Not particularly related, here are people blowing up some pumpkins.
Since the OP mentions OWS, I guess this is the correct thread to share this sad news:
L.I. Couple Seeks Trademark For "Occupy Wall St."
Citing the potential of "Occupy Wall Street" to become a "global brand," a Long Island couple has filed to trademark the name of the amorphous organization responsible for the protests and encampments in lower Manhattan and other U.S. cities, The Smoking Gun has learned.
In a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) application, Robert and Diane Maresca are seeking to trademark the phrase "Occupy Wall St." so that they can place it on a wide variety of goods, including bumper stickers, shirts, beach bags, footwear, umbrellas, and hobo bags.
I suppose this was inevitable.
I'm one of the Occupy Portlanders, although I've been at work this weekend, and wasn't around for the attack, or its aftermath, I'm about to go to tonight's GA. I might have more to say when I get back.
Huh! Go Natilo. Anybody built one of those? Sound kind of fun.
I stopped in at the local GA yesterday. I feel like a terrible person for saying it, but the pace and lack of organization was really frustrating to me, and I could see it turning a lot of well-intentioned people away. There were several mentions of getting people more training, which I gather should help streamline things a bit more. I wasn't totally clear whether this is some sort of online training or what. In any event, they did seem to have a good amount of community support—specifically, food and a donated port-a-john. And I did get to experience first-hand the joy of some wanker driving by and yelling, "Get a job, you bums!"
Whatever you say, Mr. Lebowski.
Natilo predicted all this, and I didn't comment, but I did ruefully remember the interminable concensus meetings we held at my co-op. My decision to move out of the house I loved came precisely when I realized I could not listen to another multi-hour meeting about organic bananas.
multi-hour meeting about organic bananas.
So the co-ops were just as dirty as we'd always heard.
I don't remember seeing the word "IED" used outside the Iraq context before.
I don't remember it being used before Iraq either. We just called them "bombs". Or, if you were the police, "devices". If they were in cars, we called them "car bombs".
Leading to the classic moment where a US army officer in 2003 confidently announced "Of course, the British Army has far less experience than us with IEDs". Presumably because he'd asked "what do you know about IEDs?" and got the reply "What's an IED?"
OK, I know I've been away, but what is an IED? I mean, I realise it goes bang, but what does it stand for?
23:Drummed out of Zuccotti Park
Went to a tavern and I got drunk
That is where they found me
Back to barracks in chains I was sent
And there they did impound me.
Fifty I got for selling me coat
Fifty for me blankets
If ever I 'list for a soldier again
The devil shall be me sergeant.
It's interesting, by which I mean "dangerous and creepy", that basically anything that goes bang that didn't come directly from the factory that way and isn't being used according to the manual, is called an IED. 6-inch pipe bomb, C4 strapped to someone's chest, artillery shell wired to a cell phone buried by the side of the road, 2-liter plastic bottle drano bomb: all IEDs. So we should respond to all of these the same way, right?
A lot like what happened with the term WMD a few years back. Envelope full of anthrax, rusted out VX shell, RC airplane loaded with ricin, Tsar Bomba: Weapons of Mass Destruction.
the interminable concensus meetings we held at my co-op
We looked seriously at an intentional community in North Durham while we were house hunting, but decided against it after sitting in on one of their community meetings because I was highly likely to stab somebody had I been required to attend a second one.
Field Guide to Revolution Pt II Newberry, today
And this is part of the nature of successful popular revolution: behind it stands the abyss of violent revolution, of street battles, or military battles, of riots and looting, of burning, lynching, and terror unleashed, of lawlessness in the true sense that there is no orderly conduct of daily life. Popular revolution brings the course of business to a halt, but it is a promised pause before returning to it. The street demonstration, the strike, is then, not merely a wave that crashes against power, but a damn that holds back the rootless and nameless anarchic result of a government that has not merely lost the consent of the governed, but of a social order that people no longer respect.This distinction is in the mind. The popular revolution asserts that there is an order, but that the leadership have violated that moral order. The violent revolution asserts that there is no moral order, and that a new one must be established by the traumatic baptism of the entire population. Popular revolution prevails precisely because the very adherents of the regime's power, those that must carry out its apparatus, realize they live in a house made of dry wood, and that beyond the banners, lie those with gasoline and matches, and no qualms about using them.
I still think I prefer the Marxist distinction between "bourgois revolution" and "social revolution"
And this...
The lesson of all of these revolutions is that a popular revolution, since it does not have an internal ecology of power, is always a revolution in favor of those ready to take power. Lech Walesa was not a man out of nowhere. He organized boycotts in 1968, strikes in 1970, in 1980,
A "popular" non-violent "revolution" is always really just a coup, usually just the switch of Pareto's alternating elites. But the lesson to OWS is that if they want to be a successful non-violent revolution, they need a shadow gov't.
And more Newberry
The hallmark of a popular revolution is the creation of mass action that halts the normal course of business...Second, it cuts the lines by which decisions made by one group are multiplied. Popular revolution then, rests on the disruption of the channels through which power is transmitted, and a disruption of the centers from which power is born.
I have actually heard OWS folk says this is the first occupation. Fuck, we had one a week in the late 60s. But in the 60s they occupied strategic locations like administration buildings and actually got in the fucking way.
Hey, bob: serious question. Have you attended any OWS-type events in your neck of the woods? If not, would you consider doing so?
I missed the October 15 one in Dallas, but I was watching for an announcement every day. There were like 50 people. I don't really understand it, but yes, I am considering pretty constantly. Occupysupply looks attractive, and I checked the FDL board for a DFW connection.
Like I said, I don't understand it, so I would be just another tourist, I think.
I mean, honestly, I'm not rich, and if I am going to get arrested and pay a hundred dollar fine, it's going to be for loitering in the Plaza in front of Dallas City Hall, rather than in the City Hall itself?
Maybe I don't belong.
It seems to me that OWS has gone a step past non-violent to non-confrontational, as a principle.
Do you think I fit in?
Look, I don't mean to seem too critical, I ain't Jodi Dean, I'm willing to give OWS some time and see if they have a better idea. Really.
But...
Ok, here come the police, everybody sit down, lock your arms and go limp.
Oh Bob, why do you want to cause trouble? Everybody stand up, put your hands on your head, and be helpful to the police.
I'm paying a hundred dollars for this? Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
Matt Taibibi says OWS isn't against Wall Street, it is against "cheating" and corruption on Wall Street. Sumgum, Matt wrote a book on that very
subject.
Everybody Rorschachs this thing. Everybody.
And you can do yourself great damage by seeing a reality as you want it to be.
If they were in cars, we called them "car bombs".
Just to be nicely pedantic, those are not IEDs. Those are VBIEDs.