On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, A. Melon wrote:
They've got a good idea -- one of the tactics used by cops for quite awhile is to have undercover agents in the crowd who spot the *real* troublemakers, leaders, etc. and then often an "affinity squad" will target that individual. By making it very difficult to differentiate any individuals, that whole cop tactic becomes useless.
So there will be joint prosecutions, with each of the Bloc-ers receiving indictments for *all* of the "operations" performed. I also think such aggressive demonstrations will make the police even more trigger-happy than they are now.
The other part of the bloc is that by staying together in a tight group, they can grab arrestees from the cops more easily. We used to have groups of two or three who worked together this way, more is better.
The only logical conclusion I can see to skirmishes between black-clad anarchists, going on "street operations", and governmental riot control forces, is that the police are eventually given the right to just gun the protestors down, irregardless of whether they have *done* anything. Unless the Bloc actually has enough muscle to overthrow something before then, which I highly doubt, their raising the stakes seems fairly unwise. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front