My thoughts on last night

A couple of things about yesterday/last night's protest I wanted to say.

First of all, there were two instances where the crowd clearly went WAY over the line. At one point in the afternoon the crowd suspected a man in a black shirt of being a gangster sent to make trouble or a police spy sent to collect information. They beat him up pretty bad and ripped his shirt off, presumably to see if he was wearing a wire. Some others in the crowd, including an FTV reporter, helped get keep the violent ones at bay until the police were able to escort him away. The black-shirted man insisted he had just come to protest.

The second incident was the molotov cocktail thrown last night at the scuffle near the Grand Hotel. Could have very seriously injured a number of police officers and scared them for life. Maybe even kill somebody. Not cool.

On the other hand, the police were not the picture of calm law and order either. Some of the riot police were really unnecessarily violent with their billy clubs, really ripping on guys who were running away and who the poliec had no intention of actually arresting or anything.

I also had a friend who stayed until the end of the protest at the Grand hotel last night. He'll have pictures up soon and also has some audio of the police intimidating the protesters. I asked if the police were being reasonable or crossing the line, and he thinks the latter. Will let you know once I have the link.