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I guess another topic for this thread could have been "When to punch a woman".

In all seriousness though, when are things going to stop at Berkely? This was the third Riot so far this year, all instigated by the same people. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the White Nationalists that were on the other side of this conflict. I oppose what they believe, but I do support their right to publically assemble and speak their minds. The same goes for any group, whether they are Black Panthers, the KKK, or NAMBLA.

Black Bloc and Antifa would be okay with me if their goal was to simply counter protest and bring media attention. Bringing explosives, smoke bombs, pepper spray, and clubs to beat on otherwise peaceful demonstrators isn't in any way acceptable though.

Which leads me to my next thought. Why is the Antifa woman that got sucker-punch being portrayed as such a victim by the media? Sure, a guy sucker-punched a girl in the mouth. However, when the video is shown they tend to edit out the parts where she is throwing glass bottles, swinging bottles, and triple-team beating a man on the ground. While I don't condone violence of any sort if you are instigating violence you become a viable target regardless of your gender.

All in all these protestor clashes seem to be escalating. It woudln't surprise me if it is only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured or killed. How long will the police sit by and let it all happen?

Berkeley police defend their actions:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Berkeley-chief-defends-handling-of-volatile-11081661.php


I for one hope this continues for my personal amusement.
As GC has decided to pass on Berkeley on attend UT's Mad Scientist School and is not in the frey all I can say is...break out the firebombs and bike chains.

Whoever loses, we win!

What were they protesting this time?

Berkeley is a mess. From the groups itching for a fight, to the police seemingly unprepared to handle these occurrences, I can't imagine the citizens are happy. I am amazed that when people were arriving with weapons, anyone thought the continued demonstrations should be allowed. Since these groups know it is allowed to escalate, I only see it continuing.

I'm not a fan of police brutality, or hammering peaceful protestors, but when it turned into an outright brawl, they should have thrown enough tear gas to accurately recreate WW1. No permits, turned to violence between groups that would legitimately kill each other given the chance, incapacitate all of them.


EDIT: spelling

 jasper76 wrote:
What were they protesting this time?

Trumpsters being bussed in get attacked by Black Bloc radicals (2nd time). This time Black Bloc get heads handed to them.
If Berkeley PoPo don't get control, there's going to be gunplay. Mark my words.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I guess another topic for this thread could have been "When to punch a woman".

In all seriousness though, when are things going to stop at Berkely? This was the third Riot so far this year, all instigated by the same people. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the White Nationalists that were on the other side of this conflict. I oppose what they believe, but I do support their right to publically assemble and speak their minds. The same goes for any group, whether they are Black Panthers, the KKK, or NAMBLA.

Black Bloc and Antifa would be okay with me if their goal was to simply counter protest and bring media attention. Bringing explosives, smoke bombs, pepper spray, and clubs to beat on otherwise peaceful demonstrators isn't in any way acceptable though.

Which leads me to my next thought. Why is the Antifa woman that got sucker-punch being portrayed as such a victim by the media? Sure, a guy sucker-punched a girl in the mouth. However, when the video is shown they tend to edit out the parts where she is throwing glass bottles, swinging bottles, and triple-team beating a man on the ground. While I don't condone violence of any sort if you are instigating violence you become a viable target regardless of your gender.

All in all these protestor clashes seem to be escalating. It woudln't surprise me if it is only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured or killed. How long will the police sit by and let it all happen?

The rumor I've heard is that the girl punched wasn't just throwing glass, supposedly she was loading the glass jars with M80s (low grade explosives) THEN throwing them at people.

If you watch the video, she actually attacked someone else before hand then jumped back, jumped out to fight and got clocked. HAH HAH

 Frazzled wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
What were they protesting this time?

Trumpsters being bussed in get attacked by Black Bloc radicals (2nd time). This time Black Bloc get heads handed to them.
If Berkeley PoPo don't get control, there's going to be gunplay. Mark my words.

Yep. One day, the people they are attacking are likely going to hit back hard and with hardware. It's almost inevitable...violence begets violence.

And now with proper drone technology we can watch it all in HD!

Pro-tip dropping in M&ms into your bowl of freshly popped and buttered salted popcorn is awesome, especially with a nice Rum and coke.

Does anyone have a source for this story? None of my usual outlets are covering it.

 jasper76 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
What were they protesting this time?

Trumpsters being bussed in get attacked by Black Bloc radicals (2nd time). This time Black Bloc get heads handed to them.
If Berkeley PoPo don't get control, there's going to be gunplay. Mark my words.

Yep. One day, the people they are attacking are likely going to hit back hard and with hardware. It's almost inevitable...violence begets violence.

And to be honest Trumps are more likely to be armed with guns than they are.
Or thr open carry supporting groups.

 jhe90 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
What were they protesting this time?

Trumpsters being bussed in get attacked by Black Bloc radicals (2nd time). This time Black Bloc get heads handed to them.
If Berkeley PoPo don't get control, there's going to be gunplay. Mark my words.

Yep. One day, the people they are attacking are likely going to hit back hard and with hardware. It's almost inevitable...violence begets violence.

And to be honest Trumps are more likely to be armed with guns than they are.

Absolutely. They're playing with fire.

 jhe90 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
What were they protesting this time?

Trumpsters being bussed in get attacked by Black Bloc radicals (2nd time). This time Black Bloc get heads handed to them.
If Berkeley PoPo don't get control, there's going to be gunplay. Mark my words.

Yep. One day, the people they are attacking are likely going to hit back hard and with hardware. It's almost inevitable...violence begets violence.

And to be honest Trumps are more likely to be armed with guns than they are.
Or thr open carry supporting groups.

Except these types do like to at least pretend to be well armed and open carry...

Antifa in AZ:




shorter version with commentary.




EDIT: Took out an error.

Sargon of Akkad is actually a liberal, FWIW. At least, that's how he self-identifies.

Thanks for the correction. You are right.

There is evidence based speculation that some if not all the weapons are Air Soft guns.

The M-80s they are launching at people are very real, though. And it's stupidity of the highest order. If you bring rocks, they come back with knives, if you bring knives, they come back with guns, etc.

Not sure where firecrackers come into that equation, but the only reason to hurl a firecracker at someone is to maim them. And that's a recipe for escalation.

 CptJake wrote:
Thanks for the correction. You are right.

There is evidence based speculation that some if not all the weapons are Air Soft guns.

Would it surprise you? Antifa isn't exactly the group that would support open-carry when open-carry is for them dirty fascies.

I can think of other reasons to launch firecrackers at folks.

In my misspent youth my buddies and I had bottle rocket fights all the time. I used to launch m-80s with a wrist rocket during them.



/things dumb kids do for fun

 jasper76 wrote:
The M-80s they are launching at people are very real, though. And it's stupidity of the highest order. If you bring rocks, they come back with knives, if you bring knives, they come back with guns, etc.

Not sure where firecrackers come into that equation, but the only reason to hurl a firecracker at someone is to maim them. And that's a recipe for escalation.

If mistaken for a gunshot to.
Stupid games win deadly prizes.

Yes, we used bottle rockets etc.

However in this instance, throw a firecracker and someone may pop a 9mm firecracker right back at you.

I sense a new WWF event though. Awesome.

To sum up this story, there was a "Free Speach" rally where students and out-of-towners showed up. Some of them were white nationalists.

The group known as Antifa let it be known they were going to show up and cause violence. Some members of the group were quite open about their violent intentions on social media. Their group claims to be anti-facist, yet (ironically enough) states that they believe that not everyone should have the right to openly discuss their views and that most views should be legally banned.

After a good stare-down session Antifa started throwing explosives and home made tear gas, however they threw the tear gas upwind, and it all blew back on them. Scuffles between the groups circled the demonstration area for a while. Reporters on the scene have estimated about 80% of the violence was instigated by Antifa. Eventually the Free Speach group started to win the fights and chased the Antifa group away.

Previously Antifa has been known to beat on bystanders in the area and loot nearby stores during their protests.

The best part about it is where CBS news refers to the Antifa group as victims here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=dcrY2QbppWg

 cuda1179 wrote:
Their group claims to be anti-facist, yet (ironically enough) states that they believe that not everyone should have the right to openly discuss their views and that most views should be legally banned.

And the irony here seems completely lost on them. The few people I've discussed this stuff with that are actually supportive of Antifa tactics and goals seem genuinely unaware that they are acting more like fascists than those they oppose.

A while back I bought a full suit of surplus police riot gear. It would be fun to see how much of a beating that stuff could hold up to. The only reason I actually bought it was to use as a Halloween costume. Buying the real thing was almost as cheap as buying the fake costume replica, so I thought "what the heck".

 cuda1179 wrote:
A while back I bought a full suit of surplus police riot gear. It would be fun to see how much of a beating that stuff could hold up to.

Wait, from where? Daddy Needs him his Zombie Games uniform...and pronto!

I got it from a military surplus store in Omaha. Unfortuneately the store still exists, but no longer carries military surplus. They sell mostly kayaks, tents, and paintball guns now.

There's some stuff that should be noted about these incidents.

By and large, these are relatively small scale events that are beinf portrayed as having national significance by elements on all sides, when mostly they arent. This latest incident had a couple dozen arrests from both sides and seemingly no bystander harm/damage. Many a sporting event has had more action than that. We also have people who are saying and advocating for deplorable things and are doing it largely to get a reaction in a place they know is hypersensitive, and people inevitably feed into it due to the nature of the things being advocated for, and the runaway Trevor's Axiom effect being used by all sides to feed their interests in turn and portray these events far differently from what their actual impact and scale is.

For instance, we see elements making out the punched girl to be an innocent victim who was assaulted for no reason instead two donkey-caves going at it who both should have been arrested. We get other elements calling it the "Berkely Battle" and making it out like it was a huge battle royal and that "the left" (however nebulous that is) is aggressively violent against free speech, again, instead of it just being a relatively small group of donkey-caves (many or most not local Berkely people) getting into tiffs with another relatively small group of donkey-caves (again, also with many if not most being non-local) hoping to instigate a tiff.

Simply stated, it's an event where multiple groups are looking for trouble.

If it were me, once the riot starts... start arresting everyone and put 'em on the bus.

You youngins might not know this, but Berkley is where Rage Against the Machine started out from in the early 90s. Thing is, RatM weren't doing it for the usual rock star reasons, they genuinely thought they were going to kickstart a global revolution of the youth. Instead their message was co-opted and made mad bank for the record execs. So the kids of Berkley now skip the angry guitars and go straight to the bottle throwing.

I'm generally sympathetic to the ignorant antifa kids because I still remember being young and stupid and full of wildfire. How many old fat guys on the antifa side? How many old fat guys in MAGA hats?