Chicago Ninja Terrorists?
Susie wonders about the ‘terrorist’ arrest in Chicago, and this makes me wonder about everyone involved:
“The men had been making Molotov cocktails out of empty beer bottles filled with gasoline and fitted with cut bandanas for fuses,” Cook County state attorney Anita Alvarez told a news conference after the bond hearing.
“It is pretty clear from the evidence they were making the bombs,” Alvarez said. “There was a lot of discussion about making these Molotov cocktails and what they were going to do with them.”
How much of a discussion can there be about making a Molotov cocktail – breakable container, inflammable liquid, and rag for a fuse? If you can figure out Legos you are over-qualified to make a Molotov cocktail. Was there some big discussion of Corona vs Bud or regular vs high-test, cotton vs polyester? Did they wonder about the effects of ethanol being added to the gasoline? What was there to discuss?
If they had bottles sold for home beer brewing, they had a problem – the bottles don’t shatter easily because beer-brewing generates a lot of pressure and the people who sell to home brewers carry heavy duty bottles. Not exactly as tough as old Coke bottles or wine bottles, but robust. Reusing bottles from commercial beer is not recommended for home brewing because of the pressure problems.
Molotov cocktails are OK in Europe because they have cobblestone streets, but not very effective in the US.
The real issue is that there was obviously a police agent inside. Are there recordings, or are we supposed to believe someone who is paid to lie? If there was an agent inside, why didn’t the police get a warrant? If there was time for a lot of discussion about bombs, there was time to get a warrant.
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Do you really believe there was ever a “terrorist” plot? I emphatically do not. The scenario constructed to convince us was about as weak as it could possibly be.
Police chose as “bomb-making materials” things that practically any household in America would have. The warrantless search seems less for the element of surprise than for the avoidance of having to convince a judge. Judge:
Hence… no judge, no warrant, no true authorization for the search that “found” the “bomb-making” materials. Hence… no bomb. No plot. No shit, Sherlock!
But during the Obama meeting the “bomb-makers” will be off the streets waiting for those preliminary motions to be heard, which is all the Chicago PD wanted anyhow. Blatantly unconstitional? Well, sure. But nobody’s ever held accountable by being sent to jail for violating people’s Constitutional rights, so why should they care?
– Badtux the “Is it paranoia if we really ARE living in a police state?” Penguin
Steve, I don’t see reasonable suspicion, much less probable cause. They didn’t have enough to stop these guys for a field interview, much less break into a house. All of the ‘evidence’ will be thrown out in pre-trial motions. This is Chicago, of course they could’ve have found a judge to issue a warrant, and everyone knows it, so they had nothing. Their insider couldn’t push fast enough to get an ‘overt action’, so the bosses just went ahead anyway.
Yeah, Badtux, it is really hard to get Federal enforcement when the Feds are coordinating this crap.
My Mother watches WGN out of Chicago, and they had no mention of any of this on their noon news show, so no one locally is paying any attention to it. This is all for national consumption.
It is more amateur theatrics to acclimate people to having their civil rights stolen.
London is hardly replete with cobbles any more. Still I’m sure milk bottles will do the trick. relatively fragile and can hold a handy 568ml… Not that I am advocating making such a cocktail. I’ll stick to Midori Daquiris!
Most of the containers that were once ‘ideal’ for Molotov cocktails are now plastic and worthless for the purpose. They have never been popular in the US for anyone other than arsonists. Even the ‘Black Bloc’ in the US is not a fan. The exception being the whackoes who attack women’s health clinics and frequently use Molotovs.
Most leftist radicals in the US know enough not to carry incriminating materials on their persons, nor store them in their houses. They tend to use whatever is available at the protest – stones, bottles. When they set fires, they use debris and just light it.
Petrol has a readily identifiable odor that is difficult to get rid of, as anyone who has ever had a petrol can spill in their boot knows, so it would be really stupid to go to a demonstration smelling like a service station. Even the ‘Black Bloc-heads’ are smarter than that.
I was thinking about what kind of bottles are currently sold in America that would be useful for Molotov Cocktails, and the only ones I can think of are the relatively thick bottles used for alcoholic beverages. Everything else is plastic. And carrying alcoholic beverage bottles around is a fine way to get arrested for public drunkenness long before the time when you pop the top and put your wick into the thing.
As you say, Molotov cocktails in the absence of cobbles are not useful because the vertical surfaces hard enough to break relatively thick wine and beer bottles typically are fireproof. Throw it against a stone-clad building or the metal side of a police car? Get real! And throw it *under* the police car in hopes of catching the police car on fire, and all that happens is that it skitters across the pavement and fizzles out harmlessly in the gutter on the other side, since there are no cobbles to “catch” it and make it shatter. Thus why the Black Bloc doesn’t use them…
Everyone I know stayed out of the city last weekend and Monday. Many businesses were closed and commuters stayed home. Events were canceled and hotels were empty. There were unannounced expressway shutdowns and public transportation was undependable.
The city did a great job of scaring the $hit out of everyone and that’s just the way they wanted it. Police outnumbered protesters most of the time.
Large noisy helicopters were flying low over my residential area. These were not the little traffic copters. I looked up and saw four Chinooks and thought we were being invaded.
Yeah, Badtux, the breakable glass bottles that carried a quart of vinegar or whatever have all been replaced with plastic, so you are stuck with alcoholic beverage bottles that are free ‘probable cause’ for law enforcement. You would really need to start making your own containers in a ceramics class to have any hope of getting something breakable, and that would be expensive.
Security theater, Lady Min, but designed to impress the 1% and keep the 99% in ‘their place’. The security is a good deal more disruptive than any demonstrations, regular crime gets ignored for the duration. Another reason not to hold these events in cities, but exile them to empty islands.
I thought holding the economic meeting at a military base [Camp David is a Marine installation] and holding the military meeting in a center of commerce was more than a bit strange, but that is the effect of the staging for performances of Security Theater™ in the US.