firehose

autonomous-geordie:

anarchadelphia:

Last night during the Ferguson protests in Philly there were at least two dozen people in full bloc mixed throughout the march. In addition there were dozens of people with bandannas, or scarves covering their faces. A friend pointed out two undercover cops early on. I hadn’t even noticed them yet, but I am positive that I would have known they were cops immediately.

What I saw was two beefy white macho-guys in jeans (one in a blue jacket and one in a red phillies hoodie with a baseball cap) wearing two black and white paisley bandannas, and holding similar signs (same shape, same thickness of marker, similar vague slogan, same stick holding them up.) We had a good laugh at the (chumps) and I went right up to them and took a few pictures (unfortunately not many good ones.) These “protestors” (See. cops) were walking right next to the row of bike cops, always on the left side. They barely “infiltrated” the march by any means of geographical depth.

Time went by and I decided to follow them and see what they were up to. Another friend rolled up next to me and told me they were undercover cops, I told them I knew. Time went by and that friend went back into the march and I lingered off to the side. The Cop in red was behind me and the cop in blue was right next to me.

I heard the cop in blue loudly talking to the bike cops to “back up” and other pseudo-aggressive statements that the cop thought a protestor would say to cops. He then walked over to me (who was alone next to the march) and said:

"Do you want to fucking jump these guys?"

And I couldn’t help but laugh right in his face. Did he not remember when I went right up to him and took pictures of his face? from about two or three feet away?

I immediately said “Show me your badge number or shut the fuck up.”
His eyes widened and then became angry immediately.

"Oh is that right?"
"Yeah, you can shut the fuck up and stop talking to me."

He walked away. I went up to a Legal Observer that I was familiar with and told them about the situation and showed them the pictures. I moved on to tell as many friends in bloc about them. I never saw the blue shirted cop again that night, but I was later pointing out the phillies hoodie cop to a group and as I was pointing at him, watched him turn away out of the crowd.

Obviously the philly cops haven’t learned that big beefy white men with jeans and a bandanna stick out like a sore thumb. Most people I talked to about it either already knew, or were not surprised to find out.

It’s business as usual, but I guess this is just an heavy-winded way of saying to only work with your crew. Don’t listen to strangers. Especially if it’s random advice and bad idea. (during a completely nonviolent march, the idea of two people taking on a row of 100 bike cops is preposterous. I would have laughed at my best friend if they had proposed the same idea)

Just keep secure and keep safe. Get work done and keep fighting. Not to push the whole (outside agitator or infiltrator) trope but be careful. Remember, the cops (in Philly) are obviously incompetent as fuck at this. We can laugh at their weakness, but should also warn any younger or less experienced radicals to be careful.

P.S. The guy in orange was posing as a reporter but went up to a group of people in bloc outside of the police station (where the march was holding a rally) and tried to film our faces under his arm. We pointed out we could see the shape of his gun tucked into the back of his jeans and he laughed and walked away. Not minutes later I took the picture of him talking to the cops. Later as the march began moving towards city hall again, he was on the other side of the line of bike cops (the cops being between him and the protestors.)

The police are terrible at trying to infiltrate protests and blocs, they have to be identifiable to their fellow pigs in uniform so its always easy to spot them.

thecharliecharmander:

naturepunk:

Apparently, in an attempt to paint Michael Brown as anything less than innocent, people have been spreading an image of an armed 17-year-old Joda Cain around the web and claiming that it’s Michael Brown.

Joda Cain is accused of murder in my home state of Oregon, and has literally jack shit to do with the Michael Brown murder in Ferguson, Missouri. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME PEOPLE. Anyone using the above image as “proof” that Michael Brown “deserved” to be shot should be called out for defamation, and promptly thrown down a spiral staircase. 

The bottom photo is the real Michael Brown. He was called a “gentle giant” by friends and family. He was unarmed and innocent, and he was murdered by a police officer after being shot more than five times at close range. Witnesses, including a friend who was with him at the time of the shooting, all agree that he was doing nothing deserving of such violent actions from the officer who gunned him down. 

A reminder, since I’ve seen the image circling again.

The ability of biomolecules—and entire organisms—to survive space has implications for a number of scientific questions: whether molecules from space could have seeded life on Earth, or whether life could spread among the inner planets following impacts. It also has practical implications, in that it dictates how careful we need to be in sterilizing hardware we send to other planets.

Chance gave some biologists access to a rocket, and they figured out a way to answer one of the questions. While prepping a sounding rocket for an experiment that briefly lofted some of their samples to space, they decided to put some DNA on the rocket's exterior. And when it returned to Earth 780 seconds later, they were able to recover the DNA and put it to use.

Sounding rockets are typically used for payloads that only have to be put into space briefly. In this case, the researchers were putting cells into the payload of a VSB-30, a two-stage, solid-fueled rocket manufactured in Brazil. While doing so, they decided it would be interesting to see what happened to samples outside of the protection of the payload. So they obtained some DNA called a plasmid that carried two genes: one that provides antibiotic resistance to bacteria, and a second that encodes a green fluorescent protein.

Submitted by: (via envyone)