corrente

So they mobilized every real cop, rent-a-cop, SWAT team, both remaining members of the Massachusetts National Guard and anybody else they could find with a uniform, to guard agaist the dread forces of Protest expected to descend on Boston, right?

And what did they get? The Dread Pirate Roberts and a guy with a toilet plunger. I love it:

(via Pittsburg Post-Gazette)

BOSTON -- The Revolution officially began at noon yesterday with a Battle of the Bands between the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement and a cadre of anarchists dressed as pirates.

The LaRouchies, a weird amalgam of far-right conspiracy theorists, have taken to singing black spirituals and Bach cantatas all over town. They do this in four-part harmony and do it quite well.

The anarchists, who had gathered in Copley Square to prepare to march on the FleetCenter convention site, took offense at the LaRouchies crashing in. They crowded against the intruders, banged on drums, and chanted, "Are you hungry? Eat the rich!"

This went on for about 10 minutes, at which point one of the pirates engaged in a mock duel with a masked guy carrying a toilet plunger. For the record, the pirate won.

Boston has been anticipating trouble for a week now. Under an umbrella group called The Bl(A)ck Tea Society -- the "a" in black is parenthesized to stress anarchism -- an assortment of left groups sent a few hundred marchers to send the message that the only difference they can see between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry is about four inches in height.

Thursday was the day for "decentralized actions," which meant some groups planned to break the law, but wouldn't tell the organizers. One thing these guys learned from the Reagan administration is the importance of plausible deniability.

The first action started around 10 a.m. when a dozen young men on bicycles, led by the chief pirate, whose attitude toward reporters would have done Teresa Heinz Kerry proud, lazily circled the intersection of Boylston and Clarendon.

"Hold the intersection!" the chief pirate yelled. Traffic was blocked for a few minutes, until a woman in an SUV edged her way through and shouted her displeasure.

"We're protesting the DNC!" one bicyclist yelled.

"You need a sign or something, you idiot," she replied. In Boston, dissent is respected, but people demand clear labeling.

Suddenly, a phalanx (and I've been waiting to use that word all week) of police arrived. On bicycle. There was a bicycle chase. The anarchists sped down Clarendon, followed by 30 uniformed Boston policemen pedaling hard. The group made a long circuit around the Copley Square area, then returned.

There were no arrests, motorists were annoyed and, possibly to everyone's amazement, the United States was still a capitalist nation. The Democratic National Committee is invulnerable to bicycle attack.

Oh yeah...almost nobody used the "Free Speech Zone" except reporters doing standups in front of it. These folks are really going to have to try harder in Manhattan if they expect accomplish anything beyond being offered jobs promoting off-Broadway theatrical productions.