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by pvarangot 5281 days ago
Please if you think you will ever take part in a protest, for the sake of your own safety and that of your co-protestors, don't read this article. Or if you already did, don't take it seriously.

It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people.

I do agree with most of what Occupy is about, but if the writer of this post is trying to make any political point, he is failing.

Also, I think that a blog and an HN thread are so not the place to learn about how to safely occupy public space and how to participate in a protest, that I simply don't understand how hard some are trying for it to be that place...

1 comments

>It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people.

Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).

You can find some of my opinion about the content in my other reply in this thread. Also, the whole rummaging about light infantry and heavy infantry is completely wrong, short of some movies I really don't know where the author actually saw the kind of formation he seems to think is standard.

He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated.

Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.