6 ms·

Scientists Identified a Poisonous Gas Used by Fed Agents on Portland Protesters

126 points by minikites 6y ago

istorical 6y ago
Because many people unfortunately don't bother to read articles and merely check comments, the relevant section: "HC is a highly regulated toxin, labeled as a “likely carcinogen” and skin irritant by the Environmental Protection Agency. Eye masks and gloves are recommended for people who handle the chemical. Defense Technologies, an imprint of Pennsylvania-based security equipment manufacturer Safariland, markets the HC canisters as “military-style” smokers, even though the U.S. military actually stopped using HC in grenades in the 1990s due to its extreme toxicity. Activists are more concerned about the chemicals that leave the canister than those packed inside it. Firing an HC grenade triggers a two-stage reaction in which the chlorine in HC rapidly combines with metallic zinc, resulting in zinc chloride, a toxic metal fume that appears as a greenish-white smoke. “It’s a chemical reaction in a can,” says Simonis. “The zinc chloride is an intentional product of the grenade’s design.” The Material Safety Data Sheet supplied by Safariland, however, doesn’t mention zinc chloride at all. Gaseous zinc chloride, also known as hexite, is more than an alternative type of tear gas. Because it contains the super-hot gaseous forms of both chloride ions and zinc, a heavy metal, hexite plumes are highly mobile and extremely dangerous to most forms of life. The chloride ions increase the uptake of zinc particles by exposed cells on the skin or mucous membranes. Zinc can accumulate in tissues and organs, then mobilize later and cause a new set of symptoms. The most striking effects of zinc chloride toxicity in the street — vomiting, burning skin, coughing — are only the first onslaught of a chronic, unpredictable respiratory condition that can cause severe liver damage, fatigue, weight loss, and anorexia, in addition to difficulty breathing. Zinc toxicity sharply contrasts with the effects of tear gas, which tend to be excruciating but short-lived, with dangerous exceptions. “[Conventional tear gas] causes pain through a specific mechanism,” says B. Zane Horowitz, PhD, an emergency toxicologist in the Portland area and author of a recent op-ed decrying the city’s use of tear gas on protesters in the journal Toxicology Communications. Tear gas shorts the nervous system’s pain response, essentially creating the experience of pain without doing lasting damage — most of the time. Still, says Horowitz, “There’s no reason to have pain inflicted on you if you haven’t done anything wrong.” Seems like some war crime style agent orange kinda stuff to me. Why not just spray asbestos into the air instead.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  Using chemical weapons is already a war crime, so governments just decided that the chemical weapons they use on their own people are not chemical weapons. Tear Gas was the first chemical weapon used in World War I: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103718?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103718?seq=1
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The classification of war crimes just doesn't have much to do with what's needed in the context of domestic policing. Hollow-point bullets are the canonical example; they're illegal in war but required for police, because the fully jacketed bullets used in war are much more likely to hurt bystanders.
  - solidsnack9000 6y ago
    The laws of war don't apply outside of war. The military can't use tear gas on the battlefield; military police can use tear gas against rioting soldiers and sailors. Soldiers can't use hollow point bullets even in those calibers, like 7.62x51mm, where that is by far the most common type of bullet used by civilians because of its effectiveness in hunting; but police use hollow point bullets all the time, in part because they are more effective against unarmored targets (though less effective against armored ones) and in part because they are much less likely to pass through a wall and strike someone the officer can't see. These differences are not due to governments deciding that tear gas is not a chemical weapon or that hollow point bullets are not hollow point bullets, but rather because the laws of war apply in war and not elsewhere. If you were serious about the war crimes thing, you'd have to acknowledge the Antifa and BLM committed war crimes by not having uniforms and clear insignia and by not distinguishing between civilians and non-civilian property when destroying things during their raids. There is no such thing as a body of law that applies to only one side. Talking about war crimes in this context really is disinformation: it confuses what those laws are about as well as the difference between international and domestic jurisdiction.
    - falcolas 6y ago
the_only_law 6y ago
A bit unrelated, but a few weeks ago, I was watching some videos and reading related to disastrous industrial chemical spills, the incredible mess how they wound up in the environment, the effects they had on the population, and the seemingly incredibly long time it took for proper responses. I later on took a look at some of the former EPA superfund sites near me and out of curiosity started reading about the various contaminants and the history of the sites. Scary what multi-generational effects some of that crap can have and it could be very close to you.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fabian2k 6y ago
It might be naive, but I would have expected that there is some approval process for stuff like that. It's an inherently dangerous thing to incapacitate people without harming them. An example of how this went horribly wrong was the Moscow hostage crisis, where a gas designed to incapacitate people ended up killing a lot of them. I don't see any acceptable reason to introduce new agents here unless they are properly studied and considered less harmful than the existing ones.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  In many cases the departments run out of their existing stock of the normal stuff and will either use old expired canisters or just use whatever they can get their hands on. Many departments were not prepared for the amount of unrest they saw this year.
interestica 6y ago
> “It’s a chemical reaction in a can,” says Simonis. “The zinc chloride is an intentional product of the grenade’s design.” The Material Safety Data Sheet supplied by Safariland, however, doesn’t mention zinc chloride at all. This is like (spoiler / 37 year old movie) in Superman 3 when he defeats the AI baddie because it determined the can of acid he was holding was harmless. ...until he heat-activated it.
grumio 6y ago
"The federal government’s refusal to cooperate with chemical weapons legislation and local lawmakers has further hampered research by CWRC and BES. Federal troops have erected an illegal barricade around the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse and have refused to allow BES to test the storm drain inside the site, despite the city’s threat to levy a $20,000 penalty against the federal government for every day the barricade stands after September 10." Using illegal weapons, refusing to follow the law, illegally blocking the collection of evidence, all in the name of Law and Order. What are the odds anyone who injured someone with this illegally-used toxin will face any repercussions? Justifying this really requires psychopathic cynicism or some serious doublethink.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  I believe this would be a valid use case for the National Guard. They should be able to remove any barricades in their state. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    I thought the Nat guard was already mobilized to put up the barrier to the courthouse?
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      If that is the case, then the governor is supporting the federal government. Has anyone received a statement from the governor?
      - CameronNemo 6y ago
        Not necessarily. "Another method is when the federal government activates the Guard in what is called Title 10 status—that is what is meant by “federalizing” the Guard. The federal government pays, and activated Guard units are placed under the control of the secretary of defense and the president, with an active-duty military officer in the chain of command." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/right-way-activate-national-guard/608524/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/right-way-...
aaomidi 6y ago
I don't care where you are politically. But if this doesn't terrify you then what will? Does the state ever have justification to do this to the people it's supposed to be representing? At what point are you going to realize tomorrow it might be you at the receiving end for this? This isn't a Trump or Biden issue either. This was authorized by a Democrat. Biden winning the election doesn't mean this won't happen again. It only means this will happen but there will be more diversity in the officials that authorize it.
- irrational 6y ago
  It wasn't the state. The governor and mayor were complaining. What I don't understand is why the governor didn't call up the national guard to kill the federal bully boys.
- stevenicr 6y ago
  "At what point are you going to realize tomorrow it might be you at the receiving end for this?" - April 1993. When the three letter agencies killed a bunch of white christian kids with CS gas then killed their parents with fire on live TV. The senate hearings when they were scolded for it, should of been the end of these practices. Many people watched that on HBO. There's been a lot of tomorrows since then. The point is, people are supposed to be terrified. When the Justice employees say move and they have weapons, they mean move. We should all know what happens when you don't at this point.
miked85 6y ago
While I don't agree with this, things are going to be taken to extremes when "protesters" destroy businesses, attack police officers, and kill people.
- harperlee 6y ago
  If police goes to the extremes that criminals do, they don’t deserve being police.
- mitjak 6y ago
  that's a concern based on a reality that doesn't exist.
  - miked85 6y ago
    I guess my eyes have deceived me.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- grumio 6y ago
  Is blocking the collection of samples from a storm drain an extreme measure that's OK? If they're justified, why are they hiding evidence?
- triceratops 6y ago
  Which protestors killed people?
  - miked85 6y ago
    Michael Reinoehl
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
Just to give some context: huge volumes of variants of these products were used this summer in Portland. We're talking enough to reduce visibility to 10 feet over several block areas. This was blocked by a court order, which was skirted by the local police department soliciting the irregular fed squad to do so instead. The feds were overstepping their jurisdiction in doing this outside of the very narrow perimeter of the ICE facility and fed court house, but in the current environment the proper legal channels to address this are willfully deaf. One of the more reprehensible tactics the police bureau used was to deliberately kettle and push protestors down residential streets, delivering massive amounts of gas as they did so. This resulted in children trapped in their homes unable to escape the gas as well. What happened in my town this summer should alarm everyone, no matter your political creed.
- KittenInABox 6y ago
  What do individuals even do when the proper legal channels are willfully deaf?
  - gilrain 6y ago
    They use collective action to protest, and doing so they make themselves more powerful than any individual.
  - kridsdale1 6y ago
    Historically, rise up in armed rebellion.
- MengerSponge 6y ago
  It doesn't alarm auth-right authoritarian bootlickers. What's alarming to the rest of us is just how many of our "friends" and families actually fall into that camp.
- sershe 6y ago
  Ok, let's burn some karma. This is a question of lesser of two evils, or ends justifying the means. Not everyone agrees with the far left (the faction doing most of the rioting); being from an ex-socialist country I quite literally, not exaggerating, think they are morally equivalent to nazis. I think the US constitution really needs a "self-protection" amendment that would remove the first amendment protection for an enumerated list of ideologies explicitly hostile to the rights that it gives (free speech itself, freedom of/from religion, due process, to some extent racial/gender equality/private property/gun rights, etc.), then make them a crime and throw anyone marching with a hammer and sickle (or swastika) in jail; but you don't need to go that far to think roughing up rioters is justified as a deterrent. Kinda like shooting a burglar in your house is a justifiable self-defense, although shooting a burglar who is running away is not.
tunesmith 6y ago
Completely detached from the more serious matters described in the article, I thought I had read that we should refer to they/them the same was we refer to "you". But this is the first time I've noticed this formulation: >[...] whose pronouns are they/them, [...] Simonis, who is also [...] I guess my brain had trained me to expect "who are" rather than "who is". But apparently "they is" is acceptable? Or was this a mistake in the article?
- ysavir 6y ago
  I think we're all figuring out the modernized rules for pronouns as we go. Nothing about it is written in stone. For my part, I think it's fine to say "they are" for a singular person, but "who" should stay singular.
asah 6y ago
Is this also an OSHA case for the law enforcement personnel assigned to the protests ?
powerslacker 6y ago
@minikites I didn't flag your post but this is clearly a politically charged and potentially biased article that has little to do with HN or its core demographic. Here's the relevant rule from the guidelines: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- grumio 6y ago
  Using expertise and scientific tests on an unknown object to determine what it is and uncover a contemporary conspiracy? That gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
nan0 6y ago
From this article and a one a month back(0). Simonis seems to have some major bias against law enforcement. As they participated on one side of the protest (not as am independent watcher) and even got arrested at the protest. Regardless of that, what percentage of the gas canisters where HC? To say that the protesters where completely peaceful and didn't deserve anything is really dishonest. I am not saying that the officers were completely peaceful either. Straw man from the article made me question the intent of the study. “The degree to which law enforcement believes Black lives do not matter is shown by their willingness to use known toxic hazardous waste chemicals indiscriminately,” Simonis says. “Now I don’t go around the feds without a gas mask.” 0:https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/485705-390928-highly-toxic-smoke-grenades-deployed-at-portland-protests- https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/485705-390928-highly-t...
ManBlanket 6y ago
This has bothered me for a long time and the fact it still drags on blows my mind. Predominantly white protesters in Portland misappropriated protests over racial inequality for their own disphoric amalgamation of social issues. There's little agreement among them about the goal of the protests or even why they're protesting. I know many of those people. Many have no idea why they're there, it's just drama to them, something they can do in the face of the most socially regressive times of our generation. On the other side people see this, point and say, "See? Told you I was right about those people." Nobody seems to give a shit about issues racial minorities and poor face, in the same breath ravenously supporting covid policies and their unprecedented impacts on income and social inequality along mostly racial lines. I'm surprised they aren't chanting, "black lives are essential." This is not helpful for racial equality. It's not helpful for anybody except the psychopathic industry of military oppression of civilian populations. Of course they're walking all over our social contracts, the continued protests have opened the door for them. Disruption of systematic inequality is needed, but this ain't the way it's going to happen. As a privileged work-from-homer, white person, whatever, our first obligation is to listen to what racial minorities are saying to understand the nature their struggles. Otherwise you can tell yourself you're a virtuous champion of wokeness, but you're really just a part of the same problem.
- feoren 6y ago
  Did you just imply that it's racist to support face mask requirements and mandatory stay-at-home orders? Is it racist to support legislation against drunk driving? Against firing guns into the air? Against throwing objects out of cars and off overpasses?
  - ManBlanket 6y ago
    Stay at home orders are selective. Focused primarily on industries and jobs where minorities overwhelmingly find themselves. School closures favor children from households that can afford a computer for each child; requiring a parent to stay home, namely a responsibility falling upon women who are dropping out of the workplace at an unprecedented rate. So what then happens to those households who don't have that privilege? Do you care? The people paying the cost of public health are children, women, poor, and minorities. Meanwhile I haven't given anything up, so it's very easy for people like us to sit here while earning our full income from home and say, "Yes, this makes sense. It is totally worth it." It's worth it to us because we aren't paying the cost. These stay at home orders and quarantines have overwhelmingly and profoundly impacted people who were already struggling without offering them a path forward. Rest assured the economic uncertainty from shut down was a catalyst behind the BLM protests. The people impacted by shut down are predominantly poor and minorities, and the fact we haven't considered how to share that burden before stabbing in the dark is what makes them racist. At the global level, malaria kills almost a million people every single year, mostly children under 4. There's no herd immunity and it has and will continue to happen for decades. The WHO anticipates due to new covid travel restrictions on malaria relief workers an additional 3 to 4 hundred thousand deaths due to malaria will occur in Sub Sahara Africa alone. Surely malaria is a pandemic that shadows covid by any measure, except the measure where it overwhelmingly affects poor black people. Meanwhile the second our society is faced with something which mostly kills old white people, the average age of which exceeds the average human lifespan, we're cancelling school and creating a generation of illiterate 2nd grade children while their parents are left with no way to feed them. So yeah the reaction to covid has been first and foremost selfish, and given the government is a historic institution of race, these orders are themselves the children of our racism.
sedachv 6y ago
How much zinc oxide do the hexachloroethane grenades release? Zinc oxide is extremely toxic and results in symptoms known as "metal fume fever." You only need a tiny amount of exposure - I once got sick from not wearing a respirator when doing a handful of quick spot welds on galvanized metal shelving (thought I could get away with it). All of the criminals involved in this deliberate toxic gassing should be on trial right now.
rv-de 6y ago
let me tell you what those people need - it's the clock work orange therapy with a Bill Burr twist. there you have your treatment ...

126 points by minikites 6y ago

Because many people unfortunately don't bother to read articles and merely check comments, the relevant section: "HC is a highly regulated toxin, labeled as a “likely carcinogen” and skin irritant by the Environmental Protection Agency. Eye masks and gloves are recommended for people who handle the chemical. Defense Technologies, an imprint of Pennsylvania-based security equipment manufacturer Safariland, markets the HC canisters as “military-style” smokers, even though the U.S. military actually stopped using HC in grenades in the 1990s due to its extreme toxicity. Activists are more concerned about the chemicals that leave the canister than those packed inside it. Firing an HC grenade triggers a two-stage reaction in which the chlorine in HC rapidly combines with metallic zinc, resulting in zinc chloride, a toxic metal fume that appears as a greenish-white smoke. “It’s a chemical reaction in a can,” says Simonis. “The zinc chloride is an intentional product of the grenade’s design.” The Material Safety Data Sheet supplied by Safariland, however, doesn’t mention zinc chloride at all. Gaseous zinc chloride, also known as hexite, is more than an alternative type of tear gas. Because it contains the super-hot gaseous forms of both chloride ions and zinc, a heavy metal, hexite plumes are highly mobile and extremely dangerous to most forms of life. The chloride ions increase the uptake of zinc particles by exposed cells on the skin or mucous membranes. Zinc can accumulate in tissues and organs, then mobilize later and cause a new set of symptoms. The most striking effects of zinc chloride toxicity in the street — vomiting, burning skin, coughing — are only the first onslaught of a chronic, unpredictable respiratory condition that can cause severe liver damage, fatigue, weight loss, and anorexia, in addition to difficulty breathing. Zinc toxicity sharply contrasts with the effects of tear gas, which tend to be excruciating but short-lived, with dangerous exceptions. “[Conventional tear gas] causes pain through a specific mechanism,” says B. Zane Horowitz, PhD, an emergency toxicologist in the Portland area and author of a recent op-ed decrying the city’s use of tear gas on protesters in the journal Toxicology Communications. Tear gas shorts the nervous system’s pain response, essentially creating the experience of pain without doing lasting damage — most of the time. Still, says Horowitz, “There’s no reason to have pain inflicted on you if you haven’t done anything wrong.” Seems like some war crime style agent orange kinda stuff to me. Why not just spray asbestos into the air instead.

claudeganon 6y ago
Using chemical weapons is already a war crime, so governments just decided that the chemical weapons they use on their own people are not chemical weapons. Tear Gas was the first chemical weapon used in World War I: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103718?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103718?seq=1
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The classification of war crimes just doesn't have much to do with what's needed in the context of domestic policing. Hollow-point bullets are the canonical example; they're illegal in war but required for police, because the fully jacketed bullets used in war are much more likely to hurt bystanders.
- solidsnack9000 6y ago
  The laws of war don't apply outside of war. The military can't use tear gas on the battlefield; military police can use tear gas against rioting soldiers and sailors. Soldiers can't use hollow point bullets even in those calibers, like 7.62x51mm, where that is by far the most common type of bullet used by civilians because of its effectiveness in hunting; but police use hollow point bullets all the time, in part because they are more effective against unarmored targets (though less effective against armored ones) and in part because they are much less likely to pass through a wall and strike someone the officer can't see. These differences are not due to governments deciding that tear gas is not a chemical weapon or that hollow point bullets are not hollow point bullets, but rather because the laws of war apply in war and not elsewhere. If you were serious about the war crimes thing, you'd have to acknowledge the Antifa and BLM committed war crimes by not having uniforms and clear insignia and by not distinguishing between civilians and non-civilian property when destroying things during their raids. There is no such thing as a body of law that applies to only one side. Talking about war crimes in this context really is disinformation: it confuses what those laws are about as well as the difference between international and domestic jurisdiction.
  - falcolas 6y ago

the_only_law 6y ago

A bit unrelated, but a few weeks ago, I was watching some videos and reading related to disastrous industrial chemical spills, the incredible mess how they wound up in the environment, the effects they had on the population, and the seemingly incredibly long time it took for proper responses. I later on took a look at some of the former EPA superfund sites near me and out of curiosity started reading about the various contaminants and the history of the sites. Scary what multi-generational effects some of that crap can have and it could be very close to you.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fabian2k 6y ago

It might be naive, but I would have expected that there is some approval process for stuff like that. It's an inherently dangerous thing to incapacitate people without harming them. An example of how this went horribly wrong was the Moscow hostage crisis, where a gas designed to incapacitate people ended up killing a lot of them. I don't see any acceptable reason to introduce new agents here unless they are properly studied and considered less harmful than the existing ones.

kevingadd 6y ago
In many cases the departments run out of their existing stock of the normal stuff and will either use old expired canisters or just use whatever they can get their hands on. Many departments were not prepared for the amount of unrest they saw this year.

interestica 6y ago

> “It’s a chemical reaction in a can,” says Simonis. “The zinc chloride is an intentional product of the grenade’s design.” The Material Safety Data Sheet supplied by Safariland, however, doesn’t mention zinc chloride at all. This is like (spoiler / 37 year old movie) in Superman 3 when he defeats the AI baddie because it determined the can of acid he was holding was harmless. ...until he heat-activated it.

grumio 6y ago

"The federal government’s refusal to cooperate with chemical weapons legislation and local lawmakers has further hampered research by CWRC and BES. Federal troops have erected an illegal barricade around the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse and have refused to allow BES to test the storm drain inside the site, despite the city’s threat to levy a $20,000 penalty against the federal government for every day the barricade stands after September 10." Using illegal weapons, refusing to follow the law, illegally blocking the collection of evidence, all in the name of Law and Order. What are the odds anyone who injured someone with this illegally-used toxin will face any repercussions? Justifying this really requires psychopathic cynicism or some serious doublethink.

LinuxBender 6y ago
I believe this would be a valid use case for the National Guard. They should be able to remove any barricades in their state. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  I thought the Nat guard was already mobilized to put up the barrier to the courthouse?
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    If that is the case, then the governor is supporting the federal government. Has anyone received a statement from the governor?
    - CameronNemo 6y ago
      Not necessarily. "Another method is when the federal government activates the Guard in what is called Title 10 status—that is what is meant by “federalizing” the Guard. The federal government pays, and activated Guard units are placed under the control of the secretary of defense and the president, with an active-duty military officer in the chain of command." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/right-way-activate-national-guard/608524/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/right-way-...

aaomidi 6y ago

I don't care where you are politically. But if this doesn't terrify you then what will? Does the state ever have justification to do this to the people it's supposed to be representing? At what point are you going to realize tomorrow it might be you at the receiving end for this? This isn't a Trump or Biden issue either. This was authorized by a Democrat. Biden winning the election doesn't mean this won't happen again. It only means this will happen but there will be more diversity in the officials that authorize it.

irrational 6y ago
It wasn't the state. The governor and mayor were complaining. What I don't understand is why the governor didn't call up the national guard to kill the federal bully boys.
stevenicr 6y ago
"At what point are you going to realize tomorrow it might be you at the receiving end for this?" - April 1993. When the three letter agencies killed a bunch of white christian kids with CS gas then killed their parents with fire on live TV. The senate hearings when they were scolded for it, should of been the end of these practices. Many people watched that on HBO. There's been a lot of tomorrows since then. The point is, people are supposed to be terrified. When the Justice employees say move and they have weapons, they mean move. We should all know what happens when you don't at this point.

miked85 6y ago

While I don't agree with this, things are going to be taken to extremes when "protesters" destroy businesses, attack police officers, and kill people.

harperlee 6y ago
If police goes to the extremes that criminals do, they don’t deserve being police.
mitjak 6y ago
that's a concern based on a reality that doesn't exist.
- miked85 6y ago
  I guess my eyes have deceived me.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
grumio 6y ago
Is blocking the collection of samples from a storm drain an extreme measure that's OK? If they're justified, why are they hiding evidence?
triceratops 6y ago
Which protestors killed people?
- miked85 6y ago
  Michael Reinoehl
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

Just to give some context: huge volumes of variants of these products were used this summer in Portland. We're talking enough to reduce visibility to 10 feet over several block areas. This was blocked by a court order, which was skirted by the local police department soliciting the irregular fed squad to do so instead. The feds were overstepping their jurisdiction in doing this outside of the very narrow perimeter of the ICE facility and fed court house, but in the current environment the proper legal channels to address this are willfully deaf. One of the more reprehensible tactics the police bureau used was to deliberately kettle and push protestors down residential streets, delivering massive amounts of gas as they did so. This resulted in children trapped in their homes unable to escape the gas as well. What happened in my town this summer should alarm everyone, no matter your political creed.

KittenInABox 6y ago
What do individuals even do when the proper legal channels are willfully deaf?
- gilrain 6y ago
  They use collective action to protest, and doing so they make themselves more powerful than any individual.
- kridsdale1 6y ago
  Historically, rise up in armed rebellion.
MengerSponge 6y ago
It doesn't alarm auth-right authoritarian bootlickers. What's alarming to the rest of us is just how many of our "friends" and families actually fall into that camp.
sershe 6y ago
Ok, let's burn some karma. This is a question of lesser of two evils, or ends justifying the means. Not everyone agrees with the far left (the faction doing most of the rioting); being from an ex-socialist country I quite literally, not exaggerating, think they are morally equivalent to nazis. I think the US constitution really needs a "self-protection" amendment that would remove the first amendment protection for an enumerated list of ideologies explicitly hostile to the rights that it gives (free speech itself, freedom of/from religion, due process, to some extent racial/gender equality/private property/gun rights, etc.), then make them a crime and throw anyone marching with a hammer and sickle (or swastika) in jail; but you don't need to go that far to think roughing up rioters is justified as a deterrent. Kinda like shooting a burglar in your house is a justifiable self-defense, although shooting a burglar who is running away is not.

tunesmith 6y ago

Completely detached from the more serious matters described in the article, I thought I had read that we should refer to they/them the same was we refer to "you". But this is the first time I've noticed this formulation: >[...] whose pronouns are they/them, [...] Simonis, who is also [...] I guess my brain had trained me to expect "who are" rather than "who is". But apparently "they is" is acceptable? Or was this a mistake in the article?

ysavir 6y ago
I think we're all figuring out the modernized rules for pronouns as we go. Nothing about it is written in stone. For my part, I think it's fine to say "they are" for a singular person, but "who" should stay singular.

asah 6y ago

Is this also an OSHA case for the law enforcement personnel assigned to the protests ?

powerslacker 6y ago

@minikites I didn't flag your post but this is clearly a politically charged and potentially biased article that has little to do with HN or its core demographic. Here's the relevant rule from the guidelines: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

grumio 6y ago
Using expertise and scientific tests on an unknown object to determine what it is and uncover a contemporary conspiracy? That gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

nan0 6y ago

From this article and a one a month back(0). Simonis seems to have some major bias against law enforcement. As they participated on one side of the protest (not as am independent watcher) and even got arrested at the protest. Regardless of that, what percentage of the gas canisters where HC? To say that the protesters where completely peaceful and didn't deserve anything is really dishonest. I am not saying that the officers were completely peaceful either. Straw man from the article made me question the intent of the study. “The degree to which law enforcement believes Black lives do not matter is shown by their willingness to use known toxic hazardous waste chemicals indiscriminately,” Simonis says. “Now I don’t go around the feds without a gas mask.” 0:https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/485705-390928-highly-toxic-smoke-grenades-deployed-at-portland-protests- https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/485705-390928-highly-t...

ManBlanket 6y ago

This has bothered me for a long time and the fact it still drags on blows my mind. Predominantly white protesters in Portland misappropriated protests over racial inequality for their own disphoric amalgamation of social issues. There's little agreement among them about the goal of the protests or even why they're protesting. I know many of those people. Many have no idea why they're there, it's just drama to them, something they can do in the face of the most socially regressive times of our generation. On the other side people see this, point and say, "See? Told you I was right about those people." Nobody seems to give a shit about issues racial minorities and poor face, in the same breath ravenously supporting covid policies and their unprecedented impacts on income and social inequality along mostly racial lines. I'm surprised they aren't chanting, "black lives are essential." This is not helpful for racial equality. It's not helpful for anybody except the psychopathic industry of military oppression of civilian populations. Of course they're walking all over our social contracts, the continued protests have opened the door for them. Disruption of systematic inequality is needed, but this ain't the way it's going to happen. As a privileged work-from-homer, white person, whatever, our first obligation is to listen to what racial minorities are saying to understand the nature their struggles. Otherwise you can tell yourself you're a virtuous champion of wokeness, but you're really just a part of the same problem.

feoren 6y ago
Did you just imply that it's racist to support face mask requirements and mandatory stay-at-home orders? Is it racist to support legislation against drunk driving? Against firing guns into the air? Against throwing objects out of cars and off overpasses?
- ManBlanket 6y ago
  Stay at home orders are selective. Focused primarily on industries and jobs where minorities overwhelmingly find themselves. School closures favor children from households that can afford a computer for each child; requiring a parent to stay home, namely a responsibility falling upon women who are dropping out of the workplace at an unprecedented rate. So what then happens to those households who don't have that privilege? Do you care? The people paying the cost of public health are children, women, poor, and minorities. Meanwhile I haven't given anything up, so it's very easy for people like us to sit here while earning our full income from home and say, "Yes, this makes sense. It is totally worth it." It's worth it to us because we aren't paying the cost. These stay at home orders and quarantines have overwhelmingly and profoundly impacted people who were already struggling without offering them a path forward. Rest assured the economic uncertainty from shut down was a catalyst behind the BLM protests. The people impacted by shut down are predominantly poor and minorities, and the fact we haven't considered how to share that burden before stabbing in the dark is what makes them racist. At the global level, malaria kills almost a million people every single year, mostly children under 4. There's no herd immunity and it has and will continue to happen for decades. The WHO anticipates due to new covid travel restrictions on malaria relief workers an additional 3 to 4 hundred thousand deaths due to malaria will occur in Sub Sahara Africa alone. Surely malaria is a pandemic that shadows covid by any measure, except the measure where it overwhelmingly affects poor black people. Meanwhile the second our society is faced with something which mostly kills old white people, the average age of which exceeds the average human lifespan, we're cancelling school and creating a generation of illiterate 2nd grade children while their parents are left with no way to feed them. So yeah the reaction to covid has been first and foremost selfish, and given the government is a historic institution of race, these orders are themselves the children of our racism.

sedachv 6y ago

How much zinc oxide do the hexachloroethane grenades release? Zinc oxide is extremely toxic and results in symptoms known as "metal fume fever." You only need a tiny amount of exposure - I once got sick from not wearing a respirator when doing a handful of quick spot welds on galvanized metal shelving (thought I could get away with it). All of the criminals involved in this deliberate toxic gassing should be on trial right now.

rv-de 6y ago

let me tell you what those people need - it's the clock work orange therapy with a Bill Burr twist. there you have your treatment ...