Man Arrested After Video Threat (at OWS)

Source: NYT

A man who said he planned to firebomb Macy’s was arrested on Wednesday on charges of making terrorist threats, after a video of remarks he had made at an Occupy Wall Street protest in Manhattan surfaced online.

“We had somebody who identified a specific location for firebombing with easily obtainable means,” said Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the New York Police Department. Fire marshals were involved in the investigation.

In the video, which the police showed at a briefing, the man, Nkrumah Tinsley, 29, spoke Tuesday outside Zuccotti Park and referred to Thursday, which protest organizers have planned as a day of demonstration. He said, “In a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/nyregion/man-arrested-after-video-surfaces-of-macys-bomb-threat.html

Agent provocateur implies the person is working for or sympathetic to the other side in order to purposely discredit the group or incite others to commit actions that bring discredit.

Some bad actors are just bad actors. The guy in this video previously was arrested for getting into a scuffle with police and is awaiting a hearing on that charge. Is it so difficult to believe that the OWS movement might attract a few revolutionaries of the "molotov cocktail" variety?

and are functionally, DE FACTO agent provocateurs.

What's going on inside their little heads is entirely moot.

Who decides how much lawbreaking is okay? All non-violent lawbreaking okay? Some, then which and by what criteria?

"criteria":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

Good to have him out of there. Violence is not reflective of compassion and preserving life from any group or person.

Working people in the store would have been hurt. Macy's is a big target, but isn't known for taking people's homes and denying them jobs, so it's like breaking shiny things, calling that revolution.

It's the kind of action that makes people support the status quo which is hurting so many people and the environment.

People have been invigorated and inspired by the inclusiveness and peacefulness of OWS overall, the respect they've shown for those who need to know they matter, that they are part of something greater than their own struggles. They've not even disrespected TPTB; they've just demanded fairness, and if not from them, they are demonstrating how to create it themselves with GA's.

Threatening violence doesn't fit the tenor of the movement, shunts the energy away from the purpose. If not an AP, he was self-absorbed and feeding his own ego, a useless act.

That, or an agent provocateur. Real Occupiers don't advocate violence.

You are using a logical fallacy to rationalize.

The stated aim of the movement is to 'peaceably' effect change. Anyone who advocates violence is therefore not a part of the movement regardless of ideals.

Needs to buy a vowel.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

That's a unique theory, there. Arson is inherently extremely dangerous to human life.

You have the right to speak your opinion, but other people have the right to reply that if this becomes common, OWS will be massively discredited in the minds of the 99%.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Particularly of a building like Macy's which could have thousands of people within it.

So this may just be provocateur or an anarchist but what saying that you're going to firebomb an inhabited structure is an act of violence.

The First Amendment does have its' limitations, ie: threatening to kill the President and to some degree most anybody, you can be indicted for falsely yelling "fire!" in a theater as people can be hurt from the panic.

Make no mistake about it firebombing is a violent act, people can die from fire whether it be a night-guard, the firemen sent to extinguish it or any other number of people in the vicinity.

This man proposed a violent act against a specific target and if a weak minded individual acts on it, the planter of the seed is as guilty as the harvester.

would be inbounds and okay dokey with you if that's what OWS collectively decided to do?

...I would venture to say. Security, inventory activity, cleaning crews, restocking and tidying up merchandise, etc.