Part 1: The Dancer. It's called the Dancer. La Bailarina. Like some crazed Stravinsky diva, the Condor GL 310 gas grenade bobs and weaves when it lands, moving in random patterns, spewing noxious gas into the air. Its jittery swirls are specifically designed to cover large areas with gas, but also–critically–to prevent protestors from grabbing the thing and chucking it back at the police.
The 202, you see, is a long-range gas grenade–also quite popular–but the 202 lands and just lies there. It can be shot from further away (over distant barricades, for example, or down into metro stations, or into second-floor windows or terraces or hospitals but it gives no chase.
The 310 dances.
Just weeks after Turkey’s protest movement erupted, Brazilians have taken to the streets en masse. In a show of solidarity, Turks waved the Brazilian flag in Taksim square. The Condor company happens to be based in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, and is one of the two major suppliers of “non-lethal technologies” to both the Turkish and Brazilian governments. In a kind of bizarre, capitalist love triangle of tear gas, popular uprising and government repression, Turkey and Brazil have never been closer.
From "The Dance and the Dancer: At Taksim Square", a rather poetic piece from scientist Cat Bohannon, holidaying in İstanbul at the time of the Gezi Park protests. (Part 1 with, hopefully, part 2 to follow.)
