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The White House Crowd Control Manual
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 23, 2007 08:02 AM
from the sliencing-free-speech-silently dept.
from the sliencing-free-speech-silently dept.
quizzicus writes "The Washington Post writes today about a sensitive White House document detailing how to screen for, silence, and remove protesters who show up at the President's public appearances. Obtained by an ACLU subpoena in the Rank v. Jenkins case, the Presidential Advance Manual (PDF) is dated October 2002. It lays out strategies such as searching audience members at the door for hidden protest material, strategically placing 'rally squads' throughout the crowd to intercept and shout down hecklers, and forcefully removing dissenters who cannot be squelched. The manual advises, however, that staff should 'decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.'"
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The Slashdot Crowd Control Manual: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Slashdot Crowd Control Manual: (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Out of sight == Out of mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only does Chimpy not see it, but no one else sees it, either, thanks to the complicit corporate media.
If this was a Peter Sellers movie, it would be hilarious. Unfortunately, it's not a movie. We're actually living this.
What's really entertaining (Score:5, Interesting)
Democrats regularly strip off shirts and try to confiscate signs that are critical of them at their rallies. Try bringing a counter-sign to one of the Muslim KKK / "Pro-Palestine" events sometime, and see what happens. If you're lucky, they'll just try to cover your sign with theirs or grab it from your hands and rip it up and stomp on it; if you're not, you'll be physically attacked for being a "Jew."
I took a sign asking Obama what he thinks of the racial supremacist [blogspot.com] views of his "church": when I held it up at his rally, it lasted about 30 seconds, then one of his "staffers" pointed at me and sent cronies into the crowd to take it from my hands and rip it up. Seems they don't want the truth about him pointed out.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
if(exists(democracts.spurious_similarity(accusatio n_of_fascism))){
play_up(democracts.spurious_similarity(accusation_ of_fascism));
}
else{
play_down(accusation_of_fascism);
}
if(exists(democrats.main_candidate.opportunity_to_ discredit(accusation_of_fascism))){
democrats.main_candidate.discredit(accusation_of_f ascism)
}
fox_news.discredit_democrats();
}
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or just beat the ever living crap out of them. [ijot.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:What's really entertaining (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:What's really entertaining (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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And even though it might be bad now, the real question is why is it bad now. Was it bad then and we just accepted it because the democrats were the ones doing it whic
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I don't see how they compare. In relatively recent history, the Mormon church tried to establish a theocratic state, and even executed non-mormons who entered their state (in front of their children). Only a few decades ago, the head of the Mormon church said that black people were representatives or Satan.
Obama's church has some "us vs them" and otherwise regressive philosophies, bu
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After reading through the manual my opinion is: (Score:5, Funny)
[redacted]
I think I should finish this long post by summarizing my opinion about the [redacted] manual which is: [redacted].
Re:After reading through the manual my opinion is: (Score:5, Insightful)
You gotta wonder...if an open admission that this administration is actively working to squelch the First Amendment rights of American citizens wasn't redacted, what was?
Parent
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What the Court said could be redacted, most likely to ensure operations of the Secret Service that safeguard the President are keep off
You should remember that in cases like this, the Secret Service exerts a great deal of influence. Their job is to protect the President and First Family (and political candidates in the right context).
Re:After reading through the manual my opinion is: (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:After reading through the manual my opinion is: (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it IS the cast that about 90% of the document is redacted, it is merely very, very sad.
Parent
Tagged Republican? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Tagged Republican? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech zones, cant wear shirts, hire people to protect against the protesters, make people remove shirts to see if they have anything underneath someone might not like, etc. goes against what this country was founded on.
You can't be president and say you are protecting free speech at a rally, when at the rally you have people arrested for wearing a shirt with a red cross through your name.
And now I have to type this paragraph because of all the bush trolls. When kerry did the plus unbutton your shirt to make sure you don't have another bad shirt underneath disgusted me just as much.
Parent
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Elections will now boil down to : which lobbying group behind the candidates do I like/hate the least. lol
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Then instead of pointing the finger at the other side when it DOES happen.. you should be lining up with your fellow Americans and decry the practice in whole. Otherwise it just makes you look like you are defending the practice of one side because "the other side does it too".
Then when democrats do the same thing you can decry that as well and not look a hypocrite.
This goes for all partisan bickering.. we need to point out EVERY infraction no
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If you do, FOAD.
Re:Tagged Republican? (Score:5, Informative)
The But But! corollary: In any discussion of traditional political malfeasance, someone will find a similar but much less egregious offense by someone slightly less conservative and claim equivalence, and therefore, that no offense has taken place at all.
Feel free to add "Democrats" to a gun-grab or MPAA pandering, but the Republicans own this kind of shit, and that ain't ever going to change.
Parent
nothing new here (Score:2, Informative)
I'd have written the manual, too... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just another inflammatory, irrelevant article from kdawson. This article belongs in politics, not YRO.
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And I think a Democrat president, if he we smart, would have a manual on it, too. What is the big deal?
Just another inflammatory, irrelevant article from kdawson. This article belongs in politics, not YRO.
You are right, he (or she) would. It would shock me to find out that every President since LBJ DIDN'T have a manual or an equivalent set of written orders. After the numerous sets of really negative (from the seated administrations point of view) protesters showing up in a crowd since the Vietnam era.
And you're right, it does belong in a different category that Your Rights ONLINE. It don't think it's inflammatory or irrelevant, though (except that it's not relevant to online rights).
As to what the big
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White House CC (Score:5, Funny)
OK. Sap "Circle". "Star" gets sheeped, "Square" gets banished, "Diamond" gets freeze trapped, and we all DPS down "Skull".
Got it?
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How low can you go? (Score:2, Insightful)
With the President's approval ratings in the 30% area, why would they even care about negative publicity? Might as well throw some of those pesky dissenters into Gitmo while you're at it. Hell, start sending kids to war. I'm pretty sure the last 30% of the nation is so brain dead they would probably be behind anything the president said.
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Not really. The GOP have unwavering people supporting them, and it's unlikely, at this point, that anything would make them change their minds.
Whereas the low ratings of Congress are due entirely to the fact that Democratic voters do not view the Democrats in Congress anything but scorn, because said Democrats are apparently fucking morons who don't have the slightest idea how to end a war. (Hint: You all could literally stay at home 24 hours a day and the war would end because it would become unfunded. Yo
Re:How low can you go? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the problem isn't a military one, a military solution alone will not work. Military action is certainly justified as part of the overall strategy (e.g. in Afghanistan, now sadly neglected) but can't be the only means we use. The ultimate solution is to greatly reduce our dependency on oil.
This doesn't have to involve austerity programs and such. We could go nuclear - not just nuclear power plants, but nuclear rockets - e.g. this one [nuclearspace.com] (the good tech stuff starts in section 7). With that, we can lift a thousand tons into orbit in a completely reusable and non-polluting craft that even eliminates not only its own nuclear waste but also waste generated on Earth. Using those, we can put up solar-power satellites that send their energy down to Earth in the form of microwaves. (If you've ever played Sim City... forget it. It doesn't work that way, it can be done very safely with large margins of safety. See here [wikipedia.org] especially the section on "Safety".) With the lower launch costs of nuclear rockets, we can make the U.S. a net energy exporter, in time. This has plenty of military applications, as well. Space is the ultimate "high ground" and a dominant U.S. presence in space should have obvious strategic benefits.
Of course, at the same time we can work on more efficient techniques for utilizing the oil we do need. Cars with better mileage (improving our overall fuel efficiency by less than 3mpg would eliminate our need to import oil from the Persian Gulf), more efficient means of generating and using fertilizers, a bit of thought about how we use plastics, etc. Even better, we can sell the technology we develop to other parts of the world - further reducing world demand for oil, driving the price down. The lower the price of oil, the less funds the Islamist fanatics have to work with, and the less of a threat they pose. (Reducing oil prices also impacts people like Hugo Chavez, as a bonus.)
(Not that, realistically, Islamist fanatics pose an existential threat to the United States. They can harm us, certainly, and even cause a relatively large amount of damage, sometimes. That's not the same thing as posing a threat to the existence of the United States. For perspective, more than 30 times as many American citizens have died in traffic accidents since 9/11 than have died in 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined.)
Parent
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Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes.
Easy decision.
In Bushunist America (Score:3, Funny)
tag: redacted (Score:3, Informative)
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I feel un-enlightened.
Only ~1% of manual released! (Score:2)
Was this a
best bit: USA! USA! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure which part I find less wholesome, the almost self-parodying use of yelling "USA! USA! USA!" or the idea of importing the local football team and/or frat to act as rhetorical muscle.
Before we get into a hissy fit about this.. (Score:4, Informative)
Bush Appologist Alert! (Score:2)
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Valid general point, except that one of the explicit criteria for removing or minimizing the protesters is whether the media can see or hear them.
As far as protesters mixing with the loyal, their instructions are to send loyalists out to the protesters in order to drown them out. So this policy isn't about safety in a mixed environment. Plus, no matter how disruptive the protesters