The White House has a a 103 page operations manual, The Presidential Advance Manual, on how to silence or quarantine dissent at Presidential speech sites.
The document also recommends drowning out protesters or blocking their signs by using what it calls "rally squads." It states: "These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators. The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site."
The document offered advice on how to recruit members for such squads: "The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities."
Hence my concern with "civility" and accepting the "frame" provided to us by the Main Stream Media and the Pundits in the Think Tanks. The "New Normal" is not acceptable. Blogging is one the few venues where our voices can be heard without being blocked, drowned out, quarantined or framed out. Let's not censor ourselves simply to make life easy for "rally squads" and our Patriotic Leaders on the Hustings. It is a Free Country after all. Or, did I fail to read the Presidential Directive suspending the Bill of Rights in Time of War?
And if Bush is not the decider, but the placeholder, and Iraq is not the point, but the distraction, the nice touches in the manual become ever so much more ingenious.
Posted by: tom | July 17, 2007 at 10:06 AM
Speaking of blocked. I understand that the video I just linked to ad WB has been blocked from being broadcast in the US. (It is a BBC documentary, hardly a radical source.)
Posted by: Gerry | July 17, 2007 at 10:52 AM
Last call. Closing time.
Posted by: Phil | July 17, 2007 at 06:58 PM
My Daddy beat me up and my Mother too, but he was a good man, except when he was drunk and abusive. I can't expect gummint to be any better. I kind of have learned to love an abuser. Feels like home, if you know what I mean. I am happy to serve my country beating up liberals, as a Rally Master. I got damn sick of them hippies coming South to tell me how to live. You don't like living under an Oppresor? What the hell do you Yankees think Reconstruction was and is? About time you learned to serve the men in boots. Best to keep your mouth shut or you will be hanging from the nearest tree, all nice and legal like. We are the Sheriff in this town, Tom. And we don't like pointy heads with an attitude. We will see how brave you are, big talker, when we show you the bloody chains.
I got to tell you this blog pisses me off. All the little liberals talking about social change. They are scared of their own shadows. Society has already changed, you morons. We are in charge. Get used to it.
We are standing proud. We call the shots. We rally to those in power and shout the name of God. And you can slink around like a beaten dog. You don't like it? You are going to like it a lot less, when my man declares Martial Law and makes me dragnet, judge, jury and executioner.
For now, Tom, keep it civil, ok? You don't want to piss me off.
Posted by: Captain Blowtorch | July 17, 2007 at 07:08 PM
As civilly as I can muster, Cap'n:
Somebody seems to be pissed off.
Posted by: tom | July 18, 2007 at 10:21 AM
Tom, is that the link you meant to post? I don't get anything? It takes me to a page that required a login and I even created one, and then found myself at a "blockedblog" page. Very strange.
Posted by: Gerry | July 18, 2007 at 10:38 AM
I'll try to put the picture where all that isn't necessary, Gerry, but I think you got to the image. It is a picture of what I find today when I try to post to blogger. Since I've not spammed anyone nor been accepting spam comments (comments are moderated), I'm unclear why I've been singled out for this honor. Blogger (Google) says they're trying to distinguish between actual humans and blogbots, so I had to enter a code and send it off. Of course if Google were not itself a giant bot, they might have been able to tell I'm actually not like them. There's no other communicative recourse, so I'm waiting to hear back from a human at Google.
approaching Kafkan status...
Posted by: tom | July 18, 2007 at 11:07 AM
This link should take you directly to the same image, only fuzzier. Click to enlarge.
Posted by: tom | July 18, 2007 at 11:21 AM
Tom and Jerry ;-) .. oops I meant Gerry.
I wonder if the Blogger blog to which you refer has been "flagged" by a fraternity member or a local athletic organization ?
Remember the Blogger "Flag this" capability ? There's a cure for every form of rowdiness, it seems (actually, I have no idea if my suggestion has any merit in deed, I just remember thinking of the possibilities).
Posted by: JJ Commoner | July 18, 2007 at 11:50 AM
Yes, that's very likely - here's what comes up on the link offered with the block:
Your blog is locked
Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
We received your unlock request on July 18, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
I'd love to learn more about these spam detecting robots...
Posted by: tom | July 18, 2007 at 01:54 PM
I wonder if it was a robot or not ? It could be that someone (sure, I'll call some people spammers) didn't like something you said. and flagged the site, no ?
Maybe it's the frequent use of the term USian ?
;-)
Posted by: JJ Commoner | July 18, 2007 at 02:49 PM
Google's experience in China is serving them well?
Posted by: Phil | July 18, 2007 at 03:03 PM
For the record, the end of this adventure:
Hello,
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
It does make me wonder what sort of pressures Google is under, what sort they allow themselves to be responsive to, and how they can tell a Republican from a robot under any laboratory conditions you name.
Posted by: tom | July 18, 2007 at 07:38 PM
how they can tell a Republican from a robot under any laboratory conditions you name
Thanks, it's nice to laugh once in a while.
Posted by: Gerry | July 18, 2007 at 07:57 PM
Turing Machine or Fox News Viewer? We report. You decide.
Posted by: Phil | July 18, 2007 at 09:13 PM
Phil:
have you read Larry James' recent blog, "Are you kidding me, Mr. President?"
http://larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-you-kidding-me-mr-president.html
Posted by: Jeremy Gregg | July 19, 2007 at 09:07 PM
Thanks, Jeremy, blogged it.
Posted by: Phil | July 19, 2007 at 09:17 PM