Freedom Cage

You can't get there from here...

Denver - My first task today was to locate the DNC approved "free speech" zone, a 47,000-square foot zone of parking lot A, enclosed with a double row of 10 foot metal barricades some 300 yards from the Democratic convention, out of site and definitely not on the minds of the Democratic delegates.
I set out from the Civic Center bus station and took the free and usually frequent shuttles up the 16th Street mall to Market Street. It's one thing to encounter the ubiquitous Starbucks or McDonald's. But I didn't expect to run into Wackenhut, the same private security firm that patrols PDX and even provided security at Obama's huge Waterfront rally.

For the credentialed, it was just a few block's walk to the gates separating the insiders from the outcasts. I made it only so far until I was directed to the freedom cage. How to get there? A long... walk.

The security zone walling in the DNC encompassed several blocks to the south of the Pepsi Center. I tried to continue my quest with public transportation (rumor had it that the cage was best accessible from the the commuter train stop at Invesco field. But as it turned out, only Convention goers were allowed so far. All others were kicked off stops farther away.

In the end I didn't make it. Today, the Democratic establishment won out. Free speech was essentially thwarted.

As convention begins, no protesters in 'Freedom Cage'
Nick Juliano
Published: Monday August 25, 2008

DENVER -- Fears of confrontation between police and protesters outside the Democratic National Convention seem to have been overblown. As Democrats gathered for their convention's first night at the Pepsi Center, there were no protesters to be seen in the fenced in free speech zone a few hundred yards away. [More...]

1933-1984

Hey! 1933 called. Adolf wants his brown shirts back.

Chris Weigant over at the Huffington Post has leaked portions of a secret White House manual on crowd control. Here's a sample:

The formation of "rally squads" is a common way to prepare for demonstrators by countering their message. This tactic involves utilizing small groups of volunteers to spread favorable messages using large hand held signs, placards, or perhaps a long sheet banner, and placing them in strategic areas around the site.

This isn't fiction. It's a page out of the Nazis' play book, where the popular slogan among Hitler's bands of brown shirted thugs proclaimed, “Terror must be broken by terror.”

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 [sic] (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site. The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/ sororities.

The Brown Shirts were fond of saying, “all opposition must be stamped into the ground.” Is it really that far of a leap from "Free Speech Zones" (those corrals of demonstrators kept out of sight from Bush which shred the First Amendment) to the gulag of Guantanamo where POW's are being held without any rights at all.

Hermann Göring, commander of Hitler's Luftwaffe, made the following admission in the course of his trial in Nuremberg:

“Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Tell me if you've seen this movie already.