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DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

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Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#121

Post by comex »

ohazi wrote: post #117
matt_the_bass wrote: post #10

There are legitimate (IMHO) uses for these. For example, a crowd panics and people start getting trampled. An LRAD can be used to communicate directions quickly at long range to help stop the panic. The report sounds like the police were doing what they should be doing. Have the organizers of that March complained about police actions or disputed the report? If not, then I would tend to believe the report. If correct…

You're making the same mistake that everyone in this thread is afraid the cops are also making. A sound cannon is not a loudspeaker, it's a weapon. If you want a loudspeaker, get a loudspeaker. This thing is designed to inflict actual, serious, permanent damage to people mechanically, from a large standoff distance. It's used to paralize combatants approaching a convoy. It shouldn't be used against crowds at home.

If you look at LRAD's product guide [1], they primarily describe their devices as being for "communication", not as a weapon. Now, they apparently can also output "deterrent tones", which are potentially dangerous - and I wouldn't be surprised if the product guide 'sugarcoats' things by focusing on non-offensive use cases. But it seems like a leap to claim that it's incapable of being used safely as a loudspeaker (which seems to have been the police's intent in the DC march).

[1] https://www.lradx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LRAD-Produc...

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#122

Post by totalZero »

djsumdog wrote: post #35
sidcool wrote: post #18

America's becoming the scary police state we all despise. And with good tech.

becoming? It's been this way for a very long time. Very few major media outlets cover the Democrat/Republican National Conventions, but you can watch videos online of the protests from past years going back quite a bit. Rage Against the Machine use to do protests at both the DNC and RNC which I thought was hilarious. It's very common for protesters to be smoke bombed, herded, arrested and detained. There are several…

> Anderson Cooper caught in front of a green screen

source?

> CNN Kosovo videos from the mid 90s being filmed in front of a blue screen

source?

EDIT: the second one appears to have been debunked (was the Gulf War, not Kosovo years later). wasn't able to find any evidence of the first one.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22170/did-cnn-f...

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-cnns-fake-news-broadcasts-...

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#123

Post by wallace_f »

root_axis wrote: post #107
wallace_f wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the primary abuses of the plutocracy in the States (ie War Complex, Wall Street & Central Bankkng, psrticulsr kinds of constitutional abuses) there is little difference. For example, Goldman Sachs wins with unelected powerful positions after every election(1). Obama was anti war and said he would protect whistle blowers, but prosecuted more whistle blowers than any president in history, and dropped ove…

> You can't tell me any rhetoric coming from our last presidents has much of anything to do with what really matters in the world Without delving into the subjective can of worms that underpins "what really matters in the world", none of what you said refutes the fact that it is still rational to make choices since those choices have consequences that matter to citizens. There are other things going on in the world b…

Just to make it abundantly clear, by "what matters" I'm referring to the topics I addressed in my post such as (1) who gets killed? (2) who does the killing? (3) who ends up with the money? (4) who has constitutional rights?

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#124

Post by peak_body_yo »

rectang wrote: post #54
Sephr wrote: post #17

High power directed ultrasound can potentially cause brain damage from induced mechanical strain in brain tissue. I feel like parametric ultrasonic speakers should be more stringently regulated before every single police department starts using them as if they were regular loudspeakers. I support requiring something akin to an amateur radio license to operate high powered parametric ultrasonic speakers.

> brain damage Surely that's a feature, not a bug, when the police have to deal with civil rights protesters. Recall the dogs, batons, and water cannons of the south.

Isn't mental instability positively correlated with antisocial, disruptive behavior? I'd imagine that they want well behaved protesters.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#125

Post by vertex-four »

clort wrote: post #114
emodendroket wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're given a choice of two candidates and neither of them represent your interests, and this happens time after time, I think it's fair to question the efficacy of the tack you're proposing.

In this situation, another person has to put themselves forward as a candidate. The failure of the society is when nobody else does.

Then you run into the systemic failures of the current political and electoral systems in the US (and some other countries with electoral systems dating back to a similar period) - that voting for a third-party candidate is to throw away your vote for the most acceptable of the two "provided" candidates, and practically guarantee that the least acceptable wins due to the divide in votes.

There are, of course, a variety of electoral systems that allow and encourage third-party candidates to have a chance, but it's very, very hard to change an electoral system that got everyone in the political system where they are, to one which provides them new competition. See parallels with regulatory capture.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#126

Post by pjc50 »

handelaar wrote: post #23
jstanley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If police are unable to control the crowd, at what point is that simply because the crowd is so large that the police should be unable to control them? If the DDR had this sort of technology, would the Berlin wall still be standing? And, if so, would that be a good thing?

As someone who used to organise large demonstrations in London for CND [a UK anti-nuclear org] a long time ago -- there is no point that the crowd is ever so large that a combination of the organasition itself with the police where the crowd "should" be unable to control it. In fact when you're putting together a demo in London you meet the Met police and meeting that requirement is one of the things you discuss with…

Interesting. The Met vs. crowds seems to have a varied history; I ended up next to the famous May Day 2001 protest where people were "kettled" in Oxford Circus for 8 hours, entirely by accident.

I was between jobs and had gone to the shops on Oxford Street, noting a commotion and went to have a look. I then noticed that police lines were forming loosely around me, and decided that I needed to be behind them quickly. Very much the right decision. A little later I was looking at a completely deserted Regent Street (unthinkable given how busy it is normally), chatting to the only other bystander. He was a rightwinger's caricature of a "liberal elite"; an English lecturer at a polytechnic dressed in a red corduroy suit. We discussed Marxism. It seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#127

Post by pjc50 »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
djsumdog wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

becoming? It's been this way for a very long time. Very few major media outlets cover the Democrat/Republican National Conventions, but you can watch videos online of the protests from past years going back quite a bit. Rage Against the Machine use to do protests at both the DNC and RNC which I thought was hilarious. It's very common for protesters to be smoke bombed, herded, arrested and detained. There are several…

Little known fact: 1984 is based on WW2 and immediate post-war Britain. Orwell was a propaganda correspondent for the BBC; his wife worked for the Censorship Department. 1984 was based on his experiences then, and the disillusionment of the Cold War immediately following WW2. He had initially intended to title it 1948 . Actually, this is not that little-known: it's in the Wikipedia page for George Orwell and easily a…

Orwell is an interesting figure; while a solid left-winger all his life, his experience in the Spanish Civil War left him with an entirely justified fear and hatred of Stalinism. 1984 and Animal Farm are about this, both allegories for the crimes of Stalin. 1984 was a fairly straightforward extrapolation of trends he could see back then. All the little details of the dystopia can be traced back to actual events under Stalin or Mao.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#128

Post by louithethrid »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #109
wallace_f wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, one of the remaining only ways "doing the right thing" ever gets done in the States these days. Why can countries like South Korea, Taiwan or Japan provide public services like roads, internet infrastructure, police and healthcare at an incredibly small fraction of the cost that is lightyeaes ahead in quality and competency (for the 99%)?

These countries all have at least 10x the population density of the US. I'm not sure about healthcare, but the rest of your list gets cheaper as population density increases.

Fine, we are talking about the trhee main urban centers of the US here - not the whole country. Now that this strawman is out of the way- are we allowed to continue?

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#129

Post by louithethrid »

code_duck wrote: post #57
mc32 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's suppose Kim, Jung-un has a problem with people crossing over into SK. Do you think he'll use less than lethal weapons, or do you think he'll go for the assault rifles? Parent Post implied that had the DDR had these sonic weapons the Berlin Wall would not have fallen... as if The DDR would not have had the willingness to put a stop to it if they wanted to. What happened is they announced publicly that they had a…

I think that the reason the DDR did that was because of their power was already slipping. If they massacred a lot of citizens, they would probably have a revolution on their hands… They practically already did. It’s a difficult comparison to North Korea because the regime is not in that situation. The situation is more nuanced than that. I elaborated on possible motivations for using nonlethal force earlier... In the…

I find it fascinating that in North-Korea, even though they where starving, the system itself did not deteriorate. To be honest, the moment my life is slowly ending, due to missing calories- the politics of survival should kick in and vote for freedom (aka food) with theire feet.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#130

Post by Ao7bei3s »

mc32 wrote: post #13
jstanley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If police are unable to control the crowd, at what point is that simply because the crowd is so large that the police should be unable to control them? If the DDR had this sort of technology, would the Berlin wall still be standing? And, if so, would that be a good thing?

The DDR "let" people cross the wall. If they had not wanted to allow the people to cross, they would not have let them cross. I mean, it's not like they didn't have storm rifles or were unwilling to fire upon civilians. That is to say, they had more powerful weapons and were willing to use them. They made a choice to let people cross. So it was only after the spokesperson for the Berlin Communist Party announced they…

Quite the opposite, actually - the announcement was by accident, and the police at the border weren't informed. They caved to the sheer mass of people, unintentionally organized by the party.

It is not clear that if a similar number of people had been organized in another way, the wall would not have fallen.

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