This Blog Could Terminate My DSL

Ars Technica reports on a change in the terms of service for AT&T broadband customers that gives the company the company to terminate service for anyone who “tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

Yes, it’s overbroad, overly vague, and therefore probably too difficult to enforce across the board. Nevertheless these terms give the company a good excuse if it wants to go after some overly critical blogger who also happens to be a customer. And, yes, I am an AT&T customer, so I wonder if some company hack will go through my archives of less-than-flattering comment about its former incarnation as SBC, or my critical words about its merger with BellSouth.

Nevertheless, as Free Press’ Ben Scott points out, this represents a basic abrogation of freedom of speech that must be addressed:

“Phone companies are supposed to deliver our messages, not censor them,” said Ben Scott, of Free Press. “If the phone company can’t tell you what to say on a phone call, then they shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say in a text message, an e-mail, or anywhere else. We can’t trust these corporate gatekeepers. Congress needs to step in immediately to safeguard free speech and the free flow of information.”

Dispatch from Oaxaca: Breaking the Communication Blockade

I received the following email from George Salzman yesterday:

Oaxaca, 3 May 2007
Friends,
I fully endorse this call for support of popular radio in Oaxaca from Tonee Mello, who initiated the Oaxaca Study-Action Group with me in December 2005. Here’s Tonee’s message:

Subject: [oaxacastudyactiongroup] APPEAL
From: Tonee Mello
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 17:02:55 -0700 (PDT)
To: oaxacastudyactiongroup@xxxxxxxxx.com

Mis Amigos,

Mid afternoon on May 1, Labor Day, students took over the radio station at the Autonomous University Benito Juarez of Oaxaca. They explained that they intended to give ample coverage to the labor day events, which included a march by the Popular Assembly Movement.

By seven o’clock that night, government supporters were already hard at work jamming the university signal. By 10:00 the students were no longer audible.

The fear of the government is that the public hear honest news, news of real events that affect the lives of people without money and power, in towns lacking any access to newspapers. Their only source of news is government controlled corporate television.

The only available remedy is community radio. Right now, young Oaxaqueños are working to put on the air as many community radio facilities as the communities can afford. The technical support project for them is completely Oaxaqueño in staff and muscle. It’s controlled and managed at the base, in a system of democratic participation. But the funding comes in part from people like you.

This is the moment to show Oaxaca communities that they are not alone in wanting access to the truth as it relates to them in their towns and villages.

Your donation, of any amount, will help to maintain the vital training and technical support provided by Servicios de Comunicación de Oaxaca .

If you want the address to send money, drop a line to Jean Rodriguez, wabob(at)earthlink.net

Good News: Army Subpoena of Journalist Dropped

Just saw this email from the National Radio Project that came in yesterday:

UPDATE! Journalist Subpoenas Dismissed!
Army prosecutors of Lt. Watada drop two charges
for speaking to the press

January 29, 2007

Two charges of “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman”
have been dropped by the Army-each of which carried a one year
possible prison sentence for vocal Iraq War objector Lt. Ehren
Watada. The two charges were based on interviews with independent
journalist Sarah Olson and Greg Kakesako of the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin. The Army dismissed the subpoenas of these
journalists who, if they had not testified against their source
were faced with felony contempt of court charges, which carried
a sentence of up to six months in prison.

More…
http://www.radioproject.org/watada/

I know I’ve been a bad indy blogger and I haven’t mentioned this important case here at all. But you can turn to John at DIYmedia who interviewed journalist Sarah Olson for the special NCMR January 12 edition of Media Minutes [MP3 link].

On the next radioshow: Update from Oaxaca

This evening I spoke again with Nancy Davies and George Salzman, two Americans living in Oaxaca, Mexico. They updated me on the situation there and I’ll play that interview on tomorrow’s radioshow, live on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, IL. That program will be available for download by Sunday at midnight.

George has been sending out periodic updates by email, and he’s given me permission to repost them here. After the jump you can read about the Nov. 2 attack by federal police on Radio Universidad, which is the last station broadcasting the voice of the popular movement, the APPO. Nancy has been filing reports for NarcoNews. Her latest is from Nov. 7 on the Communications War in Oaxaca.

Read more »

Bizzarro World: Police Raid Station In Effort To Save Host of Bad Cop, No Donut! Radio Program?

As Jake relays, it’s a bizarre situation for Ron Anicich, host and producer of the muckraking radio program, Bad Cop, No Donut:

On Thursday morning [May 25] a Toronto police SWAT team raided CKLN during my show, Bad Cop, No Donut! The station was on auto-pilot at the time because I was not well and was offered a ride to my front door by a friend and left about an hour before they arrived. CKLN has still not officially said a word to me about it.

I actually found out about it from what I pieced together from other ckln volunteers who had heard rumours but assumed I knew all about it. Many of them sent confusing emails like “I heard the cops really didn’t like their show this week.” By this morning i managed to get someone
from the station’s management who confirmed that this was true.

Apparently, the police say that someone listening to my show believed that someone at ckln was being attacked and called 9-1-1. If you listen to the show there is a segment where a recording is played of the police torturing a man in tennessee. This is obviously the segment in question. If you heard the show you could have noted a few things which would indicate to any person of average intelligence that there was no attack taking place at CKLN.

I’ve been a fan of Ron’s show for a while, and listening to it serves as a massive wake-up call as to how much police misconduct goes on every single week across the US and Canada. It’s just that nobody–besides Ron–really collates it all, so each incident seems like an isolated event. Bad Cop, No Donut‘s reportage paints an entirely different picture.

I plan to interview Ron late tonight for tomorrow’s radioshow. I’ll ask Ron about the police incident, though he’s already told me that he doesn’t have a lot of facts yet. We’ll also talk about the show and its purpose, as well.

Jake interviewed Ron on last week’s edition of Lying Media Bastards. It’s a much longer interview than I can do on my half-hour program, and they cover a lot of interesting territory about the nature of policing.

One the US’s Greatest Publishers Going Out of Business

I’ve always been a fan of Loompanics Unlimited, the publisher of such great titles as The Outlaw’s Bible and Understanding U.S. Identity Documents. Before there was a public internet, Loompanics made good on the notion that information wants to be free, publishing information and ideas that no other book publisher would touch.

Loompanics is perhaps the only publisher in business for thirty years that has a disclaimer like, “Loompanics Unlimited cannot be responsible for any shipment of books seized by any government body. ”

So I am sad to hear that Loompanics will be going out of business. Although publisher Mike Hoy says that sales have slowed, his main motivation to shutter this labor of love is retirement. Right now he’s having a half-off everything going-out-of-business sale — so stock up.

As I mentioned before, I was first exposed to Loompanics buying a copy of the aforementioned Outlaw’s Bible at a short-lived Anarchist bookstore in Paterson, NJ around 1991. It was not the sort of thing a suburban Jersey kid could easily get his hands on back then, and I was glad Loompanics existed.

It would be great if Hoy could release the Loompanics catalog into the public domain, though I suppose that would take getting the permission of all his authors, many of whom write under pseudonyms. Alternately, perhaps someone could buy the rights from Hoy to either keep the books in print, publish them with an on-demand system, or make them available electronically.

Photographer Arrested for Taking Pics of Cheney’s Hotel

According to 2600,

“An amateur photographer named Mike Maginnis was arrested on Tuesday in his home city of Denver – for simply taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Cheney was residing. Maginnis told his story on Wednesday’s edition of [the radio program] Off The Hook.

Maginnis’s morning commute took him past the Adams Mark Hotel on Court Place. Maginnis, who says he always carried his camera wherever he went, snapped about 30 pictures of the hotel and the surrounding area – which included Denver police, Army rangers, and rooftop snipers. Maginnis, who works in information technology, frequently photographs such subjects as corporate buildings and communications equipment. “

More Gov’t Attacks on Indymedia — Greece

According to a feature on Global Indymedia, the Athens IMC has been targeted by the Greek gov’t in its “anti-terrorist summer,” a program its using to persecute leftist political activists:

By the end of September, Indymedia Athens was among the groups targetted in the witch-hunt climate, with establishment journalists contending that the “site is supporting the terrorists; therefore it must be shut down and those responsible for it arrested.” Soon later, there was an attempt by the head of the Department of Cyber Crime of the Greek national police to infiltrate the editorial group of the Athens IMC. Athens Indymedia, however, has also seen support in favor of freedom of speech.

The Athens IMC editorial collective has issued a statement, and has further coverage in English.

more on DC harrassment of journalists…

Matt has a few more articles and resources on this story blogged at machination.

Reporters of All Stripes Detained by DC Cops; Corp. Press Just Sees an Inconvenience

Matt of machination.org has alerted me to a couple of stories on the bunches of journalists, both indy and mainstream, that were rounded up by overzealous DC cops last Friday at the start of the IMF/WB protests.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reports that

“The count of journalists arrested late last week during the IMF-World Bank protests in downtown Washington, D.C., climbed to at least 17 as more reports came to light…. Two washingtonpost.com reporters and a United Press International intern were arrested, detained and released without charges in a matter of hours. Student journalists and independent media were detained anywhere from 10 to 27 hours, slapped with a $50 ‘post and forfeit’ fee for early release and returned to their respective newsrooms with a criminal charge of failing to obey the police.”

DC IMC held a press conference on Monday and reports evidence of much more blatant police targeting of those who would reveal their abuses:

“Two DC IMC journalists, Robin Bell and Matthew Bradley, were arrested while trying to cover Friday’s actions. Video evidence proves that the police blatantly targeted them for arrest.

‘I was specifically targeted by police officers for attempting to capture the unfolding events on video. When the police set up the parameter, I immediately identified myself as a journalist and attempted to join other journalists across police lines,’ Bell, a videographer with MPD press credentials, said. Bell’s request was denied. Furthermore, Police Chief Charles Ramsey authorized the removal of Bell’s media credentials by Public Information Officer Bryson during Bell’s arrest.”

Two Washington Post reporters described their experience being arrested in a piece entitled, “The View From the Other Side,” from last Friday’s edition of the paper. Although they note their rough treatment and noncommunication from DC police —

“Despite having identified ourselves as news reporters several times, we were grabbed forcefully by police officers in riot gear, handcuffed and led to Metrobus No. 8771 with 34 protesters and an indignant United Press International reporter. Aboard the bus, no charges were ever announced, and we watched as other journalists were allowed to leave.”

–absent from their account is any real sense of indignation or that the police round-up actually represented any sort of injustice. Perhaps that’s because

“Our wait would be much shorter than the others who were being detained. Our staff worked with police officials to clear up the matter and we were released without any charges at 1 p.m. “

So, rather than an assault on press freedom, the Post journalists seemed to have just experienced a little bureaucratic hassle that was easily resolved by the Post staff. Of course, independent, non-professional journalists are not afforded such luxuries or courtesies.

Should we be surprised that the mainstream press should look uncritically at a few of their reporters being arrested willy-nilly? Why, in the end they got released and everything was just dandy, right?

Looking at these arrests as anything other than an inconvenience would require that the corporate press admit the police had something more sinister in mind. The likes of the Post would have to admit that the police working the streets that day didn’t want reporters actively watching their actions from outside the closely guarded press areas. And then they’d have to ask the hard question,

“Gee, why in the world would the police be afraid to have reporters observing their behavior in controlling and rounding up protestors?”

They don’t want to ask that question, because they really don’t want to know the answer. Because when it all gets added together, the Post, the UPI and other mainstream media need the police all too much to protect their corporate positions of power. Even just at an event like the IMF and World Bank meetings, the corporate press rely on the cops to let their credentialed reporters in and keep the rabble out, never mind that their corporate bosses are also on the inside wheeling and dealing with the world’s economic elite.

Don’t doubt one bit that the corporate bosses aren’t willing to sacrifice a few young infantry to the cops for a few hours in exchange for getting to carry on in the guarded meeting rooms and mixers.

To question police force in the US is to question the very concept of keeping most of the population out of the bombshelters of power, even if that means beating them back with all the force they can muster. What corporate boss or minion would benefit from that?