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.

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Sad News from Oaxaca

I’ve been mostly offline (from the web, at least) for days now, so I apologize for not posting this earlier. Many readers well-plugged-in to the Indymedia scene will likely know already, but I must note the murder of NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will by Mexican military forces in Oaxaca last Friday. This happened as mexican federal police continued a violent crackdown on the peoples’ popular movement (APPO) that has brought the center of Oaxaca City to a standstill.

What can I say except that it makes me very sad and angry, both for the death of this innocent man, and for what is happening to the people of Oaxaca at the hands of the corrupt state and federal governments. I’m afraid I otherwise can’t say anything that does justice to the situation, except express my deepest condolences to Brad’s family, friends and compañeros.

NYC Indymedia is doing an excellent job keeping up on the news from Oaxaca, as is Arizona Indymedia, which is posting English translations of updates from Indymedia Oaxaca.

Narconews has been providing continuous coverage of Oaxaca since the teachers’ strike began in May. Free Speech Radio News has also been providing very regular reports from its reporters in Oaxaca.

These independent sources are very important at this moment because the mainstream US news has paid little attention to Oaxaca, aside from when the situation flares up. But it’s not about isolated bursts of activity and violence, but rather a growing movement of peoples’ solidarity that is now being met with ever increasing state repression. The governments of Oaxaca and Mexico do not want the eyes of the world on them now.

In their press release on the death of Brad Will, the NYC Indymedia collective made explicit the role of information in this struggle, as first expressed by Subcommandante Marcos:

The NYC IMC also supports the call of Zapatista Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos “to compañeros and compañeras in other countries to unite and to demand justice for this dead compañero.” Marcos issued this call “especially to all of the alternative media, and free media here in Mexico and in all the world.”

Indymedia was born from the Zapatista vision of a global network of alternative communication against neoliberalism and for humanity. To believe in Indymedia is to believe that journalism is either in the service of justice or it is a cause of injustice. We speak and listen, resist and struggle. In that spirit, Brad Will was both a journalist and a human rights activist.

Finally, I’ll mention that I covered the developing situation in Oaxaca back in September on the radioshow in an interview with Nancy Davies and George Salzman, two retired Americans living there. George and Nancy were much more sanguine six weeks ago, before the federal soldiers came, as the APPO was gaining strength.

I’m out of town through Monday, so this Friday’s radioshow is already produced. But I think I’ll try to get in touch with Nancy and George again for the following show.

OH, the Tubes! or, Why I Don’t MySpace.

Thanks to everyone’s fake anchorman, Sen. Ted Steven’s tubular understanding of the workings of the Internets is gaining much more popular recognition. Now the NY Times has taken note, as well as the LA Times, and the Washington Post.

But one blogger apparently got his MySpace account temporarily suspended because he posted a parody song of Stevens’ internets tubes rant. Because Stevens’ comments were made during a Senate meeting, they are not under any copyright protection whatsoever. That didn’t stop MySpace for jumping the gun, even though they restored the account later. The blogger, Andrew Raff, told Wired News:

“I’m not at all upset about MySpace taking the page down — just curious as to why,” he wrote. “I have yet to receive a reply to my inquiry as to why this account was deleted…. I am very curious about the reasons why they took this down — if it is a case of extreme caution with regards to copyright or whether it is the result of some other influence (perhaps even good taste).”

Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge rightfully questions the MySpace incident, given that MySpace was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp this year, and that network neutrality threatens the passage of the Senate telecomm bill that would hand over big wads of power and money to Murdoch’s cable and entertainment interests.

Which leads me to the reason why I have not set up camp over at MySpace. I’ll admit that I’ve been tempted, especially noticing how effectively the site allows people to network together, and how it might help me connect with friends I’ve lost touch with.

But the Murdoch connection and the MySpace terms of service are really too much to swallow.

From leading the media campaign in support of Margaret Thatcher, and making Fox News the propaganda arm of the Bush Administration, to belligerently agitating for widespread media deregulation, there is very little good in politics and life that Murdoch and News Corp. stand for or do. Quite obviously, all that I do with mediageek stands in pretty stark opposition with everything Murdoch does.

I had this conversation with my pal John Anderson a couple of weeks ago, with him equating getting onto MySpace as getting in bed with Murdoch and Fox News.

If nothing else, creating independent media is about having control over distribution and transmission, not just production and creation. That’s why the Indymedia movement, for all its growing pains, is still important. Because Indymedia is a movement that attempts to take the shackles off distribution, so that corporate control can’t suddenly wipe a picture, story or video right of the internet.

That’s why I fund my internet hosting for mediageek myself. It is a small financial burden, but the tradeoff of having control is worth it. In my ideal world, I’d host the server myself in my own house, but I don’t quite have the resources to pull that off. But I want and need this blog and website to be subject to as few terms of services as possible. I don’t want some middle manager jumping the gun over something I’ve posted that might be infringing or just offensive.

I guess it’s kind of lucky that I’m not hip enough to have gotten on MySpace before the Murdoch buyout. It would kind of suck to have to close up a useful page because the MySpace boys decided to cash in to Rupert.

It is cool that free services like YouTube, Blogger, and even MySpace are there to allow people to post interesting content to the internet without charge. But the control these companies gain through their popularity should give us pause — how will they use their power?

At the beginning of this decade, there was this cool site called MP3.com that let bands post their songs on the internet for free. But then the site got bought, and the new owners wiped out everything. Ostensibly, their actions were more about finances and change of plan than politics — but did that matter to bands who lost their vital presence on the internet?

It’s a simple idea that gets proven time and again: ownership matters.

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.

Micro-Transmitter Manufacturer Fined by FCC

Ramsey Electronics has been well known in micro-radio circles for selling small Part 15 transmitter kits that often function as many folks’ first introduction to unlicensed broadcasting. A few years ago Ramsey started selling transmitters that put out much more power, at least 1 watt, which greatly exceed the Part 15 limits for unlicensed operation on the FM band.

Ramsey’s way around the fact that these transmitters are illegal to operate in the US is to label the high-power kits as “export only,” and attach this disclaimer:

The end user is responsible for complying with all FCC rules & regulations within the US, or any regulations of their respective governing body.

Well, it looks like the FCC doesn’t accept Ramsey’s work-around, issuing a $25,000 fine to the company for selling unauthorized transmitters. According to the FCC, the Ramsey transmitters aren’t “type-accepted” for use on the FM band, and therefore cannot be legally sold in the US. All type-accepted equipment is inspected and approved by the FCC for its intended use.

With regard to Ramsey’s contention that the high-power transmitters are legal because the company doesn’t intend them to be used in the US, the FCC says,

This exemption, however, applies only to devices that the manufacturer actually exports. … Ramsey admits that it does not actually export all of the FM35WT and FM100BWT devices it sells. Rather, it attempts to shift the burden for compliance with the Commission’s rules entirely to the buyer by requiring the buyer to sign a certification form which purports to absolve Ramsey of any responsibility regarding the operation and redistribution of the devices.

I don’t believe Ramsey transmitters ever had the best reputation amongst microbroadcasters, mostly due to their little Part 15 kits like the infamous FM10 series. (There’s a wealth of opinions and experiences with these kits in the Usenet alt.radio.pirate archives. Here’s a link to a 1997 comparison between the Ramsey FM100–for which they were fined–and a British Veronica transmitter. Here’s a Google Groups link for dicussions on Ramsey’s FM10 going back at least 10 years.)

And I’m a bit surprised it took this many years for the FCC to finally take a shot at Ramsey, since they’ve been selling the higher-power kits for at least nine years. But, then again, there has been a step-up in enforcement against unlicensed broadcasting as of late.

I wonder if this action will spread to other companies that make transmitter kits available. Progressive Concepts has been making the 1/4 watt Panaxis FMX transmitter available for years on an “export only” basis — but perhaps the “export only” restriction is more true at PC than Ramsey.

However, the most well regarded micropower broadcast transmitters and kits come from England’s NRG Kits, which is a little outside the FCC’s jurisdiction.

Outfits like Ramsey are particularly vulnerable since they already make and sell FCC-inspected equipment, and so rely on continued cooperation with the Commission for their business. Apparently the FCC took that relationship and Ramsey’s record of compliance on other matters into account when it reduced the fine from $7000 per model to $3000.

Nevertheless it’s too bad to see one reliable source of FM microbroadcasting gear get taken out of the market.

Here’s a brief RadioWorld report on the fine, and links to the TXT and PDF of the notice of apparent liability.

Another Indymedia Server Seized: Bristol, UK

Thanks to Jebba, I’m alerted to the alarming seizure of yet another Indymedia server:

On Monday, June 27th, Indymedia Bristol’s server was seized by the police. An Indymedia volunteer was also arrested during the raid on suspicion of incitement to criminal damage and is now on bail. …

Bristol Indymedia say: “We are outraged at the actions of the police. They have completely disabled the entire Bristol Indymedia news service. By their actions they have undermined the principle of open publishing and free access to the media, thereby removing people’s opportunity to read and report their own news. This situation has serious implications for anyone providing a news service on the Internet. We do not intend to let this stop us from continuing the project.”

Last week, police demanded access to the server to gain the IP details of a posting. The alternative media outlet is receiving advice from civil liberties organisations and the NUJ. Before being legally forced to hand over the server, Indymedia Bristol stated: “We do not intend to voluntarily hand over information to the police as they have requested”. Bristol Indymedia see the seizure of their server and the arrest of one of their volunteers as an attack on the freedom of speech. …

The collective best guess is that this is related to the upcoming G8 meetings in Scotland, which begin this coming weekend.

The Power of Video

A remarkably uncritical article [bugmenot login] in today’s New York Times notes the role of video in the dimissal and acquittal of hundreds of people arrested during last year’s RNC. Simply put, the videos contradict police accounts of protestor actions:

Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

Of course, NYPD had their own camcorders, too, and in one case apparently didn’t feel shy about editing out parts where an arresstee acted peacefully and calmly submitted to arrest. That case was dismissed when a second citizen tape came to light that showed the missing pieced. The police response? Oops. Yeah, right.

The police try to spin it that the video record only shows their “professional handling of the protest” — whatever that means. But doesn’t a “professional” police department have a little less than 90% of their arrests dismissed?

As we saw even in little old Champaign, IL last year, keeping a video eye on cops, especially in protest situations, is very important and valuable. The thing we have to watch out for is a police backlash against camcorders, either through direct violence, or through pushing to get laws passed against their use.

In Champaign last year our slimy former state’s attorney tried to say that videotaping police in public was criminal eavesdropping under Illinois law. Even our conservative daily newspaper saw through that, and I believe the publQic response to his persecution of two African-American copwatchers contributed to his overwhelming defeat in elections last November. His successor has since dropped all eavesdropping charges.

It makes me think that one should never be out an about without a camera or camcorder in your bag at all times.

Update:I found out today that the National Lawyer’s Guild has just asked for footage shot by Urbana-Champaign IMC reporters during the RNC. They were arrested, too, and their footage directly contradicts police claims, and may also be helpful for other cases. Initially NLG told them that they already had more than enough video footage. I guess now that they’ve had some months to sift through their pile they’re ready for more.

FBI Persecuting Independent Media Websites Again

The FBI has demanded server logs of flag.blackened.net which hosts a variety of grassroots anarchist websites, including the valuable Infoshop.org, and Infoshop News. The sysadmin, Dave, is under a gag order preventing him from giving specific details, but explains some of the circumstances in an informal “press release”:

I have been ordered to submit IP info on two separate incidents having to do with subdomains hosted on flag. Both of these are in regard to claimed or threatened responsibility for acts of propaganda by the deed. Both incidents involve topics which are completely out of line for consideration here at flag and really I can only view them in two ways. Either people are simply ignorant about the murderous history of the FBI, or, as is my belief in one case, they are trying to make flag vulnerable to government intrusion. …

I have called numerous friends nationwide, anarchists and otherwise whose opinions I respect and who I know will be honest and forthwith in their opinions to ask them how I should proceed. The unanimous consensus is that I comply with the wishes of the FBI and provide the IP addresses responsible. The only point of discussion, really, has been whether or not I should reveal the specific information in violation of two court orders. …

Though it pains me to comply with the State in any manner, I have… The people who have foolishly compromised us all will shoulder the burden for their selfish actions. Frankly folks, they know better – we all know better.

Without a doubt these demands for server logs, like Indymedia has experienced, is a harassment technique, especially since system administrators risk court-sanctioned penalties if they do not comply.

Dave invokes COINTELPRO in his release, in reference to the fact that the posts garnering FBI attention are presumably about committing acts of targeted violence of some sort. The COINTELPRO angle is the possibility that government officials or agents made the posts in order to give the feds an excuse to go fishing through server logs.

Even if it’s not a direct government or law enforcement plot, the posts may be the work of persons with an ax to grind, looking to create trouble for flag.blackened.net. We certainly see more than our fair share of garbage posts to Indymedia websites that seem written only for the purpose of stirring up trouble and bringing unwanted attention.

And, of course, maybe the posts are the result of moronic braggadocio from folks who thinks it’s cool to strut about and talk big, or, sadly, they could be posts from people who have actually committed some violence and aren’t smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

In any event, the net effect is still chilling. If the FBI can come in and seize records of who posts to radically political forums and newswires, then that presents a strong disincentive for people to post information and opinions that challenge the ruling order.

Indymedia has seen similar demands for server logs and actually experienced the seizure of equipment. As a result of the FBI’s first demand for Indymedia server logs back in 2001, most, if not all, IMC websites do not maintain server logs that contain identifying information like IP addresses.

Unfortunately, not maintaining IP logs make it harder to fend off crackers trying to attack IMC websites, but the consensus appears to be that the tradeoff is worthwhile in order to protect the anonymity of IMC website posters.

According to comments on this thread about the flag.blackened.net situation at NYC IMC, some of the software running sites on that server do maintain IP addresses, which the sysadmins periodically purge. Unfortunately, it looks like the addresses the FBI was after were not yet purged.

The threat from the government is real, and the intent is real: Independent media websites should shut up and control what gets published. Don’t push the boundaries.

We don’t have to give in to the threat. But I agree with Dave, that we have to pay attention and watch ourselves:

This is why we do not discuss certain things as if they are a legitimate part of anarchism. Resist the extra y-chromosome influenced urge to sound more hardcore than the guy next to you. Nobody is impressed and the powers that be are sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for an excuse to shut down flag. Freedom of speech does not exist, don’t try to test it. They will come bust down your door – for real – point a gun to your head and pull the trigger if you refuse to comply.

Believe it.

Indymedia Files Motion to Unseal Seizure Case

With the help of the EFF, Indymedia has filed a motion to unseal the secret US federal court order that resulted in the seizure of web server hard drives by the US government, apparently to aid Swiss, and possibly Italian authorities.

The AP has a fairly lengthy story on the matter.

UK Home Secretary and FBI Deny Responsibility for Indymedia Hard Drive Seizure

Sascha files an update to U-C IMC:

As legal pressure and public outrage grows, both the UK home secretary and the FBI are now claiming that they were not involved in the seizure of two Indymedia servers that shut down 20 Indymedia Websites and multiple other online projects.
According to questions asked by two British MPs, the UK government is now claiming that no one from UK law enforcement was involved in the server seizure…