part 2 of where the world is now, a quickie

Ok so between my first post about the world and this one, lots of things have been happening.

on january 18th wikipedia, google, flickr and thousands of other web sites had either gone dark or added additional pages to protest and bring attention to the SOPA/PIPA bills being strongarmed through congress. it was the largest recorded infonets protest ever, the presence was pretty intense.

on january 19th, feds brought down megaupload.com without so much as a whisper of due process, arresting people in new zealand and confiscating u.s. servers in virginia. within minutes the internets troops began rallying. for the remainder of the day and all the way through right to this minute, hacktivist group anonymous has been dropping government and mpaa web sites using thousands of anonymous ddos attacks from all over the world. theres a program called LOIC(low orbit ion cannon) that anyone can use to help anonymous etc flood servers.

i spent part of the day in an anon-run irc chat coordinating attacks and constantly receiving updates on the operation.

i watched as they systematically took down the department of justice website, fbi.gov, mpaa.org, universal, etc etc etc.

it was messy but vaguely organized, with people from all over the internet chiming in to let everyone know what was up or down.
"mpaa down in lithuania, fbi.gov down in brazil, mpaa chugging in u.s., down in canada, fbi.gov back up in argentina, etc."

the chatrooms caption changed depending on the prime target at any point, which changed every half hour or so. it was a mix of noobs like myself figuring out how to use LOICs and HOICs and skilled cats using all kinds of things i didnt understand, but it sounded like they had a lot more power to work with than i did on my toshiba tablet.

aside from this, the supreme court on the same day had ruled to make re-copywriting public domain works legal, which essentially gives corporations yet another way to own things they shouldnt. this affects anyone using public domain works to make a living, such as orchestras now being forced to pay licensing fees to play certain songs they could legally play a week ago.

also there was a rather large protest at UC riverside, on again the same day, in which occupy l.a. joined students protesting the constant enrollment fee hikes. several hundred if not thousands of people eventually pooled, as did roughly 200 police officers. rubber bullets were fired into the crowd injuring a few, and a professor was arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer. the UC regency meeting was soon after closed to the public.

america, right now. november 29th, 2011.

the worlds a wreck right now and this place is no exception, in fact its probably the cause.

theres some particularly curious bills going through congress right now, they are called the "National Defense Authorization Act", the "Stop Online Piracy Act" and the "Protect IP Act". coupled with some of the other things going on including police departments with flying drones and the occupy movement/anonymous connections, it points towards certain directions the united states' focus is turning, now that we have all of these middle eastern wars handled and everything. seems like theyve had a lot of time to perfect large scale crowd control over there.






a new provision of the national defense authorization act give presidents the power to imprison anyone anywhere, indefinitely, without charge or trial.

“A ‘sleeper provision’ deep inside defense bills pending before Congress could become the single biggest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.”

new bits of the national defense authorization act

the aclu article

the act would “permit the federal government to indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil, without charge or trial, at the discretion of the President,”






the Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that will effectively boot up americas version of the great firewall of china, brought to you by hollywood, the music industry and the u.s. chamber of commerce. itll give the gov the power to block any web site at any time, hold sites solely responsible for user generated/uploaded content and will make streaming copyrighted materials a felony.

SOPA(stop online piracy act)

the "Protect IP Act" was introduced by the senate. it is essentially the same thing as the house' SOPA bill.

on the surface this can and will include torrent sites, cover songs/video mashups, game/movie/music clips and protest/riot vids on youtube etc., causing them to pull probably millions of vids in fear of lawsuits, and will easily slop into being used to control the news, trends, the economy, and pretty much everything on the internet including blog newsfeeds and sites like 4chan and anonymous and anyone else they deem necessary.

a man burned himself in tiananmen square recently, but only one blogger covered it, zero chinese news coverage.

(taken by a british blogger staying in china)


google, yahoo, facebook and a load of others(pretty much the rulers of the country of "internet"), are opposing the bill

"If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems] to do X, and it's passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it, then we would still fight it," Schmidt told reporters at a London conference. "If it's a request, the answer is we wouldn't do it. If it's a discussion, we wouldn't do it."

"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems,"
-eric schmidt, google ceo
meatspace tries to net the infosphere









also these things are happening:

"This is a tool that many law enforcement agencies never imagined they could have."

faa set to propose legalization of citizen drones




the occupy l.a. camp lasts another night after an all day standoff with the l.a.p.d.


occupy los angeles camp stands through another night, as of november 29th at 6:43 am

a letter clarifying the means of communication with the occupy l.a. general assembly for authorities, mayors office, lawyers, protesters, news and anyone else interested.



the camp reminds me of a story i heard from some olde timers (ha) about a place in san francisco called psycho city. it was a place people came to paint, tag up, piece, whatever right, without being hassled by the cops. the city didnt shut it down and the grafheads kept it under control, they had a little piece that was theirs and their colored it up nice and spent their time there. it got famous and more people came to paint there. after a time, the city finally shut down this mecca to graffiti.

once psycho city was closed, graffiti in san francisco exploded.


i hope thats what happens here with these camps being raided all across the country.




oh also economically brick and mortar stores are still on the decline despite a good (but terribly sickening) black friday, and chinese factory city minimum wage is up 20%. there was also a large explosion in iran in the city where its nuclear facility is located earlier today. iranian newspapers have since retracted the statement.

l.a. november 17th, 2011 through my eyecams

this is a longass post, i got so much data and it took forever to get it all into this thing so i apologize for the long wait and its superwordiness, but heres some stuff on the 2 month anniversary of occupy wallstreet, dubbed the official "day of action.", which happened 8 days ago today.






i wrote this that night:


"i am writing this on the steps of city hall, my bed for the night. when i woke up this morning i thought i was going to school, but before i left i saw a news report on the people that pitched tens in the intersection of figeroa and 4th street, the crowd of protestors and police. i saw a reporter patronizingly interview the denizens hand in hand forming a circle around their vinal domes. i saw many police, and news anchors with giggles on breath of things they couldnt or wouldnt understand. i had to see it for myself, unedited, and so do you. 2 buses and a subway, some three hours and one free bus fare later, i was in north hollywood station. there was no sign of anything, so i headed towards fig and 4th, but there was nothing. i started wandering and figured id know when i was there. i checks the feedsites, 23 people had been arrested not soon after id left home. it soon became apparent by looking at the sky that i was close. choppers.


5 floating choppers


it was surreal to suddenly see so many, and most of them immobile, just looming in the air, motionless at every main street in the area. there were easily 6 or 7 of them, just eerily floating with their dull buzzes in the distance. i began to walk towards one. 20 minutes and a cigarette with a syrian guy named aamir on a layover on his way to ireland from who knows where that had the same blue pouch of buglers rolling tobacco as me and needed a paper later i was met by a chunky tail of people marching along the sidewalks and streets, plugging up intersections with their flow of people, signwielders and screamers, eyecams and drummers and a saxophone playing man. i followed briefly on the opposite side of the street for a block or two listening to their words, humming their bassline and crossed over into a welcoming serpent of energy. cars honk their horns as they push through the street, yells and cheers coming within. people watch from high windows, police followed. i made my way to the head of the serpent, where was it headed? it tunneled through the meat and metal traffic of the financial district and reached its apparent destination. a bank of america. maybe THE bank of america.

the serpent was long


the serpent stretches and coils around it, floods through its rent a cops and private security and the small showing of the lapd, around 20 or 25. we were many more and they barely were seen as establishing a presence. from what i gather from my surroundings, having dove into the thing mid-slither, is that a permit was held to hold a peaceful march for the day, but the arrival of several hundred people and the erection of a small group of 10 or 12 tents on their front lawn was a surprise and not part of the deal. over the next few hours, more and more people filled up the bofa plaza and surrounding streets, and so to did the police arrive. more and more of them, then all of them as i understand it, later reenforced with neighboring precincts. the choppers began to focus on the area. the police sport light riot attire, clubs and faceshielded helmets, guns and radios, bean shotguns and tear cannons; and form a line in front of the building, thats when the tents went up. once they did, the entire plaza, then all adjacent streets and intersections and parking garages were surrounded and blocked. i counted early on and there were around 60 of them in front of the building and and a section of the tent perimeter. there were cop cars in the middle of the streets, side by side two by two, spanning back two full blocks, ive never seen so many. in retrospect it was the perfect time to rob a bank somewhere else, but i digress. id never seen such a huge police presence with my own eyes, and for a little old peaceful protest and a bank. estimates at its peak saw 350 to 400 cops in riot gear, wearing guns and brandishing batons. the media then came, like a plague. all the tv outlets, loads of blogs, time magazine, the l.a. times, and tons of freelance reporters and photographers. i havent yet seen how the news is spinning it, but it was beautiful. anyway the police lines thinckened and tightened, surrounding wide perimeter of the tents, took them down, arrested 43 of its denizens and very slowly, over the course of several hours of pointed words and careful babysteps into the setting sun and beyond, the crowd took back to the streets in many subsnaked directions.

3:11 for the bulk of the cities police


theres a funny thing about laws. they are words, and words are interpretive. it was indeed private property, but with a cityordered clause of general public access 24 hours a day. eventually the commander(i dont believe the chief was present) claimed that the corporation of bank of america had issued essentially a court-ordered citizens arrest of trespassers on the property and had to do it because it was the law. it was a heated, messy talk between many people, message carriers weaving through the crowd to their respective groups. police higher ups, lawyers, the mayors people, march organizers and everyone in the nexus' vicinity had a take on what the flimsy law and actions held up. during those hours i held the front lines with my fellow citizens, face to face with helmetshield covered faces. face to face with fellow citizens. i talked to many of them, who wouldnt share an opinion on the situation, i mustve asked 30 of them.

opinions and badges, a venn diagram consisting of two nontouching circles.


with a badge comes an inability to voice an opinion. when they were on duty, they were to do as they were told, and you could tell that that bothered some of them. they tightened their squeeze on the minicamps perimeter and i began to roll video and get all of their faces, badge numbers and names, just in case. 20 or so minutes later, their grip loosened and fell back to their main perimeter around the plaza. anyway that was midday an hour or so after the tents went up. back to the face to face line. the majority of the officers were relatively respectful and delicate about the whole situation, some wanted to bust heads, you could tell. most didnt, most just wanted to go home. just like us. i talked to the officer i was face to face with in the line a fair bit, his name was wells. he seemed like a stand up guy, unable to openly speak about the present goings on, but visibly struck by it. there was a cop behind their line walking along their spines and whispering to them. "keep your batons raised." "take an inch." i asked wells why the guy didnt pick up a baton himself and join the line, and wells just gave me one of those "yep, this is fucked." faces. this man did not want to be there and he knew what this group stood for was right, but he had a family to feed, i asked. he understood, a lot of them did, and thats really what this movement is about, opening a dialogue within the country, to really get a conversation going between the people, all of them who are being affected by the worlds spinning out of control. looking at a police line, looking at a protest line, they were like looking at a mirror for both sides. both sides had good men and women. and bad men and women. scumbags looking for trouble and disheartened people trying to fix something broken and every shade in between. the media will spin it however they feel will best suit their needs since the majority of them are the very things being protested against. but they arent on the front line, they arent there, not really. today ended without tear gas or vicious beatings, or pepper spray or molotov cocktails or rubber bulletstorms. today ended with both sides foced to look one another in the eyes, size each other up, knowing that its not over by a longshot and theyre on the same side, in the same group, wearing different clothing, and that the way things are being run are both irresponsible, unsustainable, and generally fucking everyone. its a matter of pack size and the law still has the biggest pack on the streets, but that could easily change. a times on its way when those on the same side will have to make the conscious decision to work together or come to blows, to the dismay or joy of the people peering over the edge of the top of the world.








so here i am, here at city hall, here at this makeshift tent city, like an amalgamation of a camping trip and the lost boys neighborhood, mashed together with the white pillars of government buildings and trees, here with all of these people. i sat in at a meting of the nightly general assembly to hear many voices of the movement. everyone is given time and voices and ears, and all together. these people arent disorganized and stupid like their oppressors would have you believe, there are just so many ideas, with so many perspectives, with so little resourses, its bound to get messy, thats just how it is. but make no mistake, these are people with plans, and every direction is forward."

-its cheesy, but i was hopped up on pride and adrenaline. it was a good night.