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A USian escapes the bubble: Summer 2019 adventure to British Columbia, Part 1

Note: In 2020, I’m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released on Mondays or so. Here’s today’s, the fourth of 52.

Note: Here’s the completed series, a USian escapes the bubble: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and (forthcoming) Part 4.

Last summer I took a trip alone from Seattle, where I reside, to British Columbia. That was my first trip by myself to another country. Gauging by the stress that multiple acquaintances say they experience when considering just looking at the passport application form, I am not the only USian for whom exiting the bubble of THE ONLY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET ACCORDING TO THE ONLY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET feels overwhelming. Thus, instead of immediately plunging into an overnight quest to visit all 190-odd countries in the world and get to know all seven billion non-USian human souls, I decided to start small: merely ride a Clipper boat northward and sleep in a Victoria hostel for a week, then voyage homeward via same ferry southbound.

Yeah, um, how do we pronounce USian, y’all?

Propaganda against leaving the States is everywhere, and conversation about doing so is nearly never heard, so the overwhelm among us peons is understandable. Stuffing my single backpack for the trip with shirts and books and cotton swabs, I feared the metric system itself might attack me: tape measures extending murderous meters, test tubes spilling lethal liters, and the foreign atmosphere itself pressing down on my skull with the weight of killer kilograms. After all, just watch this stunning FOX News revelation of “the global tyranny of the metric system.” I demand the United States give up the huge portion of its military using the metric system, its fully metric Big Pharma dosages, and its fully metric dollar amounts!
James Panero trying to keep from laughing at 0:27 ?

If scientific units of measurement weren’t going to undo me, maybe I’d get frozen to death by the National Igloo that Mike Huckabee as Arkansas governor sincerely congratulated Canada on preserving:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCyy7q_ylc

However, I was ready to resist such fictional terrors. If dastardly, freezing decameters came at me hard, malevolently enlarging into subzero deca-space, I could defend myself, sweating wildly, swinging swords of middle school math, the unit converter app on my phone, or the Metric Act of 1866, which legalized the use of the metric system for weights and measures in the U.S. when President Johnson signed it, probably drunk and well on his way to becoming the first impeached very stable genius presiding over the world’s most sacred, most beautiful coun… Okay, I’ll stop shooting fish in a barrel saving fish in a peril and move on to the next crushing calamity faced by all USians who dare dream of, say, searching for paid-jobs north of Seattle by oh about 241 kilometers ⁠— I’m sorry! I’m sorry! 150 miles! 150 miles! I’ll be good! Stop threatening bodily harm to metric system advocates, fellow residents of the only intelligent country that has ever existed, the only intelligent country that will ever, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin…William Whipple? Uh yeah, also William Whipple, whoever he was…the founders, the Founders!

A slightly more highbrow fear came from the Hollywood-esque stories of beefy border agents versus millionaire heartthrob journadoodles — here’s the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2018 documentation of dozens of cases of U.S. border dudes’ suspicionless searching and interrogating of journalists who color outside the (map) lines, most not wielding Oscars — but I took whatever precautions I could implement in the time frame I had, because an even worse fate would be hiding under the bed for the rest of my life. Further, beyond the glare of edutainment re: suffering journadoodles — JOURNALISTS, THE ONLY VICTIMS ON THE PLANET ACCORDING TO JOURNALISTS, THE ONLY VICTIMS ON THE PLANET — there are the almost 20,000 people since 2014 trying to cross borders who died in the Mediterranean Sea, to take one sole region recently, so cowardice would have been unjust to all of them. Think about it. Out of those twenty thousand people, imagine one who had really amazing sketch art to share, a fantastic decade-long relationship with an awesome cat to tell you about, hopes of walking around France, and that’s just .00005% of the individuals who died without a Committee To Protect People With Awesome Cat Stories Amazing Sketch Art and Hopes of Walking around France. Obviously the churnalism fan club will primly retort “First they came for the journalists, and after that, we don’t know what happened” which is as laughable as Huckabee’s Canadian National Igloo because once you turn off the roar of corporate media and the USian ‘anarchists’ who amplify corporations all day every day, you can hear your friends who are already trying to tell you what happened, to have a conversation about what’s happening you don’t need professional trade association membership or a New York Times subscription (to defeat their paywall, use your public library’s website, or simply turn off javascript). God, next, people are probably going to tell each other it’s unrealistic to go back to the days before individuals had to buy a credential for permission to tell someone Hi. Solutions should solve problems not for a guild but for everyone, and we can all already stop waiting around for a ZuckerBernie messiah, and just go right ahead, write teach speak learn sing cry laugh help heal hug. POINT BEING, in light of the much more serious injustices done to many more border-crossers around the globe, I made up my mind to just deal with any awful border shit that might happen and stop obsessing over encrypting my socks. [Note added 4 February 2020: This paragraph is a bit muddled, so just to clarify what I’m saying. Considering both the US-Mexico and the US-Canada borders, and both inbound and outbound crossings, there are definitely more than a million border-crossings per day. Yet from informal conversations, USians are scared to cross the borders because of news reports of border agent searches, seizures, and interrogations. Both the fear of crossing borders and the agent behaviors are getting worse. That strongly implies the news reports are not solving the problem, though they might be slowing down its worsening, which is about as exciting as the ‘healthcare cost climb slow down.’ With a million border crossings per day, why not just go, fade into the huge numbers? Life is short. The authorities wrongfully seizing good journalists’ encrypted laptops, and the celebully journalists blaring about how awful it was they got asked some questions at an airport, plus the pathetic fan clubs reflecting both sides in perpetuo, drowning out others’ far worse border-crossing problems including death are just causing audiences to hide under their beds. Regarding solutions solving things for everyone, obviously regional variations are required; I just want to point out that journalists must not be gods with special border blockbuster movies or special snuggly beds to hide under. Free speech for everyone. Might lose my FOIA fee waivers for saying that someday, but the docs should be leaked and hacked out and otherwise publicized anyway.]

Hidden by mental walls, but clear as day, near downtown Seattle, the Clipper awaits

My alarm blasted me off early one Thursday morning in July, and after a giant breakfast, I walked to a bus stop, then rode the bus to the terminal. There the Clipper staff made sure I and everyone else had our passports. At the destination waited the real border security. The vessel was pretty empty, just a few folks on it, including me. Seated, I stored my backpack in front of my legs. It’s startling how central your backpack becomes to you (or at least me) on a trip like this: suddenly, it’s your mobile house, and everything about it quickly takes on outsized significance for creature comfort and safety. After a while, we were off into the Salish Sea, headed toward Canada.

Finally getting underway, for real, felt thrilling. I’d just walked a ways, got on a bus, walked a bit more, and all of a sudden I’m in the middle of the fucking ocean sailing to another country. Stuck-minds of a species that once migrated thousands of miles on foot insist invisible borders are absolutely real and natural and necessary, not just partitions for economic markets, then go escape into video games where they fly across mountain ranges in airships, then at night asleep, they dream of rocketing into outer space. Perhaps for many people, the biggest mental reference point for the concept of going on an adventure is video games. My trip certainly felt like one at times.

Departing the U.S. via the Clipper, July ’19

Scene from Final Fantasy 6 (Japan) aka Final Fantasy 3 (US)

One of the first super intriguing sights I saw: beyond, in what I think were international waters, container ships sat anchored out, waiting their turns to dock at ports. Usually you imagine some commodity, maybe a jar of pickles or a pile of steel, just magically existing wherever sold, no backstory to it at all, but now with my own eyes I was seeing these gigantic cargo ships floating in the middle of the ocean circulating commodities in containers around the world. A former U.S. Navy sailor told me later that years ago, newspapers printed shipping timetables for people on shore to find out when boats would arrive or leave (whatever newspapers were).

Approaching Victoria BC, via the Clipper, July ’19

Crew tied Clipper off so it stays put

Docking fascinated me. It took a sturdy crewmember two or three tries to throw the pictured cable to the sturdy guy on land so they could tie off the boat. That way it’d stop moving and we could disembark. The voyage of this high tech vessel weighing hundreds of tons that just sailed nearly three hours crossing m̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶i̶l̶e̶s̶ kilometers and kilometers and kilometers, still came down to a burly guy tossing a cable to his burly counterpart standing nearby. Once they finished, we headed into the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) checkpoint.

Crossing a border checkpoint alone for the first time in my life, I stood wearing my backpack in a very white room with humans sorted into lines, cameras staring at us, and a handful of y̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ meters forward, several CBSA border agents sitting up high on a dais-like structure, separated into little booths so they could interview us aspiring incomers individually. Behind me, a father tried to quiet his talkative children: “Shh! This is very serious!” I waited in line, doing my best to appear casual and calm. With all the earnest seriousness everywhere, a rogue thought suddenly impinged on my mind. What if — what if I yelled, “There’s a b̶o̶m̶b̶ balloon!” Everyone would break out into a panic as the b̶o̶m̶b̶ balloon e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶d̶e̶d̶ expanded through the very white walls, turning all into f̶i̶r̶e̶ fun! I started to giggle. I started to giggle some more. I kept giggling, and then I saw my hero, my savior. Along the very white wall to my right hung a clear plastic box from which brochures advertised to tourists. Immediately I grabbed one and began reading it with scholarly focus. Did you know the Butchart Gardens began in 1904? My giggles subsided. Did you know its Rose Garden has 280 different varieties of roses? I was breathing again. Did you know that for the safety and enjoyment of all visitors to the Butchart Gardens, selfie sticks are NOT permitted? Now it was time for the CBSA guard to interview me.

I walk forward.

I peer upward at the uniformed g̶o̶d̶ guard staring down at me. In a gruff voice, he asks me routine questions. Occupation, destination, duration of trip, how do I plan to leave Canada? Everything goes straightforwardly until I mention I plan to stay a week in Victoria and then return home the same way I got here, via the Clipper. Why, he wants to know, am I just visiting Victoria? Why not go elsewhere also? YEAH, DOUG, WHY NOT? Bewildered, I stand there. What even is the appropriate answer? My mind flashes to Aristotle’s four causes, four different ways to answer a Why question according to the long-ago Greek philosopher who traveled across countries himself, thousands of years ago:

  • Material cause: Indeed, my legs could transport me elsewhere, to another place outside Victoria, maybe even to the National Igloo

  • Efficient cause: His question was stimulating me to consider journeying to Vancouver also

  • Formal cause: I was trying to take things one step at a time, and wasn’t in any particular hurry to see each and every place

  • Final cause: The objective was a successful trip; would leaving Victoria and encountering scary road signs with kilometers on them impede or facilitate that?

I said something, quite truthfully, about how I was also considering checking out Vancouver BC. He stamped my passport and granted me entry.

Another gub’ment! With Anglophilic buildings

I exited the border station into another country. But what was this? Something was decidedly different in Canada, or at least Victoria. Evident instantly. Not just me; something radiating from the people around me as well. Everyone, so calm. Everything, so chill. The people were even walking more slowly. This immediate drop in ambient anxiety, relative to the United States. Was I in some strange dream world? Were Canadians or Victorians all on Valium or Ativan and not telling outsiders? Or is tranquility just what universal health insurance, next to no mass shootings, and the metric system result in? What on Earth was going on here?

I’ll continue the story with Part 2 next Monday. But in the meantime, you might enjoy the excellent talk below, just under an hour and a half, by punk singer Henry Rollins encouraging people to experience life in other countries. The video would be a fantastic one to show students or really anyone interested in this subject. Until next week!

Creative Commons License

This blog post, A USian escapes the bubble: Summer 2019 adventure to British Columbia, Part 1, by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (human-readable summary of license). The license is based on a work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2020/01/27/summer-2019-adventure-british-columbia-part-1/. You can view the full license (the legal code aka the legalese) here. For learning more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license, or want to correspond with me about this post otherwise? Please email me: dal@riseup.net.

Flower Fest 3 at Lo-Fi: Seattle music meets Guadalajaran

Seattle punks TERMINATor meet Mexican rocker Nathalia

September 11 in Seattle saw a moderate-size crowd sweating anxiety away in the Eastlake neighborhood before two Lo-Fi nightclub stages, where four local acts supported four bands all the way from Guadalajara for Flower Fest 3. The festival made a nice way to compare and contrast Mexican rock with rock developed from within the Five Eyes states (FVEY: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). That’s a term a little more specific—this writer pedantically notes—than “the Anglosphere,” which would include states such as Jamaica and South Africa where presumably (please correct in comments if wrong) local bands produce a very different sound than either Guadalajarans or FVEYers.

En esa noche

So how does music from México’s second most populous municipality differ from today’s Emerald City sound? First thing to know, if you’re reading this from outside the Pacific Northwest, is that grunge is basically over here. The four USian groups who played constituted two pop punk bands (one, Secret Superpower, easy on the ears and one, TERMINATor, more challenging), a heartfelt acoustic guitarist-singer with a bassist backing him up (Great Spiders), and a set of very talented, medium-hard rockers (Swamp Meat vs. Killer Ghost).

The highly enjoyable Seattle bands are, in the grand scheme of things, not too different from what you’d likely hear on a college radio station in any U.S. port city. Imagine 4/4 time, some nifty idiosyncracies sprinkled in, familiar instruments to hear for a respite at the bar … and you have the general idea. But what about the sound from south of the border?

Judging from Tuesday evenings’s excellent four viajeros (travelers)—an experimental noise-metal crew (Mortemart); an instrumental group of rockers (Mindhala); and two sets of all-around rockers with vocals (Uay and the all-women Neptuna)—Guadalajara rock is typically infused with more rhythmic variety and no fear of major intervals relative to the more strict FVEY sound.

Now let’s see how that simplistic binary plays out or doesn’t with each individual act. One caveat: I couldn’t make out lyrics of any band, so this is solely judging based on audio. And for extra explicit dorkiness, images of Guadalajarans are aligned right, and Seattleites are aligned left.

Seattle on the left meets Mexico on the right

Secret Superpower rocks

First up, locals in Secret Superpower (Soundcloud) sounded a bit like Garbage in a good mood, with Daniel Cutting’s steady drumming and Kira Wilson’s distorted bass underpinning guitarist Paige Spicer’s warm chords. The trio’s dreamy songs welcomed the night in well. For those who showed up early, Secret Superpower enjoyably situated the evening in the context of familiar female-fronted rock, with their own almost retro spin—happiness is too often uncool these days, but like yesteryear, Secret Superpower didn’t fear to put a smile on audience faces.

Confident drummer Daniel Onufer

Next came two local bands in one: Swamp Meat (Bandcamp) vs. Killer Ghost (Bandcamp). The first song of this badass conglomerate of bands featured a rumba-like drum beat that really showed off drummer Daniel Onufer’s confident playing. The second started off with a military-style march on his authoritatively cracking snare while Laura Seniow fingerplucked her bass and Lila Burns added sweet guitar melodies. Onufer’s confidence extended to dropping a stick and retrieving it without missing a beat and singing (and singing well) while drumming. The other guitarist, Sharif Ali, let loose with passionate vocals too. If there’s one word for this superband it’s confidence. Their skill breaks my binary already, because they inserted unusual rhythms that ventured outside radio norms.

Noisy Mortemart, perfecto

Third, a loud noise intro said shit was about to get serious with Guadalajaran psychedelic rockers Mortemart (Bandcamp). Synth player Chaka—fittingly dressed in a NASA T-shirt—guitarist Albert and bassist Kiaran constructed a rumbling howl that caused showgoers to instinctively look around at the P.A.—would it hold? Would our eardrums? With the independence viajeros have, Mortemart didn’t worry about audience reaction and kept going. With his bucket cornet, Eric issued plaintive cries over the aural thunder. Then Daniel’s drums kicked in with a driving beat on the floor toms, the horn’s perfect-fourth agonies now almost lost in the rumble. Kiaran’s bass grooved hard with an octave-based pattern and it was clear the rhythm section would put passion into every simple note as the soundscape continued to be built around us. Chaka even inserted some video game-like bloops and beeps into the strange mix. This writer bought Mortemart’s album Overthinking via Bandcamp and you should too—check out the song “The Healing part 2.” The album versions are far less experimental than the live show, which is good for iterated listening. Put the shoe on the other foot, and it’s a hard time imagining notoriously homebound USians traveling to Guadalajara and repeating this show of confidence. But hopefully someday!

TERMINATor’s Veronica Dye on flute

Fourth, Lo-Fi gave us Seattle-based TERMINATor’s popping punk (Instagram; got a link to their music? put it in the comments). The three-piece: Veronica Dye on drums and flute, Albie on guitar (with hat), Lauren on guitar also (no hat). Veronica looped her flute in for some songs, which gave the music a psychedelic edge, especially with Kevin Blanquies’ colorful, trippy TV static-ish visuals in the background. TERMINATor is currently filming a visual album, which sounds promising and super cool. We take back what we said about all USians in the preceding paragraph; these musicians, who aren’t afraid of challenging listeners while still delivering pleasing pitches, could totally play with confidence in Guadalajara. The looping flute (a simple three-note phrase) added some rhythmic risk. Not all is stable and predictable in corporate FVEY land.

2/3 of Mindhala

Fifth, Lo-Fi offered Mindhala (Bandcamp), an instrumental Guadalajaran band. Victor’s Stratocaster described long, tender arcs above the urgent bossa-like grooves of Anton on bajo electrico and Nathalaia on drums. Some of the fastest notes of the night came from Victor, Anton brought skill to his hammer-ons, and Nathalaia, who would go on to drum for Uay and Neptuna later in the evening, was just getting started with her ample abilities. It would be great to hear Seattle-based rock bands experiment with bossa beats and more technical playing.

Uay, un grupo excellente

Antepenultimately, Uay (YouTube; got more links, put them in the comments please!). This Guadalajaran band serves as a cool example of how Guadalajaran rock tends to differ from rock from the FVEY states. Unlike USians in general, Uay has no fear of vocal harmonies, stomping the kick drum every beat, using major intervals to build riffs, and rumbling regularly on the toms. Chaka (in his NASA T-shirt!) laid down powerful bass-playing that matched Nathalia’s hard-hitting drums. Kieran added extra percussion with a second snare; all this rhythm inspired a woman up in the balcony to dance in sexy circles. Vocals came from guitarist Oby and Nathalia (which made two drummers singing that night). This writer is predicting more great music from all these Guadalajaran musicians in the future and wouldn’t hesitate to hear them play again. Gotta make sure the orange boy-king doesn’t actually build a stupid wall, so that can happen.

Great colors behind Great Spiders

Penultimately, guitarist-vocalist Omar Shambacher’s Great Spiders (Bandcamp) played some thoughtful pop tunes with a bassist (know her name? leave it in the comments). This pensive music served as a nice breather between the louder UAY and Neptuna. It encouraged this writer sit down and rest for a few minutes, thinking over the night and being glad to live here in this corner-of-the-map city. Heartfelt songs long developed, Great Spiders sounded comfortable for FVEY-raised ears without sounding completely conformist either.

Neptuna canta en español

Ultimately, Flower Fest 3 closed with Neptuna (Bandcamp), four women from Guadalajara, all of whom sang as in the image from the balcony. The reliable, powerfully playing Nathalia drummed yet again, but this writer failed to get the names of the bassist, keyboardist, and guitarist (know them? by now you know where to add ’em). Nathalia frequently kicked on each beat in that Mexican style as the women sang in exquisite Spanish. Neptuna also makes use of rests (silent pauses in the music), something FVEY rockers all too often leave out. Go check out their Bandcamp and spring for the album Mar Rojo (Red Sea); this writer just did.

Hasta pronto

All the bands were totally enjoyable, but the Guadalajran music sounded more of a nation, fluxing and changing with vibrato and rhythmic variety…whereas the Seattle music was a bit more square, a bit more predictable, a bit more of uber-state Five Eyes. Travel generally enhances art, so remember, no bad borders, no wrong walls…

Creative Commons License

Flower Fest 3 at Lo-Fi: Seattle meets Guadalajara by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It does not affect your fair use rights or my moral rights. You can view the full license (the legalese) here; you can view a human-readable summary of it here. To learn more about Creative Commons, read this article. License based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@riseup.net.

Extra material for Salon George W. Bush painting article

Today Salon published my and Amy O’Neal’s new article, “Portrait of a failed president: Inside the art of George W. Bush.” As is usual in this industry, they made some changes. So, some extra text and images here for you.

Below are the images buried in the article’s slideshow. (Except for Felipe Calderón, whose portrait I took a picture of, the images come from TheBushCenter’s Flickr.)

Portrait of Tony Blair

Portrait of the Dalai Lama

Portrait of Felipe Calderón

Exhibit wall

While Vladimir Putin’s false-flag bombings of his own Moscow remained in, George H.W. Bush’s connection to the JFK assassination came out. Here’s that text:

He once said he didn’t remember where he was when John F. Kennedy was assasinated, which is like saying you don’t remember where you were when Apollo 11 landed on the moon or the twin towers came down. As journalist Russ Baker’s thorough book Family of Secrets reveals, Poppy was actually in Dallas the day before and probably the morning of November 22, 1963, when military intelligence figures led Kennedy’s motorcade to its fate. Poppy was also a friend of George de Mohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler, and closely tied to Allen Dulles, whom JFK removed from the CIA directorship. Not to mention Poppy’s ties to Texas oil barons whose tax breaks JFK wanted to end. Draw your own conclusions about this “gentle soul.”

Also I want to note that Bush raised more than half a billion dollars for the complex. Presidents raise money for their libraries while in office (as well as after), which means the fundraising is an opportunity for influence to be exerted. Even foreign leaders can give sitting presidents secret donations for their libraries.

Creative Commons License

Extra material for Salon George W. Bush painting article by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It does not affect your fair use rights or my moral rights. You can view the full license (the legalese) here; you can view a human-readable summary of it here. To learn more about Creative Commons, read this article. License based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@riseup.net.

The Value of the Stratfor Leak

My speech at Foley Square

On November 15, hacktivist Jeremy Hammond was unjustly sentenced to ten years in prison for, among other actions, hacking confidential emails out of the Austin-based private intelligence firm Stratfor. WikiLeaks published these emails as the Global Intelligence Files. I’ve been researching them intensively for more than a year, and have published two articles on my research at WhoWhatWhy, one on General David Petraeus and one on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division seeking White House permission to kill Mexican drug lord El Chapo. That second also includes a lot of my research into Stratfor’s informants and clients.

The day of Jeremy’s sentencing hearing, I gave a speech at Foley Square outside the courtroom and some interviews about the value of the Stratfor leak. The leak will continue to benefit researchers for years and years. Journalist Chris Hedges (Wikipedia), journalist Alexa O’Brien (Website, Twitter), and defense attorney Jay Leiderman (Website, Twitter) also spoke at Foley Square.

If you want the short version, check out this interview of me conducted by Jeff Durkin (Twitter) of We Are Change Connecticut (Website, YouTube). It was right after the speech. The interview is about seven minutes long and came out really well.

If you want the long version, here is a video of all four speeches and more by Small Affair (Twitter, Tumblr, Donate, Occupy the Stage). My part is from 36:00 minutes to 49:30. Small Affair also took the picture at the top of this post. Below the video is the prepared text of my speech.

[wposflv src=https://douglaslucas.com/FreeJeremySpeeches.flv previewimage=https://douglaslucas.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DALStratforSpeech.jpg width=400 height=325 title=”Free Jeremy Speeches”]

This morning we saw young but longtime hacker and political activist Jeremy Hammond unjustly sentenced to ten years in prison for, among other actions, hacking confidential emails out of the Austin-based private intelligence firm Stratfor, the leak of which WikiLeaks is now publishing. The five million-plus emails Jeremy provided to us through WikiLeaks span 2004 to 2011 and consist of internal and external correspondence, files, and records of the firm’s analysts, spies, executives, writers, and other employees.

I want to talk for a few minutes about why what Jeremy did has been and will continue be so beneficial to us—that is, I want to talk about the value of the Stratfor leak, which is Jeremy’s contribution to what we can call the historical record or humankind’s knowledge repository or simply just the Internet. For more than a year, I’ve been intensively researching the complete cache of Stratfor documents in WikiLeaks’ possession. I’ve published two in-depth articles at WhoWhatWhy using my research, have a third coming out soon there, and many more in the works.

When WikiLeaks began publishing the Stratfor leak, which it calls the Global Intelligence Files, much of the reaction from the US mainstream media was dismissive. The Atlantic published an article the same day WikiLeaks announced the leak, titled “Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is WikiLeaks for Taking It Seriously.” The Atlantic writer, of course, did not read the five million-plus emails. Rather, he was probably acquainted with Stratfor’s free email newsletter reports and media appearances and was itching to discredit WikiLeaks and its source, who we now know was Jeremy. But what the Atlantic writer was acquainted with was just the surface of Stratfor.

The firm does so much more. In the 2004 to 2011 time span the leak covers, Stratfor provided training and created custom intelligence products—reports, predictions, assessments—for big corporations such as Hunt Oil, National Oilwell Varco, Parker Drilling, Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical, and for government arms such as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines, and many more. These people weren’t reading the free email newsletter reports. They were buying intelligence products such as Stratfor’s Yemen attack database, in which Stratfor catalogued incidents of violence in Yemen with precise information such as GPS coordinates. They were, in Emerson Electric’s case, paying more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for phone and email access to Stratfor employees who would brief them on political, economic, and security factors affecting their operations. So much of the information Stratfor was providing these clients is available to us now thanks to Jeremy, and most of it hasn’t been researched yet.

National security journalist Joshua Foust said this week that Stratfor isn’t that much different from a private investigator. P.I.s don’t have the clientele I just listed. They also don’t have Stratfor’s informants, who included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mexican diplomat Fernando de la Mora Salcedo, and DEA supervisor William F. Dionne, whom I interviewed and who provided Stratfor information off JWICS, a top-secret US government computer network. Much of what these informants were telling Stratfor is available in the leak, again thanks to Jeremy, and most of it, again, hasn’t been researched yet. So we still don’t yet know the full extent of Jeremy’s contribution.

Joshua Foust also said this week that the Stratfor emails “weren’t surprising” for people in the know. That’s false. And he said “weren’t surprising” as if the leak is already over. We’ve barely scratched the surface. The mainstream media in the US doesn’t want to research the information I’ve been describing, they’re not familiar with it, they don’t care. They bash Jeremy’s contribution on the one hand, but on the other hand, the New York Times (as documented by the NYT Examiner), NPR, and other news organizations collaborate or share information with Stratfor behind the scenes. That’s the US mainstream media for you, hypocritical. Turn them off.

There are easily decades’ worth of research remaining for the Stratfor documents. Not only are there more than five million emails, but many of them have PDF attachments of up to hundreds of pages each. Examples of these attachments include intelligence bulletins from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center, Texas Department of Public Safety threat assessments and situation reports, and intelligence products created by Department of Homeland Security state fusion centers. There are even intelligence products created by Stratfor competitors whom the firm was studying such as Total Intelligence Solutions, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, and Oxford Analytica. So Jeremy didn’t just provide us with information from Stratfor, but also from other private intelligence firms and government intelligence organizations. Again, most of this material hasn’t been researched yet.

But here are some of the greatest hits of what has been uncovered so far.

The previously unknown Trapwire surveillance system was one of the biggest Stratfor revelations. This company with CIA ties developed software for CCTV cameras that identifies or supposedly identifies suspicious behavior and manages and cross-references suspicious behavior reports from different locations and time periods. It also integrates information from license plate readers and other surveillance inputs. Trapwire has been deployed in DC, Seattle, LA, Las Vegas casinos, Atlanta, the London Stock Exchange, and right here in the NYC subways, 500 cameras’ worth according to Stratfor in 2010. If someone “sees something, says something” about you in a New York subway, your “suspicious activity report” possibly goes to TrapWire. Thanks to Jeremy, we better understand mass surveillance, which is crucial, because giving the people who brought us mass incarceration, more than two million people behind bars in the US, the technology to incriminate anyone, whether rival politicians or ordinary citizens, is obviously an immense threat to freedom.

My work at WhoWhatWhy on the Stratfor documents, thanks to Jeremy, includes an article about General David Petraeus, whom Stratfor shows was probably having an extramarital affair prior to previously known, which besides possibly being a military offense, suggests his mistress Paula Broadwell, who was an intelligence officer, may have had him in her crosshairs for a long time. That makes more sense of Petraeus’s downfall from the CIA and gives a better picture of internal government struggles. Another article of mine is on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division seeking White House permission to assassinate Mexican drug lords. That’s a picture of the increasing militarization of law enforcement and the possible broadening of US assassination policy to merge the war on drugs with the war on terror–a push for a so-called “narcoterrorism” policy. Later this month WhoWhatWhy will publish another Stratfor article of mine of Mexican military presence in the US and US military presence in Mexico. Thanks, Jeremy.

Another contribution of his are the revelations in the media outlet Narco News about the US and Mexican governments easing the path for certain cartels to traffic drugs into the country. Instead of improving the Mexican economy so poor people don’t join cartels or legalizing drugs, the US and Mexican governments pick favorites among drug cartels in hopes that a preferred balance of power among them will reduce the drug war violence. Meanwhile they arrest people for smoking pot. This is a picture of what the drug war really is. And I’ve seen in my research that even Congresspeople are listening to Stratfor on so-called narcoterrorism issues.

Thanks to Jeremy, we learned private intelligence was looking for connections between Alexa O’Brien’s campaign finance reform group US Day of Rage and Islamic fundamentalism, which of course carries the threat of Alexa being smeared as a terrorist. That particular Stratfor memo was cited in her and Chris Hedges’ court case against indefinite detention that went to the Supreme Court. We also learned thanks to Jeremy that the Department of Justice has a sealed indictment against Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, indicating the severity of the US government’s efforts against journalists and the Internet. This revelation was cited by Assange in an affidavit to Swedish police.

There are plenty of other revelations in the Stratfor documents. Those are just some of the greatest hits. You can get involved researching the Stratfor documents yourself. Look them up on the WikiLeaks website, where there is a search engine to look through them.

You might say, Okay, so we grabbed a few headlines, and maybe a few legal documents benefitted, but what’s the use, what does it all add up to? We know Jeremy’s legal case was unjust. The FBI knew Stratfor was being hacked for weeks and did not stop it, and entrapped Jeremy through their informant Sabu. Judge Preska denied Jeremy bail wrongfully. And the sentencing is irrational: if Jeremy had broken into the Stratfor building in Austin and walked off with hard drives, he might have a prison sentence of only about a year. There were other actions he did, but since the US government is cracking down on the Internet and journalists and their sources, he’s stuck with a much more severe sentence. So now he’s in prison. Are the news headlines, past and future, worth that? He says so, but are they really?

Yes. For one, these revelations are examples of why more and more people are ceasing to take the US government and traditional politics seriously. The fewer people trust in the Democratic Party, the better. People who grow disgusted with the System as a result of revelations such as these will begin to look to themselves and solidarity for solutions. Solutions such as the commons or mutual aid. Instead of trying to reform or overthrow the government, we can simply practice governance. Internet technology is a tool that makes mass collaboration for mass self-govenance possible, which is something Heather Marsh writes about, if you know her work. If not, read it.

The best way to look at what Jeremy did is to see it as a permanent contribution to humankind’s knowledge base, our knowledge base, the Internet. Think about checking your phone to look something up. We all know what it’s like to look something up online and find an answer, and we all know what it’s like to feel grateful when we find an especially good answer. That’s the sort of gratitude we should feel toward Jeremy. He improved our knowledge; he’s given us better answers, and they are answers about some of the most important things: what the powers who try to control us are doing. With better information, we can make better decisions and govern our own lives.

Fundamentally, Stratfor is a profit-driven business. It influences big business, government, and the media. It’s an organ of the powerful, but despite its power over all our lives, Stratfor’s employees are not vetted by the people and it’s not open to Freedom of Information Act requests. The knowledge it held between 2004 and 2011 was locked up behind closed doors.

But Jeremy freed it. For that, journalists owe him hard work researching the Stratfor documents, and we all owe him our thanks.

That evening, Vivien Weisman (Twitter) interviewed me about Barrett Brown and my Stratfor research to include in her upcoming documentary The Reality Wars, which is about hacktivists.

Also that evening, I was interviewed on Lorax Live (Website, AnonOps Radio, Twitter, Facebook) about the value of the Stratfor leak. The audio is not online yet, but I will update this page when it is.

Creative Commons License

The Value of the Stratfor Leak by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It does not affect your fair use rights or my moral rights. You can view the full license (the legalese) here; you can view a human-readable summary of it here. To learn more about Creative Commons, read this article. License based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@riseup.net.

Patriot and Mailman at The Chat Room, 9 March 2013

Two awesome local bands played here in Fort Worth last Saturday at The Chat Room (Twitter).

“Shake Me” by Patriot

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When I first met Jake Paleschic, the leader, singer, and songwriter of Patriot, he was reading Flannery O’Connor, ’50s and ’60s author of tough, serious short stories and two intense novels. Patriot is just as real as her work. Gritty, not unlike James McMurtry, Jake’s music makes you care — he and his band play, everyone stops to listen. The rest of the band is up to the task of accompanying him. Austin’s experience on classical guitar has trained his right hand to give every single note on bass its own sound, rather than the stream of identical notes you normally hear. Tyler’s fills on lead guitar are as thoughtful as he is, adding to the music like a voice. And Peter’s drumming feels personal, a genuine feel, where so many drummers just bang away mindlessly. I always want to listen to these guys.

Patriot (Bandcamp; Facebook):

  • Jake Paleschic — guitar, harmonica, vocals
  • Tyler Brown — lead guitar
  • Austin Kroll — bass
  • Peter Wiernga — drums

Jake Paleschic

Tyler Brown

Austin Kroll

Peter Wiernga

Set list:

  • Bullet
  • Ballad of Joey Gorman
  • Speak Momma
  • Shake Me
  • Long May I Sleep
  • Day Moon
  • Slow Love
  • Brimstone Blues

“Seth Met a Girl” by Mailman

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Mailman is really fun. Austin has free range for his talent, and Jon sings from his heart. I’m eager to hear “Suburban Angst” recorded, perhaps their catchiest song. Read more about Mailman on the excellent site FortLive.

Mailman (Facebook):

  • Jon Phillips — guitar, vocals
  • Austin Kroll — guitar, vocals
  • Reece Presson — bass
  • Robby Rux — drums

Mailman

Set list:

  • Nevermind (It’s Not So Bad)
  • Working
  • Suburban Angst
  • Seth Met a Girl
  • Slug
  • Black Dress
  • Terrible People
  • Hard Way

Ralph White also played solo that night, as did someone else — if you know this other person’s name, leave it in the comments. And if you know the name of the original artist for the song “Hard Way,” leave that in the comments.

(Thanks to Fernando Ochoa for help with some of the photos.)

Creative Commons License

Patriot and Mailman at The Chat Room, 9 March 2013 by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It does not affect your fair use rights or my moral rights. You can view the full license (the legalese) here; you can view a human-readable summary of it here. To learn more about Creative Commons, read this article. License based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@riseup.net.

I Hate Game Theory

I have yet to read this book

A lot of people I’ve recently met center their lives around winning games, with scoring casual sex encounters as one of the main ones. In this Interview with Pickup Artist Chaser Clarisse Thorn, the interviewer, whom the answer-ready Clarisse just barrels over, splashing her slang about One-itis and strategic ambiguity and outcome independence, asks: “Must everything be framed in terms of a game? What if […] You want to opt-out of that worldview?”

Clarisse answers by saying everyone’s playing games regardless of whatever nobility they affect.

Protester nobly not playing a game; opting-out or super-rational opting in?

One guy I know who regards himself as a skilled pick-up artist (or, as their lingo has it, a PUA) denigrated a certain other person who likes to read books in public by saying the person reads books in public for the sake of appearing broody to women. Maybe the reader just likes to read books. Anyway, the guy writes off men who do not optimize for the degree of social success he regards as advisable by saying these broody idealists have lost so many social games that now they’re just bitter. (As if bitterness alone is damning.) That’s often partly true, I believe, but by not thinking further he’s foreclosing himself from understanding a dimension of human experience that for him just isn’t salient.

I think practicing idealists — let’s say good artists and whistleblowers for specificity — share something: they intentionally lose games in order to create new realities. Think about whistleblower and soldier Joe Darby who exposed the abuses at Abu Ghraib — which included the gruesome CIA-assisted murder of “ghost prisoner” Manadel al-Jamdi. As recounted in Phil Zimbardo’s excellent book The Lucifer Effect (p.476-77), Darby said the abuse he witnessed

“just didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After about three days, I made a decision to turn the pictures in. You have to understand: I’m not the kind of guy to rat somebody out….But this crossed the line to me. I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways.”

After retaliation by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Darby “was whisked away, and eventually concealed in military protective custody for the next several years.”

“But I don’t regret any of it,” Darby said recently. “I made my peace with the decision before I turned the pictures in. I knew that if people found out that it was me, I wouldn’t be liked.”

“For many,” Zimbardo writes, “Darby’s calling attention to the abuses was unpatriotic, un-American, and even faintly treasonous. ‘Hero a Two-Timing Rat,’ ran a headline in the New York Post. [… Darby] was unable to accept [a Presidential Citation honor from the American Psychological Association] because he, his wife, and his mother had to remain in military protective custody for several years in the wake of the many retaliation threats they received.”

The game, the incentives lined up for Darby did not offer him victory for whistleblowing. He decided it was more important to create a new reality wherein injustice at Abu Ghraib had a better chance of being righted. These are the kind of people, I think, that pickup artists write off as merely being bitter. (Note the mainstream media’s dogged efforts to reduce idealist Bradley Manning’s motives to social frustration.)

Another guy I know defended Joe Paterno for not doing enough about the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. This guy said Paterno was being paid well, and when you are being paid well, you can’t be expected to risk things; he also said it with a wink wink, nudge nudge attitude that conveyed “Mature people in the know agree with me.” He is a popular, cheerful young man who is solidly liberal, solidly Democrat. His attitude that maturity consists in surrendering ideals belongs to the feel-good pickup artistry of political and social marketing: Romney’s RNC speech, Obama’s speeches, The Daily Show, TED Talks. The content is irrelevant here; the truth or falsehood or the value of a particular Daily Show joke or Romney claim is irrelevant here. What I am saying is that the way marketers prioritize making the audience feel good higher than the content is most dangerous. We have a world where marketing and appearance trump reality and truth-telling to such an extent that anyone who prefers the latter over the former is cast off as immature and bitter before they are even listened to. But how are you supposed to report CIA torture? With a laughtrack?

Good artists work the same way, though not in the conscious decision-making manner of whistleblowers. By a sort of instinct, good artists wind up rejecting the incentives the main of the art market offers them and create not ossified things but new and therefore real things. New realities. Creative writing is good to the extent that writers allow themselves to live fully while writing; that reality pays off in the voice or tone of the piece, which reminds readers not to trust in appearance but rather in reality. Somebody might be reading a book in public to remind himself of that.

Read this book

You could ask, though — what is the difference between perception-management (a negative term for a component of marketing: managing consumer or voter perceptions) and putting your best foot forward? After all, many of the techniques pickup artists teach are useful social skills to learn, just amped up and repurposed for sexual conquest. And though the horizon for contributing to humanity anonymously (see these to learn more) is improving, people pretty much still need to interact with others to get where they want to go.

When you put your best foot forward, you are primarily allowing people to perceive you of their own accord, rather than emphasizing your manipulation of consumer and voter perceptions. I say emphasize because of course people are always managing perceptions by picking out what outfit they want to look good in today, etc. But it is when appearance overtakes reality that you have a problem. Especially if you can no longer tell the difference between the two. The phenomenological difference between them in first-person experience is real, I think. I’m not entirely sure. More than one slightly ashamed person in a private moment has asked me how they can make themselves more authentic. Maybe I am bitter, but I never know how to answer that question, because it is a problem I’ve never really had.

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I Hate Game Theory by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@riseup.net.

James McMurtry in Denton, Texas, June 2012

Opening song: “Bayou Tortous”

James McMurtry (Website, Twitter, Facebook) played at Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, Texas, last Friday, June 29. I’d been looking forward to hearing him play long enough that when news of his show came across my screen I bought a ticket straightaway. His music sounds like hard work feels. Nostalgic realism, sometimes touched by a dreaminess you’re surprised to hear out of this rough-looking guy. From “Levelland“:

Mama used to roll her hair
Back before the central air
We’d sit outside and watch the stars at night
She’d tell me to make a wish
I’d wish we both could fly

James McMurtry

I found out about McMurtry by reading about his father, writer Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove and Brokeback Mountain fame (I’m fond of the his novel All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers). That led to me finding one of his son’s best-known songs, the protest piece “We Can’t Make It Here”:

At the Denton show, his bassist Cornbread played with a classic Ampeg tone, a good heartbeat beneath McMurtry’s razor-sharp chords. Drummer Daren Hess kept the framework strong throughout. If my memory’s correct, guitarist Tim Holt joined the stage for the ninth song, “We Can’t Make it Here.” He stayed on for the remainder of the show (except when McMurtry played a solo song or two). Holt had a guitar teacher’s facility for putting the right licks in at the right times to top things off. The band grew louder as the night went on, the two guitars howling like a hard rock band’s, and they closed by jamming out at such volume (for a small venue) that the speakers’ lack of distortion surprised me; the mix of the instruments and the gear’s performance was perfect — a sound a band gets once their success allows for good equipment and their years of effort are consistently paying off.

Cornbread

Daren Hess

Tim Holt

McMurtry has a great blog where he’s expressed his support for Occupy Wall Street:

With regard to Occupy and Law enforcement, mayors and college presidents seemed to be charged with giving the orders, at least officially, and they are subsequently charged with taking the heat when the execution of any of their orders goes terribly wrong and produces violence, physical injury, and embarrassing Utube. Politicians and Administrators don’t generally like controversy, it’s bad for careers. I don’t think such people would give orders that would likely result in some really messy controversy, unless enough pressure were brought to bear on them that they would fear for their careers anyway. I think there are bigger forces at work here. […]

I hear complaints that the protest is unfocused, that the protesters rejection of traditional hierarchy renders the movement ineffective as a political force, that it has no clear message. But I don’t see a problem yet. Occupy has been effective simply by coming into existence. No one organized Occupy ahead of time. A call went out and people showed up. They’re still showing up and their numbers and tenacity do have an effect. They get noticed. As for the message, one can google Keith Olbermann and hear the message, well written by Occupy and well read by Olbermann. Basically, occupiers want to take their country back from the banks and lobbyists. Their demands aren’t that different from those of the Tea Party. The two groups should join forces. They’re mad about the same conditions, though they disagree on where to put the blame.

The Tea party blames the government, Occupy blames the corporations that now own the government. Is there that much difference? Ultimately, we will all have to join forces if we are to call ourselves a nation. Right now, we are too polarized to be effective. We no longer recognize each other as Americans. The mayors and college presidents who call out the riot squads apparently don’t know that those are their fellow Americans getting beaten and pepper sprayed. Those are American sons and daughters. Those are American students, American librarians, American grandmothers, and American veterans, and when they get hurt, we all get hurt. The stick swinging has to stop. It serves no useful human purpose.

He also blogs about his observations during his travels. The little observations and the powerful sense of place that show up in his father’s novels appear in his songs, too; many of them are narratives of ordinary lives and the travails people experience. From “Out Here in the Middle“:

They broke into your car last night,
took the stereo
Now you say you don’t know why
you even live there anymore
The garage man didn’t see a thing,
so you guess it was an inside job
You made a reservation, a table for three
They said you’d have to wait,
somebody must have bribed the maitre’d
Boss got mad and he blamed it all on you
Food was bad and the deal fell through

(Chorus)
Well out here in the middle
you can park it on the street
Step up to the counter;
you nearly always get a seat
Nobody steals. Nobody cheats
Wish you were here my love
Wish you here my love

Reminds me of the town Missoula in Montana…

Full Band

The show had a sad point for me in that McMurtry’s music was one of the things my ex-wife and I shared. (My divorce concluded last month.) You have something with someone such as a marriage or a business or a band, and then the structure isn’t there anymore; you remember good things and bad things, and it’ll always be that way, but you come across things that remind you of what used to be. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s hard to take.

Some more about McMurtry: NPR, a Rumpus interview, and this short clip from CNN:

Here’s the set list from the show (links go to official lyrics). I couldn’t figure out all the song titles from my notes, so you’ll have to pardon me for the blanks. If you know, leave a note in the comments.

Creative Commons License

James McMurtry in Denton, Texas, June 2012 by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

Literary Cablegate, Number 2 of Many

Clark Stoeckly‘s Wikileaks Truck on Flickr, Twitter

Second in a series of posts where I’m picking through WikiLeaks Cablegate for literary topics. See my first post in the series for an important introduction, and view the entire series here. At the time of my first Literary Cablegate post (then called Literary WikiLeaks), not all of Cablegate had been published; CablegateSearch.net showed 665 hits for the search term “literature” and 334 for the term “literary”. Now that all of Cablegate has been released (a.k.a. “Cablegate2”; see my remarks on the controversy surrounding the comprehensive Cablegate publication), CablegateSearch.net shows 1,214 hits for “literature” and 403 for “literary.”

I’m going through all of them.

I’m focusing only on cables where “literature” or “literary” is used in the sense of short stories, essays, the humanities, etc. So I’m mostly ignoring cables mentioning literature as in, say, campaign literature, or the medical literature for a malady (unless the cable mentions one of Oliver Sacks‘s highly literary case studies, you see?). Given the importance of intellectual property (or lack thereof) to free speech and the Internet, copyright and copyleft issues will be included as well. Literary Cablegate blog posts will feature about 8 cables each, starting from the most recently written cable. I’ll take on the 403 cable hits for “literary” first.

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Here we go!

  • The United States maintains an annual “Special 301 Report” that, in the words of the United States Trade Representative, reviews “the global state of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and enforcement” and “reflects the Administration’s resolve to encourage and maintain effective IPR protection and enforcement worldwide.” The Report lists nations perceived as threats to copyright interests. Some nations wind up on the Watch List, and others on the more severe Priority Watch List. In a cable dated February 2010, the US Embassy in La Paz said Bolivia’s laws granted powerful intellectual property rights:

    the existing copyright law does protect literary, artistic, and scientific works for the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. Bolivian copyright protection includes the exclusive right to copy or reproduce works; to revise, adapt, or prepare derivative works; to distribute copies of works; and to publicly communicate works. Although the exclusive right to translate works is not explicitly granted, the law does prevent unauthorized adaptation, transformation, modification, and editing. The law also provides protection for software and databases.

    Compare the Bolivian law’s extreme length of copyright (50 years) to the US Pirate Party’s intent to reduce the length of copyright to 14 years and legalize all noncommercial sharing, and to the efforts of Creative Commons.

    Regardless of Bolivian law, the US Embassy noted, copyright was so laxly enforced in Bolivia that their

    Video, music, and software piracy rates are among the highest in Latin America, with the International Intellectual Property Alliance estimating that piracy levels have reached 100% for motion pictures and over 90% for recorded music. There are no legal sources of audio-visual materials in most of the country, since it would be impossible to compete with pirated products prices: in the capital of La Paz there is only one store that sells legal CDs. Bootleg CDs, DVDs, computer software, pharmaceutical products, and other goods are sold on street corners and in stores across the country.

    The Embassy blames the rampant piracy on Bolivia’s lack of human and financial resources to enforce copyright, and says pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to file patents in Bolivia due to fears of trade secret theft and counterfeiting. Despite all the piracy, the US Embassy suggests keeping Bolivia only on the Special 301 Report’s Watch List and not its Priority Watch List just so as not to frustrate Bolivia and thereby damage the copyright interests’ outreach efforts. In 2010 and 2011 Bolivia did remain on the ordinary Special 301 Watch List.

    (Original Cable “Special 301 La Paz Input” 10LAPAZ368.)

  • A February 2010 cable from Baghdad discusses the membership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s State of Law Alliance (SLA), formed in October 2009 as, according to the cable, “a nationalist, non-sectarian political” group. The cable identifies Hassan Sunayd as one “key figure” of SLA, describing him as

    SLA candidate 4 in Dhi Qar. A well-known poet and literary figure in Iraq, Sunayd has been in Da’wa’s political bureau since the late 1980’s. A member of the previous COR’s Security and Defense Committee, he is Maliki’s closest friend, one of his security advisors and liaison to the KRG leadership. Having survived physical torture during the Saddam regime, he has used his position as spokesman for the SLA to rail against the threat of resurgent Ba’athism and was critical of purported U.S. efforts to interfere in the de-Ba’athification process.

    A somewhat substantial search of Google’s various resources as well as academic journals and US newspaper archives turned up no discussion of Hassan Sunayd’s literary background, with one minor exception. (Sometimes his first name is transliterated as Hasan, sometimes his last name as al-Sunayd.) According to an April 14, 2008 BBC transcript, Sunayd recited a poem at a ceremony held in Baghdad to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the martyrdom of Islamic scholar Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Sunayd is mentioned with some frequency as a spokesperson for the Iraqi government.

    Professor Hanan Hammad at the TCU History Department told me Sunayd used the pen name “Jawad Jamil (could be Jawwad Gamil). he lived in Iran in early eights along with members of al-Da’wa Islamist Party. his sister Balqis is also a poet, but with the Communist party. nothing indicate that he’s a great poet/ intellectual.” My searches for his pen name turn up nothing.

    (Original Cable “Coalition Profile: Pm Maliki’s State Of Law Alliance” 10BAGHDAD499)

  • The US State Department maintains an annual Trafficking in Persons Report to “engage foreign governments on human trafficking” and as a resource for “governmental anti-human trafficking efforts.” In a February 2010 cable, the first of three parts (part 2, part 3), the US Embassy in Paris gave its input for the tenth annual report. The cable notes “France prosecutes French nationals who travel abroad to engage in child sexual tourism” and goes on to say

    Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand faced criticism during the reporting period related to his 2005 literary work, which included depictions of sexual tourism in Asia. In “The Bad Life,” Mitterrand details the experiences of an unnamed protagonist with so-called “boys” in the brothels of Thailand. Facing pressure to resign for engaging in sexual tourism before he joined the government, Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterrand stated during an October 8, 2009 television interview that he had never had sex with a minor. “Each time I was with people who were my age, or were five years younger,” the 62 year-old Mitterrand said, adding: “I condemn sexual tourism, which is a disgrace. I condemn pedophilia in which I have never participated in any way.”

    The Guardian extends Miterrand’s quote a sentence: “The book is in no way an apology for sex tourism, even if one chapter is a journey through that hell, with all the fascination that hell can inspire.” The BBC termed Mitterrand’s book an “autobiographical novel” and said the scandal would have brought him down in other countries, “not because he is gay, but because there is an inconsistency between a government committed to fighting sex tourism and a minister who has been a sex tourist. But in France, where a belief in the right to privacy and a liberal view on sex are both near sacrosanct, many believe it would be hypocritical to hound Frederic Mitterrand from office.”

    The cable says France prosecutes child sex tourism, and Mitterand claims he was involved with people basically his age. More importantly, the book is, autobiographically based or not, a work of fiction. How much of it is true to Mitterrand’s life is therefore hard to evaluate beyond educated guessing. Mother Jones, reviewing the book, says the French right wing targetted Mitterand by quoting the book out of context. The Mother Jones reviewer makes the book sound pretty good:

    The Bad Life is a stunningly candid and beautiful book. Described by its author as an “autobiography which is half real and half dreamed,” it recounts his life as a child of privilege born into Paris’s haut bourgeois sixteenth arrondissement, his experience of homosexuality, and a number of deeply felt personal relationships. Much of this is set in a social milieu of movie stars, politicians, renowned artists, and other public figures. […]

    The Bad Life is an intimate, courageous memoir in which Mitterrand is brutally honest not only about himself, but with himself. If it includes a few sordid accounts of a homosexual underworld that some would rather not be asked to consider, it does so within a larger portrait of one man’s life and desires, a nuanced collection of affecting incidents examined with an unsparing eye.

    The entire scandal was complicated by Mitterrand’s defending Roman Polanski shortly beforehand, demanding the director be released after arrest in Switzerland over his US conviction for sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Yet again, the publisher calls The Bad Life a “novel inspired by autobiography.” You don’t take Philip K. Dick’s autobiographical novel VALIS as definitive proof of anything, do you? Or Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead. Writers build off their own experience, but don’t exactly replicate it in fiction. No crime was shown here. Mitterrand is still in office.

    (Original Cable “France: Input For The 2010 Trafficking In Persons Report (part 1 Of 3)” 10PARIS196)

  • A February 2010 cable from the Consulate Shenyang US Embassy in China noted traffic across the border between China and North Korea. “For all the talk about frozen trade between the DPRK [North Korea] and China,” the cable says, the Consulate General Office noted people crossing the border talking business and culture. For example,

    At the train station many different groups of North Koreans were seen waiting to take the train up to Shenyang [China]. On board, a middle-aged North Korean female trader was reading a Sino-Korean literary journal and a Dandong business weekly.

    The apparent significance for the Office is the interest North Koreans show in the Chinese, as evidenced in part by the Sino-Korean literary journal. One wonders which journal the woman was reading. In the United States, “literary journal” tends to mean a venue for highbrow literary work, as opposed to a “magazine,” which can run the gamut of literary taste classifications.

    (Original Cable “Prc-dprk Border: Amcit Crossers, Trade Push, Border Smuggling, Regional Growth” 10SHENYANG21)

  • A February 2010 cable from Berlin discusses German copyright law in the context of foreign investment in Germany.

    Germany is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Germany is also a party to the major international intellectual property protection agreements: the Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Universal Copyright Convention, the Geneva Phonograms Convention, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Brussels Satellite Convention, and the Treaty of Rome on Neighboring Rights. […]

    Germany has signed the WIPO Internet treaties and ratified them in 2003. Foreign and German rights holders, however, remain critical of provisions in the German Copyright Act that allow exceptions for private copies of copyrighted works. Most rights holder organizations regard German authorities’ enforcement of intellectual property protections as sufficient, although problems persist due to lenient court rulings in some cases and the difficulty of combating piracy of copyrighted works on the Internet.

    The Berne Convention — spelled Bern or Berne — was instigated by the writer Victor Hugo in the late 19th century. It says copyright is established when the creator puts the work into fixed form, bypassing the need for registration. The Berne Convention also establishes a minimum term of 50 years after the author’s death for written works. Cory Doctorow talks a bit about the Berne Convention in this Guardian article.

    (Original Cable “Germany – Revised Investment Climate Statement 2010” 10BERLIN166)

  • A February 2010 cable from Geneva and the US Trade Representative discusses January 2010’s 7th Working Party meeting on Yemen’s Accession to the World Trade Organization, the in-progress effort to enter Yemen into the WTO. In a section about trading rights, the cable noted

    The US and EU had additional concerns about certain requirements that only Yemeni nationals could be granted the technical clearance needed to import medicines, medical equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, books, newspapers, audiovisual and other artistic literary works, and requested that the Trading Rights Action Plan be updated to include information on these technical clearance requirements.

    I suspect the technical clearance for Yemeni nationals who regulate the import of “artistic literary works” involves Yemen’s prohibition against the import of “Any item offensive to Muslim culture.” (Yemen’s population is 98% Muslim.) Reporters Without Borders ranks Yemen within the bottom 10 of all nations for press freedom. This might or might not be relevant: a May 25, 2009 piece in the Yemen Times by Dr. A. K. Sharma said if “a nation has to import and export not only goods and commodities but also knowledge and skills, it has got to have an army of well-equipped and professionally competent translators.” Currently Yemen isn’t a member of the WTO.

    (Original Cable “7th Working Party Meeting On Yemen’s Accession To The Wto Held January 26, 2010” 10USTRGENEVA12)

  • A February 2010 cable from Beijing discussing the climate for foreign investment into China notes the country is a member of the Berne Convention (discussed above).

    (Original Cable “2010 Investment Climate Statement – China” 10BEIJING303)

  • Another February cable discussing the climate for foreign investment, this time from the Colombo embassy, notes Sri Lanka is a party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (discussed above). Original literary works are protected under a 2003 Sri Lanka copyright law that was “intended to meet both U.S.-Sri Lanka bilateral IPR agreement and TRIPS obligations to a great extent.” In a January 2003 article for Daily Variety, an entertainment-industry trade magazine, Bryan Pearson said the new law aimed to crack down on piracy; pirating software was “not illegal in Sri Lanka,” Pearson wrote, and the island was a “paradise for fraudulent imports.”

    (Original Cable “Investment Climate Statement, 2010 – Sri Lanka” 10COLOMBO72)

  • Creative Commons License

    Literary Cablegate, Number 2 of Many by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me: dal@douglaslucas.com.

RI Rep Dan Gordon Tinychats with Anonymous, Others; Promises More Chats, #J17 Participation

Rhode Island Representative Daniel P. Gordon, Jr. (Twitter), also known as Rep. Dan Gordon and DiverDan, has drawn interest in the last week for using slogans adopted by the decentralized hacker collective Anonymous (see Quinn Norton‘s series on Anonymous at Wired to catch up on them: Parts 1 2 and more forthcoming). His tweet that initially brought him to the attention of the hivemind was this one against NDAA (the legislation, signed by Obama in the last week, that permits endless US military detention of anyone anywhere without trial based on secret evidence; more from the ACLU):

AnonyOps, one of the most influential Anonymous Twitter accounts, appreciated the representative’s remarks:

Rep. Gordon was sworn in to the Rhode Island state legislature about a year ago, and it’s his first political position, where, among other things, he’s on a committee to study the possible use of ebooks in schools. He’s had three stints in jail and faced 18 charges, including a conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He was evicted from the Republican Caucus in 2011 and angered supporters of a Rhode Island high school’s Gay/Straight Alliance by telling them sexuality shouldn’t be promoted in schools.

He’s taken backroom politics public and taunted at least one fellow Congressperson.

Rep. Gordon opened up a tinychat this evening and, over Twitter, invited people in. The chat session was planned a little earlier by Rep. Gordon and Anon1781.

I managed to jump into the chat and log it; below I’ve pasted two versions of the log: first, an excerpted version edited a little for readability, and second, the whole thing unaltered. The chat mostly took the form of a conversation between Guy Fawkes mask-clad Anon1781 and Rep. Dan Gordon, who played DJ, selecting, among other songs, Rage Against the Machine’s “Bombtrack” and Corrosion of Conformity’s “Vote with a Bullet.”

Highlights from the chat:

  • Rep. Gordon said he planned to participate in #Jan17, which is Occupy Wall Street’s date to Occupy Congress; when I pressed him on his plans, he didn’t give details, citing “many enemies” and the need for “OpSec” (operational security).
  • He said “Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount”; I asked him what he thought of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea. He found it “interesting” and said he’d research it.
  • He called Lincoln “the worst President ever.”
  • His ultimate political goal, he said, is to raise awareness for the people.
  • He promised future chats with Anonymous and other netizens, perhaps over Ustream.

The positive part of this, I think, is that it might be the beginning of public officials, particularly local- or state-level ones, engaging or even collaborating with hardcore netizens, Occupiers, and hackers in an open way. That’s a big maybe, but who knows? Life isn’t going to get any less weird.

Here’s a screenshot to give you a feel for the chat’s vibe. Yes, those are Free Topiary graphics. Rep. Gordon didn’t appear on video.

Excerpted log, edited a little for readability (complete log farther down):

[6:53 PM] douglaslucas: Hi Rep Dan, this is @douglaslucas from Twitter.
[6:53 PM] repdan: Hi Doug!
[6:54 PM] douglaslucas: When did you first begin to use Anonymous & net-culture slogans as a public official?
[6:55 PM] repdan: Just this past week, or so. Outstanding network of social media freedom lovers.
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: hey repdan
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: what the hell is wrong with the ri gop
[6:56 PM] moose_mario: and whats with all this movement to close all the voting
[6:56 PM] repdan: Hiya Moose. The RIGOP is apparently a disfunctional group of ‘climbers’ that care not abou
[6:56 PM] repdan: You in RI, Moose?
[6:57 PM] moose_mario: yes
[6:57 PM] repdan: Who is ur Rep. Moose?
[6:58 PM] moose_mario: providence so i guess ciciline
[6:58 PM] repdan: State Rep, Moose. Cicilline is US Congressman, sir.
[7:00 PM] moose_mario: well then i have no idea
[7:01 PM] repdan: NP. Stand by and I’ll show u where to go to find out, k?
[7:05 PM] repdan: Garbage govt web sites…still looking. Hold on…
[7:05 PM] douglaslucas: Which things about net culture & Anonymous make ya identify them as freedom lovers?
[7:07 PM] repdan: Hello anon1781!
[7:09 PM] repdan: Here you go, Moose. https://sos.ri.gov/vic/
[7:09 PM] anon1781: diverdan you there?
[7:09 PM] repdan: Right here, 1781.
[7:12 PM] repdan: 1st time hosting. Tips welcome.
[7:12 PM] anon1781: pretty easy shit, nothing to it really
[7:12 PM] anon1781: alrighty my question before
[7:12 PM] anon1781: money freespeech
[7:12 PM] anon1781: bastardizing what lobbying is supposed to be
[7:12 PM] anon1781: opinion
[7:13 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:15 PM] repdan: Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount, in my opinion.
[7:15 PM] anon1781: difine set amount
[7:15 PM] anon1781: define*
[7:16 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you think of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea?
[7:16 PM] anon1781: repdan = diverdan = Rep RI Dan Gordon
[7:16 PM] repdan: @douglaslucas Interesting idea. Will research!
[7:17 PM] anon1781: you mentioned before you distaste for the reactions you got of idgaf when talking about
[7:17 PM] anon1781: ndaa with other reps and such, mind describing more?
[7:17 PM] repdan: what do you guys want to listen to for tunes?
[7:17 PM] repdan: @1781..typing…
[7:18 PM] douglaslucas: Rage Against the Machine works for me!
[7:18 PM] repdan: @1781…Apathy, not even aware at the state level of #NDAA….
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: ohh gordon fox
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: dan, if you can, turn on cam, so they stop thinking i’m you lol
[7:19 PM] repdan: CoC, then Black Flag
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: rep dan gordon fox.
[7:20 PM] repdan: @1781. No cam 2nite, bro! But you are a good rep for ANON!
[7:21 PM] repdan: CoC…”Vote with a Bullet”
[7:21 PM] repdan: The People are so apethetic in this state.
[7:22 PM] anon1781: Have you gotten any beef yet for even talking to us?
[7:22 PM] repdan: One Party rule for 74 years….
[7:22 PM] repdan: @1781. No, but I’m sure that folks are watching. No worries here.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: my state, every fucking senator and congressman voted yes on ndaa -.-
[7:23 PM] anon1781: cept one, which shocked me
[7:23 PM] anon1781: the only demo in either lol, again shocked me
[7:23 PM] repdan: One party rule has rusulted in disaster…RI is bottom of barrel in most aspects.
[7:23 PM] diabloanon: pretty much the same here, even people I never thought would support it, voted for it
[7:24 PM] anon1781: i’m scheming my schemes :P
[7:24 PM] repdan: Roger that, 1781. MMN feeling better?
[7:24 PM] anon1781: he was sick?
[7:24 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan do you know MMN?
[7:25 PM] repdan: @Moose. Roger that. He is also Speaker of the House. Send him email or call him.
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you know what i like about the south
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: all the gun vaults you see everywhere.lolz
[7:25 PM] anon1781: MMN = MotorMouthNews :P
[7:25 PM] anon1781: who’s the other MMN you were talking about? lol
[7:26 PM] anon1781: guns are crucial here, so many rednecks, love them, they gonna be on front line
[7:26 PM] anon1781: if civil war breaks out lol
[7:26 PM] anon1781: mad respect for the rednecks now
[7:26 PM] repdan: @1781 Flu, I believe. Was in hospital the other day.
[7:26 PM] cruzaders1: i dont think the war ever ended. the north sought strong fed govern and still do
[7:27 PM] cruzaders1: both lincoln and obmama were illinios sentors, comeing from chicgo ” organized gang/crime”
[7:27 PM] anon1781: my governor is one of the top 5 lobbyists in the US -.-
[7:27 PM] repdan: Lincoln was the worst President ever..false that it was about slavery…
[7:27 PM] anon1781: i dunno about worst, but i do believe history is MUCH more interesting, when you don’t
[7:27 PM] anon1781: learn it from a text book
[7:28 PM] anon1781: it’s like a fucking soap opera
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:29 PM] diabloanon: ooh is that Black Flag?
[7:29 PM] cruzaders1: look, rob bovoghis got cault selling senate seats. east st louis always has voter fraud
[7:29 PM] repdan: Alright, what do yo uall want to losten too. This particular BF vid is lame.
[7:29 PM] repdan: @diablanon. Yepper.
[7:30 PM] diabloanon: I’m fine with whatever everybody else wants to listen to
[7:30 PM] anon1781: how has your first few experiences in house been? boring? do you feel like your doing
[7:30 PM] anon1781: something useful?
[7:31 PM] chichibonga: some tool?
[7:31 PM] repdan: Good Q’s. 1781..stand by. @Chichi Tool, YES!
[7:31 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: anyone heading to dc on the 17th
[7:32 PM] anon1781: :: raises hand ::
[7:32 PM] anon1781: pitched in with about 80 peeps to get a bus
[7:32 PM] anon1781: we’re packing that bitch full
[7:32 PM] repdan: @1781 1st Experiences in the House…awful.
[7:32 PM] anon1781: how so diver?
[7:33 PM] repdan: TThought that good ideas would prevail..reason…not so.
[7:34 PM] anon1781: dan is old fart
[7:34 PM] anon1781: he types epic slow
[7:34 PM] anon1781: so if you ask questions, wait for reply :D
[7:34 PM] repdan: Fiscally sound ideas do not translate to good politics, I’ve found.
[7:34 PM] abc: لا تكن المغــرور فتنـدم ، ولا تكن الواثق فتُـصـدم . .
[7:35 PM] anon1781: sound ideas do not translate to politics lol
[7:35 PM] repdan: 1781 spends too much time typing, lol!
[7:35 PM] chichibonga: i find santorum offensive to the point i wanna kick him in the face ya hear
[7:35 PM] anon1781: santorum, looks like he’s been kicked in the face quite a bit lol
[7:36 PM] repdan: Political Q’s peeps? (Santorum=junk)
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: thats a dreary green wall behind you
[7:36 PM] anon1781: greenscreen :)
[7:36 PM] anon1781: useful :
[7:37 PM] anon1781: what are your overall goals for your term in office diverdan?
[7:38 PM] repdan: @1781. Raise awareness is the ultimate goal.
[7:38 PM] anon1781: with people or government lool
[7:39 PM] repdan: @1781. Both. People take priority, though
[7:39 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:40 PM] anon1781: what actions do you have planned in the near future to raise awareness?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @1781 Trying to spread word thru media to the People…it’s a challange.
[7:41 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: You’re on commission to study use of eBooks in RI schools, yes? How’s that going?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @doug. Yep on Text books.
[7:41 PM] anon1781: unless you do something, umm.. highly questionable, you won’t get much word out that way
[7:42 PM] repdan: @1781. Roger that. I think that is in work, lulz!
[7:42 PM] anon1781: :P true
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: me and peeps are actually gonna clean trash up in towns and talk to people. we care
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: also planning a peoples library based by donations and not taxes
[7:43 PM] repdan: Tunes,,,what next?
[7:43 PM] anon1781: if citizens wanted to put to trial government officials for treason, what route do wetake?
[7:44 PM] repdan: @1781. GREAT Q!
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: we get signature and expect the law,courts to up hold the peoples request
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: If you want to prosecute them in the nextfew years i think your options are limited to
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: revolution
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: if majority of americans feel that way we need to do more then speak but act
[7:44 PM] anon1781: I’m sick of fucking playing around with these asshats, shit’s gotta get serious asap
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: no revolution, the only solution and conclusion is a resolution
[7:45 PM] repdan: Stand by….we need to do a Skype some time…so much 2 talk about.
[7:45 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:45 PM] repdan: LOL…hold on,..1787 what u want to hear?
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: ussr was a revolution and lead to 20years economic depression, with still promblems
[7:46 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:46 PM] cryoanon: Well i wouldn’t exactly call Russia democratic today
[7:46 PM] anon1781: Rock some FooFighters :P
[7:47 PM] repdan: fOO IT IS…STAND BY
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: me either. thats why revolution is not the solution
[7:47 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:47 PM] anonrep: Do what do you make of recent artical’s claming the pentagon has sold infomation to
[7:47 PM] anonrep: hollywood for films that they will not release to the public
[7:48 PM] anonrep: basically selling exclusivitey right’s on infomation to hollywood
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: but back in the 90’s the black panthers walk into congress with ak’s and none was arrest
[7:48 PM] cruzaders1: we need not to gather is groups of hundred but in hundred thousands and storm OUR building
[7:48 PM] anon1781: black panther’s get away with alot of shit lol
[7:48 PM] repdan: It’s estimated that only 3% of the pop, actively participated in American Rev. Trivia…
[7:48 PM] anon1781: i see J17 being a milestone
[7:49 PM] anon1781: or a complete dud, hope it’s the better of the two
[7:49 PM] cryoanon: It’s certainly going to get interesting
[7:49 PM] repdan: #J17 is a day to look FWD too. Also watch for #OpMindCrime.
[7:50 PM] chichibonga: i hope so i hope no one acts like a tool and ruins it or drowns out the causeu know FOX ne
[7:50 PM] anon1781: you going to be there on J17 dan?
[7:50 PM] repdan: Yepper.
[7:50 PM] anon1781: good
[7:50 PM] anon1781: and i’ve got a plan in the works for fox lol
[7:51 PM] douglaslucas: Yes to #J17, Dan?
[7:51 PM] anon1781: pretty much almost all the major news networks actually
[7:51 PM] repdan: @ Doug…Y
[7:51 PM] chichibonga: yes i hope so i hate those haters
[7:51 PM] anon1781: the plan is to have censorship bar carrying activists
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and block the view of their cameras
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and let it be covered by the people instead
[7:52 PM] anon1781: got a team of 30 so far on that, but gonna need more
[7:52 PM] repdan: Do U folks actually realize how bad it is? W/ respect….
[7:52 PM] repdan: @1781. Word
[7:52 PM] anon1781: I’d say some of us are aware, some are close, and most are far away
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: people are so apathetic –lotta dumb folks out ther
[7:53 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you plan to do for #J17 ?
[7:53 PM] anon1781: it’s bad enough for me to have already bought a plane ticket to argentina, and have a
[7:53 PM] anon1781: place to stay
[7:53 PM] anon1781: if shit gets too hairy
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:54 PM] star_gazer: i have a home in the philippines and my passport ready
[7:54 PM] anon1781: but, do tell us how bad it is from your own words
[7:54 PM] anon1781: will be interesting to hear
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: RI is pretty messed up
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: its like..decay
[7:55 PM] anon1781: MS is fucked up
[7:55 PM] anon1781: think about this, when do you ever hear anything about MS?
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: neva
[7:56 PM] anon1781: exactly lol
[7:56 PM] anon1781: so much insane shit happens
[7:56 PM] anon1781: but they have it so on lock
[7:56 PM] anon1781: nothing gets out
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: but i dont hear anything about dakota either
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: n or s
[7:56 PM] star_gazer: Oklahoma is not messed up …..yet
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: I don’t hear anything but what is going on in Oklahoma
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: unless i jump on twitter and help spread the news
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: dont hear about any states
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: well repdan in ri politics. here its a total one party stranglehold we dont even get 2 lol
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: would like to hear his experience
[7:58 PM] anon1781: tell us “how bad it is” diverdan
[7:58 PM] repdan: REAL bad… zero regard 4 the 10th Amendment…People’s apathy…
[7:59 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What are your plans for #J17 ?
[8:00 PM] repdan: Ok….regroup…we need to do a Ustream soon for talkie
[8:00 PM] repdan: Many important Q’s…2 much typing
[8:00 PM] anon1781: ustreams is cool, just one sided
[8:01 PM] repdan: @1781. Recommendations?
[8:01 PM] anon1781: on here up to 16 people can cam and talk at once
[8:01 PM] anon1781: (maybe more, i’ve only seen up to 16
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] anon1781: but it allows for quick dialogue
[8:01 PM] repdan: Rgr that, 1781.
[8:02 PM] anon1781: next time, i’d like to make it a bit more formal
[8:02 PM] anon1781: i’ll send you a list of questions before we do it
[8:02 PM] anon1781: that i’ll be asking
[8:02 PM] anon1781: so you can prepare your answers mentally structured
[8:03 PM] repdan: Good idea 1781. I’m down. Did an interview 2day on similiar stuff.
[8:03 PM] anon1781: we plan on recording it, and posting it
[8:03 PM] anon1781: and a challenge to any other governmentals
[8:03 PM] anon1781: to do the s
[8:03 PM] anon1781: same
[8:03 PM] repdan: I welcome it, sir!
[8:04 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: who was the interview with?
[8:04 PM] repdan: Station in Nashville…stand by . I;ll get the link
[8:05 PM] repdan: They r anons from Tn…Great interview.
[8:06 PM] anon1781: cool, it’s a date, sometime next week
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: its a date?
[8:07 PM] repdan: Yepper! Date, Umadbro?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: go find ethersec lol, they
[8:07 PM] anon1781: will give ya hugs or some shit
[8:07 PM] repdan: Lulz..
[8:08 PM] repdan: Yay!
[8:08 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:09 PM] anon1781: alright, i’m out, tnx for this diver, will set up something better next week
[8:09 PM] anon1781: got some Ops to work on
[8:09 PM] anon1781: peace folks
[8:09 PM] repdan: Rgr that..Ty. Best
[8:10 PM] datoneanon: repdan howd you get elected as a libertarian, isnt that impossible
[8:10 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Can you tell us any about your #J17 plans?
[8:11 PM] repdan: @Daton….ran as as an (R) w/ Libertarian leanings.
[8:12 PM] repdan: @doug. Not at the moment..many enemies…OpSec
[8:12 PM] douglaslucas: Okay.
[8:13 PM] repdan: Any other Q’s B4 I call it a night for TinyChat, peeps?
[8:13 PM] douglaslucas: Is your eBook commission considering open curriculum possibilities like creative commons?
[8:15 PM] repdan: Thank you all for participating, and giving ur input.
[8:15 PM] repdan: More formal and structured chat soon.
[8:15 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Thanks for doing this tinychat!
[8:16 PM] repdan: My pleasure, sir.
[8:17 PM] repdan: @repdangordon on the Twitter
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: Sorry I didnt say much, I appreciate you really trying to reach out and represent your
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: constituents
[8:17 PM] repdan left the room.

Complete, unedited log:

[6:53 PM] guest-944707 changed nickname to douglaslucas
[6:53 PM] guest-944719 entered the room.
[6:53 PM] guest-944719 left the room.
[6:53 PM] douglaslucas: Hi Rep Dan, this is @douglaslucas from Twitter.
[6:53 PM] repdan: Hi Doug!
[6:54 PM] douglaslucas: When did you first begin to use Anonymous & net-culture slogans as a public official?
[6:54 PM] guest-944755 entered the room.
[6:54 PM] guest-944755 left the room.
[6:55 PM] guest-944776 entered the room.
[6:55 PM] repdan: Just this past week, or so. Outstanding network of social media freedom lovers.
[6:55 PM] guest-944776 changed nickname to moose_mario
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: hey repdan
[6:55 PM] moose_mario: what the hell is wrong with the ri gop
[6:56 PM] moose_mario: and whats with all this movement to close all the voting
[6:56 PM] repdan: Hiya Moose. The RIGOP is apparently a disfunctional group of ‘climbers’ that care not abou
[6:56 PM] repdan: You in RI, Moose?
[6:57 PM] moose_mario: yes
[6:57 PM] guest-944815 entered the room.
[6:57 PM] guest-944815 left the room.
[6:57 PM] repdan: Who is ur Rep. Moose?
[6:58 PM] moose_mario: providence so i guess ciciline
[6:58 PM] repdan: State Rep, Moose. Cicilline is US Congressman, sir.
[7:00 PM] moose_mario: well then i have no idea
[7:01 PM] repdan: NP. Stand by and I’ll show u where to go to find out, k?
[7:05 PM] repdan: Garbage govt web sites…still looking. Hold on…
[7:05 PM] douglaslucas: Which things about net culture & Anonymous make ya identify them as freedom lovers?
[7:05 PM] guest-945064 entered the room.
[7:06 PM] guest-945064 changed nickname to anon1781
[7:06 PM] anon1781: hello there
[7:06 PM] anon1781: one moment
[7:06 PM] guest-945082 entered the room.
[7:06 PM] guest-945082 changed nickname to s0usanon
[7:07 PM] moose_mario: hold on i think i found it
[7:07 PM] s0usanon left the room.
[7:07 PM] repdan: Hello anon1781!
[7:08 PM] guest-945148 entered the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945148 left the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945166 entered the room.
[7:08 PM] guest-945166 changed nickname to cruzaders1
[7:09 PM] repdan: Here you go, Moose. https://sos.ri.gov/vic/
[7:09 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you still on
[7:09 PM] anon1781: yes
[7:09 PM] guest-945187 entered the room.
[7:09 PM] anon1781: diverdan you there?
[7:09 PM] cruzaders1: how you been?
[7:09 PM] repdan: Right here, 1781.
[7:10 PM] anon1781: good good, OpSpend50bucksOnCarShitCuzItsApieceOfShit successful
[7:10 PM] cruzaders1: know where mc comb use to live there
[7:10 PM] guest-945211 entered the room.
[7:10 PM] guest-945211 changed nickname to diabloanon
[7:10 PM] cruzaders1: moved away. but damnit south is something elese.lolz
[7:10 PM] anon1781: no doubt
[7:11 PM] anon1781: alrighty, i think i’m set up now
[7:11 PM] cruzaders1: so whos hosting, wheres the music?
[7:11 PM] guest-945232 entered the room.
[7:12 PM] repdan: 1st time hosting. Tips welcome.
[7:12 PM] anon1781: pretty easy shit, nothing to it really
[7:12 PM] anon1781: alrighty my question before
[7:12 PM] guest-945232 changed nickname to billrappleye
[7:12 PM] anon1781: money freespeech
[7:12 PM] anon1781: bastardizing what lobbying is supposed to be
[7:12 PM] anon1781: opinion
[7:13 PM] guest-945187 changed nickname to chichibonga
[7:13 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:13 PM] moose_mario: apparently my rep is.. 4
[7:13 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:13 PM] moose_mario: all hail 4!
[7:13 PM] anon1781: 4!
[7:13 PM] cruzaders1: sweet
[7:14 PM] cruzaders1: so whats up tonight? wonder what can do with our time?
[7:14 PM] repdan: Hiya billrappleye
[7:14 PM] billrappleye: nice mask yiou should wear that at the state house
[7:14 PM] anon1781: diverdan here promised some dialogue
[7:14 PM] anon1781: i have
[7:14 PM] anon1781: got pics
[7:15 PM] anon1781: funny shit, got kicked out of walmart with it on
[7:15 PM] cruzaders1: i need mask…thought of makeing a flour plaster one
[7:15 PM] repdan: Political campaigns should be publically funded at a set amount, in my opinion.
[7:15 PM] anon1781: but went to supreme court, senate, and house of reps with it on
[7:15 PM] anon1781: even got to sit in chairman’s chair with it
[7:15 PM] anon1781: difine set amount
[7:15 PM] anon1781: define*
[7:15 PM] repdan: Not my mask, billrappleye.
[7:16 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you think of @USDOR’s 1 vote, 1 campaign donation dollar per citizen idea?
[7:16 PM] guest-945343 entered the room.
[7:16 PM] anon1781: repdan = diverdan = Rep RI Dan Gordon
[7:16 PM] guest-945343 changed nickname to kg
[7:16 PM] guest-945355 entered the room.
[7:16 PM] repdan: @douglaslucas Interesting idea. Will research!
[7:17 PM] guest-945355 left the room.
[7:17 PM] anon1781: you mentioned before you distaste for the reactions you got of idgaf when talking about
[7:17 PM] anon1781: ndaa with other reps and such, mind describing more?
[7:17 PM] repdan: what do you guys want to listen to for tunes?
[7:17 PM] repdan: @1781..typing…
[7:18 PM] anon1781: :P
[7:18 PM] douglaslucas: Rage Against the Machine works for me!
[7:18 PM] kg: Yes!
[7:18 PM] repdan: @1781…Apathy, not even aware at the state level of #NDAA….
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: ohh gordon fox
[7:19 PM] anon1781: @cruz, bug MMN to get his ass in here lol
[7:19 PM] cruzaders1: you got any black flag- my war
[7:19 PM] guest-945451 entered the room.
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: dan, if you can, turn on cam, so they stop thinking i’m you lol
[7:19 PM] cruzaders1: r even online right now?
[7:19 PM] repdan: CoC, then Black Flag
[7:19 PM] moose_mario: rep dan gordon fox.
[7:19 PM] anon1781: MMN is always online
[7:20 PM] cruzaders1: lolz. i shout at him
[7:20 PM] anon1781: kilgoar wanted to witness this too he said last night
[7:20 PM] guest-945451 changed nickname to 6042
[7:20 PM] anon1781: but, i was too lazy to get contacts from him lol
[7:20 PM] repdan: @1781. No cam 2nite, bro! But you are a good rep for ANON!
[7:21 PM] repdan: CoC…”Vote with a Bullet”
[7:21 PM] kg left the room.
[7:21 PM] repdan: The People are so apethetic in this state.
[7:21 PM] guest-945577 entered the room.
[7:22 PM] anon1781: Have you gotten any beef yet for even talking to us?
[7:22 PM] repdan: One Party rule for 74 years….
[7:22 PM] repdan: @1781. No, but I’m sure that folks are watching. No worries here.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: my state, every fucking senator and congressman voted yes on ndaa -.-
[7:23 PM] repdan: One party rule has rusulted in disaster…RI is bottom of barrel in most aspects.
[7:23 PM] anon1781: cept one, which shocked me
[7:23 PM] anon1781: the only demo in either lol, again shocked me
[7:23 PM] diabloanon: pretty much the same here, even people I never thought would support it, voted for it
[7:24 PM] anon1781: i’m scheming my schemes :P
[7:24 PM] repdan: Roger that, 1781. MMN feeling better?
[7:24 PM] anon1781: he was sick?
[7:24 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan do you know MMN?
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: 1781 you know what i like about the south
[7:25 PM] repdan: @Moose. Roger that. He is also Speaker of the House. Send him email or call him.
[7:25 PM] anon1781: >.>
[7:25 PM] anon1781: lolol
[7:25 PM] cruzaders1: all the gun vaults you see everywhere.lolz
[7:25 PM] anon1781: MMN = MotorMouthNews :P
[7:25 PM] anon1781: who’s the other MMN you were talking about? lol
[7:25 PM] guest-945694 entered the room.
[7:26 PM] anon1781: guns are crucial here, so many rednecks, love them, they gonna be on front line
[7:26 PM] anon1781: if civil war breaks out lol
[7:26 PM] repdan: @1781 Flu, I believe. Was in hospital the other day.
[7:26 PM] anon1781: mad respect for the rednecks now
[7:26 PM] cruzaders1: i dont think the war ever ended. the north sought strong fed govern and still do
[7:27 PM] guest-945694 left the room.
[7:27 PM] anon1781: my governor is one of the top 5 lobbyists in the US -.-
[7:27 PM] repdan: Lincoln was the worst President ever..false that it was about slavery…
[7:27 PM] cruzaders1: both lincoln and obmama were illinios sentors, comeing from chicgo ” organized gang/crime”
[7:27 PM] anon1781: i dunno about worst, but i do believe history is MUCH more interesting, when you don’t
[7:27 PM] anon1781: learn it from a text book
[7:28 PM] anon1781: it’s like a fucking soap opera
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:28 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:28 PM] moose_mario left the room.
[7:28 PM] cruzaders1: I personally think chicgo is controlling the countrie
[7:29 PM] diabloanon: ooh is that Black Flag?
[7:29 PM] cruzaders1: look, rob bovoghis got cault selling senate seats. east st louis always has voter fraud
[7:29 PM] repdan: Alright, what do yo uall want to losten too. This particular BF vid is lame.
[7:29 PM] repdan: @diablanon. Yepper.
[7:30 PM] diabloanon: I’m fine with whatever everybody else wants to listen to
[7:30 PM] guest-945790 entered the room.
[7:30 PM] cruzaders1: play some smashing pumkins
[7:30 PM] guest-945790 left the room.
[7:30 PM] anon1781: how has your first few experiences in house been? boring? do you feel like your doing
[7:30 PM] anon1781: something useful?
[7:31 PM] diabloanon left the room.
[7:31 PM] chichibonga: some tool?
[7:31 PM] repdan: Good Q’s. 1781..stand by. @Chichi Tool, YES!
[7:31 PM] cruzaders1: anyone like to read
[7:31 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:31 PM] guest-945829 entered the room.
[7:32 PM] guest-945829 changed nickname to motormouthnews
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: anyone heading to dc on the 17th
[7:32 PM] anon1781: :: raises hand ::
[7:32 PM] guest-945838 entered the room.
[7:32 PM] anon1781: pitched in with about 80 peeps to get a bus
[7:32 PM] repdan: @1781 1st Experiences in the House…awful.
[7:32 PM] cruzaders1: got a good collection of the poor james bond
[7:32 PM] anon1781: we’re packing that bitch full
[7:32 PM] anon1781: how so diver?
[7:32 PM] chichibonga: very nice a bus-debating drive or train
[7:33 PM] guest-945853 entered the room.
[7:33 PM] repdan: TThought that good ideas would prevail..reason…not so.
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: sup sup
[7:33 PM] guest-945853 changed nickname to abc
[7:33 PM] repdan: Hey MMN!
[7:33 PM] guest-945868 entered the room.
[7:33 PM] guest-945868 changed nickname to diabloanon
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: hows all
[7:33 PM] anon1781: hey bro
[7:33 PM] diabloanon: hey MMN
[7:33 PM] motormouthnews: sup
[7:33 PM] chichibonga: i love the guy fawkes mask its my pic on FB
[7:33 PM] guest-945877 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] guest-945889 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] anon1781: dan is old fart
[7:34 PM] guest-945889 changed nickname to touchedbypriest
[7:34 PM] anon1781: he types epic slow
[7:34 PM] chichibonga: hahah
[7:34 PM] guest-945895 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] repdan: Fiscally sound ideas do not translate to good politics, I’ve found.
[7:34 PM] abc: لا تكن المغــرور فتنـدم ، ولا تكن الواثق فتُـصـدم . .
anon1781: so if you ask questions, wait for reply :D
[7:34 PM] guest-945898 entered the room.
[7:34 PM] 6042 left the room.
[7:35 PM] touchedbypriest: this place is bumpin’
[7:35 PM] anon1781: sound ideas do not translate to politics lol
[7:35 PM] guest-945895 changed nickname to dallison281
[7:35 PM] repdan: 1781 spends too much time typing, lol!
[7:35 PM] guest-945877 changed nickname to protocol
[7:35 PM] chichibonga: i find santorum offensive to the point i wanna kick him in the face ya hear
[7:35 PM] protocol: supppppppppppp
[7:35 PM] guest-945898 left the room.
[7:35 PM] guest-945919 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] touchedbypriest: joined the group whiteboard.
[7:35 PM] motormouthnews: sup
[7:35 PM] guest-945931 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] abc left the room.
[7:35 PM] guest-945919 changed nickname to motormouth
[7:35 PM] anon1781: santorum, looks like he’s been kicked in the face quite a bit lol
[7:35 PM] motormouth: how is everyone
[7:35 PM] guest-945943 entered the room.
[7:35 PM] motormouthnews: lol
[7:36 PM] guest-945943 changed nickname to anonrep
[7:36 PM] motormouthnews: you cant be meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
[7:36 PM] anon1781: i was wondering how long it would take for a troll :D yay!
[7:36 PM] chichibonga: with those thin lips– and that whiny nasal voice
[7:36 PM] motormouth: I’m not, you must me my news arm.
[7:36 PM] repdan: Political Q’s peeps? (Santorum=junk)
[7:36 PM] protocol left the room.
[7:36 PM] anonrep: hello
[7:36 PM] guest-945931 left the room.
[7:36 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:36 PM] chichibonga: santorum frothy
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: thats a dreary green wall behind you
[7:36 PM] anon1781: greenscreen :)
[7:36 PM] anon1781: useful :
[7:36 PM] touchedbypriest: ahhh
[7:36 PM] anon1781: ^_^
[7:36 PM] motormouthnews: i was touchedbyapriest once
[7:37 PM] motormouthnews: then i became atheist
[7:37 PM] touchedbypriest: lol
[7:37 PM] guest-945973 entered the room.
[7:37 PM] guest-945973 changed nickname to cryoanon
[7:37 PM] guest-945838 changed nickname to kazeno_p
[7:37 PM] touchedbypriest: you know kids .. cant keep their mouths shut
[7:37 PM] chichibonga: musta been a bad touch
[7:37 PM] kazeno_p: I can haz destroy planet earth?
[7:37 PM] anon1781: what are your overall goals for your term in office diverdan?
[7:37 PM] motormouth: Follow me on twitter @motormouthnews
[7:37 PM] guest-945976 entered the room.
[7:38 PM] guest-945976 changed nickname to k
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: Hi there DanGordon Sama! D:
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: /me licks Rep Dan Gordon
[7:38 PM] touchedbypriest: need some tunes or boobs
[7:38 PM] anon1781: tits/tunes rock it
[7:38 PM] repdan: @1781. Raise awareness is the ultimate goal.
[7:38 PM] kazeno_p: Y u no asian? :(
[7:38 PM] anon1781: with people or government lool
[7:39 PM] kazeno_p: SHOW ME UR EYES? D:
[7:39 PM] k: anything new?
[7:39 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:39 PM] kazeno_p: omg.. my net are slow
[7:39 PM] repdan: @1781. Both. People take priority, though
[7:39 PM] anon1781: learn2net kaz
[7:40 PM] chichibonga: fucking traveler ad keeps cumin up
[7:40 PM] anon1781: what actions do you have planned in the near future to raise awareness?
[7:40 PM] cruzaders1: who knows how to telnet?
[7:40 PM] chichibonga: love sublime
[7:40 PM] kazeno_p: i dunno how to net trollolol
[7:40 PM] cryoanon: And now 4 some boobs
[7:40 PM] repdan: @billrappleye What r u up 2 2nite?
[7:40 PM] cruzaders1: fun anyone later?
[7:40 PM] anon1781: ty cryo
[7:40 PM] anon1781: marry me
[7:40 PM] guest-946051 entered the room.
[7:41 PM] guest-946051 changed nickname to moose_mario
[7:41 PM] anon1781: tits + tunes
[7:41 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: You’re on commission to study use of eBooks in RI schools, yes? How’s that going?
[7:41 PM] repdan: @1781 Trying to spread word thru media to the People…it’s a challange.
[7:41 PM] k left the room.
[7:41 PM] kazeno_p: cruzaders1: i know. is that like some epic game that goes with netcat?
[7:41 PM] cryoanon: What color shall we go with?
[7:41 PM] cruzaders1: you know be great idea. set this video chat up but with doodle like yahoo
[7:41 PM] cruzaders1: could interact and share things
[7:41 PM] repdan: @doug. Yep on Text books.
[7:41 PM] kazeno_p: i’m not from the us. HALP.
[7:41 PM] anon1781: unless you do something, umm.. highly questionable, you won’t get much word out that way
[7:42 PM] guest-946090 entered the room.
[7:42 PM] cruzaders1: telnet, its dos… research and educate
[7:42 PM] repdan: @1781. Roger that. I think that is in work, lulz!
[7:42 PM] anon1781: :P true
[7:42 PM] chichibonga: whos trollinhg
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: me and peeps are actually gonna clean trash up in towns and talk to people. we care
[7:43 PM] kazeno_p left the room.
[7:43 PM] anon1781: if citizens wanted to put to trial government officials for treason, what route do wetake?
[7:43 PM] anon1781: ^_^
[7:43 PM] repdan: Tunes,,,what next?
[7:43 PM] cruzaders1: also planning a peoples library based by donations and not taxes
[7:43 PM] anonrep: good question anon
[7:44 PM] repdan: @1781. GREAT Q!
[7:44 PM] chichibonga: halesto
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: we get signature and expect the law,courts to up hold the peoples request
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: If you want to prosecute them in the nextfew years i think your options are limited to
[7:44 PM] cryoanon: revolution
[7:44 PM] billrappleye: joined the group whiteboard.
[7:44 PM] cruzaders1: if majority of americans feel that way we need to do more then speak but act
[7:44 PM] anon1781: I’m sick of fucking playing around with these asshats, shit’s gotta get serious asap
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: no revolution, the only solution and conclusion is a resolution
[7:45 PM] repdan: Stand by….we need to do a Skype some time…so much 2 talk about.
[7:45 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:45 PM] repdan: LOL…hold on,..1787 what u want to hear?
[7:45 PM] cruzaders1: ussr was a revolution and lead to 20years economic depression, with still promblems
[7:45 PM] motormouthnews: 1787?
[7:46 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:46 PM] cryoanon: Well i wouldn’t exactly call Russia democratic today
[7:46 PM] motormouth left the room.
[7:46 PM] guest-946204 entered the room.
[7:46 PM] guest-946090 changed nickname to eman
[7:46 PM] anon1781: Rock some FooFighters :P
[7:46 PM] guest-946204 changed nickname to youranonnews
[7:47 PM] repdan: fOO IT IS…STAND BY
[7:47 PM] youranonnews: please vote for us: http://shortyawards.com/?category=activism&screen_name=youranonnews
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: me either. thats why revolution is not the solution
[7:47 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:47 PM] anonrep: Do what do you make of recent artical’s claming the pentagon has sold infomation to
[7:47 PM] cruzaders1: but back in the 90’s the black panthers walk into congress with ak’s and none was arrest
[7:47 PM] anonrep: hollywood for films that they will not release to the public
[7:48 PM] cruzaders1: we need not to gather is groups of hundred but in hundred thousands and storm OUR building
[7:48 PM] anon1781: black panther’s get away with alot of shit lol
[7:48 PM] chichibonga: foo fighters always works
[7:48 PM] anonrep: basically selling exclusivitey right’s on infomation to hollywood
[7:48 PM] repdan: It’s estimated that only 3% of the pop, actively participated in American Rev. Trivia…
[7:48 PM] guest-945577 left the room.
[7:48 PM] chichibonga: i love dave grohl
[7:48 PM] anon1781: i see J17 being a milestone
[7:49 PM] anon1781: or a complete dud, hope it’s the better of the two
[7:49 PM] eman left the room.
[7:49 PM] cryoanon: It’s certainly going to get interesting
[7:49 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: For yr textbook commission, might RI use Creative Commons or other open materials?
[7:49 PM] guest-946285 entered the room.
[7:49 PM] repdan: #J17 is a day to look FWD too. Also watch for #OpMindCrime.
[7:49 PM] guest-946285 changed nickname to thaliecat
[7:49 PM] thaliecat left the room.
[7:49 PM] guest-946300 entered the room.
[7:50 PM] guest-946300 changed nickname to star_gazer
[7:50 PM] chichibonga: i hope so i hope no one acts like a tool and ruins it or drowns out the causeu know FOX ne
[7:50 PM] anon1781: you going to be there on J17 dan?
[7:50 PM] repdan: Yepper.
[7:50 PM] anon1781: good
[7:50 PM] anon1781: and i’ve got a plan in the works for fox lol
[7:51 PM] douglaslucas: Yes to #J17, Dan?
[7:51 PM] anon1781: pretty much almost all the major news networks actually
[7:51 PM] repdan: @ Doug…Y
[7:51 PM] chichibonga: yes i hope so i hate those haters
[7:51 PM] anon1781: the plan is to have censorship bar carrying activists
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and block the view of their cameras
[7:51 PM] anon1781: and let it be covered by the people instead
[7:52 PM] anon1781: got a team of 30 so far on that, but gonna need more
[7:52 PM] repdan: Do U folks actually realize how bad it is? W/ respect….
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: hahaha cool
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: i dont thinks so–
[7:52 PM] repdan: @1781. Word
[7:52 PM] anon1781: I’d say some of us are aware, some are close, and most are far away
[7:52 PM] chichibonga: people are so apathetic –lotta dumb folks out ther
[7:53 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What do you plan to do for #J17 ?
[7:53 PM] anon1781: it’s bad enough for me to have already bought a plane ticket to argentina, and have a
[7:53 PM] anon1781: place to stay
[7:53 PM] chichibonga: I love in philly –they are so bad here no one has a clue
[7:53 PM] anon1781: if shit gets too hairy
[7:53 PM] chichibonga: live in philly
[7:53 PM] motormouthnews left the room.
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:53 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[7:54 PM] repdan: brb.
[7:54 PM] star_gazer: i have a home in the philippines and my passport ready
[7:54 PM] anon1781: but, do tell us how bad it is from your own words
[7:54 PM] anon1781: will be interesting to hear
[7:54 PM] touchedbypriest: yanahmean
[7:54 PM] chichibonga: i like big butts and i camnot lie u other fellas can deny!!
[7:55 PM] chichibonga: haaha some mix here
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: RI is pretty messed up
[7:55 PM] anon1781: MS is fucked up
[7:55 PM] moose_mario: its like..decay
[7:55 PM] anon1781: think about this, when do you ever hear anything about MS?
[7:55 PM] touchedbypriest left the room.
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: neva
[7:56 PM] anon1781: exactly lol
[7:56 PM] anon1781: so much insane shit happens
[7:56 PM] anon1781: but they have it so on lock
[7:56 PM] anon1781: nothing gets out
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: but i dont hear anything about dakota either
[7:56 PM] star_gazer: Oklahoma is not messed up …..yet
[7:56 PM] chichibonga: n or s
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: I don’t hear anything but what is going on in Oklahoma
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: unless i jump on twitter and help spread the news
[7:57 PM] star_gazer: dont hear about any states
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: well repdan in ri politics. here its a total one party stranglehold we dont even get 2 lol
[7:57 PM] repdan: ok…BACK NOW
[7:57 PM] moose_mario: would like to hear his experience
[7:58 PM] anon1781: tell us “how bad it is” diverdan
[7:58 PM] moose_mario: ^^
[7:58 PM] anonrep: Anonymous: American Treason Alert
[7:58 PM] anonrep: http://ilegionnet.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/anonymous-american-treason-alert/
[7:58 PM] diabloanon: sexyfawkes lmfao
[7:58 PM] repdan: REAL bad… zero regard 4 the 10th Amendment…People’s apathy…
[7:58 PM] chichibonga: hahaha
[7:59 PM] repdan: We’ll have to do a …whoa…..boobs!
[7:59 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: What are your plans for #J17 ?
[7:59 PM] star_gazer: yall boys are easiliy distracted
[7:59 PM] chichibonga: haah
[7:59 PM] anon1781: welcome to legion?
[7:59 PM] anon1781: lol
[7:59 PM] star_gazer: lol
[7:59 PM] anon1781: cryo lol
[7:59 PM] chichibonga: ooh theres titties i got my own set so im good
[8:00 PM] star_gazer: me too
[8:00 PM] repdan: Ok….regroup…we need to do a Ustream soon for talkie
[8:00 PM] repdan: Many important Q’s…2 much typing
[8:00 PM] anon1781: ustreams is cool, just one sided
[8:00 PM] star_gazer: I need a mast stat so I can take some pics
[8:01 PM] repdan: @1781. Recommendations?
[8:01 PM] star_gazer: jokes
[8:01 PM] anon1781: on here up to 16 people can cam and talk at once
[8:01 PM] anon1781: (maybe more, i’ve only seen up to 16
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:01 PM] anon1781: but it allows for quick dialogue
[8:01 PM] anonrep left the room.
[8:01 PM] repdan: Rgr that, 1781.
[8:02 PM] chichibonga: nice pic
[8:02 PM] anon1781: next time, i’d like to make it a bit more formal
[8:02 PM] anon1781: i’ll send you a list of questions before we do it
[8:02 PM] anon1781: that i’ll be asking
[8:02 PM] anon1781: so you can prepare your answers mentally structured
[8:03 PM] chichibonga: we neeed some prodigy–to get all radical!!!
[8:03 PM] repdan: Good idea 1781. I’m down. Did an interview 2day on similiar stuff.
[8:03 PM] anon1781: we plan on recording it, and posting it
[8:03 PM] anon1781: and a challenge to any other governmentals
[8:03 PM] anon1781: to do the s
[8:03 PM] repdan: I welcome it, sir!
[8:03 PM] anon1781: same
[8:04 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: who was the interview with?
[8:04 PM] moose_mario left the room.
[8:04 PM] guest-946666 entered the room.
[8:04 PM] repdan: Station in Nashville…stand by . I;ll get the link
n
[8:04 PM] cryoanon left the room.
[8:05 PM] repdan: They r anons from Tn…Great interview.
[8:06 PM] anon1781: cool, it’s a date, sometime next week
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: its a date?
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: :P
[8:07 PM] anon1781: jelly?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: lol
[8:07 PM] datoneanon: a lil
[8:07 PM] repdan: Yepper! Date, Umadbro?
[8:07 PM] anon1781: go find ethersec lol, they
[8:07 PM] repdan: Lulz..
[8:07 PM] anon1781: will give ya hugs or some shit
[8:08 PM] repdan: Yay!
[8:08 PM] repdan: started a YouTube-video.
[8:09 PM] anon1781: alright, i’m out, tnx for this diver, will set up something better next week
[8:09 PM] anon1781: got some Ops to work on
[8:09 PM] anon1781: peace folks
[8:09 PM] repdan: Rgr that..Ty. Best
[8:09 PM] billrappleye left the room.
[8:09 PM] star_gazer: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] dallison281: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] star_gazer: joined the group whiteboard.
[8:10 PM] datoneanon: repdan howd you get elected as a libertarian, isnt that impossible
[8:10 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Can you tell us any about your #J17 plans?
[8:11 PM] datoneanon: and that
[8:11 PM] repdan: @Daton….ran as as an (R) w/ Libertarian leanings.
[8:11 PM] chichibonga left the room.
[8:12 PM] guest-946930 entered the room.
[8:12 PM] guest-946930 changed nickname to chichibonga
[8:12 PM] repdan: @doug. Not at the moment..many enemies…OpSec
[8:12 PM] douglaslucas: Okay.
[8:13 PM] chichibonga: great song o neg
[8:13 PM] repdan: Any other Q’s B4 I call it a night for TinyChat, peeps?
[8:13 PM] douglaslucas: Is your eBook commission considering open curriculum possibilities like creative commons?
[8:14 PM] chichibonga left the room.
[8:14 PM] star_gazer left the room.
[8:14 PM] datoneanon left the room.
[8:15 PM] repdan: Thank you all for participating, and giving ur input.
[8:15 PM] repdan: More formal and structured chat soon.
[8:15 PM] douglaslucas: RepDan: Thanks for doing this tinychat!
[8:15 PM] dallison281 left the room.
[8:16 PM] repdan: My pleasure, sir.
[8:17 PM] repdan: @repdangordon on the Twitter
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: Sorry I didnt say much, I appreciate you really trying to reach out and represent your
[8:17 PM] diabloanon: constituents
[8:17 PM] repdan left the room.
[8:17 PM] diabloanon left the room.
[8:17 PM] anon1781 left the room.

Creative Commons License

RI Rep Dan Gordon Tinychats with Anonymous, Others; Promises More Chats, #J17 Participation by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Attribute to “Douglas Lucas” or “www.DouglasLucas.com” or preferably both. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license? Email me.

Party at Stay Wired!, Oct 15 2011

On Saturday, Stay Wired! Coffeehouse & Computer Service (Twitter, facebook, 2918 W. Berry Street, Fort Worth, TX 76109) hosted an awesome party, organized by Ted Wick and Travis Hildenbrand as the production team Canadian Caveman. Cover was $6 and beer upstairs was free (tips suggested).

Kari talks about burlesque history

The night’s main attraction proved to be Christopher Walker‘s CYBERPUNKS Burlesque. Here are the members’ names in the order pictured above, left to right.

  • KARI KALVIG, Associate Artistic Director
  • LUCY GUNN
  • MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS
  • MISSY LEMURE
  • NEVAEH ROGUE
  • AMBER ROMANCE
  • MAGENTA D’LITE
  • MAX VALENTINE

The burlesque troupe performed twice, once before the bands, and a second time after either one band or two had played (I can’t remember for sure).

Nevaeh Rogue was extremely confident. Definitely the star.

NEVAEH ROGUE

Mystical Temptress was a very fun performer, clearly having a good time.

MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS

Max Valentine was entertaining as well. I think he has a pretty good job.

MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS & MAX VALENTINE

Missy Lemure’s expression and hair are amazing here:

MAX VALENTINE & MISSY LEMURE

Nevaeh again for the win.

NEVAEH ROGUE

Nothing in their way:

Christopher Walker‘s CYBERPUNKS Burlesque

Signals & Alibis (Website, facebook, ReverbNation) began for the bands, returning to the site of their first-ever gig.

  • Brian Carter (guitar, keyboards)
  • Darby Eckles (drums)
  • Sybil High (bass)
  • Rebecca Jozwiak (vocals, keyboard, guitar)

Singing, Rebecca never met tied whole notes she didn’t like; her voice glided well over the dreamy, reverb-heavy atmosphere Brian brought with his guitar. Darby’s drumming created the right stoner-rock framework, and Sybil’s bass, strong as a piano’s bottom strings, undergirded it all.

(Maybe it’s captious to criticize, but the addition of eccentric fills from Brian and Darby would add some nice detail to their soundscape.)

Thanks for the Burnett’s Whipped Cream Vodka, Sybil!

DJ NOiCE (Twitter, facebook, SoundCloud) played house music, cyberpunk-sounding stuff.

You can hear DJ NOiCE in this video compilation. This was the first time I’d ever used my (DSLR) camera to record video, and the first time I’ve ever edited video by computer. What strikes me about this video is how much fun everyone’s having.

Collective Dreams (Twitter, MySpace, facebook, ReverbNation) played second.

  • Caleb Barber (guitar)
  • Travis Hildenbrand (drums & percussion)
  • Ben Rodriguez (bass)
  • Albert Salinas (guitar)

Travis is a talented drummer. But all and all what this instrumental band did was stare at the floor and play progressive rock to one another. They were talking to themselves, but at least they seemed to enjoy it.

Downstairs by the coffee bar Hyung-Joo Kim tore it up on cello for passersby. He’s a graduate music student at UT-Austin.

Hyung-Joo Kim, cello

Stereo Type Writers (facebook) played last.

  • Kevin Brown (bass & vocals)
  • Jake Ferris (guitar & vocals)
  • Herman Gallegos (drums)

Stereo Type Writers faced a diminished crowd since by then the burlesque troupe had left. It was also their first real gig; each member earned a dollar. They deserved that $3, though, since they persevered bravely despite minor equipment problems and overall venue exhaustion. Their straightforward music was at its best when their enthusiasm took off. Kevin Brown’s confidence on his fuzzily distorted bass drew my attention. It’d work well for this group to find an exciting singer who could move into the crowd.

The weekend was also the 28th birthday of Stay Wired!’s leader, John Campbell. His birthday and his role as host earned him plenty of applause, which he totally deserves.

Birthday Boy John Campbell

Stay Wired! holds an open-mic night every Thursday; arrive at 8:30 p.m. to sign up for a slot; it ends at midnight or so. Events such as the Oct 15th party happen on many weekends. Awesome, right?

Creative Commons License

Party at Stay Wired!, Oct 15 2011 by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Attribute to “Douglas Lucas” or “www.DouglasLucas.com” or preferably both. Permissions beyond the scope of this license might be available: contact me (email).