Now it is 1984: Bill is passed Allows ISP Snooping by US Gov.

Okay, to those who read this post, you all know about my feelings regarding America's current foreign and domestic policy. You know I left due to a police state atmosphere and that I could not run away fully due to America's pervading atmosphere throughout the world. You know what my mission is. You know of Anti-E and our alignment with Anonymous during the beginning of the Cyber War. You know that my writing is cyberpunk and that I and others are trying to stand up to stop the pervasive fingers of an American Empire in whichever way we know how.

You know I am back. Here to shake shit up with my writing and "journalism". And then... I see this.

Mine, and any sane person's reaction.

And here I was possibly doubting myself about the true nature of an American Police State. I have no problems feeling totally in the right and a greater sense of urgency for my writing, almost more than ever before. This is completely inexcusable cyberwarriors. This is bullshit. The fact that the House of Representatives Judiciary just gave a mandated order to all Internet Service Providers to keep a log of all their users' web activity for up to one year is an INSANE breach of personal privacy. The fact that they're tacking this mandate onto a bill designed specifically to protect children from being abused sexually for pedo porn is even more insulting.

You know why?

Because no-one wants to really argue against a bill that's supposed to protect kids from net predators and prosecuting those with kiddie porn. Know what other bills have been passed in recent history in America which severely curtails civil rights but no one likes voting against it because of the NAME?

If you didn't guess this, you're an idiot.

See, this is how politics works in the good ol' U.S. of A. now. You come up with some reactionary measure in a time of perceived crisis (in this case the ongoing Cyber War), and then they wrap up some goose-stepping bullshit specifically designed to look like all nice and innocent and apple-pie eating Americanism before giving a jack-boot straight up the ass of civil liberties.

'Merikuh.

I wrote a blog a while back called "The Digital Frontier is Closing Soon" which discussed this sort of curtailing of our generation's wild west. This bill is exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Don't give me that "Oh, they're only going to go after you if you're doing something wrong" bullshit. This is specifically designed to attack Anonymous due to the sad fact that a lot of Pedos tend to hang around posting child porn. Why target Anonymous? Because they're the ones who've been so instrumental in fighting back against Wikileaks. Hell, just a quick surf on 4chan is going to get your cookies clogged with kiddie porn even if you don't go so far as to even look into a thread. With that in mind and with the government having full access to private IP addresses and web history, it wouldn't be hard for the FBI to come down to some Anon's house and convict him under a possession of child pornography charge even if all he was really ever doing was trying to fight the good fight and keep information free. The Anon probably never even looked at a CP thread, but the thumbnails are there.

And you know what that is cyberwarriors?

And to those of you who are reading this and are not Anonymous, or Anti-E, or anything of the sort, thinking you're going to get off scott-free from Big Brother, let me leave you with this quote from a certain Pastor in Germany a few years back:

First they came for the communists
And I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
And I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak out for me...

DO NOT TAKE THIS LYING DOWN!

Why I Write: Of Ex-Pats and Exile

As I am writing this I am sitting in the basement of the house I grew up in. A house that is now less than a month away from foreclosure and auction, like so many others in the USA. If any of you have read my older posts you'll know that I've recently been uprooted from my choice land of self-exile; Australia.

For the past four years I have considered myself an ex-patriate under a self imposed exile from the land of the Free and the home of the Brave. This is largely due to my increased disillulsionment with America and the hypocrisy of her leaders and head-in-the-sand citizenry. I put myself into self exile due to many reasons, but I was scared by my growing radical thoughts back then.

Before I left, I had witnessed the steady decline of my hometown of Fairfield, Ohio, a northern suburban town in Cincinnati. Running parrallel to that decline was the alarming rise of what can only be defined as a police state due to the War on Terror. I had personally witnesses an All-American Town's police force silence protesters against the war. I had felt their hard hand come down on myself and my peers. In many cases our crimes were just even being around an area that town council had meant for the corporate investors and rich yuppies. These areas were places like publice libraries, community centers, and ampitheatre greens.

Traditionally places like this have been meant for the people which could afford no other way of staying out of trouble, yet we were largely denied through police intimidation, Big Brother tactics, and plain old economic denial. Cops patrolled the areas threatening criminal charges for as little as using a library computer. Surveillance cameras were installed in so many clusters you had no where to meet without police being alerted. The community center, a place we had all been originally excited about as a place we thought we could access without harassment from the boys in blue, has classes which are prohibitively expensive and aimed more at a rich audience.

I've never heard of a community center built in the poorer side of town with courses upwards of 60 dollars, but I guess the wine balcony speaks for itself.

I left because I was sick of the problems of the unanswered and denied domestic quagmire, and the increased problems I saw with American foriegn policy.

"Respect national soveriegnty? LOLWUT?!"

I was sick of the blind flag waving. Sick of the corporate funded plutocracy. Sick of the "U!S!A!U!S!A!" chants and the police state atmosphere of paramilitary cops, psuedo-fascist vertical flag banners, and the Homeland Security mindset of the whole goddamn country.  More than anything, I was sick of the complacent acceptance of it all by so many more concerned with Next Top Model rather than how the country was being run.

So I went to Australia. Yes, I went for love , but I knew in my gut that wasn't the only reason. I needed to get out before I was either consumed by the beast or became it. Honestly, I really wanted to run away and live in a different country without any responsibility to change anything other than my immediate environment.

My first mont in Australia was in December 2007. The 2008 US Primaries were heating up. The Republican party was in shambles. Hillary still looked like the main Democratic contender even though Obama was just starting to get some looks his way. My Aussie girlfriend and I were in a cottage on the Great Ocean Road along the south-eastern coast. We were cooking breakfast (at five in the afternoon lul) and I was having my first taste of Victoria Bitter (forgive me, I was new). I switched to the news as we ate and got a shock.

What the fuck was this shit? Coverage of the US election? On Aussie local news?

Exactly Old Meme. Exactly.

I wish I could say I was stunned, but I was more disturbed than anything. Disturbed because as much as I disliked the US as a super-power, I had never wanted to consider us an empire. After-all, hadn't the elections in England been closely watched in her colonies around the world when the sun never set on Victoria's Empire? Hadn't British culture permeated much, if not all of the world? When I watched Aussie TV I found that the majority of the shows and movies, even the cable networks, were American. The weird feeling that Fox News was the only US news network exported pissed me off. Hell, last year I had learned that a deal between the major corporations and the Aussie government had been signed, assuring that Australian programming could only take up at max 40% of the airwaves. The other 60% was largely American. Even so, the Australian programming poked fun at US politics and celebs more than their own and with the same vigor that people did in the US. Hell, it was like they considered themselves as much a part of the US as a guy from New York.

As I began working on my writing, my thoughts toward the world changed drastically. What if everyone in the world had to deal with the economic colonialism of the US? How many people felt as if they had just as much a stake in US politics as any US citizen because of our global impact. The signs were all there. Friends and In-laws asked who I would vote for in 2008 and 2010, their eyes filled with a vague sense of excitement or hope, as if I had access to a golden groundhog which could either bless the world with 4 years of summer or 4 years of bleak winter. I was 19! Had my vote counted against the tide of corporate manipulation, I could theoretically change the world, as could any young American. But I did not vote. I liked none of the candidates. I didn't know how to face their eyes, and the eyes of all those around the world.

Instead I channelled my frustrations and anger into my writing.  I had come to Australia to get away from US influence, and for most of 2008 I was working at becoming a plumber. My father-in-law had been showing me the ropes. I was happy keeping my writing on a computer and away from public sight. My girlfriend and I were engaged November 2008 and my first novel finished. We went back Stateside so she could meet my friends and family, and I stayed behind to work on getting a spouse visa.

Almost immediately I was hit with the truth of my situation. I was a self-exile stuck in limbo in the country I wanted nothing to do with, forced to watch the decay. For seven months I was back stateside, right when the recession had hit and was at it's worst. Businesses closing. Jobs even more scarce than before. The War in Afghanistan had begun to look unwinnable. Friends came back from The Desert with scars both physical and mental. Others were either in jail or joining the military to avoid it. I watched Obama give the bastards who helped start it all bail-outs just like Bush had before him. All the while the TV blared soft-brain-washing comfort. All the while the criminals up top dined in their ivory towers while the world burned and suffered. I told those I could about what I had learned to ease my distaste, but nothing could make it better.

Eventually I returned, and I knew what I had to do. Like the anti-heroes in my writing, I had to stand up and speak out. If not for just my country, then for the world. Few others came along with me on this mission, but we were and are Anti-E. This mission I took consumed my life in every way. I could not stand by any longer. I wrote like a mad man. I protested with Anti-E during the beginning of the Cyber War.

That was not without it's casualties. My marriage disinitigrated under the stress of it all, but now I am not disheartened.

No.
I am emboldened.

The cycle of it all is happening again and I'm in the US for it this time. Every time I see the neon contienent of Australia on a Fosters ad in-between the corporate coddling, I am reminded of those eager eyes of which I have seen and all those I am yet to see. I am reminded mostly of my wife, who despite all her love, couldn't understand my fire. I'm reminded of her eyes, and how I saw the truth through their blue lenses. I am no longer saddened by the distance. Instead, I am strengthed, because inadvertently she has put me back right where I need to be.

I'm back in the belly of the beast.
I'm gonna give it a fucking ulcer.

Author. Great Ocean Road. December 2007.

 

Oslo, Norway Government Buildings Bombed

I know most of my commenters here tend to talk about the interesting times we live in. I think the picture above explains it pretty well. At around 3 PM Oslo time, what is suspected to be a car bomb went off in front of the Government area of town where the Prime Minister and his cabinet usually meets.

The bombing has been attributed to a group known as Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad), and it seems to have been as a result of the imprisonment of a Kurdish mullah who has threatened reprisals against the Norwegian government. According to Al Jazeera there have already been people stopped and apprehended at airports in response to the security risks.

A personal aqquaintance of mine in Oslo mentioned that he and some friends were so shaken by the blast they went to the pub so they could steady themselves a bit. By the time they were out soldiers were on the streets and telling them they were in a restricted zone. Luckily they were lead out without much mishap.

This friend was also the one who told me of the shooting in Norway at a Norwegian Labour Party Youth Camp. The gunman has been apprehended, but there were around four to five people killed and several more wounded. My heart goes out to him right now as he was involved in that group and he doesn't know if anyone he knew was hurt. Those who were hurt were fifteen or sixteen years old.

There's also news that the prime minister was slated to visit the camp today. Two close calls for him.

I'm hoping that this isn't a sign of things to come in Norway and Scandinavia as a whole. This is a tragedy and I hope that Norway will learn from the mistakes of the USA and other countries in that this is not a reason to hamper civil liberties and create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.

However, only time will tell.

CyberWar's Still on Guiz: NATO Servers Hacked by Inj3ct0r

So, with all the stuff about LulzSec going around the last few months, I haven't felt the need to write anything big. Hacking a gaming network really isn't my sort of thing. Sure, there's been some nice news about WikiLeaks again (check it). I was starting to think that this whole thing from the past year or so was winding to somewhat of a close.

Then I found THIS.

YOU GUIZ GOT PWND!!!!

Honestly, I think this is a pretty amazing development in the last year or so of hacktivism (note how they didn't deface the website despite having the option). The article says they did this to expose nuclear weapons development and financing. The fact that these guys were able to hack into the NATO server and back up all the data so they could distribute it is pretty freaking huge.

The repercussions of this could be very staggering. I'm assuming they were trying to expose a supposed hypocrisy of NATO countries who still work on nukes while trying to keep just about everyone but them from having nukes. Sure, that's fair enough on NATO's part considering North Korea and Iran are a bit on the sketchy side when it comes to why they want nuclear power. Sure, those nations are kind of unstable right now.

But does it make it right for NATO to still produce nukes themselves when the future of the Western World is so uncertain?

Does it make Inj3ct0r in the right to distribute this information for the world to see?

On that token, how do we know Inj3ct0r didn't just do this to show the world that hacking a monolith of geopolitics is possible?

This, like all of the events of the past few months, has raised a lot of questions. If anything, the last few months have told us that the people of the world are the ones who choose the answers.

Not the banks. Not the corporations. Not governments.

Just people like us.