Open Mic News

 

 R4nger5 Radio Episode 35 [119:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (6)

(Admin note: Archiving has begun again. Associated text is taken verbatim from the R4nger5 LJ. Using the 64Kb recoded version from Archive.org to ease downloads.)
EDIT: Now using a recoded 32K version, as the inital file was a partial and the full one was huge.

NEWS

Guardian ColumnisT backs our POV on CCTV! Thanks Harlequin!
Link : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/28/civilliberties.privacy

Viacom Suing you Tube and Google for copyright infringement - Thanks again, Harlequin!
Newspaper argues impeachment of Bush is a waste of time! Thanks Macavity!
Get the full article here: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june162008/exler_are.php

And in related news, Also from Macavity :

San Luis Obispo political activist Sandra Marshall thinks President Bush should be impeached and is upset with Congress and her representative, Lois Capps, for not getting the job done.
Link : http://www.sanluisobispo.com/183/story/373634.html

Additional links :
http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx0613b08
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obamas-florida-co-chairman-backs-bush-impeachment-2008-06-12.html

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled. The ruling comes as part of Google’s legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.
Link : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7488009.stm

Shneelock’s News regarding the EU’s need to crack down on evil interwebs users:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/washington/28privacy.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Also, there’s apparently plans to crack down on blogs and other
user-generated content:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/058-31021-161-06-24-909-20080605STO30955-2008-09-06-2008/default_en.htm

LONDON (Reuters) - A student who scribbled an expletive on an English language exam paper was awarded 7.5 percent for accurate spelling and effective communication, The Times newspaper reported on Monday.
(Advertisement) Thanks APIPA!
Link: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080630/tuk-uk-britain-exam-fa6b408.html

Macdonlds sued over Devo Look alike! Thanks Harlequin!
Link : http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/29/devo-sues-mcdonalds.html

Lloyds-TSB has been criticised for sending debit cards to children as young as 11 so they can buy goods online without parents knowing. Thanks APIPA!
Link: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080630/tbs-bank-slated-for-giving-kids-visa-car-327c223.html

FEEDBACK
–Xenovalent, Psyranger,Harlequin and Raindog951

HALFTIME MUSIC
Track 1-
Track 2 -
Track 3-

DISCUSSION
LINKS
www.rantmedia.ca - the godfathers of independent media!
www.wogrant.com - guys like us trying to get a bit of real information out there to you!
www.wognetwork.com - a new resource for the independently minded - go and register and add something to this new collective effort!
www.empowerthyself.com - organisational help and practical advice for getting your own projects of the ground - great work, Alex!
www.kevinisageek.org - Great guys from the caledonias who mirror a lot of cool stuff for the people out there - keep up the great work, Kevin!
www.r4nger5.tk - our site!
www.r4nger5blog.tk - our blog!
http://aioe.org/ - A news reader to allow EVERYONE to get hold of usenet news groups, whatever their ISP - Nice one, guys - Thanks to Harlequin!
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/ - an archive on the history of anarchy -Thanks to Harlequin!

RECCOMEDIA

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3338076.ece - An article on the Times Online about how to disconnect from the ever-tightening noose of monitoring and surveillance in today’s Britain. Thanks to Harlequin!

www.adbusters.org - lots of cool videos - not a bad magazine, either!

OUTTRO MUSIC
Track 1-
Track 2-
Track 3-

2 Rant -
RED LINE

Okay, so I’m not quite sure what’s going to be happening to the OMN site, but for the moment the database is back together and WordPress is all up to date. The archive is re-uploading. So what’s been is here for you to go through.
Still not sure why the custom theme we had stopped working. That was before the downtime, and nothing’s changed from the original scripts, so I guess it must be an incompatibility with newer WP builds than it was made on.

As you may have noticed, it’s been some time since OMN was last updated. Collectively it seems life has gotten busy for all the OpenMicNews hosts.

It seems like OMN is dead.

However, not so. The idea behind OMN is a pretty open one. And there’s other out there keen to start their own shows.

This is the Open Mic News website, but it doesn’t only have to serve up episodes of a show called Open Mic News.

With this in mind, I’d like to welcome on board the first outside newcast to be syndicated on the OMN website..

..R4nger5 Radio!

As you can see, we’ve given them their own separate RSS feed if you just want their show. The main audio feed will still serve up any podcasts the site hosts, and the main feed will throw up everything, text updates and all.

In the next few days there will be a second addition to this sites lineup, so stay tuned! And in the meantime, we’d love to hear back on your opinions on this turn of events. Feel free to leave some comments.

The government has been criticised for cutting the right of arrested suspects to advice from a qualified lawyer.

In a little-noticed change, from next February most people who are arrested and held in custody in England and Wales for minor offences will usually be denied the right to speak to a duty lawyer.

Instead, they will be put through to a telephone call centre, staffed by legal advisers - who are not qualified as lawyers.

In London, most of the advisers will be former police officers.

Is there an official definition of “minor offense”? And I’m sure every single former officer and other advisor will be able to offer the same advice as trained legal council, and in no way have any work-related grudges or biases in the advice they give the offenders.

This will potentially save up to £4 million across the entire country, that will aparently be reinvested in Legal Aid.

However Legal Aid is provided by the CLS (Community Legal Service). This new service, the CDSD (Criminal Defence Services Direct) is run by the LSC (Legal Services Commision).

So is the Community Legal Service.

So by doing this, the LSC creates a new department within itself (modelled after NHS Direct). Cuts money going to lawyers, and instead covers the same issue with an unqualified call centre.
What this is is fudging the numbers. The four million pounds isn’t going to be “saved” because the LSC is reinvesting it in this new service. They’re still going to be getting the same amount of money from the government. The only difference is simple, and I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.

Who charges the LSC more? A lawyer or someone in a call center?

This is not a push to redirect funds, this is a push to increase the profits of the LSC at our detriment.

Finally..

Suspects will not be forced to use CDS Direct if, for example, they need interpreters or if they accuse the police of serious mistreatment. In those cases they would still be able to see a traditional duty solicitor.

In other words, only if you’re going to get the police in shit.

The noise of an engine can become a calming thing after a few decades working with it. The paint-chipped blades of an elderly combine harvester, flailing their way through golden ripe grain under a crystal blue sky, throwing up the seeds that’ll be ground into flour for market and to make the bread to feed a family.
At the feilds edge the farmer comes to a stop for a momment and sighs. It really is a beutiful day in Kansas. He takes a relaxed swig of his coffee from it’s old enameled flask and looks skyward, thanking the god of his choice for such simple wonders. A few birds fly past, siloetted against that blue sky with a flutter of song. And up and behind them, a vapour trail creeps lasily across the sky, heading south.
As he restarts the combine and gets into finishing his job, surely the last thing on his mind is that far overhead weapons of power inconceivable to him are shooting at hundreds of miles per hour. Six nuclear missiles, silent, unoticed and flying over his head by some terrible mistake.
The setup sounds like the most tragic scenarios of the Cold War. A millitary mistake that could spark a final mommentary global war, with innoccents blissfully unaware until after the fact.

However, this happened last week.

Six nuclear warheads, attatched to cruise missles, were loaded onto a B-52 bomber and flown 1500miles across Americas heartland for decomisioning.

It’s only 1500miles though, right? And they’re old ones, so they wouldn’t work right anyway. Wrong for starters. There is no safety with aging nuclear weapons. They’re being decomisioned because they’re getting to the end of their reliable lifetime. Noone wants to try and break one up when the detonators are so old they’d trigger if you farted in the same room as them.

Well, they were in a plane, so they were pretty safe, right?
Wrong again. Cruise missles are big bastards. That B-52 took off with three nuclear cruise missles attatched to each wing. For all the reports words of “we didn’t know what we were carrying” I say there’s no way you can take off without knowing you’re carrying six cruise missles, regardless of their payload.

Perhaps today we’ve gotten a bit blasé about nukes, but the millitary hasn’t. Some of my Flist here know the proceedures involved in handling nuclear weapons. Just gaining access to where they’re stored takes a mountain of paperwork, signed by higher-ups. Then there’s getting further permissions to sign out all the tools, keys, dollies and lifts to just get them out of their storage racks, let alone leave the building with them.
At every stage here, the people who are checking your paperwork have permission to shoot to kill.
No one is exempt, and those handling them are kept with weapons trained on them for the entirety. Even those handling the paperwork have to have someone else with them at all times, and if it leaves their possesion for even a fraction of a second, it’s all gotta be done again.

Remember for a momment here that the type of cruise missle made to be carried by the B52 has a W80 variable-yeild nuclear warhead of between 5 to 150Kilotonnes.

Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” was 12-15Kt, for a sense of scale.

So somehow, six independantly flight-capable nuclear weapons with a combined yeild of nine hundred kilotonnes were not only signed out, removed and loaded onto the wing-mounts of a long-range bomber, but was done while in full knowledge that this was wrong, and against an international nuclear-weapons treaty from the cold war, against flying nuclear weapons. And all this aparently without the knowledge of the President of the United States.

Frankly it’s one theft of precious bodily fluids away from Dr Strangelove. Especially with Russian PM Putin doing the Cold War style long-distance bomber recons again.

I’m not naming sources, as they made their own heads-up friends only, but they know who they are and they have my thanks. They also offered up a link for the Department of Energy manual on the handling of nuclear explosives. PDF here.

So now you know.

Edging away into another subject though, how many people will find out about this? I’m under the impression that CBS at least stopped reporting on nuclear testing since they were bought up by General Electric. Who build nukes.

I’d like to know how and if this story proliferates in the US.

I’d also like to know where these missiles are now. Seems Barksdale Air Force Base is a staging area for US middle-east operations.
Can’t help but wonder if some long-sought WMDs are about to turn up.

ADITIONAL: I am aware the official line is that they simply forgot to remove the warheads before flying them off for disposal. However, which mistake do you find more comforting? That nuclear missles can be sent through so many breaches in security, or that someone can actually forget where they’ve left 900 kilotonnes of nuclear explosive?

 

 OMN #24 [30:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (41)

New style show, seeing how it goes. Enjoy! Here’s the newslinks:

Climate Camp, police incursion timeline with videos:

13.08.2007 07:33

14.08.2007 23:26

15.08.2007 00:00

15.08.2007 00:12

15.08.2007 00:52

15.08.2007 01:25

Climate Camp, “It’s a Trap!”:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378350.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378378.html

Volcanoes and Climate change:
http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/greenhouse_2000e.htm

Useful tool:
The Wiki Tracker

Right, some minor changes have been made to the website.

We now have two RSS feeds.
On the left of the main page you’ll see the Audio Feed. This is the feed for podcasts only, and what you’ll find on directory sites.
On the right however, is the full RSS. It contains everything going through the website, as we’re going to try including text reports, opinions and news as well! We’ll see how that works out, as sometimes it’s a lot easier to get a set idea or point across in writing, and you just don’t feel like getting on the mic.

We still only have three hosts here at OMN, and even though this spreads the load somewhat we still need your help. We want you to contact us if you’d be interested in doing audio or text reports, or contributing portions to shows. Send us a sample of you talking or typing, and as long as you’re not being a total ass, you’re probably gonna get in. We look forward to hearing from you.

And of course, if you want to send us any news, views or opinions, send it all to: news@openmicnews.org (no attatchements please. If sending and audio file, send a link to a download location)

There’ve been some difficulties with time and equipment of the various hosts. A slight change to OMN is being concidered, but we will return shortly.

Sci here. Last night I spent 2 hours recording the show for you, but PowerGramo decided this was a bad thing and not long enough anyway. So it took the decision to insert blocks of silence several times a second into the recording. This has the effect of doubling the length of the recordings, and also making myself and sultry-voiced co-host Vintage sound like retarded whales.

I’m waiting on technical support’s reply on wether there’s a way to fix this, but it’s unlikely there will be. There’s also no time to record a second version of the newscast. Unless one of the other hosts has something up their sleeve, then this is a No Show Day.

Sorry everyone. Sugestions on alternate and better Skype recording software much apreciated.

~ Sci

 

 OMN #23 [60:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (52)

It’s been an odd 38hours. Delayed and without sleep, I think this was a fucking excellent recording nontheless.
Download and enjoy listening to me eulagise the wonders of the CF-28 Toughbook, the dangers of the upcoming fruit-robot rebelion and occasionly thinking I’m Max Headroom while making dire predictions on the future of the world..

Here is the news!

~ News drone 1 of 3

USA - Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers

USA - FBI to restrict student freedoms

Tech - Sony’s Flexible OLED Display

USA - Online video recorders stoke new piracy concerns