Pirate radio calls for inauguration protests

[Minstrel Boy]

Pirate radio calls for inauguration protests

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 Posted: 2252 GMT (0652 HKT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An unauthorized radio station in the nation's capital called for "massive protests" in the week leading up to the January 20 presidential inauguration.

The station broadcast Wednesday at 1680 AM and identified itself as "Guerrilla Radio, WSQT."

During the identification message, an announcer said, "WSQT is a project of urban activists in the D.C. area working on housing issues, homeless issues, issues of war, issues of occupation both at home and abroad, and issues of the environment that we all have to live in."

...

"It's about $40 in parts from Radio Shack and the Dumpster," he said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. The caller's voice sounded similar to the voice heard on the broadcasts throughout the day.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/22/pirate.radio/index.html

[Pam-Moby]

1. LOL now that was funny

[Mika]

2. An important point in this story..

From the linked story,

After being tipped by a reporter, an official with the Federal Communications Commission said enforcement investigators will try to pinpoint the transmitter using direction-finding equipment.

-

An FCC monitoring station is within reception range of the signal, the agency official said.

[BiggJawn]

3. Amazing!

You can actually buy PARTS at Radio Shack????

I thought they only sold RC toys and cellies...

[Mika]

5. The parts are buried in dust in the back room.

Parts? Who the fuck wants parts these days? :shrug:

Get with the program.. you're supposed to buy a new Chinese made widget & toss the old one. x(

There's a landfill with some space somewhere.. I think.



:hi:

[BiggJawn]

6. Yeah, it's sad...

"Radio Shack-You got questions? We got stupid, blank looks..."

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

9. Actually I think the Chinese will be our landfill too! ;^)

for a price...

The only trouble is the high rate of interest they charge us on the money they loan us to pay them for their goods and for taking away our garbage ...

hmmmmmmmmm It's a shame our banks only get 1% of that interest money as fees... and it's a shame only 1% of the population get the benefit of profitting from those fees from the money we pay to borrow money to buy goods and discard trash ... um, something seems a little circular here...

borrow->buy->throwout --> china!
borrow->buy->throwout --> china!
borrow->buy->throwout --> china!

hmmm Radioshack's "quaint" approach to having "parts" seems a lot more "american" than borrow->buy->throwout, er, --> china! ...

But hey, its okay, with every child born today owing $25 grand and --oh look--its growing! And the best part is that baby can grow up and work and pay taxes to help pay their share of the debt they got for being born in the usa ... oh yeah!

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK
The Outstanding Public Debt as of 23 Dec 2004 at 09:39:42 AM GMT is:
$7,531,570,079,606.11
The estimated population of the United States is 295,129,536
so each citizen's share of this debt is $25,730.50.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$2.56 billion per day since September 30, 2004!
Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!

---

From: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

and this

The Debt To the Penny
Current Amount

12/21/2004 $7,531,570,079,606.11

---

From: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

and

Interest on the debt. Interest payments for money the government owes to people it borrowed money from to cover the federal deficits during our lifetimes. $229.7 Billion in 1999. Billion. Almost $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States, every year. More than the government spends on education ($56B),
unemployment ($23.6B), housing ($27.7B), food assistance ($33.1B), family support ($19.1B), the earned income tax credit ($25.6), and foreign aid ($15B) combined. The rest of the budget is roads ($42.5B), justice
($25.9B), and everything else ($88.7B). Yes there are savings to be had here, but it is dwarfed by the interest payments on the debt.

So, all of the argument about income taxes and how we spend them is over these $600B and change, and almost $230B is interest on the debt. Money we pay every day, almost $700 million per day of your hard-earned money and mine, and we get nothing for it. Nothing. And it goes on forever! We pay it every year, forever! Until the country either defaults on its debts (a bad idea), or pays off its debts (a better idea).

---

http://www.geocities.com/ldsdemocrats/opinion_001.html

and see here they are already being our landfill!

From http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/23/china.wtcsteel/

---

Ground Zero steel China-bound
January 23, 2002 Posted: 6:49 AM EST (1149 GMT)

BEIJING, China -- China's biggest steel firm says it will receive its first shipment of scrap metal from the World Trade Center wreckage soon...

Yay!
All the Best!
{:^) FMH

[Occulus]

15. You can also get the parts for a

rail gun there, at least, last I checked you could.

I didn't build one- they're too potentially dangerous unless built under very controlled conditions. But the schematics look like a fun (supervised) science project.

Rail guns are considered to be under the purview of the various state firearms laws, I believe. It's best you check before you go building one. But, you can get the parts fairly easily, as it's an electromagnetic projectile weapon. Or can be. Or whatever. :)

[stevedeshazer]

4. Now THAT'S real radio

That takes guts. Michael Powell and crew probably had their transmitter triangulated in about 30 seconds. Hope they are mobile. :)

[Ian David]

7. Maybe it was Christian Slater?

[Wilber_Stool]

8. If the FCC is as good as the FBI

I don't think he has much to worry about.

[saigon68]

10. Like in WHO MAILED THE ANTHRAX

[Occulus]

16. I knew someone once who had fun with mobile transmitters a long time ago

it was a CB radio with a linear amplifier (frequency booster), around the time way back when that the FCC was trying to crack down on them. They (they guy I knew and his friends) had portable scanners in the cars and could hear where the agents were by listening in on their frequency (illegal, BTW). They were able to run the FCC agents around town for hours by having multiple setups in play. The agents eventually gave up.

They were giving them the impression that there were a lot of people doing this, when in fact there weren't very many. Upon research I discovered that getting caught doing this deals out a hefty fine. Linear amps make it possible to hijack frequencies, not to mention they were running the agents around.

I wouldn't exactly recommend this for fun, because if you get caught, you get hammered.

Now, low-level frequencies, as I understand it, don't have as big a fine, but they're still illegal. Some would complain about this being a violation of the spirit of the airwaves being public, and they're right; the cause is due to the licensing fees charges by- you guessed it- the FCC. The end result of that is the rise of companies like Clear Channel, but that's a whole other thread.

Our airwaves have already been hijacked, and there have been more and more reports of people doing what the article in th OP described. It'll never be stopped simply due to the ease of radio and transmitter construction; they're not hard things to build. It just takes some patience, skill, and parts, like any functional project of that kind.

The FCC doesn't really want to pick this fight, because enforcement would be prohibitive both financially and from a civil rights standpoint. If enough people did this (built small, low-level transmitters), we could actually see a resurgence in the popularity of radio as a public communications medium, but I suspect that's antithetical to the goals of the people in power, not to mention a threat to the large corporate radio empires- what few there really are- operating in this country.

edited to ask: Who owns the frequencies, and how exactly can you pirate something you already own?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Pirate radio in NW AR

was happening during the protests before the war. They were mobile, and as far as I know, were never caught. More power to the pirates in DC!

[Vidar]

12. Power to the Pirates.

[cascadiance]

13. Where's Blank Reg?...

[uppityperson]

14. Pirate radio calls: argh matey, call to protest

or is it Guerilla radio call: aroooo, thump thump thump (beats on chest).

Homeland security better get involved, maybe there was a code or secret message inbedded in this message, calling people to act in protest against the government. Cna't let people broadcast whatever they want, I mean, really. Arghhh matey.