Is LAPC Filtering PFW?

Content filtering is popular with the ruling powers in places like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other geographies where the current regime has a reason to fear and subdue its adult citizens. Content filtering in the workplace is popular with employers who have actual, economic concerns about their workers’ abilities to simultaneously idle on MySpace, bid on Ebay, chat on AIM, play Warcraft, and still work at a productive pace. Content filtering in K-12 schools is popular with parents and administrators because it protects minors from sexually explicit material of a pornographic or obscene nature.

Content filtering at public, CA community colleges ain’t so popular, much less defensible, when the filtered content turns out to be neither obscene, pornographic, inflammatory with an intent to incite unlawful action, or libelous, but merely critical of a filtering institution’s policies, programs, curriculum, and publicly-employed personnel.

If you are unable to reach any Pierce Farm Watch content (all over there in the sidebar) from computers located on the Los Angeles Pierce College campus, or your browser is redirected to a page you did not request, let us know. And we’ll let EFF know.

We’d like you to test from libraries, computer labs, Wi-Fi spots if they exist, and any other networked computer on the Los Angeles Pierce College campus from which you have access to the Internet. Other LACCD campus locations and CSUers can test, too, because the wider you cast the net and the narrower the set of results … well, that says a whole lot about a little.

What you are looking for:
Instances of domain/subdomain failure or redirection:
Examples: You get redirected from www.piercefarmwatch.org to a page you did not request.
You can read other Blogspot or WordPress blogs, but not ours.
You can reach Eurekster, but our swicki is not available.
You can reach Flickr, but our photo sets are unavailable.
You can watch YouTube videos, but our playlists are unavailable.
Social networking sites (del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and shadows) are available, but our bookmarks are not.

Search Engine cache filtering:
Example: You found us via a search engine, clicked on the Cached link for page results, but were redirected.

Legitimate URL redirection services fail:
Example: tinyurl

Mobile content translation fails:
Example: You are redirected to somewhere other than results you request through Google Mobile Search.

RSS-formatted requests fail:
Example: You can reach Feedburner, but clicking on our feed URL from Feedburner fails.

Language Translation fails:
Example: You know how to do the en-to-en thing to get Google Translate to serve as a proxy, but that fails.

That’s about it for the testbeds, other than the many mega-lists of anon proxies out there which you can find and play with for yourselves. Happy animal-safe-and-sane hunting!

Update: June Trial Date for Wiles Farm Defendants

Wiles Farm owner Ken Wiles (middle), his son Joe Wiles (left), and employee Dusty Stroud (not pictured) have another 2-1/2 months to sort out their collective defense to 10 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. A jury trial for the trio is now scheduled to begin on June 19, 2007.

Rep. Mervyn Dymally, a senior member of the CA Legislature, former Lt. Governor, and member of the House Committee on Agriculture, has introduced a bill to amend the Health and Safety Code that would prohibit the keeping of any mammal or bird used for the production of food or fiber in conditions that do not allow “sufficient space for each animal to stand, lie down, get up, move his or her head freely, rest, turn around completely, and extend all limbs and wings without touching any part of the enclosure or other animals.” Thirty-six years of “you can’t make us” on the part of CA industrial animal production interests is about enough, but $1000 a day in fines ain’t nowhere near enough. You’re encouraged to write in support of AB 594.

In totally unrelated geek news, we’re supposed to say something nice about c0demonkey’s efforts of late with regard to the overall look and feel of our various joints:

“Thanks!”

Screechy little twit Greybox’d the Pierce College Farm Property Map so it magically fades in ala beautifulness, and built us a Google Earth flyover of the known animal-holding areas, complete with groovy, red binocular icons. There may be some issues with our Greybox implementation if you’re using Firefox on MacOS (or so said Greybox/Orangoo Labs developer Amir S. when we finally got around to showing it off to him …), so if it doesn’t work for you, let us know. ‘m0nkey can’t really test on MacOS until the new toy arrives. So try the flyover. As far as we can tell, it works just dandy.

World Farm Animals Day, Oct. 2

Some activity hints just to get you started:

Add one book or article to your reading list.
Be a vegan buddy for the day.
Contact your senators and representatives.
Donate to a farm animal sanctuary.
Encourage another person to go vegan for one day.
Foster a rescued farm animal.
Go vegan yourself for one day. Just one out of 365 is a start.
Help distribute literature.
Investigate farm animal cruelty in your area.
Join a World Farm Animals Day event in your area.
Keep informed about farm animal issues.
Learn how to include humane education in your curriculum.
Meet Your Meat.
Network with professionals in your field.
Oust an undesirable legislator.
Peek in on your own for a change. For once.
Question authority.
Read one journal article.
Sponsor a rescued farm animal at a sanctuary.
Type a letter to your local paper’s op/ed section.
Use your multi-million dollar acreage for something worthwhile.
Visit a farm animal sanctuary in your area.
Walk for a farm animal.
<Your_two_ideas_here>.
Zap your zits the cruelty-free way.

Now how hard was that?

What part of “we can’t sweat” don’t these people get?

Is it because there’s no reliable mechanism in place to provide these animals with a means to cool themselves in 100F heat? That’s a possibility. But take a look at just a few of our archive photos tagged “pigs” and you might catch a glimpse of a previously existing wallow, a generic garden hose for filling it, and a faucet to make the whole process as easy and union-friendly as possible.

Is it the big-word implications, like thermoregulation and hyperthermia? Couldn’t possibly be the case given the breadth and depth of animal agricultural experience, education, and undifferentiated spin-ese wafting from this operation. Is it because they’re bound by law from providing a species-specific, physiologic necessity in the environment? Our friends at the pro shops had four words for that talking point, only two of which will make it into print: “f——-g load of b———t.”

Or is it because they’re just incapable of operating the faucet? Now that’s a definite possibility. But half a day and and some well-timed rewards could have the two long-loin lovelies themselves operating it at will. Regardless of the excuse the only real question of any importance is, how long do these pigs have to suffer the scorching consequences?

Props to RandomRunningGuys for the update. Consistency is the better part of something we’ll have to let you know about later once we figure out roughly what the hell it is.

Dear President Garber

Even though we sent you an email back in February and it didn’t bounce, we believed you didn’t know. Even though roughly 11% of our aggregate traffic originates from CSU-LACCD netblocks, we believed you didn’t know. Even though we’ve served thousands of page requests in a few short months, we still believed you didn’t know.

In fact, we were so confident in our belief that we assembled more than 320 unique photographs and videos–week after week, month after month, year after year–of individual animals, animal groupings, animal facilities, fixtures, and conditions on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. True, we don’t frame each subject with Warner Center in the distance. Traffic snarls excepted, its just not our concern. Nor do we require that all submitted images have GPS data embedded in the EXIF. It’s doable, but a simple “please date stamp if possible” seemed sufficient.

We edited more than 11,000 words in explanation, expansion, and support of our documentation down to just under 6000. True, we don’t annotate each posted entry with the legal names of any contributors. Why? Here are just a few of the reasons, in their own words:
“I just want to graduate and get out of here before this place gets shut down.”
“I still have to go to class there.”
“I’ll lose clients.”
“I could lose my job.”

Though we have no reason to doubt its sincerity, unfortunately we have to decline the invitation to sit down and talk with you about improving conditions for animals on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. Years of sitting and talking rather than navigating the manure, mud, and misery to check on the investment is what brought us all where we are today. And from the first catalogued photo to the last, we found it more dirty, hungry, thirsty, weak, ill, injured, and in abject need than any of us bipedal beachcombers are likely to be in a lifetime.

Asking for operational transparency has failed consistently for better than a decade but that doesn’t mean you should abandon the idea. We just don’t think you’ll have much of an unobstructed view from the vantage point of office towers sparkling in the distance or beneath a fabric woven from derailment of the issues, denial of their validity, or criminalization and censorship of the dissenting voice. You, for yourself, must either unravel the curtain or tear it away. Consider Pierce Farm Watch as having frayed a thread and lifted a corner. You appear young and able-bodied, neither the naked Emperor nor the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, least of all the smoldering Man of Straw. Stay with it. And BTW, you’re welcome.