We interrupt this program: Prison censorship of TV news

by Robert Frazier

In today’s world we’re seeing the courts and media minimize the fact that U.S. prisons are run by criminals worse than some of the so-called worst confined within them. They have attempted and have succeeded to a degree in demonizing the prisoners being tortured and thereby desensitize the general public on that subject.

This is why it also seems the jury in the court of public opinion is still out regarding what process is due and how the experimental implementation of political censorship known by its official misnomer “Obscene Material Regulations” is already in progress on San Quentin’s four death row Security Housing Units. The normalization of censorship in all its forms continues right before our eyes in SQ and beyond.

Consider how an invasion force imposes their will upon their victims preserved alive. One of the first things it does is knock out all means of communication. After installing a puppet governing body it then promotes its own agenda through it in the mass media.

Wake-Up-art-by-Roger-Rab-Moore-0514-web, We interrupt this program: Prison censorship of TV news, Abolition Now!
“Wake Up” – Art: Roger “Rab” Moore, G-02296, High Desert State Prison Z-168, P.O. Box 3030, Susanville CA 96127

The San Quentin Antenna Cable System (SQACS) can be described as a one-sided propaganda bomb with a signal jamming warhead. It is a weapon of mass corruption in the hands of terrorists embedded in the Cal-incarceration Corrupted Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) and other affiliates using the CDCR as their puppet to lord it over in the micro-societies of prison. Their fee for this is deducted from YOUR paychecks, education and social services for the disabled and elderly.

The SQACS (aka SQTV) consists of expensive technology similar to that used by cable providers. Most cable companies receive their programming via satellite, then rebroadcast it on frequencies which boxes atop your television can receive.

SQTV consists of 14 converter boxes and several DVD players. As you may know, these devices require your TV be on channel 3 or 4 to operate. However, the SQACS rebroadcasts each on a different frequency. It even rebroadcasts free over-the-air digital signals on different frequencies of the QAM (cable mode) and UHF bands.

Not only are the 14 now obsolete converters a huge waste of electricity – they’ve been on 24/7 nearly five years – they also block free over-the-air broadcasts on the VHF frequencies they’re re-broadcasting on. Contrary to popular belief, prisons don’t make money and since this SQACS wastes your money and not theirs, they don’t care – especially when it can be used to give them job security. How?

Public broadcast stations KQED and KTMP are just two stations multi-casting from Sutro Tower that are currently being blocked or restricted by the SQ administration under the guise of technical difficulties. But it is actually intentional and because these provide programs such as world news and Democracy Now, even documentaries denouncing the horrific practice of long-term torture by solitary confinement in California prisons.

Consider how an invasion force imposes their will upon their victims preserved alive. One of the first things it does is knock out all means of communication. After installing a puppet governing body it then promotes its own agenda through it in the mass media.

San Quentin is by no means the only California prison using this technology to censor over-the-air broadcasts that don’t fit their oligarchy’s agenda. Radio stations received via these systems at various SHUs have reportedly cut out as the hunger strikers were being commended for their peaceful protests. The broadcast was then turned back on when the CDCR representative began demonizing them.

As stated in the essay “Free Your Mind: Reversing the Effects of Prison Censorship” by S. Muhammad Hyland, “the bottom line is simple. The institutional restrictions on revolutionary political material are in place for a reason: to keep us from learning how to go about securing our freedom and destroying the system responsible for our lack of success in America.”

Send out brother some love and light: Robert Frazier, F-55038, San Quentin SHU II D.R., San Quentin, CA 94974.