Indy Media Watch

I can see from my logs that I have been linked to from an Indy Media Newswire.

Presumably this means after three odd months, some Indy Media type has discovered my critical website. I can't view the article above as their server seems to be down (seized?) but have no doubt this will attract plenty of visitors to my blog who take exception to it.

I want to make something very clear up front - I am not the enemy of Indy Media. I am not against the concept nor the idea, and as a blogger am all in favour of giving people the means to publish their thoughts and ideas. My 'mission statement' at the top of the page suggests this.

I am however dead against the Nazis, bigots, racists, liars and trolls who have turned Indy Media into what it currently is - a garbage bin. Indy Media needs to clean up its act, or concede defeat. The current path of crying "Freedom of speech" while providing safe haven for the scum of society, or employing the Standard Indymedia Defence "but we are volunteers" while strategically doing nothing simply isn't a solution. Indeed it has driven away plenty of intelligent people who would otherwise contribute to the site, to the point where they are now distilling stupidity.

Hopefully my newest visitors won't feel the urge to spam my blog comments (though criticism or dissent is welcome). Indeed, I hope many Indy Media types agree with my sentiments and turn their frustration towards the management (or lack thereof) of Indy Media that have prompted the creation of this blog.

Today I received my first threatening message - naturally from someone who chose to remain anonymous.

You are a truly sad sad man.

I thought there may be persons such as yourself out there. Now I know its true. How anyone could be so unashameably [sic] right wing and conceited, I do not know.

This blog's days are numbered.

Presumably the poster dislikes me and this blog for taking exception to Indy Media. I wonder why? Could it be that the cry of 'freedom of speech' no matter the content, by diehard Indy Media advocates is fine unless it applies to someone who doesn't agree with them in which case their "days are numbered"?

Update: Someone (gee I wonder who) is now trying to spam the comments and have me implicated for copyright infringement. A most intelligent form of debate. I may have to turn off anonymous commenting. It's really sad when people are so filled with hate...

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) has released its Third Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index.

In it, Denmark is ranked number one and North Korea last at 167. Unsurprisingly, most of the Arab world is in the bottom ranks alongside various other dictatorships and Indy Media favourite Cuba.

America ranked 23rd, below most of Europe.

Reporters Without Borders received 15% of its funding from the European Commission, and an unspecified number of grants from the French Government, or previously up to 44% according to some sources who have questioned Reporters Without Borders' agenda..

Is it a co-incidence that Europe did so well and America and others did not?

I must also question what methodology was used to compile the statistics on which the report was based. According to the page,

Reporters Without Borders compiled the index by asking its partner organisations (14 freedom of expression organisations in five continents), its 130 correspondents around the world, as well as journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer 52 questions to indicate the state of press freedom in 167 countries (others were not included for lack of information).

Or in other words, they asked some questions and compiled the results. Doesn't sound like a very scientific approach which would avoid any bias does it? But then, they are only reporters aren't they?

I previously reported that Indy Media resented not being taken seriously as a news provider to compete against the (evil corporate scum) mainstream media.

I wonder what would happen if a mainstream publication released a sister publication entitled "Fuck the US".

Because that's exactly what Indy Media has done.

The website, hosted at http://fuc.kthe.us/ sits on 69.48.73.245 which, according to the home page is "shared with indymedia and other acitivist sites".

...including aotearoa.indymedia.org.nz, germany.nysindy.org (don't mention the war!) and hamilton.nysindy.org, just to name a few, as well as (ahem) http://fuc.kthe.us.

"Fuck the US". That's some activist site...

Some speculated after the FBI seized Indy Media servers the seizures may be nothing to do with Indy Media, but the Jihadist websites which also occupied the same servers. I commented that you can tell people by the company they keep.

Some disagreed and argued that you cannot blame Indy Media for the content of other sites which are 'coincidentally' hosted on the same machine.

But there's no denying a clear association this time.

"Fuck the US" was registered by Brian Szymanski (ski@indymedia.org) - who has been "involved in Indymedia since early 2001".

A friendly bit of advice to Brian Szymanski of New York who feels it's okay to say "Fuck the US" yet live there and keep a straight face while complaining about his lack of civil liberties.

If you don't like it, leave.

Perhaps even move to another country and try starting something called "Fuck China" or "Fuck Iran" or even "Fuck France" from within that country's border. You'll soon be back.

What gross hypocrisy and stupidity.

And Indy Media still wonders why it's not taken seriously...

An Urbana-Champaign Indy Media member was denied credentials to cover the St. Louis Presidential debate. They can't work out why.

Gee I wonder.

As one reply said:

"I suppose we could also invite Lyndon LaRouche, Granpa Munster, and every other write-in nutcase that wants to be President, along with you and every other blogger and wannabe reporter with a "scoop" button on their fedora, but that would probably clog things up to the point that they'd be pretty useless, now wouldn't it?"

Yes. It probably would.

Nodes of Conflict: Weaving a Web of Radical Communications says of the future of Indy Media:

"We want to kick start a shift towards maturing into a real media network that can compete with any of the best wire services in the world"

Ambitious.

I wonder if they realise that the "best wire services in the world" probably wouldn't run articles like this (from the same site):

Howard's a WANKER!

Everything you need to know about everything

And lastly, racing up the charts: Money is fucked - The song.

I suspect the "Best wire services in the world" aren't feeling threatened by Indy Media's aspirations just yet... The problem detailed in a reply to the article:

The fact remains that even if there are over 200 indymedias only about half of them have anything useful on them mostly cut 'n' pasted, and about a third are just totally useless. For example Brisbane which is dominated by Indymedia spam, porn, flaming and abusive right-wing crap.

Good, consistant journalism takes time, work and resources, which is what the mainstream media has"

(and Indy Media hasn't).

Permalink # posted by Dan @ 5:17 PM | |  | 0 comments

On UK Indy Media, the U.S. GREENS LIST THE TOP 12 ISSUES CENSORED FROM THE BUSH-KERRY DEBATES.

Apparently, when Green presidential nominee David Cobb was arrested for storming the second Kerry/Bush presidential debate it was actually a protest against censorship.

My favorite part however is at the bottom of the Indy Media Posting:

Paid for by the Green Party of the United States.

I hope they didn't pay Indy Media too much...

Further to an earlier story about Indy Media servers being seized by law-enforcement, it seems they have now been returned in original condition.

It has been verified that the returned hard-drives are the originals, but the circumstances of the seizure still remain unclear: who took them, why were they taken, and under which court order? Indymedia is not aware as to whether Rackspace is still under gag order.

Why do I get the feeling that if the drives had been reformatted instead, it would have improved the site?

Interesting article in Front Page Magazine which explores Indy Media's origin and various other deceptive myths about it that would be of interest to sponsors.

Credit where credit is due, from a brief glance, and relative to other Indy Media sites, IMC India really isn't that bad at all.

Maybe it's something to do with a simple editorial policy which is obviously enforced. Even the ubiquitous criticism of Israel isn't the same old, same old, so it seems even the seagull spammers have been banished and the results are pleasing. Of course there's still work to be done, but other IMC sites, pay attention!

And now... Ragging.

After the Australian election in which John Howard was overwhelmingly triumphant, and the Indy Media favourites were massively beaten, the following post to Melbourne Indy Media nicely sums it up.

Well, I guess the people have spoken. No doubt there will be laments of angst from those supremely arrogant souls who claim to have some unique insight into the meaning of life. That the rest of Australia is somehow deficient in the ability to critically analyse situations and come to reasonable decisions. That eveyone but them is hoodwinked by a 'corporate' media. That they alone see the truth and know best.

What supreme arrogance.

And then the excuses began...

Meanwhile, over on Sydney Indy Media they aren't even discussing the election, in favour of more relevant 'news' such as how the Holocaust was actually a hoax.

They must have done something bad...

So now they are talking about encryption, decentralisation and failover hosting to avoid this happening again. Though I can't see the point of encrypting the contents of a public website. Methinks the tin-foil hat is restricting blood-flow to the brain.

Anyway, here's a much easier idea guys: Don't break the law!

Slashdot Discussion here.
Little Green Footballs discussion here Update: with an interesting thought:

Rackspace has hosted a number of Jihadist websites as well as Indymedia - this has not gone unnoticed, see here and here...

It could be that this seizure has nothing to do with Indymedia, but rather has everything to do with the jihadi sites hosted thereon. It was reported on Indymedia because they happened to share the same server as the jihadis, but that doesn't mean the seizure was because of Indymedia.

Still, you can tell some people by the company they keep - Material present in other sites hosted within the same systems.

I'd link to the offending Indy Media Site, but well.... It's kinda 404...

Update: This "Press Release" demonstrates the deliberate denial of any responsibility by Indy Media.

The last few months have seen numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government. In August the Secret Service used a subpoena in an attempt to disrupt the NYC IMC before the RNC by trying to get IP logs from an ISP in the US and the Netherlands.

Despite referring to recent activity by law-enforcement, the whole article specifically gives no indication of the rationale or accusations behind prior seizures despite these being common knowledge.

Denial and dishonesty.

We all remember when New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark hammered Israel over two Israelis charged with passport fraud who she suspected were Mossad agents working on behalf of Israel.

Her attack on Israel was immediately followed by attacks on Jewish graves and it was no co-incidence.

Well it turns out there was another passport fraud operation going on in New Zealand but you probably haven't heard about this one even though the perpetrators have just gone on trial. The difference was that this time, the perpetrators weren't Israeli, they were an Iraqi and a Kuwaiti.

Oh and there was one other difference - their operation was :

"on a scale never before seen in this country"

One of the forged passports was for Bolivia. Now I can't work out why anyone would want a real Bolivian passport let alone a forged one. That is, unless you are an Islamist terror cell operating out of Bolivia.

Now I appreciate that may be a long bow to draw, but let's face it, it's more of a worry than Israelis forging passports given that Israel has never attacked New Zealand or any of it's allies (nor would it). And yet, there was no outrage at all. Maybe New Zealanders and Helen Clark were sick of news about passport scams?

Not really, Police had arrested the men, Fahad Jaber Ajeil, an Iraqi and Riyad Hamied Sultan, a Kuwaiti last October. Well before the Israeli incident, yet we heard nothing out of it from the worldwide media, much less Helen Clark.

One thing's for sure. If Helen Clark does repeat her outrage (and I'm not holding my breath here folks) it probably won't be followed by any attacks on Muslim graves.

Meanwhile, as could be expected, they're not exactly talking about this on New Zealand Indy Media. Instead, they are running the old favourite about Jews manipulating the US Government and people.

Apparently:

Even the atheist majority among the Jewish oligarchy thanked providence for 11 September, when the deaths and sacrifices of non-Jews enabled the Jews to convince Americans that all the political goals of Israel are identical to the political goals of America.

Though almost all who died on 11 September were non-Jews, including some ethnic types quite distasteful to the Jews, such as Irish Catholics, those American deaths, in the shallowness of the American mind, came somehow to symbolize the struggle between Israel and the Arabs.

The events of 11 September reduced contemporary world events to a simple scenario that simple minds could easily grasp: “bad people” had cheered 11 September; “good people” were horrified.

Hmmm... Well here's a video of Bad people cheering September 11.

I wonder why "good people" were horrifed?

Oh, that's right:


But it seems:

While the Jewish oligarchy imagines that the American masses are eager to clean their palaces, grow their crops, and service their automobiles, as they enjoy the sweet life of the privileged, history tells us that the Jewish oligarchy always encourages resentment in its servants. In America, the straw that breaks the camel’s back will be the Americans’ military and political humiliation at the hands of radical Islam. In spite of their hopeless ignorance of geography and history, Americans eventually will come to understand what it means to sacrifice their youth in a hopeless war to advance the goals of Israel.

Gosh, all that talk of camels yet not one mention of radical Islamist Mullahs and Osama bin Laden. Silly me thought that was the cause of Militant Islam but now I know it was also the fault of the Jews. Thanks Indy Media for clearing that up.

Indy Media claims it compensates for bias in the mainstream (sorry, evil corporate scum) media.

Looking at this BBC piece demonstrates one example of exactly such bias.

The text of the BBC article reads:

"Two US Christian volunteers were beaten and robbed by masked attackers they suspect were Jewish settlers while escorting Palestinian children to school."

Islamist terrorists worldwide have attacked aid workers in the past.
The article does not say why the victims "suspected" their attackers to be Jewish settlers and the fact they happened to be masked and threw rocks does leave some room for reasonable doubt does it not?

While a settler spokesman denied any knowledge of the attack and Israeli police are still investigating however, the BBC has already tried and convicted Jews as their headline reads: "Jewish settlers attack US workers".


Perhaps the scare quotes were around the words 'Jewish settlers' to imply that there was some doubt? Not that there would be any doubt in the mind of anyone actually reading the piece. Thank you BBC.

But what's the relevance of BBC bias to a blog about Indy Media I hear you ask? This article where even the BBC's bias was eclipsed by an Indy Media headline stating :

Two peace activists [sic] volunteers were beaten and robbed by Jewish Thugs.

Naturally the Indy Media version deliberately avoids any of the (albeit scarce) detail from the BBC article which might suggest there's more to the story, but what did you expect?