Indy Media Watch

I have been going through my server logs and getting plenty of traffic for my tsunami commentary. First, let me say hello Sweden from where I'm getting a whole lot of visitors. Secondly, I have seen some very interesting patterns in the search engine requests from which people are stumbling across this blog. These have included:

Tsunami Conspiracies - Yahoo

Israel caused tsunami - a Google search which rather unsurprisingly also listed plenty of Indymedia articles suggesting just that.

America caused tsunami - by the same person on several occasions.

and so on.

Most of the above requests originated in America. Whilst one half of me wants to believe they were fellow researchers looking to uncover lunatic conspiracies, the fact is Indy Media originated in America as well, so I'm not too sure. I am certainly worried that some of the requests originated in Arab countries where I highly doubt they were looking to debunk the theory. Moreover, considering that several of the above requests point directly towards al-Jazeera articles or comments saying just that, I can see where the Arabs get their opinion - their local anti-America, anti-West, anti-Israel propaganda machine cunningly disguised as a news service.

I loved this:

Never one to miss an opportunity, the United States is hoping to reap the benefits of their much delayed, much criticised aid relief efforts for the disaster struck regions of South East Asia.

A week ago, the world and U.S. media launched scathing attacks on George Bush's administration for failing to react quickly and adequately to the crisis that killed some 145,000 with many expecting the number to continue to rise. But having consigned some $350 million with the promise of more, it seems that Bush's administration is hoping to score some favourable points with the Islamic world.

As opposed to say sweet FA contribution from the entire Islamic World who to date have given less altogether than to the families of suicide bomber. But then, I guess they just don't need the "favourable points" so are entirely justified in being completely miserable to their so-called Muslim brothers.

Finally, whilst I don't want to turn this into al-Jazeera watch (there's no shortage of others doing just that I did stumble across Al-Jazeera's conspiracy theory section. Note the poll results at the bottom of each discussion.

Even Indy Media ain't got nothing on this!