Indy Media Watch

No, not a 'win an iPod' chain letter, but a new call to arms to Save the Critical Mass/Reclaim The Streets bike sound system!.

I'm currently facing two court cases in San Francisco for the being ticketed while riding the bike soundsystem. Both cases share the same charge of California Vehicle Code section 27007 (which has to do with vehicles with amplified sound). The first ticket was received when I was pulled over by the CHP at the May 2005 SF Critical Mass. The second ticket was from the September 2005 SF Critical Mass ride when I was pulled over by the SFPD. In July 2005, I was also arrested while riding the bike soundsystem at the G8 protest in San Francisco. My bike, soundsystem trailer and iPod were all confiscated and it took about a month and a half to get them out (on the day of the August 2005 SF Critical Mass).

What is it with protesters and ridiculously loud sound systems?

DC Indymedia asks: Are New Orleanians The New Palestinians?

Erm... No.

Not unless they go and blow up some hurricanes anyway.

After keeping us waiting for months, the World Can't Wait protest happens tomorrow.

Previous reports:
Here,
here,
and here.

I can't wait...

Update: According to the organizers' hopeless website, there are two more days to wait...

Here's a list of 'actions' across America. I welcome field-reports if anyone actually goes.

It also appears some people are screwing with the organizers:

The Sacramento contact, worldcantwait_sac@hotmail.com is me. Laughing

I have been manipulating local events. These people are idiots. They follow me, a random hotmail address.

A bunch of dipshits are going to show up downtown on Wednesday and stare at each other, wondering who is in charge. I made sure to drop the cops an anonymous tip. There are no permits, so if they veer off of the sidewalk, they face arrest. I hope they have fun. Of course, I will be there to observe the loony left clusterfuck.

It's interesting to note that several protests have involved protesters staring at each other wondering who is in charge, so I don't expect this interference will have much effect.

Continuing its achievement as one of the worst sites on the whole IMC network, another fabricated news release about Israel and the US is currently hosted on Sydney Indymedia.

zionazis attack Palestinian Civilians with u.s. f-16s murdering scores of child (sic)

The article has provoked complaints and proof it is wholly bogus, yet the complaints have evidently fallen on deaf ears.

Which begs the question: What does an article actually have to say or be in order to be removed from Sydney Indymedia?

You can learn a lot about what's high on the Indymedia agenda by looking at the most 'commented' articles on the various newswires. At the moment, an article on Utah Indymedia featuring a massive list of Hebrew & Yiddish insults is the most commented by a factor of about ten. Not much of it is particularly intelligent.

Small things...

Some time ago, I wrote of an article entitled "Tips on Effective Propaganda" which originally appeared on the Global Indymedia site (and is now 404 for some reason, Google cache here). Go and read my whole post here and come back. I'll wait.

This morning, as a result of the author Googling for the heading of the article, that post received the following comment, colourfully reproduced below in full:

Well, I just have to say I feel very misrepresented and offended. I don't know where to start but I feel whomever wrote the abstract for my document is a complete and total asshole, and an uneducated one at that. I have attended a state university at the cost of $20,000 in loans in my name; and while I may not be the smartest person in the room I can form a damn "sentance". Your arrogance stinks!! If you want to point fingers the last sentance in your "review" isn't a complete sentance; nor does it make sense. It's inappropriate to start a sentance with a proposition... "Or". Ok, so now that we've established you suck I really don't appreciate your uneducated opionions smeared all over my hard work. If a "review" is neccesary it is absolutly inappropriate to include such misguided personal opinions.
For your information jerk wad, People reading this will gain freedom. PERIOD. Freedom. Jerk.

Second what does "well written proof read media" have to do with ANYTHING in middle america???

This guide is usefull to just about anyone in the political movement, just as it says in the introduction. Why you have to fabricate some silly nonsense about how this guide is not is what? what are you saying?! I can't even understand that last bit.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, YOU MUST REMOVE THIS DOCUMENT, MY DOCUMENT FROM THE INDYMEDIA WEBSITE IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE SPIRIT OF THE DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT BY ADDING YOUR SHITTY REMARKS TO THE FRONT OF MY DOCUMENT. I NO LONGER WANT IT REPRESTENTED BY YOU buttholes.

As the commenter didn't leave an email address, I have no means of replying to ask what the hell s/he is talking about. Therefore I shall do so publicly instead.

Firstly, and most importantly, if you are going to correct my spelling and grammar, you'll want to check your own very carefully. When I saw your first comment that said "I can form a damn "sentance"" (sic) I assumed you were accusing me of incorrectly spelling "sentence' and was going to suggest it were merely a typo. Looking again at your subsequent spelling, I noticed I hadn't made a mistake in the first place, and not only do you not know how to spell sentence, you evidently don't understand the use of quotation marks (or scare quotes). This is the reason I have highlighted other mistakes in your rant.

Which state university was it you attended for $20 000? Do you feel you got your money's worth? What were their entry criteria?

You then ask "what does "well written proof read media" have to do with ANYTHING in middle america???"

Perhaps if you understood how and when to apply capital letters, you wouldn't need to ask. As you don't, I shan't bother explaining it, being "arrogant" and all. You then claim the document in its current form is useful to "just about anyone in the political movement". Good heavens! As what?

As for my "shitty remarks" being in violation of "the spirit of the distribution agreement" (I have changed to lower case by the way) I have two words: Fair Use. See also "misguided personal opinions" and ask yourself whether you are mature enough to handle fair criticism. Your liberal use of the words "jerk", "shitty" "ass" and "buttholes" in your first ever contact with myself, suggest you are not.

As for removing your document from the Indymedia website? Your request is aimed at the wrong party. Save for quoting a couple of lines, I merely linked to an Indymedia reprint of your piece. If you find a way to get them to respect copyright or fairness in any form, do let me know your secret.

Finally, if you are going to tell that "It's inappropriate to start a sentance (sic) with a proposition" you should note that I didn't. "Or" is a conjunction and I suspect you really meant "preposition".

I hope you didn't get hurt falling off your high horse. Here's a proposition for you: You apologize publicly for insulting me, and I may decide not to laugh at you for months to come.

It is just over a year since I received my first threatening message warning:

"This blog's days are numbered".

One Year!

Care to revise the number?

Update: Evil Pundit wished me a "happy blogday" in the comments. It's only the anniversary of the threat, not of the blog's inception in August.

More soul searching, this time on Santa Barbara IMC. But first, a joke:

Little Johnny was in his 5th grade class when the teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up --- fireman, policeman, salesman, etc...

Little Johnny was being uncharacteristically quiet and so the teacher asked him about his father. "My father's a welfare queen who frequents gay bars. Sometimes, if he gets lucky at closing time and he catches the eye of someone desperate, and if the offer's fair, he'll go out to the alley with some guy and make love with him for money."

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some coloring or Play-Doh, and took Little Johnny aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father?

"No," said little Johnny, "He's an editor at the SF-IMC, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the other kids."

Why? According to the article:

Indymedia has become infected with disinformation, enemy propaganda, gibberish, flame wars and spam. They discredit Indymedia as a source of credible information. They discredit every IMCista as an activist. They are, in short, bad journalism and worse politics.

Indymedia's failure as a network to practice even the most basic, minimum standards of journalism has drawn wide criticism.

The solution?

Indymedia is at a critical juncture in it's development. Either it learns to employ even the most basic, minimum standards of journalism or it will never be credible. That means it will never live up to its enormous potential. It will remain in the rut it's in now until, one by one those volunteers who recognize the virtue and necessity of credibility, lose faith, abandon hope and drift away. When enough of them have gone, Indymedia, at least as we know it, will die.

That would be a great shame, for with just a little more work and care, Indymedia could seriously compete for the hearts and minds of the news hungry public, with the ubiquitous propaganda mill of the corporate-government complex. If it can't do that, it's a failure, and should be abandoned in favor of something that does work.

I've suggested something similar. The article makes more valid suggestions:

Foremost of the basic principles of journalism which Indymedia needs to employ is fact checking. Disinformation has no place in credible news. Forgeries are the quintessential disinformation. They have long been used by the forces of repression to discredit activists, and activist organizations of all stripes

and in so doing, prompted a series of arguments, fights and name-calling against the author. Typical.

Bristol Indymedia has issued a 'Public Statement' which appeared on their front page for a couple of days, concerning the servers which were seized earlier in the year (past reports here and here. The whole incident has now escalated into physical attacks and threats against former Indymedia members, but more on that later.

According to the statement:

"This case has serious and fundamental implications for the whole Indymedia network. The reason is that police charged the individual from the collective with 'Incitement to cause criminal damage' after an article posted on the open newswire apparently urged others to damage cars, despite the fact that the article was removed under Bristol Indymedia guidelines within 24 hours."

Not quite. The offending post was not in fact removed from Bristol Indymedia "within 24 hours" and remained visible on the newswire (via the front page) for a few days. Secondly, and more importantly, it wasn't "removed" at all, rather "hidden" (see here ) meaning it was still publicly available, merely not via the front page, however available to anyone who wished to find it.

Furthermore, the article wasn't problematic because it "urged others to damage cars" as suggested by the statement. In fact, the article was posted by someone claiming to have actually dropped rocks on a moving train (a potentially fatal stunt) and encouraging others to perform the same potentially fatal activity.

Two whoppers. Not bad for the first two paragraphs. It continues:

It is clear that the police were, through using this charge, claiming that the Indymedia volunteer was somehow 'responsible' for the content of the article because it was 'published on Indymedia': meaning that anyone who volunteers (or has any connection) with an Indymedia site can be personally held responsible for anything that anyone posts on the newswire."

The Indymedia volunteer who was arrested, had the offending server in his home. It is fairly obvious why the Police may have associated the two.

As for the other question of liability, at some point, perhaps someone on Indymedia should accept some.

It goes on:

"The police response of seizing a server is completely out of proportion to the situation, especially as the Bristol Indymedia collective had agreed to discuss the matter with police. In fact it was the police who called off the meeting at the last minute. The next thing the collective knew was the server being taken and an individual arrested."

Excuse me? Indymedia would co-operate with the police? Sure. This after previous and ongoing statements that they do not log (collect) IP addresses however even if they did, would "never" give these to the police. What co-operation were they likely to extend? Besides perhaps a cup of tea. It's sheer speculation and does not justify bitterness towards the Police who looked elsewhere in their investigation. But here comes the sermon:

Through this extreme action, which brought the whole Bristol Indymedia news service offline, the police made a direct attack at the very principle of open posting and free media.

No they didn't. They attempted to locate and hopefully prosecute someone who acted in a criminal and completely irresponsible manner.

We cannot let this precedent be set, and we cannot allow this to become a tool used against Indymedia anywhere, anytime: for the sake of keeping Bristol Indymedia available to the public, and that of the whole Indymedia project worldwide

In other words: "We demand the right to incite people to drop rocks on moving trains". Sorry. There is an old Libertarian expression "The right to swing your fist stops at my nose" which applies in cases of freedom of speech versus criminal incitement (or simply abundant stupidity). See here for an academic discussion of this issue.

Mark Watson (AKA Zaskar) previously reported here has become the victim of an intimidatory campaign against him, presumably based on his co-operation with police regarding Indymedia's involvement in the above incident.

In a dicussion on another Bristol forum, he has reported receiving threats at home and had his name spraypainted on a nearby building. While he and the Police are taking the matter seriously (and should) his response and the accompanying video of it was priceless.

House of Wheels reports the Comic Gold that is the "World Can't Wait" protest's latest musical activity.

Also on the page, amidst urging of students to walk out of class (as if that ever needed a good excuse) comes this sticker:



It is almost as scary as Puff Daddy's warning to "vote or die" noting the number of people that didn't vote and actually died minutes later!

Only 6 more days... I (ahem) can't wait!

When anti-Bush protest organizers want to block traffic for hours, that's okay and no one has the right to stop them.

When George Bush jams LA traffic in motorcade however, it's an absolute outrage.

According to a post on UK Indymedia,

Wikinews has been inflitrated [sic] by a crazed little clique of militaristic neo-con Bush nuts.

As previously reported, Wiki News aspires to editorial neutrality and sometimes achieves it if the following statement on UK Indymedia is any guide:

There's a struggle going on to preserve the independence of Wikinews, the collaborative current affairs version of Wikipedia. Stories that make America look bad either get watered down or completely stopped. Please help us reclaim Wikinews!

Ain't neutrality a bitch?

Via UK Indymedia comes possibly the best post-protest argument of all time:

They didnt have to send down as many as they did in riot gear. I wonder how many pedestrians who were just walking past and had nothing to do with the bookfair got caught up in it all.

It wasnt a riot until the police turned up.

Here's how it started. According to the article:

The [anarchist] bookfair at the resource centre today was extremely well-attended, and a very positive and optimistic coming together of many types of people concerned by the way our authoritarian society is developing. the day ended in a fitting but terrifying and wholly unnecessary practical demonstration of our violent police state.

when the event ended at six o clock, many of the participants went to the local 'coronet' pub for a drink. the large space was packed. a small group switched on a sound system for some entertainment, and the pub manager reacted astonishingly by closing the bars, refusing to serve anyone in the pub and calling the police.

According to subsequent comments it wasn't that entertaining and the pub owner's reaction wasn't astonishing at all:

Are you surprised that the landlord wanted to close the bar? The coronet is a music-free pub. A lot of the punters drink in there for this very reason. So a group of quasi-crusty 'anarchists' decide to selfishly impose their soundtrack onto other people. They talk about anarchy and 'freedom'. What about freedom for other people to enjoy a quiet pint?

Controversy continues:

I was in the pub when that rubbish was going down. Those wankers should be ashamed of themselves. They come into a pub, where most of the people were enjoying a few drinks and catching up after a great day of meetings and socialising, and turned on their excuse for a sound system. It was intrusive to us and the regulars who were also enjoying their saturday afternoon. They were asked on various occasions to turn it off, by staff, anarchists and locals. The worst part of it all is that they seemed to take great delight in refusing to give a fuck as to what others thought. I asked them to turn it off and they laughed. The bar closed and they refused to open it again until it was turned off. They could have done it then. But no, on/off/on/off/on/off, just to piss everyone off. The arrogant fuckers knew what they were doing. Assholes. It took someone to take one of the speakers and smash it to the floor before they finally got the message and pissed off. By then the staff had had enough. Not really surprising when some crusties play load incoherent garbage at full volume, must have thought they were reliving J18. Someone needs to have a word with them and tell 'em to grow the helll up.

Quite. But remember, it wasn't a riot until the police turned up. In closing, a delightfully English comment:

Anarchist muppets - Those twats who took the soundsystem into pub were unbelievable. They were the ones who caused that shit last night. Serious anarchists should cut all ties with those crusty dickhead lifestylist arseholes and tell them to fuck off.

Until next time...

Further to my last post detailing the problems faced by organizers of the World Can't Wait (but will have to until 2 November) protest, comes this.



If you look in the background, you can just make out George W. Bush looking out the Whitehouse window, shitting himself...

I have previously configured links to external sites (e.g. Indymedia pages) to open in a new window and links within this blog to open in the same window. The next link will demonstrate my habit to date.

Having just read Jakob Nielsen's Top-10 New Mistakes of Web Design I now realize this may not be what some users expect or appreciate, given that they could open it in a new window themself if they wanted, however I have been forcing it on them. The article also makes some interesting points about breaking the 'back button' on peoples' browsers.

To be honest, opening links in a new window is a bit of a pain as Blogger doesn't have many options in this regard. I have to manually add "target=_blank" to each hyperlink. Could readers please add a comment to this post indicating their thoughts and preference on the matter and I will adjust further posts accordingly.

Via Israellycool, a person goes undercover with the International Solidarity Movement. We learn who is, and who is not a terrorist in their minds, and that "You're not a proper activist unless you smell".

It must get awfully smelly not picking olives.

Quebec Indymedia is reporting on the students who Swarmed the Complexe Desjardins

Earlier today [ed: Thursday, March 31st] around 500 students swarmed into the Complexe Dejardins as part of CASSÉÉ's week of "economic disruptions". While inside, many students blocked entrances, clapping and cheering, while others went into the IGA supermarket and raided food, cheese, and wine. While a minor scuffle broke out between an IGA security guard and students trying to take a cart out of the IGA, only a small amount of food was taken and the police did not get involved and there was no violence or property destruction.

The march was organized by CASSÉÉ and the taking of food from the IGA was a symbolic demonstration that for many people, good food is beyond reach.

Stealing? Very symbolic.“We declared that for the day the food in the IGA, the grocery store in the basement of Complex Dejardins, would be free for those who don’t normally have the means to afford good food. We live in a society where a lot of people have the choice of eating shit or eating nothing, so we decided that today all the good cheeses, the good wines, and all the food that a lot of people cant afford, would be free, as an example,” said Sohie Cohen of CASSEE.Needless to say, the store was not a co-signatory to the declaration.

I wonder if the same students would steal books to protest a lack of literacy, or steal bottled water to protest lack of clean drinking water. Somehow I'm not sure. Getting students to steal cheese and wine on the other hand...

New Orleans Indymedia has taken a break from post-Katrina recovery to engage in some traditional Jewbashing.

Reporting on the Million More Movement Rally:

No wonder the ADL’s mouthpiece, Abe Foxman, tried to discourage leaders of the African-American community from attending the “Million More Movement” rally, which was held on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005, on the Nation’s Mall. The event, from its inception, sounded a positive theme of unity. A theme like that tends to drives hypocrites like Foxman, right up the proverbial wall.

Really? Let's investigate some of the Indymedia author's desire for "unity" and establish whether he is a hypocrite while we are at it...

However, Foxman, a rabid Zionist

This had to be specified so you don't get him confused with merely a regular Zionist, galloping Zionist, baby-killing Zionist or Indymedia favourite "Zio-Nazi".

who has appointed himself as a "Thought Policeman" for America

Source for this?

didn't buy Farrakhan's message. He patronizingly ranted about the planned rally: "When will someone in the African-American community stand up and say the Million Man March had a positive message, but the pied piper is a racist and anti-Semite? We cannot understand why good people continue to tolerate this outrage of anti-Semitic views and behavior. It seems there is a line of denial, indeed a blind spot among many, within the African-American community when it comes to anti-Semitism."

This sounds like a call for unity, however when it comes to Indymedia, Unity doesn't generally include Jews.

The sleazy Rich had close ties to Zionist Israel's secret police - the Mossad. The question was raised in the matter whether the wily Foxman had been acting as an agent for a foreign principal. He denied any wrongdoing. Clinton granted the pardon to Rich, at Foxman's, and others' request, on 01/20/01, just hours before Bush took office.

Other comments on "Unity" at Malkin and more on what Abe Foxman thinks of Minister Farrakhan here.

Just when one conspiracy nutbag argued the whole 9/11 story could be closed comes this story on Big Muddy (Southern Illinois) Indymedia.

Most of the official 2996 September 11 victims never died in the September 11 terror attacks – at least not in the official, lying version of 911.
Most of those 2996 were fabricated, as official- 911 victims, by bush and his thugs in order to generate a bigger-than-Pearl Harbor warmongering spin.

And how do we know this?

Did you, associated press bush parrots, see the 2996 alleged bodies or body parts for yourselves?
Bet you didn’t.
And even if you had, you would have been in no position to identify all those bodies or parts thereof.
So you’re just parroting/trumpeting something you didn’t independently verify.
That’s unobjective reporting to be euphemistic…
You’re just toeing the bush party line – been doing so for 4 years.
Or did you call up/visit each and every of those alleged 2996 families and crosscheck with relatives whether those 911 deaths are for real?
Bet you didn’t – though you sure would have possessed the means and reason to do so.
And if you had done so, I’m sure you would have mentioned it in your report – but you don’t.
You ought to have verified and double-damn verified that governmental 911 victims list, name by name, run it all down,1 through 2996– but you didn’t. You flushed your journalistic ethics down the toilet.
That’s why you are bush whores.
You’re sellin’ for certain what isn’t.
Frauds. Impostors. Deceivers. Spouters of lies.
The false certainty you have been trumpeting – that 2996 fell victim to the 911 attacks – equals a lie because you are falsely confirming what amounts to nothing else but a baseless government allegation.

Right. But it's okay:

I do not blame you too much for being propaganda parrots – what few journalists try to be independent these days, get shot dead at checkpoints in iraq or sth.
So maybe I shouldn’t call you whores – maybe you’re just one bunch of lousy creeps.
Anyway you suck. So wholeheartedly – fuck off and die.

Nice. It gets even better when he decided to investigate 9/11 matters for himself, by picking up the phone to call victims' families:

This is Blake Allison’s number:
781 XXX 2 [I have deleted it -ed] - it’s a matter of public record.
I called, and…he hung up on me.
How nice of him. It certainly didn’t dispel my doubts – quite the contrary.

Can't imagine why he'd hang up...

Next I found, always on legacy.com, a purported “Sarah Preston” signing a tribute to Anna Allison.
Again I found her out on whitepages.com, this is the nr:
410 XXXXX2
And this time around I got the first ever confirmation that an alleged 911 victim was a real person.
At least according to Mrs Preston, who kindly spoke to me on the phone and said she was Anna’s “first cousin”.
But at first ,when I asked her to confirm to me that she had written that legacy.com tribute in 2002, she was vague and said only “maybe, or maybe it was my husband”.
I found that odd, I mean the gravest terror attack in then history of the US happens and your first cousin dies in it and you don’t even remember whether you posted her a tribute or not or maybe it was your husband and why would he post in your name, is he your ghostwriter?
Anyway she said “it was a time period when we used to write all those tributes…”.
All those tributes. Well I didn’t find any other Anna Allison tributes by Sarah Preston and I researched the subject pretty darn extensively.
But let’s assume for a moment that Sarah Preston really is who she claims to be – Allison’s first cousin. And let’s assume she really hasn’t seen or heard from her cousin since September 11, 2001.
This still does NOT prove Anna died – and if she did die, it does NOT prove HOW or WHERE she died – because, again ,more likely than not American Airlines 11 not only never struck WTC1 – it probably never even took off on that day because it wasn’t even scheduled to fly and it wasn’t on record as having flown on 911

And how does he justify this astonishing claim? By linking to other 'authoritative sources' such as...Wait for it... Sydney Indymedia and a thread which has been active for over two years and still believes its own BS.

Crazy wacked out stories on Indymedia sites using other Indymedia sites as references, despite the fact none of them are accountable, professional or even reasonable. Can you say "circle-jerk"?

How about just "jerk" then.

The Norway Post is reporting that:

Norway's new finance minister, Kristin Halvorsen, on her way to her new office, was Tuesday greeted by a young man who threw a cream cake at the back of her head.

Regular readers will recall my earlier report of a terrifying (yet rather tasty) new terrorist method, "cake throwing".

Be afraid.

I visited Norway Indymedia to see if they had anything on the incident. I seldom watch non-English Indymedia sites as I don't understand their content. This was no exception and nothing drew my attention except the single English article I noticed, which was you guessed it...

Impeaching Bush will not change things because he does not in fact wield the power of the Presidency. Dick Cheney and a small oligarchy of Zionist neocons do. An impeachment would be a nice gesture, and the show trial would create a kind of national forum for the nation to explore just how the hell we got into Iraq, but for that very reason, an impeachment will never be allowed. The Republicans still dominate the House and Senate and the Israeli lobby still exerts enormous control. Israel wants us to occupy Iraq for as long as possible. The fact that we were lied into the war is unlikely to blossom into an impeachment since the lies were created to benefit Israel. Our problem is systemic: it is with the very institutions that govern us and with the corporate super-rich and Zionist ideologues who control those institutions. It is not enough to bring down one man who is nothing but a sock-puppet for the neocons. We need to go for the puppet masters.

What's Norwegian for Evil Zionist Neocon? Jøøøøøøøøøøøz? Better yet, what's Norwegian for Antisemitic waste of oxygen disgraceful website? Not fussy, Bokmal Norwegian, or Nynorsk Norwegian will be fine.

According to Melbourne Indymedia:

A noisy group of 100 or more people braved the rain to heckle [Australian Prime Minister] John Howard as he attended a dinner at the Melbourne Museum tonight.

The snap action was called to highlight the government's proposed anti terror laws, which will severely restrict freedom of speech.

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/97600.php

A number of security guards were in attendance, however a small group of protesters were able to get in the front door before being caught by police, At one stage a large glass door shattered as police attempted to stop protesters entering the building.

Obviously the door, deep in depression, shattered itself. On the other hand, according to a Melbourne Newspaper:

Protesters shattered a glass door when a rally outside a Melbourne business dinner attended by Prime Minister John Howard turned violent last night.

Around 200 hostile protesters met Mr Howard as he arrived to speak at the Prime Minister's Awards for Excellence in Community Business Partnerships at the Melbourne Museum in Carlton.

After Mr Howard entered the building the protesters banged on the outside walls of the museum and one officer said eggs were thrown at police.

Inspector Stephen Mutton said about a dozen protesters entered a courtyard on the lower level of the museum and broke a large glass door.

"They've forced a door, with security on the other side, and that occurring the door shattered," he said.

"We've removed three protesters... and we are looking at commencing an investigation into the damaging of the door."

"It's been very noisy and people are having their say and free speech, and I have no issue with that, but obviously if property gets damaged we'll look into that and if we can charge someone we will."

Back on Indymedia, according to the protesters:

It was a very energetic and lively protest, which included a roving choir, and a large mix of people angry at a range of issues and concerned about freedom of speech.

And here's a photo of one such energetic and lively protester.

The comments on the Indymedia article repeat a common argument:

The new laws don't threaten freedom of speech. It's a lie to say they do.

Violent protesters do threaten freedom of speech by trying to shut down meetings they don't like.

Protesters of course insist they were non-violent (as always):

There is a big difference between violence against property and violence against people. The police were the only party using violence against peaceful protesters

...and the eggs thrown at police officers were originally intended for post-protest omelettes.

It is a shame that a museum was damaged to demonstrate that a lot of people are very angry about the many evils that Howards government is inflicting on this, and other countries. but direct confrontation is necessary for change.

An interesting attitude. So after trashing a gallery, what actually changed? Besides someone's egg-soaked shirt and a bit of glass of course. Another job well done.

UK Indymedia brings another 9/11 conspiracy piece to the forefront. Griffin Seals Case for 9/11 WTC Demolition, Calls on NY Times to End Coverup details how:

In two speeches to overflow crowds in New York last weekend, notable theologian David Ray Griffin argued that recently revealed evidence seals the case that the Twin Towers and WTC-7 were destroyed by controlled demolition with explosives. Despite the many enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Griffin concluded, "It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government."

We'll take your word for it naturally.

And who are these guys?

This weekend's events were sponsored by NY911truth.org, WBAI and the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth

The what? But surely anyone who reads Indymedia and is interested in the 'truth' about 9/11 would know it was all a big Jewish plot, so why all of a sudden are there Jews involved in an anti-conspiracy Alliance?

Well, they're not exactly... Visiting the 'Who are We' page of the MUJCA Website gives some detail:

MUJCA-NET was founded by Dr. Kevin Barrett of Madison, Wisconsin, a scholar of Islam and literature, and Imam Faiz Khan M.D. of New York City, a 9/11 first responder who teaches at Long Island Jewish Hospital. Both have been appalled by 9/11 and the ever-increasing violence it has brought us, and both are particularly unhappy with the silence of their fellow Muslims on 9/11 truth.

Aha! So by working at the Long Island Jewish Hospital, you are Jewish all of a sudden? That explains the third group in this so-called 'alliance'. But wait, there's more.

The other endorsers of MUJCA-NET do not necessarily agree with all of the co-founders’positions. (Indeed, the co-founders themselves do not hold precisely identical views on everything.) But all of us at MUJCA-NET recognize that the gaping holes in the official 9/11 story mandate a new and genuine investigation aimed specifically at either confirming or refuting allegations of official complicity.

Gee, I wonder why others might not agree. Who are some of these 'other endorsers'?

Dr. Faiz Khan is a Muslim scholar and educator as well as an M.D. with a dual specialty in emergency and internal medicine. He has been living and working in New York City since 1969. A 9/11 first responder, he has been in the forefront of post-9/11 peace and education efforts in New York and elsewhere. He is well-known as a staunchly outspoken opponent of terror in all its guises, and has participated in two memorial services for the victims of 9/11, as well as the New York group Muslims Against Terrorism. Dr. Khan is the author of “9/11: An Islamic Perspective” published by Belief Net in their selection of essays on religion and 9/11. An Assistant Imam at two New York area mosques, Dr. Kahn has treated subjects related to Islam, politics, and 9/11 at numerous speaking engagements and publications.
...
Read Dr. Khan's immediate response to 9/11 , written before compelling evidence surfaced that it was an inside job.

Compelling evidence? Okaaaay. Who else?

Israel Shamir, Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist, is one of Israel’s leading peace activists. The decendent of a rabbi from Palestine, and an IDF veteran of the 1973 war, Shamir changed languages and traded in his literary-intellectual hat to become an activist in response to the terrible events of 2001.

Not so fast. Israel Shamir is also described as a conspiracy theorist antisemite, who lives in Sweden and changed his name to Israel Shamir. Others (including the London Times) put it more bluntly: He's a Swedish Neo-Nazi that has become the darling of the Extreme Left and Extreme Right.

But with a name like "Israel Shamir" he's irresistible wouldn't you say?

Some alliance...

Coming soon, "The Muslim and Jewish Alliance for the eradication of Jews"...

Websense is a product installed on corporate computer networks to control how much time employees spend jerking off engaging in non-work related web browsing, or viewing inappropriate sites.

Putting the sense into Websense, according to UK Indymedia

Websense blocks Indy Media as an "Advocacy Group".

Advocacy Group? For what? I can think of several more appropriate headings. According to the list of categories on Websense's site, Indymedia could also be classified as:"Militancy and Extremist", "Racism and Hate", "Non-Traditional Religions and Occult and Folklore", "Tasteless", "Violence" and two or three others I'm sure.

The one category it probably wouldn't fit into however, is "News and Media". Funny about that.

Now get back to work!

Bay Area Indymedia is reporting on the latest problems for the organizers of the "World Can't Wait" (until 2 November anyway) protests.

The Field Operation Bureau has denied a parade permit to The World Can’t Wait national protest scheduled for November 2nd. The permit was denied on the basis that it will disrupt traffic especially on a weekday because the march will at one point proceed down Market St. Organizers are now fighting for the opportunity to file for an appeal to the County Board of Supervisors to overturn the police department’s decision.

But why did the organizers choose that location?

There are a number of reasons for choosing Market Street to protest. The first reason is that this was the street that people gathered on the first day the Iraq War started [approximately 50 -ed]. Second Many other symbolic protests have occurred on this street. Third, that this protest corresponds to the national protest.

The first two don't seem like terribly compelling reasons not to relocate. The last point has nothing to do with the venue whatsoever, merely the date. What's the real reason?

Finally, this protest is meant to halt business as usual, to get people to leave work and school, and bring attention on to those who are doing the same.

In other words, the precise reason given for denying the permit in the first place.

Hold your protest if you want, but you have no right to stop people going to work or cry foul if you get called on it.

The choice of venue has been a problem in the past. Come Correct was protesting the protesters.

If there's one thing the people of San Francisco do with vigor and fervor, it's protest...like seriously....they seem to protest about every falking chance they can. If it's not the war in Iraq, it's Mumia Abdul Jamal, or Leonard Peltier, or offensive t-shirts, or Hummers, or work conditions at the Gap, or Old Navy, or jesus...just about anything....I'm seriously surprised the city doesn't have special funding to compensate every whack-job in this city with material to make a protest sign.
...
Ok....Don't get me wrong, I do honestly believe you should speak out for what you believe, and if something's bullshit, you call bullshit on it. What I *really* don't understand are the people who are into protests as a social scene. I'm very sure there's a San Francisco protest email list out there somewhere announcing where these dirty hippies should show up from event to event with suggested slogans for their signs, etc. I'm sure they draw straws each time for which person is gonna work the bullhorn and get everyone all riled up. These jokers aren't even protesting because they're really pissed about something, it's just the means they use to get together with like minded people and, you know, try to get laid...I mean, do whatever you wanna do ok, just don't clog up Market street on Saturday while I'm trying to pick up some threads from some multi-conglomerate sweatshop that chains 15 year olds to sewing machines and oppresses the entire third world.......my ass needs to look freshly dipped.... recognize.

Update: Via the comments, a reader has looked into who may be behind this group.

Articles which don't meet the approval of Indymedia moderators are generally 'hidden'. That is, they aren't deleted (I mean that would be censorship!) but pushed to an obscure corner of each site that you can visit if you are that desperate. In some (though not all) cases however this material is still indexed by search engines and the Nazis/Moonbats know it.

Past entry on hidden articles.

In general, I don't wade through the hidden articles as posting that material would suggest bad faith towards the few Indymedia sites that are genuinely trying to do the right thing. Moreover, it would allow much of that otherwise hidden filth to gain more publicity than it deserves. In any case, there's no shortage of material not hidden to prove my point again and again.

Having said that, it has come to my attention that some material is hidden for no apparent reason other than the displeasure of the Indymedia moderator who hid it. Indymedia Ireland Watch has documented numerous examples of censorship - which would be called editorial in a normal publication but is purely hypocritical on Indymedia.

Evil Pundit has drawn my attention to this article on Melbourne Indymedia which was hidden within twenty minutes of its posting..

It discusses the marriage between the radical left and Islamists and argues that with the best intentions, the two are fundamentally incompatible. Read it and draw your own conclusions. Mine are irrelevant. What I do know however, is it upset someone enough to hide it, on the basis it is "racist crap".

Apparently however, this piece by local stooge Faruque Ahmed and adjacent piece Hitler, what a legend! are not subject to the same policy, as they are still proudly displayed on the site.

It's nice to see consistency...

Baltimore Indymedia believes it has a Grounds for Civil War.

When this political hack Harriet Miers is confirmed by the U.S. Senate and when she is sworn in as a associate justice to the Supreme Court, it is only a matter of time before Roe v Wade will be overturned. I will not be able to look my wife, daughter and granddaughter in the face without walking out the door and entering in open warfare with a criminal regime. It does however not require that you have women in your life in order to fight for women's rights it simply requires understanding the rule of law against the U.S. Constitution. "All "MEN" are created equal" and so too are WO"MEN" to men and vice versa. If you believe otherwise you are fostering a criminal mind and are my sworn enemy. And if you succeed in turning the very foundations of the institutions of the government of the United States against the women in my family I will have no choice but hunt you down, bring you to trial, jail you and if you will not surrender to the rule of law under the Constitution of the United States of America you will give me no choice but to kill you.

You have the right to choose the course you will take and I advise you to choose wisely for there are a great deal more people that think like me then there are people that think like you.

...At least on Indymedia.

Che Guevarra T-shirt -- $24.95
Black "anarchist" face mask --- $18.95
Birkenstock Sandals --- $189.50

Selling an "anti-capitalist" DVD for £5.50 (including p&p) -- Priceless...

I have previously reported on the fraudulent nature of the so-called International Solidarity Movement, who seem to have a hard time responding to my numerous questions.

Via San Diego Indymedia, I came across this suspiciously titled piece "A virtual tour of Apartheid Israel". It was not what it seemed, rather debunking this popular (and wholly untrue) myth. It is therefore highly worthwhile reading.

A subsequent off-topic comment however led me to something altogether different.

Anyone who has some time and travel ability can help Palestinians harvesting olives from their traditional olive groves.

It seems, the International Solidarity Movement is organizing their 2005 Olive Harvest Campaign.

The Olive Harvest Campaign provides a wonderful opportunity to spend time with Palestinian families in their olive groves and homes.

Interested in picking olives? Not so fast young Olivista...

According to the ISM site:

After a two-day training session, volunteers for the Olive Harvest Campaign will stay in Palestinian homes in West Bank communities and accompany Palestinian families to their olive groves to serve as witnesses to document and expose attacks by settlers — supported by the Israeli Army — on farmers and their families.

What the? Two days of training to pick olives? Not quite... It's training to commit suicide in front of bulldozers

join Palestinians in nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank against the construction of the Annexation Barrier, settlements and settlement roads.

And pick some olives?

With your help and participation, we will expose the injustice of the Israeli occupation and send a message to the world that The Occupation must end and the Wall must fall!

Yeah, but what about the olives?

ISM uses nonviolent, direct-action methods of resistance to confront and challenge the Israeli persecution of Palestinians.

Yes yes, but what about the damned oliv...Aww forget it.

Back on the Indymedia page, a respondent argues:

As for Palestinian agriculture, we have now seen what happened to the previously massive Gaza floral industry. Witness the saga of the greenhouses and see for yourself how serious some Palestinians are about agriculture, peace or employment.

...And olives.

According to UK Indymedia:

The US Military have been deployed to disrupt the iraq "No" vote. It is called a security clampdown. In reality it is a vote rigging operation. The US military is on it's biggest push for a long time in Anbar,Salahaddin, Nineveh and Diyala provinces in Iraq.

They are bombing and shooting up the place. The citizens can not come out on to the streets let alone vote.

Elsewhere in the media, we hear a slightly different version:

Iraq took another big step yesterday toward becoming a fully democratic and independent nation as millions voted on a new constitution despite threat of violence.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari, after casting one of the first ballots in Baghdad, said: "The constitution is a sign of civilization. We consider this a day of great achievement. This constitution has come after heavy sacrifices. It is a new birth."

Fox News? Whitehouse press release perhaps? Not quite. It's from the Bahrain Daily News. While they are thrilled, the Indymedia article notes:

The passing of the Iraqi constitution with this kind of vote rigging will be praised in the western media as a glorious step forward for democracy.

I wonder what Salahaddin would have made of it all?

And I wonder what Iraqis would have made of UK Indymedia...

We eagerly await the election results.

BC Indymedia is carrying another Tom Flocco 'scoop. I have previously reported material by "Tom Flocco" formatted to look like a credible newswire article, and presumably seeded on sites such as Indymedia to later be referenced as credible sources. Here's how it works

An article is posted:

"Survivor" of 911 Pentagon "Plane Crash" Arrested in Europe With Counterfeit Millions

French and American intelligence agents have arrested Barbara Olson, the wife of a former Bush administration official, a few days ago on the Polish-German border, according to agents close to and with knowledge of the incident.

No verifiable facts are presented, and indeed as pointed out by a later comment, even if you leave aside the conspiracy theories, the basic material itself is factually questionable:

The current internet appearance of the story claiming Barbara 'Olsen' has been arrested in Europe is devoid of substance. There is not one micron of proof. The story is simply not journalism at this point in time.

Extraordinary claims DEMAND extraordinary proof. There is nothing in the 'Olsen' story to substantiate it.

First, her last name is or was misspelled 'Olsen'. It is 'Olson' and may by now be corrected.

Even more lamentable is the claim she was arrested at the 'Polish-Austrian' border.

Unfortunately, these two countries do not share a common border...as a quick look at any map of Europe will show.

Of course this doesn't stop other stooges seizing on the material as further proof of what they believed all along:

It always amazed me how that Boeing 757 with a 154 foot wingspan slipped cleanly through that 16 foot hole without even breaking the windows above the hole (the tail must have dematerialised immediately before entry).

Now a survivor shows up in Europe, in fact the one who allegedly phoned her husband from an altitude from which cellular phone calls are impossible.

This almost ranks with the passport of the alleged "Arab hijacker" which miraculously survived the jet fuel (kerosine) fireball and bizarre spontaneous atomization of the World Trade Center tower and came fluttering to the ground conveniently after the crash.

Most of these theories have been roundly and scientifically rebuked for those who still sought 'the truth'. The remainder will of course never find 'the truth' they seek. For them I feel sorry, however at least anyone with stocks in a tinfoil company will benefit. Note, the anti-conspiracy site I just linked to itself contains links to conspiracy theories. This may be inadvertent. I have emailed the site owner and await a reply.

Now that the material is published (thanks as always Indymedia) it can serve as further anti-US propaganda based on lies and disinformation, in this case dressed as news.

This article on San Diego Indymedia has it all.

Jews control US Government, Jews were responsible for 9/11, Jews are against Christians and on and on. The author says he was "banned on Congressman Conyer's blog". Thank heavens he still has Indymedia for bringing us such information as:

We are facing a monstrous take over by the New World Order, and we can't let it happen.

Isn't it time to really seek out alternative energies, solar, tidal, and wind.

Dear citizens concerned for this country,
We must stop the passage of the Hate bill pending the Senate. If passed it will stop all political dissent that mentions any reference to Zionist Israeli influences causing the disastrous Iraq war, and many of the attacks on our country with officials at the highest levels knowledge.
...
The NSC, FBI and CIA also used an Iraqi national military member in the US, an Israeli intelligence agent inside the US, a US Black Muslim terrorist provocateur, and a German national in the US to monitor, provoke and orchestrate the OKC bombing."

And there's this old chestnut:

We learned earlier about the employees of the Israeli instant messaging company Odigo, who were anonymously informed of the attacks two hours before they took place.
...
Who tipped off Odigo? Who tipped off those Pentagon officials? Who tipped off those Israeli workers in New York? I think it's safe to say it wasn't Osama Bin Laden.

Uh huh (thank you Snopes, the urban mythbuster). For the record, here's Osama's confession and a list of Israelis and Jews who were murdered alongside other Americans on 9/11. I guess Mossad just didn't have them on speed-dial...

It's amazing that the State Department actually need to write such a thing, but I am glad they did. Do a Google search for "9/11" and "Israel" however, suffice to say it won't be in the top-ten...

Anyway... The funniest (not really) part is how upset the author gets at what he sees as "criminalizing the truth":

Here is a list of beliefs or activities the U.S. government now considers anti-Semitic:
1. Any assertion “that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world” is anti-Semitic.

2. “Strong anti-Israel sentiment” is anti-Semitic.

3. “Virulent criticism” of Israel’s leaders, past or present, is anti-Semitic. According to the State Department, anti-Semitism occurs when a swastika is portrayed in a cartoon decrying the behavior of a past or present Zionist leader. Thus, a cartoon that includes a swastika to criticize Ariel Sharon’s brutal 2002 invasion of the West Bank, raining “hell-fire” missiles on hapless Palestinian men, women and children, is anti-Semitic. Similarly, when the word “Zionist” is used to describe Sharon’s saturation bombing in Lebanon in 1982 (killing 17,500 innocent refugees); it is also “anti-Semitic.”

4. Criticism of the Jewish religion or its religious leaders or literature (especially the Talmud and Kabbalah) is anti-Semitic.

5. Criticism of the U.S. government and Congress for being under undue influence by the Jewish-Zionist community (including AIPAC) is anti-Semitic.

6. Criticism of the Jewish-Zionist community for promoting globalism (the “New World Order”) is anti-Semitic.

7. Blaming Jewish leaders and their followers for inciting the Roman crucifixion of Christ is anti-Semitic.

8. Diminishing the “six million” figure of Holocaust victims is anti-Semitic.

9. Calling Israel a “racist” state is anti-Semitic.

10. Asserting that there exists a “Zionist Conspiracy” is anti-Semitic.

11. Claiming that Jews and their leaders created the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia is anti-Semitic.

12. Making “derogatory statements about Jewish persons” is anti-Semitic.

13. Denying spiritually disobedient Jews the biblical right to re-occupy Palestine is anti-Semitic.

14. Alleging that Mossad cooperated in the 9/11 attack is anti-Semitic.

And he's furious about it! The list however, reads like a Cliffs Notes for some of the material on Indymedia. Such a nice site.... Such nice people.

Update: This same article has been posted on dozens of IMC sites. It's interesting to note which sites have deleted it and which haven't. I'll be watching...

Evil Pundit has referred me to this lunacy on Atlanta Indymedia.

Enough suspicious accidental deaths and so-called suicides abound. The aggressive funding of electro-magnetic/microwave/scalar weapons indicates that their use will not be limited to just terrerists - but are already being used to cattle-prod the masses and perpetrate evidence-less assassinations of dissidents who have become problematic. Microwave & SCALAR Weapons are NOW being implemented. This means that the Black Ops/U.S. Gestapo CAN and ARE -- FROM A DISTANT LOCATION;

1-COOKING TARGETS TO DEATH and/or BLINDING THEM using MICROWAVE WEAPONS (see photo of Jesus Mendoza on www.raven1.net/mendosa.htm and read Leslie Oliver’s account below)
2-CHOKING PEOPLE TO DEATH by CLOSING UP THEIR WINDPIPES
3-PLUNGING A PERSON INTO UNCONSCIOUSNESS to incapacitate them…
After incapacitating their victims they can assassinate them and set the murder scene up to look any way they choose. This ploy has been used innumerable times.

Are you afraid yet?

Evil Pundit expands on number 2 of the above government weapons: 2-CHOKING PEOPLE TO DEATH by CLOSING UP THEIR WINDPIPES and asks:

DARTH VADER IS KILLING DISSIDENTS FOR BUSH???

Comments are open. Suggest your own anti-dissident secret government weapon they don't want you to know about. If no comments appear, it is clear proof of the terrible conspiracy!

Lots of interesting mail and comments from people in the last 24 hours.

Hi,

thank you for good blog.
I'm very upset of IMC-UK. Now it has been much worse than ever before.Before it was a relatively free-speech for both side, but now - only for antisemites and fascists. This 'left' site don't care even when the klansmen accuse all Jews of 'communism'!!
I've tryed to protest, but MY post has been deleted immediately, while nazi-crap is still on line see this disgusting thread, read comments by Josephine Kuchera.

Just one quote from that thread

As someone whose family were persecuted by Jewish Communists, I could not care less about the alleged ' 6 million ', especially since Jews continue to tell half-truths which amount to a denial of the Jewish role in Communism.

'Free speech' is ONLY for pro-nazis on the imc-uk. When I tryed to answer to Kuchera - MY anti-racist post has been deleted, while KKK-crap is still visible LOL, on the 'communist' websites they allowed anti-communist comments!

cheers
Lena

I'd be interested to read the comment you wrote which was hidden/deleted by UK Indymedia, which I have previously identified as a problem. Feel free to post it as a comment on this entry.

In other mail:

Hi.

I just posted on your site as Xenmate. I'm adding a link of your blog to mine. I don't necessarily agree with what you may have to say but it's good that someone watches the watchers. Knowadamean?

You can have a look at my very young, random, and rather incoherent in www.xenmate.blogspot.com

If you think it merits a link, feel free.

Well....Okay. Because you asked nicely.

Finally:

http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/38587/index.php

The money quote?

"I am not certain how long this information will be permitted to remain online for all the world to see before the government takes some type of action to attempt to have it removed from public view. I URGE you to take copy of this page immediately and spread this information to everyone you know immediately!"

You'll die laughing when you hear the reasons why.

Leigh

I recently detailed conspiracy theories on San Diego Indymedia that Mossad (who else?) were behind the recent terrorist threat to the NYC subway.

Whatever.

Of course now we know that it was a hoax I have no doubt (none, really!) a correction and apology will be forthcoming.

Either that or CNN, the New York Post and the CA Yankee Blog are all part of Mossad as well.

Challenging once again the point of local IMC sites, Melbourne Indymedia is running the story of French anti-SUV Vandals, sorry, Activists.

The eco-guerrillas deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city.

"We use the mud to say that if the owners will not take the four-wheel-drives to the countryside, we will bring the countryside to the four-wheel-drives," said Marrant, 28, who uses an alias because angry drivers deluge his website, http://degonfle.blogg.org with e-mails threatening mayhem and questioning his manhood.

But don't worry...

"We emphasize the comic, the burlesque side," Marrant said with the earnest, wide-eyed look of a prankster trying to keep a straight face. "It would be hard to take us to court. We don't slash tires, we deflate them. Air doesn't cost anything.

Of course hot air is even cheaper. What does a new set of wheel rims cost? Try saying "don't worry, air doesn't cost anything" to a victim who loses their job or can't transport a loved one to hospital because their car has been damaged.

As for getting cars dirty, that's nothing. I would plead guilty to that. Our rules are to never run from the police. And always run from the owners."

The rise of anti-SUV activism in France shows that one man's vandal can be another man's avenger. The deflators are on the fringe of a movement that has considerable support at City Hall, which is governed by an alliance of the Socialist and Green parties.

It gets better...

He says the French public supports his group's approach. People send e-mails asking to participate or suggesting tactics, such as a special tool the activists now use for lightning-fast deflations.

"It's a kind of key that deflates a tire very fast and completely, in two seconds," he said. "A mechanic sent an e-mail telling us about it. He said, 'You can do better than you have been doing.' "

Delabre, meanwhile, fears an eventual confrontation.

"I put myself in the place of an owner of a four-wheel-drive who sees people messing up his vehicle," he said. "I worry that things will get out of control. We can't accept that in our fine democracy. People have died for the freedom we have today."

My hero...

Also on San Diego Indymedia, an argument over a scuffle with accompanying photos and video.

According to the article:

Here's a perfectly clear video of the Scottish Rite Center protest where a volunteer with the Minutemen tackles protester. Later, he tells the police that he was assaulted and the police handcuff and detain this protester for an hour. As always, the police defend the violent racists.

Subsequent comments however tell a different story:

1. The protesters were the aggressors due to entering private property.
2. The protester had his face covered while protesting. (A federal offense). [I'm not sure about that. Hostile yes, illegal probably not. -ed]
3. Show the whole video. Stills do not put into context what really happened. I have the video. It shows quite the opposite. It has been turned over to law enforcement.

4.You are losing. You have no credibility. The MM and FBP are out in full force and all you can gather is this?

Pathetic!
...
First of all, these are Friends of the Border Patrol not Minutemen. The FOBP gentleman is trying to retrieve the American flag that was stolen from him from the masked coward. You should show the part of the video where the protester steals it from him and throws him to the ground when he won't let go.

You guys are so desperate.

And back and forth the argument goes. Watch the (heavily edited) video and decide for yourself.

New York City was recently placed on high alert due to intelligence suggesting a possible attack on the subway.

Luckily, nothing happened.

Who was behind it? According to San Diego Indymedia, who do you think: CIA/French Intel thwarted a MOSSAD attack on NYC

New York City-October 6, 2005-TomFlocco.com-Earlier this evening intelligence members of the American-French Alliance stopped an attempt by Israeli Mossad operatives to blow up the New York City subway, according to national security and U.S. intelligence expert Thomas Heneghen.
...
SHARE and FORWARD this to everyone you know and ask them to also share and forward -- bypass the Orwellian Big Brother's newspeak/doublespeak conspiratorial traitors in the Illuminati New World Order corporate-controlled 'prostituted' LMSM (Lying MainStream Media).

Don't you love how tinfoil-hat wearing Nazis have learned to format their crap to look like a newswire story?

I'm sure that will make Indymedia look more professhurnal.

Update: Via the comments, Leigh has been here before...

Via Tim Blair:

US-born Muslim leader Sheik Khalid Yasin, currently raising funds to open an Islamic television network in Australia, offers his intriguing views on:

MULTICULTURALISM: “How can you put a sacred trust in the hands of a non-Muslim? There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend.”

FASHION: “If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs over the
clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that’s on most of those
clothings is faggots, homosexuals and lesbians.”

SEPTEMBER 11: “We now know that the way that the World Trade Center fell the way that those buildings fell — they fell from internalexplosive charges, the same way it’s done in a construction site.”

AIDS: “An AIDS virus, that is a classic disease that was created in Fort McKinley, United States. Fort McKinley, the AIDS virus, 63,000 gallons ... Missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever and they put in the medicine the AIDS virus.”

HIMSELF: “Some people characterise me as a radical cleric. I’m not more radical than Mahatma Gandhi or John Pilger or Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ!

Further to my recent exposure of more odious antisemitism on Indymedia, I received the following Essay on Anti-Semitism. A long read (as essays are) it makes a number of excellent points and is worth reading. Especially if you are not Jewish as was the case for the author, Nick Cohen, who thanks to his surname only, became the victim of antisemitism.

I experienced what many blacks and Asians had told me: you can never tell. Where people stand on the political spectrum says nothing about their visceral beliefs. I found the far left wasn't confined to the chilling Socialist Workers Party but contained many scrupulous people it was a pleasure to meet and an education to debate. Meanwhile, the centre was nowhere near as moderate as it liked to think. One minute I would be talking to a BBC reporter or liberal academic and think him a civilised man; the next, he would be screaming about the Jews.

Politicians I'd admired astonished me: Tam Dalyell explained British foreign policy as a Jewish conspiracy; Ken Livingstone embraced a Muslim cleric who favoured the blowing up of Israeli women and children, along with wife-beating and the murder of homosexuals and apostates.

I could go on. The moment when bewilderment settled into a steady scorn, however, was when the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: "David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic". Gorgeously, one vigilant reader complained that the title was prejudiced - the debate should be headlined: "David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man, or woman, anti-Semitic."

Mustn't forget our manners now, must we?
...
I don't like the term "Islamo-fascism" - fascist movements are national movements, not religions. Still, no one can fail to have noticed that in one indisputable respect the west is the "root cause" of Islamist terror: militant Muslims have bought the ideology of the European counter-revolution wholesale.

The appeal is understandable. There is a chosen people: the Germans, the Italians or the Spanish in classic fascism; Sunni Muslims in totalitarian variants of Islam. Domination is theirs by right, but they are denied their inheritance by a conspiracy of infidels, be they westernisers, Jews, sell-out leaders or the corrupters of women and youth.

You can read for yourselves the histories of the links between Nazism and the Arab world in the 1940s, but to bring you up to date, here is what Article 22 of Hamas's covenant says of the Jews: "They were behind the French revolution, the communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests."

That's right, Rotary Clubs.

Please don't tell me that it helps the Palestinians to give the far right the time of day, or pretend that Palestinian liberals, socialists, women, gays, freethinkers and Christians (let alone Israeli Jews) would prosper in a Palestine ruled by Hamas. It's not radical, it's barely political, to turn a blind eye and say you are for the Palestinian cause. Political seriousness lies in stating which Palestine you are for and which Palestinians you support. The Palestinian fight is at once an anti-colonial struggle and a clash between modernity and reaction. The confusion of our times comes from the failure to grasp that it is possible to have an anti-colonialism of the far right.

While we're at it, don't excuse Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest by saying the foundation of Israel and the defeat of all the Arab attempts to destroy it made them that way. Anti-Semitism isn't a local side effect of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It's everywhere from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here. When the BBC showed a Panorama documentary about the ideological roots of the Muslim Council of Britain in the Pakistani religious right, the first reaction of the Council was to accuse it of following an "Israeli agenda". The other day the Telegraph reported that Ahmad Thomson, a Muslim lawyer who advises the Prime Minister on community relations of all things, had declared that a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons was behind the invasion of Iraq.

To explain away a global phenomenon as a rational reaction to Israeli oppression, you have once again to turn the Jew into a supernatural figure whose existence is the cause of discontents throughout the earth. You have to revive anti-Semitism.

Read it all. Then think again about Indymedia's role in the matter.

A post on BC Indymedia asks What's Mein Kampf doing in the Turkish top 10 list of books.

According to the writer:

When I travelled across eastern Turkey two years ago with a Jewish photographer, I was amazed at how many times our translator was forced to stand in embarrassed silence as villagers, merchants and local and regional politicians offered ornate theories about the Jewish conspiracy to control the world."

Not to be outdone, a comment on BC Indymedia immediately responds:

Contrary to the view that the Zionist propaganda system (the global corporate media) would like us believe, employing specious arguments which can be boiled down to "this is not politically correct", the American corporate, military, and covert "intelligence" sector imperialist, and the imperialistic, global totalitarian scheming Zionist Jew are very concrete, real, highly active and influential personages ( people like Sharon, Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Greenspan, Brezinski, etc.) and organisations (like the ADL and Canadian Parliamentarians for Israel). These scheming, ruthless, murderous, individuals and organisations feature very prominently in nearly all dominant positions of power and influence in the world - specifically masonry, private central banking, finance, industry, government, academia and media. This holds particularly true in the USA, Canada, UK, Russia, and Israel.

Charming.

The toilet-wall that is Sydney Indymedia is having the same problem, and as usual is strategically doing nothing about it. The silence from left-wing Indymedia activists at this blatant antisemitism and hate-speech is deafening.

A comment in The House Of Wheels suggested Leigh list his preference for 7 people who never would publish or speak another single word publically ever.

Giving a hat-tip to a terrible 1990 film, Leigh has called it:
"You have the right to remain silent... Forever!"

On no authority whatsoever, I take it upon myself to start a blogger meme which may encourage public debate, by completely stifling its loudest members.

It shall work like this:

Step 1: List 7 people who you wish would never publish, or publicly speak another word. At least half must be different to the list of the person before you and up to three may be a group if not an individual.

Step 2: Get the person who sent it to you to update their blog pointing to your post.

Step 3: Forward to 5 other interesting bloggers who can continue it.

It is your responsibility to ensure it doesn't die. So if you optimistically forward it to various uber-bloggers and they ignore it, hassle them mercilessly or pass it to someone else.

If you let the chain die, a terrible curse will befall you... .The people you despise will never ever shut the hell up. Be warned!

I'll start (in no particular order):

Indymedia
Ken Livingstone
Tom Cruise
Al-Queda
Koffi Annan
Roy Nagin
Britney and Kevin

I have passed this on to Down-under blogger (I'm optimistic) Tim Blair, Scott the Environmental Republican, Andrew Sullivan, Indymedia Ireland Watch and Twenty Major.

Update: Andrew Sullivan's out, let's try Evil Pundit instead.

Update: Further down the line, a few others have joined the party. Miller's Time is no longer "it".

UK Indymedia is unsure whether it has growing pains or symptoms of decay.

Apparently "total hopelessness" was not an option.

According to the article:

Over the last couple of weeks a battle has been raging and opening fissures that threaten to drive apart the United Kollectives of Indymedia on this island. Unless you subscribe to the Sheffield IMC mailing list you are likely to be unaware about the arguments over claims of lack of communication, transparency and the existence of hidden hierarchies within the network.

You'd be well advised to don a flame retardant suit if you subscribe to the email list of your local collective. A heated battle is raging, stoking the flames of discontent within the hallowed virtual halls of Indymedia.

Hallowed? Erm... Yes. Well,

At the core of the issue is the great satan, money.

Wait a minute... I thought America was the Great Satan...

The conflict stems from debts incurred by IMC UK during coverage of the G8 summit in Scotland this July. With three seperate Indymedia centres, broadband provision, satellite truck, photodesk, video suite and radio studio, the total cost ammounted to somewhere in the region of 5,000 pounds.

And on it goes listing the problems... Accountabililty, lack thereof, arguments, infighting and incompetence. Pretty easy to identify for long time sufferers readers of the totally out of control Indymedia.

A comment argues:

One of Indymedia's biggest problems at the moment is... is that theres this pain in the arse called twilight pretending it somes kind of free speech bulletin board" when in it is fact a newswire designed to carry news, not ncessant shouty bollocks from the deepest crevices of a troubled mind.

In no way does the discussion over funding even begin to approach the enormity of the other Indymedia spats mentioned, and the original article seems to be an full scale tabloid stylee attempt to give it a level of importance that it does not have. In part the exchange appears to have developed out of a misunderstanding, and through discussion that can and will be resolved.

Quite right. I had not heard of the problems of funding and internal arguments (though I will start looking through some of the mailing lists for examples.) I am all too aware however, of racism, libel, Nazism and other problems which are completely asymptomatic of that issue and a major problem for Indymedia (and the whole point of Indy Media Watch). He continues:

IMHO the levels of trolling on the comments section, and the damage they do to the credibility of the project are a far more serious issue within the network, and one that needs to be tackled soon.

Soon? Too late! Articles and (highly rare) original material on Indy Media are just as problematic, not merely the comments attached to them.

The source of the problem is 'obvious' according to subsequent comments however:

The naivety of some people amazes me. INDYMEDIA THREATENS THE BLIARS [sic] PLANS AND MUST BE DESTROYED. When people talk freely Blair trembles, that is why people are being turned against each other. IT IS DEVIDE [sic] AND RULE.
...
Blair fully understands how important these discussion forums are and has ordered psy-ops to breack up Indymedia FROM THE INSIDE. Can there be anyone left who does not now understand how far Blair will sink to execute his sick and evil plans. Blair called for murdering people in London for his political gain, why are you all so surprised when Indymedia is ATTACKED.

TONY BLAIR WANTS TO CONTROL ALL 'PUBLIC FORUMS' AND IS WORKING ON SHUTTING INDYMEDIA DOWN BY PUTTING PEOPLE INSIDE TO PROVOKE FIGHTS

So there you have it folks. When he's not blowing up his constituents, Tony Blair is actually responsible for the hopelessness of Indymedia, which he recognizes as an "important" site. Presumably he got the job from Mossad by arrangement with George W. Bush.

Sigh...

More erudite poetry from BC Indymedia:

I wish my prime minister, Mr. Paul Martin, had the balls to suggest to the hood ornament of that old roman hate-mongering, aggression-mothering whore from hell that the future will only be better if she would just go to hell. Can’t he just publicly say, “Go ahead and excommunicate me”?
...
If you plan to bring me back into this fucked up world, please don’t let my life be any less painful. Bring me back as a paraplegic black lesbian dwarf rabbi who gets stuck watching AIDS-ridden children cry to the heavens for mercy, while your divinely ordained and biblically authorized government officials fuck the world up the ass with more corruption and greed.

Yes. Well.

BC Indymedia is hosting statements by terrorists in a "Letter from Iraqi Patriotic Alliance addressed to our brothers all around the world".

The post links to an openly anti-American and (naturally) antisemitic Baathist website - the Voice of the Resistance (sorry, I'm not linking to the enemy) who apparently held a conference in Italy at the start of this month. I'm sure the Italians would be thrilled.

It must be nice for these groups to know they can count on Indymedia to echo their message of hatred.

Previous examples of Indymedia's association with terrorists: here, here and here.

I previously reported on a group calling itself World Can't Wait who argue that the World Can't Wait to "drive out the Bush regime", however will need to, at least until November 2, when they are planning a rather non-specific series of "actions".

Read my earlier piece and note some of the organizers. I use the term lightly however. The site has finally been updated and now includes a FAQ which contains a series of statements, rather than questions. Still, at least the World won't have to Wait for the FAQ... It gives an insight into the depth of planning that has gone into this exercise...

To the question: "If we drive out the Bush regime, what will replace it?" Comes the (ahem) answer:

Our government’s agenda, actions and direction are intolerable. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

What the world needs most at this moment is massive and broad political resistance to the Bush regime. We can and must bring millions of people into motion to stop and reverse the political direction the Bush regime is dragging the country and the world. We must drive the Bush regime from office.

The question of what will replace the Bush regime should be discussed and debated as we join together and work shoulder-to-shoulder toward our common political goal. There are, there will be, and there should be many diverse views on this question among us. Our unity is embodied in the Call and our main slogan, The world can’t wait—Drive out the Bush regime!

Or in other words.... How the hell should we know? We'll worry about that stuff later.

It elaborates on the futility of asking such a question:

Answered from another angle by the World Can’t Wait Youth & Students:

What is the point of the question? Are you saying that if we don’t have a full vision of where society needs to ultimately go that we should not go anywhere? Are you saying that people should not unite broadly on a great need that desperately calls out to be done, by millions of people all around the planet, because people disagree about what to do once that need is met?

Let’s take this outlook into other realms. Imagine being in a prison, and knowing that everyone in there, or the vast majority of people, were unwillingly there and wanted to get out. Now imagine you had a plan to break through the walls. You had a vehicle that could bust the wall open and free the prisoners, but you heard that it would take all of the people, or the majority of the inmates, to unite to operate the vehicle in order to bust through the wall, and, in order to do that, people needed to first escape their assigned duties that the guards were telling them they needed to stay within.

If you heard this plan, saw its viability, and saw, while difficult, it was reasonable, and achievable, in fact the only way to actually get out of the prison, would you say, “well, f- this plan, I am not getting down if you don’t know what we are going to do once we get past the walls.”

THAT’S CRAZY! When the walls come down, a whole new world of possibility will open up, and we need to have talked about what we should do with the potential that does open up. But as we do so, let’s not lose sight of where we are, and where we will be. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that a more appropriate analogy may not be a prison, or even a plantation. A more appropriate analogy may be a ghetto, or a concentration camp. The World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime.

I don't think Bush needs to be too worried...

I'm sure they'll have great Samba music though. I hope they stretch beforehand.

Update: Leigh weighs in on their plans.

Leigh at The House of Wheels scoops Indymedia:

White House infiltrated by spy - Or as Indy Media would put it, Zionist Jew attempts to destroy humanity by stealing White House documents.

A FORMER US Marine and naturalised US citizen from the Philippines allegedly stole secret documents from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in the first case of espionage at the White House in modern times.

Oh hang on, it's not a Jew. Indy Media aren't so interested anymore.

And he's right... Not a word!

It's hard to say for certain whether this article on Chicago Indymedia is genuine or not.

Bush is evil. I am NOT in love with neocolonialism!!! The Retrosexuals stole the election by gassing the voters in Iowa, just like Tony Blair helped our Thief-in-Chief to STEAL public broadcasting (while the Federalist SOCIETY sat on the sidelines)! Power to the Wiccans!!!? If you aren't crestfallen about this chimp in charge, you understand you are a Rechimplican!!

Chimpy McBu$Hitler can talk about "freedom", while silencing Sunni workers in developing nations! As any fool can plainly see, say goodbye to jobs and union wages. We've seen this before, in Guantanamo, when incarcerated prisoners of war were molested by the coal industry! Shrub lied about that too!! This MAKES no sense whatsoever. Down with death.

KKKarl rove
Your pal Karl Rove frightens me! I assume, when the troglodytes say "fiscal conservatism," they really mean "division"!! When they say "pro life," needless to say it is just a code word for "SUVs". Power to the vegetarians. The head warmonger's War Against Reproductive Rights must end now! IMO, the Rethuglicans stole the so-called election by murdering the exploited voters in Tibet, just like Alan Greenspan helped our Thief-in-Chief to steal pure rivers from the homeopathic forests!! Doubtlessly, it looks like we can say goodbye to public transportation and truth!! Hmmmmmmm! If you aren't loony about the pollution and licking of this imperial chimp, then plainly you are a Repuglickin brownshirted employee of Laura Bush and NAFTA! William Rehnquist? John Bolton? In fact, I can't tell one graft-loving, Zionistic fluffer for the FBI from the other. (Glenn Reynolds either, like I've said a million times before.) I see, Smirky only wants Prague for the oil!! We shall overcome!

What do you think?