Indy Media Watch

Arizona Indymedia is currently running a mixture of stories from January 2006 and January 2007 as its newswire; it would appear the software can't determine between 2006 and 2007 stories, as they run in order of day and month only.

If only this was the biggest mistake on their site, and not this, or this.

Three questions:

1) Will this bring back Faruque Ahmed?
2) And will Sydney Indymedia be able to satisfy its readers who are on Melbourne Indymedia complaining about missing posts, bad design, slow loading speeds and two people being an autocratic Indymedia regime?
3) How can two people be an autocracy?

A front-page article on UK Indymedia says:

Get Down to Your Local Indy

Local Indymedia groups (IMCs) exist all over the UK. Some have existed longer than others and some are more active than others, but they all have one thing in common: they need your help.

You know. So they can keep churning out quality independent journalism like this article, which suggests the recent suicide bombing in Eilat was really a Mossad plot. Just like 9/11 of course.

Then there's this one: Paedo-police video every UK child naked.

Get on down!

Update: It seems there are still enough people involved with UK Indymedia to ensure that Holocaust Remembrance Day articles are hidden and any article about Israel which doesn't follow the party line, is also hidden.

Update II: Via comments, UK Indymedia moderator, "Sam Wilson" illustrates (once again) what's so wrong with UK Indymedia.

Longtime readers will be familiar with Australia's Taxi Terrorist, Faruque Ahmed, a man best known for plumbing new depths of stupidity, bigotry, antisemitic terrorist-apologia and conspiracy theories, in bad English, on multiple Indymedia sites, his many own Yahoo Groups and occasional other fora. Repeatedly.

With the closure of Sydney Indymedia, like kicking anthills, Faruque has resurfaced elsewhere. In this case, the "Muslim Village" forums.

Normally, when one is criticized, one might ignore it, or rebuke it.

However, it takes a special kind of moron to link to it, in this case an old thread on Indy Media Watch, with no further comment, as some kind of proof of a grand conspiracy.

Faruque Ahmed is that kind of moron.

It seems he is also quite accomplished at talking to himself.

Tim Blair bitchslaps Portland Indymedia:

Indymedia’s Brent Herbert scores a crushing victory over the MSM, which he claims is frantically removing pro-DDT articles from Google News in the wake of a mighty Herbert takedown:

Now only three remain, only one of which is pro-DDT. So I see that people have been busy pulling those stories, since they obviously were embarrassed by my post on Indymedia. Never let it be said that one person cannot make a difference, or that Indymedia does not matter, since apparently it does.

Speaking of embarrassment, Brent is unaware that Google News removes stories after 30 days.

Google should of course be embarrassed to even consider Indymedia as a news source as it has in the past. Apparently it still does.

Vancouver Indymedia's colorful recent history has included getting sued and moving offshore.

Possibly related, Vancouver Indymedia has now shut down with the message:

Vancouver Indymedia is currently offline while we reorganize in order to operate within our mandate. Hopefully we will be back shortly with a new look, editorial policy and committed collective. Thank you for your patience.

Well good luck with all that...

A post on Melbourne Indymedia asks, Where's Sydney Indymedia?

[Looks under desk]

Comments bemoan the death of Indymedia:

if u follow the IMC network globally, it is obvious it is dying in the arse, especially in the States .. it has been infiltrated and destroyed from within .. can't comment on SIMC, but the Irish are down too. ... not good.

if anything it highlights the weaknesses in collectives, or tiny factions .. killed the Oz labor party and killed IMC ... are ppl round here hard learners or sumthin???

change the paradigm or die .. but be heartened over the fact that independent publishing is exploding in other forms .. text and pic are taking the background to vid

Infiltrated? I doubt it, but everyone loves a good conspiracy right?

Occam's Razor essentially suggests the the simplest solution to a question tends to be the best one.

In this case, the simplest answer is that Indymedia's content is woeful. Massive crossposting of material across local sites, little original content, just reposts from other sites, trolls, libel and this is before we get into the flagrant antisemitism, terrorism and abject stupidity which abounds.

Indy Media Watch sometimes finds out about IMC sites going of air, sometimes weeks or months after it's actually happened. Nobody even notices!

Whilst it's easy to blame The Gubment (just like 9/11) it's really not a conspiracy at all. Put very simply, readers have gone elsewhere. Why would they bother going to Indymedia, except for perhaps the same reason one might stare at a car crash.

The question: Can Indymedia recognize its own role in any of this? Or are they too busy blaming everybody else (including this site) and denying a problem. Judging from recent comments, it's pretty obvious.

This is what happens, when you have an unmoderated, uncontrolled and wide-open website, which attracts a certain kind of person.

(Link contains porn)

For 'some reason', quality news sites don't seem to have this problem. If they did, and couldn't control it, I am confident they'd pull the plug very quickly.

Regular readers will know Indy Media Watch has previously been accused of being on the Mossad payroll, CIA payroll and MI-5 payroll.

Now, via a comment on Melbourne Indymedia, we can reveal another one of our funding sources.

In response to our recent post concerning a blogger under attack, paranoid Australian lawyer and Indymedia type, Tom McLoughlin, who has previously commented on this blog, says:

For those not aware there is this rather nasty attack site for IMC haters:

http://indymediawatch.blogspot.com/

as for this Sunday 14th January 2007 below, but let me say as a preface, as a new blogger and strong supporter of the IMC concept, I think IMC and blogging are quite complimentary. Indeed a collectivist model of organising helps offset limits of the individual, and keep honest the blogger service providers.

With IMC call it teamwork, anarcho syndicalism or whatever, and my blog is really a hybrid anyway with due regard for correct characterisation as non official indy.
Over to the hatemongers at Indymedia Watch, which is so biased as to be living satire, guilty of most of the accusations they level in a highly hypocritical way. But if you care do post a sincere progressive comment. They freak at that as I've found to my lasting mirth (its on the Bob Dylan string).

IMC is big enough to cope with this shallow baiting, and actually can be positively viewed as useful discipline/feedback (with large grains of salt added to sanitise the obviously biased commentary, perhaps paid for by some sad Murdoch hack?):

As a "new blogger", we suggest Tom learn about permanent links, and use them, rather than pointing to the top page of a blog and expecting readers to find it themselves.

The Bob Dylan thread, with Tom's comments can be found here. An earlier example of Tom's bizarre conspiracy theories, wherein he felt porno spam to Sydney Indymedia to be a Government plot, here.

We look forward to adding regular Murdoch income to our other black-bag payment schedules.

Molly's Blog has given Indy Media Watch a write-up and also performed some interesting analysis on the state of the various Indymedias in Canada. He also notes:

Plagued by a chronic lack of volunteers, old feuds and a never ending volume of spam from anti-semites, conspiracy nuts and campaigners for the Canadian military Winnipeg Indymedia has closed its portals for now.

Steve walks warily down the street,
With the brim pulled way down low.....

Although disagreeing with some of what gets said here - and I guess it's mutual, the site's well worth the read, as are several of the links from that site to Indymedia alternatives. Molly also formed an opinion as to what may save Indymedia:

In the discussions on Winnipeg Indymedia shortly before it was shut down Molly put forward the proposition that not just certain opinions like anti-semitism should be banned but that a whole area of discussion,- the Middle East, its religions and any conspiracy theories connected to same- should be declared off limits, at least for a time. Also that priority should be given to local news. Perhaps only local and national news should be allowed.

I have long questioned the point of multiple theoretically local IMC sites, all saying the same things with little to no local content.

The Indymedias in Canada that are most likely to last are basically those who have come closest to such strictures, those who have taken a hard line not just with the nuts but also with well meaning leftists who think they can solve the problems of the other side of the world by taking one or another side. This well meaning cheerleading is precisely the door through which the neo-Nazis enter.

Inevitably at such a suggestion, some will cry "censorship" (or as likely, that it's a giant Jew conspiracy) and demand the right to post whatever they wish.

We've seen precisely where that approach got Indymedia.

Pop Quiz:
A week old post on Arizona Indymedia entitled: Jews of the World is trying to make which of the following points:

a) There are Jews spread all around the world
b) Government leaders sometimes meet with minority groups
c) Government leaders sometimes participate in religious ceremonies or
d) Other.

If you guessed D, you are correct.

For bonus points, work out what the "Other" point they are trying to make might be.

Most of the photos used were cherrypicked from a single website, and it's a shame they didn't include some of the more interesting photos that can also be found there. I can't imagine why that might be.

This post on Blogintegrity tells an amazing story of Disney trying to shut down criticism of the speech of one of their talkback radio hosts. Read it all.

That is the sort of issue, which should be right at home on Indymedia, yet you won't read about it there - in this case, the closest site, Bay Area Indymedia.

No. Indymedia are too busy fighting other battles. You know which ones.

With the growth in the blogsphere, at every political angle, this goes to show how Indymedia has allowed itself to become completely irrelevant.

Despite the blogs, conventional mainstream news services remain relevant as they have the money to spend on reporters, editorial, distribution and content that bloggers do not.

As a 'citizen's alternative media' however, Indymedia just doesn't cut it any more, and they have nobody else to blame. Although they will probably blame the Bush Government. And maybe the Jews.

(Hat-tip: Scott, who doesn't agree with the victim's politics, but supports his rights completely)

Update: Indybay have caught up with a direct cut and paste from another source. I can't say for sure whether that had anything to do with this posting, which obviously got someone's hackles up (see comments). However, it does seem a little convenient that the original blog was dealing with this matter a fortnight ago, and the Indybay post appeared a few hours after this one.

If this is the case however, and Indybay have responded to what's been said here, I am not going to gloat about it. Instead, I will give them full credit for responding to criticism, albeit without adding a lot of original commentary to the discussion. Criticism is something many other Indymedia sites are blind too.

The Indybay post links to a Youtube video of a CBS news report discussing this issue. It's as possible, Indymedia have picked up on the case further to that report, which gives full credit to "the blogsphere" and none to Indymedia.

The substance of my original comments remain the case, though it seems Indybay might be one of the last ones to turn out the light.

In response to a question why a typical anti-Israel post on Thunder Bay IMC was hidden, comes this comment:

The drums of distant wars
by an editor

Thank you for asking why this issue is off bounds and I hope we can continue working together towards weaning it off of this site.

It is clear to anyone who is familiar with the Indymedia network that this site has lost control of spam, pornography, and hate speech. Having been part of this collective for a long time, I'm disappointed by what a once highly reputable site becomes when our editors are too busy.

We simply do not have the horsepower to moderate discussion on the occupied territories. At times, the editorial collective can't even hide the material fast enough, never mind read through it all and balance the fine lines between free speech and hate speech (the latter of which, I would say is the majority).

The simple reason is that this site's design is to discuss issues related to Northwestern Ontario, Canada. There are often reasons to discuss foreign policy within these confines but the Israel Palestine conflict has a plethora of other discussion fora elsewhere.

I would like to continue to urge the curious, the intellectuals, and the bigots to seek out properly moderated and lively discussion on the topic on other sites.

This prompted the following response on San Francisco Indymedia:

On one side are the racist aggressors. On the other side are their indigenous victims. Thunderbay-IMC has chosen to side with the racist aggressors. Like all racists, people like that should be ostracized. They don't belong in Indymedia. They don't belong in the progressive left. They don't belong in human society.

Here are a few examples of Thunderbay-IMC's despicable collaboration with the Zionist war machine. Note what they hide and what they don't hide. It illustrates their position clearly, distinctly, and beyond all doubt. This is not just another case of sloppy, lazy, inconsistent editing. This is racism, plain and simple

This is followed by a bunch of links to hidden articles, which, even if you fully agree with them (and it would be a stretch), are without doubt of no relevance whatsoever to the Thunder Bay area. It is then followed with an incitement to harrassment:

Here is their contact information:

http://thunderbay.indymedia.org/process/contact.php

Like they have nothing better to talk about.

SF Indymedia does not allow comments, so in the interest of fairness, neither does this post.

A post on UK Indymedia regarding the rocket attack on the US Embassy in Greece, has this to say:

The night of 12 january a rocket targeting the US embassy in the center of Athens was fired resulting in some damage on the building and brough a lot of frustration to the local authorities and especially the local minister of public order
...
Personal comment: It's good that at the climate of generalized numbness there are people that show with their actions the disaprovement to what the US GOVERNMENT does to the world.

Kisses to all

So there you have it. Once again, Indymedia explictly condones terrorism.

Subsequent comments to the post include:

lets have more of this please
...
Bollocks to the American embassy!
...
well done to all involved
...
Good shot!
...
liquidate americans wherever you find them
...
too bad all americans arent killed, every one needs to be kiled, Man, Woman, Child- all are equally guilty, rise the proletariat against the ravages of americans there needs to be a final solution to the infestation of north america.
Should bomb the day care centres of the diplomats families

Death to america
Death to all who help america

Followed by the usual conspiracy theories. Interestingly, the Jews haven't been blamed. Yet.

Before any of the usual gang of idiots try the cop-out excuse about Indymedia being an open newswire, it is worth noting that far from being hidden (despite a formal request), the article was actually 'promoted' by one of the UK Inydmedia administrators to their promoted newswire.

Let there be no doubt.

A post on what's left of Vancouver Indymedia states:

Well kidz, Vancouver Indymedia has finally been moved out of the country. Turns out that local ISP Peer1, who had kindly provided us with bandwidth for the past couple of years, finally got fed up with all the cease and desist letters they were receiving and decided to give us the boot.

I can't imagine why.

I guess the fact that we were consuming about $10k in bandwidth a month may have been a factor too.

I doubt it. You would be getting a bill, rather than the boot.

I'll be taking an extended hiatus from Vancouver Indymedia now. If you're looking for me I'll be freegeeking, hanging out with uberbabes or meditating. If you need to contact me because of a system error on this new server (meuse) I'm always reachable at resist.ca.

metta,

agent humble

ps. meuse is running on an encrypted file system so your privacy is better preserved in the case of a raid by the .gov but you're still crazy to leave a trail of inflammatory comments that haven't been delivered through Tor IMHO.

pps. try not to be TOO paranoid...

Okay.

According to a post on Bay Area Indymedia:

The movement to impeach President George W. Bush is kicking into high gear with the beginning of the new Congressional term.

And what better way to call for impeachment, than forming a human impeach sign, on the beach. Cause, you know, "beach" rhymes with "impeach".

I guess they couldn't get "Screech" to commit.



According to the post-event review, it went as planned:

Over 1,000 people converged at San Francisco's Ocean Beach this morning to form a giant human "IMPEACH!" sign.
...
“I think it went really well,” added Newsham after a helicopter had passed over the diverse crowd of Bush-loathers.

According to the article which appears on the front page of Indybay however:

On Saturday, January 6th, over 100 people people gathered to form a human "Impeach" sign in the sand at Ocean Beach.

Way to undermine your own cause guys.

Yes, that is a naked guy in the middle of the protest.

Update: Bay Area local "Zombie" has more photos, including plenty of tinfoil.

I have long given up on Indymedia genuinely taking the mainstream media to task in matters of accuracy or bias as given Indymedia's problems and refusal to treat them, any criticism would be downright hypocritical.

This is a pity.

Instapundit, raises a similar question about the MSM.

Via comments to the previous post comes advice about a post on UK Indymedia, so bad I almost wonder whether it's deliberate satire.

An article has gone up on the UK IMC site as an excellent example of what I was saying in my earlier post today.

A story so full of mistakes, lies and innacuracies as to make it a contender for the Booker prize for fiction and for its "proof", links to such websites as timetowakeup.net which even by the standards of the so called truth movement is way off the screen.

Despite a number of people posting to illustrate the garbage of the post it has been allowed to reamin, later posts have been hidden so we can safely assume it has been read by an Indymedia UK moderator.

Why are they leaving up this obvious rubbish then ? Well perhaps the clue is in a quote a quarter of the way into the diatribe, "Zionist controlled... corporate media which is an un-elected de facto 4th branch of government" Yes that's right it's our old friends the Jews again.

It seems Indymedia UK will allow just about any piece of obvious nonsense to be on the site as long as it includes the obligitory Jew hater comment ! In the meantime two articles written by black activist in Zimbabwe which document the arrest of 16290 mine workers in a continuation of Operation Murambatsvina which has so far displaced 2.4 million people in Zimbabwe have both been hidden. Robert Mugabe of course being one of those political leaders who is above critical comment as far as Indymedia UK is concerned. I wonder if a story about 16290 Palestinians being arrested would have been hidden ? ex IMc'er

Choice quotes from the article:

During our entire lives there hasn't been over 700 to maybe 1500 people killed by genuine terrorism such as a planted bomb at a cafe going off during a lunch hour rush,or a school bus being bombed.

1,126 people have been killed by Palestinian violence and terrorism since September 2000 in Israel alone (source and details)

Cursory Googling lists other sites which put the figures into tens of thousands.

Obviously none of those deaths count. Of course.

A commando raid on a military facility is not!!!!! terrorism .Valley Forge was not terrorism. Fort Sumter was not terrorism. The attack on the USS Cole was not terrorism. True, there have been stagey
blood-and-thunder simulated/synthetic terror incidents such as Oklahoma City: 5-19-95, NY/DC: 9-11-01, Madrid: 3-11-04, London: 7-7-05,and Amman Jordan: 11-9-05 , all pulled off by western intelligence agencies and their tentacles ,and- with the exception of Oklahoma City - blamed on Muslim patsies.

Well yes, there's that.

Obviously 9/11 doesn't count either:

"9--11" was but a phony as a $3.00 bill,on the cheap dramatization.It was micro weaponry entomopter cluster/formations in N.Y.The perps bastardized the WABC feed ,the only feed we saw early on -mind you-using PROMIS progeny software with CGI blue screenuploads of "cartoon" computer generated images of Boeing 767s in NY.It was a cruise missile- or no telling what - in DC.There were no Arabs. Nothing was hijacked,and nobody flew anything into any buildings."9--11" was America's Operation Canned Goods (Hitler)....Goggle that...Soon,everyone will have abandoned the absurd 19 Arab hijacker fable.

Yup. Any day now.

Gosh those Western intelligence agencies have been busy, and they sure are good at keeping some things secret aren't they?

Here's the part that ex-IMCer was talking about:

Bottom line, an individual isn't a terrorist until that individual has committed an act of terrorism."Terror" and "terrorism" are meaningless racist xenophobic ethnocidal buzz words when they flow from the Zionist controlled, corporate controlled media which is an un-elected de facto 4th branch of government here in this country. "Islamo-Fascists","Islamic Fundamentalist"," Radical Islamist" or "Jehadists" have become silly right wing talking point xenophobic/racist code word designations implying non-Caucasian inferiority or even sub-human criminality. Small wonder so many craven sheeple brainwashed lemming-like Americans equate 26.4% of this earth's population with "terrorist".

There's one bit right at the end, which has me guessing:

Abu Musab al Zarqawi is fiction.''Zarqawi'' is a Pentagon psyop code name and nothing more. He never lived. He never died.

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the
bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.

~ Helen Keller, 1911

She couldn't see. She couldn't hear.But she knew what kind of country
she was living in.

Oh, and by the way, Viva Chavez!!

Surely this isn't real. Is it? One reads so much other material on Indymedia precisely like this, it's impossible to tell. Even if it is satire (and I really have my doubts) I have no doubt some readers will take it entirely seriously, as they are precisely who Indymedia has attracted. And why shouldn't they?

Regular readers will know I tend to overlook the 'hidden' articles on Indymedia newswires as a show of good faith to the (few) Indymedia sites who do run a good outfit (obviously you won't find me commenting on them a whole lot). However, having a look at the complete UK Indymedia newswire, listing what's hidden as well as what isn't, is quite an eye-opener.

This one asks

Why is Indymedia so fucking boring?

Why indeed.

The famous editorial policy is here and notes:

Articles and/or comments may be hidden for the following reasons:

* Discrimination : posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination.

Of course, there's none of that now is there?

Ahem.

I have previously observed that a huge amount of the material on Indymedia is copied and pasted across numerous global IMC sites, drawing into question the point of local sites. Moreover, much of that material was originally procured from other sources outside of Indymedia, therefore raising the question - in terms of original content, what exactly is the point of Indymedia?

An article about The Left and Islam appears on Melbourne Indymedia. A comment to the post asks:

[I] query the authenticity of this article as i cant find it reproduced anywhere apart from indymedia

It appears that even Indymedia supporters don't regard it as a worthwhile primary source. Gee I wonder why?

SF Indymedia is hosting a video of women talking about the "Rainbow Grocery Store's" decision to boycott Israeli goods. They have used the substantial Israeli developed technology in their computers and Youtube's to spread their message.

One customer, a self-described "long-term vegan shopper" raises shocking accusations of "customer censorship" in the store, which seems to have some... Issues.

A staff member (who I hope wears a hairnet when handling food) sums up her position:

"It's very clear to me when I see a picture of a boy throwing a rock at a tank, a state-of-the art tank, who is the rich person and who is the poor person?"

This is presumably the picture she is referring to.


It is one of the longstanding images in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and has been repeated and emulated on probably thousands of sites and posters (Google Image search).

However, anyone with any military experience can see that the hatches on the tank were unlocked, for the same reason soldiers can be seen lounging around in the background.

The tank was parked.

The photograph, was staged by a photographer, presumably looking to recreate the famous images of a single young boy holding up tanks in Tiannenmen square. Emotive images are prizewinners for press photogaphers, however sometimes what's happening behind the lens is more interesting than what's happening in front of it.



Propaganda's funny that way. The woman in the Rainbow store thinks it's as simple as Palestinians throwing rocks versus Israelis using state of the art weaponry.

I wonder if she'd like to have these rocks thrown at her:

Source: Honest Reporting who have documented dozens of such cases of media misrepresentation.

They charge that the media is often guilty of creating news images, rather than capturing them.


The recent 'fauxtography' scandal involving Reuters reports in Lebanon suggest the problem is enormous. This is something Indymedia, a self-described alternative to the media could challenge. Do you think they will?

Here's some more pictures of Palestinians, err... Throwing rocks.


Here's a young Palestinian who wants to throw rocks when he grows up:


And here's what sometimes happens when they throw those rocks:


It's not really that simple is it? However, the woman in the Rainbow Store is that simple, for she's clearly been swallowing a one-sided, completely biased and evidently factually inaccurate anti-Israel narrative. The very same narrative one might find daily on Indymedia.

Therein lies the problem. The Rainbow staff member continues:

who is the rich person and who is the poor person?

Ask Yasser Arafat's Wife, who will confirm he was worth billions while the average Palestinian earned a few dollars a day, and Arafat blamed Israel for all of it. This is precisely the sort of corruption and inequality that progressive activist movements should oppose, but when it comes to Israel, they specifically choose not to. Ditto strapping bombs to young children.

Thomas Friedman wrote, "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest."

Here's the thing: Take the absolute worst things Israel is genuinely accused of. There are dozens of countries that do these things, to a far greater degree, with impunity. However, from China, to Sudan, Saudi Arabia to Syria, Libya to Iran, Zimbabwe to you name it, you seldom, if ever hear about them. In contrast, there is an absolutely constant drumbeat of criticism on Israel, the World's only Jewish state.

Does that excuse some of the things Israel has done? Of course not. However to hold Israel, the World's only Jewish state to a greater level of accountability than any other country can only possibly be described as antisemitic.

I am quite sure many of these critics, such as the owner of the grocery store, would never describe themselves as antisemitic, and would be horrified if others called them antisemitic. The fact is however, they have been romanced by a movement that is antisemitic, and simply haven't noticed.

This is some overdue introspection the Left has failed to do (despite efforts such as the Euston Manifesto) and it is a disgrace. Indymedia, could be a wonderful tool for addressing this imbalance, however instead, not only is it part of the problem, it is spearheading it.