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Senseless censorship on IndyMedia?

George Orwell | 05.09.2002 11:28

Senseless censorship on IndyMedia?

Senseless censorship on IndyMedia?

Earlier this week (Monday 2nd) someone posted an interesting item on the bombings of working class apartment blocks that took place in Russia during 1999 (‘The real state of the war on terror’):-

 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=39996

These bombing, which were quickly blamed on Chechen militants, paved the way for the rise of Kremlin insider Vladimir Putin and the re-launching of the murderous assault on the Chechens. This was all a very useful diversion from domestic political and economic crisis in Russia itself. Whilst no credible evidence that Chechen’s were behind the attacks was ever produced, much evidence has emerged pointing the finger to forces inside the Russian state itself. Putin is of course a long time KGB/FSB (the post-Soviet KGB) careerist.

In response, I posted a list of links relating to this item. When I tried to find the posting the next day, having realised that some of the links were no longer accessible, I could not locate it. A search of IndyMedia’s database revealed that the posting had been deliberately pulled. I would link to ask the editors/censors at IndyMedia why on earth this item was pulled? Your guidelines section relating to postings states that your policy is to “hide uploads which are discriminatory, infactual, advertising or a repeat posting.” Which category did this posting fall into? I find this all quite disturbing.

George Orwell
- Homepage: http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=39996

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Censorship

05.09.2002 16:38

It is quite clearly stated on the article upload form that the UK IMC is intended for news.

"Please use this form to contribute news stories only. "

"The Indymedia web site is a 'newswire' not a noticeboard for political parties, or any other hierarchically structured organization. While we struggle to maintain it as a completely open forum we do monitor and on occasions remove posts."

The article you refer to was removed simply because it was not news. Likewise, this thread will be removed from the newswire for the same reason.

ben


Of course there is censorship on IMC

05.09.2002 16:42

Of course it is no surprise that IMC "collectives" arbitrarily censor/remove content for no valid reason. It is inbred within the human species, that when confronted with undesired information, humans flee from it, condemn it, censor it. For example, I posted my brilliant essay, "The Forbidden Truths of Child Abuse within Human Society", to most of the local IMC's, as well as the international IMC site. Most of the IMC's recognized my article as being a perfectly appropriate contribution, but a few did choose to "hide", i.e. censor it. So, most "collectives" recognized it to be appropriate, but a few judged it to be inappropriate, based solely upon personal judgement, even though the actual content was the same in every single post. UK IMC was one of the few that did "hide" my essay, censoring it. So, this provides a good lesson on how the illusion of "journalistic freedom" is a sham, even within an organization that states it has a primary goal of embracing all journalistic freedom, and it indicates, very simply, that a few IMC "collectives" are more apt to censor than other collectives.

No surprise in any of this, as the Superior thinker and seeker of Truth recognizes that bias, discrimination, condemnation and removal of all ideas and concepts which appear personally threatening to an individual or a collective, is a hallmark character fault of all but a tiny handful of members of the human species.

The Seer of Forbidden Truth

The Seer of Forbidden Truth
mail e-mail: forbiddentruth@hushmail.com
- Homepage: http://forbiddentruth.8k.com