[Imc-uk-features] 374918

[Shiar]

I find myself agreeing with yossarian for the second time today (that's
quite something innit? ;) Not about politics obviously (I don't really
have time to discuss that right now but, as i've said before many times, i
think this discussion is very important to have) but about how unpleasant
the features list feels at the moment.

-- 
Shiar

On Tue, July 3, 2007 6:30 am, yossarian wrote:
[...]
> Hey,
>
>
> I'm not sure how to approach this whole discussion but thought I'd try
> to make a contribution.  From my perspective, at the same time as the
> government and media reaction to recent events is totally overblown
> (al-qaeda? come on...) I think that the reflexive "black op" stuff in
> the newswire is almost a parody of what one would expect from the 9/11
> "truth" crowd.  And at the same time as I can see a need for more
> analysis in our newswire, I have pretty serious problems, as is well known,
> with the claims that everything bad that happens in the world is directly
> traceable back to the intelligence agencies of rich western governments.
>
> So, we have something of a problem - any significantly newsworthy event
> involving violence brings a flood of newswire postings "proving" that the
> responsible parties include MI6, the CIA, the Mossad, etc.  This puts us
> in an unfortunate bind, because our site is supposed to be about "radical,
> passionate truth-telling", and there is a disagreement about what the site
> is for.   Certainly the 9/11 types have enough passion to fill the
> newswire many times over, and they certainly believe that they have found
> "The Truth".
>
>
> Personally I don't see, and have never seen, any reason to keep the
> conspiracy stuff in the wire.  In my view, there is plenty of room on the
> web for this sort of speculation, people can easily set up a MySpace page,
> a blog on blogger.com, etc.  The fact that many of the conspiracy reports
> we get are just cut-and-pastes from blogs that are readily available
> elsewhere doesn't make me think that they are deserving of our time and
> effort, or that the 9/11 truth "movement" are contributing to the wire in
> the same way as people in other movements, who consistently create
> original content (including both action reports and analyses) to
> contribute to the collective undertaking that is the Indy UK newswire. I
> also don't feel that the conspiracy "movements" are standing up to
> government or corporate power in the same way as the people at G8
> protests, demonstrations against financial institutions, the Zapatistas,
> noborders groups, wildcat strikers, Justice 4 Cleaners, the anti-CPE
> demonstrators in France, the squatters of Ungdomhuset or Les Tanneries or
> The Square or Ramparts, anti-GMO activists, Brian Haw, the B-52
> wreckers, Smash EDO, the big anti-war demonstrations, etc (just to name a
> few).  Those, and many other movements, are the reasons that I put time
> into Indymedia.  I have respect for them, because to me they are more than
> a bunch of bloggers who occasionally get together to hold up placards in
> Whitehall.
>
>
> I also think that we have a real chance of intervening in these
> struggles in a way that makes sense to me - we can report their actions,
> publish analyses of their strategies and tactics, participate ourselves in
> these movements, and help them link together.  It doesn't seem likely to
> me that we can act in the same way in the case of 9/11, 7/7, or whatever
> other conspiracy theories hit the wire, because the events themselves are
> not generated by "us" (for lack of a better term). The main actors in
> these events are not "us", they are either various terrorist groupings, or
> the CIA, depending on who we want to believe - and I happen to believe
> that there are in fact real live terrorists in the world who actually have
> the capacity to act without government direction, unpopular as this view
> might be to many newswire contributors at the moment.
>
> A few thoughts - newswire posts stating "you guys are a bunch of fucking
> morons" from people who clearly know of the existence of the features list,
> and who even personally know some of our newswire admins, don't really
> make me think want to take their complaints seriously or consider their
> cut-and-pastes in a more favourable light.  Another thing is that I have
> been getting consistent flak about "stupid 9/11 bullshit in the wire" in
> London when I'm out at movement meetings, socials,
> demonstrations, and other events, which is maybe worth relaying here.
>
> I am not saying that I think our newswire should be reserved only for
> action reports - I think that there is a desperate need for more analysis
> in the UK.  I guess I am trying to figure out what I see as the
> distinction between the various conspiracy "movements" and the ones I
> actually think belong in the newswire.  Very obviously, others will
> strongly disagree.  I am not really sure how to proceed, but I thought I'd
> try to make a positive contribution to the discussion.  I don't expect
> that we'll figure all this out today but it'd be nice for a change if
> everybody who does get into the discussion could try to refrain from
> personal attacks and keep the tone positive, the features list has been a
> pretty unpleasant place recently.
>
>
> Greets,
>
>
> Yossarian
>
>
> --
> Indymedia United Kollektives editorial: features and wire moderation
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-features
>
>