"My reputation has been tarnished by the release of my name and address associated with the trading of this disgusting pornography. I demand compensation."
ACS:Law is screwed and I don't mean that in the sense of those videos that they've been blackmailing 4,000 people for downloading (and have now leaked the names of).
Just in case people were wondering what kind of response one can expect to get from IndyMedia should you question them... Here's what I finally got back from someone named "Erik".
Hi Dagmar, Your comments have been "unhidden."
I have a couple questions for you. You have repeatedly accused our collective of engaging in criminal acts in a public forum. You have lied and slandered us on our own website. We are allowing you to do this because we believe in the value of critique. Now it's time for us to ask you a few questions:
1) What would give you the impression that the "Livewire" is anything other than a place to publish breaking news?
2) Why would you accuse the people who have made this service available to the public of engaging in illegal acts?
3) If you are actually concerned about the law, then why don't you do the responsible thing and call the police instead of whining on the Internet? After all, the police have been more than willing to target activists over the last couple weeks. I'm sure they would appreciate the tip.
You are a weak-minded coward.
-Erik TCIMC volunteer
evildagmar from geemail.com wrote:
Dagmar dSurreal sent a message using the contact form at http://twincities.indymedia.org/contact.
I would like a response from someone about why it is I keep having comments summarily deleted from the site without explanation or any real reason. I was under the impression one of the core values around here was supposed to be freedom of expression, and I've not been violating any sort of guidelines that I am aware of beyond merely disagreeing with some statements made.
...and because when prodded I become an a**hole the size of which would make most people think I should have my own gravity field and atmosphere, here's my less than polite response (because a "weak-minded coward" I sure as f**k am not), which I will be deciding over the course of the afternoon if I want to bounce a copy back at the same web form as the original question so that the other people (if any) who are recieving those comments will see just how badly this is being handled.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Erik wrote: > Hi Dagmar, > Your comments have been "unhidden." > > I have a couple questions for you. You have repeatedly accused our > collective of engaging in criminal acts in a public forum. You have lied and > slandered us on our own website. We are allowing you to do this because we > believe in the value of critique. Now it's time for us to ask you a few > questions:
Really. What "criminal acts" would those be? I can assure you that everything I posted is absolutely true as I witnessed it. Perhaps if people were engaging in illegal acts, they ought not ... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]
Since there seems to be a slight problem with posts to the Indymedia site disappearing, I'm also posting this here.
Dear lunatic children,
Perhaps if you were the type of self-proclaimed anarchists who didn't believe in attempting to deceive other people and believed firmly in not engaging in acts of wanton destruction, you'd stand a chance of winning the media "war".
As people who you call your friends are gassed, beaten, and arrested while attempting to hold a peaceful protest, you guys are merrily celebrating the acts of petty vandalism and disruption that without fail gives the people who you claim to be your enemies the excuse to come down on your friends hard. Stroking your own egos and celebrating the fact that you can get away with doing something useless and stupid and then hiding in a crowd, it seems, is more important than actually allowing the evil going on around you to be seen for what it is.
Under normal circumstances, it's at least implicit that people carrying press credentials are in no way engaging in, encouraging, or participating in what they are covering, but you self-proclaimed journalists and reporters have failed miserably in this respect. There have been enough snarky comments to both the site and the audio streams to make it clear that you've been at least partially complicit in several events that simply should not have taken place had people's intentions been to remain 100% peaceful. You've been actively using the top level page of twincities.indymedia.org to rebroadcast instructions telling people where to go to make pedestrian congestion issues worse at best. ...not things about where a march supporting this and that is taking place, not details about which rallies are still on and which are not, just locations and telling people the equivalent of "hey if you want to get your fight on, go here". This is horrifically irresponsible, and it's positively mind-blowing that you express astonishment that the police are arresting people regardless of whether or not they bear press credentials in light of what you've been doing to cast serious doubt on just how impartial the smaller news outfits might actually be.
You've not just been giving the police a "good excuse" to bring a heavy boot down on your heads, you've been giving reasonable people plenty of reasons to suspect you're a part of the problem, if not near the core of it. It doesn't matter how many video clips of police brutality you collect if your hands are not clean as to why the police started busting heads. Reporters for big media have no problem with being "arguably wrong" by reporting that some lunatics broke some windows and as a result the police had to try to scatter the crowds before someone started throwing firebombs, when that's actually close (even if an incredibly skewed perspective) to what happened. That'... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
So, the other day a video came up on the twincities.indymedia.org site claiming to have outed a couple of "provocateurs" at one of the marches.
Not only are their criteria for determining if someone's a cop laughably loose, they can't handle criticism either. Let's see how long my response to this lunacy lasts _this_ time.
cop != provocateur.
Perhaps they need some really paranoid people (e.g. hackers) to explain to them how to properly vet someone (and how to handle a crowd).
So, the other day a video came up on the twincities.indymedia.org site claiming to have outed a couple of "provocateurs" at one of the marches.
Not only are their criteria for determining if someone's a cop laughably loose, they can't handle criticism either. Let's see how long my response to this lunacy lasts _this_ time.
cop != provocateur.
Perhaps they need some really paranoid people (e.g. hackers) to explain to them how to properly vet someone (and how to handle a crowd).
Amy Goodman (of Democracy NOW!) comments on her arrest
Topic: Politics and Law
3:07 pm EDT, Sep 2, 2008
So, more fodder for "exactly how are the police behaving according to law in MSP"? This is a short interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW! shortly following her release from jail after having been illegally arrested yesterday.
Note that immediately after her arrest, the Secret Service pulled her credentials and clearance for being allowed in the convention center.
So, doesn't CBS believe in 'journalistic integrity'?
Topic: Politics and Law
1:14 am EDT, Jul 26, 2008
So, I'm just going to lay this out very simply, even though in the linked video, Olbermann appears to consider this too distasteful to do more than just touch upon (and indeed, there are bigger fish to fry first).
An "interview" is supposed to be a question and answer session between a reporter and the interviewee, right? So that the reporting is basically saying, "the reporter asked this question, and the person being interviewed gave this particular answer to that question", right?
So, in what lunatic alternate dimension does this become "an interview is a creative reinterpretation of what we think we'd like this person to have said in response to these questions" and make Katie Couric's interview session with John McCain, as airednot a massive breach of journalistic integrity because basically, what they aired showed McCain giving an entirely different answer to the question asked about the troop surge.
In short, what CBS aired was decidedly fiction and "news" is supposed to be non-fiction.
