[Imc-web] Re: Was there a valid question?

Wed Oct 30 12:51:49 CST 2002

fyi:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 12:09:09 -0600 (CST)
From: Sascha Meinrath <sascha at ucimc.org>
To: frank <frank at atl-imc.org>
Cc: resolve at lists.indymedia.org, Sheri Herndon <sheri at indymedia.org>,
     John Windmueller <john at conflictresolver.com>, imc at ucimc.org, web at ucimc.org
Subject: Re: Was there a valid question?

Hi Frank (et al.),

My comments are interspersed:

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, frank wrote:

> During my communication with "Cuibono" off-list, I was trying to find out
> what a reasonable resolution to his problems with Indymedia would be.  He
> gave me a pretty straight-foward answer, so I was trying to get him to
> articulate it here in a PRODUCTIVE/CONSTRUCTIVE way.  Obviously that just
> wasn't possible.  But he had an interesting (to me at least) question.  I
> know where Atlanta Indymedia stands on this issue, but I'm not sure about
> other IMCs -- we all have wildly different editorial policies.
>
> In his last posting to this list, between derogatory comments and
> childish insults, he said in regard to his questions about UC IMC's
> editorial policy: "One might have expected to see a disclaimer issued:
> We the members of the UC collective hereby declare that we do not in
> fact support or sympathize with Zionism in any way shape or form, that
> we view same as a form of Racist Fascism, and we call for the
> establishment of a Secular Democratic State on the entirety of the
> territory of Mandate Palestine on the basis of One Person, One Vote,
> equal rights for all, separation of religion and state, and with
> recognition of the Right of Return for all Palestinians, and of the
> right of all born in the area or having resided there for three years to
> remain in the country with full citizenship rights."

The UCIMC wouldn't take this political stand _as an organization_.
However, we do support and encourage participants to educate themselves,
think about, and act on their own politics.  Anyone who takes a look at
the actual history of the UCIMC will realize that we have been major
supporters of human rights in Palestine and have been disseminating
information of what is happening in Palestine to our local community and
beyond.  We are very much in solidarity with those facing oppression,
discrimination, and abuses of their basic human rights in Palestine.  We
have hosted numerous screenings, talks, and other events concerning this
issue (we are currently featuring a story on the Palestinian Truth Tour).
AND, the UCIMC doesn't believe in loyalty oathes and pledges -- we believe
that the examples we set as an Indymedia Center are much stronger
statements of support and solidarity.

Our members have been repeated accused (myself included) of being
"terrorists" because of our active support of the Palestinian cause.  For
example, just last night I was berrated by a man who walked in off the
street while I was staffing the space to complain about the IMC's actions
in disseminating stories of anti-war protests.  We have even had a member
of the public phone in a terrorist threat to our local daily newswpaper
against one of our members in order to discredit him for being
anti-Israeli (see http://publici.ucimc.org/oct2002/7.htm ).  The UCIMC has
been accused of being both Zionist AND Terrorist -- we get it from both
camps; these claims seem to depend on which (extremist) side you're on.

> Now that's certainly a strong statement and not one that I would expect any
> IMC as a group to make -- we're a media outlet, not a political one --
> however, it is definately one that I personally agree with 100%.  Having
> looked at the UC IMC newswire and hidden posts, it does seem that they get
> regular Palestinian-specific postings.  Maybe enough to be spam... However,
> it seems that there's now a policy of assuming that every article on events
> in Israel/Palestine are spam and have been hidden, save for those about a
> speaker that was in town recently.  I'm curious why an article like
> http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/8047/index.php would be hidden?

As I'm writing we currently have 2 article and a feature dealing with
Palestinian-specific issues -- clearly we do not discriminate against
Palestinian-specific postings.  You should know, however, that the UCIMC
has been under a sustained 3-month long spamming attack.  At times, we
have had over 70 posts an hour flooding our newswire.  We have had denial
of service attacks, spamming of our e-mail lists, and attempts to hack
into various parts of our systems and servers.  Currently, our spammer(s)
have been reposting mainstream news stories en-masse to our newswire
(basically flooding it such that nothing else gets through).  When we
don't hide these posts, they tend to change various elements of the post
until they get something through our editorial system that is an abuse of
our website use policy.  Thus, the post you indicate above would alone not
have been hidden -- but then we have this problem:

http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/8059/index.php -- same article, same
poster, same day -- however, the headline reads "Israeli Injured When
ZIONAZIS Fire At Israeli And Palestinian Olive Pickers" (emphasis
original).  After three months of spamming our website, our site's
spammers have been flooding our newswire with "legitimate"  stories -- but
often changing them in minor ways.  When this occurs, we try to remove all
instances of these stories.

> A local activist friend of mine in Atlanta said (just this morning) that he
> thought that some IMCs considered it to be "Anti-Semitic" if a posting
> aspoused a single secular state with equality for it's citizens to replace
> what is now Israel and illegally occupied Palestine.  Is anyone aware if
> this is true?  Are the Global site's editorial guidelines posted publicly
> anywhere?

The UCIMC certainly wouldn't consider this to be Anti-Semitic.  Or a
violation of our web-use policy.

> Anyway, I hope this isn't taken wrong.  Atlanta IMC has been questioned by
> other IMCs before over articles we've hidden -- we instituted a policy of
> adding a comment to the article as to the specific ed. policy violation in
> that article -- but we certainly don't mind friendly questioning about
> what's going on here.

We have a web-use policy posted at:
http://www.ucimc.org/info/display/policy/index.php

We do tag hidden stories as being a policy violation or spam in the hidden
article list, but because of the incredible number of spam postings (over
two thousand in just the last 3 months), we no longer write detailed
descriptions for each one.

I hope these comments address the issues you've raised.  The UCIMC has
been a nexus in the local community for anti-war organizing and
Palestinian solidarity.  We do not censor posts because they are
pro-Palestinian; however, do hide posts from known spammers (as per our
web-abuse policy and proceedures).

We certainly don't take your intent the wrong way, but please understand
that Cuibono seems to get a certain thrill out of wasting the UCIMC's
collective time; each time people raise concerns about how the UCIMC
operates, we have to spend time answering these claims.  Because many
people have raised baseless claims, we then come under further examination
-- leading to an ongoing, and as far as I am aware, baseless hunt for
problems at the UCIMC that do not exist.  The UCIMC has been exceptionally
fair, open, and cooperative, and has continued to work to build network
solidarity and support Indymedia.  We've been under an enormous amount of
scrutiny (perhaps unprecedented within the Indymedia Network) and have
always responded with factual evidence that addresses and directly
explains (and often refutes) the claims being made against the UCIMC and
its participants.  But please keep in mind that all of this takes time and
energy.

In solidarity,

--Sascha Meinrath
Urbana-Champaign IMC