Interesting things

[juliet]

• Sign the Indymedia petition (more details on the FBI seizure of their machines at that link)


• Found this on Strange Machine (marnameow should like this)


• Alien Loves Predator (made kitty_goth & I laugh immoderately)


• MY MONITARY SISTEM IS f1dud14ry & 133t!!!!!! (especially this one)

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

If Indymedia want my support, they'll stop publishing articles supporting Holocaust denial. Until then, the FBI can ritually bumrape them for all I care.

[juliet]

See, I'm mostly concerned with the fact that a non-UK agency can seize UK property with no need to give any justification for this behaviour either at the time or afterwards. I'd be concerned about that whoever it was.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I don't especially like that, but seeing as we've now signed treaties saying that British citizens can be arrested in Britain on the sayso of a magistrate in any other EU country, losing a few disks for a while to the FBI when they belong to an organisation that is sympathetic to terrorists isn't exactly high on my list of worries.

[peshwengi.livejournal.com]

People have a right to be protected by the law whether or not they are "sympathetic to terrorists" in someone else's opinion. And the USA isn't in the EU.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

People's right to be protected from terrorists > People's right to support terrorists.

I am, in fact, you will be surprised to hear, aware of the geographical ambit of the European Union. But forgive me for being more worried that the Greeks can arrest me than that the Americans can look at my PC.

[peshwengi.livejournal.com]

What I was getting at was really my fear that the Americans can come and look at my PC (and maybe arrest me) despite not being part of the EU.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

What I was getting at was really that there are plenty of non-EU countries I would rather had legal rights here than EU countries, you know, specifically the ones that have jury trials, presumptions of innocence, defence lawyers, that kind of thing.

[karen2205]

Yeah - that doesn't sound good, but is it not possible that they were (a) acting with the approval of the British authorities or (b) had a Court Order entitling them to seize the property.

Something just isn't right about this - why would the FBI risk creating a PR disaster for Bush's closest ally, weeks before the US elections? I can't believe that there wasn't British involvement somewhere along the line. And the lack of coverage in the mainstream press makes me wonder about what kind of reporting restrictions might have been imposed. It's fishy, decidely fishy.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

It's been in The Register, Computer Weekly, Guardian, and a fair few American papers. Generally, when there's a reporting restriction, it doesn't get into the broadsheets...

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

> Sign the Indymedia petition

Not sure I want to...Hmmm. I'll think about it.

> Alien Loves Predator

I love their tag line.... "In New York no one can hear you scream".

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Here's your starter for 10. What did a writer on Indymedia call the "most heinous ethnic cleansing of world history"

a) 'The' Holocaust
b) Some African shambles, let's say Rwanda, or Sudan perhaps?
c) The Armenian Genocide of 1915.
d) The dropping of the atom bombs on Japan
e) The expulsion of the Germans from Polish and Czech borderlands after 1945
f) The AIDS epidemic's disproportionate impact on Africa
g) The US attack on Iraq, 1990 through 2004, including sanctions era

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

No idea. I'll guess h) any of the above, although from what I remember of history e) didn't affect that many people.

Do you have a link to articles on their site supporting denial of the holocaust? I just looked and didn't see any, but I'd never heard of Indymedia until this incident.
I'm inclined to sign this petition in any case, because free speech doesn't mean much if it's restricted only to speech I like. I haven't signed it yet because I know so little about Indymedia.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm afraid it was (e). Here y'go.

http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2004/05/802998.shtml

We have lots of restrictions on free speech, most of them for damn good reasons.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Providing a platform for whackjobs is, unfortunately, a good way to get yourself associated with their whackjobbery, of course.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Take a look at the final comment on this page. BTW, John Paul Cupp has a known reputation as an utter crackpot (see kennedybak's journal), and AFAIK has nothing at all to do with Indymedia.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Nothing to do with them apart from the fact that they are publishing his writings and therefore funding Holocaust denial.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Yes, funny that it's suddenly a spoof five months after it's posted, and after people start noticing it, rather than at the time... You'll excuse me for being a bit sceptical of a news organisation that evidently has no fact or quality control filter.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Here's a few more - I believe indymedia sites elsewhere in the world are part of the same dubious network, aren't they?

http://melbimc.nomasters.org/news/2004/06/71087.php
http://www.sdimc.org/en/2004/05/104243.shtml

[peshwengi.livejournal.com]

Whew, that guy writes like a 12 year-old. The "inverted commas" hurt my eyes (and my brain).

[the23.livejournal.com]

i can't think of any damn good reasons except maybe where campaign finance is concerned.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

OK, restrictions on free speech which I think are good ones.

1) If I ring someone up and say "Hey, let's go out and rob a bank this afternoon, here's where you can buy some big guns", that's two crimes, and rightly so.

2) If I stand at the top of the high street and say "Hey, blacks are taking over the country, and faggots too, let's kill them all, come on, kill them now!" that's one crime, and one thing that probably is, and ought to be firmed up to be.

3) If I write all over my LJ "the23 is a paeodophile who has sex with little boys", that's a civil offence, and I can be bound over not to say it again, and rightly so.

4) If I ring up the fire brigade and say "hey, the house across the road from me is on fire, come quickly!", and it in fact isn't, that's a crime, and rightly so.

5) If I find out at work that we are providing secure transport for nuclear material which could be used to make a dirty bomb, and there's a flaw in the security, and instead of fixing it, I ring up my local Al Qaeda supporter, that's a crime, and rightly so.

6) If I write a newspaper article saying that the UK should stop being a monarchy, that's a crime, and on reflection probably didn't ought to be.

[juliet]

I'm not so much worried about free speech as about the issues of legal framework - stuff being seized without people being told why, that sort of thing.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And being fuckwits shouldn't exempt you from that legal protection.

[puffinry.livejournal.com]

That's true, but also Indymedia aren't fuckwits.
They publish stories that are ignored by the mainstream
media, some of them very important. The opinions of
contributors are often controversial, and occasionally
they're completely insane, but nobody is forcing you
to agree with some random nutcase!

I guess I fundamentally disagree with beingjdc insofar
as I don't think the expression of wrongheaded beliefs
should be criminalised, whatever they concern.

(A proud signatory of the petition.)