Censorship

Censorship is becoming the rule and not the exception at Indymedia (IMC), the network of websites which touts itself as “Independent Media”. If you have an alternative view of what really hit the South Tower on 9/11/01 you can expect to have your article marooned from New York’s IMC home page within ten minutes. If you question the veracity of the 911 video the TV networks aired NYC IMC will remove your commentary shortly afterwards. If you post proof of New York IMC’s censorship at Portland’s IMC or the Twin Cities IMC they will swiftly maroon this commentary as well.

In Baltimore, the IMC committee is constantly hiding news and commentary in an apparent effort to limit the site’s effectiveness as a news resource. Hidden material does not appear when users perform searches. So, if you object to the support that Amy Goodman and Democracy Now actually gives to power Baltimore IMC will ruthlessly take steps to prevent other people from discovering your views.

Features

To this author’s knowledge the Baltimore IMC editorial committee has not featured one commentary in the last four years which articulately criticizes the propaganda of the State. During this period many articles have been featured which support State propaganda, particularly with regards to the official story of 9/11.

In addition, Baltimore’s IMC updates its features section at a glacial pace. At this writing Baltimore IMC has featured only a dozen new commentaries in the last three months. (Two of these commentaries are part one and part two of the same article. By the way, Portland’s IMC has featured over a hundred commentaries in the same span.)

A typical commentary featured by Baltimore IMC is Chuck Michaels’s virtually unreadable “The Guantanamo Maze”. Michaels declares in the first part of his series that he will describe how the situation in Guantanamo Bay came about. He does so in one disinterested sentence: “The [Executive Order authorizing the Guantanamo Bay concentration camps] was among various actions by President Bush immediately following the September 11 attacks.” In other words, Michaels accepts the official story of 911 and wants you to do so also. (True to form Baltimore IMC is hiding my three critical comments to Chuck Michaels’s commentary.)

Another featured commentary is Howard Ehrlich’s shallow and self-indulgent first installment of an ongoing report that he apparently intends to produce regularly. In it Ehrlich defines personality types (carefully omitting the type of “infiltrator”). For fifteen days this particular article was tyrannically kept at the top of the features section despite having no user comments suggesting any interest in what Ehrlich is saying.

Local Interest

All sorts of commentaries are permitted in the local interest section which have nothing to do with local writers or concerns. While I have personally had material removed from this section that I believed qualified every day new material is kept in this section with no relevance to Baltimore.

Recently I posted a commentary indicating that I had been banned (without a word of explanation) from the NoWarBaltimore Yahoo group. Among the “Local Interest” commentary which was permitted to gradually push this article off the Baltimore IMC home page was a press release by University of Colorado professor (and South Dakota native) Ward Churchill, a defense of Churchill and a general commentary concerning Hydrogen as an energy source.

Baltimore IMC meetings

For those who ask “why don’t you join the Baltimore IMC collective instead of griping about it” I would like to say that I tried. The IMC meetings I attended were marathon sessions, frequently lasting three hours or more. Ehrlich is particularly skilled at lengthening and introducing tedium into the IMC general meetings. I stopped participating with Baltimore IMC when I realized their decisions are made always in secret and with no transparency.

Conclusion

Baltimore IMC’s editorial committee appears to be deliberately keeping the site dull and indoctrinated in an effort to steer traffic to Portland’s IMC, where censorship is swiftly practiced. In addition, Baltimore IMC is extremely disciplined and features only articles which reiterate the propaganda of the State, when they refer to current events at all. Finally, the editorial committee reveals its contempt for independent media by hiding articles, reader comments and news blog entries that challenge propaganda (or the phony progressive media).

Indymedia is a Trojan Horse for activists. It appears to be a public resource that promotes independent media. However, in reality it behaves like a network of intelligence centers which are all directed from Homeland Security.

Partial List of Articles Hidden by Baltimore IMC

Hidden--"Policy Violation":
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/9341/index.php

Hidden--"Unknown reasons":
Loughrey--'Democracy Now' propaganda for electoral fraud and Fallujah massacre:
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8725/index.php

Hidden--"Unknown reasons":
News Junkie Scott's 11/03/04 news blog:
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/8566/index.php

Hidden--"unknown reasons":
Loughrey--An Open Letter to Amy Goodman (5/2004):
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/7119/index.php

Hidden--"unknown reasons":
News Junkie Scott's blog (3/22):
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/6587/index.php

Hidden--"unknown reasons":
Gerard Holmgren's updated 9/11 evidence kit:
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/6524/index.php



Scott Loughrey