[IMC-Editorial] The Seige of "Ramparts" Magazine and The Seige of Indymedia

[Jonathan Rapoport]

4 January 2004

An Open Letter to the Leaders of Worldwide Indymedia Collective

>From Jonathan Dale Rapoport writing from the European Union Member State of 
HM Carl Gustaf XVI’s Kingdom of Sweden


Indymedia is the internet reincarnation of the groundbreaking Ramparts 
magazine, which was published from 1962 to 1975 in San Francisco.

The situation that the worldwide Indymedia collective finds itself in is 
worse than anything ever faced by Ramparts magazine, where my father was a 
staffer, where my Italian Jewish father and Swedish mother met and which was 
printed on presses owned by my Swedish grandfather.

This state of siege does not have to be the beginning of the end of 
Indymedia.

Ramparts was also attacked and survived, publishing monthly from 1962 to 
1975.

The worst attack on Ramparts was a libel lawsuit against Lowell Bergman.

My father and others contributed to his legal defense fund and ultimately 
Lowell would go on to get the editorial page of the New York Times to trash 
Mike Wallace for betraying the legacy of Edward R. Morrow for his connivance 
in an egregious act of censorship and expose the same act of censorship by 
what was once one of the biggest and most credible entities in the world in 
the corporate-controlled mass media.

What was left out of the Hollywood version of the story, Michael Mann’s film 
The Insider, was that the real motive to censor the big tobacco nicotine 
manipulation scandal from 60 Minutes was that the owners of CBS at the time 
of the scandal, the Tisch family, have major tobacco holdings.

What has been left out of the Indymedia story is the following:

Adolf Hitler was responsible for the torture and deaths of most of Ariel 
Sharon’s family.

Publishing a caricature of him french kissing Hitler was totally beyond the 
pale of any acceptable human conduct, no matter how totally beyond the pale 
of any acceptable human conduct Ariel Sharon’s actions have been and 
continue to be.

Sinking to Ariel Sharon’s level is not something to aspire to.

For better or for worse Ariel Sharon is the leader of the Israelis, all of 
whom lost family in the holocaust, and a caricature of their leader French 
kissing the man who is responsible for the torture and deaths of their 
families is totally unacceptable.

The Israelis have been living in a hell since the start of the holocaust and 
Arabs who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time have been and 
continue to be the victims of victims who, like the child who was beaten and 
goes on to beat his own children, feel the need to victimize others.

It was a serious mistake to take on Diebold, who’s corporate motto is “We 
won’t rest,” and which, for better or for worse, built and operates the 
safes that guard the original copies of the Declaration of Independence of 
the United States of America and the Constitution and the Amendments to 
Constitution of the United States of America.


“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of our 
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a 
promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Diebold also built and operates the safes that guard the four Geneva 
Conventions of 1949 and the two additional protocols to the Geneva 
Conventions of 1977.

Diebold built and operates security systems for the facilities that guard 
the lion’s share of the world’s gold supply, which is stored in Switzerland, 
and the lion’s share of the world’s diamond supply, which is stored in 
Israel.

Indymedia has tried to take on the power base of the entire world.

>From the basis of the government of the most powerful civilization in world 
history, to the basis of international humanitarian law and human rights 
protection, to the base of the world’s financial system in the form of the 
precious metal and stones which have intrinsic value and form the foundation 
of a world financial system that is built on leveraged oil reserves and 
fractional reserve banking that is carefully controlled to a certain fixed 
exponent to prevent a total collapse of the world’s financial system while 
allowing for limited collapses of areas of the world’s financial system that 
are required in order to ensure that fractional reserve banking remains 
viable.

Indymedia Israel now finds its leaders threatened with criminal prosecution.

The collective is not standing behind Indymedia Israel.

Their legal defense is practically nonexistent and they are under attack by 
the attorney general of the State of Israel.

The third-level domain name www.israel.indymedia.org goes to Indymedia 
Barcelona for some unexplained reason.

The problem with Indymedia Israel’s third-level domain name has been going 
on for almost three years now.

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

-Aesop

The Indymedia collective finds itself with nobody willing to provide host 
servers.

Even if Indymedia acquires its own servers, who will provision the gateways 
to the internet?

What is to stop Cisco Systems, which designed and operates to the 
Swedish-based Nobel e-Museum and therefore can credibly claim to an integral 
part of the ultimate arbiters of human rights and human achievements, from 
refusing to route Indymedia and effectively blocking it from the internet?

What is to stop Indymedia from being blacklisted with hate and pornography 
websites by, for example, worldwide local library favorite filter Norton 
Internet Security?

Yes the world is in a state of humanitarian catastrophe.

Yes 40,000 people per day starve to death when Archer Daniels Midland could 
feed the entire world.

Yes 29 million HIV and HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 positive Africans are being denied 
the medications that can prevent them from developing AIDS and dying.

"Modern man has a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in great 
contrast to his remarkable scientific and technological achievements.
We've learned to walk in outer space and yet we haven't learned to walk the 
earth as brothers and sisters."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The leaders of Indymedia and those who have contributed to Indymedia as 
writers and photographers, including myself, should be commended for being 
concerned about the humanitarian catastrophe that the world is in.

The leaders of Indymedia and its contributors have tremendous compassion and 
concern for their fellow 6 billion human beings and even for the other 
animals on our planet.

But the awareness that comes from compassion and concern can all too easily 
lead to frustration, anger and hatred.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, 
Switzerland received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland has 
received the Nobel Peace Prize three times, in 1917, 1944 and 1963.

The entities received the world’s highest honor, not a particular High 
Commissioner or a particular member or members of the International 
Committee of the Red Cross.

If Indymedia is to survive it can and must show only genuine compassion and 
concern for the humanitarian disaster that the world is facing and for the 
people affected by this humanitarian disaster.

“In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of 
wrongful deeds.

We must not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup 
of bitterness and hatred.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

-30-

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