Letter to Buzzflash.Net from a Concerned Community Member

weazl felt the need to write this letter because of the various issues surrounding the new site. The site was marketed with the following material:

"BuzzFlash.net is designed to be the ultimate in pro-democracy news and commentary sites, because readers control what news is submitted and what news is most important. All of this happens 24 hours a day.

You can no longer complain that the news isn’t covering a story, because you can post it on your website and then submit it to BuzzFlash.net.

After stories are posted on BuzzFlash.net, readers cast their votes (by buzzing the story). The top reader-ranked articles rise to the front page, so you can see what fellow members of the BuzzFlash community believe merits your attention.

You can’t get anymore democratic than that."

Sadly, though we found that we CAN get a more democratic than that because things were not as they were purported. Weazl first noted that the system seemed to be off when it became painfully obvious that a reader had taken multiple avatars and started cross-voting to ensure that certain stories would be published, and that the group of one would each have the highest "karma" of all readers, effectively destroying the idea that the selection and publishing of stories was "democratic." Yet this seemed to be unavoidable. A reader could always be expected to exhibit "bad faith" and ruin protocol by getting several names, so this, weazl suspected, was simply the price of doing business in an open internet forum such as this.

But other things started becoming clear, as well. It soon became apparent that there really was some fixation with anyone posting stories pertaining to 911. Readers began posting negative votes, registering such stories as "spam," "irrelevant," "duplicative," and "old news" irrespective of the date, content and number of times this was posted. weazl immediately signaled to certain readers that this type of behavior would ruin the site, as the terms were being used indiscriminately to silence people, rather than serve as a safeguard for abusive posters, as the negative voting option was obviously intended. Yet once again, this seemed to be a normal price to pay for operating in a "free society."

Yet it kept getting worse. Perhaps even more suspicion should have been raised when posters such as Kibwe, were mentioning that the buzzflash people were removing Alex Jones' "Terrorstorm," but who could really know when the negative votes were anonymous? Maybe we should have paid more attention when he was claiming that buzzflash was censoring the search for words such as 911 and 9/11 But it seemed perhaps even a bit too consipiratorial, so weaz didn't even bother to check it out. But the straw that broke the weazl's back was when he submitted photos of the mass killings of Beit Hanoun, and despite 14 readers buzzing support, the article was pulled. Why was it pulled? Because the same gatekeeping editor decided, with no basis in fact, that the photos were inaccurate, spam, duplicative and old news, and finally, just pulled them, despite this being one of the biggest stories in the world, and despite the US having to veto a UN resolution regarding the massacre.

Only a little bit of research would have verified the story.

So weazl responded with the same authoritarian tactics used against him, contributing to making the site much less enjoyable. Posting negative votes against those who has similarly done the same. The result? The site quickly descended into chaos, with cries of unfairness and measures needing to be taken. The result? The negative votes were quickly removed from being anonymous and we can see what has transpired.

So what was the result? The result is that a cabal of THREE PEOPLE, the buzzflash editor (operating under five names), raz0r and Zee have effectively stifled all discussion of 911. But more importantly the buzzflash editors HAVE ACTUALLY SILENCED ALL DISCUSSION OF 911 events. This in the name of free speech and democracy? This in the name of reader selected material? The editors of buzzflash are obviously oblivious to the fact (or don't care) that 42% of Americans believe in some government coverup of 911. And ironcially, these so-called liberals scream bloody murder at all the symptoms of an authoritarian government, such a fraudulent elections, torturing, going to war in a cloud of lies in Iraq, stripping civil liberties, enacting laws criminalizing previously protected activity, and removing habeas corpus, yet are not only in denial about the cause of the disease, but actively conspire to silence anyone who desires to talk about it. And far from hijacking the site, discussions about 911 should be able to coexist among stories of snow melting in Tibet, more evidence of the failed war in Iraq, and the other issues that normally come to the attention of progressives.

But to silence discussion on these points is anti-academic, anti-intellectual and authoritarian. And to inject multiple avatars to steer certain stories, while vetoing others, subverts the very raison d'etre (or purported raison d'etre) of the very site in question.

As all should know from experience with the Bush Administration, democracy doesn't work halfway, as in only when the side you want wins. Buzzflash should know this. But their actions don't speak of it. And their hypocrisy is made even greater by peddling materials on their site that advocate examining the very issues they censure.

You should be much better than this. This letter was written by someone who fully supports the idea that you have developed. But sometimes to love someone and something is to criticize it/him/her when it/(s)he deserves it. And the activity of the buzzflash editors in this regard has been disgraceful. Hopefully, this can be not only recognized, but rectified (as the posting of the identity of negative voters suggests), and the site can be as successful and the originators intended. But to do any less, is to ape the behavior of those you purport to oppose. And thus, you become part of the problem rather than the solution. And far from attacking Alex Jones and Mike Ruppert, you should be thanking them for expanding the discourse to the left, and raising awareness. And as much as they may err, have bad manners or sometimes engage in hyperbole, they cannot be said to have silenced discourse and engaged in such blatantly hypocritical and authoritarian behaviour. So I would save my attacks for those who richly deserve it. And in this case the target is you.

weazl

PS: Of course, what was the result of the letter that you just read? They censured it.

PPS: To make matters even worse than weazl imagined, weazl figured out a further tabooed subject. Weazl ran "Israel" throught the buzzflash.net search engine and found that the fix was in. Almost no stories critical of Israel made it, and when such stories appeared likely candidates for inclusion, the same buzzflash editor pulled them. (Example 1, Example). This explains why they pulled weazl's Beit Hanoun pictures. To call this (and them) disgusting is not doing justice to the disgrace that they have perpetrated.

PPPS: The editors of buzzflash.net, despite nice pleasantries about my letter, after having originally slammed it, blocked access to the site from my main computer at home, and completely scrubbed a link that I had submitted regarding mainstream media reports of the Beit Hanoun attacks. Never would I have imagined that I could find people more fascistic than the David Horowitz's stormtroopers at FrontPageMag.Com. Yet these buzzflash people actually made David look like, by comparison, he is actually what he claims to be: a champion of free speech. This is not true by any stretch of the imagination. But never could I have envisioned that buzzflash.net would descend to depths of suppression never even imaginable.

Please see Rules of Engagement for dealing with buzzflash.net

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