The Narco News Bulletin
"The
Name of our country is América"
--
Simón Bolívar
BURN SITE IS BACK!
June 9, 2000
12:00 noon San Diego Time
The
Narco News Bulletin congratulates the Groundwork and Burn collectives
on their taking of victory -- rather than waiting for it to be
given -- and stands alert, as always, to defend the free expression
of information and ideas throughout América.
Here is their
statement, uncensored, of course:
BURN! CENSORED: NOW
UP AGAIN AT GROUNDWORK
see:
Groundwork Books
La Jolla, California
June 9, 2000
After seven years online, the
UCSD Communication department chair Carol
Padden has censored the project hosted at burn.ucsd.edu. She
has made
her decision against the wishes of the majority of department
faculty
and graduate students and without consulting or even informing
any of
the department faculty or students involved with the project,
reportedly
under pressures from the UC president Richard Atkinson. No explanation
or justification for the shutdown was given, nor was any opportunity
for a hearing or reconsideration of the decision. Host records
were
simultaneously removed from campus DNS servers, rendering burn.ucsd.edu
nonexistent. Only a few hours advance warning was given to BURN!
project
representatives, leaving them no way to even contact most system
users
to inform them of what had happened or to arrange for moving
to another
address. When students retrieved the server hardware from the
department
chair's office, the CPU board no longer functioned and the Master
Boot
Record on the primary hard drive had been damaged. After ordering
the
machine offline, the department chair left on a trip to Finland
for two
weeks. The other faculty and graduate students have spent the
last week
debating what to do.
From informal communication
with people in the department, and from
statements by UCSD's campus spin doctors, we know that the University
had
received some complaints about BURN.UCSD.EDU from right-wing
elements in
Colombia, who objected to BURN's publication of information on
the FARC-EP
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército
del Pueblo), and
found in this an excuse for censorship. The university also claims
that
they didn't know who was responsible for the server, and therefore
had no
place to direct these complaints. This is patently false. More
than ten
BURN! members attended a department course-group meeting late
last year,
where they formally designated one student to be their official
liason
with the department. Last fall, a memo was also sent to the current
department chair reminding her of who this designated representative
was, and providing contact information. Both paper and email
copies
of this memo were also given to each department faculty member.
Also,
the BURN! main homepage had a large disclaimer explaining that
BURN is
a student project and that the university and communication department
are not responsible for its contents. E-mail addresses to contact
the
BURN! project appeared prominently in several places, as well
as hyperlinks
to a web-based "corkboard" for public comments. In
addition, the standard
e-mail addresses postmaster@burn.ucsd.edu and webmaster@burn.ucsd.edu
have always functioned and were monitored. By making these claims,
university administrators are trying to obscure their eager complicity
with right-wing Colombian elites in censoring the views of the
FARC-EP
and denying everyone access to the many other unique and hard-to-find
resources published on BURN!
Because The Groundwork Collective
opposes censorship, we have decided to
publish the materials formerly hosted on burn.ucsd.edu when it
had its
home in the UCSD communication department. The Groundwork Collective
does this for two reasons: first and foremost, we are opposed
to censorship
of any kind and it is dangerous to allow anyone get away with
it for
any reason; second, the Groundwork Collective has been a registered
student organization at UCSD for over 25 years and has a binding
legal
contract with the university. As such, the university cannot
possibly
claim that it does not have a place of contact to direct complaints
against the site. There should now be no reason for censorship
of any
kind as the Groundwork Collective has formally responded to all
official
concerns supposedly created by the previous publication of the
site. If
they now try to censor the Grounwork Collective, it will be interesting
to see how the university's excuses change.
In the event we are censored,
there are webpages maintained at
which will always contain current
information on where BURN! can be found.
Yours in struggle,