Congratualtions on getting around the IP ban and on listing all these prestigious publications that are examining the serious issue of censorship on "IMUK" (whatever that is)!!!!

I'm sure you'd tell us that the articles that you can't find were within the guidelines and spirit of this site - but so far, to be honest, all we have is a piece of dirge that doesn't make any sense.

I can say with absolute certainty that an investigative journalist you are not.

This is an important issue. There is a lot of censorship on Indymedia. I have had many of my posts deleted. The excuse offered is always the same “technical difficulties”.

Yeh right.

It may be helpfull to your 'news' if you could back up this claim with some examples / links.

What a wanker you are, woohoo, and obviously short of the necessary brain cells required to decode what IMUK means. You obviously didn't realise that only anti-Indymedia activists are issued with the decoder filter to read what other agents are saying.

I don't think that woe was suggesting his IP address was banned but it has been patently obvious that certain addressed have been banned and it has been privately admitted by an Indymedia admin. It was suggested to me by an Indymedia admin some time ago that this was the case as is a text string ban.

And it is evident that something new is amiss. Either your censors have been at the glue or the system is fundamentally knackered. Last night I went through the well concealed view all post page and over half were missing.

Indymedia in the UK is fast becoming a joke. You are hypocrites and/or quislings. You don't even seem aware of your own heritage and are most upset when somebody tries to tell you who your parents are, the same Mummy and daddy as the CFR! And that ain't no conspiracy theory, go check your bank statements and see the Ford Foundation as one of the principal backers of this so-called Indymedia project. Don't whinge, I'm sorry, but your daddy was a Nazi. Get over it!

False grass-roots organisations are the speciality of tyranny.

Do you actually have any facts to back up any of the 'censorship' claims? Like the hidden article links, or the links to the discussions on the mailing lists, or your complaint emails and replies. The other dodgy thing is that 'websites' do not complain -- people do. Why are these websites not publishing the material then?

Your style so far suggests that you love conspiracies, which could well be the reason your posts are hidden. So back your statements up, if you can and stop pretending that there is some mysterious force hiding your stuff.

According to collins english language dictionary, censorship is "the practice or policy of censoring books, plazs, films, reports, etc, especially by governnment officials".
I wasn't aware that indymedia uk is a government, or that it had the power to stop people from setting up websites and publish whatever they like.

Indymedia uk is part of a network of alternative news websites, dedicated to social change. Like in any other self organised project, it is up to the people who run it to define the profile of their website. In imc websites, boundaries for content are rather wide, allowing for campaign groups, individuals concerned with community issues and the restrictions of their daily lives, artists, political groups from various angles, writers, to publish their news.

Indymedia uk has defined these boundaries through editorial guidelines. These guidelines are quite open. How they are filled with meaning depends on the composition and political positions of the people in the imc uk collectives. These meanings are in a constant process of negotiation, because the collectives are fluid and open, and new people with their ideas are joining all the time.

The guidelines state that postings _may_ be hidden, not _must_ be hidden, allowing to decide on an individual basis. A poem might be seen as non-news by some, but as a valid contribution to social change by others.

The practice to "clean the newswire" is necessary to keep indymedia functional. If nobody looks after the newswires, they soon become flooded by right wing rants, repetitions, advertising, conspiracy theories and other spam.

The purpose of indymedia is not to provide a platform for just anything. The indymedia mission statements are stating clearly the boundaries of this particular open publishing project.

The talk about censorship is inaccurate, because no indymedia collective is in a position of power to prevent anyone from setting up their own website or posting the contributions hidden from frontpage indymedia newswires on more appropriate forums.

Censorship is what the states and governments are doing, when they are silencing the very articulations of dissent that Indymedia publishes, using their legal apparatus.
Censorship is no business of indymedia.

> Indymedia UK are under increasing pressure to explain their censorship issues,
> as more and more independent web sites pick up on the fact things are not as
> they seem over at IMUK.

Yeah, right. One of your posts gets moved from the open newswire to the hidden wire on the grounds that it was a commercial advert and you start crying censorship. You crying os 'nazis' on the mailing lists and the various web sites that you manage hardly constitues increasing pressure on indymedia in relation to censorship.

> Global web sites and news networks are beginning to ask questions about this
> "independent" network. Just who is responsible for the censorship? Why are they
> determined to hide the truth and suppress the voice of the individual?

Come on Tony, you used to work for the BBC, you should know what censorship really is. It's you asking question and you should know the answers to you pretend question since you used to be part of an indymedia collective yourself.

> Issues raised by several sites this week have lead IMUK to change direction and
> actually delete visitor submissions. What is Indymedia afraid of? Who or what
> are they protecting?

Indymedia doesn't delete submission and you know it, especially since you used to have admin access. Posts which are considered to fall outside of the published editorial guidelines are simply moved off the front pages open newswire and into another. Anyone who wishes to read porn adverts, or the lizards blow up the twin towers from an invisible UFO posts are perfectly welcome to go view all those posts. Yes, indymedia is trying to protect something - the integrity of the site and the usefulness of the newswire. If the newswire is swamped with adverts or irrelevent non-news etc then it becomes increasingly difficult and time consuming to find and read the first hand grassroot reports which indymedia was set up to host.

> Getting answers from IMUK isn’t easy, nobody seems willing to accept responsibility
> for the actions and censorship taken,

Your lying and you know it. What's more, anyone can check for themselves by reading the thread you started on imc-uk-process(@)lists.indymedia.org [hint: go to lists.indymedia.org to browse the archive for any of the lists for all the indymedia sites in the entire world]. On the list they will see that the person who moved your advert took responsibility and explained the grounds for the decision.

> however claims made my IMUK administration that
>“IP banning” is not possible by the group have been proven false. What reason does
> Indymedia have for telling blatant lies to visitors? What can be done about it?

Indy can and does block IP addresses and text strings (which you know). IP blocking is not normally enabled and isn't very effective because indy doesn't log IP addresses. It is however switched on during periods of spam bombardment which clutter up the newswire with dozens of copies of porn links or race hate insults etc.

> Hopefully our research can shed some light on the issues raised above.
> woe

Yes Tony, put on your investigative journo hat and write a few articles for those 'independent' global websites and 'news' networks you manage. Hope that nobody digs into your history too much while you are going around shouting Nazi since I know the spotlight has shone in your direction more than a few times in terms of links with right wing nutters.

Anyone else, the discussion about moving posts from the newswire takes place in imc-uk-features(at)lists.indymedia.org along with anybodies proposals for a front page feature that draws together a collection of recent newswire posts. You are all welcome and encouraged to get involved since this is your media.

... even if you make it to the 'view all posts' page, you will have trouble reading ANYTHING there if you have sight problems. The helpful imcuk people have ensured access and debate by using a particularly dense background image for all the 'hidden stories'.

Not strictly censorship - semantically speaking - but practically so.

... and what of soros ... who he?

From a previous comment.. '...or the lizards blow up the twin towers from an invisible UFO posts...'

I would be suprised if that was hidden, it appears about par for the course on this site to me.

I think that poster who posted the 'lines' may be a complete loon as i fear the thread originator may be.

All IMs hide stuff... if you dont like it find another place to vent your spleen. To call it censorship is rather childish (usually).

At last! An Indymedia admin (I assume that's how 'Yawn' comes by his insiderinsider knowledge) admits publicly that Indymedia have a system of banning IP addresses. It has only taken about a year for them to come clean since I first became aware of this. They have categorically denied it, repeatedly, evidently lying in the process. Why trust them!

And the definition of censorship offered by 'jablon' is an example of censorship itself. No dictionary I own defines censorship as being in the sole domain of governments. You use the word 'especially' and transpose that to mean 'always'. A lie.

- Censorship, official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body, or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails, speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the cinema, radio, television, or computer networks. Censorship may be either preventive or punitive, according to whether it is exercised before or after the expression has been made public. In use since antiquity, the practice has been particularly thoroughgoing under autocratic and heavily centralized governments, from the Roman Empire to the totalitarian states of the 20th cent.

 http://www.answers.com/censorship&r=67

That pretty sums up what Indymedia stands accused of and from where I stand that pretty sums up what Indymedia has been doing. You don't have to be a member of government to declare yourself 'official'!

Pay particular attention to the line, 'prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order'. It is precisely this official truth which Indymedia feels is being threatened, is it not. The real truth threatens your 'political, social, or moral order' because you will no longer be regarded as the voice of dissent. It becomes clearer that Indymedia (at least in the UK) is a flypaper organisation which draws out dissent and contains it.

The example of the hiding of an article publishing an 'unnoficial' DSEi protest springs to mind. Indymedia hid that article for its own reasons and then played hide and seek with reality trying to cover its tracks - but screenshots with dates proved that the article and a follow up were hidden and later 'unhidden'.

The assertion by 'Yawn' that articles have had to be hidden because they claim that 'the lizards blow up the twin towers from an invisible UFO' is preposterous. I doubt that anybody who feels agrieved at being censored has ever posted such an article and your suggestion that they have is a fucking lie and shows what an arsehole you are, 'Yawn'. The recent posts about the 9/11 truth Group in Oxford never suggested anything of the sort. And being a friend of the poster, I know full well that he would have no truc with anybody who claimed such a thing, no matter how sincere they are.

The hiding of the article about the Freemasons' Yearbook on the grounds that it mentions Amazon as a place where the book can be bought substantially less than its near £100 cover price (we don't all have executive salaries, you know) is a joke. I've met some of you Indymedia people and have felt like verbally assaulting you for wearing designer clothes with logos plastered all over them. Fucking hypocrites! Perhaps we should see postings that advertise where you might find anti-GM protestors banned because the mention Sainsbury!

And when will you face up to your history. Indymedia was financed by corporate money which has passed through a many a bloody hand. You are one of thousands of phony organisations financed thus. To paraphrase Bush, you are either with the tyrants or against them. By hiding articles exposing Bilderberg, 9/11, Freemasonry etc., whether niaively or maliciously, places you squarely on the wrong side of the war on tyranny.

Some of you are complicit and some of you are fools. But you are all guilty.

Zaskar, m, jablon, woohoo, Yawn

 http://www.flamesong.com/imuk/index.html
 http://www.flamesong.com/imuk/index01.html
 http://www.flamesong.com/imuk/index02.html
 http://www.flamesong.com/imuk/index03.html
 http://www.flamesong.com/imuk/posts01.html
 http://www.flamesong.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=75

Yossarian said:

"I'd like to ask imc-uk list moderators across all of our lists to place all 300 of this fellow's known email addresses on moderation, and only pass them through to the lists if he refrains from calling people Nazis, etc. Our newswire cleaners wade through reams of crap all day every day, they don't need this kind of abuse for doing their jobs. This keeps on happening whenever The Baby Goose appears on-list. It's great that there is debate about newswire policy (it makes us stronger as a network I think) but this is not debate, it is just name-calling."

Well, actually, it was me who used the word 'Nazi' and I sure as hell don't have 300 e-mail addresses.

Do you know what a solipsist is? Somebody who believes that they are the only being in existence. So, what do you call a bunch of self-righteous censors who think that their criticism comes from only one person?

"It's great that there is debate about newswire policy (it makes us stronger as a network I think)"

Is that right, Yossarian? I'd have thought that with a name like that you would have a better understanding of irony! You are not getting much debate in your favour! And it is kinda ironic that you suggest that debate is healthy whilst supporting a policy of suppressing debate on the subjects which you can't cope with.

You are out of your league, mate, out of your league and a danger to us all!

So much for healthy debate, eh, Yossarian?

Indymedia just removed the last three or four posts on this subject. Why? well, perhaps because it didn't like the truth.

Do an IP check, you will see that I am not Tony. Please stop blaming him for my actions.

I'd just like to thank all of you who are standing up to IMUK and showing your support. Fantastic!

I didn't know there is so many of you upset with the actions of IMUK.

What a load of shite. If you're being censored, buy some webspace you fuckin tight arse.

Has some one spiked the IMC coffee machine or got at their alcho pops ?
there is always a lot of yawning going on.
IMC was / is a good idea but like everything it will be subject to some lefty radical chic
tosser and his wendy who will, go to all the meetings and it will be ever so democratic
cos the vote will be rigged before. I had an interesting experience with middle class controlled
housing coops in Lambeth during the 1970's . Of course they didn't have to queue up at some
window with their screaming kids they met their mates from the council in the (youngs) pub just
of Acre lane / Brixton road. There they learnt council jargon for grants and other freebies and when
they had finished they had enough money to buy a house in Greece.
yeah sure fight the NF I was always in the hot spot , but when NF skin heads were getting stuck in
the middle class wankers were stuck in the pub ..
So it's left wing and it's democratic and it sucks big time !!!!
of course "mummy and daddy " think it's wonderfull

Your right to free speech doesn't mean you have a right to demand that someone else must help you publish whatever you want.

Indymedia has never been open publishing, and never will be. Quit whining. Go start your own site, and publish whatever you like. If Indymedia is so terrible and so heavily censored, then people will stop reading it, and start reading your wonderful uncensored site instead.

This has all been said before a hundred times on this site, every time one of the same old handful of people start a rant about it. They never seems to get tired of posing as victims though.

The bottom line is this. Unlike other organisations on the Left who are open and proud of their politics and their bias, Indymedia pretended they were Independent and unbiased. This is dishonest. And they have been caught out so many times censoring posts on their site if it does not fit with their anarchist line that more and more people are starting to get tired of it and not bother with Indymedia. Its sad because it was a good resource but it has become so dominated with anarchists that its not really a voice for the moment anymore. RIP.

Yeap, it's all been said before and the newswire is meant to be for news not whinging so it's surprising that the moderators have left the thread unhiden (since when was indymedia a discussion forum like Urban75 etc?)...

Born into the tear gases streets of Seatle, the Indymedia network was set up by activists for activists specifically to provide coverage of the actions and protests etc that were being ignored or misrepresented by the corporate media.

As such, it is the collectives that have built the network and invested their time, money and labour to maintain and expand it, who ultimately define what indymedia is for.

"Indymedia UK is a network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues." is the line that appears at the top of the UK IMC page and should give visitors an idea of what to expect and whether they wish to use the site or not.

While indymedia is an open publishing site, it doesn't mean that anything goes. Open publishing in this context means that anyone can publish (and actually, to correct the previous claims about indymedia using IP 'blocking', Indymedia can't and doesn't block addresses but can switch on automated moderation that moves from the frontpage newswire any incoming posts from specified IPs or authors.) Open publishing doesn't mean all posts are acceptable.

Those wishing to post are provided with guidelines as to what is accepted content, after all, why should social justice activists provide a forum and pay for bandwidth for commercial adverts, or porn etc?

"IMC UK volunteers are moderating the site and collaborate in the production of features. Contents on the newswire and calendar are generated by anyone who wants to contribute. The open posting guidelines below have been created to ensure the integrity of the site."

It goes on to say, "Occasionally we choose to hide postings offending the open posting guidelines. Because of the 'real time' nature of the newswire, it is not possible to monitor its contents 24 hours a day."

Most importantly, in order to maintain transparency, "All articles, hidden and showing can be inspected via the View all posts page." and indeed anyone can view or take part in the discussion about which posts are moved from the front page by subscribing to the open imc-uk-features email list (which is also where anyone can propose features).

The Open Posting Guidelines state that articles and/or comments may be hidden for the following reasons:

* Repeated : content that is reposted or text that was originally a comment posted as a report.
* Non-news : posts which are clearly purely comment, opinion or rants unrelated to a recent event or action etc.
* Discrimination : posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism or any other form of discrimination.
* Inaccurate : posts that are inaccurate or misleading.
* Advertising : posts with personal or product promotions.
* Hierarchy : The newswire is designed to generate a news resource, not a notice-board for political parties or any other hierarchically structured organizations.
* Disruptive : Contributions by individuals who habitually publish above mentioned discouraged content. Posts where topical or regional selections disrupts the utility of the sub pages (ie spamming regional and topic selections).
* Reposts : Articles that are simply pasted from corporate news sites. Please write something original, by all means link to articles elsewhere and quote from them but don't just copy them.

Most articles moved off the front page newswire are either reposts (where people have hit submit mulitiple times or persist in posting substantially the same article day after day in order to keep it visiable on the front page) or cut and paste artcles from other websites or news sources. There are occasional surges of porn site ads but rapid moderation means that few people bother trying to advertise on indymedia any more.

A lot of stuff that stays on the newswire probably shouldn't according to the guidelines, such as event annoucement and non-news items (like the whinging about censorship threads). However there aren't that many people with time to spend all day watching the wire and moving every post that falls outside the guidelines. It is very rare for comments to be hidden.

Anyway, I'm not saying that there are not problems with Indymedia, problems often widely recognised within the various collectives that form the informal network. There are many inconsitancies and disagreements within the collectives (as our friend Tony Gosling knows as he was kicked out of one of the collectives).

The global indy site says "Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth." but truth and accuracy are subjective concepts and democracy has never meant that everybody gets their way.

People whose posts are not given time on the front page will inevitably get upset and some complain. This is understandable and sometimes their arguments will result in a post being moved back onto the main newswire. The processs is not, and can never be, perfect. It can never please everyone. There are no doubt ways in which the process can be improved. But to describe the people who attempt to maintain the ingerity of the site as Nazis is frankly laughable bollocks and casts serious doubt on the integrity of the accusser (and probably the accuracy of anything that person has to say on any subject).

Indymedia *is* an open-publishing forum. However, this doesn't mean that we just let the newswire fill up with stuff that is contrary to our publicly stated and democratically agreed-upon editorial policy, which can be found at  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/editorial.html One of the editorial guidelines is that we don't allow advertising on this site. I'm sorry if you think it's "censorship" to hide posts that are advertisements, but my guess is that most of our site users are happy that ads are hidden.

Anyone wanting to review the process by which the article that is being complained about was hidden can view the thread starting at  http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-process/2005-March/0331-ng.html Just hit the "next message" link to follow along. My reasons for hiding the article in question is stated pretty clearly (it's advertising).

Anyone wanting to review our "censorship" policy can view all "censored" articles any time they want by browsing through  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/viewallposts.html All kinds of garbage is in there, and people work hard to keep the newswire clean of this garbage, day after day. Help would be appreciated in this, join the editorial policy email list at  http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-features if you are interested in helping out with admin work on the site.

Any questions regarding editorial policy for this site can be directed to imc-uk-features at lists.indymedia.org Note that Tony is not banned from participating in editorial discussions, but his messages are going to be reviewed for accusations that the Indymedia UK editorial admins are "Nazis", "Lying for the far right", "BNP", etc., when they hide advertisements in the newswire. People work hard on this site, they don't need these sort of insults. If Tony can refrain from calling Indymedia admins Nazis then he is welcome on our lists.

"Indymedia pretended they were Independent and unbiased. This is dishonest."

This is bollocks. There are editorial guidelines which you can see by going to the top of this page and clicking on...you guessed it..."Editorial Guidelines". Pretty sneeky, eh?! If you can't manage that, here's the link...

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/editorial.html

"And they have been caught out so many times censoring posts..."

Er, you mean IMC UK has been "caught out" implementing its own publicly available editorial policy!!! OH MY GOD!!! The bastards!

"it has become so dominated with anarchists that its not really a voice for the moment anymore"

Yeah, right. We should turn instead to one of the many Party controlled newspapers who always put the needs of 'the movement' first, and who are known for their efforts to publish a wide cross section of opinions.

Here's an idea for you. Set up a website and make it 100% open publishing. Let anyone post anything as much as they want. Have no control at all over the content. See how long it lasts before being taken over by right-wing ranters, porn spammers, etc. Go on, give it a go. Or just hang around slagging off people who are trying to provide a useful platform for alternative media...

R.I.P. just about sums it up yes.

Question: So who interprets and applies the editorial guidelines?

Answer: The people who edit Indymedia.

And while these anarchists are a tiny minority on all the mass demonstrations they report, they totally dominate Indymedia editorial. Inevitably their political bias informs their editing. How could it be otherwise? Every medium will display the bias of its editors. This medium is dominated by anarchists. So what? Why should anarchists hide their bias?

Claiming it is otherwise is what gives people the dirts. Because it assumes we are too stupid to notice.

IF that is so, then I look forward to your new and improved version. I expect you will be popping back here for quite a while though. Stop whining.

The way I see it they aren't deliberately censoring information because they are complicit. I just don't think they really know what is going on and because they are like everybody else themselves and taken in by the broken record of the mainstream news they can't see the truth.

It is a very sad and serious situation. The way they ridicule anybody who thinks outside the box is just like watching some psychological experiment. Rather than look at the evidence of something like 9-11 they focus on some ridiculous story involving aliens. Why does that person do that? Normally it is because they are frightened of not being part of a group and it really isn't much different from a gang of drunk lads picking on somebody vulnerable.

I read something on here about micro chips being implanted and all the replies were saying that they were paranoid and crazy but now they are being used all over the place and even on the BBC. When I read this I didn't know what to think about people getting microchips but now I am sorry that in my mind I was thinking that maybe they are paranoid.

I have read a lot of things about 9-11 and I think there are a lot of questions which nobody can answer and nobody says anything about aliens so why does indymedia even mention aliens? Somebody in indymedia said that people are being rude to them but making fun of people by making things up about them is much ruder. If I see people arguing it normally ends up that the one who is making the most insults is wrong. When I read about this I thought that the people who think indymedia is right have made the most insults.

That's what I think anyway.

Whatever your reasons for hiding this stuff TPTB must be overjoyed that you are making their job so much easier. Let's play British Bulldogs with the BNP or disappear to Gleneagles while they pursuade the masses that they need fascism, because just like Nazi Germany, the public are being scared into allowing fascism in through the back door whilst you (consciously or unconsciously) are providing a diversion.

You think Indymedia are anarchists? Crap! I'm an anarchist and I don't want to be associated with these quasi-lefties who are not unlike the other lazy lying bastards who claim to be journalists!

Almost ALL journalists are lazt bastards who want an easy life and are easily compromised and these boys and girls are no different. They have no moral base if they can't be bothered to investigate thoroughly before axing something on spurious grounds.

I'd really like to have a discussion about this but any discussion they offer is based on their terms, i.e. their lists and the pack mentality and bullying which comes with it.

Neutral territory, girls and boys, but that's a bit to egalitarian fo you isn't it!

errr, why do I hate capitalism amongst other reasons? Because it forces us to overproduce and make profits for the bosses and politicians. Bring on the anarchist society where we can be as lazy as we like! The whole concept ond wage labour. Before that workers had piece rates that allowed them to get drunk all wef laziness seems to stem from the early stages of the introduction of capitalism aek and decide when they wanted to work.

An anarchist having a go at people because they're lazy eh? Sounds like that anarchist is a product of capitalism itself.