oops wrong thread

The use of sock puppets to drive home a message is not a new trick - but note the lack of links and evicence to back up claims.

The old Indymedia uk site is archived. As per the Bradford agreement 'a.indymedia.org' which was later known as the Mayday Collective was to run a full copy under a different name. The new collective was blocked at new IMC and b.indymedia.org later known as bethemedia, who were to run the aggregated site insisted on the fork going on ahead without the preconditions being met. Mayday kept the name until bethemedia were prepared to return to consensus. They're still waiting......

Stolen implies that it was someone's property. So that raises the question - who does Indymedia belong to?

It seems churlish discussing the idea that IMC uk was stolen on BIMC without discussing BIMC's part in the whole affair.

So here's a rundown.

Bristol IMC were present at the network meeting where the 'Bradford Agreement' was drawn up.

Decisions included:

We accept to archive www.indymdia.org.uk, indymedia.org.uk and
uk.indymedia.org and indymedia.co.uk as static html with a banner on
top of each page that says along the gist of "this a archived version
of the site For a active version of this page go to ,
there is also the aggregator at .
There will be splash page at / that links to the archive site, site
a.indymedia.org and b.indymedia.org
We agree that henceforth noone can call themselve Indymedia UK, UK
network and UK collective anymore.

So, IMC uk was to be archived - and two new Indymedias were to replace it. The national open newsire was to change its name, as noted in the next decision:

We agree that it's great that there is a national site, and that goes
through new imc with a different site and name , and others go on with
their projects

So it was also agreed that the new IMC should go through new IMC - (despite the fact it was run by long standing Indymedia volunteers - (in retrospect this looks increasingly like venture capitalists demanding that long-standing employees re-apply for their jobs).

However, bart from linksunten indymedia blocked the Mayday application, and Bristol joined London and Northern in demanding that the fork go ahead without . ie without the conditions being met. Numerous blocks were ingnored and come May 1st a splashpage was put up (I'm told by slacker of BIMC although there is no transparency on this). The splashpage announced that rather than the "national site, and that goes through new imc with a different site and name" the national open publishing site would be at the URL  http://www.maydaymedia.org. Although maydaymedia.org belonged to the Mayday collective, we had never agreed to host the site at this URL, and as far as we were concerned implementation of the 'fork' was blocked until the issue with new IMC was sorted.

Mayday responded by pointing the DNS for www.indymedia.org.uk at the copy of the IMC uk site on its own server. BIMC were quick off the mark with an email to IMC process which makes for interesting reading:

uk.indymedia.org and indymedia.org.uk are no longer under the control of
the volunteers who have maintained UK Indymedia since its inception. A
faction within UK Indymedia, Mayday, composing of individuals who are
not members of any full IMC, and who currently have a new-imc application
which has been blocked, have taken control of the DNS for the domain of
indymedia.org.uk, pointed it to a new server and deleted the access of
all non-Mayday volunteers from the system.

It is true that attempts to gain new IMc status had been blocked. However it is hard to see how the Bristol IMC email was within the spirit of the the Indymedia POU which all IMCs are expected to sign up to - (despite they fact they have never been ratified ). POU 1 states: "1. The Independent Media Center Network (IMCN) is based upon principles of equality, decentralization and local autonomy The IMCN is not derived from a centralized bureaucratic process, but from the self-organization of autonomous collectives that recognize the importance in developing a union of networks. yet Bristol started their email be suggesting that there was no equality in light of the fact that members were not part of any "full IMC" - and remember this had been blocked by someone in Germany - so much for 'local autonomy' and the fact that the new IMC had turned itself into a a centralized bureaucratic process.

Furthermore the claim that Mayday had "deleted the access of all non-Mayday volunteers from the system." was also untrue - the access was not revoked on the archived site - only on the copy of the site

Bristol IMC went on to state that:

This includes expelling the access of volunteers from accredited imcs
including Bristol, Northern England, London and Nottingham [1] along with
individuals not associated with any collective and members of Oxford
Imc, a group currently going through the new-imc process.[2]

So again stressing 'accredited' (a centralized bureaucratic process) and repeating the falsehood that access for non Mayday members had been explelled - when their log-ins were intact on the archives site as per the agreement.

Bristl IMC went on to request that:

Bristol Indymedia asks that the global Indymedia community request that
control of the domain indymedia.org.uk be handed over to the Global IMC
DNS working group as a neutral party not involved in the current conflict
forthwith.

In fact that request never got made.

Bristol then went onto to make a POU busting demand;

Following this unprecedented and unfortunate action we also propose that
all members of the Mayday group have their admin privileges, membership
of key lists such as tech-lists, listwork, control of documents servers,
indymedia server root accounts and the like be revoked pending resolution
of the situation.

POU 8 states: "8. All IMC's are committed to caring for one another and our respective communities both collectively and as individuals and will promote the sharing of resources including knowledge, skills and equipment. yet Bristol were demanding the very opposite - ie that the 'unacredited members' be expelled and their access to resources be removed. This appears to be their response despite POU 6 which states: "All IMC's recognize the importance of process to social change and are committed to the development of non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian relationships, from interpersonal relationships to group dynamics. Therefore, shall organize themselves collectively and be committed to the principle of consensus decision making and the development of a direct, participatory democratic process] that is transparent to its membership" - yet here they were promoting authoritarian responses in order to use IMC process as a way of excluding one group.

In the end the global network pretty much dissolved as techs refused to implement the demands and began resigning after receiving threats from bart and others.

For mayday members the priority had always been to maintain a national Indymedia with an open newswire - and unsurprsisingly we were unprepared to go along with threats, autoritarian demands and POU busting behaviour. For us the solution was to return to a forum where we could reach consensus on a way forward. But Bristol and the rest of the self-declared in crown rfused to do so, and 20 months later the national open publishing site is still running and still being used.many of the bethemedia crew have now left the network so it seems unlikely that the matter will be resolved through consensus, which would involve revisiting past decisions and replacing them with sound ones which are in accordance with the Indymedia POU

Consensus is needed to change a project - and whilst London and Northern decided that they wanted the open publishing site closed down - they never got consensus for this. They then abused consensus decision making to force a situation where they believed they could expel those who did not agree with them. What they should have done is walked away and set up the project they wanted - leaving those committed to a national open publishing site to get on with doing what they were already doing. They seemed to believe that it was their Indymedia and that if they left it had to close down. I am glad they were thwarted and that the site still exists. In light of Bristol's role to date it is not surprising that they have been willing to keep up blatant lies about the IMC uk site on Bristol Indymedia - and that is why I am here pointing out that there is another side to the story, and dispellling disinformation - which means they have no removed some of the lies - but still allow trolls to post as me and to spread disinformation.

This is of little interest to most BIMC readers, and if it bores you feel free to ignore it. But for those who want to know what is going on, there is a shedload of information which makes it explicit.

It is my hope that Bristol will move towards adopting a more POU friendly approac (and less authoritarian one!) enabling them to live up to their own stated aim which is laid out in the 'Respect' guideline:

Bristol indymedia is intended to represent the world we are striving to create, rather than the world we live in. A cornerstone of this principle is respect for others, therefore articles or comments that are abusive rather than relying on force of argument are not acceptable.

I look forward to the day when they use their own guideline to stop the spread of disinformation about another IMC which is 'unrelated to the SW' and therefore outside of "the purpose of Bristol IMC [which] is to share local news".