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UK Indymedia Newswire Archive

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Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK

27-04-2011 11:25

On 1st May 2011 Indymedia UK will give birth to two new projects. The Indymedia UK website will be archived, it will stay were it is now, but you won’t be able to publish news. In its place there will be two distinct projects: Mayday will provide a non-regional site with open publishing and Be The Media will present the best of radical news across the regions, including Bristol, Northern, Nottingham and London.
BeTheMedia | Find out more about the history of Indymedia: article | video | pics | i - the film

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Diaz G8 2001 - Supreme court of Appeal - Italy

27-04-2011 01:00

Francesco Gratteri - the Diaz raid commander- convicted four years
GENOA: One of the most important court cases in Italian history is the legal process for the raid on the Diaz school during the G8 in 2001. So far, this infamous event has convicted 25 Diaz police commanders and enlisted men when the Ligurian appeal verdict was announced on May 18th 2010.

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Are radical, collective, independent media projects still possible?

18-03-2011 20:30

The following piece about the present and future of independent media projects was included in the latest issue of the Corporate Watch Magazine, which has just been released, on so-called free newspapers. And since it concerns Indymedia more than any other project, we thought it should be reposted here as well, with the hope that it would contribute to a much-needed debate among IMC UK volunteers and users about the issues raised.

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“You're in charge but don't touch the controls.”

30-01-2011 20:37

“You're in charge but don't touch the controls.”
Shannon Lucid, recounting what the two Russian cosmonauts told her
every time they left the Mir space station for a spacewalk, 1996

Indymedia UK, one of the oldest Indymedia websites worldwide, will fork in two projects by the 1st of May 2011 [1]. A contentious point was IP monitoring [2] by uk.indymedia.org which led to a fierce controversy [3] | [4] | [5] | [6]. Both the British Indymedia website and de.indymedia.org run on the content management system Mir [7] and de.indymedia.org logs IPs temporarily, too. But what exactly does that mean?

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Censorship amid controversy over police on indymedia

25-01-2011 01:41

Last week the respected alternative news project SchNEWS published a story revealing long term malicious use of indymedia by elements within the states police apparatus. The piece was base on the so-called 303 Gateway article written collaboratively by a number of indymedia admins and proposed in secret as a feature for the UK site over six months ago. The proposal was blocked by London and Northern IMC. They claim they failed to get agreement on amendments aimed at distancing themselves from admissions within the article that indymedia admins had in fact had access to IP logs despite having repeatedly said the opposite in the past. Both London and Northern said that they would have no objection to the article being published as a feature on Indymedia UK if it was made clear within the article that the IP logging was a feature found within the MIR content management system used by IMC UK and its regional sites Birmingham, Cambridge, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield and South Coast, not those using alternative CMS such as Bristol, London, Northern, Nottingham and Scotland. However it seem tonight that their claim has be proven a lie...

The draft article stated, "what has never been openly stated before is that the CMS system we use has a number of anti-abuse measures which include the ability to monitor for particular IP addresses and log their behaviour." The draft goes on to say, "site admins believed that they would never be able to gain the trust of posters, if the range of anti-abuse measures were made public. As is often the case, once a body has failed to be completely open about something, it becomes 'the elephant in the room' and so a situation was created where the new and current admins were actively blocked from bringing these measures into the open. The stalemate continued until now, with site admins proposing a new approach of coming clean about the measures that are in place, and others in the collective blocking this."

Prophetically, that stalemate over coming clean about the IP logging meant that no consensus was possible on publishing the article. There was no way that the information about the governments disinfo campaign could be published without revealing that indymedia had been lying about IP logs. Apparently some suggested it could be published via a different alt media outlet while leaving out the info about indymedia but the story would have been weak without the evidence gathered by indymedia admins.

The impasse remained but then the draft article was leaked by a disgruntled admin using the name 'indyleaks'. The posts were repeatedly hidden from the indymedia sites it was posted to and a filter set up on IMC UK to automatically hide it whenever posted.

There remains no consensus about publishing the article which includes a frank admission that indymedia has misled its user since 2003. However the lack of consensus is now a moot point since SchNEWS has ran the story and Birmingham IMC has published the 303 gateway article as a feature on it's own site.

 https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472622.html

Both the story about the government running a disinfo campaign via indymedia, and the story that indymedia UK has been hiding the truth about IP logging for all these years, that is big news for activists at a time when trust is already in short supply.

As the article says "continuing to gloss over the reality in a misleading way was detrimental to Indymedia UK, and that there was no small likelihood that at some stage we could be outed." Now that the truth is out, lets hope indymedia can recover from the damage to its credibility and move on to become more open and honest with its users.

Fisher

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Advocating Domestic Extremism - Cops on Indymedia - An Exposé

23-01-2011 19:53

http://www.govconnect.gov.uk/what-is-gcsx.php

On April 27th, 2010, a comment appeared on the Indymedia UK newswire entitled Don't use SPEAK as a model. The comment, on an article entitled New animal lab at Leicester; New nationwide campaign to start urged readers to respond to the campaign by "Model{ling} the campaign on a successful AR campaign such as Hillgrove cats or Darnley(sic) Oaks etc". Readers familiar with those campaigns will be aware that the campaigns are alleged to have included violent actions against individuals, including a a letter bomb in the Hillgrove Cats campaign, and the removal of Gladys Hammond from her grave.

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Full list of Gateway 303 and 202 posts to IMC UK

23-01-2011 19:30

Attached is a CSV file (which should open in Open Office) of all the posts from gateway-303.energis.gsi.gov.uk and gateway-202.energis.gsi.gov.uk that were caught by the anti-abuse filters set up to detect this Police abuse of the site.

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Police dirty tactics and indymedias dirty laundry

23-01-2011 19:00

The shit hit the fan when Schnews published it's story on how a shadowy police unit has spent years planting false stories and sowing discontent among activist groups using the comments sections of campaign blogs and IMC UK. It instantly became impossible for indymedia admins to continue to claim that they did not have any access to IP logs on the IMC UK site. Airing indymedias dirty laundry could not have come at a worse time with all the distrust generated by the recent outing of a number of deep infiltration undercover cops within activist circles.

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schnews website down after revealing further dastardly acpo tactics

22-01-2011 01:45

shortly after revealing that not only is taxpayers money being spent to razz around europe sleeping with as many people as possible, but more mundanely they are paid to post false comments on indymedia...professional troll division...

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INTER-NETCU: Government Agency Caught Infiltrating Activist Media Outlet

21-01-2011 20:45

“No - stuff that - SHUT the place: Let’s not all stand around like lemmings - lets shut the place!Bring ladders and wire cutters. If there are enough of us we can shut it!” - a pretty average comment on Indymedia you might think - if a little gung-ho. In fact it was posted there by the police - and SchNEWS has the proof.

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Mayday Indymedia Film Screening - 29th Jan - Brighton

21-01-2011 16:07

Mayday Indymedia Film Screening - 29th Jan - Brighton

The Mayday Indymedia Collective presents a screening Human Resources from Metanoia Films at 6.00 PM on Saturday 29th of January 2011 at the Cowley Club 12 London Road, Brighton, BN1 4JA. To be followed by a discussion. Read on for more information about the Mayday Indymedia Collective and other events that weekend.

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SWP Cyprus, Cyprus "Indymedia"

18-01-2011 14:07

SWP on Cyprus "Indymedia"

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Revealing Grasses on Indymedia

14-01-2011 15:05

Dos & Dont of using Indymedia to expose infiltrators / informers.

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New video - how to publish on Oxford Indymedia

14-01-2011 15:05

Video
We have made a video that hows how you can publish a simple story (no pictures, audio, or video) on Oxford Indymedia.

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Post Flash Fallout, Lessons and Activist security

12-01-2011 20:00

Everyones being talking about Mark since Oct but what have people learned or changed? We always knew that the state was interested in our activities and that they send people to our meetings and monitor our email etc. However it seemed unlikely that the cops would take us seriously enough to go to such extreme lengths to embed a cop in our circles so deep or for such a long time. Sure, the cops would have their snitches among us, those who dedication to the cause could not compete to their own dedication to drink, drugs, parties and easy cash. Of course we also knew that the corporations we target would also be spying on us and that there were companies who specialised in infiltrating our groups and selling info to whoever would pay. When the news about Mark broke, the surprise wasn't that we had been infiltrated, it was the it was a cop and not simply a private detective or a friend turned informer.

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Flash Mark Filled Minibus with Crusty Cuties

10-01-2011 19:36

Slavering hordes of vampires!

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Download! Dissident Island 17 December 2010

23-12-2010 11:15

Ready for Download now!!!

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The Emperor Wears No Clothes

16-12-2010 12:53

We are writing this statement in support of democracy.

Since Sunday, November 28th, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from around the world (The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) have been publishing redacted versions of leaked US Diplomatic Cables in an ongoing story that has become known as "Cablegate." The identity of the original leaker is - as yet - unconfirmed