UK Indymedia - Sheffield Newswire Archive

Mozaz's Funeral Details.

incurable hippie | 28-01-2011 10:19 | Sheffield

Mozaz's funeral will take place on Thursday 3rd February 2011

Sheffield Seed Swap!

Grow Sheffield | 28-01-2011 10:17 | Ecology | Sheffield

20th Feb

Old Sharrow Junior School

1pm - 4 pm

Sheffield Coordination event

networkx | 27-01-2011 21:51 | Sheffield

Autonomous resistance groups coordination event, Sheffield

Wikileaks: UK Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources

Wikileaks | 27-01-2011 10:39 | Sheffield | World

One of the latest cables to be released, 09STATE15113, contains, "a comprehensive inventory of CI/KR (critical infrastructure and key resources) that are located outside U.S. borders and whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the United States". The UK list CI/KR follows, these places would appear to be good targets for protests!

The Empty Press Room - How Corporate Journalism Happily Lost Interest in Climate Change

Medialens | 26-01-2011 22:47 | Analysis | Sheffield | World

In the media’s coverage of climate change, are we really still stuck on square one of some ghastly board game?

Crisis of Civilisation: Trailer & Website Launched

Details of a new UK film inspired by Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's recent book "A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It"

More Woeful Financial News about UK Coal plc.

New information has come to light that suggests that any promises UK Coal plc make about providing Community Benefits when it works Opencast Sites need to be backed up with the assurance that a Banker's Guarantee underwrites that promise.

Hunt investigated after claim they chased foxes through village

Paul Timpson | 25-01-2011 17:48 | Animal Liberation | Birmingham | Sheffield

Police were called following a report that a pack of dogs had run across the back garden of a house south of Lincoln on Saturday - and that they were chasing of a pair of foxes.

Censorship amid controversy over police on indymedia

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

Barclays Shut All Day, After Lively Protest.

Protestors clashed with police and security guards during a picket of banks in Broadmead and Cabot Circus.

About 80 people, many wearing guy fawkes masks and others dressed as clowns, joined the rolling demonstration to highlight the banks’ involvement in the arms trade.

They gathered in Castle Park before marching down Union Street and into Broadmead, at first followed by two patrolling police officers.

'Peter Black' undercover 1993 to 1997

Ann | 24-01-2011 22:21 | Repression | Sheffield | World

According to this article 'Peter Black' was deployed against environmental activists from 1993 to 1997, including at the M11 link road protests.

Australia Floods - Climate?

Alex Smith | 24-01-2011 03:08 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Sheffield

Terrible floods in Queenland, Australia - with record rapid rainfall. Another extreme precipitation event, like caused by warming oceans, from climate change. Says Professor Matthew England from the Climate Change Research Centre, at The University of New South Wales, in Sydney. 13 min interview with Alex Smith, Radio Ecoshock.

The Food Bubble - Lester Brown

You have seen food prices going up at the local grocery store. That could be just the beginning. According to Lester Brown, a leading expert in both the environment and world agriculture, those bulging supermarket shelves are part of a "food bubble", which could crash. Radio Ecoshock interview. 24 min

Full list of Gateway 303 and 202 posts to IMC UK

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.

Statement on Lynn Watson

The following is a statement from the ActivistSecurity.org collective following discussions with individuals involved in the expose of 'Lynn Watson' as an undercover police infiltrator. The original of this, including photographs, can be found at their website

http://www.activistsecurity.org/lynn_watson.html

Mozaz

Incurable hippie | 23-01-2011 11:07 | Sheffield

Mozaz, aka Mark Wallis, was angry, unpredictable, stubborn and inconsistent.

Farewell to NETCU

ACPOwatch | 23-01-2011 11:07 | Policing | Repression | Sheffield

Corporate Watch published last week an article outlining a history of NETCU / NPOIU and other related units. It is long but it gives a pretty detailed overview of them, including their history and what they have been up to. The body of the text is below. To get the references in it see the original article at

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3868 They have done another interesting article on the various companies involved in spying on protestors at

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3869

Nazi “Butcher of Lyons” was a German intelligence agent

Dietmar Henning | 22-01-2011 09:12 | History | Sheffield | World

Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal infamously known as the “Butcher of Lyons”, was an agent of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in the 1960s. This was revealed recently by the news magazine Der Spiegel.

State infiltration and attempted disruption of activist websites

New revelations published in an excellent article in today’s Schnews show police and/or government employees actively disrupting activist websites, posting comments designed to “sow mistrust, demoralise movements and to incite violence and illegality”.

INTER-NETCU: Government Agency Caught Infiltrating Activist Media Outlet

“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.

Publish

IMCs