# Indy Media London Collective  Website closes...



## Treacle Toes (Oct 15, 2012)

> *Time to move on: IMC London signing off*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 



http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Oct 15, 2012)

RIP Indymedia.

It is through their site that I found a link to Urban75.


----------



## DrRingDing (Oct 15, 2012)

Boo and hiss.


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Oct 15, 2012)

I hope that the international activities of Indymedia are not closing down. They have been most useful in publicising what has been happening in the battle between ordinary people and the agents of capitalism that call themselves governments. Perhaps there have been changes in the use of individual publishing of news via smartphones, but Indymedia surely has a role in putting together the broad and narrow casts on their websites.


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Oct 15, 2012)

They were a daily read back in the day but the whole media landscape is radically different now, you don't need a tiny group of people providing you content anymore...


----------



## andrewdroid (Oct 15, 2012)

Was going to post this but got beaten to it 
I know how much unappreciated hard work goes into admining and moderating an IMC site and would like to say thanks to all involved you are champions.
It is now unfortunately a common occurrence  Austria IMC is closed and Germany is thinking about it. but things move on and the new generation of activists dont wanna put time into projects like that which is a shame as no one will archive facebook twitter and all the rest of the stuff concerning the present dissent.
As they say see you on the streets


----------



## BigTom (Oct 15, 2012)

Back in 99 indymedia was vital but now between free blogs, twitter and facebook they've been superseded imo. Shame to see it go but I think Twitter is better news aggregator and wordpress at least is better CMS. 
What is lost is the anonymity of indymedia, but network23 does that job now, using wordpress.

Still sad to see the London collective shut down though.


----------



## Kid_Eternity (Oct 15, 2012)

What's also lost is going to actions/protests and seeing camera people with IMC logos providing alternative coverage. Today far too many people think good social media is simply typing stuff up or RTing someone...


----------



## ska invita (Oct 15, 2012)

I think theres a lot wrong with the way the internet is heading.....havent got time to say more right now

well done all involved anyway


----------



## BigTom (Oct 15, 2012)

Kid_Eternity said:


> What's also lost is going to actions/protests and seeing camera people with IMC logos providing alternative coverage. Today far too many people think good social media is simply typing stuff up or RTing someone...


 
Yes that's true, but presumably the people who did this with IMC will continue in a different guise, and hopefully others will come into their place as well. The means for journalism have become so much cheaper and readily available than they were 10-15 years ago and this should open up more space for proper alternative coverage. 
Having said that I'm trying to think of people/groups and it's ones like Reel News and Undercurrents who I associate with indymedia anyway.
There's a lot of bloggers who are great for alternative analysis of events, but not so much for reportage. Hadn't thought about that tbf.


----------



## editor (Oct 15, 2012)

There's been loads of great collectives and concerns who have done great work over the years but I guess changing times and technologies has made them less useful or relevant.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 16, 2012)

Rutita1 said:


> http://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128



Rumor has it that London IMC was run by a RCMP dude with connections in high places, who wrote software for the Tories for six figure sums.  It was found out and so RCMP dude ran away.  Of course this is total speculation with only a body of circumstantial evidence to support it.  I know the Tory stuff is true, it's harder to pin the RCMP thing coz he attended a College where RCMP ran writing courses, and coincidentally at the same time wrote something mostly nicked off Chomsky and posted it to ainfos.  Still its fekin weird that a top London digital agency with connections to the Ruling Class would import and employ someone who wrote of armed struggle against global corporatism in glowing heroic terms and in his own name.

RCMP dude also wrote Corporate Spyware a kind of on line focus group ware where Corporations could "drill down" through the data, and Hyperactive the CMS 3 IM sites currently use.  When Hyperactive was first launched it was collecting IP data into its data base for the London G20 protests.

Obviously just an error, and coincidence and nothing to see here, so "time to move on"


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Oct 16, 2012)

UK Indymedia may close down, and if that really happens that will be a sad day. However Indymedia is international. It exists in many countries and enables people to get an international picture of what is being done to us. I first found out about Indymedia from a label on a video of the Seattle protests. I then got on the website and followed that up via the UK Indymedia site. I hope that the people involved with holding Indymedia don't give up. It is a channel for people to publish news of political protest and activities. It acts as a  resource, holding the history of these events. This is different to the way Twitter works which is always reporting the new but not recording the past. Twitter doesn't show the context of events.


----------



## Nigel Irritable (Oct 17, 2012)

Irish Indymedia, which was a much better site than its UK cousins, was once by miles the biggest left wing site in the country but is now on life support and has been for quite a while. That particular model is dying everywhere.


----------



## ska invita (Oct 18, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> Rumor has it that London IMC was run by a RCMP dude with connections in high places, who wrote software for the Tories for six figure sums


RCMP? google says Royal Canadian Mounted Police


----------



## DJWrongspeed (Oct 19, 2012)

Equally clueless, what's RCMP ?


----------



## Arlarse (Oct 20, 2012)

editor said:


> There's been loads of great collectives and concerns who have done great work over the years but I guess changing times and technologies has made them less useful or relevant.


 
I understand what you're saying about newer forms of communication but I don't think that the network of indymedia, the IMC's or whatever you want to call them should be abandoned just now. People were talking about the death of bulletin boards not too long ago, and yet. I see that google took a major wobble yesterday to the point that trading was closed. Nothing is set in concrete and we need to remain flexible and have all our options open...


----------



## free spirit (Oct 20, 2012)

sad day.

I loved the concept of indymedia, and respected the work that many put into it over the years, and their live reporting of much of the anti-neoliberal globalisation protests around the world was incredible at times.

It's pretty sad that this generation of protestors has chosen to abandon the indymedia format in favour of total reliance on facebook, twitter and the corporate media.

I remember up at the G8 protest campsite the priority we gave to ensuring the indymedia tent was kept powered, even supplying it with a sat truck for guaranteed internet connection, as we say the indymedia reporting as a key part of our defence against police aggression. It was also great to see so many people from around the world using the facilities most of the time to keep the indymedia site updated with live reports.


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

Arlarse said:


> I understand what you're saying about newer forms of communication but I don't think that the network of indymedia, the IMC's or whatever you want to call them should be abandoned just now. People were talking about the death of bulletin boards not too long ago, and yet. I see that google took a major wobble yesterday to the point that trading was closed. Nothing is set in concrete and we need to remain flexible and have all our options open...


thing is they put in a lot of work and can see how many visits they're getting. The domain is staying up, so no reason why no one could pick it up again in the future...

I would be curious to see some stats on visits for Indymedia UK and London........


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

free spirit said:


> It's pretty sad that this generation of protestors has chosen to abandon the indymedia format in favour of total reliance on facebook, twitter and the corporate media.


and its not just protestors who have made this shift - the whole open source mood of the internet is starting to feel like a memory. Maybe like Arlarse says, a few stock crashes might make things better! Facebook has got to have its comeuppance once day in that respect


----------



## free spirit (Oct 20, 2012)

oh, hold on, is this just london IMC?

tbh I always thought that independent local collectives was likely to result in dilution of the project, not enough people to run both local and national IMC, and the content on both the national and the local IMCs suffering as a result.

I don't know much of the internal politics, but I hope the national IMC survives and maybe could even integrate some local feeds within the main site or something.

The northern IMC is also looking for help / threatening to shut down...


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

yeah just london - UK is as normal. There was some politics wasnt there between the UK crew and others? I heard the rumours but make a point of forgetting them quickly


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

FWIW the London website was/is one of the best looking websites I think


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

free spirit said:


> I don't know much of the internal politics, but I hope the national IMC survives and maybe could even integrate some local feeds within the main site or something.


that sort of used to happen. I think the UK site could do with a spruce up and that would help a lot


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 20, 2012)

ska invita said:


> RCMP? google says Royal Canadian Mounted Police



Yeah, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  It's a conjecture that IM globally has been the target of a campaign to disrupt it and close it down, some of the same names turn up in a lot of these splits, Oceania, San Fransisco, Belgium, Germany.  A lot of IM sites have been closed down by this crew.

It always seems to take a similar form with usually a "majority" liberal (i.e. the softies) being split from a more hard core minority, a divide and rule tactic out of Machiavelli or a Ruling Class tactic.  A bit like the way Black Bloc tactics are criticised, it's a way to divide movements.  These "divisions" exist, the nefarious know how to exploit them and turn them into splits as I say it's conjecture, but the way in which the UK collectives were split has the hallmarks of a classic divide and rule op.  The plausible deniability is that groups on the left are always splitting and fighting amongst themselves,  but having observed this at close hand it looks like "social engineering" ruling class style to me.

The authorities got really scared when the original site Portland got more hits than CNN during the WTO protests in 1999, So in a way you'd expect some form of response from the ruling class, so twitter and facebook is one response,  both heavily funded by CIA .  The main problem with investigating that kind of operation is that they have at their core the idea of Plausible Deniability.

Whatever went on the dude that made this site and won awards for it.

'http:// www.headlondon.com/our-work/webcameron'

Also made this site

'http://london.indymedia.org/'

He's also on record lying about his involvement with the tories, he tried to deny his 
own responsibility with a seemingly plausible reason, i.e. the Nuremberg excuse, i.e. I was only following orders, but it turns out the dude is one of the folk giving the orders.

He's abandoned the users of the CMS he created. The Hyperactive project site was being spammed, now it can't be accessed.


----------



## ska invita (Oct 20, 2012)

Im open minded to your post Zoltan. The amount of infiltration that goes on is shocking.

As i said I thought it was a brilliantly designed website London Indy, so hmmm well yeah...



Zoltan K. said:


> He's abandoned the users of the CMS he created. The Hyperactive project site was being spammed, now it can't be accessed.


i didnt understand either of these sentences though...

relates to this i guess


Zoltan K. said:


> RCMP dude also wrote Corporate Spyware a kind of on line focus group ware where Corporations could "drill down" through the data, and Hyperactive the CMS 3 IM sites currently use. When Hyperactive was first launched it was collecting IP data into its data base for the London G20 protests.
> 
> Obviously just an error, and coincidence and nothing to see here, so "time to move on"


are you saying London Indymedia site was collecting IP addresses? What is Hyperactive exactly


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 20, 2012)

ska invita said:


> Im open minded to your post Zoltan. The amount of infiltration that goes on is shocking.
> 
> As i said I thought it was a brilliantly designed website London Indy, so hmmm well yeah...
> 
> ...



Hyperactive is a CMS (content management system). Its built on Ruby on Rails, distributed via git.  If you go to the London site and scroll to the bottom there's a link to the Hyperactive project site, which I can't access anymore.  Basically the way these sites work is that user content is stored in a data base.  The developer of Hyperactive added a rails module called "rail stats", It stored user agent data including IP addresses into the data base.  The reason I say it was storing IP addresses is because it said so on the Hyperactive dev site in the blurb about how fab Hyperactive was, it said that the London IM Hyperactive site had had >500,000 "unique hits" a day during the London G20 demos.  The uniqueness of each hit could only come from IP addresses stored in the rail stats table of the Hyperactive database.  Some steps were taken to stop this happening (what should have happened is that the rail stats module should have been removed, it wasn't), but it was easy to revert and not configure the server properly, so that it could store IPs again. 

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/06/480350.html?c=on#c269733

It could be done remotely via a "ssh" script, you need server access to do it, but anyone could download the code and set up an IM site and collect IP addresses with the code as reverted above. Not terribly secure.

Yes brilliantly designed as a data mine, I mean what fields do you need for an anonymous news site? The Hyperactive data base definition is about 400 lines of code, it includes things like telephone numbers, the lat/lon of actions and a way of correlating posters to "groups" and actions, of course you don't have to fill in all those fields, but the database is overkill for what's required. All you actually need to store is -The title of the post, an abstract of the post, The content of the post (including vids or pics)- the name of the poster, (plus maybe an e-mail or website),  the time posted, plus some space in the database for the comments, there is absolutely no need to store IPs or user agent info in the database.  The arguments made about "improvements" were all to do with form over content.  Surely it's the content that matters? dunno.  All I'm saying is there is a significant smell of fish around the whole IM bust up, not enough to "prove" anything, it is extremely difficult to prove that this dude is a Pisces working for SCALE or whatever, but it's enough that he made webcameron isn't it?


----------



## flickerx (Oct 21, 2012)

Nigel Irritable said:


> Irish Indymedia, which was a much better site than its UK cousins, was once by miles the biggest left wing site in the country but is now on life support and has been for quite a while.


 
So true. Indymedia Ireland is shit now, and nobody uses it to publish content, or publicise (pre or post) actions. The comment threads are full of trolls - but also the editorial collective tend to hide anything that doesnt conform to a very narrow left view of what they see as "news", which means your comments on sites like the Irish Times are way more likely to remain up there. Its a disaster and could do with a hiatus or an influx of fresh blood of organisers to try to something new, anything with it. If that doesnt happen it might be time to switch off that life support.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 21, 2012)

Here's a snip of the Hyperactive data base that defines the rail stats table - line 295 is the User's IP - the rest is User Agent Data

root / db / schema.rb @ 3c4b8fb25a8fcffbc67133cb0a8f40c85e1bd15b

View | Annotate | Download (17 KB)
1# This file is auto-generated from the current state of the database. Instead of editing this file, 
2# please use the migrations feature of Active Record to incrementally modify your database, and
3# then regenerate this schema definition.
4#
5# Note that this schema.rb definition is the authoritative source for your database schema. If you need
6# to create the application database on another system, you should be using db:schema:load, not running
7# all the migrations from scratch. The latter is a flawed and unsustainable approach (the more migrations
8# you'll amass, the slower it'll run and the greater likelihood for issues).
9#
10# It's strongly recommended to check this file into your version control system.
11
12ActiveRecord::Schema.defineversion => 20110209082754) do

13	
<snip>

294	create_table "rail_stats", :force => true do |t|

295	  t.string "remote_ip"

296	  t.string "country"

297	  t.string "language"

298	  t.string "domain"

299	  t.string "subdomain"

300	  t.string "referer"

301	  t.string "resource"

302	  t.string "user_agent"

303	  t.string "platform"

304	  t.string "browser"

305	  t.string "version"

306	  t.date   "created_on"

307	  t.string "screen_size"

308	  t.string "colors"

309	  t.string "java"

310	  t.string "java_enabled"

311	  t.string "flash"

312	end

313	

314	add_index "rail_stats", ["subdomain"], :name => "index_rail_stats_on_subdomain"

<snip>

470	

471	

end

And here's the code that stored the info in the data base It was this code that was changed to stop UA data being stored, and the code that can be reverted to make it happen again.  This was the state of the code during the 2009 G20 demos

module PathTracker
  public

  def track_path
    begin
      referer = params['referer'] # env['HTTP_REFERER']
      req_uri = params['doc'] # env['REQUEST_URI']

      req_uri = request.env['HTTP_REFERER'] if req_uri.nil?

      req_uri = get_doc_url(req_uri)

      size = params['size']
      colors = params['colors']
      java = params['java']
      je = params['je']
      flash = params['flash']

      env = request.env.nil? ? {'HTTP_USER_AGENT' => nil, 'HTTP_REFERER' => nil,
        'REMOTE_ADDR' => nil, 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE' => nil, 'REQUEST_URI' => nil} : request.env
      br = parse_user_agent(env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])
      subdomain = detect_subdomain
      domain = get_urls_host(referer)

      sniff_keywords(domain, subdomain, referer);

      remote_ip = env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] || env['REMOTE_ADDR']

      if remote_ip == "127.0.0.1"
        country_name = "LOCALHOST"
      else
        country = Iptoc.find_by_ip_address(remote_ip)
        unless country == nil
          country_name = country.country_name
        else
          country_name = "UNKNOWN"
        end
      end

      RailStat.create("remote_ip" => remote_ip,
                      "country" => country_name,
                      "language" => determine_lang(env['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']),
                      "domain" => domain,
                      "subdomain" => subdomain,
                      "referer" => referer,
                      "resource" => req_uri,
                      "user_agent" => env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],
                      "platform" => br['platform'],
                      "browser" => br['browser'],
                      "version" => br['version'],
                      "screen_size" => size,
                      "colors" => colors,
                      "java" => java,
                      "java_enabled" => je,
                      "flash" => flash)
    rescue Exception => e
      RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER.error("Error on path track #{e.backtrace.join('\n')}" )
    end
    ""
  end

This is what can be stored permanently on disk using the above code
The IP and other info has been changed for security reasons)

"173" "62.218.127.120" "UNITED KINGDOM" "en-us" "hyp.eco.net" "hyp" " http://hyp.eco.net/groups" "/groups/tossersngroup" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:2.2) Gecko/20100104 Firefox/3.0" "Macintosh" "Firefox" "3.0" "2011-04-02" "1240" "24" "1" "1" "1" 

And here's the code that allowed the Hyperactive developers to boast of the 500,000 unique hits

 def RailStat.count_hits(*params)

    query = "select"
    where = ""

    if params.include?unique)
      query << " count(distinct remote_ip)"      
    else
      query << " count(*)"
    end

  <snip>     
  end

It returns a  'unique' =>count  of "distinct remote_ip" s from the rail stats table i.e. it sums them to give the "unique hits" stats.

' http://web.archive.org/web/20091122...at.org/projects/hyperactive/wiki/MainFeatures ' 

Quote
It was used during the G20 meeting in London this past April 2009, serving pages to about 500,000 unique visitors a day.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 21, 2012)

There's also a campaign wherever this story appears to spread the disinfo that IM is "dead", a thing of the past, "time to move on" etc.  Careful what you wish for.


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Oct 21, 2012)

I've let this through as some of it was flagged as being spam (this happens occasionally) but the idea that the above constitutes any sort of proof of evildoing is bollocks.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 21, 2012)

I have never said it was proof of "evildoing", just that London IM was storing IP addresses during the G20 2009 demos.  What evidence is that statement based on? well the database schema, the code that stores IP addresses into the database and the code that retrieves them from the database and counts unique ones. All taken from around the time of the G20 demo in London, along with a statement boasting of being able to count "unique visitors" put out by the developers.    What then became of a data base stuffed full of 500,000 unique IPs is anybodies guess.  So no need to get shirty, read the thread? maybe.  Webcameron *is* yer actual "evildoing".


----------



## barricolas (Oct 22, 2012)

Hmmm. Any webserver can be set to log ip addresses, it's not difficult if you have access.

The original 1999 WTO IM website was Seattle not Portland by the way Zoltan. I think you're talking rubbish. Sure the CIA runs twitter and facebook and lot's of IM sites have been closed down by the same crew (I think that would have been noticed and commented upon).

And if you knew where everybody in all the activist and campaign groups throughout the country worked or has worked you'd probably have kittens! It's not unusual for people to have jobs and be political.

Accusing someone of being a cop is pretty heavy shit, doing it without any evidence is just shitty.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 22, 2012)

barricolas said:


> Hmmm. Any webserver can be set to log ip addresses, it's not difficult if you have access.
> 
> The original 1999 WTO IM website was Seattle not Portland by the way Zoltan. I think you're talking rubbish. Sure the CIA runs twitter and facebook and lot's of IM sites have been closed down by the same crew (I think that would have been noticed and commented upon).
> 
> ...



Yep any web server, but not built into a CMS designed for activists huh? You just don't store Visitors IP's permanently in the database of a Ruby on Rails app designed for those prepared to risk their liberty for social justice.

Well yep Seattle not Portland so ta for putting me straight on that. To err is Human

My information comes from reading the publicly archived mail lists set up for IM web sites.  The same names appear and the same shit is going on.  I'm only talking about Indymedia UK and not "all the activist campaigns" I know some of the activists involved and have spoken to them about their experiences during the IM bust up, like more of the same shit.  The dude in question isn't actually "employed" by the digital agency he's a "founding director" of the digital agency it's not therefore just a "job"  The Nuremberg excuse "just following orders" can't apply here, dude was giving the orders.

Now as for the accusation of being a cop there is no accusation of being a cop. There is speculation and conjecture about a dude who was involved at the heart of the IM network who helped Dave Cameron and his Eton chums into power, and has now abandoned his Hyperactive followers to their fate and abandoned IMC London.  You would be surprised if there wasn't speculation and conjecture.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Oct 29, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> ....  What then became of a data base stuffed full of 500,000 unique IPs is anybodies guess. .....



Here's some more conjecture and speculation about what happened to the Hyperactive database that had collected 500,000 IPs a day during London G20 - some of them were presumably Canadian IPs, it is after all a global resistance to G20.  The article says that the Canadian operation targeting among others  "a media centre for independent journalists"  began in April 2009 the time of the London G20 demos.

http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/living-among-us

More coincidence.....


----------



## andrewdroid (Oct 31, 2012)

So Zoltan how do you know that London IMC collected IP addresses ? lets see the proof.
Why is it you have only posted on this thread? and posted malicious rumours at that. It seems strange to me and personally I think your
1 a troll just trying to stir up shit or
2 you are connected with the uk imc or others and didnt like the fallout much and want some revenge or
3 your just a conspiracy theory nutcase
Are you even in Brixton or London for that matter?


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 1, 2012)

Oooo the andrewdroid challenge.

>>>So Zoltan how do you know that London IMC collected IP addresses ? lets see the proof.

Erm the Hyperactive data base has a module called "rail stats" it stores UA data and IP addresses in the data base to generate "Unique Visitor" stats.  That was how the code was set up during London G20, the code is/was on a git repository. A git repository keeps a record of all the changes made to the code a bit like the history of a page on wikipedia.  You can also see who made the changes, Hyperactive is/was an "open Source" project any one can/could see what state the code was in at any stage in its development. The developers were keen to tell everyone that IMC London had received >500,000 unique visitors during the London G20 demos they could only do that with IP data stored in the rail_stats table.  Were they lying about it?, well I doubt it, the code they built allowed them to count unique visitors using IP addresses stored in the database.  I've posted the code along with a link to the statement about the "unique visitors" thing.

I don't think the point that IMC London we're storing IP's into it's website's database is contentious.  What all the conjecture is about is what happened to that data base. Any ideas?

>>>Why is it you have only posted on this thread? 

Where else is this being discussed?

>>>and posted malicious rumours at that.

Malicious rumours? yeah right rumours about a dude that built the Tories' webcameron?

Here's what your beloved Tories had to say about your friends who built webcameron.  Their

... friendly and experienced team, along with their creative approach to the brief and deep understanding of social media , made them an absolute joy to work with on this project.

Craig Elder
Digital Communications Manager, The Conservative Party.

mmmm nice 
I wonder where that "deep understanding of social media" came from?.


>>>> It seems strange to me 

What seems stranger to me is that you're attacking me with the same conjecture and speculation and malicious rumour, and don't give a toss about the webcameron issue.-

>>>>and personally I think your[sic]
>>>>1 a troll just trying to stir up shit or

What worse shit than webcameron and Tory Power? Yeah right.

>>>>2 you are connected with the uk imc or others and didnt like the fallout much and want some revenge or

Well I've already said I know and have spoken to some of the activists involved. Did anybody like the fallout much?  I'm more interested in truth and reconciliation than "revenge".

>>>>3 your just a conspiracy theory nutcase

Well do the Ruling Class conspire in a top down class war? Well yep, but to me that's a conspiracy fact, just look at what your mates the Tories are up to, slash and burn to collect enough loot for one last gamble on Chinese infrastructure or a new war in the ME, forced labour for profit led corporations, more repression, squatting illegal, need I go on ....  Nutcase? are you qualified as a psych?

>>>>Are you even in Brixton or London for that matter?

Never heard of London

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/welshisms.214418/

Heddwch.


----------



## andrewdroid (Nov 2, 2012)

So Zoltan I guess you have been 'in' the server and seen the list of IP addresses that IMC London has or even how it was configured. Development is very different to application there are multiple ways of applying any code on a server. Just because they have a record of the amount of hits does not mean that a list of IP addresses was kept. Part of being an IMC site is the fact is that IP addresses are NOT logged which I am dam sure was the case with IMC London. IMC UK always had a record of hits as does any IMC site but did not collect IP addresses. Thats only practical you want to know how many people are looking.

I know that several of the people involved in IMC London were instrumental in setting up IMC UK, founders if you will, part the Indy collective that ran the site for years  and that they would not have been party to anything breaching IMC guidelines.

As for webcameron Have you even considered that when you work for a company even if you are up the ladder you do not control that company (companys' policies are not made by the employees) and if told to work on something then you have to. Webcamaroon was a disaster and had no impact on the election as Ive been told by a few sources not connected with any of it, it served to take money away from the tories (not my mates) which in my view is not a bad thing. As someone else said some people have jobs and most jobs entail doing things that you dont like or want to do.

It seems to me you are not really interested in reconciliation at all else you wouldn't be spreading these sorts of disinfo with no proof. you said yourself you don't know any of these people personally, whereas I know many of them up (some over 10 years) some I dont get on with but would still trust them and certainly wouldn't spread propaganda like what you have and I refute all your accusations.


----------



## free spirit (Nov 2, 2012)

I'm sure there's a thread on here about IMC london using IP logging to supposedly expose security service agent provocateurs using the IMC feeds, which would seem to back up Zoltan's claims if I've remembered the thread right.


----------



## free spirit (Nov 2, 2012)

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/schnews-blows-the-cover-off-netcus-indymedia-postings.267946/

this is the thread, which shows they were at least temporarily monitoring certain IP addresses apparently for good reason, but if they were then it still would have opened them up to that data being used for other purposes when servers are impounded.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 2, 2012)

andrewdroid's exemplar of Plausible Deniability and the Nuremberg excuse.



andrewdroid said:


> So Zoltan I guess you have been 'in' the server and seen the list of IP addresses that IMC London has or even how it was configured.



The developers said there were >500,000 unique visits a day to London IMC during the G20 demos in April 2009, could the code report unique visits? yes the code had a module that could store IP addresses into the database, that IP data was then used by the code to report unique visits.  Earlier in the year the London IMC server located in Manchester was seized by plod, plod still have it. In the light of that seizure it was at the very least extremely dumb to add a module to a CMS designed specifically for activists that permanently stores the IP addresses of visitors on disk. Is the creator of webcameron and Hyperactive extremely dumb?, well no the creator of webcameron and Hyperactive is not extremely dumb, he's won several awards (Channel 4, Webby, BIMA, Young Entrepreneur of the Year) for his lack of dumbness. 



andrewdroid said:


> Development is very different to application there are multiple ways of applying any code on a server. Just because they have a record of the amount of hits does not mean that a list of IP addresses was kept.



They're not just hits are they? They are hits from "Unique Visitors" counted from IPs stored in the database. The code I have posted is the code as deployed during the London G20.



andrewdroid said:


> Part of being an IMC site is the fact is that IP addresses are NOT logged which I am dam sure was the case with IMC London.



Right so adding a module to the code that stores IP addresses into the database of a CMS designed for IMC's would seem to go against that policy huh? so why add an IP logging module?.  Just making an assertion by putting the word "not" in capitals does not counter the evidence. What the evidence shows i.e. the Hyperactive code as it was set up for the G20 along with the statement of the developers about "Unique Visitors" is that beyond a reasonable doubt or on the balance of probability your assertion is wrong. Otherwise you would have to concede that the developers are now known to be liars and that therefore we cannot trust anything they say.

Look here is the line of code that gets the IP from the environment variable 'REMOTE_ADDR' i.e. the visitors IP address.  If the visitor is using a proxy remote_ip gets an environment variable HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR that the server has tried to resolve for the proxy.  If the proxy is configured as it should be that would resolve into the IP address of the visitor.

remote_ip = env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] || env['REMOTE_ADDR']

and here the line of code that puts that IP address into the database, a new entry is created in the rail stats table. and the IP is stored.

RailStat.create("remote_ip" => 'remote_ip'.....

The code then reports Unique Visitors by querying the database to return a count of unique IP entires in the database. That's how the developers could say that they'd had >500,000 unique visitors a day during the G20 in London.

So given that as you rightly point out Indymedia has a policy of not fucking about with visitors IPs, what the fuck is this code doing in a CMS designed for those interested in radical dissent and who are prepared to risk foregoing what little liberty they have left in expressing that dissent?.



andrewdroid said:


> IMC UK always had a record of hits as does any IMC site but did not collect IP addresses.



IMC UK can monitor traffic as can any web site, those are not "Unique visits" the only way to get "unique visitor" stats is from the IP data of visitors. In the case of Hyperactive/London IMC this was done via the rail stats table in the data base and the code that read the IP data and counted the unique ones.  



andrewdroid said:


> Thats only practical you want to know how many people are looking.



Well you can get an idea of how many people are looking from the traffic on the site you can't get a number of unique visits without using IP data which is what Hyperactive did it used IP data stored in its database to count unique visits.  



andrewdroid said:


> I know that several of the people involved in IMC London were instrumental in setting up IMC UK, founders if you will, part the Indy collective that ran the site for years and that they would not have been party to anything breaching IMC guidelines.



So how come the "rail_stats" table got added to the code? They were "party to ... breaching IMC guidelines" there because the "rail_stats" module by definition breaches the IMC guidelines.



andrewdroid said:


> As for webcameron Have you even considered that when you work for a company even if you are up the ladder you do not control that company (companys' policies are not made by the employees) and if told to work on something then you have to. Webcamaroon was a disaster and had no impact on the election as Ive been told by a few sources not connected with any of it, it served to take money away from the tories (not my mates) which in my view is not a bad thing. As someone else said some people have jobs and most jobs entail doing things that you dont like or want to do.



The dude is a "Founding Director" he was giving the orders and sharing in the profits, you are repeating the Nuremberg excuse,  there is no evidence that the dude has redistributed any of the 6 figure sums purloined in the "Tory Blag" as one commenter called it, other than perhaps buying the odd beer for his fans and acolytes, he has not for example set up an ethical trust fund to produce income that would ensure that IM didn't have to worry about server costs any more.  If you as I think that we are currently involved in a rearguard against the class war perpetrated by the Ruling Class then the dude's actions are mercenary actions for the 'enemy'.  He could choose to do other than make a web site for the enemy.  Look at the results of dude's actions the Tories are in power and IM at least the Hyperactive wing of IM is in disarray.

Others the Founding Director dude has collaborated with WithersWorldWide Withers LLP, 
Withers LLP is a top 30 global law firm. They represent 25% of the names on the Times Rich List and lots of famous luxury brands
British Gas, Microsoft, British Heart Foundation, Promise Communities. 

What a lovely bunch.

As for "webcameron the disaster", then you'll have to take that up with Channel 4, the Webby (web oscar) judges, the Conservative Party and several other commentators who all think webcameron was a roaring success keeping Dave 'the Etonian' Cameron on the front pages and ahead of his New (Neo-Liberal) Labour rivals.

http://www.andybennett.net/2007/02/12/webcameron-wins-channel4-award/
http://www.andybennett.net/2007/04/10/webcameron-official-honoree-of-2007-webby-awards/
https://katiethorpe.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/the-interactivity-of-politics/



andrewdroid said:


> It seems to me you are not really interested in reconciliation at all else you wouldn't be spreading these sorts of disinfo with no proof.



I'm interested in both truth and reconciliation, I have not spread "disinfo",  I have supported any assertions I have made with evidence and clearly reported anything else as conjecture or rumour.



andrewdroid said:


> whereas I know many of them up (some over 10 years) some I dont get on with but would still trust them and certainly wouldn't spread propaganda like what you have and I refute all your accusations



Yes I understand that you are defending your friends, and that when trust gets exploited it is painful, I have seen this in the people I know that were involved, it quite often manifests itself as denial and anger. I am only referring to the dude that made webcameron and not everybody involved in the London collective. I have made no "accusations".  I'm just trying to find out WTF happened here, to do that involves a degree of conjecture, assuming the worst etc etc.


----------



## editor (Nov 2, 2012)

For the record, I'm finding this thread a mix of


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 2, 2012)

free spirit said:


> http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/schnews-blows-the-cover-off-netcus-indymedia-postings.267946/
> 
> this is the thread, which shows they were at least temporarily monitoring certain IP addresses apparently for good reason, but if they were then it still would have opened them up to that data being used for other purposes when servers are impounded.



This story was part of the politics of the IM split.  Dude was against publishing he blocked a proposal to publish, in the end someone "leaked" the story to Schnews so it was in public domain so not reporting the story was no longer an option. fekin anarchists eh? like trying to herd sheepdogs.  . 

UK IM uses a CMS called MIR not Hyperactive. These gateway202 and 303 posts were caught by an IP  filter set up after an admin had turned on the IP log and reported it was on,  they were alerted to the IP addresses by fitwatch.  The gateway 202/303 posts were mainly designed to demoralise and divide animal rights activism in the UK. 

When turning the IP log on MIR admins have to report it in the internal messaging system so everybody else knows it's on.  If the IP log has been used and not reported then the admin can have their access removed. The facility to monitor IPs in MIR uses memory if the plug is pulled on the server the IP data is lost. The only way to be nefarious with MIR IP logs, is to have admin access and copy and paste each batch of IP's into a text file.  MIR only logs the IP's of those posting comments or articles when the anti abuse measures are turned on and does not log visitors IPs unlike Hyperactive which in the way it was set up for G20 in London acted as an IP farm collecting half a million IPs a day.


----------



## free spirit (Nov 2, 2012)

editor said:


> For the record, I'm finding this thread a mix of


I concur.

I was never active in IM, though almost got involved at some point. Last time I had any serious involvement being in 2005 keeping their tent and the sat truck we'd found from somewhere for them juiced up throughout the G8 protest camp.

Cracking concept, but as with anything that involves an serious level of personal commitment over a period of many years without pay, it seems that internal politics kick and the energy and enthusiasm wains....


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 2, 2012)

free spirit said:


> .... any serious involvement being in 2005 keeping their tent and the sat truck we'd found from somewhere for them juiced up throughout the G8 protest camp.



They hired the sat truck themselves.

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-g8-2005/2005-March/0331-i1.html


----------



## free spirit (Nov 2, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> They hired the sat truck themselves.
> 
> http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-g8-2005/2005-March/0331-i1.html


fair enough - that should really have read 'that had been found from somewhere' as I wasn't meaning to claim the credit for it, though in a lot of ways I really viewed indymedia (at least those running the tent) and dissent as being pretty much joined at the hip when it came to the G8 planning.


----------



## andrewdroid (Nov 11, 2012)

editor said:


> For the record, I'm finding this thread a mix of


me too
wanna go for a coffee in brixton Zoltan and discuss this ?


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

editor said:


> For the record, I'm finding this thread a mix of



Sorry for the technical nature of my posts.

What was the point of my posts?

Well for anyone that's interested......

As I have mentioned I have been observing the bust up of IM from around 2008-2009. It is easy to cite various political differences and argue that the left are always falling out over seemingly, when put into the context of the top down class war that has been waged by the ruling class ever since History began, i.e. since the human species began producing surpluses that needed to be redistributed (fairly) trivial differences.

As far as I can see the problems for IM began when a group of "global IM activists" (what I mean is people who can afford to travel the world, these people might be well meaning, but due to their obvious wealth they are as far removed often from the 'grass roots' as it is possible to be e.g. the bloke that set up the original Seattle IMC is now a very well paid lawyer in the US) introduced a process to vet local groups wanting to set up an IMC called "New IMC".  Passing 'New IMC' which was basically a bureaucratic form filling exercise gave you IMC "status".  Now for a supposedly "non hierarchic"  organisation what the introduction of this global bureaucratic process meant was that those "global activists" involved in New IMC were in a position to politically control global IMC processes.  This was an inherent weakness in the organisation, that is a small group was allowed and was able to control the global process and bypass local groups' autonomy or local groups' autonomy was subordinated under the "global process".  For a "non-hierarchic" organisation this was at least unhealthy.

Again as I've mentioned above what is evident from reading the publicly archived global mail lists as well as the local IMC lists is  that the very small number of people that were involved at the "global level" were actively closing down IMCs that they deemed to be "inactive" and intervening in local disputes, which usually ended in splits.

Whether or not this global group were actively engaged in a strategy to disrupt IM is open for conjecture, but the results of their interventions were usually disruptive and the UK split is typical. The essence of their intervention was always a top down (global), we know best attitude often found in privately educated people, a kind of "we're in charge" arrogance that is often found in my experience in dissident groups, the professionalisation of dissent, all that "hand waving" consensus stuff often "facilitated" by oxbridge type students is to me just a way of controlling things, but I digress.

So what I've learned is that despite an ideology of non-hierarchy, the human species is naturally hierarchical,  what we've lost is the freedom to hold the "leadership" to account.  In the UK split it is clear that despite claims by the "leadership" that consensus had been reached there was at least a third of the UK network that dissented.  The "leadership's" solution was to create an "outgroup" of the dissenters. The "outgroup" were activists who basically couldn't be arsed with the bureaucratic New IMC process as many of them had involved in the UK network from the start and who didn't see the need to fix something that wasn't broken.  From what I've read about the way Native Americans did consensus what should have happened is that those that were dissatisfied with what was going on and who couldn't get consensus to change things should then have moved on with a new project with the assistance of those who were happy to continue running the old one.  What happened here though was an attempt to push the "outgroup" out.

So the way this should have been resolved was a new IM UK aggregating site should have been set up on its own indymedia domain and the old UK site which was the de facto aggregator of UK news,  would point to the new project site, the new aggregator would then either grow naturally off the back of traffic re directed from the UK site or not, that solution would have allowed a natural growth and transition to the new from the old without disruption to site users.  This solution is still possible and could bring the UK network back together which may or may not make it stronger.  What is clear is that the lack of care shown by the "leadership" for those who followed the "leadership" down the Hyperactive route has meant they are left abandoned with no technical support for their CMS, their CMS is no longer "Open Source".  This is an abrogation of responsibility by the "leadership", they were responsible for pushing for change, but are not accountable as they have "moved on".  To me that's what really sucks about this.  It smacks of the arrogance of the ruling class.

ps andrewdroid I've already said I'm not in Brixton (I'm not the only one that posts here that isn't from Brixton) so I can't discuss this over coffee in Brixton with you 
You can PM me if you want to discuss this off thread if you like.

Cheers
Zoltan


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

Iron Law of Oligarchy strikes again.


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Nov 12, 2012)

More like the iron law of why consensus and networks don't scale upwards past a certain fairly low and local level.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> Iron Law of Oligarchy strikes again.



Well the way IM was set-up was in response to the "iron law",  the iron law was discovered (by someone who went on to be a fan boy of Mussolini) in the 1910's when things like the 'democratising' internet didn't exist.  IM was supposed to break the Iron Law so you'd think that the IM "globalists" would know that, yet their actions would suggest that they were ignorant of the iron law either wilfully or otherwise.  Where the people involved at the centre of IM ignorant of the Iron Law? seems it should be unlikely.



Spanky Longhorn said:


> More like the iron law of why consensus and networks don't scale upwards past a certain fairly low and local level.



Well as I tried to explain above there was a consensus based solution even if that solution involved an admission that consensus was unachievable.  What's supposed to happen (at least the way I see consensus decision making) is a new project is set up with the good will and support of the old project.  So it was possible to find a solution that did not end in the situation as it stands now i.e. a divided network, it didn't have to end that way, it was the insistence by the "leadership" that the new project could only prosper if the old project was killed off. This position went against the principles of consensus when no consensus can be reached.  Again it was surprising that the "leadership" was ignorant of these principles and ways of working.


----------



## Spanky Longhorn (Nov 12, 2012)

You have a total failiure to understand consensus there.

Consensus decision making outside of a tiny affinity group of five mates is all about a well organised and well resourced minority forcing a wider group to go along with it's decisions whether they want to or not.

Which is not a bad thing if said minority have good ideas, the problem in your case is that they had shit ideas.


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> IM was supposed to break the Iron Law...


 
But it's an Iron Law! You can't just break it! 

I remember thinking this when Occupy was going on. Sure you had these general assemblies, but who's actually setting the agenda for discussion? Who's actually in control of the twitter account and facebook and means of communication? What are the oligarchical tendencies in this new group? They're probably more discrete in this type of organisation than a social democratic or leninist party, but they'll be there.

There's a massive fetish for horizontal, networked, rhizomatic, etc whatever you wanna call it, type of organising but I dont' see much criticial evaluation of it, or it's flaws, it's just an article of faith for a lot of people that this stuff is inherently ace and democratic. I don't think it is though, i think it's well open for abuse. That why Michels, who may have been an anarcho-syndicalist at the time he wrote Iron Law, but he ended up dirty fascist after losing faith in working class self-organisation, is very imporant. Even with the internet and so on, I think this stuff is going come back again and again. I don't think the internet is likely to break the Iron Law, just move the dynamic to a different arena.


----------



## butchersapron (Nov 12, 2012)

He wasn't an anarcho-syndicalist


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> He wasn't an anarcho-syndicalist


 
You sure about that? I'm perfectly prepared to be wrong but he was certainly on the left back when he was younger?

What was he then? Or had he given up on the left before he wrote Political Parties?


----------



## Citizen66 (Nov 12, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> Sorry for the technical nature of my posts.
> 
> What was the point of my posts?
> 
> ...



TL;DR


----------



## butchersapron (Nov 12, 2012)

He was an intellectual dilettante who hung around with the left. Being on the left doesn't make him an anarcho-syndicalist - and it's actually quite important to understand this given the long history of anarchism being attack as inherently anti-organisation.

(Something that yourself have often slipped into in recent weeks - you need to look at things like the The Tyranny of Structurelessness and other critiques of anti-organisationalism that have come from _within_ anarchism before you can point so assuredly to anarchisms failures to deal with such currents)


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

butchersapron said:


> He was an intellectual dilettante who hung around with the left.


 
I like the sound of that!



butchersapron said:


> Being on the left doesn't make him an anarcho-syndicalist - and it's actually quite important to understand this given the long history of anarchism being attack as inherently anti-organisation.
> 
> (Something that yourself have often slipped into in recent weeks - you need to look at things like the The Tyranny of Structurelessness and other critiques of anti-organisationalism that have come from _within_ anarchism before you can point so assuredly to anarchisms failures to deal with such currents)


 
I only mentioned his anarcho-syndicalism beacuse that's what I assumed he was. I think the introduction to the copy of Politcal Parties I had described him in those terms. And I think he himself identified as an anarcho-syndicalist for much of his. Whether in your opinion he was a _real_ anarcho-syndicalist or a poser of some kind is bye the bye. I wasn't even making a point about anarcho-syndicalism as such but Michels himself going from left to right.

For what it's worth here's what wiki said about him



> "He was a student of Max Weber, a friend and disciple of Werner Sombart and Achille Loria. Politically, he moved from the Social Democratic Party of Germany to the Italian Socialist Party, adhering to the Italian revolutionary syndicalist wing and later to Italian Fascism, which he saw as a more democratic form of socialism."


 
Anyway I'm not really attacking Anarchism as being anti-organisational, at least not consciously. You only have to read Rocker or Kropotkin to see the sort of society they were aiming for seemed pretty regimented and and disciplined. If anything it's the opposite, it's a super-organised society, where literally every person has some kind of role to play. Now to pre-empt you asking me to cite references to justify that, that's just a general impression I got from reading those guys back when I was childishly infatuated with Anarchist theory in my late teens, so I don't have anything specific to hand.

The Tyranny of Structureless thing looks good, and at least you've mentioned something that's absolutely correct; most of the critical things I've said about anarchism can be found within the anarchist canon. But with Anarchism it's really difficult to make a generalised criticism coz it's really quite diverse, there's all sorts of mad tendencies and positions that I'm only just getting to know. So I'm sure anything I ever say that's critical of Anarchism will have been said before by someone within that movement,

Oh yeah and another thing, I know better than to assume anarchism is just anti-organisation, but sadly i've met a disturbing number of self-identified anarchists, general my age or younger, who really do think anarchism is anti-organisational nihilism. I mean they're wrong, but y'know it won't stop them calling themselves anarchists. For a lot of these people anarchism is a political theory based on sniffing ket and squatting in houses, with only lip-service to working class self organisation. That's a real shame too.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Spanky Longhorn said:


> You have a total failiure to understand consensus there.
> 
> Consensus decision making outside of a tiny affinity group of five mates is all about a well organised and well resourced minority forcing a wider group to go along with it's decisions whether they want to or not.
> 
> Which is not a bad thing if said minority have good ideas, the problem in your case is that they had shit ideas.




 Cynic

I'm convinced some of them thought you could socially engineer a revolution Eddy Bernay's styleee.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> But it's an Iron Law! You can't just break it!
> 
> I remember thinking this when Occupy was going on. Sure you had these general assemblies, but who's actually setting the agenda for discussion? Who's actually in control of the twitter account and facebook and means of communication? What are the oligarchical tendencies in this new group? They're probably more discrete in this type of organisation than a social democratic or leninist party, but they'll be there.
> 
> There's a massive fetish for horizontal, networked, rhizomatic, etc whatever you wanna call it, type of organising but I dont' see much criticial evaluation of it, or it's flaws, it's just an article of faith for a lot of people that this stuff is inherently ace and democratic. I don't think it is though, i think it's well open for abuse. That why Michels, who may have been an anarcho-syndicalist at the time he wrote Iron Law, but he ended up dirty fascist after losing faith in working class self-organisation, is very imporant. Even with the internet and so on, I think this stuff is going come back again and again. I don't think the internet is likely to break the Iron Law, just move the dynamic to a different arena.



I guess you have to try to break the Iron Law otherwise what? join the Fash?..... 

Yes I concur, and noticed similar things in my local Occupy group.  I think you have to acknowledge the fact that we are a social primate and like a lot of other social primates Humans are naturally hierarchical.  So just having an ideology that demands non-hierarchy isn't enough it is just a fetish as you say.

Check out these dudes for example
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024144314.htm

They have "revolutions" and show Machiavellian "intelligence"


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> Yes I concur, and noticed similar things in my local Occupy group. I think you have to acknowledge the fact that we are a social primate and like a lot of other social primates Humans are naturally hierarchical. So just having an ideology that demands non-hierarchy isn't enough it is just a fetish as you say.
> 
> Check out these dudes for example
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024144314.htm
> ...


 
Disagree totally with that which is underlined, I don't think human society and civilisation "naturally" pre-determined to be anything. Human nature is infinitely malleable, and crude evolutionary determinism doesn't change that.

My gripe is that in honesty I dont' have a problem with authority per se, I've got a problem with arbitrary authority that's undemocratic and doesn't rely on any form of consent. I can reluctantly accept the need for a legitimate form of authority in society, at least for now. I do cling onto some small hope that we might get to a point in society where it's politically possible to do away with the state in it's entireity and live in perfect harmony, with no relations of heirachy or dominance or authority of any complexion, but that's a really massive change in human civilisation, I can't see that happening in my lifetime.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> Disagree totally with that which is underlined, I don't think human society and civilisation "naturally" pre-determined to be anything. Human nature is infinitely malleable, and crude evolutionary determinism doesn't change that.


 
That's not what I was getting at. You have to acknowledge that you cannot separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past, that's not the same as saying everything is naturally evolutionary determined, human nature is malleable for sure. One simple illustration is the way we shape our open spaces like the park I walk my dog in. It is ideal "hunting" territory with tree and brush cover to run and hide in if a bigger predator shows up or to watch the wide open savannah where the grazers would have grazed waiting to ambush. The ruling class have been studying humanity for a long time, Eddy Bernays based his work on the work of his uncle, S Freud. It's why fear is such an effective mechanism for control. Maslows hierarchy of needs, Adorno, Altemeyer, Stanley Milgram etc etc.


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.

And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.

There's a lot of really complicated issues rising up here that I'm not so sure I know a great deal about so it's probably best I say nowt and defer to those with a better understanding of the historical issues you're on about.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.
> 
> And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.
> 
> There's a lot of really complicated issues rising up here that I'm not so sure I know a great deal about so it's probably best I say nowt and defer to those with a better understanding of the historical issues you're on about.



Well my take on it is this, throughout history the ruling class have developed "technologies" to deal with the inevitable social unrest that an uneven distribution of the commons will lead to.  We see them every where as social institutions like "democracy" or the legal system, or taxation or religion or dynasties, they're all ways for the ruling class to keep a bigger share of the commons, if you have a gripe then vote for x, or take it up with the legal system through the Common Law or the "Divine Right of Kings" etc.  They're all predicated on fairness,  fairness is important to social cohesion a lack of fairness leads to social unrest, things have to be seen to be fair, this is "natural" justice or social justice, we know when we're being fleeced, lied to and generally shat upon you don't need to be a Marxist or have read Bakunin to know that.  All of these institutions were invented by a ruling class in order to give an impression of fairness to the way the commons are distributed this is not a naturally occurring hierarchy these are the systems put in place by the ruling class, they can't be used to gain a fairer share of the commons they're all in place to ensure the continued unfair distribution.

Anyway we're heading way off topic so I'll shut the feck up too


----------



## Delroy Booth (Nov 12, 2012)

Zoltan K. said:


> I guess you have to try to break the Iron Law otherwise what? join the Fash?.....


 
Just on this topic, you can't really get around it entierly, but you can mitigate against it. Democratically elected full-timers, who can be recalled, would be a good start. Then open access to all means of communication to anyone in the party, instead of having a central committee who run a paper who control the flow of information to the membership. There's a few other idea's I've come accross. The German Green Party, before they went to the right, had a lot of stuff that was specifically meant to break the Iron Law of oligarchy and I remember reading an academic article on historical attempts in the US Labour movement to get around it too.


----------



## Zoltan K. (Nov 12, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> Just on this topic, you can't really get around it entierly, but you can mitigate against it. Democratically elected full-timers, who can be recalled, would be a good start. Then open access to all means of communication to anyone in the party, instead of having a central committee who run a paper who control the flow of information to the membership. There's a few other idea's I've come accross. The German Green Party, before they went to the right, had a lot of stuff that was specifically meant to break the Iron Law of oligarchy and I remember reading an academic article on historical attempts in the US Labour movement to get around it too.



That's what's strange with what's happened with the UK Indymedia network looking at the way it was set up would suggest a very clear attempt to mitigate against the Iron Law  IMC London were the first to break with the openness and transparency thing, they closed their mailing list and made it private and the "Iron Law" began to have its "ferric" effect.  They just got a bit rusty mebe


----------



## co-op (Nov 13, 2012)

Delroy Booth said:


> Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.
> 
> And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.


 
It's possible to believe that we are hard-wired to desire status (there's some pretty good evidence for this imo) but that the way that we gain status is socially determined. So the form that "status" takes can be (from a left pov) be good or bad. A good form of status = being widely respected and loved for your generosity, bad form = pretty obvious, most of modern society's badges of success really.

In terms of whether hierarchy is "natural" (I know this is a minefield of a subject) but evolutionary psychologists always try and analyse evolved behaviours in terms of the "EEA" the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation i.e the form of society we were living in when the later parts of our brain evolved and that is your basic hunter-gatherer group 100 - 200 people. For a lot of reasons, mainly the absence of systemic organised surpluses, hierarchies in HG groups are very flat and mainly based on age which gives greater knowledge and experience - of everything - but principally of the group and how to organise it. So in general the idea of human hierarchies as "natural" is weak, there may be some evolved tendency but we basically evolved our modern brains in the absence of hierarchy or - at worst - in very flat ones. What seems much more deeply evolved and ingrained is resistance to being subjected to a degraded position within a hierarchy - in the EEA this would have meant you were regarded as an outcast and it would have been close to a death sentence and would certainly have affected your chances of breeding - especially if you were a man. I've seen right wing EPs (on one occasion unknowingly so) argue that this resistance to degradation is a "relic behaviour" that really needs to be got rid of to allow us to live more successfully in the modern world.

But like I said, evolutionary psychology's a minefield.


----------

