Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC

Previously, we had attempted to resolve internal conflicts among group members by engaging in formal mediation, which ultimately resulted in an official split of the group into two and a list of specific actions upon which each side agreed. This letter is being sent out only after these agreements have not been respected by the new SF IMC collective that has split from us.

As many of you know, the SF Bay Area IMC had been using both
sf.indymedia.org and indybay.org since its inception. The SF Bay Area IMC website had been hosted on a linefeed.org server which was operated by the tech members of our collective.

Conflict

Our IMC has now split into two groups. When a few of the tech members began to have personal problems with other members of the collective, these tech members demanded a split of the collective. The resulting dynamics within the group continued to worsen. It created an environment that made it difficult to continue working together and also discouraged potential new people from joining the collective.
Maybe the whole purpose of your sites are keeping people away?

While most members of the collective opposed any kind of split, the aforementioned tech members insisted that they would split anyway, because they wanted to and because they could.

The tech members who wanted the split also had convinced the rest of the group to agree to move the site to the linefeed.org server. They claimed that this was merely a technical issue which would enable the site to run faster.
Sounds reasonable to me.

The members of the splitting group also began making viscious and false accusations about other members of the collective. This even went as far as accusing some members of being security risks and/or police informants.
Pick one. Security risk or police informant. You can’t be both.

The splitting group began to take control of the linefeed.org server that the SF Bay Area IMC website had been hosted on by kicking off all other IMC members from access to it. At the same time, they also cut off access to other local activist websites (such as the Food Not Bombs News website, liberationradio.net and passionbomb.com) that were being hosted on their linefeed.org server. These other websites were affiliated, to greater or lesser degrees, with members of SF Bay Area IMC with whom the splitting group members were in conflict.
There is a new (actually rather old) thing out called mirroring. Ever hear of it? Aaron over at Internet Haganah went from no mirror to 14 inside of three weeks and has never looked back since.

When it was clear that this internal conflict had reached a stalemate, a neutral professional mediator was hired to conduct a series of mediation meetings.
Right, true to their views, they bring in the lawyers.

The continuation of the internal crisis was effectively preventing the group from doing their work and was discouraging new people from wanting to join the group. Most collective members were fed up with having to deal with this conflict. As a result, during the mediation process, the rest of the group reluctantly agreed to split the group and further conceded to the splitting group’s demand to give up the sf.indymedia.org domain to them. Also part of the mediation agreement, the rest of the group was to keep indybay.org (which at the time still pointed to sf.indymedia.org) and also to create a new domain of
sfbay.indymedia.org. This new domain was to be used along with indybay.org once indybay.org was handed over from the splitting group.

The mediation agreement was officially finalized on November 13th, 2003. Since that time, members of the new sf.indymedia group have backtracked on their agreement in multiple ways. The indybay.org DNS was supposed to have been handed over by the Monday following the final mediation meeting, November 17th. But this did not occur until over a month later, in mid-December. And although this "handing over" has resulted in indybay.org now pointing to the correct site, they continue to refuse to hand over the indybay.org domain ownership, which they still control. Also, immediately after the mediation, they locked out the group that was now sfbay.indymedia.org (indybay.org) from access to sf.indymedia.org. In combination, these actions left the rest of the group without a website for over a month.
Damn them! Nothing to laugh at for a whole month!

During this period, the new sf.indymedia group has been hiding posts of news stories to the sf.indymedia.org newswire (such as an announcement about a live streaming coverage of the recent mayoral election by Enemy Combatant Radio) made by members of the indybay.org group, effectively censoring the indybay.org group.
What goes around comes around, I guess.

The new sf.indymedia group has also refused to place on their website a link with an explanation about the split, as both groups agreed to do as part of the mediation agreement. Nevertheless, the indybay.org group put up the explanation and link immediately after the site was up, after the DNS switch. Also, members of the new sf.indymedia group have been engaging in tactics of doublespeak by accusing members of indybay.org of precisely the kinds of acts that they themselves have been responsible for, such as lying, manipulating, and threatening.
Betcha both sides in fact have been doing this.

In sf.indymedia.org’s recent application for status as a new imc that they submitted to the New IMC Working Group, they stated that their "supporting groups were too numerous to mention." While we didn’t speak up then, since we had agreed in good faith during mediation not to stop their new IMC process, we now feel, in light of their actions, that they should be asked why they failed to list those groups and to show who really aligns with them. As far as we know, local activists and groups and members of other IMCs who are finding out about the split do not support them nor their actions.
Uh oh. They are really talking about splitting activist alliances. Like splitting garbage.

List of violations of the mediation agreement by the new
sf.indymedia.org group:

1. The sf.indymedia.org group has refused to put up a blurb and links about the split as agreed to during mediation.

2. idymedia.org group failed to switch the DNS for indybay.org until over a month after the mediation agreement.
Moot

3. Before the indybay.org DNS was eventually switched over, a member of sf.indymedia.org pointed indybay.org to a non-existent IP address, causing many people to stop using indybay.org.

3. Immediately after the mediation was over, a member of sf.indymedia.org withdrew half of the money from the imc checking account, and then refused to negotiate the price for stickers and t-shirts advertising the sf.indymedia.org web site address. According to the agreement, the groups would split the money in the bank account after sfbay was reimbursed for the mutually agreed upon price for the stickers and t-shirts, and sf.indymedia was reimbursed for pieces of equipment that sfbay wanted to purchase.
Soo, who splits the crack you all use?

4. The sf.indymedia.org group has deleted the SF-IMC email list and the Enemy Combatant Radio (ECR) email list without warning, before anyone had the chance to back up three and a half years of work and contacts contained in the lists’ archives.
Holy Hell. No backups? ARe you kidding me. In the heart of high tech America, no one thinks to make backups?

5. The sf.indymedia.org group has gone against the agreement by
redirecting aliases to their new email addresses.

List of actions by the new sf.indymedia.org group that violates the indymedia Principles of Unity

1. Members of the linefeed.org server (which now hosts
sf.indymedia.org, other IMCs and activist websites) have sabotaged local activist websites hosted by them that were connected to indybay.org.

2. The sf.indymedia.org group has been repeatedly hiding and deleting legitimate posts to their newswire by local activists whom they see as being connected to indybay.org.
WHat goes around comes around.

The end result of all of this is that techies with positions of power, and a personal vendetta within an IMC collective, have effectively hijacked complete control of the website from the rest of the collective.
Remember that word, hijack, socialists.

We believe that the behaviors displayed by the members of the new sf.indymedia group/linefeed.org are offensive and unacceptable, and that they have abused their powers as tech people within the IMC network to manipulate and bully others to get their way.

Proposed Resolution

We, the undersigned, request the following from the global tech working group and other IMCs in the network:

1. The ownership of the indybay.org domain should be handed over to the current members of indybay.org immediately, and

2. sf.indymedia.org should immediately put up texts and links about the split on their website as they should have already done as part of the agreement.

If both of the above requests are not met immediately, then we ask that:

1. The new sf.indymedia.org’s status as an IMC should be revoked, and

2. The current members of the new sf.indymedia.org should be denied access and control to the sf.indymedia.org domain, and

3. in the event that the new sf.indymedia.org group should lose control of their domain, that it be handed over to the current members of indybay.org instead of being destroyed, since it is an established community resource, and

4. the money that paid for the mediation should be refunded to the current members of indybay.org.

We also request that all IMC websites update their links to the San Francisco Bay Area as http://www.indybay.org.

We are hereby challenging the legitimacy of the new sf.indymedia.org group for violating its own Principles of Unity by their abusive and intimidating behaviors.
Right, they reserve that behavior for conservatives

We want to stress that we believe this is an urgent, critical matter that is in the interest of the entire Indymedia network. What has happened here with the SF Bay Area IMC seems to be quite unprecedented within the history of the IMC Network, and we hope that we can depend on the support from all IMCers to help resolve this conflict and maintain accountability within the indymedia network.
Actually I believe that this will happen to all groups who subscribe to socilaist ideology. You all are just the first.

In solidarity,

Sarah Olsen - San Francisco Bay Area IMC, SF Liberation Radio
Lisa Sousa - San Francisco Bay Area IMC, AK Press
Mark Burdett - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Pauline - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Sunny - Enemy Combatant Radio, San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Zachary Ogren - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Wayne Wong - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Peter Maiden - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Karen Martin - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Jino Choi - Revolutionary Anti-authoritarians of Color, SF Bay Area IMC
A. Mark Liiv - Whispered Media
Ali
Dan Mattson - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Pod - Enemy Combatant Radio, Whispered Media
Kevin Keating
Matt Fitt - San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Jeff Taylor - Whispered Media
Lani Riccobuono - Enemy Combatant Radio, San Francisco Bay Area IMC
Lauren A. - San Francisco Bay Area IMC

Gen. Wesley Clark....is more appalling than most people know, I think: utterly scoundrelly on the stump. We think of Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley Braun as the fringe candidates. But have you gotten a strong whiff of Wes Clark? Pretty fringy, actually.

The general has told us, "I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in occupying countries to extract their natural resources. I think you buy them on the world market." Because, as you all know, the United States is in Iraq to extract their oil, and not buy it on the world market. You did know that, didn’t you? Haven’t you read your Noam Chomsky, or the speeches of Wesley Clark?

Clark is almost never "credited" with being as flaky and offensive as he is. He repeatedly charges President Bush with personal culpability in the death of 3,000 people on September 11. He completely exonerates the Clinton administration, saying that it had no time to do anything about al Qaeda (seriously). He claims that the Iraq war was a great diversion from our alleged failures against al Qaeda, and that this diversion was the trick of "neocons."

Check out Clark: "I suspect [Bush’s] advisers said, ’Now, Mr. President, you know, there’s no guarantee we could ever get [bin Laden]. You know, it’s, you know, you ought to go somewhere, you know, go somewhere easy, do something easy like taking care of Saddam Hussein, and he’s probably connected . . .’"

Wait a second: Saddam was supposed to be easy? What happened to quagmire? But that’s another point altogether.

I give you some more Clark, from just the other day, with Chris Matthews: "Ultimately, all of this was passed through a political filter. Karl Rove — he passed judgment on it. He even sent out, apparently, a memo back in early 2002, saying ’George W. Bush is going to run on his war record.’" Asked whether the president was spilling American blood for electoral advantage, Clark answered, "I can’t say that. I can’t prove it."

"I can’t prove it"? Whatever kind of campaign Clark is running, it is not honorable, in my view. And, by the way, why should a senseless war be popular — give a president electoral advantage, instead of disadvantage?

In his few months as a candidate, Clark has become famous, or infamous, for his stunning about-faces. Examples abound. For instance, he once praised Bush and his national-security team in lavish terms. When Bush tabbed Donald Rumsfeld to be SecDef, Clark said, "I think it’s an inspired choice. He’s got great experience. He’s got great international stature. He knows the issues." Etc. But as a candidate, Clark pronounced Rumsfeld a horrible choice. Why? Because the secretary is not "up to speed on the way the world has changed since the end of the Cold War."

That’s a funny criticism to make, given that Rumsfeld has been in the forefront of military reform (whether he is correct in his views or not — and I think he is). Usually he’s scored for going too fast or too incautiously — for upsetting existing Pentagon structures. What’s more, Rumsfeld favors a radically different approach to terror and its state sponsors — different from the policies and attitudes of decades. In this, he is at one with Bush. Those two are faulted for being all too "up to speed on the way the world has changed" since the Cold War!

For good measure, Clark maintained that Rumsfeld "had to leak his own memo." This refers to the celebrated memorandum in which the secretary challenged his lieutenants on war strategy. When asked how he knew that the author himself had leaked the memo — which would have been monumentally uncharacteristic — Clark replied, "Well, that’s what the rumor is, and it’s been talked about on the Sunday talk shows."

Great.

Once upon a time, General Clark was a great fan and advocate of preemptive defense (as I explain in the magazine piece). But, boy, has he changed his tune, as a candidate. He admonished the Dem leadership in Congress: "Let’s see you take apart that doctrine of preemption now! I don’t think we can wait until November of 2004 to change the administration on this threat. We’re marching into another military campaign in the Middle East. We need to stop it."

Hang on — what does that last part mean? "Another military campaign" that "we need to stop"? Ah, that’s a further piece of Clarkian darkness. The general has spoken of a secret list — drawn up by "neocons," of course — spelling out countries to be invaded. As our careful and honorable general says, "You only have to listen to the gossip around Washington and to hear what the neoconservatives are saying, and you will get a flavor of this."

In September ’02 — when Clark was in what seemed like support-the-war mode — he said the following about Saddam Hussein: "He is not only malevolent and violent, but also unpredictable. He retains his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities." As a candidate, a year later, he said, "What I was calling for at the time, to justify the urgency the president felt, was a smoking gun."

But preemptive action is in conflict with a smoking gun. The whole idea — as Clark once grasped and articulated — is that you strike before your enemy’s gun goes off.

It should shock no one that a general (or a presidential contender) is a bit vain. But General Clark seems to sort of abuse the privilege. There’s stuff like, "If I’d been president, I would have had Osama bin Laden by this time." And his arrogance is clumsy. For example, in a television interview, when he was acknowledging a previous "bobble," he said, "I don’t want to give any excuses for this. A Rhodes scholar is not ever supposed to make a mistake." Uh, did you know he was a Rhodes scholar? Now you do!

In my opinion, the worst thing Clark has done is accuse President Bush of dishonoring — yes, you heard that right — dishonoring fallen American soldiers. Said Clark, "[The administration] is trying to dishonor the very Americans who are over there serving and fighting and dying by not letting us welcome the remains back home."

Now, this refers to the fact that the administration is continuing a 14-year-old policy of not permitting media coverage at Dover Air Base, when soldiers’ coffins arrive from abroad. You may disagree with this policy, but there are reasons for it, and no one — least of all the President of the United States — is "trying to dishonor" our dead. And no American is prohibited from "welcoming the remains back home." People in cities, towns, and hamlets all across the country have. Families can decide for themselves whether they want TV cameras graveside. I imagine some do, some don’t.

Clark has also said, "We’ve got a president who will go halfway around the world for a photo opportunity [this presumably refers to Bush’s visit with the troops at Thanksgiving] but won’t go halfway across town for a funeral for an American serviceman." Also: "We have an American president who visits the families of bereaved Britons [while in England] and won’t visit our own families in this country." Bush has met with families privately — but he refuses to make a show of it, respecting the gravity of our situation, and his duties as commander-in-chief.

Look: Even if you think George W. Bush is dead wrong about the War on Terror, and about Iraq in particular, you should know that his motives are sincere — and that he has the deepest respect for the men and women who serve. Anyone awake must see that. It takes a real ignoramus or creep to miss it. And Wesley Clark gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I mind it less from Dennis Kucinich, or from some campus paranoid and blowhard. But from a decorated general like Clark — very hard to take. He might have brought sobriety, clear-headedness, and honor to the Democratic race. He did not. We already had a Kucinich — or several. Who needed Clark?/BLOCKQUOTE>