Police threaten 'may day' web hosts

[Paul Mobbs]

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Police Threaten Mayday Web Hosts



The MET police have been threatening to raid website hosts who have tried to 
host the website for this years "May Day Festival of Alternatives".

The content of what should be available at www.ourmayday.org.uk is 
information about the 2002 'May Day Festival of Alternatives'. Running from 
16th April - May 6th, the programme of events mostly includes music 
performances, film screenings, and workshops on a variety of issues and diy 
skill sharing, as well as ideas for protests on May 1st itself.

The website should have 'gone live' last month, however at least 3 different 
website hosts who agreed to host the site have been quickly approached by 
police, when the domain name 'ourmayday.org.uk' has been pointed at their 
servers.

MET Police have either contacted the hosts by phone or in person, demanding 
to know all of the personal details of the people behind the 'ourmayday' 
website. The MET Police have also told the hosts they must remove the site 
(or not to host it) or be faced with a police raid during which their web 
servers would be seized. The Police have not said under what legislation they 
are making these demands and threats. As a result of the police threats the 
webhosts have so far declined to host the website.

Recently the website was temporarily hosted on a German website, but soon 
after the whole server which also hosts many other websites 'went down' and 
has not been restored. At this time it is not known if this is connected to 
British police activity. Appeals have now been made for other servers to host 
the website. 


NB:

Text on the website and on May Day leaflets says:

"This Mayday we are responding to the frequently asked question 'What are you 
for? What do you actually want?' We aim to show our goals of creating a 
society based on solidarity, autonomy and co-operation - in practice. We want 
to show that there is a future beyond capitalism, wage-labour and the state;"

"The Festival will consist of around 10 days of community-based events aiming 
at celebration, subversion and DIY liberation; and to demonstrate the 
diversity of our movement, with the intention of building long-range 
sustained alternatives."

"The Mayday Festival of Alternatives is inspired by a month of dissident 
art/culture events in France, held last year in response to the irrelevance 
and media saturation of the General Election 2001."

Planned workshops throughout the Festival of Alternatives include:
*Allotments *Wildlife garden projects *Asylum *Biodiversity and food security 
*Clothes making *Desktop publishing *Feminist History *Film Showings 
*Flamenco *Gender *GM monoculture *Shiatsu *Journalism *Sweatshop labour 
*Nuclear issues *Climate Change *Social Centres *Squatting *Plumbing *Tree 
climbing *What is Anarchism? *Yoga

NB Recent public meetings about the Festival have been subject to police 
surveillance with people attending being filmed and photographed.


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"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for
this party nor against the other but we are for justice and mercy and
truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation,
and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity
with God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burroughs, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')


Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations,
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864

email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey.html
public key - http://www.fraw.org.uk/keylist.html

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