Talk:S11 (protest)

message: From my talk page:
:Oh yeah, s11 was an anti-globalisation group that were one of the major suspects for the twin towers bombing.  That was why they disbanded.  Their web site was http://www.s11.org/.  Not only is that web site permanently de-listed, but you cannot look at archives.  All you can do to find out who they were is to look up greenie/communist sites.  They were an Australian-based group (hence more well known in Australia than the rest of the world).  Slashdot wrote an article on them on September 12, 2001, and as far as I know, they were all either arrested or killed by people who thought that they were involved, and all evidence that they had ever existed was destroyed by early 2002.  They used to be called M1 apparently.  The reason why they were called s11 was because their major protest was always held on September 11th.  On September 11, 2000, they protested at the World Trade Center in New York, and were labelled by the US government as terrorists.  Their effort for September 11, 2001, however, was in China.  Pretty massive connections though, and people who know about them think that they are a very valid suspect for the Twin Towers bombing.  Biggest problem though is why on earth would they want to attack the Pentagon? Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 00:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems this "s11" group may have stumbled onto the September 11th, and other, dates as having some sort of meaning to the powers that be...? What other major events in history have happened on September 11th? I doubt this group was complicit, but they may have been onto something. zen master T 01:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It was something to do with dates of Economic Forums, although the dates of the economic forums seemed to happen on different dates and weren't annual things.  They protested things like the G7 summits and stuff as well.  But the thing is that "s11" wasn't really just one group.  "Green Left", which has an article about them, was essentially a part of the same organisation.  They went by different names, all calling themselves different things, all a big mix up of lots of things.  If I recall from their old web site, "s11" was just a date that made sense to them, and also, since they thought that USA was the centre of all of the world's globalisations, and "911" is the phone number that Americans use to call for emergencies, it was kind of a play on that.  "m1" was a play on UK's "MI5" organisation, if I recall.  I have no idea what "s26" was based on since they didn't use that one very much.  They weren't entirely anti-American though.  They were anti-globalisation.  They still sort-of exist.  At least, Green Left (a communist activist group) still exists, as do others who were once a part of s11, who continue to do the same things.  The parallels between the way that this group operate and the way that Al Qaeda operate are obvious.  One big difference though - s11 were almost exclusively white, and almost exclusively came from western countries.   There's a fine line between protesters and terrorism.  That line is often interpretative.  But they were regarded as terrorists by the Australian and American government.  And by Nike. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 02:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Responding to Zordrac, I hope you are kidding about "fine line between protesters and terrorism"? Instead of using labels what sorts of illegal things did this group do specifically in your estimation? Protesting Nike's alleged sweatshop labor is hardly a "terrorist" thing to do. So you think their "s11" date name was purely coincidental? Do I assume correctly there aren't many sources remaining for why they named themselves "s11"? Should we compile a list of all events, conferences, and economic forums that took place on September 11th historically to look for the same pattern they may have? The article kind of hints the group was made to disappear by the CIA or similar, what is the source for that, just the fact info about the group is mysteriously sparse? zen master T 07:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there any evidence that this actually was a "group" and not just a specific one-time event put on by a coalition of Australian activists?...  Blackcats 07:31, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I dunno, group or coalition, my questions apply the same in either case. What did this coalition do to be labeled a "terrorist organization"? zen master T 07:45, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion 

message: The following needs a cite:
:"In the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist actions, s11 was one of the primary suspects as for :who might have caused the attacks, because they had not released plans for what they were planning :to protest on that 11 September 2001 effort. They replied on their web page insisting that they had :planned to protest the economic forum in China, but that they had been unable to do it and hence :had abandoned their protest for that year."
Arkon 02:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, that would be very helpful. Arkon 02:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I've also just read over all of the the links, none support the section I quoted. Arkon 02:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cite needed 

message: I think a whole lot more evidence is needed to ascertain any sort of direct link between the Austrailian S11 protest organizing and the 9/11 attacks one year later.  I was fairly active in the larger anti-globalization movement at the time, so I heard about the S11 protests when they were happenening.  The were held in Melbourne, Australia when the World Economic Forum was meeting there.  The meetings began on September the 11th, 2000 - one year to the date before the 9/11 attacks.  
As far as I know, this is entirely coincidental.  Of course some people within the WEF likely were behind 9/11, but I don't know that they would have been so meticulous as to plan their meetings exactly one year before.  Who knows though - maybe they are into numerology or have some kind of number fetish. (in any case - that's all completely speculative - anything's possible - for all I know, they picked that date because it was a Monday and that allowed them to party for the whole weekend before hand).  Sept. 11 also happens to be the date that Salvador Allende's government in Chile was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup.
As for the name S11, this followed in the tradition of activist code-names for anti-globalization convergences.  For example, the WTO protests in Seattle on Nov 30, 1990 were known as N30 and the IMF/World Bank protests in DC on April 16th, 2000 were known as A16.  These short and simple names were also ideal for urls - hence n30.org, a16.org, and s11.org.  But though these were .org urls, they didn't generally represent long-term organizations - rather just a coaltion that came together to facilitate the convergence and protest.  After the protest was over, a lot of the local, regional, and national/international social networks would remain, but there wouldn't typically be a group that would go by that name.  For instance, after the WTO protests, there wasn't a group in the Seattle area (at least not one that I know of) called N30.  And typically the protest-specific website would eventually be taken down some time after the event.
Blackcats 06:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Evidence needed... 

message: I'm sorry guys, but as I read through that article more I became more and more unhapy with its content.  The way that article was written is exactly the sort of thing that gives the whole notion of "conspiracy theories" such a bad name in so many people's minds.  In particular the last paragraph, which read:
"The group all but collapsed following the attacks in 11 September 2001, and, after 1000s of death threats were directed against all of their members, they disbanded, their web page cannot be looked at in any archives, and any hint that they ever existed in the first place has been removed. Whether they were all murdered, or the CIA took them all to interrogate them or what happened nobody will ever know."
First of all, is there any evidence that this was ever a group?  As far as I know, S11 was an event - put on by a coaltion of groups that was part of the larger anti-globalization movement (not one group).  Second of all, there's any number of reasons why their archives may have been blocked.  It looks like the URL has been bought by some corporation, and it would likely be an embarassment for their patrons to see that the site had once owned by a bunch of Australian radicals.  Third of all, the last sentence implying that large numbers of Aussie protest organizers may have been killed strikes me as pretty absurd.  The sorts of people who put on those kind of big protests have connections - both direct and indirect - within the whole liberal and radical milleus, not to mention family connections (and many of them are of middle or upper class origins).  So if hundreds or even dozens of these activist sudenly disapeared or were killed, there would certainly be some record of this, as a lot of people would take note.  If the "powers that be" wanted that many people dead, they would at least have to engineer cover-story events, and those would leave a media trail for investigators to follow.  And of course there would be a whole lot of chatter in the Aussie (and even international) activist communities about so many of their comrades dying or disapearing over such a short period of time, and there would be a record of that too.
So at any rate, I've removed most of the wild speculation and re-written the article to focus on verifiable events.  (If I hadn't done so, I'm pretty sure the article would have been quickly AFDed).  Blackcats 07:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of some wild speculation

message: Thanks to everyone for helping there and getting rid of my ignorance! :)  This started out as original research, which is bad, and you've proved that a lot of the things that I thought were true weren't (e.g. s11 came first, m1 came later), but it has also backed up most of what I thought was true.  Oh man my eyes are tired from all the google searches.  I did about 50 different ones.  Trying to run a search on this and not be mixed up with the whole terrorist attacks thing is seriously tough.
I was sad though that I couldn't find direct links that they were threatened for their involvement (well, they obviously were threatened in 2000, but I mean because of the belief that they were involved in the 2001 WTC attacks).  Its pretty obviously true, considering that Arabs and Muslims the world over (especially in America and western countries) were murdered just because of their race or religion in the wake of the WTC attacks.  But precisely what happened we might never know.
I think that took me a good 4 hours, so I hope that most of my research stays up.  Thanks especially for Black Cat.
I personally never agree with conspiracy theories, but I just thought that this one should be included in the 9/11 site, for balance.  Whilst it wasn't really believed by a lot of people, they did get death threats in bucketloads, as did anyone who had anything to do with it.
Of course, when was the site shut down?  Police forcibly removed it end of 2002, but was it shut down before then?  Dunno.  Last time I can remember it being active was March 2002, but they didn't update it much after about October 2001.  I'm not sure if they updated it at all after October 2001 actually.  
Who owns the domain name now I don't know.  But whoever does, those activist pages are still there.  Intelligence agencies CAN access those pages.  FBI, CIA, all of them, they can.  So there you go.
I think that the reason why it wasn't in the media more about the connection was to protect them.  That was my understanding.  I mean they obviously had nothing to do with the WTC bombings. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 09:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Well I'm done 

message: I'm removing the paranthetical part of the following:
::and the Australian government (with the approval of the US) had declared S11 a "terrorist" event.
Last I heard Australia was a sovereign nation and doesn't get approval from the US to label people anything. They may get cooperation from the US, or request that the US label the group in turn, but "approval" implies a relationship that doesn't really reflect Australian-US relations in this context (i.e. it implies that Australia is subordinate to the US). If you think something important was meant by this, then find out what it actually was that Australia requested and use more accurate language, because whatever it was "approval" is certainly innaccurate at best and misleading at worst.--Brentt 07:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I didn't realise that was poorly worded.  It should say "as well as the US government".  I will reword it. Both countries declared them terrorists.  The US government under advice from the FBI. I believe that the USA declared them terrorists first. Zordrac  (talk) Wishy Washy  Darwikinian Eventualist 08:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: To clarify: The Australian government used the labelling of the group as terrorist by the US government as "permission" or "proof" to do the same. This section should be reworded. - Synapse 05:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "...with the approval of the US"

message: In regards the following passage:
::On 14 November 2002, Australian police initiatives commenced with an effort to ban all anti-WTO sites which were thought to "instruct in crime", i.e. encourage violent protest, including s11 .  As a result, the web site has been permanently blocked from viewing including archives 
The citations do not say that the s11.org site was taken down because of the police initiatives. All that is said in the story cited is that 4 "take down" notices were issued by the ABA for "unamed sites. It doesn't say which. This either needs to be qualified with an "allegedly" type descriptor or a better source cited.--Brentt 08:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cite needed on why s11 site is inaccesible

message: In regards to:
::whilst Google demonstrates that the pages still exist, but cannot be accessed by any members of the public.
Because a site comes up in a Google search does not mean it "still exists", Google is constantly trawling the web to find new websites, and stores those websites to make searches quicker. Any site that is taken down will likely come up on Google searches for a long time after it no longer exists (it happens all the time!) It does not mean the site is there but inaccesible. Even if this wasn't the case this would have been "original research",bad original research at that, but even good original research is against wikipedia policy, so watch what your writing people. 
--Brentt 08:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Google search does not demonstrate site "still exists"

message: I'm finding to many problems with this article to keep attacking myself. I'm tempted to put a rewrite tag, but I decided to be more conservative and put a cleanup tag instead. Whoever wrote the bulk of this I think needs to study wikipedia policy a little closer. It seems consist mostly of extrapolotions of speculations heard around the web.--Brentt 08:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup Tag

message: What the article really needs - more than rewriting or even cleanup is expansion.  The majority of the article should focus on S11 for what it's really known for - a large protest in Melbourne Australia on September, 11th, 2000.  I added one paragraph on this, but a lot more still needs to be added, so hopefully some people can find the time to do that..
There can still be a section for allegations or misunderstandings regarding S11 and 9/11, but that's by-far not the most notable thing about S-11.  Also, I don't know that any source has been cited to show that anyone still believes that S-11 had any connection to 9/11 (other than maybe a couple people here of course).  All I've seen is that right after 9/11 the coincidence of dates and the similarity of names caused some confusion...  Blackcats 02:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Even those misunderstandings were limited to people posting in comment threads or on message boards.  I don't believe that even meets wikipedia's standards for reliable sources, but it certainly doesn't deserve to be the focus of the article. Arkon 03:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: .....Right... Arkon 21:56, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion

message: Hi Guys,
I quick read through this page seems to point to the fact that many of you are living in some bizarre alternative reality within your own heads.  You should really get some professional pyschological help.  To set the record straight, s11 was simply a protest in the year 2000 attended by about 20,000 people in Australia.  I was there. I helped organise it.  There was nothing sinister about it.  I know hundred of other people who were there too, many of whom helped organise it.  None are dead - they are all very much alive.  Many of them work for mainstrean trade unions, environmental organisation and even in state government bureaucracies in Australia.
If you believe that simply because two events happened on the same day one year apart then there must be some connection, you are clinically insane and should be admitted to an asylum.  The S11 protest were just that - protests.  There was some police voilence, but that's about as exciting as they got.  There was nothing sinister about them.  You can even check out the photos of what happened on the links on the wikipedia page.  I guess the s11 website is down because the protests happened so long ago.  Why don't you guys find something more productive to do with your time instead to sitting around seeing who can think up the most brainless conspiracy theory? 
I've deleted the conspiracy theory crap on the main page.  Please don't put it back up - it's insulting tot he tens of thousands of people who were there in 2000 trying to make the world a better place - something you guys could learn a lot from.
User:MMc 2:39 PM (EST) 31 December 2005.
:I agree one slashdot posting and some of the other sources aren't much but we should report the allegations nevertheless, the fact members of the coallition were questioned by the Australian senate (presumably over "terrorism" or 9/11 or ...?) is relevant enough for inclusion. If you disagree please make a case against that information rather than label it dismissively with "conspiracy theory". Why did you remove the relevant fact the Australian and U.S. Governments had labeled S11's September 11, 2000 protest in Melbourne a "terrorist" event? zen master T 03:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Response to Conspiracy Theorists

message: I've added this section, and in the interests of being factual and NPOV I have only mentioned events that were not in dispute and for which there is substantial video evidence.
Unfortunately I can't find a lot of good material relating to this on the web. In particular, I can't find the Victorian Police Operating Procedures manual anywhere on victoria police (?!) or government sites. Googling only gives pages referring to particular sections by name. It's a public document, there isn't really any reason why it 'shouldn't' be up.
Also, I've tried searching for some of the footage from TV stations sites, but it seems to have expired. However, I did find this article  about the s11 sites being blocked.
- Synapse 05:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Police Response 

message: Reminders for editors of these articles:
* WP:CITE All material must cite refrences. Blogs, web forum posts, newsgroup posts, slashdot comments etc are not references.
* Conspiracy theories are better added to 9/11 conspiracy theories
* Do not remove material which is cited.
If this behaviour continues I will probably have to take this further and get the page locked for anon edits.
-- Synapse 22:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bordering on Vandalism 

message: This article makes unsourced claims of criminality and brutality against police, and does not pretend to offer their side of the story. I'm adding a NPOV tag. Let's discuss it here. Wikipedia isn't a place for attacking Victoria Police. - Richardcavell 00:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The claims are all sourced in the article to the footage that was broadcast nationally that night. I was one of many who saw all the things listed there (and I wasn't the one who wrote that paragraph). Rebecca 06:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Much as I hate to say it, being one of the people who participated in the protests (non-violently), this article needs a major POV re-work to cover the criticism and police counter-claims better. Being a WikiRooki I'm going to have to do some research before I wade into the fray. And for the record, S11 was always billed as an event amongst the various protest groups I interacted with - nobody referred to S11 as an entity in itself. Judi 00:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: First I should preface my comment that I have a potential conflict of interest as a present editor on Melbourne Indymedia, and therefore I should not post info about Indymedia on the main article page without discussion on this page. 
The concept of Indymedia as an open publishing site for participants in protests to file their own text, photo and video news stories came together for the Seattle protests against the WTO in 1999. The open publishing software was actually partly developed by the Catalyst collective in Sydney - a group of computer activists interested in developing alternative grassroots media publishing. A website for Melbourne Indymedia for open publishing of news was established in July 2000, one of less than 30 Independent Media Centres around the globe at that stage. You can see pages from Indymedia 15 August 2000 at archive.org. Unfortunately I could not find an archive of the Indymedia site for September 2000 - these pages were archived by an Indymedia tech around 2003 and I do not have access. 
The site served its purpose in allowing activists to post their text reports, photos, and even a few videos to the site and allowing comment and debate on news articles. My website page at Protests against World Economic Forum at Melbourne Crown Casino September 11 - 13 contains the reports I posted on Indymedia each evening over the three days of the protest. The Indymedia site also allowed anti-globalisation activists from around the world to read news reports of protests written by protestors at the same time or even before the corporate media published their reports.
At the time I was not involved in any organised group at the protest, nor was I then a member of Melbourne Indymedia. That came much later. My account is useful as it contain relevant succinct quotes from the media at the time. Maybe some followup research is necessary to accurately source the quotes, and then they can be used in the article. I reckon reference to the use of Melbourne Indymedia at S11 should also go into the article, but I'll open it up for discussion.--Takver 17:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indymedia at s11