The Electrohippies Collective (Ehippies) is an international group of internet activists based in Oxfordshire, England, whose purpose is to express disapproval of governmental policies of mass media censorship and control of the Internet "in order to provide a 'safe environment' for corporations to do their deals." [1]
The protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 was a signal event in the anti-globalisation movement. Thousands of people gathered to disrupt the World Trade Organisation conference by preventing delegates from entering the conference venue. [2] :p.41 Simultaneously, an online direct protest was run by The Electrohippies Collective with what is now a familiar aspect of cyber space: a denial-of-service (DOS) action. This tactic blocked the computer network servicing the WTO meeting by flooding it with requests. The Ehippies claimed success for the action, saying 450,000 people participated over 5 days, resulting in the WTO conference network being constantly slowed and periodically brought to a halt.
Their claim was disputed by staff of Conxion, the ISP hosting the conference website, who deployed a URL rewriting rule to redirect attack traffic to the attack page itself. It was claimed that this counter-attack "crashed" the Ehippies' server within seconds, forcing them to move to another ISP. The majority of hits to the Ehippies' site were thus their own attack page attacking itself. Conxion claimed to have logged fewer than 10,000 unique-source IP addresses. The attack page consisted of nine frames, three attacking the San Jose conference server, three against the Virginia server and three against the main WTO server. The Chicago conference server was not attacked and remained entirely unaffected. However, the WTO main website server, hosted by another provider, did not benefit from the rewrite-engine fix and did suffer significantly from the DOS attack. [3]
The Ehippies justified their campaign tactic as enabling tens of thousands of remote computer users to join the Seattle protest action. They pointed out that the action could not have worked without the support of sufficient people—purporting to demonstrate that there was significant support for their action. [2] :p.77
As a follow-up to their WTO action, the Ehippies and volunteers tried to shut down the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank websites by a "virtual sit-in" in conjunction with 'real world' protests in Washington, D.C. in April 2000. Some 5000 online participants were able to cause only intermittent slowdowns on those sites. [2] :p.25
The collective was forced to subside temporarily into inaction by the British government's The Terrorism Act 2000 and The Regulation of Investigatory Power Act 2000, perceived as significantly changing the right of British citizens to freely use the internet for political and protest action. [1] Now it "focusses on the use of technology by activists, mainly through organising workshops and quietly assisting 'behind the scenes' of other campaigns. Current campaigns are the "Simple" energy-focused campaign and the "Browser Alert" campaign against proprietary software abuses and Digital rights management.
The Independent Media Center is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Beginnings were made in London and Sydney during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital then the first Indymedia Media Center was founded to report on the protests against the World Trade Organisational Ministerial Conference in Seattle. Indymedia became closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticized neo-liberalism and its associated institutions.
A black bloc is a group of protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing and face-protecting items. The clothing is used to conceal wearers' identities and hinder criminal prosecution by making it difficult to distinguish between participants. It is also used to protect their faces and eyes from pepper spray, which is used by law enforcement during protests or civil unrest. The tactic allows the group to appear as one large unified mass. Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism, anarcho-communism, libertarian socialism, anti-globalization movement or antifascism.
1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999. The Conference was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations.
Electronic civil disobedience can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves computers and the Internet and may also be known as hacktivism. The term "electronic civil disobedience" was coined in the critical writings of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a collective of tactical media artists and practitioners, in their seminal 1996 text, Electronic Civil Disobedience: And Other Unpopular Ideas. Electronic civil disobedience seeks to continue the practices of nonviolent-yet-disruptive protest originally pioneered by American poet Henry David Thoreau, who in 1848 published Civil Disobedience.
Battle of Seattle may refer to:
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. It is also sometimes considered an act of Internet terrorism where terrorist activities, including acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet by means of tools such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, and other malicious software and hardware methods and programming scripts. Cyberterrorism is a controversial term. Some authors opt for a very narrow definition, relating to deployment by known terrorist organizations of disruption attacks against information systems for the primary purpose of creating alarm, panic, or physical disruption. Other authors prefer a broader definition, which includes cybercrime. Participating in a cyberattack affects the terror threat perception, even if it isn't done with a violent approach. By some definitions, it might be difficult to distinguish which instances of online activities are cyberterrorism or cybercrime.
Direct Action Network (DAN) was a North American confederation of anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian and anarchist affinity groups, collectives, and organizations. It grew out of the Seattle chapter which had been formed to coordinate the nonviolent civil disobedience portion of the anti-WTO mobilization in Seattle in 1999.
The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was a draft agreement negotiated in secret between members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) between 1995 and 1998. It sought to establish a new body of universal investment laws that would grant corporations unconditional rights to engage in financial operations around the world, without any regard to national laws and citizens' rights. The draft gave corporations a right to sue governments if national health, labor or environment legislation threatened their interests. When its draft became public in 1997, it drew widespread criticism from civil society groups and developing countries, particularly over the possibility that the agreement would make it difficult to regulate foreign investors. After an intense global campaign was waged against the MAI by the treaty's critics, the host nation France announced in October 1998 that it would not support the agreement, effectively preventing its adoption due to the OECD's consensus procedures.
The Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, also known as the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Conference and abbreviated as MC6, was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai, Hong Kong from 13 to 18 December 2005. Representatives from 148 countries were expected to attend the event, as well as over 10,000 protesters led by the Hong Kong People’s Alliance on WTO and made up of largely South Korean farmers. Wan Chai Sports Ground and Wan Chai Cargo Handling Basin in Wan Chai North have been designated as protest zones. Victoria Park served as the starting point for the rallies. Police wielded sticks, used gas grenades and shot rubber bullets at some of the protesters. They arrested 910 people, 14 were charged, but none were convicted.
The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 was a meeting of the World Trade Organization, convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, over the course of three days, beginning Tuesday, 30 November 1999. A week before the meeting, delegates admitted failure to agree on the agenda and the presence of deep disagreements with developing countries. Intended as the launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations that would have been called "The Millennium Round", the negotiations were marred by poor organization and controversial management of large street protests. Developing country representatives became resentful and uncooperative on being excluded from talks as the United States and the European Union attempted to cement a mutual deal on agriculture. The negotiations collapsed and were reconvened in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha venue enabled on-site public protest to be excluded. Necessary agenda concessions were made to include the interests of developing countries, which had by then further established their own negotiation blocs, such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. Thus, the current round is called the Doha Development Round, which has since 2008 remained stalled as a result of diverging perspectives regarding tariffs, agriculture, and non-tariff barriers such as agricultural subsidies.
Battle in Seattle is a 2007 political action-thriller film written and directed by Stuart Townsend, in his directorial debut. The story is based on the protest activity at the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999. The film premiered on May 22, 2008 at the Seattle International Film Festival.
This is a timeline of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Warcry is an Indian-American environmentalist and anarchist activist, filmmaker, writer and political organizer.
30 Frames a Second: The WTO in Seattle 2000 is a documentary film shot during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity and contains interviews with many of the protest leaders. It was directed by journalist Rustin Thompson and released in 2000.
The Martin Luther King. Jr. County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, (MLKCLC) is the central body of labor organizations in King County, Washington. The MLKCLC is affiliated with the national AFL-CIO, the central labor organization in the United States, which represents more than 13 million working people. Over 125 organizations are affiliated with the MLKCLC, and more than 75,000 working men and women belong to Council-affiliated organizations. Not only does the MLKCLC support labor organizations, but it acts as a voice for the interests and needs of the working people in King County, WA.
Alter-globalization is a social movement whose proponents support global cooperation and interaction, but oppose what they describe as the negative effects of economic globalization, considering it to often work to the detriment of, or not adequately promote, human values such as environmental and climate protection, economic justice, labor protection, protection of indigenous cultures, peace and civil liberties.
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or movement against neoliberal globalization.
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power to directly reach certain goals of interest; in contrast to those actions that appeal to others ; by, for example, revealing an existing problem, using physical violence, highlighting an alternative, or demonstrating a possible solution.
Deborah James is an American activist. She is director of international programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and is on the Board of Directors of Global Exchange. Prior to her work for CEPR, James had been called "a top U.S. protest organizer" by the Center for Public Integrity. She was formerly the Director of the WTO Program at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the Global Economy Director at Global Exchange, and the Executive Director of the Venezuela Information Office.
Showdown in Seattle: Five Days That Shook the WTO is a 1999 documentary film, first broadcast in daily half-hour installments, about the November 1999 protests against the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington.