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FALSE ACCUSATIONS: Response from our comrades at No Gods No Masters Cooperative about the false information currently circulating on Bluesky with a lot of misinformation from resentful people banned by forum members.
👉 1) Who manages the hosted sites?
✅ The No Gods No Masters Network collective hosts over 100 anarchist and independent websites around the world, most of which do not display links to the store. These include some of the most well-known, easily accessible, and verifiable anarchist sites. The technical team has no control over these sites.
✅ Although funded and hosted by the store, third-party organization sites are NOT managed by the team, nor announced publicly (at least we won't be accused of using them as advertising).
✅ In addition to these independent sites, the network also hosts and administers more than 30 activist information platforms and forums (the Network). Each is launched by the team but managed by its own autonomous collective. Sites part of our network sometimes display the shop's t-shirts.
✅ Local anarchist federation sites are managed by their local activists. These platforms were launched following requests from these local activists who translated and moderated the platforms. Discussions with local collectives and responses to their requests can be found on the forum, with great care to avoid any ambiguity on the name chosen: https://forum.anarchistfederation.net
❌ NONE of the sites is only controlled by one single person, and the team often doesn't even have access to their moderation system.
👉 2) What is the financial link with the hosted sites? A big fat NET LOSS.
❌ All sites are hosted at a loss by the store. Clicks on t-shirt links are far from enough to cover expenses, and the team is currently considering removing all ads.
❌ All independent sites we host can attest that the store has never asked for anything in return, no advertising, no money, no anything else. We even regularly refuse donation offers.
❌ There is no financial incentive to operate sites at a loss. A president of a commercial enterprise would normally have a fiduciary duty to generate profits for his shareholders, and therefore to stop losing money by hosting sites unprofitably.
✅ Music albums shared by forum members are hosted on PunkDownload.com, a platform financed by the shop (and not on Megaupload).
✅ Sites that choose to display links to the store do so voluntarily and on their own initiative.
👉 3) Where are the T-shirts made? Is this ethical?
✅ T-shirts are printed and shipped to the United States, where the cooperative is legally based.
✅ The store also offers printing on locally produced t-shirts while offering choices for all budgets. Unfortunately, some people make the wrong choice and then write lies to blame us.
✅ All our clothing is “fair trade” certified by labels such as the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Foundation (WRAP).
✅ Even our t-shirts made outside of America are made of 100% cotton grown in the USA and ethically sourced.
🤔 Ethical clothing is not limited to the country of manufacture but also to its ecological rating, which is why we also offer organic t-shirts printed with natural inks. Local production should not come at the expense of destroying the planet.
👉 4) Who is the team behind the collectives?
✅ The NGNM Tech Team includes around ten members of different languages and nationalities located in Europe and North America.
✅ The store is based in the United States, not Canada. It legally reports its taxes to the American IRS, not the Canadian CRA, which would be impossible if the store had only one sole Canadian owner.
✅ Several dozen artists and groups contribute to the t-shirt store, which is also managed collectively by a separate team of several people.
🤔 Hosting forums put the store in a position where it is often targeted by trolls banned by member votes. The banned trolls then take revenge against the technical team.
❌ The member mentioned in the article currently participates very little in the forums, which are managed by their own moderation teams. Decisions are made collectively by voting and consensus, almost always without the participation of the Tech Team.
❌ The role of the Tech Team is limited to server management - it is not involved in daily moderation
👉 5) Is there a tax advantage with our donations?
❌ The shop does NOT get any tax advantage by making donations, these accusations make no fiscal sense.
❌ As anarchist collectives are not government-registered charities, they would NOT be eligible for gift tax reductions anyway.
❌ ZERO tax deduction is claimed by members for donations made by the cooperative, it is strictly impossible to derive a personal tax benefit!
❌ Web hosting is not a donation but an expense. Here again, ZERO tax advantage. If web hosting allowed you to magically get free money, everyone would do it!
✅ We do not ask for donations for server hosting, the only fundraising campaign is over 15 years old and all invoices are available on the forum to prove where the money was spent.
✅ Before the store, the founding members financing themselves the servers with their donations, at a loss. The store was then launched to ensure funding for growing expenses, not to enrich oneself.
✅ Outside the store, each team member has their own salaried career or draws a retirement or disability check, which makes up the majority of their personal income.
✅ The shop’s donations are detailed here: no-gods-no-masters.com/blog/its-more-than-a-t-shirt-its-an-act-of-solidarity/
👉 6) But actually, how do tax deductions for charitable donations work?
Let's say a fictitious company makes $10,000 in annual profits. To simplify, let's assume that this income would be taxed at 35% so there would only be $6,500 left to donate after paying taxes to the government.
But if the fictitious company donates $10,000 to a registered charity, it does not have to pay tax on the portion paid in donations, which allows you to make a donation of $10,000 instead of $6,500.
On the other hand, in both donation scenarios, the company's bank account always ends up at zero at the end of the year because of the donation, compared to a balance of $6,500 if it had given nothing.
In short, the company has the choice between giving $10,000 before taxes and having $0 in the bank, or giving nothing and keeping $6,500 after taxes. No hidden gains here.
It is therefore completely false to claim that one can obtain a net gain by making donations, except for the ultra-rich like Bezos and Zuckerberg who use a stratagem with free shares of their companies valued on the stock market to give to a private foundation that belongs to them. But NDNM is obviously not a listed stock company…
These illogical accusations prove that they are made without any research or fact-checking.
👉 7) On the concept of “looting” and “piracy”:
✅ We reject the principle of looting and consider the sharing of information and culture as an essential basis for activism.
✅ RSS aggregators are not new, almost all sites are happy to be included there. The team regularly receives requests from sites that wish to be added and works in collaboration with several collectives. Requests for additions are published on the forum where several members of the technical team contribute: https://forum.anarchistfederation.net
✅ All sites are moderated by the collectives. You can easily request content removal. A system is in place to notify the moderation team of articles to be deleted (rare but inevitable when aggregating more than 150,000 articles). Moreover, the article in the screenshot was deleted very quickly and has not been on the site for more than 1 year... Each report is processed quickly.
✅ The aggregators are hosted at heavy losses on several dedicated servers, so the traffic does not constitute a financial incentive since it increases the losses.
👉 8) The current financial situation:
✅ The T-shirt shop finances a dozen servers and the tech team details its activities on the site Nogodsnomasters.org
✅ Most sites wouldn't survive without the store - t-shirt sales are essential to cover the significant server expenses.
✅ Web hosting is a huge expense for the store including sales have been declining for several years, which would not make sense if the desired goal was profit.
📈 The increase in t-shirt prices is explained by government inflation. Today the profit margin on a t-shirt sold for $23 is slimmer than when we could still afford to sell for $15 because our costs and expenses have increased significantly like everyone else.
📉 Price inflation lowers sales volume and increases expenses. Since the start of the pandemic, sales have fallen by more than half.
❌ The false accusations about the store's profits make no sense, neither financially nor mathematically, and have already been debunked as false information. If the store made that much profit, it would have bought its own printer a long time ago. But is it really possible that there would be thousands of anarchists buying t-shirts every month? Obviously not.
🌎 While it is true that the store does not currently control the entire t-shirt production chain, we also work with independent printers and plan to transfer all orders there as soon as possible.
👉 In short, the store would be financially better off today if it stopped hosting sites, closed all its platforms, and focused on a single t-shirt sales site. The team is unanimous on this subject given the few clicks compared to expenses.
And obviously, the PETA certification is anything but false... It was indeed obtained by our store in 2019 and NOT by our supplier, as proven by this PETA Certificate of Appreciation 👇
This text was written jointly by the collective of the store and the Tech Team and is collectively endorsed by its members.
For more information on our activities, visit the Tech Team website:
https://www.nogodsnomasters.org
Murilo Trigo
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