[New-imc] Re: Beirut- imc/ developments

[blue.pi]

Petros writes: 


> I hope that this is only a misunderstanding 

Yap. I think it is. Sometimes things apear to be excactly the opposite of 
what they acctually are. 

I am aware that you probably want others to answer (no crusaders:)), but I 
think in this case I maybe better able to understand what you are getting 
at. 

So this is the situation (any one please corect me, if I get things wrong): 

We have a quite big group here considering the size of Lebanon. About 10 to 
15 people come regularly to the (up to recently) weekly meeting. We had good 
discussions on many issues related to indymedia (consensus, censurship, 
mainstream media in lebanon, our relationship to Israel...we will tell you 
about it later). Two indymedia activists from Italy were here and we did a 
project on Sabra and Chatilla with them. 

Most of the people in our group are also involved in a print project, a 
newspaper called Al Yasari, which evolved from the protests here this April 
(I am not part of that, so other people should tell you more), besides this 
most are really active in all sorts of other activist groups, NGO's etc. 

So I think we are precisly doing what an inymedia ought to be doing. 
However, you have the impression that we focus too much on tech. Well, from 
my perspective, the reason is, that this is the only thing we have problems 
with. And the problems are not only that Bassem and myself have not really 
started yet with setting up the website. Communicating via mailinglist e.g. 
is not such a common thing here as it is else where (hardly anyone here has 
an internet connection at home). That's maybe why you find a lot of 
technical stuff on the mailinglist, because the only ones who are using it 
are on the layout(tech) team. 

Anyhow, we have had our application form filled out on paper six weeks ago. 
You will get it as soon as we have it typed and discussed on our 
mailinglist. (maybe I am wrong, but I think this in itself shows that we are 
really not overly occupied with tech:)) 

However, if you have any suggestions what else we should be doing, I would 
be glad to hear them. I feel, that right now we got to a point where it 
seems like we discussed so much (8 months or so?) and people get impatient 
because we still don't have a website. 

So long
blue 

P.S. Sorry to the list admin for sending this from this account - the other 
one keeps crashing :(