[New-imc] IMC Belgium and proposed new IMC Vlaanderen

[Shayne O'Neill]

Proposal:

Phase #1
Imc be accept that they are beautiful and wonderful humans.

Imc vl accept that they too are beautiful and wonderful humans.

Phase #2
Imc BE kids and Imc vl kids realise that therefore they are eachother
beautiful, acnoledge it

and

Phase #3
Cooperate.

This is a joiny fluffy anouncement from the
perth-faction-for-belgium-activists-rock-patrol and the
factional-napalm-injures-kids-campaign.

You have been warned. Any more fightin' and bitin' and an entire
collective of *SMELLY AUSTRALIANS* will be catching airplanes to hug you
folks into friendlieness.

Weapons-of-mass-fluffieness will be deployed.

DEADLINE: When it starts to groove.

Shayne.

:P

------------------------------------
"Must not Sleep! Must warn others!"
-Aesop.
Shayne O'Neill. Indymedia. Fun.
http://www.perthimc.asn.au

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, lize wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I am lize and I am working since a year as an edito member of imc.be. I
> made some reportages (sometimes together with other imc members) about
> ESF Florence, about the repression of the movement in italy and I
> followed up the Iraq war, the G8 of Evian and some international issues
> like the situation in Argentina and Venezuela.
>
> I would like to give my opinion on the terrible discussion going on now
> about the imc's in Belgium.
>
>
>
> First. ** About IMC Belgium **
>
> There are some true problems at imc.be. Diversity in the collective is
> lacking and hence the coverage of all actions of the Belgian diverse
> movement against globalization. The presence of people linked to the
> Belgian communist party (ptb) in the collective is dominant and other
> members of the .be collective - like myself - often feel as a kind of
> 'diversity' excuse to cover up the ptb dominance.
>
>
>
> Second. ** About proposed new IMC Vlaanderen **
>
> The IMC.vl people seemed to turn their endless criticism on IMC.be into
> a positive project by starting to become imc activists themselves.
>
> My enthusiasm for these newcomers is reducing rapidly when I read their
> discussion list at the test <http://pingpong.piexie.net/>  site :
> instead of building up imc teams and start covering, all energy goes to
> what seems to be there main objective : dissolve the present imc.be
> collective. Horrible words like "purifying" ("cleansing?") are used.
> They also write that "the dissolution of imc.be has always been part of
> 'their plan' ".I don't think the aim of putting up a new Imc could be to
> destroy another one. But it goes further. They even think about
> withdrawing their proposal to become a new imc.vl if the imc.be
> collective could be "purified", which means : they take over and throw
> the ptb members out of the imc.be collective.
>
>
>
> ** My conclusion **
>
> At imc.be it was always (and still is) very difficult to get (and stay)
> involved as a non-ptb member. One quickly feels isolated as there is a
> lack of democratic decision making. But the door to other groups is
> still open at the imc.be collective, and could solve the problem of ptb
> dominance.
>
> At imc.vl there is simply no door for ptb-linked people. Ptb-members in
> their eyes seem to be '(the axis of ?)evil' and they want to 'purify'
> Indymedia from ptb presence. This can not be tolerated. The ptb is part
> of the movement, and at Indymedia, that's it's place : part of. Not to
> be dominant, but surely not to be 'purified' neither.
>
>
>
> ** My  proposal **
>
> As both 'collectives' refuse to work together, I think an additional
> imc.vl site might be the best solution to get more people involved into
> Indymedia making in Belgium. There are not a lot of different
> independent media channels in belgium, so the more media-activists, the
> better I think.
>
> So I would give green light to their proposal, let them work out a
> 'competing' imc in Belgium and let's see if in a future some
> 'collaboration' (e.g. by taking over some features from each other)
> could be possible.
>
> The aim of imc.vl to dissolve imc.be cannot be tolerated. If global
> Indymedia would make it possible for them to do this, there is a risk
> that no good Indymedia coverage at all will be done in Belgium, as the
> imc.vl people didn't prove yet a lot about their skills of Indymedia
> making untill now. I really would like to see them make some coverages
> and features before talking about dissolving another, after all, hard
> working IMC collective.
>
>
>
> That's it I guess. Sorry if we Belgians are giving you so much troubles,
> but I do not feel responsible for it.
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Lize
>
>
>
> Ps due to some personal problems and the fact that I urgently need to
> find a job, my participation into the imc.be collective is very low at
> the moment. When things get better for me, I'll be back !
>
>