[New-imc] IMC BEIRUT internal new-imc DEADLINE Mon 17 Feb 2003 23:00 GMT

[Petros Evdokas]

Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 01:48:28 +0100 (CET)
From: boud <boud1 at wp.pl>
Reply-To: new-imc at lists.indymedia.org
To: new-imc at lists.indymedia.org
Cc: imc-beirut at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: [New-imc] IMC BEIRUT internal new-imc DEADLINE
Mon 17 Feb 2003
23:00 GMT

hi everyone,
   As a patronising westerner ;) exiled to a second
world country (and
enjoying it :), but for once not involved in one of
these sensitive
discussions on local/global/etc. it's probably up to me
to propose IMC
Beirut for internal approval.

Here are their membership criteria, including mission
statement
and editorial policy.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2003-February/003358.html

new-imc internal DEADLINE Mon 17 Feb 2003 23:00 GMT

libertι, ιgalitι, solidaritι
boud
-------------------------- 

Boud, thanks for taking this initiative! *and* for your
much- needed sense of lightness and humour.  And I
certainly agree with your proposal. If only we had
taken this step earlier....

I feel that imc-Beirut has been ready to be a member of
Indymedia for more than a few months now, and has been
artificially held back due to our own errors,
especially in terms of allowing mixed messages to
filter toward the group from imc sources which helped
disorient, rather than help to focus. 

The recent messages from the group also show that there
is a good sense of group cohesion, internationalist
politics, and (unfortunately), still a confusion
between a website and a membership to imc (this is
something that all of us in the new-imc working group
need to keep working to clarify, to all new imc
groups). It is *our* responsibility that our colleagues
in Beirut are still being told by imc sources,
erroneously, that having an imc group and having a 
website is the same thing. We need to give relief to
our Beirut colleagues from this terrible dilemma which
has been placed on them. The group *is worthy and
ready* to be a member of indymedia, even if it never
gets a chance to publish online (due to the current
level of development, there are technical difficulties
to render text in arabic); free access to community and
radical media can take many forms, for example radio,
print, video, etc, and the Beirut group already has
enough combined political and journalistic experience
and community roots to more than qualify as an imc - it
will find its own appropriate medium of expression and
publication at its own terms and its own rhythm. 

Again, thanks to Boud, and my very best wishes to
everyone in the imc-Beirut group to continue with the
great work. 

The next step will involve sending the application
"upstairs" to the imc-communication group, where there
will be a period during which we might hear comments,
suggestions, questions, etc. 

Everyone I know of in the Eastern Mediterranean imc
community (most of us are in imc groups also stuck with
computer + language problems *and* still begging for
technical help) are eager to see the imc-beirut group
become a member of the network. If any discussions
break out at imc-communication regarding the
application of imc-beirut, you will find there is some
sense of dependable solidarity among us.

Thanks,
Petros
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