IMC-belgium-process team -
imc-belgium-process-at-STOP-SPAM-indymedia.org
People from new IMC projects in Belgium keep on claiming that they are the “one and only real IMC” and therefore should be entitled the use of the url belgium.indymedia.org. They feel the international indymedia network should take a stand against the existing belgium.indymedia.org by atributing the url to the belgian syndication project. So they feel need to campaign against the belgium.indymedia.org collective. They now even officialized their campaign with a wiki page : http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/BelgiumSituationEn. The TXT has also already been posted on several IMC's.
We think that most of the information in the text is based on rumors and sometimes there are also plain lies. We feel it is necessary to reply to those rumors and lies. We will not answer all the “intentions” as they can not be verified, we will stick as much as possible to facts and will as less as possible judge the work done by the local IMC's in Belgium.
(we used version 1.4 of the TXT it can be looked up in http://docs.indymedia.org/rdiff/Local/BelgiumSituationEn)
We feel that Turlututu and other contributers to this TXT violate
the basic principles of indymedia: local autonomy of the collectives;
respect, sharing of skills and resources and mutual aid. As he is not
a member of the belgium imc collective, he doesn't have any right to
launch this kind of vicious attacks against another collective in the
network.
We could even question whether use of the collective
resources like the twiki should be allowed for attacks against
bonafide indymedia collectives.
We can only notice that most of accusations can also be found on zionist and richtwing websites. Frontpagemag has an artickle on Seattle.indymedia.org (the mother of all IMC's) with the same logic claiming inydmedia is a front organisation of the Communist Party (USA)
“The
people who operate IMC are the modern version of those who created,
over a century ago, the International Workingmen’s Association
(IWA). The IWA, or First Internationale, was created in London in the
late 1800’s. The purpose of this organization was to create a
classless and stateless society that would bring happiness and peace
to the world. The results of the efforts of this communist
international were the deaths of 100 million people and the poverty
of billions. It was a bad idea then, and is a bad idea now.
“
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11005
Other website were you can prose that has a lot in common with turlututu's literature and frontpagemag are:
The TXT by turlututu & co starts with a description and a judgment of the WPB (Worker Party Belgium). We don't think it is up to us to answer these chapters. The definition of what the WPB is and how they work is quite caricaturist. The way the WPB is analyzed is also an example of the different approach we have. Indymedia Belgium tries to be inclusive. We don't think it is up to us to play the judges of the movement. The whole movement is welcome to participate in indymedia belgium even if we do not all agree with the ideas, methods and strategies of all those different parts of the movement.
The back of the decorations of www.indymedia.be is really much less glittering that they are obstinated to make it believe. The situation is constantly degrading since the last 3 years in an alarming way. Almost the totality of former members has left, most part of them are quickly replaced by direct or indirect members of PTB. It's not that strange because the building where www.indymedia.be has its offices belongs itself to the PTB. So, now they form a crushing majority which doesn't have to care about its throne.
As in all social movements people come and people go. But the list
of Turlu is a fraud. Certain people on this so-called list of left
members are still working within the Belgian indymedia-collective.
Turlututu mentions Deirdre, Olivier, Nicolas, Toon, etc as people who
would have left the collective. Those people never did such a thing.
Some of them contribute financially, others are just working on other
projects, and others still participate,....
Other people left
because of personal reasons (building a house and family), because
they were investing to much time in other movements or projects and
some indeed because of a political disagreement on what indymedia
should be like.
But then who is a member and who not?
Turlututu
for instance never attended any General assembly / or other
belgium.indymedia.org work group meeting. If we would use imc-houston
principles http://houston.indymedia.org/process/contact.php,
turlutututu was never part of the belgium-process or editorial team.
This “come and go” is not a shame and part of the organic development of collectives and movements. It is a sad thing that we were not always able to resolve those differences of opinion and conflicts. But it is still the fact that there were some fundamental disagreements on what indymedia should be like. We already mentioned one of the points. Others will be addressed in the rest of this answer.
We can be very short about the building where we have our office. It doesn't belong to the PTB.
The idea to form an indymedia was born in the offices of "Regard Croisé" (an association itself linked to the PTB). The proposal was then of launching a call to increase the starting group. More than thirty participants had answered this call and there was a very large diversity. At this moment, it was a "real indymedia"
It is clear that turlututu and other
writing this prose were not their in first days of indymedia in
Belgium.
The idea of creating such a thing as indymedia in Belgium
was born in Cinema Nova during the Tele-Nova sessions. The cinema
Nova was the place were people like han & Raf, ... met each other
and started to discuss,... During the Seattle protests we discovered
indymedia, we were so intrigued by indymedia we brought together the
little money we had, bought a airplane ticket to Seattle, ...
We then invited Manse Jacobi (free speech TV) to tele-Nova to present the indymedia movie on Seattle and decided on the spot to start indymedia and called for a meeting in cinema NOVA.
The first general assembly of Indymedia Belgium was in Cinema Nova. The people who were active at that time still form the backbone of today's collective. But many others joined during the past four years.
Then seeing this growing success, certain people, very discrete at the beginning, started to take an increasingly imposing place. These people, all members of PTB, started then to merge to form a hard core. It's this "hard core" composed only of 5 or 6 people which pushed people one by one to leave from the nest like a cuckoo (the bird). Consequently, the decisions by consensus were not respected any more, the freedom of expression was briskly flouted, the small group dictated its law, that's why so many members disgusted by such an attitude started to quit. Others tried for months and even years to reason the hard core but themselves were pushed to leave because of the pressures and the war of attrition3.
In the history of belgium.indymedia.org all important decisions
and matters were discussed in open general assemblies. It is true
that it is not always easy to find a consensus within a mixed and
rich group of very active and involved people and less involved
participants. During the last year we tried to resolve this question
with the renewed process-team of imc-belgium. In that way we can have
better prepared general assemblies and we avoid that there are is to
much informal consensus-making.
We invite anybody to point us to
a major decision the collective made without a consensus. It took us
more than 2 years to work an editorial policy because we took the
time to reach a consensus. The funny part about turlutu's proof is
that the the mailing lists of belgium.indymedia.org remained public
until september 2004, because there was no consensus until then. But
some people do not have that patience and want to impose their vision
on the whole collective, if this does not work they quit. A good
example is the way turlututu quit:
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-August/001526.html
This only makes sense if you look at the previous messages and more
particularly a mail from Bart (pseudopunk)
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-August/001522.html
During the past elections, they did
excessive promotion for their own political party where they
were themselves candidates. The members non-PTB who criticized this
large promotion were ignored5
or attacked verbally with aggressivity and the critics from
readers were massively hidden.
Indymedia represents for them an
excellent propaganda tool for their party and all its satellite
organizations.
Turlu has to be really a lot more accurate in his research. Now we find in this list of so-called propaganda a feature that was made after the elections. More than that, it actually is a feature with 14 interviews about the giant leap ahead of the fascist party Vlaams Blok in the past elections. You can find there interviews with the head of the Official Body of Anti-discrimination, with a former dissident green member of parliament, with people form antiracist movements, trade unions and last but not least with the former president of the national Belgian (dutch-speaking) television (compare it with Greg Dyke of the BBC).
But it is certainly true that we have a different approach towards
elections and indymedia than some of the local collectives. Most of
us don't really believe in social change through elections. But each
time we have to see that others do find elections an important
political period. Trade unions and NGO's (even small ones) write
memorandums. Intellectuals deconstruct the language of the
politicians. Action groups put a pressure on candidates etc...
Therefore we choose to give this debate a place on the website. In
order to avoid an unstoppable list of election propaganda, we decided
to interview all political tendencies who call themselves leftist
(from extreme wing to social and Christian democrats). There was a
long debate under each interview. It is not by accident and very
manipulative that turlututu only links one of the whole series of
interviews.
We for sure don't think this is the only possible
approach. Indymedia Liege choose to censor every article about the
elections.
In march 2003 two members of the collective joined an electoral
list. It was a special period in Belgium with a war coming on and a
repressive campaign against a fresh and radical immigrant movement
(AEL of Dyab Abou Jahjah). When Dyab Abou Jahjah launched the
initiative of a clear antiracist, anti-war and left wing electoral
initiative some of us responded to it with enthusiasm. Because
indymedia was the sole media in Belgium where this movement could
express itself, it was no surprise that Abou Jahjah turned to us to
support the list. When Turlu says that critics of this list where
constantly censored, he is not telling the truth. In one of the
so-called
propaganda-features where Turlu points to you can even find a
debate section with a lot of harsh critical texts.
When we look
back at this period, we learned that media-activists should keep far
away from electoral initiatives. Even if we consider that true
objectivity doesn't exist, in general people don't accept that
media-activists are engaged in elections.
Also dismaying, they received more than 12.000 euro from the Pascal Decroos's funds to finance the book of Han Soete on the mediactivism (some who read it, say that it contains in fact a pure propaganda for the PTB), we wonder also why the benefits of this book would not return to indymedia instead of filling the pockets of its authors.
It is disturbing to read this. We all know how hard it is to be an activist and in the same to make a living. Some of us depend on social welfare, some of us have the luck to have wealthy parents. Others work part time in the traditional media. Others write books and try to find a funding for this work. We don't think it is up to the collective to judge how each of us finds his way through live. (if Turlu wants to judge the book, he should read it. He can find it on line, as the book is totally on the website: www.media-activism.be . Do a google-search and you will see that the PTB (or PVDA or WPB) is not mentioned ones.)
More serious, they also received in the name of "indymedia" nearly 25.000 euro coming from the foundation King Baudouin, a governmental organization. Like indymedia is not supposed to be directly financed by a governmental organization, they invented the "media circus" collective to receive these funds. We don't know what happened of the totality of these sums, a little part of this money seems to be used to buy 2 portable PC and 1 digital camera but what about the remainder ?
During the last years we received a lot of demands for training.
Schools, trade unions, NGO's, teachers, activists, ... They all
wanted us to organize workshops on media-activism. Because this took
a lot of our energy and because we saw that there was an opportunity
to get a special funding for this work, we started the mediacircus as
a project of Indymedia Belgium. The project was successful but there
were some weaknesses. First of all there was no follow up. We had
contact with a lot of potential media-activists, but after the
workshop all contact broke off. Second the demands were still there
and we came aware that we would need stable funding to keep on doing
this work. That's how in 2003 the movement GetBasic was founded out
of the collaboration of Mediacircus and a small education
organization Aanzet. GetBasic can be called a spin off of Indymedia
Belgium. It is an independent organization with it's own dynamic. But
we hope it's work can be a support to indymedia belgium.
For Mara
who is the main force behind all this it was rather shocking to read
these accusations, for months and months she asked people to
participate. Every General assembly she gave an account of what was
happening with the media-circus and invited people to participate.
Lately, they said that they receive between 1000 and 2500 euro per month, this money would be used to pay the hiring of the server and the low rent of their offices. The story doesn't say what they do with the cumulated surpluses every months. For what all that money is used ?
This of course is getting ridiculous, first the belgium collective
according to turlututu has no credibility, “everybody left”
but still we would have loads of money from contributions,...
It
is true that we opted for a particular way to get our funding. We ask
people to support us by paying us a small amount of money every
month. These contributions vary from 1 Euro up to 25 Euro a month. We
feel this way of funding is also a way legitimizing our work, the
more people that support us, the more money we get, the more we will
be able to do.
There is a finance team and all major financial
decisions have always been proposed to the general assembly: our
office, our server, outreach, fliers, ....
The PTB took such an importance inside www.indymedia.be that in less 3 years it lost completely its credibility to the eyes of the alternative and activist public. A large part of associations and collectives refuse to publish on www.indymedia.be because they see it like a vulgar puppet orchestrated for and by the interests of the PTB.
Well it is always good to look at the facts. If we only take the
newswire of the last weeks. In between 10.09.2004 & 04.10.2004
200 articles were posted in the belgium.indymedia.org. Those 200
articles were posted by 112 different people. We did the same
exercise in June and then had 200 articles posted by 91 people. There
was a huge diversity of articles going from: the wikipedia, Bishop
Romero, DHL, Refugees, education, Venezuela, Iraq,... In oktober
2004: 397 artickles were posted by 173 different people.
Among
those contributions were articles by people from Pax Christi (pic
report + article), ACV (the largest trade union: 1 pic report + 2
interviews), the Socialist Trade Union, Refugee organisations,
anti-war activists, environmental organizations, .... Note that these
organizations & people didn't just post a news release but made
the effort to write original stories. Compare this for instance with
the newswire of indymedia wvl were only thirteen articles were posted
in September from only six different people. There was only one
original story (i.e. no news release).
In September 2004 belgium.indymedia.org had 23 features on 17 issues with contributions from all kind or people with different backgrounds. (and it must be said that September is traditionally a low-intensity month)
Compare this to the September 2004 features of
#
OVL.indymedia.org : 3 features of whom 2 are on actions co-organized
by people involved in collective.
# Antwerpen.indymedia.org: 1
feature on a squat that involves people from the imc-antwerp
collective.
# wvl.indymedia.org : 0 features
#
liege.indymedia.org: 3 features, 1 on an action co-organized by
imc-liege people.
We know that in belgium there will always be rumors about any left wing initiative that it is being linked to the PTB. Nazi websites like dof.skynetblogs.be do have a reason. The method of calling people commies, Stalinists, ... Noam Chomsky describes it as one of the main filters in the “propaganda model”. http://media-activism.be/article.php3?id_article=153
All critics against the PTB (and its satellite organizations) are systematically hidden or even completely erased. The freedom of expression is very restricted because a lot of articles and comments are hidden massively according to the mood of the regulator for reasons as eccentric as arbitrary. We counted more than 16.000 articles/commentaires hidden in less than 4 years, which makes an average of 10 hidden per days.
It would also be normal to mention the number of articles/comments
posted on the website: 88.461 (september 2004) or more than 60
articles/comments a day. (in less than 4 years)
It is a bit a weak
argument to take the number of 16.000 articles. The big part of those
hidden posts are technical (doubles, tests, pics, ...). Apart from
that we have a very strict policy towards spam (no articles that are
posted all over the imc-network!). There is also the fact that
imc-belgium as most imc's in the world were under fierce attack from
fascist and Zionist side.
Saying that we would hide or remove all
critics on the PTB is totally absurd, check for instance
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2003/06/69278.php
.
Concerning the editorial charter, it's simple, they never had one. Except a text not really clear and very vagueness (allowing a great number of abuse).
This is grotesk, Turlu. First you say: “they don't have one” and then you give the link to our editorial rules. The editorial guidelines of Indymedia Belgium are based on the experience of other imc's in the world. The actual version was discussed for long months and is an active instrument that still can be amended.
In the past, they even tried to impose their own rules to indymedia Holland by asking them to hide an article blaming an organization related to the PTB of which one of admin Belgian is an imminent member. Indymedia Holland of course refused the ask, especially when it's done under the constraint. No need to say that the same article on www.indymedia.be doesn't have undergoes the same fate, the contents was replaced17. This article caused a dispute in www.indymedia.be because a total dissension between some non-PTB members who considered this article as acceptable and the PTB members who judged being authorized to hide all anonymous articles/comments as excuse (which is violation against the POU because people are allowed to use anonymity).
This is rather interesting example of plain lies.
An article
posted (copy paste) by Guido (Guidoke in #indymedia) falsely accused
the AEL of working with fascists so of course was put on hidden. We
even contacted the AEL to verify if we had it right. As we saw the
same post on IMC-NL, we of course told them this accusation was
false. We felt it very sad that such false accusations were out there
on the newswire.
But this has nothing to do with the PTB as we are talking about an article on the AEL. This might seem confusing but it illustrates the complexity of dealing with false information on IMC, it is even more confusing if this false information is posted on purpose by some IMC-Member (Guido).
They had ingenious idea to remove the link towards the hidden stuffs on the home page. So like this, it's impossible to know how much articles/comments were hidden, for which reason and by who.
The link is still on the website, you can find it in our editorial guidelines. How would Turlu have found it otherwise? On Sunday night (03.10.2004) Guidoke even mentions in irc #indymedia: “<guidoke> han: you know this rumour about the hidden pages om imc.be are more interesting than the newswire?” How could Turlututu give the exact number of artickle hidden if “ it's impossible to know how much articles/comments were hidden”
Another problematic is also the internal discrimination, for example they refused to give an access on the site to a guy simply because he was too much anarchist for them.
We don't know who you are talking about. Please be more specific. No really this is no joke, who was banned because he was an Anarchist?? (question asked in septmber 2004 and still waiting for an answer).
It was the same thing for the management of the mailing lists where they ignored 2 non-PTB members who asked to have an access on them. Later, the passwords of non-PTB members were changed so that they can't have access on their account any more (no need to say again that it has been done without somebody was warned or was consulted). Some complained also to be unsubscribed from the lists or been set on no-mail.
Be specific. The passwords were changed after an software update. Maybe that's what you're talking about? Recently we also send a mail to a few inactive members to ask them to do a new roll call. It only concerned members who didn't replied or send a mail for more than a year.
Since they chased away people, www.indymedia.be is now composed in reality of only 3, 4 active persons (the hard core of course). It arrives in difficult times (by a pure coincidence) that members emerge after several months of absence. But in all cases, we can certify that at least 90% of the people are PTB. The others are that we call "satellites", it means they don't say clearly they're from the PTB but they've got a strange relation with it.
Well yes, at process meetings there are 4 to 5 people. But most of
the time there are 8 people at work at our office. The process-list
has 23 members.
But there is very strange definition of what
turlututu calls satellites : “they don't say clearly they're
from the PTB but they've got a strange relation with it”
With such a definition not 90 but 100% of IMC-belgium is PTB or
satellite as we all have “a strange relation with it”.
The last AG of www.indymedia.be is a good example where we counted more than 15 members from PTB, the rest of people is unknown but there is a lot of chance that big part of them are from the same party.
This beats everything. So at our general assembly only 15 have “a strange relation with” the PTB?? We are for sure that all 25 people present have this “strange relation”.
We will get back later as we discuss the way people are counted to be yes or no a member of the PTB, ... but how could somebody know (not being present) by a list of names (no family names) who is and who is not PTB or has “a strange relation with it”?
Because their sectarism, a majority of www.indymedia.be doesn't wish to collaborate with the others indymedia in Belgium or elsewhere. They're not present to global or local level which tends to prove us that they're more interested by the image of indymedia than by its project.
Maybe turlutu was not there but for sure some people remember the
crowds of belgiums in Prague, Genova, ... But it is also thruth that
after Genova most of belgium.indymdia.org people focussed on building
indymedia in Belgium. But even then different people from the
belgium.indymedia.org collective participated in london IMC during
the ESF (oktober 2004),...
It also is very comprehensible that
most people who participate with belgium.indymedia.org have strong
feelings towards the local IMC's in belgium, as some of the
“spokespeople” of those IMC's spend a lot of energy in
bashing belgium.indymedia.org. The TXT we ard discussing here is
good example of that bashing, and it has been going on from the first
day indymedia has started in Belgium. (different people but the same
old story,...). We invite people to check our website, the newswire
& the features to verify wether we are sectarian. (feel free to
compare the diversity of issues covered with local belgium IMC's)
And then there is this strange list with names which should proof that we all are members of the PTB or have “a strange relation with it”.
We never ask people whether they are a member of a party let alone we would ask people what they did in the past. We feel these are personal questions. Listing people of being members of left-wing organizations is something dangerous, as people might lose their jobs,... We don't not even list the people active in the IMC as some people working in mainstream media do not want this.
The methods used to link people to the WPB are rather upsetting. This is a private matter, so people are "free" to say in public wether yes or no they are member of a group, party, ... But we feel there should be some respect for the privacy of people particpaiting in IMC. The concept of "satellites" makes almost everybody a WPB member.
Let still have a closer look at the way turlututu's list is
composed.
Raf for instance is being catalogued as being PTB (way
beyond his will) because on the WPB website his movies and the books
he wrote are featured.
han of course receive's a lot of hits on
the WPB website, everytime a picture of him used his name is
mentioned, not to mention the times he quoted, his book is
featured,... A search on google with "han Soete" gives you
more than 2.600 results, "soete han" 341 and
"han@indymedia.be" yet another 938. Why does turlutut not
mention that han was a key speaker an the green party congres, why
does turlututu not mention that han published severall artickles in
the cadre magazines of both the green party and the Social democrat
party, you can also read articles of han in the Anarchist NAR, ...
For instance: Peter (Mertens) – PTB. Of Course Peter Mertens has a lot of hits on the PTB website, as he is one of the official leaders of the PTB, but he never, ever attended an IMC meeting. There are 4 people in belgium.indymedia.org by the name of Peter (& one Pieter), but none of them is called Peter Mertens. In the newest version this was changed in Peter (intall), ... well there might be a Peter that works with INTALL but he never came to one of our meetings.
An other person featuring in this list is Gérard de Sélys. Gérard de Sélys is one of the co founders of belgium.indymedia.org. He is journalist that works for belgium national radio & TV. If you use turlututu's method and do a search with Gérard de Sélys on the website of Le monde Diplomatique you get 12 hits (articles written by Gérard or on one of his books).
Somebody not featuring turlututu's list but who according to his methodology must for sure be a prominent member of the PTB is Noam Chomsky. Give it a try en search google with : “Noam Chomsky site:ptb.be” you wil get 204 hits. I think everybody would agree it being grotesque saying Chomsky for sure must be a member of the PTB as he features 204 times on the PTB website.
Arnaud Leblanc is one of the members of IMC Liege, Arnaud being a friend of Turlutu you would expect him not to be a member of the PTB neither having “a strange relationship with it”. But try this in google : “Arnaud Le Blanc site:ptb.be” and you will get 23 hits.
Turlututu & co reason that every criticism on belgium.indymedia.org has been waved away as being facsist propaganda. This is ridicilous but can be explained as Turlutu never attended any belgium.indymedia.org meetings. If they would have done hat they would know that we spend a lot of time dussing the way we function, our editorial policy, ... and we take all criticism into consideration. But reaching concencus takes time & patience. But is understandable that turlututu feel that belgium collective waves away all criticism as they themselves seem to think that everybody who does not agree with them must either bee a Stalinist or sold out to the system. etc etc etc .........
Today's reality is that are two existing national indymedia projects in belgium.
There is the original belgium.indymedia.org project whose initiators and founders all are still taking part/cooperating & active, it also has growing number of people involved and collaborating. (belgium.indymedia.org / www.indymedia.be)
Next to that there is a new project that grew out of people who splitted from the original project. The reasons why people splitted and/or started with a local IMC are variable and not all local IMC's have the same dynamics. Still the different local IMC's have a common project, the syndication project.
The two national indymedia projects clearly have a different vision, which is inevitable as the new project(s) defined themselves in contradiction/opposition with the existing indymedia project and developed their own profile and vision.
We do not feel it as our duty to speak out on the legitimacy of the new indymedia project in Belgium, in fact we see nobody who would be able to do that. We do not want to make a value judgment of neither the syndication project or the local IMC's in Belgium.
Report of the general assembly of belgium.indymedia.org 04.09.2004 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-be/2004-September/0908-n0.html
We feel more than enough energy has been lost in this “fight” and that it is time we all use our energy in creating independent & alternative media in Belgium.
IMC-belgium-process team - 04 Oct 2004 (update on
09.12.2004)
imc-belgium-process-at-STOP-SPAM-indymedia.org