[IMC-Process] open letter about imc.be and a brief proposal of self-moderation

[Laila]

Hello,
My name is Laila and I am with imc-sweden. Imc-Sweden has, with growing concern, frustration and pessimism been following this infamous belgian issue for about three years now.
We do not consider imc-be to be working alongside with the POU, and it became clear to us at a very early stage that this is not only an issue of power or personal likes/dislikes. It is because imc-be is currently run by a small stalinist party of the worst kind - the ptb. All those who dropped out of imc-be testify of the very same thing, and of how the workings of imc-be was so far from the philosophy of Indymedia and the climate against non-members of the ptb so harsh, that they had to leave/felt they were kicked out or harassed into leaving.
Where Indymedia is about open-ness and sharing, imb-be is very closed and refuses to share a simple url with the other belgian collectives for a syndication-site. The URL I am referring to is belgium.indmedia.org. The imc-be - collective used this address only to point to www.indymedia.belgium. So, posessing to national urls, imc-be could not find it in their hearts to share one of them with the other collectives for a syndication-site, where all of the collectives would have been represented equally.This was never an issue of "taking away an url from a collective" - it was a matter of sharing and of co-existing.
Where indymedia is a lot about syndication and doing stuff together is general (such as dispatch - the best translationtool ever!), imc-be is about only guarding their own position, no matter what the costs are (more on that later).

As imc-liege presented the proposal of disaffiliation of imc-be, activists around the globe asked for evidence. Evidence of ptb running the site. Evidence of how the collective works. Such evidence was presented several times along with testimonys of all of those who left imc-be.  _that_ was never an issue of mcCarthyism. Please forgive me for being tedious, but mcCarthyism is a US-American phenomenon, probably in full bloom again with the holy war on terror. But while US-America was on the other side of the iron-curtain, manufacturing demonizing lies about anyone who wanted to share something for free (ie a "communist"), Europe was actually part of the iron-curtain, pretty much divided into half. In retrospect I believe that this historical and political closeness gave us another outlook on things. No need to demonize (as much as McCarthy) since the workings of stalinism was visible to us in another way. But also because we could see for ourselves that life under stalinism wasn't exactly a picnic in the park. It is an extremely undemocratic ideology that calls for "internal cleansing" before dealing even with Capitalism. This is how nearly all stalinist sects operate. There are also some stalinist parties arounf europe that engage in politics on a more democratic and open approach, not being obsessed with getting rid if the "traitors".
But in short: people on global lists asked for facts and now they are accusing nearly all of the belgian collectives for mcCarthyism. I find that behavour very contradictory; it is disrespectful and even a bit ignorant by certain individuals and collectives to ask for more facts, then ignore there facts, and then very aggressivly blame the people who took the time and effort to produce asked facts as McCarthyists.

The German proposal is an organic creation that evolved through lengthy and heated debates. When the proposal passed, imc-be basically accused indymedia for being undemocratic, and the list-facilitators for power-abuse.
Consensus minus one is not a new phenomenon to anyone, and imc-be has previously asked global to "respect their democratic procedures" in order to postpone a deadline last summer. With four months. 
All people/collectives involved in the process of making/raising concerns about the German proposal put down a lot of work in doing so. The proposal did not pass without being critically debated. And those who participated passed this proposal because we saw it as the only constructive way out of this mess. 
Now, the decision-making process is probably not the ultimate one. But that is _not_ on issue of a secret conspiracy by any listmoderatotrs/facilitators. Nor is it an issue of power-abuse. It is the process that we as a global network all contributed to and accepted, If someone disagrees with how decisions are made, that should be an issue of debates and new proposals, _not_ about demonizing the people who are actually doing their best to make these processes possible at all.

Blaming and accusing everyone and everything for not getting one's way is not participating in a global network. It is the behavour of a parasite.

So I have three proposals (not formal ones) to all of you

1. No personal attacs on the facilitators - try instead to think of a better way to do things or to at least keep discussion on the issue and not on "the conspiracy"
2. Let steps for mediation continue alongside with discussions of how we make decisions, so that the mediation doesn't get stalled, halted or sabotaged before it has a chance to run it's course.
3. Leave those poor Germans alone for chrissake. They been working their asses off in order to provide a solution.

/Laila liason imc-sweden
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