Who is behind "www.indymedia.be" : Indymedia West Vlaanderen

Who is behind "http://www.indymedia.be"

First of all, what's the PTB/PVDA ?
It's Workers's party of Belgium, a political party which the methods are based on Stalinists and Maoists theories. The PTB says it clearly, it preaches dictatorship of the proletariat by "reducing to silence its enemies of class"1, nobody doubt that the other left tendencies are also in the black list because its extreme sectarianism.
The PTB is illustrated by its large support to different criminals of war and dictatorships in the world.

How does the PTB/PVDA work and why is it so dangerous ?
The PTB proposes to its new members an initiatory course by which they will receive orientated political formations. These formations are in fact a propaganda and it is not rare to find there ridiculous deformations historical like the negation of the existence of the goulags! And yes. That's we call: brain washing.
From a financial point of view, the PTB does not have to complain, all its members have the obligation to have wages of workman, exceeding of these wages is directly transferred in the funds of the party. It explains why they have enormous means at their disposal but also why they don't have any difficulty of shorting the other organizations in Belgium ; because not glad to have set up a number phenomenal of satellite organizations, the PTB also tries to infiltrate associations which it doesn't have yet under its control.

Here we are, do we have to consider that http://www.indymedia.be would be one of "putsched" victims?
We don't know if it exists a real ambition from this party to control indymedia in Belgium because they have pain to understand the interest of an open media, but maybe we are wrong.
What we are sure, it's that some members of this party have a savage will to control these alternative media by all the possibilities including by trampling the principles of indymedia if necessary.
The back of the decorations of http://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 left2, most part of them are quickly replaced by direct or indirect members of PTB. It's not that strange because the building where http://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.

How the situation with http://www.indymedia.be degenerated at this point and why we weren't able to do something against?
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".
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. As the number of people who resisted fell, the number of member of the PTB on the other hand increased. What worsened the situation because the hard core had an increasingly power. There is a proverb which would be appropriate to illustrate this problem: "When disgusted people go away, there remains only disgusting people".

Today this take of control by some members of PTB can be verified by facts:

Abuse and diversion of the image of indymedia
During the past elections, they did excessive promotion4 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 hidden6.
Indymedia represents for them an excellent propaganda tool for their party and all its satellite organizations.
Also dismaying, they received more than 12.000 euro from the Pascal Decroos's funds to finance the book of Han Soete on the mediactivism7 (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.
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" collective8 to receive these funds. We don't know what happened of the totality of these sums9, a little part of this money seems to be used to buy 2 portable PC and 1 digital camera but what about the remainder ?
Lately, they said that they receive between 1000 and 2500 euro per month10, 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 ?

Total loss of recognition and credibility
The PTB took such an importance inside http://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 http://www.indymedia.be because they see it like a vulgar puppet orchestrated for and by the interests of the PTB.
You have to know that a lot of people in Belgium think indymedia = PTB. This image affects and will affect undoubtedly for a long time the Belgian local collectives, which, are really independent from any political organization. It's not even rare that during a demo, people ask us in the street if we are ourselves from the PTB. This dislike explains why so much people don't want to take part to indymedia in Belgium.

No respect of the freedom of expression
All critics against the PTB (and its satellite organizations) are systematically hidden or even completely erased11. 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 arbitrary12. We counted more than 16.000 articles/commentaires hidden in less than 4 years13, which makes an average of 10 hidden per days.
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)14. Text which they never really applied either. As soon as a person starts to criticize their organizations or even the methods of indymedia.be, we are directly insulted of "fascist"15, as well for the readers than for members of the others Imc.
In the past, they even tried to impose their own rules16 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 http://www.indymedia.be doesn't have undergoes the same fate, the contents was replaced17. This article caused a dispute in http://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 autrorized to hide all anonymous articles/comments as excuse (which is violation against the POU because people are allowed to use anonymity).
In general, the censure works like this at http://www.indymedia.be: that starts by a simple article/comment which is wrongfully hidden, the reader thinks about an technical error so he reposts it. Then he's surprised because it disappears again, so his first reflex is to ask "why his contribution is hidden?". But his question disappears also still without justification. The person irritated, asks again but the moderator finds now the excuse of "spam" to hide it, ect... If the reader wants to ask by mail then, there's a lot of chance this mail won't pass ever. Here's how they shut up people who protest against their methods.

Violation of the transparency
They had ingenious idea to remove the link towards the hidden stuffs on the home page. After that they stopped to send automatic mails to announce that contents were hidden (it goes without saying that it was done without prior agreement). So like this, it's impossible to know how much articles/comments were hidden, for which reason and by who.
They also practise the complete blanked out of the articles/comments. They even justified it by saying: "if it's not written in the edito rules that it's prohibited, so it means we can do it". This kind of logical authorizes a great number of adrifts.

Management completely hierarchical and contempt of the consensual rules
The hard core acts in a scorning and dictatorial way. They don't need any agreement to act like they want and they do not care about the opinions of the others. 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. 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 them18. 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.
Again a good example, during a big action (Get in shape), we decided to put into private the list of co-operation for Belgian local indymedia's because some personal informations (phone numbers) have been sent by error, so we wanted to avoid that police can use it against us. Jumping on the occasion, the hard core directly put all its lists into private19 without asking or trying to understand. It's only with the help and the pressures of non-PTB members (who left) that some of these lists has been put back to public20. Note that today all their lists are private except one and the list of members is accessible only to the admin.
You have to know that all the public addresses are under the control of only one person, so by that way they act like a real filter and it's technically impossible for us to know how many people complained about their methods of operation.

Tolerance and non-existent diversity
Since they chased away people, http://www.indymedia.be is now composed in reality of only 3, 4 active persons21 (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.
The last AG of http://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 large presence is not without objective, once http://www.indymedia.be is in danger, it seems that a part of PTB is mobilized. The second reason is also that some of them are using the local cells of PTB to start a local indymedia in the same town as the existing local indymedia's, thus they can shorting them.

Disastrous co-operation with other (Belgians) initiatives
Because their sectarism, a majority of http://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.
Concerning the relation that those maintain with the Belgian local collectives, it's catastrophic. They tried to sabotage the build of Imc Wvl by pushing people against each other, they also launched a smear campaign against 2 recent local collectives: they insinuated several times that indymedia Liege had been set up by the PC (Communist Party)22 and that indymedia Ovl had been formed by an emerging ecologist party. This shows very well ambient paranoia and the prejudices they've got toward the others indymedia which they see like some "political adversaries".
Confidence that those have is at a point such as they used a spy (ro)bot named "NR30" which was placed on the IRC channels of the local collectives, after several days and many messages from us, it didn't answer, that's only once we discovered the bot has the same IP as the offices of http://www.indymedia.be that it started to speak. They spend also their time by insulting or by doing some spams on the sites23 of local collectives under anonymous names but we can easily recognise them because their static IP.

Remoteness from the principles of indymedia and the open-publishing
http://www.indymedia.be is organized like a corporatist press, in their mind, the actors are not the regular visitors but rather the writer team who have the duty to inform the readers. This team of drafting (composed again of the hard core) has got its own edito meeting where they discuss the futur events they want to cover "or not" because some of them think there is too much attention on the anti-globalist movement24. That explains why sometimes they even prefer to cover the same subject as mass-media25 than an alternative event.
You can easily check what we mean by seeing their articles included in the central column, more 3/4 of them are written by the team of drafting and not by the regular visitors. So, there's no reflexion between the real content in the newswire and the content in the middle column. this fact doesn't encourage the people to publish any more. Some readers complained also about the fact their contribution didn't have the attention they deserved.

=====================================

1 Source:

http://www.ptb.be/doc/em47/seminar.htm

2 Active members who left:

Arnaud, Turlututu, Duende, Libby, Joeri, Françoise, Yannick, Tuc, Zoom, Guido, Pseudopunk, Lize, Toon, Brigitte, Frédéric, Maarten, Deidre, Janineke, Olivier, Nicolas, Marie-Ange, etc...

3 Examples:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-August/018974.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-October/019306.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-August/018966.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001803.html

4 Propaganda for the PTB during elections:

http://www.indymedia.be/news/2003/04/57330.php
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=58#8636
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=59#8623
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=60#8612
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=60#8604
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=61#8594
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=64#8478
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=64#8474
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=65#8360
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/05/85245.php
http://www.indymedia.be/archives/archive_display_by_date.php?category_id=3&page=5#9260
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/06/85976.php
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/06/85712.php

5 Protestation of non-PTB members:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-April/000992.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-April/012901.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-April/012877.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-April/013036.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-May/015363.html

6 Critics massively hidden:

http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=57330
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=57245
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=61807
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=58768
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=60088
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=61776
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=58768
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=61215
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=60530
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=62758
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=57334
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=57301

7 Media-activism book:

http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=9199&category_id=3
http://belgium.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=9258&category_id=3

8 Media circus:

http://www.indymedia.be/news/2002/10/35443.php
http://indymedia.be/circus

9 Donation of 24.750 euro:

http://www.kbs-frb.be/code/page.cfm?id_page=127&id=1827

Donation 12.394,68 euro:

http://www.fondspascaldecroos.com/archief/werkbeurzen/han_soete/index.html

10 Regular donations:

"We have +200 people who support us financialy with 5 to 15 Euro a month."
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-be/2004-September/0914-rc.html

11 Some examples:

http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/04/82969.php
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/03/82612.php
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=84292#84297
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=83608#83644
http://www.indymedia.be/news/hidden.php?id=83429#83451
http://www.indymedia.be/news/2004/03/81727.php

12 Nice example:

13 Number of articles/comments hidden:

34 pages x 500 = 17.000 hidden
http://belgium.indymedia.org/news/?comments=yes&display=f&limit=500&page=34

14 Their edito text:

http://belgium.indymedia.org/process/openpub.php

15 Examples:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-May/015222.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/Opheffingban-0002.eml

16 Pressures on Imc Holland:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-September/019197.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-September/019219.html

17 Article modified:

http://belgium.indymedia.org/news/2003/09/73625.php

18 Ignored requests of access on mailing lists:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001919.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-edito/2003-October/019464.html

19 Lists on private without any conscensus:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001873.html

20 Protestation against lists on private:

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001877.html
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001892.html

21 Actual active members:

Han (Resit) - PTB
Christophe - PTB
Mara (Maria) - Satellite

Others:
Antonio (La Braise) - PTB
Rosario (La Braise) - PTB
Jonathan (La Braise) - PTB
manolis - PTB
Pavel - PTB
Redkitten (Chengetheworld) - PTB
mehdi (Chengetheworld) - PTB
Gérard - PTB
Peter (Intal) - PTB
Raf - Satellite
Danny - Satellite

22 False accusations against Imc Liege and Ovl:

"Daarop wilden zij onmiddellijk een indymedia-luik oprichten en als plaats kozen ze de lokalen van een aan de PC gelieerde organisatie" = "Immediately, they wanted to set up Indymedia-Liege (imc.lg) and they chose to settle in the buildings of an organization linked the PC"
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-September/001580.html
Fr http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-September/001582.html

23 Perturbations on local sites:

http://liege.indymedia.org/news/2004/04/1682_comment.php#1756
http://liege.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/544_comment.php#581

24 Too much antiglobalists:

"Te veel antiglobalisten" = "too much antiglobalists"
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-October/001855.html

(((I)))ndymedia West Vlaanderen