<nettime> Welcome Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic!

[IndyMedia Italia <italy@indymedia.org>]

     WELCOME MINISTRY OF INTERIOR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC!
     Indymedia Italia intercepts the czech police
     and writes an open letter to Prague and the czech politicians.

     http://italy.indymedia.org
     mailto:italy@indymedia.org


At 8:53 (Prague Time) of September 15 the Ministry of Interior of the 
Czech Republic visited the Indymedia Italia website from the host 
mvcr.cz, that is running also the site www.mvcr.cz.

We hope that the czech police has been able to read all the italian 
content and to enjoy the flavours of a mediterranean independent 
medium. We are glad to be monitored from an institution devoted to 
protect order and normalisation in the Czech Republic since the age 
of the communist regime.

Are times really changed? The present police chief was a member of 
the Communist Party and now he is working together with FBI to 
organise police forces like once he worked with the Red Army. From 
the White Mountain battle, sadly the Prague karma is used to be slave 
of a foreign powerful country.

We would like to remember to the Ministry of Interior that Indymedia 
is not an organising tool for mobilisation and protests, but only an 
information medium to cover cultural diversities and global activism. 
In the same way Indymedia is not a propaganda tool, simply we offer 
spaces and tools for free expression and free information. We are not 
the 'Pravda' (or the 'Rude Pravo') of the global movement.

Indymedia Italia has not direct information about the italian 
partecipation into Prague 2000, but we think it will be non-violent 
(if the police wants to know that). We think that activists coming 
from all the world are not in Prague to face police and FBI but to 
demonstrate their *constitutional* right to protest WTO/IMF financial 
policies. Those activists will ask the Prague population, including 
policemen's families, if they likes to follow IMF/WTO policies and 
become as poor as Russia. After the Communist regime Prague has seen 
more wealth, but the IMF/WTO is going to make east europe as poor as 
once.

It is odd that the biggest movement featuring a really united 
european spirit is that youth movement protesting the big financial 
institutions, while euroskepticism make euro slump and nazis are 
growing. Something does not work in the spectacle of the United 
Europe if the only movement capable to unite people from all 
countries is that protesting movement.

Demonstrators of Prague 2000 belongs to the real democratic tissue of 
Europe. This is the biggest protest since 1989's Velvet Revolution. 
Ten years ago the president Vaclav Havel was treading on the same 
squares, when cops were beating marching students, the communist 
government was falling and the present Minister of Interior of the 
Czech Republic, the 31-years-old Stanislav Gross was growing around 
the communist party. Are times really changed?

We can't ask Prague citizens for joining the mobilisation because we 
are not a political medium. But we can suggest to the Ministry of 
Interior not to destroy Prague touristic and political image with a 
postcard coming from the past. There will be hundreds of Indymedia 
videomakers and photographers at work in Prague  ready to put their 
materials on a worlwide information channel. We hopes that Indymedia 
will cover the real issues about the IMF and WTO meeting and will not 
turn itself in a body count bulletin of activists beaten from police.

The president Havel is suggested to keep himself distant from IMF and 
WTO policies. They don't bring good luck. But we would be stupid to 
preach to stop the so-called *new normalisation*: it will be the 
first economic crisis that will remind about a less wild 
globalisation, a "globalisation from the bottom", that is what 
protesters ask. As the Czech central bank governor has warned, the 
fiscal deficit is growing and the future is on danger. IMF and WTO 
are not the solution, they are the cause: are you ready to go back to 
the past, mr. Havel?

intercepted regards,
Indymedia Italia

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