[Boston-editorial] flamewars

[Jonathan D. Proulx]

Not sure how useful my commentary is as I don't think you know me well
enough to judge where it's coming from, but here it is anyway.
Appologies in advance for the rant, apparently I have issues around
censorship :)

I appreciate that editing needs to take place and I can also
understand where individuals were coming from in there actions, so
please none of this is meant as  personal critiques but as comments on
policy...so disclaimers aside: 

Zoltar on his own will come off looking like an idiot, I say give him
enough rope, and only point out factual errors that are easy to
backup.  It does my heart good that he's reading this too...bet you
think your clever joining a public list (oh I suppose that is meant
personally....oops) 

Sid on the other hand has the occasional point, particularly in the
Police Brutality article.  There seems to be an "oh no you can't say
anything bad about the black panthers" reaction which is a bit
absurd.  Even the strongest supporters of their goals could have
strenuous disagreements over their methods.

Based on the two threads I can see that Sid is antagonistic, but it
seems to be a genuine disagreement and debate.  Perhaps this is
because I haven't yet figured out how to view hidden comments?

I suppose I'm a little uncomfortable with the underlying policy.

Consider would you have hidden a post by Malcolm X :

"When a snake bites your children, you don't go and look for the snake
that has blood on it's jaws, any old snake will do. Any old snake will
do!"

one location that has the speach http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/malcolm-x/end-police-brutality.mp3

now in context the "snake" can be construed as the LAPD or as white
folk generally.  I've always taken it as a "The White Man" and found
it a rather chilling speach.

I'd rather not censor this, which means in my sense of fairness I
could nod censor the converse (though I admit it'd have a much harder
time of it).

The clause "...or violations of either the Boston IMC's mission statement
or of the Global IMC's principles of unity , such as white
supremacist, homophobic, sexist, etc. postings." in the editorial
policy is a bit dangerous (infact I don't see how the ban on white supremacist,
homophobic, sexist, etc. postings is derived from the referenced
sources).  How do we define these things?  Is it really better to
supress rather than debate them?  

If it comes down to name calling that's clear and can be rulled under
personal attacks, but should we pretend that ideas that are offensive
to us don't exist...

-Jon