[Boston-editorial] flamewars

[Pete Stidman]

Thanks for airing this Jonathan,

  I am in full agreement with you.  This was discussed
at our last meeting and it was agreed that both Tim
and Matt were out of line when they hid their posts. 
Not only did Sid have a point but hiding their
comments only gave them ammunition and made us some
more enemies in the community.  

If you would like to join the editorial list you can
do so at lists.indymedia.org (although it looks like
your here so maybe you already did that...)  

Feel free to keep jumping in- your input is very
welcome.

-Pete

--- "Jonathan D. Proulx" <jon at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Boston-editorial mailing list
> Boston-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-editorial
> 


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/