[Seattle-editorial] Re: Amnesty International calls Palestinian attacks on civilians"crimesagainst humanity"

[anarch3m]

And I read your letter so fast that I got your position exactly reversed.  I rather expected a note back that called me on this gross incompetence.

<http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=191512&group=webcast>

The assertions you did come back with make me wince.  Because they are too true.  I will try to remember that "you are" refers to the collective, not to myself in particular.  And I will ask you to remember that the people working here are also not what you have in mind when you see a face for us in the chaos of postings.

I hope you understand I'm speaking personally.  And that I'm not trying to downplay your feelings, confuse you or brush aside anything to get you "off our case."  I could easily have hit delete, but I have, since the Battle of Seattle, all through my period with imc, been seeking dialogue.  Sometimes the wire rewards me, often not.

Thanks for not quiting.  As you know, the wire is a particularly attractive forum form various evil idiologies.  Yet you have written to get some response that might do something, what? improve it? make it more ballanced? I hope so.  I hope it does become that.

While you see the battle regarding the issues around Israel/Palestine
as the focus (in your original submission- but I think you have broadened it in this letter),still... perhaps you don't have a good sense of our perspective.

If we censor, they will have defeated us.  If we start to go down censoring, for any particular reason, we will become nothing but a shill for whomever.  You are right that we are being used as shills now.  But the battle is not over.  It's a different strategy than you would propose I guess.  I think you're fighting o the same ends as we, or many of us at least.

So, slow down and let me try to convince you that I responded in the spirit of "Yes, and...' rather than "yes, but."  And what can we do to correct it without betraying the (not leftist) revulsion to be censors?

Let me get personal again.  I posted for my Libertarian US party last night, on the issue of voting out the most regressive rabid dogs in Congress who support the "war on Drugs."  Today the comments were juvenile leading in with "libertarians suck" amd going on to how we're all "hypercapitalists."  That hurt.  I guess I did not toe somebodies ideological line of purity.  Did not matter that no other party (green?) was puting effort here.  We (LPUS) were discounted over a issue of supposed economic beliefs, which he got wrong to boot.

Seattle was, supposedly, about a turtle/teamster convergence of views.  It's a continuous battle to keep the alienation from overwhelming the field.  But this is where I chose to engage.  Setting in the middle of the battle field.  It's never lonely with potshots from both sides.  But it is brutal.  

More back to the issue.  We get Zionazi crap.  yes, I will say that word.  We get white supremacy crap.  We get stuff that is transparent.  We get taunting to degenerate the dialogue.  We get mind games to confuse the issue.  Misinformation, disinformation and lies all come to the wire.  While each of nthe various sites are autonomous, they each have a level of comfort that "works" for that site and the active participants.  Things are improving.  But there is still too much screaming "your wrong, you stupid idiot!"  and too little reaching out to bridge and overcome.

Funny that many of the strident voices against Israel would a few years ago knee jerked into line to defend that state, had been involved in visits to Kibutz.  Funny that many founders of IMC have family ties to Jewish traditions.  Scary how kneejerking happens in all populations.  But then people tend to prefer polarized and simple views, even if they are unfounded, conspiratorial and downright unenlightened.

I guess IMC will only look wonderful when humanity looks that way.  And I guess we need to be more proactive in getting that going.  We've had 2 years to get the project up and very viable, had a number of suits over the Israel issue.  Resisted the tendency to cave to the pro-Israel side, resisted the perils of reactionary scum to bring us down.  Perhaps we need to resist the tendency to be, like our uch maligned mainstream media, "neutral." 

Funny how we were predicated on overcoming the false neutrality we see in mainstream, yet fall into an other neutrality.  Perhaps we need to re-examine the issue as per our core values and mission statement as activists for a fair world and brotherhood, and start actively campaigning against the true horrors carried out as the sides of this issue, when in fact both extremes are the very same horror.

Your comments are requested, I am sending this as a cc to the imc collective so others can join.  I expect to read others who do not see it as I have stated in my personal opinions above.  Ah, is bottom up democracy not a rich and messy soil!

walt

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 07:21:34  
 David F. Skoll wrote:
>On Wed, 10 Jul 2002,  anarch3m wrote:
>
>> http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=191373&group=webcast
>> http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=191294&group=webcast
>
>> and then I ask, why do you have this attitude like were are patsies
>> like the rest of the press?
>
>Because you are.  Your slogan of independence and truth-seeking is a
>joke; you are simply biased towards leftist stupidities instead of
>corporate stupidities.  I could have predicted you'd respond to the
>Amnesty report with the knee-jerk idiocy of "Yes, but..."
>
>--
>David.
>
>


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