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DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

debian.community

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Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#21

Post by pytester »

tompccs wrote: post #18
techntoke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is in order for us to do this, we have to do that? What about supporting Palestine bothers you so much?

Nothing about supporting Palestine bothers me in the slightest. I'm explaining why someone might think a thread about organising a conference about an open source operating system in a city with many open source contributors is not the appropriate place to bring it up. Don't bring geopolitics into everything. That way lies madness.

>Don't bring geopolitics into everything.

A general ban on hosting conferences in geopolitically sensitive hotspots that covered Israel would be the non-hypocritical way to achieve this aim, supposing it is the true aim.

However, hosting a conference in Israel is inviting political posturing. Message censorship is political posturing. Using anti-semitism to censor non-anti-semitism is political posturing (and, usually, a form of anti-arab racism itself).

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#22

Post by woodpanel »

Many people remain uncomfortable about how DebConf organizers are handling the challenges presented in the middle east.

As someone, who has zero experience with DebConf whatsoever, I have to say, I can see how such an intro could be interpreted as anti-semitic. What "challenges" would have an Israli conference have to handle? How and why. If it's just because it is Israeli then do all Israeli conferences need to "handle" this challenge?

Should DebCon be boycotted if it doesn't live up to said "challenges"?

But maybe someone can explain, what is meant by "challenges"?

Also, as a sidenote, the article doesn't help it's case either, if it uses the Holocaust as a reason to criticize Israel.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#23

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway202001 wrote: post #19

If(?) you really want to read this, please note that the site is closely connected to a former Debian developer with an axe to grind and at least people in his very close proximity acting in bad faith [0][1]. Please use your judgement as to the quality of the contents of https://debian.community . I have no horse in this race, but I do notice it is a prime example of Godwin's law [2]... [0] dig debian.community, dig…

[deleted]

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#24

Post by tek-cyb-org »

Why the censorship though? That is pretty nefarious.

Palestinians basically live in israel, but have manufactured concrete borders put around them. Inhibiting their freedom of movement in their own country. Not allowing them to go to conferences. So holding a deb community member asking the community if they would be willing to spend some time for the engineers less fortunate, is actually quite awesome of him.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#25

Post by e12e »

tompccs wrote: post #8
pytester wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the decision to host a conference in Israel in the first place is a form of political posturing, as is message censorship. If they truly wanted to be apolitical (and it appears that Alexander Wirt very much does not) they could have held it somewhere more neutral (e.g. Turkey).

Are you serious? There was an article on HN just yesterday about how Turkey censored Wikipedia for two years. I think a lot of Israeli engineers would just like to be able to host conferences without it turning into a geopolitical debate.

It made sense to boycott South Africa during apartheid, and it makes sense to boycott Israel today.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#26

Post by jwilk »

throwaway202001 wrote: post #19

If(?) you really want to read this, please note that the site is closely connected to a former Debian developer with an axe to grind and at least people in his very close proximity acting in bad faith [0][1]. Please use your judgement as to the quality of the contents of https://debian.community . I have no horse in this race, but I do notice it is a prime example of Godwin's law [2]... [0] dig debian.community, dig…

Note that this is the same person whose message was allegedly censored.

The actual reason the message didn't reach the mailing list it that he's banned there.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#27

Post by vanusa »

throwaway202001 wrote: post #19

If(?) you really want to read this, please note that the site is closely connected to a former Debian developer with an axe to grind and at least people in his very close proximity acting in bad faith [0][1]. Please use your judgement as to the quality of the contents of https://debian.community . I have no horse in this race, but I do notice it is a prime example of Godwin's law [2]... [0] dig debian.community, dig…

I do notice it is a prime example of Godwin's law.

Except it didn't involve that kind of rhetoric at all.

Not until you brought it into the conversation.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#28

Post by ealexhudson »

slim wrote: post #14

IMHO the carefulness that was put in writing that message make it impossible to interpret it as antisemitic or bad faith. Actually interpreting it as antisemitic is bad faith.

I suspect the care put into the message was more to ensure that this specific example would look reasonable on its own. When set in the context of the site it's posted on, and the other sites associated with the author (e.g. fsfesicherheit's other postings to HN), it looks more like a pattern of quite targeted harassment.

I personally have no skin in this game, but if the message was censored from the list I would give the listmasters the benefit of the doubt that this was due to the author of the e-mail rather than the content per se.

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#29

Post by slim »

ealexhudson wrote: post #28
slim wrote: post #14

IMHO the carefulness that was put in writing that message make it impossible to interpret it as antisemitic or bad faith. Actually interpreting it as antisemitic is bad faith.

I suspect the care put into the message was more to ensure that this specific example would look reasonable on its own. When set in the context of the site it's posted on, and the other sites associated with the author (e.g. fsfesicherheit's other postings to HN), it looks more like a pattern of quite targeted harassment. I personally have no skin in this game, but if the message was censored from the list I would gi…

This is a (probably not intentional) ad-hominem

Re: DebConf20: offer to speak in Palestine censored

#30

Post by mjw1007 »

slim wrote: post #14

IMHO the carefulness that was put in writing that message make it impossible to interpret it as antisemitic or bad faith. Actually interpreting it as antisemitic is bad faith.

If the message was silently censored, there's no reason to believe that the list manager is claiming that it was antisemitic.

Here's another possible explanation: maybe the message was posted by an individual who is generally banned from Debian mailing lists.

Come to that, maybe the same individual is the author of all the articles on the oddly-anonymous "Debian Community News" site.

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