Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau • Hacker News Board

Re: Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau

#101

Post by talsraviv » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #95

talsraviv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Israeli I was really hoping Hacker News could be the one online forum where I didn't have to hear generalizations about my country's right to exist. I respect your opinion and I'm sure there's more complexity and historical awareness to mutually discuss, but please keep the snarky one-liners to Reddit.

> where I didn't have to hear generalizations about my country's right to exist. I'm not sure where you inferred that from. Criticism of Israel's policies and structural flaws is not existentialism criticism unless you have a very paranoid mindset. > could be the one online forum There should be no place on this globe where you should be free from the consequences of your actions. It would certainly be nicer if you c…

Free from the consequences of my actions? How do you know how I voted in the last election?

If anytime you travelled abroad you were treated like a hard-core Iraq ware supporter and Halliburton board member you'd get sick of it too. Or if every time your country vaguely became a topic for discussion things immediately devolved to view you and your nationality as not much except native american murderers and subjugators and ask you to answer for everyone else's actions in the history of your country. And when you have a well articulated answer explaining that it's more complicated than an archetypical narrative, or anything slightly well-written, they dismiss you as a highly-trained PR spokesperson lurking on forums instead of a human being with an opinion.

Yeah, it gets tiring.

As a result, you don't really want to get into details because it doesn't really sound like anyone's too open to hearing what you have to say, just looking for a fight. And then people pre-empt you by saying "stop calling me an anti-semite" and "I'm sick of you people saying ___ " while at the same time completely ignoring other important human rights abuses going on in the world, you begin to wonder why you bother engaging anyone, and instead just resort to asking to talk about it elsewhere, not when you're trying to read Hacker News.

And yes, snarky one-liners that gloss over the entire region's history evoke all of this.

Re: Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau

#102

Post by igravious » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

talsraviv wrote: post #101

igravious wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I didn't have to hear generalizations about my country's right to exist. I'm not sure where you inferred that from. Criticism of Israel's policies and structural flaws is not existentialism criticism unless you have a very paranoid mindset. > could be the one online forum There should be no place on this globe where you should be free from the consequences of your actions. It would certainly be nicer if you c…

Free from the consequences of my actions? How do you know how I voted in the last election? If anytime you travelled abroad you were treated like a hard-core Iraq ware supporter and Halliburton board member you'd get sick of it too. Or if every time your country vaguely became a topic for discussion things immediately devolved to view you and your nationality as not much except native american murderers and subjugato…

Oops. That's an ambiguity of English and a lack of careful specificity on my part. I meant "your actions" as in one's actions.

If I were from the US I agree that it would get irritating real fast if that was how I was treated while I went about my business - I'm not sure whether that was failed attempt of yours to turn the tables on me or a strange attempt at engendering empathy and garnering support.

I shall repeat because you appear to have missed it: there would be less opportunity to for you to get tired of hearing people calling out Israeli policies if Israeli policies changed, maybe that is where energy should be diverted to maybe just maybe?

Anyway, let's not stray too far from the real real news here, Egypt! The very real possibility of a genuine democracy on Israel's doorstep. That would be awesome, I'm sure we can all agree on that.

Re: Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau

#103

Post by stevenbedrick » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #94

stevenbedrick wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see... he doesn't speak Arabic, so any "regular" journalistic skills he might have would be useless, and AFAIK he's not an expert on Egyptian culture and politics, so he doesn't have any special domain expertise that might be useful even without Arabic language skills. I'd personally rather hear more on CNN, MSNBC, etc. from actual Egyptian journalists.

There's an English version of al jazeera, where the anchors and reporters speak English and broadcast to the English speaking world. I doubt speaking Arabic is a necessity to work there.

Point taken, but a) they've already got plenty of good anchors, and b) many of the anchors (and all of the reporters that I've seen thus far) seem to speak Arabic as well as English, and can therefore do things like talk to people on the street, understand government broadcasts, etc.

Re: Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau

#104

Post by talsraviv » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #102

talsraviv wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free from the consequences of my actions? How do you know how I voted in the last election? If anytime you travelled abroad you were treated like a hard-core Iraq ware supporter and Halliburton board member you'd get sick of it too. Or if every time your country vaguely became a topic for discussion things immediately devolved to view you and your nationality as not much except native american murderers and subjugato…

Oops. That's an ambiguity of English and a lack of careful specificity on my part. I meant "your actions" as in one's actions. If I were from the US I agree that it would get irritating real fast if that was how I was treated while I went about my business - I'm not sure whether that was failed attempt of yours to turn the tables on me or a strange attempt at engendering empathy and garnering support. I shall repeat…

can't disagree with any of that...