How to demonstrate your opponent's point

jeffrey fisher jfisher at igc.org
Fri Nov 16 10:24:07 PST 2001


i agree it's important the left not be involved in the spread of fud. bryan has himself been of assistance on precisely this issue in the recent past (remember the celebrating palestinians?).

honestly, i think y'all are completely missing the point, but obviously, it's just me. let's not waste any more of our time.

j

On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 12:15 PM, Kelley wrote:


> At 09:38 AM 11/16/01 -0600, jeffrey fisher wrote:
>> i guess i just think bryan was asking some questions in good faith.
>
> firstly, the subject line said, "Activist Curtailed in the US..." not
> "Activists Curtailed in the US...?" there wasn't one single question
> mark in bryan's post, let alone a sentence that was a question that
> lacked a question mark due to typo.
>
> instead, there was a comment, "if this is true...". bryan did not
> appear to be asking for anyone's help for anything, just distributing
> information.
>
> then he mentioned that IMC-Israel is on a US server but now he wasn't
> so sure that was a good idea. in other words, he seemed inclined to
> believe that IMCisrael might be in trouble _because_ it was on a
> (fascistleaning?) US server.
>
> thus far, there seems to be no evidence that MER was "suspended" for
> the reasons the mail implies, does there. is it a good idea to spread
> rumors around that suggest that the site is down b/c of pressure form
> the US authorities?
>
>> it's not necessary to light into him to show that there were things he
>> could have done that might have answered his own questions. joe
>> obviously did that work.
>
> joe didn't light into bryan. joe pointed out that mer.org wasn't even
> the right address. i don't know what bryan knows, but he must know ppl
> from indymedia who know just as much as joe does about how to tell if
> someone's still online or not. hell, i don't know as much as joe, a
> sysadmin for years, but _I_ know how to find out that kind of
> information. and _I_ knew before i had a job that required that i learn
> how.
>
>> if he thought the post was so idiotic, why didn't he just
>> ignore it?
>
> why encourage the dissemination of FUD? at times like this? doug
> already asked that people stop forwarding unsubstantiated rumors.
>
>> or tell bryan what to do? if he's going to do that work, then
>> do it in like good faith rather than using it as a stick to beat bryan
>> over the head with, which, as it was, makes it seem to me rather as if
>
>
> there was no stick. it was simply a heads up. mer.org isn't even the
> right address, said joe, so why should i take this note seriously?
>
>
>
>> he did the work just to have the stick. that's what gets me.
>> i just think if you're going to have an open community like this, there
>> are more important things for people to get pissed off and aggressive
>> about.
>
>
> i think it's pretty important that the left doesn't encourage the
> spread of fud--like the CNN is using old footage thing. it makes us
> look like freaked out idiots.
>
> kelley
>



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