Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 9 (since 2010-01-02 17:44:56)

Siun

Website: http://firedoglake.com/author/siun/

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• More on the 'Firedoglake' controversy
  • Siun August 30, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    My last on all of this - Edward Q, look back at what you wrote ... first you say "I don't normally read FDL" but here you are commenting on your perceptions of what we do or do not discuss and should or should not discuss.

    If you step back a second, you might see the problem with that.

    And folks, take a look at what Phil Munger has done on I/P issues and what it has cost him- over years - before being so swift to critique him.

  • Siun August 30, 2010 at 5:57 pm with 1 replies

    Thank you Phil for the apology.

    While reading and thinking about this whole conversation, I’ve come to the following.

    Many of us share a deep desire for justice in the world, many of us see different ways to work towards justice. Ideally, we honor and respect each other’s ways.

    In some ways, I feel like folks are asking FDL to become Mondoweiss – and I’d suggest people think carefully about that. Phil and Mondoweiss already is here, does a great job and is structured to allow for in-depth, continuous coverage of one critical issue. That’s great and valuable and important. That’s also not what FDL is designed to do.

    One thing I see FDL doing very well is introducing a large and very diverse audience of readers to issues and information that may be very new to them or to viewpoints they have never considered. And many of us who write at FDL use those opportunities to point to good, specialized work elsewhere so our readers can dig deeper, learn more, become more engaged. I think that’s a good mission. We have others as well but this is why I write at FDL and am immensely grateful for the support from Jane for my efforts.

    Now I understand that many (most?) here feel that the Palestinian issue is the core, the motherlode of issues – and that addressing it is the most essential thing to bringing about political change.

    I don’t.

    Instead I see a common cause between the people of the world who desire simply self-determination, a decent way of life and freedom from the kinds of abuse and oppression found yes in the Occupied Territories, but also in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in so many places today, in places like El Salvador or Nicaragua in the past.

    And I believe the first step towards shifting foreign policy, towards inching towards justice is to share their stories and let my readers see what my friends in Iraq speak of when they say we are brothers and sisters in humanity.

    Of course, in giving voice to that shared humanity, I also need to talk about the forces that do abuse and oppress – and sadly at the heart of those forces too often is our own government and way of being in the world – and so I also write about that – and try to draw the links between what happens in Iraq for example and what happens in Gaza. I do not see them as distinct or competing but as deeply connected.

    We all have different talents and foundations of knowledge to draw on, and we all have different sources and resources which inform our coverage. One of the joys of the blogosphere is that that coverage is not limited so my focus does not preclude Phil’s here and in fact, ideally, it all works together.

    It is frustrating and in ways sad to me that so many comments here on this uproar were made without reading or checking what we are writing at FDL. For Kathleen to persistently describe as a “claim” my mention of my weekly posts for example makes it hard to respond without a lot of heat on my part. Phil Munger, whose own deep and heroic commitment to I/P issues, Ctuttle’s smart diaries and so much more deserve respect – at minimum the respect of checking before declaring our work second rate or missing in good analysis. My posts – going back several years – are all available if you click on my name or go to link to firedoglake.com
    and I do post every week at 9PM on Sundays and welcome folks who would like to contribute to our dicussions of those posts.

    I’ll close with a link to one I wrote back in February 2009 which suggests a bit about the linkages I find worth making.

    Israel and the US, Codependent Warriors

• Siun and Philip Munger say FDL has offered a platform for criticism of Israel
  • Siun August 29, 2010 at 8:13 pm with 4 replies

    Danaa,

    I freely admit FDL is not a single issue blog - and that I do not post daily on the range of topics you suggest but I would note that I have been a frontpager at FDL for years now and have a scheduled slot in which I write every single week about Middle East issues - including such things as hosting conversations with Iraqi contacts and discussing the deep connections between the US and Israel. If you have not read my work - and if you like Kathleen - chose to not consider me "a heavy hitter" that's your view but it does not reflect my role on the FDL team nor the value placed on our coverage. As just one example, I will note my coverage of Operation Cast Lead which included multiple front page posts almost every day, many picked up by major aggregators at the NYT amongst others and many of which broke before the included news hit any US sources. Or consider our all night live blog of the attack on the Mavi Mamara during which we noted the actions of the Israeli troops which we saw on the live Turkish feed before that news hit the press.

    I have to admit I find it frustrating that folks who do not read my work feel so comfortable assuming it is simply a "token" or a "pass." That I have often linked to here - though more commonly to local middle eastern sources since I believe that we need to begin to hear local voices without intermediaries - again, seems to be ignored.

    Perhaps you should actually read us before deciding we're doing a lousy job.

  • Siun August 29, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    Thanks for front paging this Phil.

    I had no idea this whole uproar was going on until I emailed our editors to let them know I had an extra post this week (on Rabbi Yosef's call for genocide) and my colleagues pointed me to all this.

    I'll be interested to see your next.

• 'Firedoglake' is progressive-- just don't talk about Palestine
  • Siun August 30, 2010 at 3:27 am

    You have apparently missed the fact that I do post weekly, every Sunday at 9PM Eastern on the FDL frontpage.

  • Siun August 29, 2010 at 3:38 pm

    I'll just note that I have chosen to ask the FDL mods to mostly leave comments on my continuing posts on Israel, including a number of very vitriolic ones, remain since I find it more useful for us all to see the various responses. If at any point I had felt a commenter had crossed the line, I would have had their support in handling that comments. We've had some rather fascinating bursts of hasbara at times and to my mind, it's better to counter them in public.

  • Siun August 29, 2010 at 1:18 pm

    Phil,

    I am stunned by this given our continuing overage of IP issues, particularly the free rein and encouragement I've received from Jane to write on our flagship front page, warning of the run-up to Cast Lead, 2-3 posts a day during that horror, live blogging of the assault on the Mavi Mamara and much more. I'd suggest you and your readers take a look before launching such an unfounded attack.

    Also, I've made a point of linking to you on many occasions and encouraging our readers to follow things here as well.

    While the progressive blogosphere has persistently avoided IP issues, Jane has been one of the only site owners to offer a platform for precisely this type of coverage - and I'd note I have never had my work on IP issues edited or censored in any fashion, only encouraged and promoted.

    Thanks for just dismissing several years of my work and for attacking one of the few spots where IP issues reach a larger audience.

• Daybreak outpouring of Bay Area picketers stops unloading of Israeli ship
  • Siun June 20, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    Just heard that all shifts honored the picket line ...

    Unfortunately I heard the news too late to use in my usual post but will cover overnight, Phil.

    And cannot, as always, thank Mondoweis enough for the amazing work!

• the reluctant radical
  • Siun January 2, 2010 at 1:12 pm with 2 replies

    Just a clarification - As the Firedoglake writer who normally covers Gaza, I just wanted to note that the lack of front page coverage was solely due to my being away not to any editorial decision - far from it. I did see that folks at Seminal - which we take very seriously -were doing a good job on the story. FDL has backed my coverage of Gaza from the beginning and provided amazing support for me when I was doing nonstop coverage of Operation Cast Lead.

    Meanwhile, I want to thank Phil for his superb writing about GFM - his work is so essential to our understanding.

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