[Imc] Please read: more on imc switzerland.

[Sascha Meinrath]

if you are interested in the IMC Switzerland shutdown please read the
following post.  it captures the complexities of the issue very well.  i
would like us to discuss this issue at this Sunday's Steering Group
meeting.  i personally would like the UCIMC to lend its support to IMC
Switzerland and i feel that enough information has been posted about the
issue that we can make a decision on this.

--sascha


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from the global process list:

Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 04:18:06 +0100
From: Anna <anna at mail.nadir.org>
To: imc-process at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: [IMC-Process] Re: imc switzerland (was: new lauff cartoon)

hi,

[long mail on switzerland, debates on antisemitism in german speaking
countries and latuff's postings]

first of all i'd like to say that it's not the swiss state or government
filing a lawsuit against imc switzerland, but a swiss organization
('children of the holocaust' in english http://www.akdh.ch/) has started
this because imc switzerland allegedly violates the swiss anti-racism law.
i think it's important to really read what the swiss collective is saying.
i think they are working on more statements to make it easier to
understand some of the really complicated things that are happening.
basically it really is a free speech issue, and tightly connected with
very intense debates about anti-semitism in all german speaking countries.
i'm sure money for lawyers will help but i think asking the swiss directly
is the best thing to do. they are under enormous pressure and so it might
take some time for them to react. i agree that we all need to show as much
solidarity as possible - the whole thing seems to completely rip apart the
activist scene(s) there since the lawcase was started by people who
consider themselves activists as well: fighting antisemitism which is a
perfectly legitimate thing to do.

because of this latuff's cartoons are a very sensitive issue - i tried to
discuss this with him on irc and i think he doesn't quite grasp the
implications of the debate here. i'm not saying 'all of his cartoons
should be taken off' or 'none of them should'. i tried to make a little
clearer that in my point of view it doesn't make sense to crosspost
cartoons everywhere, trying to provoke about the situation in israel and
palestine if you don't really follow the discussions in the respective
countries or cities where things are being posted.

after sept 11 the discussion heated up enormously and we as well as
switzerland are under strong pressure by people accusing us of being
antisemitic because we left things critical of the united states' war
against afghanistan or of israel as well as others accusing us of being
way too tight in hiding things and not going by fundamental imc criteria
because we have a policy of hiding antisemitic, racist etc. postings -
they think we hide too much. latuff says that we're giving in to pressure
of users; i replied that if we did we'd have closed the site long time
ago, because our users want very different things. he doesn't seem to
listen and keeps posting cartoons even though he was asked to please
understand the situation, which is difficult to do if you don't read
german and don't follow several lists here, read newspapers and debates
within the political groups. which he doesn't, i think. he's now taking
the whole issue very personally and keeps asking us to discuss with him.
to my knowledge there has been discussion between imc switzerland and him.
to us his cartoons are one tiny aspect of the whole issue around
antisemitism and free speech. it's often hard to say what's antisemitic
and what isn't. a lot of people here think that anything directed against
israel or israel's army is antisemitic. it's generally not acceptable in
germany to directly compare israel's politics with nazi germany. because
of this many of latuff's cartoons were hidden on our website. in other
countries and contexts this is different and i hope we all agree that
situations differ because of different cultures, histories and that even
though many people think that in germany we are 'a little too sensitive
about this' that we might know quite well what the implications of our
actions are. included the fact that this leads to people brushing up old
stereotypes of germans wanting to control everything...

here as well as elsewhere there are libraries full of books on this. i can
only touch some aspects of it. groups in switzerland as well as in germany
openly call for the destruction of indymedia because of our alleged
antisemitism. in switzerland the lawcase is built on the postings that
were hidden but still accessible as far as i know.

at least imc germany gets real hard core nazi postings quite regularly
which are being hidden and so latuff is just not in the center of our
attention but most of us do think that some of his cartoons are
antisemitic (again - in the context of discussions and perceptions here).
so we hide them. i think the debate about whether latuff needs to have the
freedom to post whereever he likes is one thing and imc switzerland
something completely different. i assume that some things in the swiss
'waste bin' of censored postings are a lot worse than his cartoons - we
get that regularly on the german website and so latuff just isn't the main
problem.

however, the issue of whether we have the freedom to decide what to
publish and what we don't is. it's a legal issue sometimes and a political
one at the same time. it touches editorial policy just the same. does it
make sense to keep open publishing as open as possible if there are
postings with the intention to destroy the project and enough spam to make
it impossible to find the good articles? apparently the motto 'we are all
indymedia' doesn't work very well at the moment.

let's start with supporting imc switzerland which has been a very strong
supporter of open publishing so far.

Anna

[this is my personal view on things alone and not a statement by imc
germany]