On 2/18/20 6:03 PM, Ian Jackson wrote:
Roberto C. Sánchez writes ("Re: Announcing miniDebConf Montreal 2020 -- August 6th
to August 9th 2020"):
On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 12:05:29AM -0500, Jerome Charaoui wrote:
Following the announcement of the DebConf20 location, our desire to
participate became incompatible with our commitment toward the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign launched by Palestinian civil
society in 2005. Hence, many active Montreal-based Debian developpers,
along with a number of other Debian developpers, have decided not to
travel to Israel in August 2020 for DebConf20.
Would it be possible to not constantly air our personal political
opinions and grievances on Debian lists? Especially as part of
something that goes to an -announce list.
The choice of venue for Debconf is a political act. In this
particular case, it is highly political. It is political in a way
that the people who advocated for this venue, and those who chose this
venue, surely recognised.
Pretending that only the dissenting opinions are political, and then
asking for "political" opinions not to be aired, reframes the debate
in such a way that only the status quo can even be expressed.
It was IMO completely appropriate for the Montreal team to make their
position, and their actual motives, clear.
Ian.
So, could we avoid in future places that are politically very sensitive?
No country is perfect but some are really not needed to go through when
we have more "calm" choices.
And while I am at that, I will mention one more upcoming bid - Kosovo.
It is part of Serbia, still officially by UN resolution[0], after severe
NATO bombing led by USA in 1999. While in 2008 Albanians declared
independence and USA and majority of Western European countries
recognized it, it still isn't independent and Serbian doesn't recognize
it, as well international law doesn't either. I can go more into detail
if needed.
I, personally, would avoid any such highly politically unstable region
(no matter which side you choose or are neutral on it) because we have
plenty of other choices where we will not need to think about such tense
things and end up in such heated debates (as they inherently it will
draw people emotionally even more than rationally).
Zlatan
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1244
