Rainer Waldman Adkins just forwarded me the 64 page agenda for the Netroots Nation annual conference (formerly Yearly Kos) which begins today in Austin. It looks smashing with incredibly interesting topics and speakers including folks I’ve been reading and wanting to meet for years.
Now, I admit I haven’t read the entire 64 page agenda and I invite anyone to correct the following impression if I am wrong but…I did a search on the terms Israel, Palestine and Jewish and came up with no content whatsoever on any of those subjects. I find that passing strange. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most urgent and potentially catastrophic in the world today and not a mention of it here. Similarly, the American Jewish community is playing a central role in the upcoming presidential election and not a word about it. There is now a small, but growing community of liberal Jewish bloggers that I think play an important role in our own niche of the blog world. I think we have to start asking for recognition of that by groups like Netroots Nation who seem perfectly willing to ignore us.
I’ve written to the organizers suggesting that they include a panel on some of these subjects at next year’s conference. We’ll see what happens.
I note that this conference used to be Yearly Kos. I also note that I was banned from Daily Kos for suggesting that Markos, Armando and other liberal political bloggers should be more transparent about their paid affiliations with political campaigns. If the Kos ethos still reigns at Netroots Nation I probably won’t be getting any invitations. But perhaps they’re now larger than Kos and not ruled by that site’s prejudices.
Uh… Samir Kuntar? Child murderer set free? Hello?
First off, Mia. This comment is off topic & that is a violation of my comment rules. Second, another thing that annoys me is when my readers, especially those to the right of me feel they have some ownership of me in the sense that they expect me to write on a particular subject near to their ideological heart, & become annoyed when I don’t satisfy them. The very fact that I either choose not to or refuse to do so gets them into high moral dudgeon.
Samir Kuntar is the latest outrage that the pro-Israel right can bitch and moan about so Mia wants me to say something that either will satisfy or outrage her on the subject.
In fact, I’ve been thinking about writing something about this today. So hold yr fire till you see the whites of my eyes, OK?
Personally I think the media marathon covering the “prisoner exchange” between Lebanon and Israel has offered coverage enough of Samir Kuntar. Sorry, I understand that he is charged with committing a heinous crime, but how many Palestinian children have been brutally murdered by Israel –just in the last year alone? How many have been maimed and/or paralyzed for life? How many “child-murderers” are walking free in Israel right now?
Every media outlet on the face of the earth is not (right now anyway) under orders to report on the ghastly liberation of Samir Kuntar. Sorry.