Thursday, September 11, 2008

ISP To Avoid ?

I missed the Harry's Place brouhaha when I was away on holiday, and by the time I got back it was all over.

As I understand it, an academic called Jenna Delich had posted about a proposed boycott of Israeli academics (with which I disagree, btw) to a mailing list, and recommended an article hosted at (extremely) far rightist David Duke's site. My impression is that she probably had never heard of Mr Duke. I can't remember what I was googling myself a week or so back - probably something about the Eastern Front - and I found myself at David Irving's site. These things happen (the guy was a left favourite when he wrote The Destruction of Dresden (the download is hosted at a site which contains I know not what else) all those years ago, btw).

HP publicised this fact - in , let's say, a fairly robust fashion.

  • It is therefore reasonable to infer that Jenna Delich reads and takes her information on world events from neo Nazis... the UCU is circulating links to David Duke's website on behalf of Delich.
Delich rang her lawyers, the lawyers rang Harry's ISP, ISP pulled plug.

Now on the brouhaha, if a post is worth reading, my view is that you should link to it, though it be hosted by Satan himself. I don't think it is reasonable to assume that Ms Delich is a big DD fan - and I don't think HP believed that either. They were slapping her with a great big anti-semitic brush pour encourager les autres.

But ... I think you'd have had a job to prove libel or anything else. The fact that she was taking info from DDs site was true, although phrased in a way which (to me) suggested that her world-view derived therefrom.

Therefore her ISP should have thought a bit more before they pulled the plug. Looked like they picked the wrong blog. If I had a site worth hosting, I wouldn't use them. The former HP ISP is :

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This is a public information post.