Because
One, I share the opinion with Zaheer Abbas Merali that what Israel is doing is wrong, that I hope the international community will indeed condemn Israel’s actions and that the people in Lebanon and Palestine are getting a oppressive treatment by Israel.
Two, it’s my opinion that a personal blog, being syndicated on planet.gnome.org or not, is a free-speech instrument that definitely can be used for making political statements and expressing opinions. That what we, software developers working on GNOME software, write in our personal blog should not be censored because we get to come on a popular blog aggregator like planet.gnome.org.
We are very much allowed to write anything we want in our blogs. Knowing them personally, I’m very sure every single person in charge of planet.gnome.org agrees with that. I’m sure all of them also know that if they wouldn’t allow us to write anything we want, very few GNOME developers would want to be syndicated on planet.gnome.org. Nor had any of them, as far as I know, ever had the intention to forbid any such thing.
To make sure I piss off everybody who made these comments to Zaheer, I repeated his opinion and made sure it gets on the planet.gnome.org aggregator again. I strongly disagree with the opinion of anybody who says that we, GNOME developers, shouldn’t be allowed to write anything at anytime on our own personal blogs. I will also fight for my right to say whatever I want. Whenever I want. Wherever I want. As long as I don’t intend to discredit somebody or some group by making false statements (like unproven racist statements or telling lies about somebody to destroy his or her reputation).
If you cannot grasp that, you definitely have a huge culture difference with me. Maybe you shouldn’t use the Internet if you don’t understand this? The Internet is, for me, the free-speech instrument of this century. If necessary, I will strongly defend the free opinion and free speech of Zaheer.
“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism. — Wole Soyinka”
“I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. — Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire”