On Thu, 16 Feb 2006, Andrzej Marecki wrote:
A boycott by just one person is not a boycott.
Yes, but denying boycott, even in that "useless" form, you support them! You help them fill their pages and... make money.
True. News is a filler in order to attract readers/viewers who are sold to advertisers. As Patrick Le Lay, president of French TV station TF1 said,
http://www.lexpansion.com/patrick_le_lay,_president_directeur_general_de_tf1...
... the job of TF1 is to help Coca-Cola, for example, to sell its product. [...] In order for an advertising message to be perceived, the brain of the television viewer must be available. Our broadcasts are aimed at making that brain available: i.e. by distracting it, by relaxing it and preparing it between two messages. What we sell to Coca-Cola is time with this available human brain."
Does refusing debate with organisations supporting human rights violations support or damage our goals?
All I can say is that talking to them you give them credit. Then they can proudly say "Look, top scientists talk to us. So we are credible". But THEY ARE NOT!!! Look at that %$@##&% bull.... they print in "Fakt". What I'm really afraid of is that talking to Newsweek you give them copyright to reprint what you've said in "Fakt".
-- Andrzej
P.S. More than once I was asked to talk on Radio Maryja, one of the nastiest and extremely dependent medium in this country. And I declined each and every time! No-one knows (until now ;-) I did so. So that was not a true boycott according to your definition. But I did so because I didn't want to give them credit.
Strong argument!
BTW - if this is not a private question, did RM ask you to talk about *cosmology/AGNs* ??? or another, non-astro subject?
pozdr boud