peak-oil politics

Debate about Libya, Syria on johnquiggin.com impaired by slow moderation

This blog entry consists of a comment I -157268">posted to , which, I have been advised, more than eight hours after I posted it, is still "awaiting moderation" and as, appendices other comments on that page related to that comment. A number of other comments including -157277">one (), which is critical of an -157257">earlier post of mine have been published since.

As ">Appendix 4, I have written my response to ">post . I won't attempt to post that response to johnquiggin.com until at least my earlier post, still "awaiting moderation" is published. In the meantime, I am going to attempt to post as a very short comment to -157277">that discussion on johnquiggin.com a link to this page so that those who want to be able to judge for themselves can come to this site and have a look.

Also, you may find of interest the related discussion on a page of ABC Radio National's Background Briefing Program, . A comment I made, which referred to Professor John Quiggin's drew Professor Quiggin's attention. It seems that as a result of that discussion, I was able to have one comment, but only one comment so far, -157257">published on his web site. The subsequent comment, which is still "awaiting moderation" follows.

Thank you, Professor Quiggin for publishing my previous post.

">Tim McNay (@ ), whilst I greatly appreciate your inclusion of that quote from George Orwell, I fail to see its relevance to Mulga MuggleBrain's " id="app1_mm">previous comment (@ ).

If Orwell were alive today, he would almost certainly be speaking out against the invasion of Libya and Syria, and pointing out how the lies that are being used to justify those wars is precisely the kind of deceit he warned against in 1984.

If Orwell's critique of Pacifists opposed to the use of violence to oppose Nazism in 1940 has any relevance to the Libyan war it would be to Libyans who may have opposed the use of violence to defend their country against NATO and its local proxies on Pacifist grounds.

Following on from what I mentioned in my -157257">previous post (@ ), those interested in learning the truth about NATO's invasion of Libya and its threatened invasion of Syria should send time reading articles on globalresearch.ca and pages and broadcasts linked to from there.

A good place to start is the 38 minute Global Research TV report (linked to from globalresearch.ca), , which features Canadian journalist Mahdi Nazemroaya, "a research associate of the Centre for Research in Globalization who spent two months in Libya before escaping after the rebel siege of Tripoli."

of 18 September by Finian Cunningham. (So why hasn't NATO declared a "no-fly zone" over Bahrain after its brutal repression of dissidents?)

of 30 August by Tony Cartalucci,

of 19 September by Michel Chossudovsky

- of 15 September. - Interview with former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was present in Libya during NATO's bombing campaign.

There is vast wealth of meticulously researched papers and broadcasts on that site. I counted 41 articles just concerning Libya published in 2010 and 2011

I await with interest any response by supporters of the invasion of Libya to any of this material, but, of course, I won't be holding my breath.

" id="app1_mm">Appendix 1: -157199">Post by "Mulga Mugglebrain"

John, I find the categories ‘dictator' and ‘democracy' to be amazingly fluid. In Syria you have a supposed ‘dictator' Assad, who is, in fact, merely the figure-head for a possibly ‘dictatorial' regime. If you are inferring that Assad is equivalent to Stalin, well I think that is bollocks. The regime he heads is a complex alliance of interests that has ensured peace in Syria, despite its fractious religious and ethnic mix, which is now being targeted by those foreign forces who wish either to cause regime change or foment civil war. Assad has broad support in that Syrians do not wish to share the fate of Lebanon, where foreign interference provoked a vicious civil war. The Syrian regime, in fact, leaves its people well alone, unless they are actively working to overthrow the regime, in which case they can be famously brutal, but are they any more brutal than the USA or Israel? I would say, emphatically, not.

In any case in our so-called ‘democracies' the ‘elected' leaders (often blessed with minorities, in electorates where barely half, or less, of those eligible vote)almost invariably these days, govern as elected dictators, only having to balance the forces within their regimes, just like Assad. In fact I doubt that Assad is any more ‘dictatorial' than, say, George Bush, ‘the Decider' or Tony Blair who dragged his country to the infamy of the aggression in Iraq.

" id="app2_tm">Appendix 2: Post quoting Orwell in response to post

Comments like ">Mulga's always remind me of this excerpt from :

Pacifism. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be transferred.

" id="app3_tm">Appendix 3: -157277">Post in response to my post and on this site

...

Malthusista, I couldn't open the globalresearch.ca link (the URL in the link was mis-typed as 'http://globalrsearch.ca'. Had Professor Gigging approved my -157268">next post at any time in the 3 hours 15 minutes before this was posted, Tim would have been able to find other links to Global Research that were not mis-typed.), but I had a look at to candobetter.net, and I'm sad to say I was disappointed. The writer of that article decided to become a personal fan of Gaddafi on the basis of a 4 minute Youtube video? Hardly an improvement over getting your information from two minute reports on CNN, and it does not speak well for the level of intellectual rigour on that site.

" id="app4_tm">Appendix 4: My response to ">post

Readers should view for themselves the article and decide for themselves whether the author had became a 'personal fan' of Muammar Gaddafi and whether any of his comments favourable to Muammar Gaddafi were justified.

It seems to me that the point that Geoffrey Taylor was trying to make was that if, in a past about Gaddafi's 41 year career linked to by an in the Australian which had been beating the drum so hard for war against Libya, so little could be found against him, then we could hardly consider the Australian's efforts elsewhere to demonise him elsewhere as credible. Furthermore, the broadcast showed how, on a number of occasions, Gaddafi had displayed inspired and outstanding leadership for Arab and other Third World countries against the interests of powerful countries like the US, so the motives of governments which are now waging war against Gaddafi's Government could be better understood.

" id="app4_js">Appendix 5: My post of 21 September to Background Briefing forum

This is to be posted to the ABC Radio National Background Briefing to await the moderator's approval, but as of 1.04PM, this is yet to be done. - JS

Three comments, which I posted yesterday to johnquiggin.com (one of which concerns wind power and not Libya) are still "awaiting moderation". Since 2.15pm yesterday when I posted there the -157268">comment referred to above, 21 other comments have been posted including -157277">one attacking my views on the page "The just fight not fought" referred to in my previous post.

My most recent post was simply this:

"Please visit the web site candobetter.net (/node/2596) for my most recent comment which includes a response to Tim Macknay’s most recent post ()."

At http://disinformationfinder.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/a-truthtellers-code-of-conduct/ there is a proposed "Truthseeker's code of conduct". This proposal requires that all, who agree to abide by this code, at least allow anyone, with a view contrary to those expressed on any page of that site, the right to have posted, to that page, a link back to a page where the contrary views are expressed, together with a small amount of explanatory text.

For example, if a site which made the claim that, in 1990, brutal Iraqi occupiers of Kuwait took babies out of incubutors and left them to die on a hospital floor, abided by the "Truthseeker's code of conduct" it would be obliged, if requested by a site visitor, to have a link posted back to the YouTube video "The Kuwaiti Incubator Babies - LIE" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu8CCJTJCQk where other site visitors could learn that the 15 year old "Nariyah" who moved so many to tears with her testimony was, in fact, the dughter of the Kuwaiti ambassoadr to the US, was coached in acting by Hill and Knowlton and had fabricated the whole story.

If Professor Quiggin had agreed to abide by the proposed "Truthseekers' codeo of conduct", then he would have at least tried to enable the publication of that smaller post which would have allowed his site visitors to view material which I consider shows up NATO's case for the bombing of Libya to be no less fraudulent.

Whether those three posts were not published because of a flaw in Professor Quiggin's web management software, inattentiveness or a deliberate choice, the fact remains that many visitors to johnquiggin.com, who may be interested in views contrary to Professor Quiggin's support of NATO's actions will not be able to find material there, or linked to from there, which I consider demolishes that view.

Of course, it is Professor Quiggin's right, as it should be, to publish or not publish material on his own web-site as he chooses, but if it is his intention to prevent vistors to his site from knowing of those views, then I think he owes it to his site visitors to tell them forthrightly. Then, at least, those visitors who wish to know the other side of the debate will know that they need to go elsewhere.