Continuing Discussion with a Gaddafi Supporter

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This is a continuation of an email discussion I have been having with a Gaddafi supporter that considers himself an anti-imperialist and a socialist. My first dairy in this thread was Tuesday. I am publishing it here pretty much as-is because most of the work is already done and for what it's worth the thoughts here may have a wider utility than our private discussion. As before, names have been changed to protect the politically innocent. He is angry because I compared him to a birther

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 8:49 AM, XX wrote:

So now you are getting personal because you make allegations that cannot be proven?

No. This is not personal. This is political. I am saying that I have concluded that there is no proof that I can offer that you will accept.

I point out that the UN, the ICC, HRW as well as numerous eye witnesses and reporters say that cluster munitions have been used on the civilian population of Misrata. I even send you pictures. You don't deal with them piecemeal. You deny them en mass and tell me "you disseminate this information without proof at all."

You ask me for proof, so I send you a video. I said,

If you look at my YouTube video,

You will see what I'm talking about. That was in Feb. weeks before NATO got involved and you started paying attention. You really should watch it, although i know you won't, but you really should. It's only 2 min. long. It's a study in the contradiction between the way the MSM media was playing the story then and the facts on the ground. So you really should watch it because no matter how much you believe such carnage isn't being caused by Gaddafi, the truth is he chose the path of massive violence and I have you down as supporting the slaughter portrayed in the video.

Have you looked at it? Since you make no comment beyond "you disseminate this information without proof at all", I think not. Anyway, a little more about that video. I posted it on Feb. 28. Most of the gruesome footage is from before that but after #feb17. None of it was major media, some of it got disappeared from the web after I downloaded it. This was back when I was strongly rooting for the still mostly non-violent protesters to take up arms because I believe in shooting back when you are shot at. This was before the UN passed any resolutions or NATO got involved. It was also before IAC, PSL and pretty much anyone else on the American left had a clue about the struggle in Libya. But I did. I had already enrolled myself full-time, and I mean 24/7, for six weeks in the service of the people's uprising in North Africa as anyone familiar with my writings in this period at the first piece supporting the protest movement in Libya was published Jan. 18, 2011. What was your position on those housing protests in Libya in January? Did you support or oppose them? If you had been reading my blog, you would have at least known they were going on. I offered you as proof my entire body of writing on the people's uprisings in MENA and still I get "you disseminate this information without proof at all." So I concluded:

You are like the birthers exactly. There is no proof that you will ever believe. You believe what you believe and you won't let the facts get in the way.

This is not a personal attack, this is an astute political assessment. Like the birthers you are deciding that your view of what is politically correct will determine your acceptance of what is fact. You have stumbled into idealism. You have decided that ideas will determine the facts rather than the other way round. For example, you say:

You are saying that cluster bombs have been used in Libya and imply that Gaddafi is a monster, a boogie man like Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, etc..

No. I am saying that I have seen sufficient proof to conclude that Gaddafi is using cluster bombs. Those are the facts. You can decide for yourself what that implies. You seem to turn fact finding on it's head. Since you know Gaddafi is not " a monster, a boogie man like Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, etc.." there can be no proof of his use of cluster bombs. You whole narrative is riddled with that type of thinking. First you determine what political conclusions you think are served by a certain set of facts and then you apply that filter to the facts. Just like the birthers will never see a birth certificate they don't think a forgery, you my friend, will never be shown proof of Gaddafi's use of cluster munitions you won't think a lie and a fraud. So my statement was not personal. It was political. In Struggle, Clay


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