Saturday, March 5, 2011

Request from the Saker - please keep these points in mind before postiong here

Dear friends,

I think that it is fair to say that there appears to be a array of different views amongst us concerning the events in Libya [just for the record, my personal opinion is that it is a blessing that the people of Libya have risen up against Gaddafi and I hope that they will give him the boot.  However,  I am also concerned that this entire revolution is being hijacked and gradually co-opted by the US and Israel [I would consider a US/NATO military interference in Libya as the worst of all outcomes].

I want this blog to be a place of informed discussion and I do not censor or ban opinions, even if I vehemently disagree with them.

However, I am noticing a clear degradation of the tone in the exchanges about Libya.   So let me be clear what I do not want to see here:

a) Personal attacks on, or labeling of, others: ex: "you leftists" is not needed to make a point and it is a poor substitute for a fact based and logical argument. Most of us use some kind of nicknames/handles and we know nothing about each other.  It is silly to infer all sorts of bad things about somebody just because that person happens to hold another opinion.

b) Cut-and-paste posts: make your posts are long as you want, as long as they are *your* posts.  If you want to reference an outside source, please provide a link or a quote.

c) Propaganda campaigns: I have nothing against a discussion.  However, recently some posters have engaged in sustained propaganda campaigns, one in bashing Iran, the other one is glorifying Gaddafi.  This is just a political form of spamming and I don't want that here.

So these are my requests to you all - please keep them in mind when posting.

Thanks a lot!

The Saker