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Fair and balanced

The Quiet Road - A World Without America:

1. Why is Stalin still alive six years after his death by natural causes? Do you know something about America's role in his death that the rest of us don't? Or are you just really bad at history (and googling)?

2. You suggest that the world would never have developed a polio vaccine outside America. But you also suggest that the world would be held to ransom by foreign dictators with nuclear weapons. Who developed the nukes if not America? And might they not also have been capable of developing a polio vaccine?

3. Why would Thatcher be meeting with the Austrian president if Austria was merely a Soviet republic?

4. Why would Saddam Hussein be in power in 1999 when it's well-established that his regime was propped up by... wait for it... America, throughout the 1980s? Wouldn't a world without America be - by default - a world without Saddam Hussein? Do I need to dig out that photo of Rumsfeld getting all chummy with Hussein to illustrate the point?

5. Finally; wouldn't a world without America be a world without the world's largest arms manufacturer and dealer? Wouldn't that be a safer world? Or does 18 Doughty Street see no connection between guns and people being shot by guns?

Incidentally, I watched 18ToryStreet on Monday, and Iain Dale is still up to his usual tricks of throwing guests off with shoddy interventions and then swiftly 'moving on' when the conversation suddenly stops going his way. This makes him a very poor host in my opinion.

Also, his promise to 'investigate' comment registration* on his personal site appears to have gone right out the window along with his promise to be a more stringent moderator. It's almost as if the man refuses to do anything constructive about the situation unless my foot is on his neck.

(*As I've pointed out to Iain directly via email, if you're publishing under Blogger, introducing comment registration still allows for anonymous comments - all one has to do is register with a phoney Blogger account - but it at least strangles those who wish to abuse the current system by making multiple comments under different names.)

Iain has been warned about the type of behaviour he fosters by allowing unregulated comments and actually encouraging trolls and astro-turfers by hiding behind them when it suits his needs.

In fact, an extremely unpleasant troll appeared under his Chris Lightfoot entry the other day. The offending entries stayed in place, unmolested by moderation, for well over 12 hours... until I emailed Iain about it. Iain then deleted the entire exchange (independent castigations and all) instead of deleting only the most offensive entries and reminding his readers of some of the important ground rules he claims to have introduced.

Why?

Probably for the same reason he's all-talk about comment registration... ego.

Just take a look at the sheer number of times Dale, Staines and their pseudo-gross** of acolytes use the number of comments on a blog as a sign of success.

(**As far as I can tell, there's maybe a dozen of them... each using about a dozen different pseudonyms.)

[Psst! If you've ever been a victim of Praguetory's bullying, you'll want to read this, comments and all.]

Posted by Manic on March 8, 2007 8:30 AM in the category The Political Weblog Movement

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