(quoting Steve...) "I can understand why people dedicated to the prosecution of the war wouldn't want links to news items that showed either gross mismanagement by the forces of occupation or the spread of cholera or for that matter mercenaries firing into crowds. All these things are developments in Iraq this is a thread about developments in Iraq go ahead Keza delete this. Orwell always said you would"

This gratuitous and deliberately misleading insult needs to be deleted / edited out of steves post (along with this reply)

It's always better to provide an explanatory comment / meaningful explanation with a link. That is a request to lift your standard of discussion and not evidence of our lack of willingness to discuss. In general this is what supporters of this site do when providing links.  If you are too lazy to do that then the message will be deleted / moved to junk

The real issue here is that some people treat LS as a site where they "sniff and piss" rather than a place to have real debate. 

Steve, why don't you  repost to meet these guidelines (ie. add in your links again to your comment and take out your nonsense) and then see if is deleted then, before complaining about our "Orwellian" behaviour.

paulj entry moved to junk from global warming thread

Certain things are unacceptable:

(1)  Jumping into a thread and just asserting a viewpoint with no attempt to argue for it. 

Posting a supporting link from somewhere else on the internet is not an argument.  It is fine to post links but when doing so we generally expect them to be accompanied by a clear and thoughtful comment about the relevance and importance of the link to the topic at hand.

YM, Patrick. All this stuff about substance abuse in the Aboriginal communities is just so early 19th century. In those days the plight of the working class was put down to their drinking of gin and their rampant child abuse. Every do-gooder and social reformer rabbited endlessly about the dissolute and depraved working classes as they shovelled them and their children into workhouses and sweat-shops.

Dalek here asserts a viewpoint, without trying to argue for it. In fact, what dalek does is to attempt to draw an analogy without a) showing that what he claims about 19th century "do-gooders and social reformers" has any basis at all, and b) without showing how what he claims about 19th century social practise is relevant to the solution proposed by Noel Pearson.

Sorry I don't buy that solution and I think the Pearson analysis is big on anecdote and very small on actual hard numbers.

Hypocrisy - dalek's only evidence around the issue of aboriginal communities has been anecdotal, with no hard numbers whatsoever.

On the question of a detailed rebuttal of Pearson's arguments, I don't need to do a detailed rebuttal of the arguments for Fascism (for example) or of the Bush arguments for torture (for another) to express my utter and complete opposition to both.

1) It is utterly offensive to liken Pearson's proposed solutions to fascism or torture. This is part of a pattern of behaviour by dalek who has previously called Pearson an "Uncle Tom" and a "Kapo" (a privileged prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who served as an underguard, thus collaborating with the Nazi regime)

2) Likening Pearson's proposed solutions to fascism or torture is a way of hiding the admission that dalek can't or won't rebut Pearson's arguments and proposed solutions.

3) Being able to rebut arguments for fascism and torture would be a very useful exercise. It would certainly take me a while to get my own feelings on them down in written form.

I am still waiting for an explanation of how it is not racist to send the coppers into only Aboriginal homes to hunt down drug abusers via forced drug testing. Then explain to me how this program would go down in white middle class Australia.

If dalek would read what Pearson has said, he would see that it is employees of the local authority who are to be subject to drug testing. Many while middle class Australians who work in jobs where drug use is unacceptable are already subject to similar testing regimes.

Police searches of homes are only proposed when someone is producing or dealing drugs.

Dalek has here engaged in the process of distorting what an opponent has said in order to attack it.

I guess that if and when the young and militant Aboriginals revolt against the oppression of the state forces and their Capo's you guys will be calling for their incarceration ?

I've removed another comment by dalek from the Crisis in Aboriginal Communities thread. 
I removed the comment because

• a) It repeats the same thing over and over again while ignoring counter arguments.
• b) It distorts what an opponent has said in order to attack it.

The comment was in reply to this comment by me.

Dalek's comment that I have removed can be read here.