This presumably is quite a task, especially since it is so devoid of intelligent debate. Here’s a debate I’ve been involved in there:
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Antony Millard The no fly zone idea is bananas, and I mean that with all seriousness.
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Laurence Bennett let them figure it out. time will take care of the whole thing
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Nicole Solange I’m backtracking here, but the more I understand the true reality of a no-fly zone, the less I want it. Prayers for the ppl of Libya, but they do need to figure it out, and I wholeheartedly agree. It’s bananas.
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Brian Powell Is that real bananas or EU regulation ones?
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Laurence Bennett careful where you set your bait s
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Duncan Roy Yeah, we should go to war with scumbag dictators in defence of people surely? Trouble is we already went to war on false pretexts, without internation permission and no-one trusts us anymore… after all, who trusts war criminals? By the way, the EU never controlled what was a banana, they controlled quality of classes of bananas so that supermarkets could trade in them, which may not have been a very good idea but it was a permanent lie by the Daily Mail and other Tory papers that the EU ‘defined’ a banana.
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Duncan Roy Or to put it another way, you’re a Libyan fighter pilot/tank commander/anyone else with a biggish weapon and war is declared by the most powerful countries on earth on you but you are granted an amnesty if you switch sides. Your choice: armeggedon by supporting a nutter who has already lost trust with everyone or fighting with the winners. This isn’t a threat of war, this is Gadaffi panicking.
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Nicole Solange Tell me Duncan – who are the rebels that we would be supporting? Does anyone know anything about them?! We have no idea what we are doing. Libyans should sort this out on their own – we have no business here on any level. I feel for them, but I care more about our own troops…
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Duncan Roy We know who these people are. We have been in contact with them. Our journalists are on the ground in Benghazi, talking to them and reporting to us. They are the hapless souls of Libya who were attacked with rockets and machine guns when they peaceably demonstrated. Peaceful demonstration is a human right. The current rebel leaders are people who have been running businesses in Libya, abroad, mosques and community groups. They represent a vast swathe of Libyan society and everyone interviewed by our journalists declare that they have had enough of Gadaffi’s oppression and are prepared to die rather than live under it. They are the ordinary people. As with many revolutions, they have organised themselves into citizen’s committees. They are people who call for democracy under the jackboot of a fascist dictatorship. Merely “feeling” for them is to wash your hands of human suffering. They started to sort their own problems out and were violently attacked by foreign mercenaries, in the pay of a brutal dictator. “Our” troops are not going there; there hasn’t even been a suggestion that they will. Neither is the RAF for the time being. Arab and French planes will be doing the risky work; I’m sure you realise that France has a burden of history for the wrongs it has committed in North Africa. For once there is international agreement, possibly just in time, to stop a massacre, and you question independently established facts and express your “feeling” for the people who would otherwise be raped and murdered! Armed forces everywhere are paid to risk their lives. Better they do it on the side of liberty, in defence of basic human rights, (the right to life springs to mind too) than as part of illegal wars. Sorry, but you should check your facts. Of course these decisions are difficult and should not be taken lightly but there has never been a stronger case for intervention to save life. This isn’t going to be a protracted war – Gadaffi doesn’t have the resources. Better to check your facts than to let your emotional fears get the better of you.
People spending all their days on Facebook aren’t likely to be hugely well informed. Fact checking is crucial to all information gathering.
