there is no independent confirmation of Juan's or other similar claims of thousands of civilians dead in Libya...
A week or so into the uprising, unconfirmed reports of all sorts were being framed by the media as authentic fact...Only if you followed the stories did you come to realize, they were unconfirmed and never to BE confirmed. I have said as much here...Please produce the evidence for the "thousands" of civilians dead. Simple answer? It never happened, and those who in their academic or journalistic bias or laziness have partaken in the spreading of dangerous mis-information, should have the professional courage to revisit their towing of false claims and retract them...
I just heard the interview you held with Democracy Now. There are several statements that have been manipulated and which continue to surface. I would invite you to look further into two of these which I find particularly disturbing.
Obama, last night, say the following:
"At this point, the United States and the world faced a choice. Gaddafi declared he would show no mercy to his own people. He compared them to rats and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we had seen him hang civilians in the streets and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city."
This statement is a distortion of what Ghadaffi actually said. In the original speech in Arabic on Libyan TV and in the first available translation of that in Aljazeera, he was addressing the armed rebels in Benghazi concretely, NOT the civilian population!
He said, he would show no mercy with those who would not put down their weapons and pardon those who did. He also said, addressing the people directly, that he would guarantee the safety of the civilian population when his troops entered Benghazi and that "they" would not have anything to fear.
Now, REGARDLESS of how you or I might feel about the true intentions behind those statements, this is what he said! When we fail to name this, when we instead either tow the line of falsely constructed translations or outright deceptive statements, we do our own quest for justice and truth a major disservice.
This also applies to the statement of thousands of dead in Libya you also mention in your interview with Amy (as opposed to the 20 in Bahrain.) There is no independent confirmation of any such figures! Not even close! This too was an early media fabrication about the civilian deaths in Benghazi and elsewhere, which were never confirmed or even followed up on, even as the rebels held those cities. No hospital reports, signs of plane bombs, nothing!. Still, these never confirmed or proven claims, remain advanced weeks later as fact. Just as you did. They are not fact.
All that I am asking you is to do some additional independent facts checking about both of these statements.
The original text of Ghaddafi's "no mercy" statement can be found easily on Aljazeera English and Arabic.
I would love to be able to help share this type of critical thinking information about the Egyptian political landscape, but for my particular purposes right now in trying to support the struggle taking place in Egypt, I could use something with a little more on what the Brotherhood's present political and economic ideology is. Does it have a position on neoliberalism, for instance...What are some of the other significant economically progressive, if not outright revolutionary forces there? Know of any such pieces?
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
there is no independent confirmation of Juan's or other similar claims of thousands of civilians dead in Libya...
A week or so into the uprising, unconfirmed reports of all sorts were being framed by the media as authentic fact...Only if you followed the stories did you come to realize, they were unconfirmed and never to BE confirmed. I have said as much here...Please produce the evidence for the "thousands" of civilians dead. Simple answer? It never happened, and those who in their academic or journalistic bias or laziness have partaken in the spreading of dangerous mis-information, should have the professional courage to revisit their towing of false claims and retract them...
Dear Juan Cole,
I just heard the interview you held with Democracy Now. There are several statements that have been manipulated and which continue to surface. I would invite you to look further into two of these which I find particularly disturbing.
Obama, last night, say the following:
"At this point, the United States and the world faced a choice. Gaddafi declared he would show no mercy to his own people. He compared them to rats and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we had seen him hang civilians in the streets and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city."
This statement is a distortion of what Ghadaffi actually said. In the original speech in Arabic on Libyan TV and in the first available translation of that in Aljazeera, he was addressing the armed rebels in Benghazi concretely, NOT the civilian population!
He said, he would show no mercy with those who would not put down their weapons and pardon those who did. He also said, addressing the people directly, that he would guarantee the safety of the civilian population when his troops entered Benghazi and that "they" would not have anything to fear.
Now, REGARDLESS of how you or I might feel about the true intentions behind those statements, this is what he said! When we fail to name this, when we instead either tow the line of falsely constructed translations or outright deceptive statements, we do our own quest for justice and truth a major disservice.
This also applies to the statement of thousands of dead in Libya you also mention in your interview with Amy (as opposed to the 20 in Bahrain.) There is no independent confirmation of any such figures! Not even close! This too was an early media fabrication about the civilian deaths in Benghazi and elsewhere, which were never confirmed or even followed up on, even as the rebels held those cities. No hospital reports, signs of plane bombs, nothing!. Still, these never confirmed or proven claims, remain advanced weeks later as fact. Just as you did. They are not fact.
All that I am asking you is to do some additional independent facts checking about both of these statements.
The original text of Ghaddafi's "no mercy" statement can be found easily on Aljazeera English and Arabic.
Estimado Juan:
I would love to be able to help share this type of critical thinking information about the Egyptian political landscape, but for my particular purposes right now in trying to support the struggle taking place in Egypt, I could use something with a little more on what the Brotherhood's present political and economic ideology is. Does it have a position on neoliberalism, for instance...What are some of the other significant economically progressive, if not outright revolutionary forces there? Know of any such pieces?
Cheers,
Adrian