Fadhil/SoA Update

Ali Fadhil seems to have "moved on" from his feud with Spirit of America, choosing not to post any more on the issue, for the moment at least. In fact, his behaviour is quite bizarre: he banned me and removed some of my comments, then he unbanned me, now he has banned me again. Meanwhile someone called Alluhakbar is posting pro-extremist comments all over the place with apparent impunity.

Ali's behaviour could be related to a post that appeared early on, wherein a person claiming to be an antiwar liberal said he/she and a group of friends had posed as US women and sent seductive love letters to Iraqi bloggers like Ali. He/she said Ali had become particularly infuated with this fake persona, to the point where trips to the USA and marriage were being discussed. The poster says this reached a climax at the same time as the Fadhil's trip to the USA was being planned, and that this explains Ali's strange behaviour at the time.

I smell a snake - or two! Could it be that Ali is being pressured to keep silent? Or is he just psychotic?

Also in Ali's comments I noticed this link to a Juan Cole "retraction" (sort of) about the ITM-CIA post where he linked to Martini Republic:

In retrospect, of course, I should have been clearer about my lack of active endorsement for Mr. Mailander's specific allegations, even as I made clear that what interested me was the issue of how the blogging world might be affected by political "marketing." I don't doubt Mailander's good faith, but obviously there were elementary errors in his initial entry. And, if I could take it back, I wouldn't have linked at all. This is a matter in some ways of not knowing my own strength. Blogging is deceptively informal, sort of like a conversation rather than like formal writing. So it is natural to cross-link among friends and say, 'Hey, check this out.' But my weblog has come to be so widely read that this degree of informality is now a luxury I obviously cannot afford, and I will try to be more careful.