Thursday, December 16, 2004

 

QUIGGIN AND FRIEND

Further to my post immediately below, I have received a rather moving email from Joe Cambria, whom, as I have already indicated, I regard as a very decent man. I reproduce it below to give readers a fuller perspective on the matter that Prof. Quiggin has raised with me.

According to Quiggin, I am now not only a racist but a cyberstalker as well. This comes from a man who: 1. Accused a good man, Keith Windschuttle, of being a racist - and this without reading his book. 2. He accused me of being a racist after I pointed out to him that he needed to answer his accusation against Windschuttle.

After Quiggin blocked the last thread that I posted on his blog I emailed him and expressed my anger at what he had done. (BTW - I emailed his university and not his home). He cannot deny any of this. Accusing me of being a stalker is laughable. It is also legally damaging for him.

As far as I was concerned his accusations were those of a moral coward and he was not going to get away with what he had done. In other words he was not going to make horrid accusations and have the last word. This poor excuse for a human being has maligned enough people in the past and he was not going to get the last word especially after he had accused me of being a racist as well. I emailed Keith Windschuttle the details of his blog and suggested that he ought to have his way with Quiggin if he so chooses. It seems to me that Quiggin engages in serious name-calling hoping that some of the mud will stick. He also seems to live in a parallel universe. Let's go through this one last time.

Quiggin accuses Windschuttle of being a racist. He accuses me of being a racist because I defended Windschuttle and asked Quiggin to defend his accusations despite not having read Windshcuttle's book. Quiggin then accuses me of stalking him because I told him in an email him what I thought of him and the way he treats people. In Quiggin's world only Quiggin should sit in his high chair and abuse people.

This is the guy who accuses me of being illiterate, a racist and yet he never read Windschuttle book before calling him a racist. He also says his family feels threatened or some such in the thread you published on your blog. Well my family feels even more threatened than his after he maligned me as a racist on his blog. I am sure Keith Windschuttle's family feels even more threatened after he was maligned as a racist. Remember, he was the coward who made the accusations on a publicly read blog, whereas I emailed him to his university email address, which is listed on the university’s public directory for the world to see. Quiggin again practices defamatory lies by saying I emailed him at his home. Does this name-calling coward have any moral fiber? Is there a line in the sand he will not cross?

Another point. I have assumed Quiggin is using the university’s eqipment to malign people like Windschuttle and me without a shred of evidence, unless he has evidence to the contrary. I discerned this from between the time he blocked my last post on his blog, emailing him at his univserity address and then receiving his reply. Is this a case of the taxpayer funding this person ’s effort to impugn people’s names by accusing them of being racists?

This is an email I sent to Quiggin after he replied to me by telling me to “piss off” and threatened me with legal action: "Yea go ahead make my day. Tell your lawyer the following things. 1 tell him you accused a writer who's book you haven't read to be a racist 2 tell him you accused me of being a racist because I thought that accusing someone of the same is horrid and a university teacher like you ought to know better than that- accusing someone without evidence. I lived in NYC 15 years. The only reason that's pertinent is because I would meet thugs like you every day. You don't scare me. I'll see you in court any day over this. Nazis would use scare tactics like you are doing now. I welcome you to take action anytime any day. I'll see you in court".

I would never threaten to sue people, as it is not in my nature. However, I would happily see Quiggin in court anytime, any day over this. In fact I look forward to it. Quiggin if you are reading this, make my day in court.

I want to thank Quiggin for his alerting me to Windscuttle’s latest work. He has motivated me to buy all of his works. Anything, which annoys leftoids, is worth reading, it seems. In fact seeing this is the Xmas season I am willing to buy $250 worth of Windschuttle’s latest book and have Amazon send it out to people. All they need to do is email me with their name and address and I will have Amazon forward it. Of course they need to promise they will read it. Windschuttle is an amazingly courageous man who is prepared to go against standard opinion and look at history as a work of scholarship. We should all be grateful to him.

One last thing. I love this country. Australia is the country that gave my Southern European parents a home and economic refuge. It was populated by decent hardworking British folk who handed to us a nation instilled with freedom and wealth. It welcomed my parents and showed a generosity of spirit matched only by the US and a few other Anglo countries. This country is the place of my birth, which offered me all types of opportunities. Imagine, only a few years after my parents arrived they were offered citizenship and allowed to participate in the things other Australians enjoyed. I hate it when no-good leftoids malign this place whether directly or indirectly. The original British stock that first settled here has been maligned by the likes of Quiggin as mass-murdering animals. Where is the sense of fairness and justice that some Australians who can trace their roots to these first groups of settlers allow self-hating Australians to malign their ancestors?

posted by JR 12:49 PM

Sunday, December 12, 2004

 

AN INTERESTING CORRESPONDENCE

On 8th December I published an email from Joe Cambria that was critical of Prof. John Quiggin of the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. See here. On 10th I received an email from Prof. Quiggin which described Cambria's email as inaccurate and misleading and asking me to delete it from my blog. I replied as follows:

"It seems to me that the proper course for you would be to do a post on your own blog refuting Cambria's email. I will then add an update linking to your refutation"

Quiggin replied:

"I may not have made myself clear. I wish to have nothing further to do with this guy and have told him so repeatedly (this is not the first occasion on which he has done this).The last thing I want to do is to have this raised in public, as you have done. His repeated obscene and abusive emails to me, and further circulation of them to you and others constitute cyberstalking, which is a serious criminal offence. The legal action I will take if necessary is not a defamation suit (though he is wide open to this) but an Apprehended Violence Order. Again, I request that you remove your post."

I replied:

"You clearly believe in censorship rather than open discussion. Given your Leftist views I quite understand that but, as a conservative, my committment is to open discussion. I have made you a very fair offer -- to link to any refutation you post -- and I intend to leave it at that".

Quiggin replied

"I will try one more time. This is not an issue of censorship or defamation, but of an obscene assault on my privacy and family, which I would have expected a conservative to respect. Feel free to retain the segment of your post written by yourself, and attacking my criticism of Windschuttle. I request only that you remove the stuff written by Cambria".

I replied:

"The fact that you decline to make your comments on Cambria public leads me to the view that they are not substantiable. I will of course delete anything that is shown to be untrue or inaccurate but you need to make that case"

You must understand that it's your word against his as to what transpired. I am not in a position to know how you may have edited what appears in your comment boxes or what emails you may have received.

I have had much correspondence with Mr Cambria over the last 2 years and have gained the impression that he is a person of high moral character. As a committed Leftist, on the other hand, you would be committed to the view that there is no such thing as truth. So the balance of probabilities lies with Mr Cambria as far as I can see.

But as I said, I am happy to link to your side of the story and if a public airing of the matter makes it probable that Mr Cambria misrepresented what occurred, I will of course delete his words.

Quiggin replied:

"As regards Cambria's claim that I called him a racist, you can check the thread for yourself:
http://www.johnquiggin.com/archives/002130.html More to the point, this is a fairly typical sample of the stuff Cambria was emailing to me, after I had made a number of requests to him to leave me alone:


'You really are just fucking ugly Nazi with a beard. You and and your type make me wan to vomit. Reading your stuff makes me laugh. You have second class mind were always a third rate teacher- as former students attest'.

I don't see why I should have to put up with this kind of obscene (and illiterate) abuse. I certainly don't intend to encourage Cambria by making it public. Since you appear to have an interest in defamation law, you will observe that this explicitly defames me with respect to my professional reputation, as well as showing obvious malice which would undermine any possible defence of fair comment. It appears to have been circulated to others as well as having been seen by members of my family. By republishing any part of Cambria's material, you are positioning yourself as a joint party to any action that might arise from it. But in the end, it's up to you. You're getting into this with your eyes open, and if you wish to assist Cambria in his harassment campaign, go right ahead".

I replied:

"You must understand that it's your word against his as to what transpired. I am not in a position to know how you may have edited what appears in your comment boxes or what emails you may have received. I have had much correspondence with Mr Cambria over the last 2 years and have gained the impression that he is a person of high moral character. As a committed Leftist, on the other hand, you would be committed to the view that there is no such thing as truth. So the balance of probabilities lies with Mr Cambria as far as I can see. But as I said, I am happy to link to your side of the story and if a public airing of the matter makes it probable that Mr Cambria misrepresented what occurred, I will of course delete his words".

Quiggin replied:

I don't believe you have even bothered to read the comments thread in question, which makes your posturing about moral character pretty unimpressive. If you did, you would see that, unless I had fabricated the entire thing, I could not have changed it in the way you suggested. And unless his computer skills are greater than I expect, legal or police action will show, if necessary, that Cambria is the source of the obscene and abusive emails sent to my home and partially republished by you.

As I'm sure you're aware, forging emails in someone else's name, or publishing on a weblog, statements falsely purporting to be from them, is a criminal offence. Your assertion that "on the balance of probabilities", I have done this, amounts to a substantial aggravation of your previous actions. Again, the falsity of this allegation can be demonstrated, if necessary, by analysis of the logs held by my hosting company.

I have no interest in pursuing this matter further with you, however, at least as far as personal contact is concerned. I have cached your page and our email exchange, and will be forwarding them to my solicitors. Anything further from you will be forwarded to them and deleted without being read by me. I request, one last time that you remove your post, delink me from your web page, and leave me alone in future.

My conclusion:

One notes that the reason Prof. Quiggin gives for not doing the normal blogospheric thing and replying to Cambria on his blog is that he does not want Cambria's accusations to be publicly aired again yet in threatening legal action he is saying that he IS contemplating airing the matter publicly again. That certainly makes his excuse for not blogging on the matter seem notably hollow. Or is it just a normal Leftist self-contradiction?

posted by JR 3:19 AM