Libya

This superb documentary, Libya's Forbidden Deserts, is remarkable archaeologically and anthropologically. Because it was made in 2001, however, we can see how functional Libya was under Gadaffi, who was so cruelly killed and defamed by treasure-seeking western powers. Once the richest African country in the modern world, that Libya is now a lost civilisation, as precious and unattainable as the ancient civilisations explored in this film. This film is a testimony to the terrible injustice, corruption,cruelty and wanton destructiveness of US-NATO.

Western media are reporting headline claims that “new evidence supports claims about Syrian state detention deaths”, saying that “a leading rights group has released new evidence that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centres were tortured, mistreated, or executed”, noting that this information is a moral wakeup call and demanding that officials being held to account should be “central to peace efforts.”

The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria

[Editor's comment: 'Caesar' is allegedly the code name of a forensic photographer who smuggled the pictures out.]

However, as is usually so, not everything is quite as it seems.  So let’s take a look at the
facts.

First the timing. 

As has been commonplace the timing of the reports like these have almost always coincided with important diplomatic meetings or just after important UN resolutions are passed.

For example, beginning in mid-March claims began to pour in that Assad had been using chlorine bombs against his opponents.  Media reports would cite the fact that only 2 months later the government had already been accused of using chlorine 35 times.  What they failed to mention however was that no claims were made for an
entire 7 months before this.  So what changed after these 7 months?

Well, a UN resolution was passed condemning the use of chlorine, that’s what.

The governments alleged chlorine campaign “began just over a week after the UN security council passed a resolution under chapter 7 of the UN charter condemning its use,” the Guardian would report. For more than half of a year no claims are made and then a week after a UN resolution is passed, all of a sudden a total of 35 are made in just under 2 months.

If Assad was really using chlorine, why would he wait a full 7 months only to use it at the exact time that it would prove to be the most disastrous for him? 

This, coupled with the fact that former OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) inspectors admit that there was insufficient
evidence to prove the use of chlorine, let alone assign blame for who did it. 

Notorious White Helmets civil defense group

And further troubling still is that the claims came from the “White Helmets” “civil defense group”, who have been notorious for producing false claims against the Syrian government.  In actuality the White Helmets are part of a slick propaganda campaign aimed at mobilizing
support for foreign intervention and calling for a “no-fly zone” to oust the president.  They have financial links to Western-backed NGOs who relentlessly work towards furthering the US agenda in the region, and are themselves embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS.  Their primary function is to demonize the
Syrian government while acting as al-Qaeda’s clean-up crew, both literally and in terms of propaganda, as one video shows them waiting to clean up dead bodies moments after al-Qaeda commits summary executions against unarmed civilians.  They have produced numerous fake videos, fake photos, and fake narratives in order to manipulate public opinion towards their bias.[1]

Needless to say, their words aren’t credible.

Human Rights Watch admits only 27 of Caesar photos significantly documented; not 7000

In terms of the the Caesar photos, they too are published days before an important Syrian peace conference between the US and Russia, further raising questions as to whether the timing has anything to do with helping Syrian detainees or everything to do with political impact.

As noted by Human Rights Investigations, a previous report of the photos was done by
Carter-Ruck and Co. Solicitors of London and published through CNN and the Guardian in January of 2014.  The Carter-Ruck report claims that the 55,000 images available show 11,000 dead detainees.  However, according to the recent HRW report only 28,707 of the photos are ones that they have “understood to have died in government custody” while the remaining 24,568 are of dead soldiers killed in battle.  That is, half of the alleged “torture victims” are actually dead soldiers.

Of the remaining half (6,786), HRW maintains that they “understand” the photos are of dead detainees, this is where the media is getting the “7,000” figure from, yet they themselves admit later on that they were only “able to verify 27 cases of detainees whose family members’ statements regarding their arrest and physical characteristics matched the
photographic evidence.”

So, in other words, half of the original batch of photos aren’t torture victims, while of the other half only 27 can be verified by HRW.

Doubts about the 27 'documented' photos

There is also reason to doubt the reliability of these 27 cases.

Previous reports of the photos also coincided with important diplomatic events like the 2014 Geneva II conferences.  However, at that time, UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay admitted that the reports were unverified: “the report… if verified, is truly horrifying.”  While it was admitted by outlets like Reuters that they were unable “to determine the authenticity of Caesar’s photographs or to contact Caesar”
while Amnesty International notes that they too “cannot authenticate the images.”

One wonders what happened during this time that allowed HRW to do what these others could not just a year prior.

Leaving that aside however, let’s say that they are true, that they do prove that the Syrian government tortured 27
individuals, and that holding the officials “to account should be central to any peace efforts.”

It follows then that the major offenders should be held to account.  Namely the United
States.

United States contracts out torture program to foreign aid recipients

Of the top 10 recipients of US foreign aid programs in 2014, all of them practice torture while at least half of them are reportedly doing so on a massive scale, according to leading human rights organizations.

Afghanistan

For example, according to the UN torture in Afghanistan’s prisons continues to be widespread, while according to Human Rights Watch in Kenya police “tortured,
raped, and otherwise abused and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000 refugees between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013.”

Nigeria

The worst abuses
of torture in government detention centers however were in Nigeria, which received $693 million of US taxpayer money. . There, according to Amnesty, nearly 1,000 people died in military custody in only the first 6 months of 2013.  This means that “Nigeria’s military has killed more civilians than (Boko Haram) militants did” within the same timeframe.  Recently, the Nigerian army, instead of fighting Boko Haram has massacredupwards of 1,000 Muslims belonging to a peaceful movement opposed to extremism.

Israel

In terms of Israel, by far the leading recipient with $3.1 billion, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel accused the government of torturing and sexually assaulting Palestinian children suspected of minor crimes, while also keeping detainees in cages outside during winter.  “The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”

United States

Not to mention our own [meaning the US; The writer lives in the United States - Candobetter.net] widely publicized torture program.

According to the official narrative, the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programs [2] began under Bush after 9/11 and were considered “rogue elements” and “aberrations” to normal CIA practice, they were approved at the highest levels of government, but were eventually ended under Obama in 2009. 

Yet as leading international security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed found in a recent and thorough investigation “Obama did not ban torture in 2009, and has not rescinded it now. He instead rehabilitated torture with a carefully crafted Executive Order that has received little scrutiny.” 

It demanded interrogation techniques be brought in line with the US Army Field Manual, which is in compliance with the Geneva Convention.  However, the manual was revised in 2006 to include 19 forms of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition.  “A new UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) review of the manual shows that a wide-range of torture techniques continue to be deployed by the US government,” Ahmed notes, “including isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, chemically-induced psychosis, adjustments of environmental and dietary rules, among others.”

In his book “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation” the highly renowned Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alfred McCoy shows that from the 1950s onward the CIA spent billions “improving” interrogation techniques. 

At the start, the emphasis was on electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs, including the infamous use of LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, yet they proved ineffective.  It was later found that sensory disorientation and "self-inflicted pain", such as forcing a subject to stand for many hours with arms outstretched, were far more effective means of breaking individuals; the exact torture techniques it has been shown the US still
employs to this day.[3] 

The CIA found that by using only the deprivation of the senses, a state akin to psychosis can be induced in just 48 hours.

They found that the KGB’s most devastating torture technique of all was not crude physical beatings, but simply forcing victims to stand for days on end.  “The legs swelled, the skin erupted spreading lesions, the kidneys shut down, and hallucinations began” explains McCoy, “all incredibly painful.”

Refined through decades of practice, “the CIA’s use of sensory deprivation relies on seemingly banal procedures: heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, feast and famine,” yet this combines to form “a systematic attack on the sensory pathways of the human mind” for devastating effect.

These are not “aberrations”, but instead the fruition of over half a century’s work in the experimentation of the science of cracking the code of the human mind, of the perfection of psychological torture into its most sophisticated forms.

“With the election and re-election of President Barak Obama, the problem of torture has not, as many of us have once hoped, simply disappeared, wiped away by sweeping executive orders,” McCoy explains, “Instead it is now well into a particularly sordid second phase, called impunity.”

Legalising torture

Simply put, impunity is the political process of legalizing illegal acts.

“In this case, torture.”[4])

Instead of ending, US torture “continues to be deployed by the US government” in its most destructive forms.

It has been re-packaged and rehabilitated, codifying into law, and vanished from the general public consciousness.

 

Furthermore, not only does the US engage in torture on a mass scale, it and its allies as well “outsource” their torture to various regimes, utilizing their intelligence and security services to do their dirty work for them.

UK and Libya

It was recently reported by numerous Libyan dissidents that the UK government had entangled itself in a deep and sordid relationship with Muammar Gaddafi that amounted to “a
criminal conspiracy”, as heard before the UK high court.

A conspiracy where the UK had become “enmeshed in illegality” and involved in “rendition, unlawful detention and torture.”

The victims claim that British intelligence routinely blackmailed them, threatened their families with unlawful
imprisonment and abuse if they did not cooperate.  Information was extracted through torture in
prisons in Tripoli and fed into the British court systems as secret evidence that could not be challenged.

Yet this merely represents a wider trend whereby Western governments commit horrendous crimes in collusion with foreign states, and then use those same acts as justification for aggression against them.

Iraq

The United States attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq on non-existent WMD’s after it had supplied the same weapons to the country decades prior to wage war on Iran.

As well it was Gaddafi's alleged brutality and use of torture that was invoked to justify the devastating attack on Libya that has left the country in shambles and overrun with suffering and terrorism.

And so too with Syria.

Not only is the United States by degrees of magnitude more culpable for the crime of torture, it also was intimately involved in offshoring its crimes to Syrian jails.

A key participant in the CIA’s covert rendition program, Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered subjects.”

So while torture in Syria was all too real, what is commonly left out is 3 little words: “with our support.”

First we utilize, exploit, and propagate the atrocities, and then proceed to bask in our own moral righteousness as we
denounce others for the crimes that we helped commit, utilizing them to justify further atrocities and aggressions for shortsighted geopolitical aims.

 

If “officials being held to account” are really “central to any peace effort” in regards to torture, we know exactly where to find them: right here at home in Washington and London.

 

 

            Notes:

[1]   
For more on this, see Vanessa Beeley’s great reports, “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria”, 21^st
Century Wire, Pt. 1: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, Pt. 2: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, & overview with interview: http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-propaganda-war-in-syria-report-ties-white-helmets-to-foreign-intervention/209435/.
 

[2] See Editors' notes lower down.

[3]   Alfred McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation.

[4] Alfred McCoy giving a lecture on his book “Torture and Impunity” at Madison’s Overture Center, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgazW9sRrW4.

This article was originally entitled, "The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria". Author Steven Chovanec is an independent geopolitical analyst and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a student of International Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt University and conducts independent, open-source research into geopolitics and social issues.  His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com. You may find him on Twitter @stevechovanec.

EDITOR'S NOTES

[2] What is 'extraordinary rendition'? From Wikipedia:
Extraordinary rendition, also called irregular rendition, is the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.^{#cite_note-54_countries-1">[1]}

In the United States, the first well-known rendition case was that of an airline hijacker abducted in Italy and brought to the U.S. for trial, authorized by President Ronald Reagan.^{#cite_note-Naftali-2">[2]} President Bill Clinton authorized extraordinary rendition to nations known to practice torture, called torture by proxy.^{#cite_note-3">[3]} The administration of President George W. Bush "renditioned" hundreds of so-called "illegal combatants" (often never charged with any crime) for torture by proxy, and to US controlled sites for an extensive, advanced interrogation operation program under the euphemism enhanced interrogation.^{#cite_note-4">[4]} Extraordinary rendition continued with reduced frequency in the Obama administration: instead of subjecting them to advanced interrogation methods, most of those abducted have been conventionally interrogated and subsequently taken to the US for trial.^{#cite_note-5">[5]}

Extraordinary rendition remains a clear violation of international law.^{#cite_note-MyUser_The_Economist_February_24_2015c-6">[6]} The United Nations considers one nation abducting the citizens of another a crime against humanity.^{#cite_note-MyUser_The_Washington_Post_July_26_2015c-7">[7]} Abduction has also been a recognized casus belli (justification for war) in the Western tradition since Helen of Troy. In July 2014 the European Court of Human Rights condemned the government of Poland for participating in CIA extraordinary rendition, ordering Poland to pay restitution to men who had been abducted, taken to a CIA black site in Poland, and tortured.^{#cite_note-European_Court_of_Human_Rights-8">[8]#cite_note-9">[9]#cite_note-MyUser_Reuters.com_February_24_2015c-10">[10]} Overall, 54 countries are known to have been involved with US extraordinary renditions.^{#cite_note-54_countries-1">[1]}

See also this review of the film, Extraordinary Rendition. This film has never been released in big commercial venues.

The U.S. military is causing devastation to the environment. Joseph Nevins writes in 2010 that "The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate." The article states ". . . the Pentagon devours about 330,000 barrels of oil per day (a barrel has 42 gallons), more than the vast majority of the world’s countries." The amount of oil used by your military machine is beyond belief, and each military vehicle also releases pollutants through the exhaust. Tanks, trucks, Humvees and other vehicles are not known for their fuel economy. Other fuel guzzlers are submarines, helicopters and fighter jets. Each military flight, whether involved in the transport of soldiers or in a combat mission, contributes more carbon into the atmosphere. Candobetter.net editor: Unfortunately the Australian government supports this US war machine. Earth Day is Wednesday April 22, 2015. These letters will be sent for that occasion but they seek to involve the public earlier in this campaign against war.

National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

"A classic case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relates to international law." Most Australians seem to get their opinions on world events from some well-known ABC, Murdoch and Fairfax commentators, and some newer ones sourced from corporate 'think tanks' like the Lowy Institute, and some questionably alternative sources like the Green Left Weekly, who all basically run the same line. If that is how you get your news, then you won't have any idea of what happened to Libya in 2011. To have any understanding of events in the Middle East, it is necessary to read much more widely. I came across this book recently and snapped it up because it was by an international US law professor who personally represented Mohamar Qadaffi in Libya's defense against the Lockerbie airplane bombing accusations and documented successive NATO attempts to draw Libya into war. Written very clearly, with a proper thesis, the book proved to be a fascinating and moving document of one man's attempt to represent his people honestly and truly and to synthesise a way forward for Muslims, men and women together, as a national participant in global affairs.

This is a book review of Destroying Libya and world order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution by Francis A. Boyle. ISBN: 978-0-9853353-7-3.

This book gives us a perspective that no newspaper can on the repetitive accusations against Eastern and Middle Eastern states of weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapon stockpiles and airplanes falling out of the sky.

It tells of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's legal fight to defend himself against US and UK allegations of being responsible for the Lockerbie Aircraft bombing in 1988. Libya filed two World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom so that they would not attack Libya again as they had done before.

After these two World Court lawsuits were filed, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. Thus Libya managed to avert war with the United States. Because of these legal suits, as Francis Boyle records, "There was no war. No one died."

Unfortunately that was not the end of NATO attempts to bring chaos to the Middle East and war to the world.

Boyle describes how, time and again, the United States would invade Libya's coastal waters and attempt to draw fire. The US seemed to make up the law as it went and NATO went along with it all. Qaddafi followed Francis Boyle's legal advice and documented Libya's peaceful responses in world legal forae. You would think, reading of these considered documents, that the US, the UK, and NATO would have desisted for fear of being tried for war crimes. But they did not. They went further to support Qadaffi's enemies who pursued Libya's leader with guns and knives and killed him along with about 60 of his supporters, in a war-crime as yet officially uninvestigated. One concludes that the leaders of the countries involved truly believe they can get away with anything. They must think they are beyond punishment.

Francis Boyle describes Colonel Qaddafi's rule as 'secular-nationalist'. He decreed that women in Libya were equal to men. He wrote a 'Green Book' that attempted to find a third way between capitalism and communism, consistant with Islam. Although most Libyans were moderate Sunni Muslims, Qaddafi's biggest opponents were Muslim fundamentalists in Libya itself.

In order to overthrow Qaddafi in 2011, the U.S. and NATO states worked hand-in-glove with Libyan and imported foreign Muslim fundamentalists including elements of Al Qaeda and Salafists. There were many assassination attempts by the West and, in 2011, when the bombing of Libya campaign began, Qaddafi went to ground, trying to stay alive. Eventually he was assassinated in the most brutal way, defending his country. In the wake of his removal, Libya has fallen into chaos. Extremism of the most brutal kind has sprung from this chaos, radiating outwards. This was not the fault of Qaddafi, but of the international forces that armed his enemies.

Francis Boyle explains how the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect evolved to be abused. In 2011 the Obama administration directly took over Libya’s oil fields under the pretext of the so-called Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

- Sheila Newman

From the publisher's website at http://www.claritypress.com/BoyleXLibya.html

AUTHOR FRANCIS A. BOYLE is a leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993.

In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Tackling America's Toughest Problems, and The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka.
He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour. Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.” Muammar Qaddafi* (“Qaddafi website publishes ‘last will’ of Libyan ex-leader”, BBC News, 23/10/2011)

Synopsis

It took three decades for the United States government—spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II , and Obama)—to terminate the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution, seize control over Libya’s oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with that from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it.

Francis Boyle provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the 2011 NA TO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change, and beyond.

He sets the record straight on the series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra, exposing the Reagan administration’s fraudulent claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism put forward over his eight years in office.

Boyle reveals the inside story behind the Lockerbie bombing cases against the United States and the United Kingdom that he filed at the World Court for Colonel Qaddafi acting upon his advice—and the unjust resolution of those disputes.

Deploying standard criteria of international law, Boyle analyzes and debunks the UN R2P “responsibility to protect” doctrine and its immediate predecessor,“humanitarian intervention”. He addresses how R2P served as the basis for the NATO assault on Libya in 2011, overriding the UN Charter commitment to state sovereignty and prevention of aggression. The purported NATO protection in actuality led to 50,000 Libyan casualties, and the complete breakdown of law and order. And this is just the beginning. Boyle lays out the ramifications: the destabilization of the Maghreb and Sahel, and the French intervention in Mali—with the USA/NATO/Europe starting a new imperial scramble for the natural resources of Africa.

This book is not only a classic case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relates to international law, but a damning indictment of the newly-contrived R2P doctrine as legal cover for Western intervention into thiird world countries.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction

Chapter 1.
Using International Law to Analyze American
Foreign Policy Decision-Making.

Chapter 2.
The Confrontation Between the Reagan
Administration and Libya
over the Gulf of Sidra and Terrorism

Chapter 3.
The Reagan Administration’s Criminal Bombings of
Tripoli and Benghazi

Chapter 4.
Resolving the Lockerbie Dispute by Means of
International Law.

Chapter 5.
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) versus International
Law.

Chapter 6.
The 2011 U.S./NATO War Against Libya.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, the conduct of nations on the international stage is almost never driven by moral considerations, but rather by a shadowy cocktail of money and geopolitics. As such, when you see the mouthpieces of the ruling class begin to demonize a foreign country, the first question in your mind should always be "what is actually at stake here?"

For some time now Russia, China, Iran, and Syria have been in the cross hairs. Once you understand why, the events unfolding in the world right now will make much more sense. Article republished from SCG News http://scgnews.com/the-geopolitics-of-world-war-iii

11.Sep.2014 | SCG

Breaking news : (30 August, 11:30AM GMT+10) UK Parliament votes against war

(Originally posted: Mon, 26 Aug 2013, 01:20:28 +1000) See also: Syria 'Chemical Weapons' Crisis: Live Updates on RT, Appendix 1: Links to factual reporting on Syria, Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda.

Unlike Syria, Australia has participated in several unjust wars since the end of the Second World War.₁ As a result of two of those wars, 1,300,000 Iraqis, fled to Syria. The illegal wars, in which Australia participated include: The Korean War,₂ the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of 1991, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In its "demographics" section The Wikipedia Syria article, states:

According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. The vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), but sizeable populations from the former Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) also lived in the country.[106]

So, as a result of the illegal wars against Iraq in which Australia participated in 1991 and 2003 and the sanctions in which Australia also participated, which even denied medicine to critically ill Iraqi children and food to starving Iraqi children, 1,300,000 Iraqis fled to Syria, where they have since been cared for.

By rights, Syria should have received aid from Australia to help it cope with a problem of Australia's making.

Instead, Bob Carr, who claims to have opposed the wars against Iraq, found a convenient excuse to side with the world's bullies against Syria.

In May 2012, on the pretext of the unproven allegation that the Syrian Government had massacred 108 unarmed civilians at Houla, 'Labor' Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr expelled the Syrian ambassador and tightened existing sanctions against Syria.

#app1facts" id="app1facts">Appendix 1: Factual reporting on Syria #introFacts">↑

Regarding allegations that government had killed its citizens with chemical weapons

The links below do not include links to articles on Global Research (http://globalresearch.ca). At around 10:00PM (GMT +10) on 27 Aug 2013, the web browser showed the message "Error establishing a database connection" every time I tried to view a page on that site.

Lying about Syria, and the lying liars who lie about the lying ₃ of 25 Aug 2013 by David Swanson, Moallem: We Dare Anyone to Reveal Evidence that Damascus Used Chemical Weapons of 27 Aug 2013 in Almanar News, Sarin Gas : a new propaganda campaign against Syria of  Aug 2013 Voltaire Network, Strike on Syria serves Israel interests: Syrian FM of 27 Aug 2013 on PressTV, of 27 Aug 2013 on The Voice of Russia,
Congress Should Veto Obama's War of 27 Aug 2013 by Patrick J. Buchananan on antiwar.com , Information Minister : US has no evidence on Syria's use of chemical weapons (SANA) of 27 Aug 2013.

Other aspects of the Syrian conflict

Syria opposition handed Western powers lists of targets for strike of 27 Aug 2013 in The Voice of Russia, Aleppo Christians Fear Iraq-Style
Ethnic Cleansing of 26 Aug 2013 on Almonitor of  Aug 2013.

#app2lies" id="app1facts">Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda #introLies">↑

To understand the stories listed below, first read Lying about Syria, and the lying liars who lie about the lying ₃ of 25 Aug 2013 by David Swanson (also linked to above).
Mainstream media war propaganda: UN to inspect site of alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack, US say it's too late (includes embedded interview with Lisa Millar) of 26 Aug 2013 on ABC News, Obama's Guns of August of 24 Aug 2013 in Slate, Baird, counterparts express 'outrage' over alleged chemical attacks in Syria of 26 Aug 2013 on CTV, Air, missile strikes on Syria considered by US, UK of 26 Aug 2013 in Rupert Murdoch's Australian (possibly behind a paywall), Kevin Rudd's Syria briefing 'could have been by phone' of 26 Aug 2013 also in Murdoch's Australian, DFAT urges 64 Australians to leave Syria of 25 Aug 2013 in Murdoch's Sydney daily Telegraph, Australia to use UN role to push for Syria solution: Kevin Rudd of 25 Aug 2013, Syria to allow UN to inspect 'chemical weapons' site of 25 Aug 2013 in the BBC, Cameron and Obama warn of 'serious response' to Syria attack of 25 Aug 2013 also on the BBC, Caution needed in considering intervention in Syria ₄ of 26 Aug 2103 on ABC TV's Lateline, Carr says West could act on Syria without UN as US, allies gear up for probable military strike of 28 Aug 2013 and embedded video,
US intelligence to justify looming missile strike against Syria of 28 Aug 2013, 10 Simple points to help you understand the Syria conflict ₅ of 28 Aug 2013, Kevin Rudd talking to 'global leaders' on Syria, suggests he may attend G20 of 28 Aug 2013 in the Australian (includes another video of Bob Carr again making the lying claim that "evidence [is] accumult[ing].").

Footnotes

#fnSubj1" id="fnSubj1">1. #txtSubj1">↑ Contrary to some misguided "left-wing" narratives of the Second World War, the fight by the Western allies, the Soviet Union and other allies against German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese colonialism was one in which all the people of the world have a vital stake, as Oliver Stone has shown in the TV series "The Untold History of the United States" (2012) and book of the same name. For all the flaws of the Allied nations, humanity is greatly indebted to them. Had the Allies lost, a new and more terrible of barbarism would have begun.

#fnSubj2" id="fnSubj2">2. #txtSubj2">↑ Whilst the Korean war can be technically viewed as the defence of 'South' Korea against aggression from 'North' Korea, in reality, it was an extension of the national war of liberation against the brutal regime of former Japanese collaborators, which had been imposed on 'South' Korea by U.S. occupiers in 1945. From 1945 until 1950, a guerrilla war had been fought against the southern regime.

#fnSubj3" id="fnSubj3">3. #txtSubj3">↑ This otherwise insightful and informative story is flawed by the following words: "5. Both sides in Syria have used horrible weapons and committed horrible atrocities. ...". In conducting a war against ruthless insurgents who use unarmed civilians as human shields and who conceal conceals themselves inside their residences, the Syrian Army has bombarded these residences and undoubtedly caused death and injury. However, in conducting an armed struggle to ensure that the terrorist killers do no triumph the Syrian Army would have little other choice. David Swanson seems to have been influenced by the false "far-left" opinion that every government (except for a truly "revolutionary socialist" of the old Leninist-Trotskyist paradigm) must necessarily be corrupt. However, it appears that a number of notable historical figures who have risen to the top are indeed well-meaning and courageous individuals. One obvious example is the late President Kennedy. President Bashar al-Assad may be of a similar mould. Certainly I have yet to see any evidence that he is corrupt.

#fnSubj4" id="fnSubj4">4. #txtSubj4">↑ On the surface, Bob Carr appears fair, calm and rational in this interview by Lateline presenter Emma Alberici. However, as this interview only likely to be viewed by a very small minority of the public who take the time to watch Lateline and would be overshadowed by news of the strident beating of the drums of war by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and John Kerry, Bob Carr's apparent urging of caution would have negligible impact, particularly given that Bob Carr has repeated the lies about Syria and has not made the effort to question them.

#fnSubj5" id="fnSubj5">5. #txtSubj5">↑ The 'points' are anything but simple. Includes some token pretences at being objective and not biased, for example: "5. And pretty soon, bad guys on both sides are killing civilians…".

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibly 1,500,000

Iraqis and 20,000 Afghan civilians. A copy of the interview in which Carr repeated corporate media lies to justify action against Syria can be found on YouTube and is embedded in this article. Readers may wish to contrast Carr's words with facts about the Syrian conflict to be found on Global Research. See also: Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 10 May 2012, Syria -70% vote to end one-party state - why aren't we celebrating? of 1 Mar 2012, Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 12 Apr 2012 on candobetter, AN ONGOING DISASTER: Libya, Africa and Africom - More than 50,000 Deaths of 26 May.

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibbly 1,500,000

Iraqis and 20,000 Afghan civilians. A copy of the interview in which Carr justify action against Syria due to civil conflict can be found on YouTube and is embedded in this article. Readers may wish to contrast Carr's words with facts about the Syrian conflict to be found on Global Research. See also: Syria -70% vote to end one-party state - why aren't we celebrating? of 1 Mar 2012 on candobetter, AN ONGOING DISASTER: Libya, Africa and Africom - More than 50,000 Deaths of 26 May.

By Geoffrey Taylor with Sheila Newman

Australia's new Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, has wasted little time in rekindling Australia's participation in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. In 2003 the Coalition illegally invaded Iraq using, as a pretext, the fraudulent claim that Iraq posed a threat to the world with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). This followed Australia's participation in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, based on an inadequate official investigation of the events of 9/11. As a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq one million Iraqis may have died according to one study in the British Lancet medical journal. In the ten years prior to that invasion a further one million Iraqis had died from hunger as a result of sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the US, Australia and its allies after the conclusion of the 1991 war against Iraq[1] in which a further 130,000 Iraqis were killed.

Since the Afghan War in 2001, a further 20,000 civilians have died.

Embedded below is a YouTube broadcast of a recent interview with Bob Carr in which he uses inflammatory corporate newsmedia reports about the Syrian conflict to justify the imposition of sanctions on Syria. The journalist in the interview asks Carr if he would consider expelling the Syrian ambassador and Carr does not rule this out.

Carr says nothing of the 2011 invasion of Libya, shamefully supported by Australia's previous foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, nor, of course, anything about Australia's past participation in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, mentioned above.

Nor does the interviewer. This is a failure of journalism to situate our current policy and actions in their historic context where our recent actions turned out to be entirely wrongly based. For instance, the fact that many Australians remain unaware that the excuse used by the US to invade Iraq, that it had weapons of mass destruction, was proven to be a CIA fabrication is a complete failure of journalism and national education. This is despite the clear accessibility of the truth in this case. (See Fair Game and the book of the same name.)

These continuing failures of accurate reporting by the Australian mass media - commercial and public - are shunting Australians and the rest of the world blindfolded towards a third world war with the Middle East.

In response to growing competition for ultimately scarce oil resources, world blocs have formed in an effort to get favorable terms for long-term access to Middle Eastern oil. What is going on now represents attempts to isolate Iran by disorganising and possibly invading its neighbours. Iranian oil reserves have been of great interest to the world since the early 20th century, beginning with Anglo-Persian oil. Iran continues to hold a disputed but considerable volume of remaining accessible oil reserves in the world and this is the reason that world attention is currently focused in this area. Iran's position on the Caspian Sea is critical. See "What's in it for Russia? Georgia, Ossetia, & Caspian oil and gas". Multi-national oil companies tend to be aligned with particular national blocs and rely on governments in their negotiations. Access to oil is never left to the international market alone.

Growth economics, combined with population growth in the first world has made us hungry for oil at almost any cost.

Above broadcast embedded from http://youtube.com/watch?v=0H9H2XsvS20

Australians seeking a more three dimensional view of these conflicts will find other views on Russia Today's media internet media outlet. The video, "Judging Syria," for instance, talks about how US allies, Saudi Arabia, are engaging in repressive violence that goes almost completely unreported in the media. Other videos ask why the media have lost interest in humanitarian causes in Libya when the country has now dissolved into armed gang warfare. The answer to that question probably resides in the very close cooperation between the Western political blocs and its mass media.

Get more background on Syria from the articles listed below

Here are links to articles about Syria from Global Research and Global Research TV, where readers can get more information than the Anglophone mainstream press provide. Please feel most welcome to add your comments below, whether critical or supportive.

SYRIA: NATO's Next "Humanitarian" War? - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-05-11

SYRIA: WESTERN POWERS ARE SUBVERTING THE PEACE PROCESSPress Conference, Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations - 2012-04-09

BREAKING NEWS, SYRIA: Imperialist Powers Manipulate Syrian "Peace Plan" to Prepare for All Out War - by Johannes Stern - 2012-04-09

VIDEO: Syrian Journalist: CNN, Al-Jazeera Falsifying Events in Syria Get all the info on GRTV - by Rahshan Saglam, Rafik Lutf - 2012-04-08

SYRIA AND THE UN: Diplomatic Confrontation at the UN regarding The Kofi Annan Syria "Peace Plan" - by Ronda Hauben - 2012-04-08

US-led conference backs Syrian puppet group, threatens war - by Niall Green - 2012-04-02

Shocking Report Reveals Terrorists' Crimes in Syria - 2012-03-28

Syria Denounces Foreign Support for Terrorism - 2012-03-25

VIDEO: US/NATO Proxy War in Syria Follows Precedent Set in Bosnia Find out more on GRTV- by Benjamin Schett - 2012-03-22

Syrian opposition accused of "human rights abuses" - by Chris Marsden - 2012-03-22

Bahrain Medics Show Trial: This Is Not Syria, Therefore No Western Outcry

MEDIA LIES: Deaths in Syria: Counting them (politically) correctly - 2012-03-19

SYRIA OPPOSITION TARGETS CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY: Christians Expelled from Homs by "Opposition" Al Qaeda Gunmen - 2012-03-18

SYRIA: Testimonies from Homs Reveal Identity of Terrorists and Mercenaries involved in Atrocities

Foiling Peace: The Imperial “Friends” of Syria - by Ben Schreiner - 2012-04-11

SYRIA: THE WINDS OF WAR - by Stephen Lendman - 2012-04-11

SYRIA’S "ROGUE ISLAMIST OPPOSITION": US-NATO’s New Lie in its Bid for Regime Change

Syrian Peace Deal: UN's Cloak to NATO's Dagger - by Tony Cartalucci - 2012-04-09

"RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT" SYRIA: A US-NATO "TROJAN HORSE" - by Carla Stea - 2012-04-09

Kofi Annan is the "War-maker" in Syria Interview- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-04-08

THE HISTORY OF "REGIME CHANGE": Putting Syria into some perspective - by William Blum - 2012-04-06

“Friends of Syria”—the Antechamber of a Wider Mideast War - by Bill Van Auken - 2012-04-04

VIDEO: Free Syrian Army Foot-Soldiers of Western Military Alliance - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-04-02

See also: Syria -70% vote to end one-party state - why aren't we celebrating? of 1 Mar 2012, Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 12 Apr 2012 on candobetter, AN ONGOING DISASTER: Libya, Africa and Africom - More than 50,000 Deaths of 26 May.

Footnotes

[1] Iraq had been set up by US Ambassador to Kuwait, following Kuwait illegally slant drilling for oil under Iraqi territory. As shown in the transcript of the interview April Glaspie assured Hussein that there would be no adverse consequences from the US were Iraq to invade Kuwait in retaliation for the slant drilling.

As the US was preparing to attack Iraq in reprisal for the invasion, the Public Relations firm Hill and Knowlton manufactured the lie of the "incubator babies" to overcome opposition to the war. See YouTube broadcast, embedded on candobetter in this comment.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must. End the empire!

See also: thepatriots.us.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must.

Candobetter Editor: We welcome essays and papers from Dr Robert Bowman. Robert Bowman was in charge of the program to build an outer space missile defense shield in the early 1970s under Presidents Ford and Carter. He retired in 1978. In 1980, when President Reagan took over the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) it was put into the hands of a group of people who wanted to turn it into a means to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. Many of the top brass under Reagan were opposed to this but could not speak out publicly. Robert Bowman, as he was already retired, was free to speak without incurring any penalty. Because he was free to speak, the top generals, who themselves felt unable to speak up, appealed to Robert Bowman to use his voice to stop the SDI. Bowman gave thousands of public speeches against the SDI and, of his own efforts, turned American public opinion around, so that the SDI, as a first strike weapon, had to be abandoned.

Arab Spring

Most of the revolts of 2011 have been popular uprisings against aging dictators who have for decades kept their people in poverty and without a voice in their governance. The successful revolt against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is a good example. It was a genuine popular uprising of ordinary people. The protesters were unarmed and mostly peaceful. They quickly gained the support of people all across the country and from all walks of life. Even the Army refused to fire on them. The media called them “pro-democracy” forces, but most of the demonstrators had little interest in “democracy” as such, and little understanding of what it is. What they wanted was a better life. They were demonstrating against unemployment, poverty, and hunger. And they succeeded. It is doubtful that any meaningful democracy will result, but the Egyptian people at least have a chance for a better standard of living. The dictator they overthrew, Hosni Mubarak, was an ally of the United States and Israel. But he was not deemed essential to our elites. We did not interfere. After all, puppet dictators come and go. Once in a while, you have to throw one of them under the bus.

It’s another story in Yemen and Bahrain, where the local dictators have given us military bases and active cooperation in our “War on Terror.” In these countries, the dictators are brutally repressing the demonstrators and killing unarmed civilians, with our tacit approval and probably with the assistance of the CIA. Having armed these dictators, we don’t have to send troops in to help them (that the American people would not stand for). But we certainly won’t help the “pro-democracy” demonstrators. For them, “Arab Spring” is nothing but a long, hard winter of discontent.

Libya

So what’s goin on in Libya? Why are the vast majority of the Libyan people standing behind Moammar Khaddafi? And why are we sending the full air power of NATO to assist a small band of armed revolutionaries in Libya?

The answers are simple. First, Khaddafi has been, for the most part, a benevolent dictator. He has enormously bettered the lives of his people until their standard of living is the highest in the Arab world. Education is free. Medical care is free. Housing is free. Automobiles are heavily subsidized, as is the gasoline to run them. Young married couples start wedded life with a $50,000 subsidy. Every Libyan man, woman, and child gets something like $500 a year directly from the oil profits. Khaddafi has built the world’s largest public works project, pumping rivers of fresh water from aquifers under the desert of southern Libya north to the cities along the Mediterranean where the people live. This has allowed the people to have clean drinking water, and has enabled agriculture. In short, the economic factors behind most of the revolts of “Arab Spring” are absent in Libya. No wonder the people, for the most part, support him (democracy or no).

Then who are the armed rebels, and why are we supporting them? Easy. They are Islamist malcontents. Some of them are unhappy that Khaddafi is taking a leading role in uniting African countries. They look down on black Africans, and want Libya to align itself with Europe. Some have long been CIA operatives, fighting against the Russians in Afghanistan, and now against the Americans (like so many “Al Qaeda”). Having no political loyalties, they are happy to accept CIA and NATO help in taking over Libya as an Islamist state.

For our part, we are using them to get rid of a thorn that has long been in our side. All of the dictators (former puppets of ours or not) that we have turned on (Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, all the way back to Mossadegh in Iran) have committed one of these two cardinal sins: (1) they have nationalized the oil industry, denying the Western oil companies billions in profits, or (2) they have declared independence from the global banking cartel, refusing to borrow from the IMF and World Bank. This has cost the banks billions in interest, and prevented them from imposing harsh austerity measures which impoverish the people and make them permanent debt slaves. Khaddafi committed BOTH of these cardinal sins. First, he nationalized the oil industry, kicking out the western corporations. Instead of having a central bank under the thumb of the Rothschilds (like the US, Greece, Ireland, etc), Khaddafi printed his own money, backing it with gold from oil sales. He used the money to better the lives of his people.

These actions sealed Khaddafi’s fate. The West has been waiting decades for an opportunity to take him out. The NATO “no fly zone” and the incessant bombing of Tripoli have nothing to do with protecting civilians from the Libyan army. They, like all our military adventures since World War II, have to do with protecting the global financial interests of multinational corporations and banks and the billionaires who own them. It’s a desperate attempt to maintain the financial empire which owes no loyalty to this or any other country, which pays no taxes to our government, but which somehow has gotten control of our government and both major political parties, uses our sons and daughters as cannon fodder in their wars of aggression, and (believe it or not) gets us taxpayers to pay for it all!

Are we stupid or what?

Syria

As we write this in mid-June, it appears that Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be the next dictator to feel the wrath of US military power. He and his father Haffez al-Assad before him have been closer to Russia than to the West, allowing Russia access to Naval bases on the Mediterranean. They have also been supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. But they have (like their fellow Ba’athist in Iraq, Saddam Hussein) also opposed militant Sunni Islamists, and allowed significant religious freedom to their Christian minority (about 10%).. That did not save Saddam, and it won’t save Assad.

Afghanistan

Our ten-year war against Afghanistan has nothing to do with 9/11 or our national security. It is a war to secure the oil pipeline through Afghanistan that the Taliban refused to give to Unocal. It was planned in detail before the attacks on 9/11 (which the Taliban had nothing to do with). (According to the FBI, we don’t even have any evidence that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11.) Like all the others, it is a war of Empire.

Iraq

The war against Iraq had even less justification than that on Afghanistan. Since there was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11, the G. W. Bush administration invented the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) excuse — one they knew was false. Would our generals have massed 150,000 troops in one spot in Kuwait if they thought there was any chance Saddam had even one WMD that could wipe out our entire force with one attack? No. But Iraq was the centerpiece of the grand plan of the Empire to establish 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, from which they (according to their own PNAC document) could control the entire Middle East and its tens of trillions of dollars in oil and gas.

End the Empire

We have hundreds of thousands of troops on over 700 bases in nearly 200 countries. After 56 years, we are still occupying Germany and Japan. It’s time to end the Empire, bring all our troops home, end the corporate wars of aggression, give up our foreign military bases, abolish the CIA, and adopt a Constitutional foreign and military policy that uses our Armed Forces to protect our borders and our people — period. No more puppet dictators. Let the corporations and banks protect their own financial interests, and pay for it out of their own ill-gotten profits. We must take political power away from the corporations, banks, and billionaires so we can, once and for all, end the Empire!

By Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.
National Commander, “The Patriots”
[email protected]

See also: thepatriots.us. (In spite of not being as current as Dr. Bowman would wish, it is, nevertheless, a fantastic resource.)

This is a response to Sheila Newman's comment Marxism is the other side of Capitalism

Few political groups and individuals who wear the label 'Marxist' (including this one) in 2011 are not working to serve the same ruling elites they claim to oppose or are not duped by those who are, but this was not always so.

Through much of 19th and 20th century history, a good many who labeled themselves 'Marxist', 'socialist', 'communist' or 'Trotskyist' were truly engaged in a struggle for a more equitable and democratic world.

Had they succeeded, the vast majority of humankind would today be in control its own destiny and not manipulated to serve the, short-sighted interests of the small selfish global elite.

If humankind were in control of its own destiny, as it could have been, there is no way that it would have allowed its population to grow to levels so much higher than the carrying capacity of this planet.

However, the elites of Europe and America and elsewhere prevented their people from emulating the example of the 1917 Russian Revolution in their own countries, notably in Germany in 1919, 1920 and 1923 and Great Britain in 1926 (as shown in the last episode of "Days of Hope" of 1975).

The isolation of the Russian Revolution led to its corruption by Stalin and in turn to the corruption of the whole international Communist movement.

In 2011, it's evident that this corruption has spread even to socialist groups which originated from the fight against that original corruption of the Communist movement. Not one of these groups in the US the UK or Australia even attempted to organise opposition to NATO's criminal war against Libya, See for yourself. Try to find any mention of Libya on any of these web sites: Green Left #fn1_7378" id="fn1_7378_text">[1], Direct Action #fn2_7378" id="fn2_7378_text">[2], the Socialist Alliance. #fn3_7378" id="fn3_7378_text">[3]In the UK, one group, Workers' Liberty has actually supported NATO's war against Libya(!!?).

Would those, who have so miserably failed to act to prevent NATO's destruction of Libya and mass murder of Libyans, have us truly believe that they give a damn about people from other countries?

If they appear to care for a tiny fraction of people from those countries, that is, those seeking to immigrate to First World countries, it is only because high immigration suits the interests of the very elites they claim to be against.

Footnotes

#fn1_7378" id="fn1_7378">1.[#fn1_7378_text">back] As of Saturday 8 October 2011, there is no mention of Libya on the main page, ...

#fn2_7378" id="fn2_7378">2.[#fn2_7378_text">back] One mention ostensibly opposed to the war dated 26 September, six months after the war began?! No other mention in its whole 'anti-war' section. No mention of silence of other 'Trotskyist' groups about Libya, nor of support for bombing of Libya by UK Workers' Liberty group with an Australian affiliate. If they truly oppose NATO's bombing of Libya, why cover up the shameful behaviour of other supposedly 'socialist' groups?

#fn3_7378" id="fn3_7378">3.[#fn3_7378_text">back] One mention dated 18 March 2011 on the main page.

Like Australia, Latvia is (mis)ruled by a government which sends its armed forces to fight illegal wars such as those being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

See also: NATO and 9/11: Declaration of the Latvian Antiglobalists, Youtube broadcast Against NATO in Libya. NationalState.INFO, Ditta Rietuma (also embedded here).

However, the people of Latvia have never given their Government a mandate to wage these wars on its behalf. The following is a statement from Latvian anti-globalists published on Global Research on 7 September.

Riga, 7th September 2011

To all peoples of the world, NATO nations and NATO occupied countries

1.Following the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 event and the evidence that this was pre-arranged as an excuse for further illegal global invasions in the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.) to succeed earlier invasions in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

2.Whereas the government of Latvia and the Parliament members have not been elected constitutionally because the Constitution of Latvia (Satversme) requires that all citizens have the right to become Parliamentarians. It therefore follows that for the last 20 years the country has been governed illegally by a minority chosen out of the 1% who are Party members. The word “Party” does not occur in the Latvian Constitution.

3.In view of the worsening military and political situation in the Middle East, and because these developments may lead to a 3rd world war.

4.Because the government and the Parliament do not take into consideration the will of the Latvian people and since also for years these authorities have been exceeding their mandate in sending Latvian soldiers to wars without the express sanction of the Latvian people.

For these reasons set out above and for others, we, the Latvian Antiglobalists:

1)Have published (www.antiglobalisti.lv Latvian language only, currently has no English translation)) the names and Party affiliations of those parliamentarians who have voted to send the Latvian troops in support of NATO colonization operations,

2) Invite the people to write to those on this list, who are responsible for the deployment of Latvian troops in these NATO colonization operations, and state that they will hold them personally legally responsible in the future for any deaths or injuries sustained by the troops or combatant or non-combatant individuals in the areas of conflict in which they are operating and for all economic or political consequences,

3) Affirm that any Latvian soldier involved in any NATO-led or sanctioned action does so without the authority of the Latvian People.

See video of the Latvian Antiglobalists action at the US embassy Spring 2011 which is embedded above, also at youtu.be/FenvRdgSzis.

Three hippos hanging their heads sadly, looking down into a shallow pool of foul brown water, seemingly reluctant to bathe or drink... A lone tiger walking restlessly, desperate for shade ... Two scrawny lions pacing inside their enclosure, suffering from a lack of food. These are just some of the more than 1,000 war-torn animal victims still trying to survive in Libya's Tripoli Zoo after NATO's war against Libyan supporters of Moammar Gadhafi.

You may have seen some of the disturbing media
images already...

Three hippos hanging their heads sadly, looking down into a shallow pool of
foul brown water, seemingly reluctant to bathe or drink...
A lone tiger walking restlessly, desperate for shade ...
Two scrawny lions pacing inside their enclosure, suffering from a lack of
food.

These are just some of the more than 1,000 war-torn animal victims still trying to survive in Libya's Tripoli Zoo after NATO's war against Libyan supporters of Moammar Gadhafi. And without our help, they will continue
to suffer and die in sweltering temperatures greater than 40° C / 100° F.

Zoo animals are often the first to be neglected when cities are hit by human-made or natural disasters. Just ten members of the 200-person zoo staff return periodically...struggling to keep up with so many animals to water and feed: hyenas, bears, monkeys, deer, emus and more. But it's the big cats, the tiger and lion meat-eaters, that are especially difficult to provide for in this heat. 

Will you please help IFAW provide food to save these desperate animals and protect other animals around the world?

The zoo has received an emergency grant from IFAW to buy food to last a few days, but your gift will help us send medicine and more money to provide ongoing support for the animals caught in the middle of the war in Libya.

How can you know that your gift can help rescue animals in the middle of a warzone?

Because with your help, IFAW has done it before.

In 2003, IFAW rushed a team of experts and supplies to the Baghdad Zoo to ensure the well-being and survival of over 400 animals during the Iraq War. And during the political unrest in the Middle East last spring, IFAW stepped in to help feed animal residents of the Tunis Zoo in Tunisia.

You are now being asked to step up once more to help us rescue animals from some of the most disturbing conditions we've seen to date.

The cost to feed the suffering animals at the Tripoli Zoo is around US$2,000 a day. Every dollar you can give today can help save an animal's life.

Cynthia McKinney is an unusual black US former congresswoman who has risked her life to report on the situation in Libya from Libya on what she calls the "Truth Tour". The article below contains her most recent report, which contains parts of alternative journalists' articles and criticises mainstream journalism. The video where she speaks, included here, is an addition. It is quite rivetting stuff.

From Cynthia McKinney: "Still in the Truth Tour"

Thanks to all who have come out and participated in the Truth Tour. I have almost come to its end. Last night in Detroit, several of the women were moved to tears as I explained the situation in Libya right now as I know it to be. Every venue has had every seat occupied or was filled to capacity with standing room only.

Detroit's young singer and band, Sister Ziyah and Black Rain were phenomenal and their music set the tone for the event: first song, Kickstart the Revolution; second song, Good Morning, America; third song, Today, I'm a Better Me.

Detroit attendees were rapt in the August 26 Tripoli streetfight video that I showed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rif7U5hRsNM#t=2s

This Truth Tour has been unique because the true peace people in this country have revealed themselves by their willingness to step forward and be counted against this war in the very midst of the worst deceit and demonization ever. NATO war crimes are being excused, discounted, or covered up by those who posed as supporters of justice and peace. It is never OK to bomb people. And it is never OK to ask the peace-loving people of this country to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare and education and housing--and I could go on and on--so that war profiteers can fatten their ill-gotten coffers.

I agree with Stephen Lendman and others who have written that the war propaganda against Libya reached heights higher than that for the war against the Iraqi people. The deceit continues to this day from the most respected "news" outlets. Now, we know them as what they really are, too.

Here are a few items that I had to wake up early to get to you before I board the plane for my next destination: it seems that the "Mighty Wurlitzer" could use a tune up because it has even ratcheted up a notch in its noise factor with this war. Watch the BBC descent from journalism to the absolute lowest depths with this:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/news-media-corruption/jubilation-as-tripoli-fallsin-india-.html

For more information on the current deceptions and machinations regarding the US/NATO war against the people of Libya, listen to this conversation between Dedon Kamathi (who was a part of the DIGNITY Delegation of alternative journalists who traveled with me to wartime Libya) and Don Debar (who traveled with me to Libya in 2009 as a part of the DIGNITY Delegation to learn more about The Green Book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrBgESw7bgs&feature=player_embedded

The Libyan Soldier

Here's what Glen Ford wrote that moved me to tears:
"The Libyan Soldier: The True Heroes of NATO’s War," Wed, 08/24/2011 - 13:02 — Glen Ford

"NATO has proven it has the capacity to kill thousands of Libyan soldiers from the skies, but it cannot “convey honor and legitimacy” to the rebels under its killer wings. “They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air.” The incinerated bodies of her soldiers have secured Libya’s place in history.

“The Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic, in the late 1930s.”

The story is not over – not by a long shot – but the saga of the Libyan resistance to the superpower might of the United States and its degenerate European neocolonial allies will surely occupy a very special place in history. For five months, beginning March 19, the armed forces of a small country of six million people dared to defy the most advanced weapons systems on the planet, on terrain with virtually no cover, against an enemy capable of killing whatever could be seen from the sky or electronically sensed. Night and day, the eyes of the Euro-American war machine looked down from space on the Libyan soldiers’ positions, with the aim of incinerating them. And yet, the Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic under siege by German, Italian and homegrown fascists, in the late 1930s.

The Germans and Italians and Generalissimo Franco won that war, just as the Americans, British, French and Italians may ultimately overcome the Libyan army. But they cannot convey honor or national legitimacy to their flunkies from Benghazi, who have won nothing but a badge of servitude to foreign overseers. The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production. They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled to battle under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air. They advanced along roads already littered with the charcoal-blackened bodies of far better men, who died challenging Empire.

“The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production.”

One thing is sure: the Americans and Europeans have never respected their servants. The so-called rebels of Libya will be no different. Washington, Paris and London know perfectly well that is was their 18,000 aircraft sorties, their cruise missiles, their attack helicopters, their surveillance satellites and drones, their command and control systems, their weapons, and their money, that managed to kill or wound possibly half the Libyan army. Not the rabble from Benghazi.

The rebels should not take too seriously being fawned over by the ridiculous hordes of corporate media tourists that have come to Tripoli to record the five-month war's finale. They are highly paid cheerleaders. And, although it may appear that they are cheering for the rebels, don't be fooled – at the end of the day, the western corporate media only cheer for their own kind. They are celebrating what they believe is a victory over the Libyan demon they have helped to construct in their countrymen's minds. Next year, rebel, that demon might be you.

Or next year, it might be many Libyans, including those who were no friends of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. The Americans treat their native minions like children in need of supervision – and there is a certain logic to this, since whoever would entrust his nation's sovereignty and resources to the Americans is, surely, either exceedingly stupid, or hopelessly corrupt. But Libya's honor and her place in history has already been secured by a small African army that held out nearly half a year against the NATO barbarians.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

Never Forgive, Never Forget

And here is what Stephen Lendman wrote:

"Never Forgive, Never Forget," by Stephen Lendman

After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes. Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.

NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.

As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.

When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.

NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.

Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.

Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.

None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.

It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.

#PackJournalism" id="PackJournalism">Leading America's Pack Journalistic Lying

The New York Times is America's lead propaganda instrument, its reports getting enough global coverage to make a difference.

From the start, it cheerled war with Libya. It played the same role in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all previous US wars, deceiving its readers by dishonest journalism, commentaries, and editorials.

August 26 was no different. Two articles among others stand out. David Kirkpatrick wrote one headlined, "As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness," saying:

Pro-NATO Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis helped incite last winter's uprising "with a fiery Friday sermon at the Mourad Agha mosque. His words sent thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets. (His) mosque and neighborhood became a center of revolt and resistance...."
After six months of shamelessly supporting death and destruction against his own people, he now encourages "forgiv(ing) each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other."

As in all his Libya war articles, Kirkpatrick left unexplained months of crimes of war and against humanity, committed by NATO and paramilitary killers.

Instead, he highlighted alleged evidence of ongoing Gaddafi loyalist crimes.

In times of war, both sides commit them, but whatever government forces did pale compared to NATO's savagery and its hired assassins. Kirkpatrick and other Times writers failed to notice.

Anthony Shadid and Kareem Hahim were no better headlining, "Grim Evidence of Fighting's Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya," saying:

"As the fighting died down in Tripoli on Friday, the scope and savagery of the violence during the nearly weeklong battle for control of the capital began to come into sharper focus."

Evidence he cites is a shameful Amnesty International report (based on freed Al Qaeda and other paramilitary prisoners), saying:

AI "uncovered evidence that forces loyal to (Gaddafi) have killed numerous detainees held at two military camps in Tripoli on 23 and 24 August."

Perhaps so if other insurgents freed them, attacked Gaddafi forces in the process, and they fought back.

Instead, AI said:

"Loyalist forces in Libya must immediately stop such killings of captives, and both sides must commit to ensuring no harm comes to prisoners in their custody."

Like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, AI tries to have it both ways, ruining everything it gets right by reports like this - equating horrendous NATO crimes with lesser ones committed by Gaddafi forces, perhaps many less than imagined. The fog of war makes it hard to know precisely.

Instead, Shadid and Hahim's article was shamelessly one sided. While citing clear evidence of rebel-committed atrocities, their article claimed:

- Tripoli violence is now subsiding when, in fact, it rages;
- rebels say Gaddafi loyalists killed their own, an absurdity on its face;
- it's hard "to ascertain the fate of....dead men" in hospitals, as well as chaos committed inside; AP and Reuters reported it resulted from rebel-committed terror;
- Gaddafi's "cloak of secrecy (and) mercurial rule" are being revealed, leaving unexplained why Washington and its NATO partners wage all wars;
- slogans are being displayed, saying "Libya is free" and "Misurata is steadfast," though still Gaddafi controlled, it's believed, what Shadid and Hahim ignored, as well as not debunking claims of Libya's freedom; and
- documents in Gaddafi's compound "seemed to show that (his) adopted daughter Hana, who was supposedly killed at age 4 in (1986), was alive (and) working as a doctor." The key words "seemed to show" both Times writers implied were proof, adding that Tripoli Central Hospital workers claimed "a spacious and well-appointed office" there was hers.

Throughout the conflict, Times articles, op-eds and editorials backed it. Their unstated message is war is good, the more the better when America wages them.

Sadly, that's the state of managed Western news and opinion. It's a shocking indictment of its support for wealth and power, no matter how lawless and harmful to billions exploited ruthlessly, shameless, and repeatedly.

Final Comments

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports continued fighting in Tripoli, inflicting many casualties. Moreover, many injured can't be treated because of ongoing violence, inadequate staff, and enough supplies and capacity at local hospitals.

In addition, "numerous arrests" were made, "including foreign nationals." Their welfare is very much at risk, especially those singled out for revenge.

Fierce fighting also continues around Misrata and elsewhere. The end of conflict is nowhere in sight. Brega "look(s) like a ghost town."

In different areas, people are endangered by unexploded ordinance, as well as shortages of food, clean water, drugs, other medical supplies, and spotty or no electricity.

Washington-led NATO turned Libya into a hellish inferno - step one before occupying and exploiting its resources and people. Months ago its wealth was stolen. Ahead will be its future if Libyans don't struggle and win their freedom.

On August 26 on Russia Today (RT.com), journalist Pepe Escobar said Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former Al-Qaeda insurgent/now CIA asset commands rebel forces in Tripoli. He explained that he was trained in Afghanistan by a "very hardcore Islamist Libyan group." Earlier he was captured in Malaysia, detained and tortured in Bangkok, then transferred back to Libya and imprisoned. In 2009, he made a deal for freedom, in return for serving Western interests, Escobar says: "I can say almost for sure with 95% certainty that this is the guy" heading insurgents in Tripoli. It shows how Washington both demonizes and uses Al Qaeda advantageously, including bin Laden. He was a longtime CIA asset until his death in December 2001 - not from Obama's staged raid. Notably, Al Qaeda was a 1980s CIA creation during the Soviet-Afghan war. Moreover, Washington both supports international terrorism covertly and battles it by imperial wars and persecuting Muslims for their faith. It's part of the fog to scare people enough to believe waging wars remove threats that, in fact, don't exist. So they have to be invented to enlist public support, unaware of the harm caused abroad and at home.

Only war profiteers benefit, not taxpayers they steal from or victims they attack. At the same time, corrosive militarism, financial wars, and other destructive policies destroyed America's soul. Its future as a free country is next.

So focused on bread and circus distractions, most people don't notice. How else can Washington get away with murder!

Finally, the fate of independent journalists trapped in Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel remains unclear. They're still in harm's way because a chartered ship for their safe passage out either hasn't arrived or it's too unsafe to reach it.

In conclusion, Law Professor Francis Boyle's morning email said the following:

"After Six Months of fighting by the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world, Ghadafy has now become the Greatest African Warrior since Hannibal against the Romans - predecessors to the Americans."

"Generations from now, people will sing songs, write poems, and compose odes to Ghadafy all over Africa, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and the Third World long after Obama is dead and disparaged and discredited."

Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)!"

Keep Libya's freedom flame alive no matter how imperial monsters try to destroy it! We're all Libyans now! Their struggle is ours!
It's high time we matched their courageous spirit against the world's most pernicious/destructive force. Bowed perhaps, they're not broken! Isn't that enough to raise our consciousness to support them!

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

For more information on the deceptions, please see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6dEfuNhL0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LtysFyO3lc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5hz2UCR0RQ&feature=related

--
http://dignity.ning.com/
http://www.enduswars.org
http://www.livestream.com/dignity
http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun
http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney
http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney
http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun

Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez are three men of different eras who have lived a similar desire to defend the rights of the nations they represent and to network with other struggling regions over international trade and political representation. The nations and regions they have championed all have suffered greatly at the hands of the United States. These leaders have confronted political realities that simply are not acknowledged in the mainstream western press. Chavez recently spoke again about Libya and of the danger of the predatory US taking advantage of his current illness, for which he is being treated in Cuba.

These leaders survived the oil shocks and forged 3rd World Alliances

Castro came to power in 1959 and only recently stepped down in favour of his brother.

Gaddafi came to power in 1969 and led the formation of OPEC, which supported the rights of 'developing' Arab countries, most of them colonies, and their independence from oppressive and exploitative western powers. [Read about the history and future of OPEC here.]

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela has been at the forefront of attempts to form associations with other 'developing' countries, particularly oil and mineral producers, since he won government in December 1998. He personally visited many of the leaders of oil producing nations around the world, and hosted the first summit of heads of state of OPEC in 25 years, and the second ever held.[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry#cite_note-Wilpert-1] The impact of this is that South American, African, Chinese and other powers might take precedence over the usual dominant countries - the UK, the US and their European allies. These previously dominant countries need to negotiate in good spirit and to downsize their demands for oil in line with depletion protocols - not bomb the daylights out of any country that stands up to them - which is what is happening in Libya.

"Libya: Chavez denounces the European and US massacre"

Translation follows from "Libye : Chavez dénonce le massacre européen et américain"(Wednesday 24 August 2011)

Hugo Chavez is furious about the bombing by NATO forces and rebel forces which daily kill innocent people in Libya: "We pray to God for the peole of Libya. Innocent people must be spared; peace must reign over the world! Since the beginning of the war which began last March, the Venezuelan President has called for a cease-fire to stop the butchery.

Because, for Chavez, the US and European military attacks are causing a veritable massacre among Libya's population. Chavez has nil approval for support by a part of Europe and by the United States for the rebel forces opposed to Colonel Gaddafi. In one of his famously passionate speeches, Chavez described how appalled he felt: "These false-democracy proselytisers are bombing Tripoly and destroying schools, hospitals, houses and factories." Over last weekend, conflicts caused 1300 dead and 5000 wounded. For Chavez, the USA and its allies are creating a true precedent by attacking an "independent country in order to steal its natural resources."

For this reason, Chavez is asking his supporters to remain vigilant in the face of a possible attempt to destabilise Venezuela [itself] at a time when its President [Chavez is undergoing treatment for cancer] seems diminished by illness. "Obama and the Americans spread violence everywhere they go. The destroy and cause death in the name of peace. But the only thing that really interests them is to get hold of oil."

"Remember that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserve in the world, with 296 billion barrels." [Editorial: This last statement fails to articulate the fact that most of these reserves are in the form of tar sands - which are very energy-intensive to mine and environmentally costly. "Based on data from BP at the end of 2009 the highest proved oil reserves including non-conventional oil deposits are in Saudi Arabia (18 per cent of global reserves), Canada (12 %, mostly oil sands), Venezuela (12 %, mostly tar sands), Iran (9 %), Iraq (8 %), Kuwait (7 %), UAE (7 %) and Russia (5 %). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#cite_note-TI2011-1]]

Where does Australia fit in?

Postscript: What does this all have to do with Australia? Well, in the early 1970s Whitlam, with Rex Connor, attempted to make Australia nationally self-sufficient in energy - including gas and oil. This was a step towards Australian independence and we might just have become another independent oil and gas producer. As many Australians may still remember, however, Primeminister Whitlam was removed from office by an agent of the Queen of England. Shortly after Primeminister Fraser began policies to sell off assets in exchange for equity, in order to develop Australia's mineral and fuel resources. Thus our country, which at the time of Whitlam had the lowest foreign ownership, became a largely foreign-owned country with only token democracy. Was this fate preferable to the one that Libya now faces or is the shock-doctrine treatment we are currently being dosed with by our Treasury just a foretaste of much worse to come, with local oil depletion well in train and overpopulation causing dispossession, displacement through migrant-worker schemes in the context of detoothed labour laws, and Saudi-like desalination projects where elites engineer water costs that will ultimately rise beyond the reach of ordinary people, along with food. On the history of oil policies pre-Oil Shock and after, and the details of the Khemlani loan and Whitlam's removal, and cabinet papers on Rex Connor's project see Chapter 7 of The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France

Original article, in French.

Hugo Chavez est outré par les bombardements de l’OTAN et des forces rebelles qui tuent chaque jour des innocents en Libye : « nous prions Dieu pour le peuple de Libye. Epargnons les innocents, il faut la paix dans le monde ! » Depuis le début du conflit qui a démarré en Mars dernier, le chef de l’état du Venezuela s’empresse de demander un cessez-le-feu pour arrêter la boucherie.

Car pour Chavez, les frappes militaires américaines et européennes provoquent un véritable massacre parmi la population. Chavez n’approuve pas du tout le soutien d’une partie de l’Europe et des Etats-Unis aux forces rebelles opposées au colonel Kadhafi. Dans une diatribe dont il a le secret, Chavez exprime son désarroi : » ces faux démocrates sont en train de bombarder Tripoli et détruisent des écoles, des hôpitaux, des maisons et des usines." Lors du dernier week-end, les affrontements ont fait 1300 morts et plus de 5000 blessés. Pour Chavez, les Etats-Unis et ses alliés créent un véritable précédent en s’attaquant à « un pays indépendant afin de lui piquer ses ressources naturelles. »

Pour cette raison, Chavez demande à ses supporters de rester vigileant face à une possible tentative de déstabilisation du Venezuela, au moment même où le chef de l’état semble diminuer par la maladie. « Obama et les américains étendent la violence partout où ils passent. Ils détruisent et provoquent la mort au nom de la paix. Mais ce qui les intéresse, c’est de prendre le pétrole. »

Rappelons que le Venezuela a la plus grande réserve de pétrole au monde, avec 296 milliards de barils.

I have learned that, far from being a bloody despot or a fool, Muammar Gaddafi was, and is, a courageous and visionary leader of the Libyan people. I learned this, of all places, from a broadcast embedded in the pages of an article in Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper. Elsewhere, the Australian has been feeding the public the lies used by NATO to justify its criminal war against the people of Libya. Viewing this video has caused me to realise what a tragic loss for all humankind it would be if Muammar Gaddafi were to perish at the hands of NATO and its TNC puppets.

Anybody with an inquiring and critical mind, access to the Internet, and sufficient time would long ago have seen through the deceit in the mainstream media's coverage of the Libyan conflict.

If Muammar Gaddafi's Government had been anywhere near as dictatorial and unpopular as has been claimed, there is no way that the Government could have lasted more than a few weeks against the massive material and financial support that the Transitional National Council (TNC) has received from NATO countries and the aerial surveillance and huge aerial and naval bombardment of Libya by NATO. Instead, the Libyan Government of Muammar Gaddafi survived for over seven months.

After these months of relentless war against the Libyan people, TNC had succeeded in conquering much Tripoli on the night of 22 August.

The survival of the Libyan Government for seven months against such overwhelming military might and in the face of such terrible hardship and tragedy is surely evidence of the strong support of the great majority Libyan people for their Government.

Libyans, loyal to Gaddafi are continuing to resist NATO and the TNC and it is still not clear if the rebels and NATO will emerge triumphant.

The barefaced CNN liars and the other mainstream newsmedia newsreporters on the ground in Libya intentionally failed to report massive demonstrations numbering at least hundreds of thousands almost every day in different cities of Libya.

Despite this, it was still possible - even for people sympathetic to Libya - to view Gaddafi as an erratic leader, whose poor judgement in past years had provided NATO with pretexts to invade Libya. The T-Shirt Gaddaffy Duck character, based upon an amalgamation of the Warner Brothers Daffy Duck cartoon character and Muammar Gaddaffy seemed to me to be not too far off the mark.

I believed this kind of cartoon representation of Gaddafi until about 24 hours ago, when I watched a YouTube broadcast A look at the Gaddafi era, embedded, of all places on a page of Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper which has, elsewhere, done so much to deceive public opinion about Muammar Gaddafi and Libya. The article was "More than six months of conflict in Libya," of 22 August. (It is also embedded below). As already noted elsewhere, the article does contain a useful chronology of the conflict.

Whilst it is difficult for me to date that YouTube broadcast, its content suggests that it may have been produced 2 years ago.

I was expecting the broadcast to depict Gaddafi essentially as he had been depicted elsewhere in the Murdoch newsmedia, as a brutal dictator with the blood of many thousands of Libyans and others on his hands, or, at best, deserving only ridicule.

To my astonishment, the broadcast has caused me now to view Muammar Gaddafi to be highly admirable and a true giant amongst today's world leaders.

I can't say if that was the intention of the producer, Deborah Lutterbeck, but the material contained in that broadcast, in addition to what I already knew of Gaddafi, has made me realise that he was, at the outset, a courageous and visionary leader of the Libyan people and remains that to this very day. His rule has greatly helped the people Libya and, indeed, all of humanity.

Whilst Western propagandists have been able,at times, to depict Gaddafi, at his age, as unstable and erratic, they could not have hoped to have done so to the much younger and handsome officer who deposed the former King Idris in a bloodless coup in 1969. That same young Gaddafi used his country's oil wealth for the benefit of poor Libyans and stood up for international justice on the world stage for decades.

In the whole 4 minute video, I could find only two things that could conceivably have been held against Gaddafi by anyone striving for a more just and peaceful world:

1. Accusations by the US that he had ordered the bombing of a German night club frequented by US Marines in 1986
2. Al-Megrahi, an employee of the Libyan Government, had been found guilty by a Scottish court for the bombing of the Pan AM flight 103 in the skies above Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 which had caused the deaths of 270 passengers

It has been shown that the latter was the result of a mistrial and the fabrication of evidence. For more information, please read The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce and readers' comments in the London Review of Books of 24 September 2009.

The islamist Libyan 'rebels', recognised by Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd as the legitimate government of Libya and who are cheered on by phoney socialist organisations, intend to bring back the Sharia Law that Libyan President Muammar Gadhaffi abolished when he came to power in 1969. The rights enjoyed by women in Libya today, taken for granted by women in any modern western democracy would taken away if the NATO-backed "Transitional National Council" were to become the government of Libya. Gadhaffi's strongest supporters, amongst the overwhelming majority of Libyans who express their support for him every day at popular demonstrations, are the women of Libya who have no wish to return to domestic servitude.

Original article of 27 Jul 11 on Global Research by Susan Lindauer author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

For European bankers, it's a war for Libya's Gold. For oil corporations, it's a war for Cheap Crude (now threatening to destroy Libya's oil infrastructure, just like Iraq). But for Libya's women, it's a fierce, knock down battle over the Abaya— an Islamic style of dress that critics say deprives women of self-expression and identity.

Hillary Clinton and President Sarkozy might loath to admit it, but the desire to turn back the clock on women rights in Libya constitutes one of the chief goals for NATO Rebels on the Transitional Council.

For NATO Rebels—who are overwhelmingly pro-Islamist, regardless of NATO propaganda (see www.obamaslibya.com) — it's a matter of restoring social obedience to Islamic doctrine. However the abaya is more than a symbol of virtue and womanly modesty. It would usher in a full conservative doctrine, impacting women's rights in marriage and divorce, the rights to delay childbirth to pursue education and employment—all the factors that determine a woman's status of independence.

That makes this one War Libya's women cannot afford to lose. For those of us who support Islamic modernity, there are good arguments that Gadhaffi would be grossly irresponsible to hand over power to a vacuum dominated by NATO Rebels. Given the savagery of their abuses against the Libyan people (www.obamaslibya.com) —and the Rebel's agenda to reinstate Shariah and retract women's rights, Gadhaffi has an obligation to stand strong and block them for the protection of the people.

Indeed, it's somewhat baffling that France or Italy would want to hand power to Rebels, outside of an election scenario. Elections would be a safeguard that would empower Libyan women to launch a leadership alternative that rejects the Abaya. That's exactly what the Rebels fear, and it accounts for their deep, abiding rejection of the election process. Democracy poses a real threat to NATO's vision of the "New Libya."

The abaya carries so much weight in the battle for Islamic modernity that Gadhaffi pretty much banned Islamic dress from the first days of his government. Getting rid of the abaya was part of Gadhaffi's larger reform package supporting women's rights—one of the best and most advanced in the entire Arab world. The transformation of women's status has been so great that the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran imposed a fatwa against Gadhaffi years ago, declaring his government blasphemous to Islamic traditions.

To gain insider perspective on Gadhaffi's reforms for women, members of a fact-finding delegation in Libya spoke with Najat ElMadani, chairwoman of the Libyan Society for Culture and Sciences, an NGO started in 1994. They also interviewed Sheikh Khaled Tentoush, one the most prominent Imams in Libya. Imam Tentoush has survived two NATO assassination attempts, one that was particularly revealing.

Tentoush said that he and 12 other progressive Imams were traveling to Benghazi to discuss a peaceful end to the conflict. They stopped for tea at a guest house in Brega--- and NATO dropped a bomb right on top of them, killing 11 of the 13 Imams, who had embraced Islamic reforms that empower women's rights and modernity.

There were no military installations or Gadhaffi soldiers anywhere nearby that would have justified NATO bombing. This was a deliberate assassination of Islamic leaders who give religious legitimacy to Gadhaffi's modernist policies, and therefore pose a great threat to the conservative ambitions of Islamic Rebels. NATO killed them off.

What's got radical Islamists so upset in Libya? Here's a primer on women's rights under Gadhaffi:

No Male Chaperones in Libya

• In Libya, women are allowed to move about the city, go shopping or visit friends without a male escort. Unbelievable as it sounds, throughout most of the Arab world, such freedoms are strictly forbidden. In much of Pakistan, for example, a 5 year old male child would be considered a suitable chaperone for an adult woman in the marketplace. Otherwise she'd better stay home.  In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, women are frequently locked in their apartments while their husbands, brothers or fathers go off to work. Yes, there are exceptions. Some families individually reject these practices. However, before readers protest this characterization, you must be honest and acknowledge that the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Saudis/Kuwaitis aren't the only groups that constrain women's freedoms in the Arab world. This is common social behavior throughout large swaths of Arab society.

• In Libya, women are never locked in their homes, while their husbands, fathers and brothers go to work. Gadhaffi forbids restricting women's mobility.

• In Libya, women have full legal rights to drive cars—unlike their sisters in Saudi Arabia. In a lot of Arab countries, a woman's husband holds her passport. So she cannot travel outside of the country without his approval.

Marriage Rights

• Tragically, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a young woman can be locked in Prison for rejecting her father's choice of husband. Until she changes her mind, her prospective mother in law visits the prison every day, demanding to know why her son is not "good enough" for this girl. Why does she disobey those who know what's best for her?  That poor woman stays locked up in Kabul prison until she changes her mind. And it happens right under the noses of American and NATO soldiers. A NATO Occupation won't protect Libyan women, either.

• All over the Arab world—from Yemen to Jordan to Saudi Arabia to Iran— fathers and brothers decide what age a young woman will be given away in marriage, usually as soon as she hits puberty— She has no choice in the most important decision of her life. Frequently a young girl gets married off to one of her father's adult friends or a cousin. Throughout the Arab world, it's socially acceptable for a shopkeeper to ask a young Muslim girl if she has started to menstruate. A good Islamic girl is expected to answer truthfully.

• Not in Libya. To his greatest credit, bucking all Islamic traditions—from the first days of government, Gadhaffi said No Way to forced marriages. Libyan woman have the right to choose their own husbands. They are encouraged to seek love marriages. Under strict Libyan law, without exception no person can force a Libyan woman to marry any man for any reason.

• Forced marriages have been such a problem throughout the Arab world, that in Libya, an Imam always calls on the woman if there is an impending marriage. The Imam meets with her privately, and asks if any person is forcing her to marry, or if there's any reason she's marrying this person other than her desire to be with this man.  Both Najat and Imam Tentoush were very adamant on these points.

• In Libya, the Imams are expected to protect the woman from abuse by relatives.

Right to End a Marriage

• Divorce is brutally difficult for a woman throughout the Arab world. A husband can beat or rape his wife, or commit adultery or lock her in a room like a prison. No matter what a woman suffers, as a wife she has no legal rights to leave that marriage, even for her own protection.  When her father negotiates that marriage contract, she's stuck for life. A man can divorce a woman in front of two witnesses by repeating three times: "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you." He can text that message on a cell phone, and it's over. The woman has no reciprocal freedom. She's stuck in that marriage until her husband lets her go.

• Not so in Libya.  A Libyan woman can leave a marriage anytime she chooses. A woman simply files for divorce and goes on with her life.  It is very similar to U.S. laws, in that a man has no power to stop her. It's completely within her control to initiate a divorce.

• In Libya, if a woman enters a marriage with her own assets and the marriage ends, her husband cannot touch her assets. The same is true of the man's assets.  Joint assets usually go to the woman.

These "abnormal" marriage rights stir deep anger among conservative Libyan men. Rebels particularly hate Gadhaffi's government for granting marriage rights to women. But consider how delaying marriage impacts women's opportunities in society.

Delayed marriage means delayed childbirth, which empowers young women to continue education and gain employment. Not surprisingly then, Libyan women enjoy some of the best opportunities in the Arab world. That might also cause simmering resentments among conservative Libyan men.

Education of Libyan Women

• In Libya more women take advantage of higher education than men, according to Najat.  There are professional women in every walk of life.  Many Libyan women are scientists, university professors, lawyers, doctors, government employees, journalists and business women.  Najat attributes that freedom and the range of choices to Gadhaffi, and his government's insistence that women must be free to choose their lives and be fully supported in those choices.  Najat and Tentoush said that some Imams in Libya would like it to be otherwise—especially those Imams favoring the Rebels— but Gadhaffi has always over ruled them. For example there are many women soldiers, and they are very strong and fully capable of contributing to the military defense of the country.

• Women receive education scholarships equal to the men's. All Libyans can go abroad and study if they so desire— paid for by Gadhaffi's government. Single women usually take a brother or male relative with them, and Najat said all expenses are covered for both the woman and her companion.

• In Libya, women are not required to seek a husband's permission to hold a job, and any type of job is available to her. In contrast, many employment opportunities are proscribed in many other Arab countries, because work puts women in daily proximity to men who are not their husbands. That eliminates many types of job opportunities.

Bashing Women's Rights

These are some of the reasons why Rebels consider Gadhaffi an "infidel." They frequently express a desire to reinstate the Shariah. It's an open secret in Arab circles. In ignoring this point, NATO resembles the three monkeys. See no truth. Hear no truth. Speak no truth. But the Arab community understands this dynamic. Rebels are going to pat Hillary Clinton and Sarkozy on the head right up until they capture power. Then they're going to do exactly what they started out to do. Reinstate Islamic law—under the protection of the United States and NATO governments. Conservative social codes will be enforced just like Afghanistan.

Libyans understand this point, even if Americans and Europeans are lost in denial. It should surprise no one, therefore, that some of Gadhaffi's greatest support comes from Libyan women. Nor should it surprise Libya watchers that Gadhaffi's not exactly "clinging to power" as the corporate media likes to suggest. Quite the contrary, Gadhaffi's support has skyrocketed to 80 or 85 percent during this crisis. President Obama, Sarkozy and Bersculoni would be thrilled to enjoy such intense popular support.

NATO bombing has backfired and alienated the Libyan people from the Rebel cause, destroying community infrastructure that Libyans are truly proud of. Rebels are chasing pro-Gaddhaffi families out of Benghazi, a sort of political cleansing. But they have no street credibility that would give them power in negotiations with other Libyans, because losers don't get to dictate the terms. NATO can propagandize until Sarkozy falls over in a fit, but the people have resoundingly rejected these Rebels.

NATO is pushing a political resolution, because Europe wants off the merry-go-round. In truth, the music is getting uglier every day. NATO never should have jumped on this bandwagon in the first place. There's no sense to it. They're fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and embracing Al Qaeda and conservative Islam in Benghazi.

Those of us who support Islamic modernity should be relieved that Libya's people are smarter and savvier than NATO bureaucrats. And we should all say a prayer that Gadhaffi holds on.

Susan Lindauer covered Libya and Iraq at the United Nations from 1995 to 2003, and started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial. Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

Global Research Articles by Susan Lindauer

Some, who present themselves as opponents of war, have spent more time cataloguing Gadhafi's past real or alleged shortcomings than rallying people to oppose the current, all-out military attack on the sovereign nation of Libya by the United States and its NATO allies. Their influence would be small, except that it coincides with the opinions of the U.S. ruling class. Thus it is important to thoroughly answer their arguments.

Article re-published from original of 25 Jul 2011 by Sara Flounders in Global Research. See also: Washington’s Allies Run Amok: Saudi and Emirati Forces Open Fire on Unarmed Protesters in Bahrain of 24 Jul 11 by Finian Cunningham, BAHRAIN - National General Strike - Demand for Representative Democracy in an immigrant overloaded state of 21 Feb 11.

If you went to a shopping center, a street corner or a graduate school of a top university in the U.S. and conducted a pop quiz asking who are the kings or crown princes of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain; the emir of Kuwait, Qatar or Dubai; and the sultan of Oman, most people would not be able to name any of them.

These dictators and feudal monarchs hold absolute control in corrupt and brutal regimes. Their rule is kept in place by U.S. arms, troops and mercenaries, but they are anonymous to the U.S. population and to most of the world's people.

But if you went anywhere in the U.S. today and asked who lives in Libya, there is only one name that a large part of the population could tell you: Gadhafi. Many people, even if they do not know that Libya is in Africa, might tell you that Gadhafi is an evil man who "must go."

The corporate media can demonize the leader of a country targeted by the Pentagon to the point that the consequences of using the most deadly weapons against a totally defenseless population are hidden and dismissed.

No other country in history has the capacity to wreak such havoc, using cruise missiles, bunker busters, drones, depleted uranium and dense inert metal explosive bombs, anti-personnel razor shredding bomblets, and anti-personal mines.

What should be the response to this terror?

Unfortunately, a minority of groups or individuals who present themselves as opponents of war spend more time cataloguing Gadhafi's past real or alleged shortcomings than rallying people to respond to this criminal, all-out U.S. attack. Their influence would be small, except that it coincides with the opinions of the U.S. ruling class. Thus it is important to thoroughly answer their arguments.

Whatever mistakes made by the leaders of a small, underdeveloped country facing U.S. sanctions, sabotage and assassination attempts, they are not the reason the U.S. is hell-bent on destroying Libya today.

What is at stake?

U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists are determined to lay hold of Libya's now well-developed infrastructure of oil refineries, pumping stations, gas lines, ports and pipelines directly into Europe, as well as billions of dollars in gold reserves, oil reserves — the largest in Africa — and Libya's other rich assets. All of this has been built up over the four decades since U.S. and British imperialism were kicked out of the country.

The imperialists are especially determined to stop Libya's assistance in the development of other African countries. The plans for a United Federation of Africa, which were put forth by Libya and backed with $90 billion in investment funds, deeply threaten the continued multinational corporate looting of the continent.

The people of Libya have resisted more than four months of nonstop aerial assault. The bombing has united the population. Their cohesion has grown. More than 1 million people hold giant rallies in Tripoli.

A government in fear of its population would never hand guns to the public, but Libya's government has distributed more than 3 million weapons in a country of 6.5 million people to enable them to resist occupation.

Incredibly, it looks like the imperialists are facing still another failed war. A falling out among thieves seems to be taking place as NATO's frustration mounts.

The response to this colonial war of aggression should be the same as the response to a racist mobilization, a racist lynch mob or a police attack on an oppressed community: Mobilize all possible forces to stand up to the crime and say "no!" Refuse to take part in the orchestrated campaign of vilification.

This may not be an easy position to take. But it is essential to reject the racist political onslaught that accompanies the military onslaught.

Demonization is meant to disorient and put the massive, criminal destruction planned by U.S. imperialism beyond debate. Enormous pressure is placed on every level of the U.S. population to accept the premise that the targeted country and its leadership are to blame. The attacks are presented as if only one person lives in Libya, and not 6.5 million people.

In preparation for a war of conquest, the role of the corporate media is to endlessly repeat every charge and statement made by the institutions of U.S. power. An almost frenzied level of lies, wild fabrications, racist stereotyping and ugly caricatures saturates all political discussion.

The corporate media spread the demands that the Pentagon death machine must act in the name of "humanity" in order to "save lives." The war itself is cloaked in neutral terms. In the case of Libya, more than 16,000 bombing sorties against people are described as implementing a "no-fly zone." The White House has assured the population that this bombing is not an act of war. The administration won't even discuss it with Congress.

The response to media demonization in the midst of a war mobilization must be to focus on the outrageous crime being committed and refuse to accept or give weight to any justification for it.

Despite an ocean of propaganda, poll after poll has confirmed that from 60 percent to 65 percent of the U.S. population is against the U.S. war on Libya. This should give all opponents of this imperialist war great hope and confidence.

But the demonization and racist war propaganda have seeped down into a layer of the progressive and anti-war movement.

In every imperialist war for decades, a whole series of writers, commentators and political organizations considered to be progressive have buckled under enormous social pressure. While claiming to be against U.S wars, they allocate their greatest energies to focusing on and discussing every shortcoming, mistake and inconsistency of the targeted country — in the very same condemnatory tone as the corporate media.

They have said "neither NATO nor Milosevic," "neither Bush nor Saddam," "neither Israel nor Hizbollah," thus helping to weaken the anti-war forces.

The responsibility of progressive intellectuals and groups in the United States is to utilize their considerable research skills to extract every piece of information that could explain the corporate stakes — the anticipated profits behind the imperialist war. And never to echo in left terminology the charges made in the imperialist media.

Working people need to know the real reason behind the attack. Thus every effort must be made to avoid reinforcing government propaganda. Progressives should look to build the broadest possible unity in order to speak with one voice against the war.

Of course, such misguided groups are a small minority in the progressive movement. But there are those political organizations, which six months ago had not bothered to mention Libya, that now suddenly seek out respectable venues to add their own reasons that the dictator Gadhafi "must go" — an echo of the imperialist demand. Some even insist that in order to be part of the political discourse, every anti-war voice must first join in condemnation of Gadhafi.

In a few places this chorus on the sidelines has even disrupted anti-war meetings, calling on the anti-war movement to fall in line and echo the racist ruling class.

The Cynthia McKinney tour

In their determination to join with all the "respectable voices" condemning Libya, some groups have even sounded just like the imperialist media by seeking to silence the courageous voice of former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney. This is how arrogant and offensive those who demand collusion in U.S. wars have become.

McKinney risked her life to visit Libya with a U.S. delegation in the midst of the U.S./NATO bombing. She deserves respect.

McKinney was first a target of national media condemnation as a young, first-term state representative in the Georgia Assembly, when she dared to speak out against the U.S. war on Iraq. The entire chamber of representatives stood up, turned their backs on her and walked out.

When elected to the U.S. Congress, her outspoken opposition to and questioning of the orchestrated national frenzy surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, attack; her clear opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement; her defense of political prisoners; and her support of the Palestinian people generated national campaigns to pour funds into opposing candidates in her small Georgia congressional district. Again and again the district lines were redrawn in an attempt to disqualify McKinney from the U.S. Congress. She has earned international acclaim for her candidacy for president on the Green Party ticket, for her participation in humanitarian convoys to Gaza and for being jailed by Israel.

McKinney's tour to six cities organized by the Answer Coalition, and now to 15 cities organized by the International Action Center — all of which have successfully mobilized forces against the U.S./NATO invasion of Africa — have also come under criticism and cowardly attack. Some of these elements are even writing and speaking against McKinney's right to speak against the war in Libya.

Even more arrogant and insensitive are their attacks on the Nation of Islam and Pan-African voices opposing the war.

For more than three decades many Pan-African activists, African people and Muslims have followed developments in Libya with great interest and enthusiasm. Many people traveled to Libya and favorably compared the social accomplishments in Libya — which, according to the U.N., scored highest in Africa on the Human Development Index in education, housing, length of life, nutrition and infant mortality — to the enormous poverty and glaring underdevelopment of most of the continent. They have spoken out forcefully against the looting of Africa and defended Libya as a country that, although sanctioned, sabotaged and under continuing attack, managed to maintain a level of independence from imperialism.

It is criminal to dismiss those actually mobilizing, writing and speaking against war as just pro-Gadhafi.

Pentagon lynch mob

What should be the attitude toward a family or a town seized by a lynch mob?

How does one respond if a racist gang of thugs, with torches and gasoline, is ready to set fire to a home with children inside, or is determined to capture someone who they felt had not shown proper "respect?" Is that a time to wander off into analysis of the targeted victims' credit card payments, driving record or other possible past mistakes or personal shortcomings?

Bombs are falling on Tripoli. Isn't that a Pentagon lynching?

In the face of a criminal terror campaign against a whole country, it's imperative not to do anything to support the attack. It's essential to do everything in your power to mobilize people to resist.

To use every possible argument of defense, and not give a shred of legitimacy to the racists who are attempting to burn the whole country down, along with all of its proud accomplishments.

Don't allow yourself to be on the same side as the imperialist war makers.

Leave it to the Libyan people to decide their own future without U.S./NATO bombs. Leave it to African, Arab and especially Libyan people to discuss and debate, without outside interference.

But here in the center of the U.S. empire, it is important to refuse to join in the demonization and attacks used to justify atrocities committed by corporate power. Most important: Don't echo imperialist propaganda in the midst of a war of aggression. Don't join in a lynch mob being organized by the Pentagon!

Unite behind one clear slogan:

Stop the U.S./NATO war on Libya.

Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center

This article examines the explicit support of NATO's bombing by the UK 'Trotskyist' organisation, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and the ineffectiveness of other supposed left-wing groups who claim to oppose the war. It is a response to a statement cited in "Dissecting a global empire and the US 'war on terror'" of 8 July of Global Research editor Michel Chossudovsky. He criticized social movements including leftist political parties that supported the US-led wars dubbed as 'war on terrorism'. For the truth about the current war against Libya and other international conflicts, please visit Global Research, one of the free news services committed to speaking the truth.

Workers' Liberty - an unapologetic 'Trotskyist' supporter of NATO bombing

The following is from Dissecting a global empire and the US 'war on terror' of 8 July by Marya Salamat:

(Michel) Chossudovsky criticized Northern governments and social movements including leftist political parties that supported the US-led wars dubbed as war on terrorism, when these are actually wars of conquests to maintain US imperialism and capitalism itself. ...

An example of one such "leftist political party" that is supporting the current war against Libya is the British 'Trotskyist' group Worker's Liberty, or, more formally, the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL). Examples of the AWL's explicit support for the war in Libya can be found in its current front page articles 'Why we should not denounce intervention in Libya' of 23 March, Peter Taaffe equates Libya's rebels with Nicaragua's contras of 24 May and An encounter with the shy Bishop Taaffe of 5 July.

The last of the previously mentioned articles is fluff in which I could find no substantial content about the actual war against Libya. It is an unfunny attempt to ridicule the Socialist Party (formerly known as Militant).

The UK Socialist Party - an opponent of NATO's bombing, if you know where to look

The Socialist Partyat least publicly opposes the war against Libya. Why they won't publicly debate AWL, if the AWL is to believed, is a mystery. However, news of the Libyan conflict is very hard to find on the Socialist Party's web-sites. On its front page, as of 9 July there is only one instance of the word 'Libya'. The link, made over small font text in a small right column, leads to its What's On page, where one Libya-related event on 14 July does get prominent mention.

On its Anti-war campaign page, found only after further searching the site, Libya gets a mention, but only right at the end, in an article Libya: the no-fly zone and the left of 20 April.

So, whilst the Socialist Party of the UK could justifiably be held by the AWL of being opposed to the NATO-backed 'rebels', they could not, by any means, be accused of being overly strident in their opposition.

They are, however, critical of other left-wing organisations which support NATO action against Libya:

The linked article, which explains the SP's stated opposition to NATO's military action against Libya can also be found on another SP site at ttp://www.socialismtoday.org/148/libya.html . It includes the following denuciation of other supposed left-wing organistions, including the AWL, which support the war:

Incredibly, this policy (of support for the NATO "no-fly zone") has been supported by some on the left, including a few who adhere to Marxism and Trotskyism. Amongst these must be included Gilbert Achar, who has written books on the Middle East, and whose support for the no-fly zone was originally carried uncritically on the website journal of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), International Viewpoint. His views were subsequently repudiated (links added -- presumably the article to which I have linked is what was being referred to, - Ed.) by the USFI.

No such uncertainty, however, exists for the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL). This organisation’s shrill tone, particularly in criticising others on the left, rises in inverse proportion to its small forces and its even more limited influence within the labour movement. The AWL has even dragged in Leon Trotsky to justify imperialist intervention through the no-fly zone. One headline read: "Libya: no illusions in west but ‘anti-intervention’ opposition is abandoning the rebels". Another priceless headline was: 'Why we should not denounce intervention in Libya'. (Workers Liberty website, 23 March)

Workers' Liberty explains why it supports NATO's bombing

The Workers' Liberty article Peter Taaffe equates Libya's rebels with Nicaragua's contras, referred to above, explicitly explains AWL's stance:

AWL sides with the rebels against Qaddafi. Although the evidence is that the rebel leadership includes a miscellany of bourgeois tendencies, they lead an elemental democratic revolt, with potential for development and liberation, against the dead hand of Qaddafi's autocratic police state.

For their own reasons, the NATO powers have intervened on the side of the rebels, bombing Qaddafi's air bases, tanks, and command centres. Because we support the rebels, we welcome that.

The article continues:

We do not endorse or support the NATO powers, because we know that they will serve their own interests.

But, because AWL holds the 'rebels' to be popularly supported and fighting for the benefit of the Libyan people "against the dead hand of Qaddafi's autocratic police state", NATO's support for those 'rebels' must be defended, but only if the NATO war does not become an outright invasion. In the word's of Workers' Liberty:

It would be different if one NATO power or another were to invade Libya and try to establish a colonial-type occupation there.

The article continued:

But they are not doing that. There is no sign of them doing that.

AWL evidently believes itself able to draw the fine distinction that no-one else is capable of drawing. On the one hand, AWL supports NATO's aerial bombing campaign, including, presumably, the use of helicopters capable of carrying ground combat troops, the use of NATO warships off Libyan waters, the dropping of supplies and to the Transitional National Council (TNC) 'rebels' and supporting them with financial donations, but on the other, if that were expanded to become an outright invasion involving US/NATO ground forces they would oppose it.

Presumably, until "Workers' Liberty" is presented with incontrovertible evidence that US/NATO ground troops have been used on Libyan soil, they will continue to cheer on the NATO attacks against Libya and denounce opponents of the war as uncritical apologists for Qaddafi's tyranny.

But judging from the front cover of "Workers' Liberty" as of 9 July, they aren't too attentively following the war. So, AWL could well miss timely evidence and fail to raise its voice against an outright invasion and "colonial-type occupation" in time for AWL to raise its voice to make a difference.

So who could reasonably hold AWL responsible for doing nothing to prevent the murder of hundreds of thousands of Africans, when their reasoning has been so soundly thought out and so well explained on their web site?

Australian 'Marxist' groups fail to speak effectively against war

Australia's 'Marxist' organisations could, like the UK Socialist Party, stand accused, by the AWL, of not providing effective support for the Libyan 'rebels', however their opposition to the NATO's bombing campaign has been even harder to find than on the UK Socialist Party's web-sites.

The Australian Federal 'Labor' Government is currently a participant in the 10 year old war against Afghanistan, which it inherited, in 2007, from the Liberal/National Government of John Howard. It continues Australia's participation in the war, because it claims to accept the fraudulent claim made by the US Bush administration in 2001 that Islamist extremists based in Afghanistan launched the September 11 terrorist attacks against the US.

Australia also participated in two illegal wars against Iraq. The first was the 1991 war, which was started as a result of US Ambasador April Glaspie setting up Saddam Hussein who was led to believe by Glaspie that the US, which had been on good terms with him until then, would not object to Iraq using military force against neighbouring Kuwait to stop Kuwait slant-drilling into Iraq's oil-fields. Public opposition to the US/Australian/UK war against Iraq was screamed down with the lie of the Kuwaiti "incubator babies".

The main pretext for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the claim that Iraq was attempting to build nuclear weapons. This has been shown to be a lie. As has been mentioned before on Candobetter.net, the truth about the WMD lie can be found in the Hollywood movie Fair Game which concludes with live footage of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, (played by Naomi Watts in the movie), testifying to US congress about the WMD lie.

Now, in 2001, The Australian Federal 'Labor' Government is doing its utmost to fan the flames of yet more wars, this time against Libya and Syria. This is exemplified by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd's recognition of "Libya's rebel council as the country's legitimate political representative".

For their part, not one of Australia's 'Marxist' parties have shown itself able to raise its voice effectively against NATO's new wars nor the Australian Government's complicity. As of 9 July, neither the words 'Libya' nor 'Syria' can even found on the front pages of greenleft.org.au or directaction.org.au. www.socialist-alliance.org/ has a long way down on its front page, the equivocating headline Support the Libyan uprising but reject foreign military intervention dated 18 March.

Of much more urgency to these groups, than the threatened wars which could easily cause the loss of hundreds of thousands more lives in North Africa and the Middle East and turn hundreds of thousands more inhabitants of this region into refugees, is the plight of the far smaller number of asylum seekers who have been able to reach Australia's shores with the help of people smugglers.

At the very top of greenleft.org.au is the story Cruelty to refugees in the spotlight of 25 June. Near the top of directaction.org.au is Self-harm on the rise at detention centres of "Issue 33 June-July 2011". Well before the equivocating story about Libya on www.socialist-alliance.org are the stories about aylum seekers: Nauru refugee detention extreme, inhumane of 18 June, We're not being swamped by refugees of 11 June, Refugees are not commodities: No outsourcing refugee obligations to Malaysia! (Joint statement of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) and the Socialist Alliance (Australia)) of (undated). Next to the article on Libya is a further article on asylum seekers, Mandatory detention is the problem of 18 May.

In 2011, the Australian left, along with nearly all of Australia's "social movements" remain committed to precisely the same priorities that have allowed Australian Governments to inflict so much harm on the rest of the world, as well as its own people, for at least the past two decades.

For the truth about the current war against Libya and other international conflicts, please visit Global Research, one of the free news services committed to speaking the truth. See also: The US House of Representatives has voted to prevent the Pentagon from supplying weapons, training or advice to Libyan rebels. of 8 Jul 11 .

This extraordinary news report (available on YouTube Obama 'ignore' button: Congress has a say? (also embedded within this article) describes U.S Congress's challenges to President Obama's powers to make war against a foreign nation without approval from congress.

See also: Libya conflict: Backlash ensues to Obama's refusal to seek Congress's nod of 18 Jun 11 by Cheryl Sullivan on Christian Science Monitor, US-NATO are Planning a Ground War in Libya, Military Intervention in Syria of 18 Jun 11 by Bob Chapman on Global Research.

The YouTube broadcast Obama 'ignore' button: Congress has a say? (also embedded below) describes U.S Congress's challenges to President Obama's powers to make war against a foreign nation without approval from congress. Near the end of the broadcast (3' 46" into the 4' 22" broadcast) Author David Swanson remarked:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich was debating a former lawyer from the Reagan White House who was defending Obama and he asked this guy twice -- never got an answer -- "If there were 2,000 missions over the United States by a foreign nation and many of them were dropping bombs, would that be war? Would that be hostilities?"

See also: Libya conflict: Backlash ensues to Obama's refusal to seek Congress's nod of 18 Jun 11 by Cheryl Sullivan on Christian Science Monitor, US-NATO are Planning a Ground War in Libya, Military Intervention in Syria of 18 Jun 11 by Bob Chapman on Global Research.

by (retired) General Lewis MacKenzie, previously published in Global Research and The Globe and Mail, June 10, 2011

We are now in the 84th day of the bombing campaign that the United Nations Security Council authorized to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya in a bid to protect civilians from Moammar Gadhafi's forces. In a bizarre development, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has said it will extend the campaign for 90 days, surely a first in the history of war when one side "extends the contract" for a set period. This presumably occurred because NATO's strategy is still based on the flimsy hope that Colonel Gadhafi will see the error of his ways and capitulate before his surroundings and his supporters are bombed back to the Stone Age.

NATO's obsession with its strategy of hope was tried once before in 1999, with the bombing of Serbia and the breakaway province of Kosovo. A myth that the 78-day bombing campaign persuaded Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo continues to grow despite overwhelming facts to the contrary.

Before that war – and contributing to its start – the international community gathered in Rambouillet, France, and, on March 18, 1999, produced an accord that spelled out a peace plan to deal with the armed insurrection by the Kosovo Liberation Army (designated at the time by the CIA as a terrorist organization).

Unfortunately – but intentionally – the accord contained two poison pills that Mr. Milosevic could never accept, making war or at least the allied bombing of a sovereign state inevitable. The first pill demanded that NATO have freedom of movement throughout the entire land, sea and airspace of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In other words, NATO would have the right to park its tanks around Mr. Milosevic's downtown office in Belgrade. The other pill required that a referendum be held within three years to determine the will of those citizens living in Kosovo regarding independence. The fact that Kosovo's population was overwhelmingly Albanian Muslim guaranteed that the outcome of any such referendum would be a vote for independence and the loss of the Serbian nation's historic heart.

Mr. Milosevic refused to sign the accord, and NATO began bombing Serbia on March 24, 1999, without a Security Council resolution, citing a "humanitarian emergency" – a decision still widely challenged by many international legal scholars. NATO said it would take only a few days of bombing to persuade Mr. Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.

As the weeks dragged on, NATO's strategy of hope appeared to be in serious trouble. Its aircraft, incapable of destroying to any significant degree the Serbian military's personnel and equipment, had turned to bombing fixed infrastructure: bridges, roads, factories, refineries, TV stations. As in all wars conducted from thousands of feet above the target, mistakes were made and civilians were killed. In one town I visited during the campaign, a medical clinic and a 10-storey apartment building had been demolished, with no "legitimate" targets anywhere to be seen.

With no indication that Mr. Milosevic was going to give in, diplomacy was given a long overdue chance. Led by Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin, Mr. Milosevic was told that, if he withdrew from Kosovo, the two poison pills would be removed from the Rambouillet accord. Within days, Mr. Milosevic agreed.

Myth buster: Diplomacy, not bombing, played the key role in bringing a punitive bombing campaign based on hope to an end.

The same solution should be pursued in the case of Libya. The main obstacle is the rebel leadership. The UN envoy to Libya has requested that the rebels call for a ceasefire, but they have steadfastly refused to do so until Col. Gadhafi is gone. NATO leaders are no longer demanding Col. Gadhafi's removal as a prerequisite for stopping the bombing. So where do the rebels get off refusing to accede to a request from the very organization that authorized the bombing in the first place? They should be told in no uncertain terms that, if they're not prepared to negotiate with Col. Gadhafi's representatives, NATO's support in the air and at sea will cease.

It is now 1:10 in the afternoon and as the daily life in Tripoli unfolds that includes teachers, staff, and children at school, shopkeepers working in their businesses, street sweepers sweeping the streets, people moving to and fro in the cars, on bicycles, and on foot, Tripoli has thus far since around 11:00 up to now, received at least 29 bombs.

Report by Cynthia McKinney who is on a delegation to Tripoli

Interestingly, the efforts of the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, and others to portray Libya claims on the bombings as "absurd" are patently false and are merely efforts to defend in the court of public opinion, the indefensible bombing of civilians going about their lives in a heavily populated area. The Washington Post headlined "Libya government fails to prove claims of NATO casualties" and the Los Angeles Times headline blared, "Libya officials put a spin on a conflict."

These bombs and missiles are not falling in empty spaces: people are all over Tripoli going about their lives just as in any other major metropolitan city of about two million people.

NATO

Meanwhile, NATO has a spin machine of its own: NATO says it is making "significant progress" in protecting Libyan civilians. "What we did target was the military intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli," the alliance said.

I am currently with a delegation of former MP's and professors from France who are here in Tripoli on a fact-finding mission. The program for today was to visit the camps of internally displaced persons in this part of the country. However, we are not able to complete our program while Tripoli is under attack. I will do my best to visit some of the areas bombed today when/if this attack lets up.

What were you doing today between 1:00 and now? The people of Tripoli endure the trauma of repeated bombings in their immediate environment.

Even if Gaddafi and his sons leave Libya, fighting will continue. The hostilities now run even deeper. The Transitional Council is not accepted by all of Libya either. What about the voices of the rest of Libya who do not want the Transitional Council to be imposed on them?
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from Global Research, June 3, 2011

Even if Gaddafi Leaves the war will not end

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

From Global Research, June 3, 2011

Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union (EU) are talking about an endgame in Libya. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy are talking about a new phase in the war as they prepare to send helicopter gunship squadrons to fight inside Libya. They claim that the departure of Colonel Gaddafi is imminent. The Italian Foreign Minister says Colonel Gaddafi is finished too. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the same. The leaders of the Benghazi-based Transitional Council are already speaking about victory.

There is despair in Tripoli now. Fuel and food are running out. People have to sleep next to gas stations overnight so they can get gasoline. The inhabitants of Tripoli and its surrounding districts are living under a feeling of virtual siege. The NATO bombings have even gotten much worse despite the fact that Libya's military infrastructure has been destroyed and bombed multiple times. NATO is clearly now bombing Libya to break its spirit and force it to submit.

Rumours and misinformation is also being spread to divide Libyans. Under the watch of NATO and US satellites, weapons have been smuggled into Libya from Tunisia and Egypt with the collaboration of both regimes. The Emir of Qatar even publicly flaunts the Qatari role in arming the Transitional Council. The whole world also knows about the role of the US in sending weapons to the Transitional Council through Egypt. This is yet another example that international law is only lectured about by the US and the EU when they intent to use it to handicap or attack other countries.

What if Colonel Gaddafi and his family leave their country?

What then? Will the war and fighting be over?

That is doubtful. Even if Gaddafi and his sons leave there will be continued fighting and resistance.

The hostilities now run even deeper.

The Transitional Council is not accepted by all of Libya either.

What about the voices of the rest of Libya who do not want the Transitional Council to be imposed on them?

Nor is the Transitional Council a cohesive body. There are real differences within its leadership. These differences will emerge once the Transitional Council comes to its full power in Libya and there will be further internal fighting.

Despite their talk about democracy, the Transitional Council does not tolerate any opposition towards it in the Libyan territory it administers.

Even now there are massacres taking place in Eastern Libya. Those Libyans who are opposed to the Transitional Council are being killed in the dead of night or taken away by the militias patrolling Benghazi. The killings in Easter Libya are casually being whitewashed. The victims are being presented as the perpetrators.

It is being claimed that these victims were figures of the Gaddafi regime or responsible for oppression in the past. It is true that some are supporters of Gaddafi or worked for the Libyan government, but then again so did almost all the people in the Transitional Council. Moreover, was not General Al-Yunis, who was the interior minister for Gaddafi, reasonable for oppression? And what happened to the process of due justice through a trial for these people who are disappearing and being killed around Benghazi? These are not the characteristics of a would-be democratic government.

The fighting in Libya will not end with the departure of Gaddafi. The seeds of division have been planted in the soil of Libya and North Africa. Washington and NATO know this very well too. Anders Fogh Rasmussen has even told the world now that NATO plans on staying in Libya after the war. This is nothing more than modern-day colonialism. With this understanding in mind, the US and NATO are now beginning to amass more military forces off the coast of Libya. This force is a naval armada that includes amphibious military vessels, land troops, and has the capability to invade Libya. Just like Iraq, the war will be far from over when Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy say "mission accomplished."

The war in Libya had and has nothing to do with saving civilian lives. It seems that Bahrain and Yemen are non-existent problems for Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and NATO. In fact, Bahrain is a coalition partner in this illegal war. The US and Britain have even been helping and training the Arab sheikdoms repress their own citizens. In an unholy alliance, the media in North America, Western Europe, and the Arab sheikhdoms have helped sell this offensive war too. The truth has been turned on its head. Killing is presented as saving lives, war is peace, destruction is preservation, and open lies are presented as the truth. Libya, the crown of Africa, has been handicapped and a plague will now spread amongst the Arabs and Africa.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Canadian sociologist. He is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) specializing on the Middle East and Central Asia. He has written extensively and been consulted internationally on the war in Libya.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

"World opinion" has accepted an act of overt military aggression against Libya, a sovereign country guilty of no violation of the UN Charter, in an act of de facto neo-colonialism, a 'humanitarian' war in violation of basic precepts of the laws of nations. Much of the credit for so moulding international public opinion can be claimed by Gareth Evans the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the former Australian 'Labor' Governments of Paul Keating and Bob Hawke.

   by F. William Engdahl. Originally published on Global Research on 4 May 2011

The most remarkable facet of NATO's war against Libya is the fact that "world opinion," that ever so nebulous thing, has accepted an act of overt military aggression against a sovereign country guilty of no violation of the UN Charter in an act of de facto neo-colonialism, a 'humanitarian' war in violation of basic precepts of the laws of nations. The world has accepted it without realizing the implications if the war against Gaddafi's Libya is allowed to succeed in forced regime change. At issue is not whether or not Gaddafi is good or evil. At issue is the very concept of the civilized law of nations and of just or unjust wars.

The Libya campaign represents the attempt to force application of a dangerous new concept into the norms of accepted international law. That concept is what is termed by its creators, 'Responsibility to Protect.'

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has stated that the justification for the use of force in Libya was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect, 'a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community's failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.'[1]

An American President, Barack Obama, has invoked this novel new concept as justification for what is de facto an unlawful US-led military war of aggression and acquisition.[2] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Presidential candidate in 2008 said about the concept: "In adopting the principle of the responsibilty to protect, the United Nations accepted the principle that mass atrocities that take place in one state are the concern of all states."[3] Nice words and highly dangerous. According to White House insider reports, the key person driving Obama to move to military action in Libya, citing a nebulous "Responsibility to Protect" as the basis was Presidential Adviser, Samantha Power.[4]

In effect, via the instrument of a controlled NATO propaganda barrage, the US government with no verifiable proof claimed Gaddafi's air force slaughtered innocent civilians. That in turn has been the basis on which Amr Moussa and members of the Arab League bowed down before heavy Washington pressure to give Washington and London the quasi-legal fig leaf it needed. That unproven slaughter of allegedly innocent civilians was why a "humanitarian" war was necessary. On that basis, we might ask why not put a no-fly NATO bombardment operation as well on Bahrain, or Yemen, or Syria? Who decides the criteria in this new terrain of Responsibility to Protect?

There has been no serious effort on the side of Washington or London or Paris to negotiate a ceasefire inside Libya, no effort to find a compromise as in other countries. This is the marvelous flexibility of the new doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. Washington gets to define who is responsible for what. National sovereignty becomes a relic.

Back in 2004 George Soros authored a little-noted article in Foreign Policy magazine on the notion of national sovereignty. He wrote,

"Sovereignty is an anachronistic concept originating in bygone times when society consisted of rulers and subjects, not citizens. It became the cornerstone of international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648...Today, though not all nation-states are democratically accountable to their citizens, the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of outside intervention in the internal affairs of nation-states. But true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified."[5]

Responsibility to Protect

The coup represented by the NATO intervention into events in Libya has been years in assiduous preparation. The first to publicize the concept, 'The Responsibility to Protect,' was Gareth Evans, a former Australian Foreign Minister and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

In 2002, one year before the illegal US-UK aggression against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Evans published a seminal paper in Foreign Affairs, the elite foreign policy journal of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.[6]

In his article Evans called for the debate on whether or not to intervene into a given country on human rights grounds, even if the events are strictly internal to that country, to be "reframed not as an argument about the 'right to intervene' but about the 'responsibility to protect.' "[7]

That clever linguistic"reframing" created a necessary blurring of lines of the original UN Charter Principle of sovereign equality of states, of Article 2, Section 1 of the Charter. There was a very sound reason that the founding nations signing the UN Charter in 1946 decided to exclude UN police intervention into internal disputes of a sovereign state.

Who should now decide which side in a given conflict is right? Under "responsibility to protect" essentially the United States and a few select allies could potentially define China as in violation of the human rights of its Tibetan or other ethnic minority citizens and order NATO troops to intervene in a humanitarian action. Or NATO might decide to intervene into the internal unrest in Chechnya, an integral part of the Russian Federation, because Moscow troops are attempting to enforce order over insurgents being secretly armed by NATO via Al Qaeda or Mujahideen networks in Central Asia. Or a similar "humanitarian" excusemight be used to call for a NATO no-fly zone over Belarus or Ukraine or Venezuela or Bolivia or perhaps at some point, Brazil.

The so-called humanitarian "responsibility to protect" doctrine opens a Pandora's Box of possibilities for those powers controlling world opinion via CNN or BBC or key media such as the New York Times, to justify a de facto neo-colonial policy of military intervention. This is the real significance of what Gareth Evans blithely terms "reframing."

Framing as deliberate manipulation

In mass media framing is a very well-researched subject. The technique refers to a technique of manipulating an individual's emotional reaction or more accurately, his or her perception of meanings of words or phrases. When the Republican Party sought to get support for a huge tax cut for the wealthy on inheritances, something people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett found relevant to keeping their billions, the Bush Administration reframed the term inheritance taxes to become "death taxes," making it subtly seem like something everyone who ultimately dies should support--only the wealthy inherit, but everyone dies became the subtle reframed message.

A rhetorical phrase is packaged thus to encourage a certain interpretation and to discourage others. Two authorities on framing, Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor identify why framing is so remarkably powerful as a tool to manipulate perception. It creates a mental "shortcut." According to them, human beings are by nature 'cognitive misers', meaning they prefer to do as little thinking as possible. Frames give us a quick and easy way to process information. Hence, people will use the previously mentioned mental filters to make sense of incoming messages. As Fiske and Taylor note, this gives the sender and framer of the information enormous power to use these schemas to influence how the receivers will interpret the message.[8]

What is emerging, with the aggression against Libya as a major test case in the reframing of military intervention as responsibility to protect, is acceptance of radical new forms of US-orchestrated military intervention, with or without UN Security Council sanction, a radical new form of neo-colonialism, a major new step on the road to a New World Order, the Pentagon's much-sought Full Spectrum Dominance.

Those ever-present NGOs

The steering organization for embedding the nebulous notion of responsibility to protect is another of the ever-present Non-Governmental Organizations, this one called the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. It in turn, much like the famous wooden Russian dolls, was created by other human rights NGOs including by the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam International, Refugees International, typically financed by a small network of donors.[9]

Gareth Evans is co-chair of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect's International Advisory Board, as well as being President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group which he led from 2000 to 2009.

Evans' International Crisis Group which once described itself humbly as "widely regarded as the world's leading independent, non-government source of information, analysis and advice to governments and international organisations on conflict issues,' is hardly a voice of independence or democracy. It is a creation of the leading Washington policy circles pledged to advance an agenda the Pentagon calls Full Spectrum Dominance, which I referred to in an earlier book as "Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order."[10]

In addition to getting government funds from the US and UK governments, Evans' International Crisis Group also gets generous support from the Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur foundations.[11] George Soros, founder of the Open Society Institute sits on the ICG Board of Trustees.[12] Until he made his dramatic and well-timed return to Egypt in January 2011, Mohamed El Baradei also sat on the board of the Brussels-based ICG.[13]

The ICG was previously headed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to US presidents and long-time associate of David Rockefeller. Among other leading figures linked to Evans' International Crisis Group have been founder, Morton Abramowitz, former board member of the National Endowment for Democracy.[14]

The present chair of ICG is Thomas Pickering, former US Ambassador to Moscow and to El Salvator where he was accused of backing creation of death squads. ICG's board also includes General Wesley Clark, former NATO-commander who led the destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999 and Samuel Berger, former US National Security Advisor. Former NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen is also a member.[15] This should cause at least some perceptive readers to rethink what Evans' agenda of Responsibility to Protect is really about.

Evans' Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in addition to being active in North Africa and the Middle East, is also directly active in Asia from their center in Australia.

In short they are making major efforts to propandagize the notion of responsibility to protect under the guize of protecting various populations from what they define as "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity..." [16] The world community is being subtly brainwashed to accept the radical new proposition with nary a peep of serious opposition

As Michael Barker, an Australian analyst of the use of humanitarian rhetoric and US-based NGOs to advance a Washington agenda noted, "Perhaps if 'evil' Qaddafi had been a bona fide US-backed dictator...the US government could have exerted more influence over Qaddafi's political choices, and encouraged him to back down and allow himself to be replaced with a suitably US friendly leader. However, it is precisely because Qaddafi is not a Western-backed dictator that external powers cannot force his hand so easily: this helps explain why the world's leading...elites were so keen to use the humanitarian pretext to support his opponents in the civil war."[17] It sets a dangerous precedent indeed, as many nations are now beginning to realize.

by F. William Engdahl. Originally published on Global Research on 4 May 2011

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

Notes

1. Ban Ki-Moon, cited in Omri Ceren, "Responsibility To Protect," Not Remotely New, March 20, 2011, Commentary.

2. Bonney Kapp, Obama's Libya Speech: The Highlights, March 28, 2011, CNN, accessed in http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/obamas-libya-speech-the-highlights/.

3. Hillary Clinton, 2008 Presidential Aide Questionnaire, accessed in http://globalsolutions.org/08orbust/pcq/clinton.

4. Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Hans Nichols, Samantha Power Brings Activist Role Inside to Help Persuade Obama on Libya, Bloomberg News, March 25, 2011.

5. George Soros, The Peoples' Sovereignty: How a new twist on an old idea can protect the world's most vulnerable populations, New York, Foreign Policy, January 1, 2004, accessed in http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/01/01/the_peoples_sovereignty.

6. Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, The Responsibility to Protect, Foreign Affairs, Vol.81, no.6, November/December 2002. pp. 99-110.

7. Ibid.

8. S.T. Fiske, and S.E. Taylor, Social Cognition (2nd ed.), 1991, New York, McGraw-Hill.

9. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Who We Are, accessed in http://globalr2p.org/whoweare/index.php

10. F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Wiesbaden, 2009, edition.engdahl.

11. Jan Oberg, The International Crisis Group: Who Pays the Piper?, The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Press Info #219, 15 April 2005, accessed in http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27a/201.html

12. International Crisis Group Website, accessed in http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about/board.aspx

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Who We Are, accessed in http://globalr2p.org/whoweare/index.php

17. Michael Barker, Stephen Zunes, Libya, and Seemingly Moral Imperatives, March 31, 2011, accessed in #comment-24720">http://wagingnonviolence.org/2011/03/zunes-critiques-war-on-libya-offers-nonviolent-alternatives/comment-page-1/#comment-24720.

Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl

See also: Libya: NATO Transitions To Terror Bombing Phase Of War of 3 May 11 by Rick Rozoff on Global Research, comment Media falsification of 'protest movement' in Syria ond candobetter.netand links,

Hugo Chavez, President of the South American oil-producing state of Venezuela, has proposed an international peace mission to Libyan leader, Kadhafi, according to the Venezuelan Minister for Communications.

Hugo Chavez, President of the South American oil-producing state of Venezuela, has proposed an international peace mission to Libyan leader, Kadhafi, according to the Venezuelan Minister for Communications. The minister confirmed that the two leaders had spoken together on Tuesday.

According to Al Jazira, Kadhafi accepted the proposal, however the Arab League has contradicted this, saying that it is still in the process of considering the idea.

Venezuela is suggesting an international mediation mission, composed of representatives from Latin American countries, Europe and the Middle East. The aim would be to try to negotiate a way out between Libyan rulers and revolutionaries.

Venezuelan authorities have not yet published the Libyan chief's response. Al Jazira, however, maintains that Kadhafi gave his agreement to Chavez's plan.

Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Mouammar Kadhafi, has accused the United States of exaggerating the Libyan situation in order to justify an invasion of the country.

Source: France2, INFO - MONDE - Libye, 3 March 2011.

Both leaders head oil producing countries which struggled for independence from the time of the first oil shock. Kadhafi says he believes that the US is exaggerating the problems in Libya to have an excuse to invade. Venezuela has long suffered from US interference and the peoples' resentment of this permitted the rise of Chavez .