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196

South Tyneside Stop the War / The Libyan Soldier. The True Heroes of NATO’s War

« on: August 25, 2011, 07:37:28 AM »

The Libyan Soldier: The True Heroes of NATO’s War

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“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 Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
 
 

197

South Tyneside Stop the War / Nato's Libya War Has Further Exposed the True Nature of the Nato Axis

« on: August 22, 2011, 08:06:28 PM »

Nato forces have entered the outskirts of Tripoli over the weekend.  Western propaganda outlets are already declaring a victory.  This was a huge undertaking of the axis Nato powers ferrying  mercenaries and troops into the areas around Tripoli.  Bombing city check points so as to open the city up to rebel gangs. Check points manned by civilian authorities no doubt wiped out by Nato bombs and bullets. Another war crime of Nato in killing civilians.   Of course it has emerged that NATO has forbidden a peace deal between the "rebels" and the the Libyan government and bombed Tripoli all day Saturday.  Comitting further bloodshed against the Libyan people in order occupy Libya via the National Transitional Council that is in there pockets and they want to impose on Libya. The  Libyan government spokesman, whose brother was just killed by a Nato bomb, is defiant and says thousands will resist but they are still wishing a peaceful settlement. Any deaths should be laid at the door of the Nato axis powers.  If the Libyan people fail  it will be like the Spanish 75 years ago. Although the Spanish Republic was defeated at the hands of the axis powers it laid the basis for the eventual defeat of the nazis.  Gaddafi in a speech called on the people to defend Tripoli and not let these new French colonialists take over Libya replacing the Italian rule. This Nato inspired  war has exposed the true nature of the Nato axis powers, especially the Anglo US and France and brings their defeat at the hands of the worlds people even closer.

198

South Tyneside Stop the War / War Propaganda. Libya and the End of Western Illusions

« on: August 22, 2011, 07:34:31 AM »

War Propaganda. Libya and the End of Western Illusions

Voltaire Network

Five months into the bombing campaign, it is no longer possible to believe the initial official version of the events and the massacres attributed to the "Gaddafi regime". Moreover, it is now essential to take into account Libya’s legal and diplomatic rebuttal, highlighting the crimes against peace committed by television propaganda, the war crimes perpetrated by NATO military forces, and the crimes against humanity sponsored by political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance.

Just under half of Europeans still support the war against Libya. Their position is based on erroneous information. They still believe, in fact, that in February the "Gaddafi regime" crushed the protests in Benghazi with brutal force and bombed civilian districts in Tripoli, while the Colonel himself was warning of "rivers of blood" if his compatriots continued to challenge his authority.

During my two months’ investigation on the ground, I was able to verify that these accusations were pure propaganda intoxication, designed by the NATO powers to create the conditions for war, and relayed around the world by their television media, in particular Al-Jazeera, CNN, BBC and France24.

However, the reader who doesn’t know where he stands on this issue and who - despite the brainwashing of September 11 and Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction - is reluctant to accept that the United States, France, the UK and Qatar were actually capable of fabricating such lies, will be able to forge an opinion over time. NATO, the largest military coalition in history, has failed after five months of bombardments to overthrow the one it designated as a "tyrant." Every Friday, a large demonstration in support of the regime is organized in a different city and all experts are unanimous in considering that Colonel Gaddafi enjoys at least 90% of popular support in Tripolitania and 70% across the entire country, including the "rebel" areas. These are people who every single day put up with the blockade, aerial bombardments and ground fighting. Never would they be defending with their flesh and blood someone who committed against them the crimes of which he has been accused by the "international community." The difference between those in the West who believe that Gaddafi is a tyrant who fired on his own people, and those in Libya who believe that he is a hero of the anti-imperialist struggle, is that the former live in an illusion created by TV propaganda, whereas the others are exposed to the concrete reality on the ground.

That said, there is a second illusion to which the West has succumbed - and in the "Western" camp I now include not only Israel, where it has always claimed to belong, but also the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Turkey which, though of Eastern culture, have chosen to embrace it -, the illusion to think that it is still possible to devastate a country and kill its people without legal consequences. It is true that, until now, international justice has been the justice of the victors or the powerful. One may recall the Nazi official who heckled the judges at Nuremberg telling them that if the Reich had won the war, the judges would have been the Nazis while those held accountable for the war crimes would have been the Allies.

More recently, we saw how NATO used the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to try to justify post facto that the war in Kosovo was "the first humanitarian war in History," according to the expression employed by Tony Blair. Or again, how the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was used in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government, then to decapitate the Lebanese Hezbollah, and probably soon to accuse the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Not to mention, the International Criminal Court, the secular arm of the European colonial powers in Africa.

However, the development of instruments and organs of international justice throughout the twentieth century has gradually established an international order with which the superpowers themselves will have to comply or which they will have to sabotage in order to escape their responsibilities. In the case of Libya, the violations of international law are countless. The main ones, presented below, were established by the Provisional Technical Committee, a Libyan ministerial coordination organ, and expounded at various press conferences by the legal adviser to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, French attorney Marcel Ceccaldi [1].

TV channels which, under the leadership of their respective Governments, have manufactured false information to lead to war, are guilty of "crimes against peace", as defined by the relevant UN General Assembly resolutions in the aftermath of World War II [2]. The journalist-propagandists should be considered even more culpable than the military who perpetrated war crimes or crimes against humanity, to the extent that none of these crimes would have been possible without the one that preceded them: the "crime against peace."

The political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance, who diverted the object and purpose of Resolution 1973 to engage in a war of aggression against a sovereign state, are personally responsible before international justice. Indeed, according to the jurisprudence established by the Tokyo Court following the Second World War, crimes cannot be ascribed to either States or organizations, but to individuals. Plundering the assets of a state, establishing a naval blockade and bombing infrastructure to cause people to suffer, attacking an army inside its barracks and ordering the assassination of enemy leaders or, failing this, terrorizing them by murdering their families, all amount to war crimes. Their systematic perpetration, as is the case today, constitutes a crime against humanity. This crime is imprescriptible, which means that Messrs. Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron and Al-Thani will be pursued by the law for the rest of their lives.

NATO, as an organization, is legally responsible for the material and human damage of this war. The law leaves no room for doubt that the organization must pay, even though it will surely try to invoke a privilege of jurisdiction to dodge its responsibilities. It will be up to the Alliance to decide how the bill for the conflict should be split among Member States, even though some of them may be on the verge of bankruptcy. This will be followed by disastrous economic consequences for their peoples, guilty of having endorsed such crimes. In a democracy, no one can claim to be innocent of the crimes committed in its name.

International justice will have to address more specifically the case of the Sarkozy "administration" - I use this Anglicism here to underscore the fact that the French president has been piloting his Government’s policy directly, without going through his prime minister. Indeed, France has played a central role in preparing for this war since October 2010 by organizing a failed military coup and then, as early as November 2010, by planning with the United Kingdom the bombing of Libya and the landing of ground troops on its soil, which was then believed to be feasible, and finally by actively conspiring in the lethal unrest in Benghazi which led to the war.

In addition, France, more than any other power, has deployed Special Forces on the ground - without uniforms, no doubt - and violated the arms embargo by supplying the insurgents, either directly or through Qatari airplanes. Not to mention that France has violated the UN freeze of Libyan assets, funnelling part of the fabulous cash from the Libyan Sovereign Fund to the CNT puppets, to the detriment of the Libyan people who wanted to guarantee the well-being of their children in the face of oil depletion.

These gentlemen from NATO, who hoped to escape international justice by crushing their victim, Libya, in a few short days so that it would not survive to pursue them, will be disenchanted. Libya is still there. She is filing complaints with the International Criminal Court, the Belgian courts (whose jurisdiction NATO falls under), the European Court of Justice, and the national courts of aggressor states. She is undertaking steps before the Council of Human Rights in Geneva, the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations. It will be not be possible for the big powers to extinguish these fires all at once. Worse, the arguments they will use to evade a court will ricochet against them in another court. In a few weeks or months, if they have not succeeded in destroying Tripoli, they will have no other way out to avoid humiliating convictions than to negotiate the withdrawal of the complaints at a very high price.

Notes

[1]Putting an end to the confusion that prevailed at the beginning of the war when various departments hired lawyers for different disorderly proceedings, Libya has appointed Marcel Ceccaldi in July to oversee all proceedings.

[2]“Journalists who engage in war propaganda must be held accountable”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 16 August 2011

 
 

199

South Tyneside Stop the War / BREAKING NEWS: Rebels Defeated in Misurata. Reports of Rebel Advances on Tripoli

« on: August 21, 2011, 10:06:32 PM »

BREAKING NEWS: Rebels Defeated in Misurata. Reports of Rebel Advances on Tripoli are Unsubstantiated
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
 


 Global Research, August 20, 2011

TRIPOLI, Global Research August 19, 2011 - The mainstream media is reporting that Tripoli is surrounded. Bernard-Henri Lévy, author and adviser to France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy has even declared that the regime in Tripoli has collapsed. This is fiction.

NATO and its coalition have launched attacks to the west of Tripoli to surround the capital. They have only managed to temporarily disrupt the supply route from Tunisia to Tripoli. This is part of their strategy of imposing a siege on the Libyan capital.

An estimated 100 to 200 rebel fighters have emerged near the south side of the Zawiyah (Zawiya) District, approximately 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of Tripoli. They claim to have taken over the city of Sorman (Surman). These claims are unsubstantiated.

What happened was that some of the insurgents merely passed through Sormon on the highway on their way to attacking Zawiyah.

The Western media report that the insurgents control most of the city of Zawiyah. This claim is unsubstantiated. In reality, the insurgent forces merely raised the flag of King Idiris I in a remote area of the Zawiyah District and then quickly left that area and did some photo ops for foreign journalists to give the impression that they had a foothold in Zawiyah.

The insurgent fighters only stayed in their location in Zawiyah for a few hours. The local population was hostile towards them and they were afraid to stay longer. Their main aim was to destroy the oil refinery in the area.

NATO and its rebel proxies are attempting to cut supply routes into the Tripoli District by sabotaging transportation routes with Tunisia. In this context, the rebels have also attacked Ras Al-Jedir, which is located on the Tunisian-Libyan border.

The Libyan Military has entered Misurata

While the insurgency and NATO are on the offensive to the west of Tripoli, they have lost their hold on Misurata.

On August 15, 2011, there were early morning celebrations throughout the country as news became public that the Libyan military had entered Misurata.

In Tripoli gunfire could be heard across the city as people celebrated. Western mainstream media reporters in Tripoli were briefed. The relevant information was made available to them. There was news blackout. Not a word was mentioned in the Western press regarding the victory of Libyan armed forces in Misurata.

 

200

South Tyneside Stop the War / Tripoli on the Cusp

« on: August 20, 2011, 09:12:37 PM »

Tripoli on the Cusp
Franklin Lamb, Foreign Policy Journal
August 19, 2011


 TRIPOLI — Truth be told, some foreign observers, and certainly this one, having been based in Tripoli the past nearly eight weeks, have not taken very seriously occasional media predictions that Tripoli might soon be invaded by “NATO rebels,” and certainly not by NATO country forces putting their boots on the ground.

The reasons include observations that the Libyan population is increasingly expressing anger over members of their families and tribes being killed by NATO sorties claiming to be “protecting civilians.” Tripoli (Photo by Patrick André Perron)

Tripoli (Photo: Patrick André Perron)

It is said by many here that tens of thousands are ready to repulse invaders who try to enter Tripoli. Support for Colonel Gaddafi appears to reflect even Western polls such as the one referred to by the UK Guardian recently that Libya leader Colonel Gadaffi’s popularity had perhaps doubled during the current conflict. This morning’s Rasmussen poll claims that support for NATO-US involvement has plummeted to just 20% among the American public due to among other reasons, NATO killing of civilians. It is even lower in several other NATO countries.

Until quite recently, life appeared fairly normal, except for the scarcity of benzene for vehicles and some luxury food items, and also some necessities such as baby formula, some medicines, and reliable phone service. Earlier piles of household trash that began accumulating at some street corners around Tripoli in early March, when up to 400,000 foreign workers fled West to Tunisia and East to Egypt, began being cleared a couple of weeks ago as the municipality of Tripoli reorganized its severely and instantly depleted work force.

Except for the recent increase in NATO bombing sorties, Tripoli has been a fairly pleasant place to be.

On August 17, things abruptly changed, and no one knows for sure in which direction daily life is now headed. Starting just before noon, much if not most of Tripoli was without power. At my hotel, one of only two in Tripoli with even sporadic Internet these days (even though parts of Tripoli regularly experiences South Beirut Lebanon-type sudden cuts that can last for hours or days), the services abruptly stopped for all staff and guests. Initially, some guests were stuck in the elevator and a few appeared to panic. Our hotel rooms, which for security reasons have windows which don’t open, began to heat up fast, laptop batteries quickly died, the weak Internet vanished, and this observer, like others, was faced with the prospect of walking down and up eighteen floors to keep appointments in the street level reception area. Two of my Libyan friends who work in one of the hotel restaurants called my room to ask me if I wanted them to walk up some lunch. Profoundly touched by their thoughtfulness, which seems typical of Libyans, I reminded them that I was fasting for Ramadan and in any case would not think of accepting their kind offer. Not long after the hotel emergency generator kicked in and the elevator began working, but there was no power anywhere else inside the hotel.

At nearby Green Square, crowds began to gather by 2 p.m. and rally against “NATO rebels” and I was told thousands of Libyan citizens were ready to move to the edges of town, man check points, and support army units to repulse any advances from Al Zawieh to the West, Gheryan and several villages from the South, or Brega and closer villages from the East.

Prices at the local “Medina” (a street market covering several blocks that sells a large variety of goods and vegetables) adjacent to my hotel jumped up again, according to two sisters who have become my friends and who shop with their mother every morning in preparation for cooking the daily “Iftar” meal that breaks the Ramadan fast at sunset. Over the past six months, basic food prices have largely leveled off under government warnings to merchants not to even dream about trying to price gouge.

Some people are leaving Tripoli, but it’s hard to estimate how many. Most people I have asked say they will stay and they do not think “NATO rebels” can enter this well-armed and apparently well-organized city of still around 1.5 million people.

A delayed UN fact-finding delegation, led by a spectacular Palestinian woman from Nazareth in occupied Palestine named “Juliette”, finally arrived by plane after the UN demanded that NATO allow their plane to land at Tripoli airport. The UN group, staying at our hotel, had been blocked from the main road between Tripoli and Tunisia. As of the morning of August 18, people are trapped in Tripoli from departing to Tunisia and no one is entering from Tunisia.

Libyan students at Tripoli’s Al Fatah University, and even some government officials, have told this observer that they have vowed to dig in and wage a “Stalingrad Defense” of Tripoli against the advancing “NATO rebels.” Certainly the neighborhoods are very heavily armed.

Some, including this observer, lack the heart to remind these dear students that at Stalingrad, the Russian citizens were holding out for the arrival of the Red Army that did indeed save many of them in the end. One does not sense that a Red Army is en route to lift the threatened siege of Tripoli. But maybe Tripoli’s defenders will not need a Red Army to lift a siege of Tripoli.

This week, a Libyan law student who for weeks has been helping man a neighborhood defense committee checkpoint near Airport Road left me the following note:

Franklin, you asked me how we will defend our capitol Tripoli if NATO bombs a path so rebel forces can arrive here and try to enter our neighborhoods. We discuss this often among ourselves during the night. This is what we have to say to answer your question:

It is not private information that our defense will be from every buildings on every main street, square or roundabout. We can and will keep for as long as possible every meter that NATO forces try to take. Every apartment building, factory, warehouse, street corner, intersection, home or office building is waiting and supplied with guns of different types, RPGs and mortars. Snipers and specially trained small 5-6 man units are ready. Our defense will be a house to house battle. From every floor and from hole in the floor we will fight NATO rebels. Also from the sewers we will fight and every basement. If NATO enters a front door we will fight them for every room in the house and from the piles of debris created from them bombing us.

Dear friend Lamb. Libyans are a good and a proud people. You and I have spoken about Omar Muktar and our defeat of the Italians that cost us more than one-third of our relatives who fell in battle. Do you know my friend that during the Ottoman Empire centuries of colonization which was the only Arab or Muslim country to rebel again them? It was Libya. Only Libya, led by her tribes. We stood up against the Turks and fought two 20 year wars against them. Do NATO and Obama believe they can defeat us?

Your friend, Mohammad. Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. Read more articles by Franklin Lamb.

 

201

South Tyneside Stop the War / The Actual Libyan Resistance

« on: August 03, 2011, 09:59:33 PM »

It seems that the struggle of the Libyan people against Nato backed rebels has entered a new phase. The people of Benghazi have risen up heroically against NATO and the rebel stooges in the so-called headquarters of the "revolution" in western Libya.  Not content with torturing and killing their own commander, 100s of Libyans, including children from the Wallabi tribe were massacred by these corrupt and criminal elements . But the phase seems now to have turned into a peoples war against the invaders because reports suggest these Libyan tried to challenge the so-called National Transitional Council through political demonstrationss but they were gunned down by NATOs helicopter gunships and their rebel stooges. The facts will emerge from other sources but what is clear is that the people know they are engaged in a life and death struggle for the future of their country and its people and Africa. According to Mathaba reports the people are facing Qatari forces and tanks as well as some French. Although same reports say the French are fleeing in the ships in the harbour.   It is very significant I think because ever since the Anglo US invaded Korea in spite of their technology and weapons of mass destruction and the millions of people they have killed they have always in the end been defeated by a united and determined people in peoples war in Korea, Vietnam and will be again in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Libya.  It will be a very decisive lesson for the people of the world because in spite of the Libyan government and people having no sophisticated weapons it will show up this lesson in stark relief and how much more diminished and defeated will be these criminal imperialist powers with their weapons of mass destruction that they hope to contiue to intimidate the world.   The reports say there are no big media reporters in Benghazi so what they are writing bears little relation to situation. Even these reports admit that the rebels are in dissaray and question Hague, Obama and other leaders judgement in continuing to intervene in Libya.

202

For Your Information / Libya, Getting it Right. A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective

« on: March 06, 2011, 01:57:50 PM »

Libya, Getting it Right. A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective


by Gerald A. Perreira / March 4th, 2011

Gerald A. Perreira has lived in Libya for many years and was an executive member of the World Mathaba. He can be reached at: mojadi94@gmail.com. Read other articles by Gerald.

Thousands of Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Filipinos, Turks, Germans, English, Italians, Malaysians, Koreans and a host of other nationalities are lining up at the borders and the airport to leave Libya. It begs the question: What were they doing in Libya in the first place? Unemployment figures, according to the Western media and Al Jazeera, are at 30%. If this is so, then why all these foreign workers?

For those of us who have lived and worked in Libya, there are many complexities to the current situation that have been completely overlooked by the Western media and ‘Westoxicated’ analysts, who have nothing other than a Eurocentric perspective to draw on. Let us be clear – there is no possibility of understanding what is happening in Libya within a Eurocentric framework. Westerners are incapable of understanding a system unless the system emanates from or is attached in some way to the West. Libya’s system and the battle now taking place on its soil, stands completely outside of the Western imagination.

News coverage by the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera has been oversimplified and misleading. An array of anti-Qaddafi spokespersons, most living outside Libya, have been paraded in front of us – each one clearly a counter-revolutionary and less credible than the last. Despite the clear and irrefutable evidence from the beginning of these protests that Muammar Qaddafi had considerable support both inside Libya and internationally, not one pro-Qaddafi voice has been allowed to air. The media and their selected commentators have done their best to manufacture an opinion that Libya is essentially the same as Egypt and Tunisia and that Qaddafi is just another tyrant amassing large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts. But no matter how hard they try, they cannot make Qaddafi into a Mubarak or Libya into Egypt.

The first question is: Is the revolt taking place in Libya fuelled by a concern over economic issues such as poverty and unemployment as the media would have us believe? Let us examine the facts.

Under the revolutionary leadership of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya has attained the highest standard of living in Africa. In 2007, in an article which appeared in the African Executive Magazine, Norah Owaraga noted that Libya, “unlike other oil producing countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, utilized the revenue from its oil to develop its country. The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa, falling in the category of countries with a GNP per capita of between USD 2,200 and 6,000.”

This is all the more remarkable when we consider that in 1951 Libya was officially the poorest country in the world. According to the World Bank, the per capita income was less than $50 a year – even lower than India. Today, all Libyans own their own homes and cars. Two Fleet Street journalists, David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, who are by no means supporters of the Libyan revolution, had this to say:

“The young people are well dressed, well fed and well educated. Libyans now earn more per capita than the British. The disparity in annual incomes… is smaller than in most countries. Libya’s wealth has been fairly spread throughout society. Every Libyan gets free, and often excellent, education, medical and health services. New colleges and hospitals are impressive by any international standard. All Libyans have a house or a flat, a car and most have televisions, video recorders and telephones. Compared with most citizens of the Third World countries, and with many in the First World, Libyans have it very good indeed.”1

Large scale housing construction has taken place right across the country. Every citizen has been given a decent house or apartment to live in rent-free. In Qaddafi’s Green Book it states: “The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” This dictum has now become a reality for the Libyan people.

Large scale agricultural projects have been implemented in an effort to “make the desert bloom” and achieve self-sufficiency in food production. Any Libyan who wants to become a farmer is given free use of land, a house, farm equipment, some livestock and seed.

Today, Libya can boast one of the finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of all charges. The fact is that the Libyan revolution has achieved such a high standard of living for its people that they import labor from other parts of the world to do the jobs that the unemployed Libyans refuse to do. Libya has been called by many observers inside and out, “a nation of shop keepers.” It is part of the Libyan Arab psyche to own your own small business and this type of small scale private enterprise flourishes in Libya. We can draw on many examples of Libyans with young sons who expressed the idea that it would be shameful for the family if these same young men were to seek menial work and instead preferred for them to remain at home supported by the extended family.

No system is perfect, and Libya is no exception. They suffered nine years of economic sanctions and this caused huge problems for the Libyan economy. Also, there is nowhere on planet earth that has escaped the monumental crisis of neo-liberal capitalism. It has impacted everywhere – even on post revolutionary societies that have rejected “free market” capitalism. However, what we are saying is that severe economic injustice is not at the heart of this conflict. So then, what is?

A Battle for Africa

The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi’s vision of Libya as part of a united Africa and want to ally themselves instead with the EU and look toward Europe and the Arab World for Libya’s future.

One of Muammar Qaddafi’s most controversial and difficult moves in the eyes of many Libyans was his championing of Africa and his determined drive to unite Africa with one currency, one army and a shared vision regarding the true independence and liberation of the entire continent. He has contributed large amounts of his time and energy and large sums of money to this project and like Kwame Nkrumah, he has paid a high price.

Many of the Libyan people did not approve of this move. They wanted their leader to look towards Europe. Of course, Libya has extensive investments and commercial ties with Europe but the Libyans know that Qaddafi’s heart is in Africa.

Many years ago, Qaddafi told a large gathering, which included Libyans and revolutionaries from many parts of the world, that the Black Africans were the true owners of Libya long before the Arab incursion into North Africa, and that Libyans need to acknowledge and pay tribute to their ancient African roots. He ended by saying, as is proclaimed in his Green Book, that “the Black race shall prevail throughout the world.” This is not what many Libyans wanted to hear. As with all fair skinned Arabs, prejudice against Black Africans is endemic.

Brother Leader, Guide of the Revolution and King of Kings are some of the titles that have been bestowed on Qaddafi by Africans. Only last month Qaddafi called for the creation of a Secretariat of traditional African Chiefs and Kings, with whom he has excellent ties, to co-ordinate efforts to build African unity at the grassroots level throughout the continent, a bottom up approach, as opposed to trying to build unity at the government/state level, an approach which has failed the African unification project since the days of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. This bottom up approach is widely supported by many Pan Africanists worldwide.

African Mercenaries or Freedom Fighters?

In the past week, the phrase “African mercenaries” has been repeated over and over by the media and the selected Libyan citizens they choose to speak to have, as one commentator put it, “spat the word ‘African’ with a venomous hatred.”

The media has assumed, without any research or understanding of the situation because they are refusing to give any air time to pro-Qaddafi forces, that the many Africans in military uniform fighting alongside the pro-Qaddafi Libyan forces are mercenaries. However, it is a myth that the Africans fighting to defend the Jamahiriya and Muammar Qaddafi are mercenaries being paid a few dollars and this assumption is based solely on the usual racist and contemptuous view of Black Africans.

Actually, in truth, there are people all over Africa and the African Diaspora who support and respect Muammar Qaddafi as a result of his invaluable contribution to the worldwide struggle for African emancipation.

Over the past two decades, thousands of Africans from all over the continent were provided with education, work and military training – many of them coming from liberation movements. As a result of Libya’s support for liberation movements throughout Africa and the world, international battalions were formed. These battalions saw themselves as a part of the Libyan revolution, and took it upon themselves to defend the revolution against attacks from within its borders or outside.

These are the Africans who are fighting to defend Qaddafi and the gains of the Libyan revolution to their death if need be. It is not unlike what happened when internationalist battalions came to the aid of the revolutionary forces against Franco’s fascist forces in Spain.

Malian political analyst, Adam Thiam, notes that “thousands of Tuaregs who were enrolled in the Islamic Legion established by the Libyan revolution remained in Libya and they are enrolled in the Libyan security forces.”

African Migrants under Attack

As African fighters from Chad, Niger, Mali, Ghana, Kenya and Southern Sudan (it should be noted that Libya supported the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army under John Garang in their war of liberation against Arab hegemonists in Khartoum, while all other Arab leaders backed the Khartoum regime) fight to defend this African revolution, a million African refugees and thousands of African migrant workers stand the risk of being murdered as a result of their perceived support for Qaddafi.

One Turkish construction worker described a massacre: “We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Qaddafi. The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

This is a far cry from what is being portrayed in the media as “peaceful protesters” being set upon by pro-Qaddafi forces. In fact, footage of the Benghazi revolt shows men with machetes, AK 47s and RPGs. In the Green Book, Qaddafi argues for the transfer of all power, wealth and arms directly into the hands of the people themselves. No one can deny that the Libyan populace is heavily armed. This is part of Qaddafi’s philosophy of arms not being monopolised by any section of the society, including the armed forces. It must be said that it is not usual practice for tyrants and dictators to arm their population.

Qaddafi has also been very vocal regarding the plight of Africans who migrate to Europe, where they are met with racism, more poverty, violence at the hands of extreme right wing groups and in many cases death, when the un-seaworthy boats they travel in sink.

Moved by their plight, a conference was held in Libya in January this year, to address their needs and concerns. More than 500 delegates and speakers from around the world attended the conference titled “A Decent Life in Europe or a Welcome Return to Africa.”

“We should live in Europe with decency and dignity,” Qaddafi told participants. “We need a good relationship with Europe not a relationship of master and slave. There should be a strong relationship between Africa and Europe. Our presence should be strong, tangible and good. It’s up to you as the Africans in the Diaspora. We have to continue more and more until the unity of Africa is achieved.

From now on, by the will of God, I will assign teams to search, investigate and liaise with the Africans in Europe and to check their situations…this is my duty and role towards the sons of Africa; I am a soldier for Africa. I am here for you and I work for you; therefore, I will not leave you and I will follow up on your conditions.”

Joint committees of African migrants, the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and international organizations present at the conference discussed the need to coordinate the implementation of many of the conference’s recommendations.

Statements are appearing all over the internet from Africans who have a different view to that being perpetuated by those intent on discrediting Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution. One African commented:

When I was growing up I first read a comic book of his revolution at the age of ten. Since then, as dictators came and went, Colonel Qaddafi has made an impression on me as a man who truly loves Africa! Libyans could complain that he spent their wealth on other Africans! But those Africans he helped put in power, built schools and mosques and brought in many forms of development showing that Africans can do for themselves. If those Africans would abandon him to be swallowed by Western Imperialism and their lies and just let him go as a dictator in the name of so-called democracy…if they could do that…they should receive the names and fate that the Western press gives our beloved leader. If there is any one person who was half as generous as he is, let them step forward.

And another African comments:

This man has been accused of many things and listening to the West who just recently were happy to accept his generous hospitality, you will think that he is worse than Hitler. The racism and contemptuous attitudes of Arabs towards Black Africans has made me a natural sceptic of any overtures from them to forge a closer link with Black Africa but Qaddafi was an exception.

Opportunistic Revolt

This counter-revolutionary revolt caught everyone, including the Libyan authorities, by surprise. They knew what the media is not reporting: that unlike Egypt and Tunisia and other countries in the region, where there is tremendous poverty, unemployment and repressive pro-Western regimes, the Libyan dynamic was entirely different. However, an array of opportunistic forces, ranging from so-called Islamists, Arab-Supremacists, including some of those who have recently defected from Qaddafi’s inner circle, have used the events in neighbouring countries as a pretext to stage a coup and to advance their own agenda for the Libyan nation. Many of these former officials were the authors of, and covertly fuelled the anti-African pogrom in Libya a few years ago when many Africans lost their lives in street battles between Africans and Arab Libyans. This was a deliberate attempt to embarrass Qaddafi and to undermine his efforts in Africa.

Qaddafi has long been a thorn in the Islamists side. In his recent address to the Libyan people, broadcast from the ruins of the Bab al-Azizia compound bombed by Reagan in 1986, he asked the “bearded ones” in Benghazi and Jabal al Akhdar where they were when Reagan bombed his compound in Tripoli, killing hundreds of Libyans, including his daughter. He said they were hiding in their homes applauding the US and he vowed that he would never allow the country to be returned to the grip of them and their colonial masters.

Al Qaeda is in the Sahara on his borders and the International Union of Muslim Scholars is calling for him to be tried in a court. One asks why are they calling for Qaddafi’s blood? Why not Mubarak who closed the Rafah Border Crossing while the Israeli’s slaughtered the Palestinians in Gaza. Why not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair who are responsible for the murder of millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan?

“An array of opportunistic forces, ranging from so-called Islamists, Arab-Supremacists, including some of those who have recently defected from Qaddafi’s inner circle, have used the events in neighbouring countries as a pretext to stage a coup.”

The answer is simple – because Qaddafi committed some “cardinal sins.” He dared to challenge their reactionary and feudal notions of Islam. He has upheld the idea that every Muslim is a ruler (Caliph) and does not need the Ulema to interpret the Quran for them. He has questioned the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda from a Quranic/theological perspective and is one of the few political leaders equipped to do so. Qaddafi has been called a Mujaddid (this term refers to a person who appears to revive Islam and to purge it of alien elements, restoring it to its authentic form) and he comes in the tradition of Jamaludeen Afghani and the late Iranian revolutionary, Ali Shariati.

Libya is a deeply traditional society, plagued with some outmoded and bankrupt ideas that continue to surface to this day. In many ways, Qaddafi has had to struggle against the same reactionary aspects of Arab culture and tradition that the holy prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was struggling against in 7th century Arabia – Arab supremacy/racism, supremacy of family and tribe, historical feuding tribe against tribe and the marginalisation of women. Benghazi has always been at the heart of counter-revolution in Libya, fostering reactionary Islamic movements such as the Wahhabis and Salafists. It is these people who founded the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group based in Benghazi which allies itself with Al Qaeda and who have, over the years, been responsible for the assassination of leading members of the Libyan revolutionary committees.

These forces hate Qaddafi’s revolutionary reading of the Quran. They foster an Islam concerned with outward trappings and mere religiosity, in the form of rituals, which at the same time is feudal and repressive, while rejecting the liberatory spirituality of Islam. While these so-called Islamists are opposed to Western occupation of Muslim lands, they have no concrete programmatic platform for meaningful socio-economic and political transformation to advance their societies beyond semi-feudal and capitalist systems which reinforce the most backward and reactionary ideas and traditions. Qaddafi’s political philosophy, as outlined in the Green Book, rejects unfettered capitalism in all its manifestations, including the “State capitalism” of the former communist countries and the neo-liberal capitalist model that has been imposed at a global level. The idea that capitalism is not compatible with Islam and the Quran is not palatable to many Arabs and so-called Islamists because they hold onto the fallacious notion that business and trade is synonymous with capitalism.

Getting it Right

Whatever the mistakes made by Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution, its gains and its huge contribution to the struggle of oppressed peoples worldwide cannot and must not be ignored. Saif Qaddafi, when asked about the position of his father and family, said this battle is not about one man and his family, it is about Libya and the direction it will take.

That direction has always been controversial. In 1982, The World Mathaba was established in Libya. Mathaba means a gathering place for people with a common purpose. The World Mathaba brought together revolutionaries and freedom fighters from every corner of the globe to share ideas and develop their revolutionary knowledge. Many liberation groups throughout the world received education, training and support from Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution including ANC, AZAPO, PAC and BCM of Azania (South Africa), SWAPO of Namibia, MPLA of Angola, The Sandinistas of Nicaragua, The Polisario of the Sahara, the PLO, The Native American Movements throughout the Americas, The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan to name but a few. Nelson Mandela called Muammar Qaddafi one of this century’s greatest freedom fighters, and insisted that the eventual collapse of the apartheid system owed much to Qaddafi and Libyan support. Mandela said that in the darkest moments of their struggle, when their backs were to the wall, it was Muammar Qaddafi who stood with them. The late African freedom fighter, Kwame Ture, referred to Qaddafi as “a diamond in a cesspool of African misleaders.”

The hideous notion being perpetuated by the media and reactionary forces, inside and outside of Libya, that this is just another story of a bloated dictatorship that has run its course is mis-information and deliberate distortion. Whatever one’s opinions of Qaddafi the man, no one can deny his invaluable contribution to human emancipation and the universal truths outlined in his Green Book.

Progressive scholars in many parts of the world, including the West, have acclaimed The Green Book as an incisive critique of capitalism and the Western Parliamentary model of multi-party democracy. In addition, there is no denying that the system of direct democracy posited by Qaddafi in The Green Book offers an alternative model and solution for Africa and the Third World, where multi-party so-called democracy has been a dismal failure, resulting in poverty, ethnic and tribal conflict and chaos.

Every revolution, since the beginning of time, has defended itself against those who would want to roll back its gains. Europeans should look back into their own bloody history to see that this includes the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions. Marxists speak of Trotsky and Lenin’s brutal suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion by the Red Army as being a “tragic necessity.”

Let’s get it right: The battle in Libya is not about peaceful protestors versus an armed and hostile State. All sides are heavily armed and hostile. The battle being waged in Libya is essentially a battle between those who want to see a united and liberated Libya and Africa, free of neo-colonialism and neo-liberal capitalism and free to construct their own system of governance compatible with the African and Arab personalities and cultures and those who find this entire notion repugnant. And both sides are willing to pay the ultimate price to defend their positions.

Make no mistake, if Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution are defeated by this opportunistic conglomerate of reactionaries and racists, then progressive forces worldwide and the Pan African project will suffer a huge defeat and set back.

1.Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution. [↩]
 

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For Your Information / US - NATO Threats to Libyan Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity

« on: March 05, 2011, 09:17:24 AM »

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27615.htm

US - NATO Threats to Libyan Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity

By Antonio E. Paris
  © Copyright Antonio E. Paris, Global Research, 2011   http://www.globalresearch.ca/



March 04, 2011 ---- The present situation in Libya is grave, with  

Philippine attention focused on the thousands of Filipino workers there  

who are fleeing the turmoil and are in need of immediate repatriation.  

Almost half of the 26,000 Filipino workers in Libya are in conflict areas,  

and many of them are technical and construction workers in the industry  

and infrastructure sectors. Their worksites have become fair game for  

armed mobs and pro-“democracy” protesters extorting money, mobile phones,  

computers and other electronic items, food and other things of value. Some  

of their barracks have been ransacked, and affected Filipino workers had  

to flee for dear life with nothing to bring with them.



The hundreds who were the first to arrive back in Manila were from the  

capital city of Tripoli and nearby areas in western Libya, and their  

orderly departure from Libya (via Malta) was arranged by their European  

and Korean employers with security escorts from forces of Muammar  

Gaddafi’s government. But employers in other conflict areas, in fear of  

being taken as hostages, have fled earlier and abandoned their Filipino  

and other expatriate workers. Areas seized by protesters are left with no  

local government forces which would be able to stop the armed mobs preying  

on worksites manned by expatriate workers.



Hundreds more of Filipina women workers, mostly nurses and laboratory  

technicians, are being prevented from leaving their hospitals, or are  

unable to get any assistance in traveling safely to the Egyptian or  

Tunisian border crossings where Philippine migrant welfare officials have  

set up documentation and repatriation centers. Many Filipino workers have  

to beg for passage in ships chartered by western governments to ferry  

their nationals from Benghazi to the southern Greek island of Crete.



The Turmoil and the Stand-Off



Latest news reports on Libya have it that fighting between pro- and  

anti-Gaddafi forces are occurring in Az-Zawiyah, Tripoli and Misurata in  

the west ; in Sabha in the south ; and in Benghazi, Al-Bayda and Tobruk in  

the east. Hundreds and even thousands are reported to have been killed on  

both sides. Protests have flared hardest in the eastern parts of the  

country, particularly in Benghazi which was the center of  

foreign-supported anti-government agitation in the past. Benghazi is now  

reported to be under the control of anti-Gaddafi forces which have torched  

police stations and government buildings, and which have taken over the  

local radio stations.



The main demand of protesters, according to western news reports, is the  

ouster of Gaddafi who has held unaccountable power as “leader of the  

revolution” for almost 42 years already, and who is preparing a political  

dynasty in Libya. Libya’s justice minister, and ambassadors to the United  

Nations, the Arab League, China, India and Bangladesh, have defected and  

turned against Gaddafi. The earlier defection to the pro-“democracy”  

protesters of some police and military units provided the anti-Gaddafi  

movement with arms and even tanks and artillery. The reported seizure of  

entire cities reflects a high degree of military sophistication, and is  

not just the result of “peaceful protests”.



The Attempts to Again Manipulate the United Nations



Unfortunately for the Philippines, the vast majority of our people are  

getting only one-sided news and propaganda from the western media  

(including Al-Jazeera). These news agencies are trying to show that events  

in Libya are an extension of the democratic upsurge in neighboring Tunisia  

and Egypt ; and that there is now a virtual division of the country. This  

division is allegedly between the pro-“democracy” forces which have seized  

most of the eastern region (particulary the cities of Benghazi and Tobruk,  

in the former Cyrenaica region adjacent to Egypt), and the remaining  

Gaddafi loyalist forces in the western region (particularly the cities of  

Tripoli and Sirt, in the Tripolitania region adjacent to Tunisia).



As usual, Gaddafi is demonized as a tyrant who is bombing his own people,  

and western calls are made for the UN to take action to stop or prevent  

Gaddafi’s genocide. Among the calls are for the UN enforcement of a  

“no-fly-zone” over north-eastern Libya, in order to prevent Gaddafi’s air  

force from attacking “liberated” areas. This would be similar to the  

“no-fly-zone” over parts of Iraq in the 1990s, which was without any UN  

sanction and was only imposed unilaterally by the US-UK forces.



  There are also calls for a blockade and ban of any delivery of weapons  

for Gaddafi forces ; and for the indictment of the Gaddafi family for  

crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court (ICC).  

However, these would set precedents which could boomerang on the USA and  

its NATO allies. If the UN were to hold the officials of governments and  

corporations providing weapons to the Gaddafi regime accountable for how  

those weapons are being used, then that would set a precedent making US  

and NATO governments and corporations accountable for arming the most  

violent despots known for human rights violations and war crimes in many  

parts of the world.



  Holding Gaddafi and Libyan officials directly accountable for alleged war  

crimes against a civilian population, by referring the issue directly to  

the ICC, would set a precedent that could hold US and NATO political  

leaders also responsible for civilian deaths in their present wars in  

Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. US and NATO warplanes and  

remote-controlled drones have so far killed thousands of civilians in  

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and US and NATO leaders could be  

also held liable for genocide.



The Threat to Libyan Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity



             Virulent western media demands for UN and NATO actions against  

Gaddafi are reflections of covetous imperialist designs upon Libya. In  

this situation, the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the  

Libyan people are threatened. A US-NATO invasion of Libya is even imminent.



             In defense of his position, Gaddafi has spoken over Libyan  

state TV and radio to stress that the present turmoil in Libya is not an  

extension of the democratic upsurge in the region, but an imperialist  

conspiracy to take away from the Libyan people their control of their own  

oil resources. Gaddafi claims that this is an armed counter-revolution  

participated in by outsiders and mercenaries, and which aims to bring  

about the imperialist occupation of Libya, similar to the present  

imperialist imposition of suffering and humiliation upon Afghanistan and  

Iraq.



             Huge demonstrations in Tripoli in support of Gaddafi, in  

response to his call for the Libyan people to defend their sovereignty and  

oil wealth, have apparently disturbed the imperialist powers ---  

especially since the protesters in Libya, up to now, have not produced any  

credible organization or leader around which people could be rallied  

politically. The so-called “National Front for the Salvation of Libya  

(NFSL)”, an exile group that has been interviewed constantly by western  

media as a leading opposition force, and which is loudly demanding a NATO  

attack against Gaddafi, has for decades served as a stooge of the CIA.



             The other group usually seen in pro-“democracy” actions  

(assaults on police and military camps, and the burning of government  

buildings and facilities) is that which is backing the return of the  

monarchy which was deposed by Gaddafi in 1969. Pro-“democracy” protesters  

have hoisted Libya’s first national flag, that of the corrupt and  

US-subservient King Idris, over the areas they have seized. However, a  

return to a monarchy could only be considered a step backward for the  

Libyan people, and would stand opposed to those striving for democracy.



             Finally, another group of protesters is the Muslim  

Brotherhood, the sect formed in Egypt in 1928, and which has cooperated  

with the CIA since their joint attempts to oust Gamal Abdel Nasser from  

the Egyptian presidency in the 1950s. Given this situation where US-backed  

protesters lack the force to oust Gaddafi, imperialism is now propagating  

the line that a peaceful transition in Libya not possible, and that  

Gaddafi’s ouster can only be done by external force. But unlike Marcos in  

the Philippines in 1986, and Ben Ali and Mubarak in Tunisia and Egypt  

earlier this year, Gaddafi is not someone who can simply be ordered by a  

US president to step down and yield power to a new US puppet.



The Role of the Western Media



             All efforts are therefore being made to “justify” an  

imperialist intervention in Libya. Thus the reports which make it appear  

that Gaddafi is using aircraft and artillery against “unarmed” and  

“defenseless” protesters. Efforts are also being made by imperialism to  

make every use of the former Gaddafi officials, diplomats and military  

officers who have defected during the past week, in order to use them as  

components of an acceptable and effective client regime to replace Gaddafi.



             However, imperialism has to contend with the fact that there  

is apparently no widespread defection among the 50,000 to 70,000 hard core  

Gaddafi security forces, unlike in Egypt where the army joined the  

protesters on the streets. It is therefore the role of western media to  

propagate the message that the Gaddafi regime is fast collapsing ; that  

its control of Libyan territory and population is dwindling rapidly ; that  

Gaddafi’s last resort is genocide against his own people ; and that the  

international community (meaning again the NATO “coalition of the  

willing”) should strike to take out Gaddafi and pre-empt his use of  

“weapons of mass destruction” and his blowing up of the Libyan oil  

industry.



             It is difficult to see how events will unfold, given the  

continuing stand-off between Gaddafi and his imperialist-backed opponents.  

But we have seen how the imperialists and their “embedded” mediamen fooled  

the world with blatant lies to attack Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. In  

the Libyan case also, British foreign minister William Hague propagated  

the yarn that Gaddafi has fled to Venezuela. Considering imperialism's  

hatred towards Gaddafi, and its desire to take over control of Libyan oil  

resources (now producing 1.8-million barrels per day, and which has the  

greatest reserve in Africa), the present turmoil in Libya is being used to  

plot the overthrow of Gaddafi and the control of Libya.



Developments Brought About by the Al-Fatah Revolution



             The Al-Fatah (September 1st, 1969) Revolution led by Gaddafi  

overthrew the corrupt and imperialist-subservient monarchy of King Idris.  

It was inspired by the ideas of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who  

earlier also overthrew a corrupt and imperialist-subservient monarchy in  

Egypt. King Idris earlier allowed the presence of the USA’s very large  

Wheelus Air Base in Libya, but the Al-Fatah Revolution promptly ended any  

US military presence in Libya. Before the revolution, the Libyan people  

were mostly illiterate and in dire poverty, while Libya’s oil resources  

fabulously enriched western oil companies and the Idris monarchy.



             The revolution nationalized the Libyan oil industry, and used  

the oil riches to uplift the social conditions of the Libyan masses ; to  

eradicate widespread illiteracy ; to provide jobs and housing ; to develop  

free higher education ; and to ensure better nutrition through food  

subsidies. The monarchy used to own much of the habitable and arable land,  

until Gaddafi ordered the nationalization of land and the burning of all  

land titles in simultaneous bonfires nationwide in order to pave the way  

for radical changes in housing ownership and agrarian relations.



             Under Gaddafi, Libya became the highest ranked among African  

countries in the Human Development Index — which includes such factors as  

living conditions, life expectancy (now at almost 75 years) and education.  

Gaddafi is also credited with the construction of a broad network of giant  

pipelines (the “Great Man-Made River”) bringing fresh water from an  

enormous lake beneath its large desert, in order to serve the needs of  

Libya’s 6 million population. Under Gaddafi, the Libyan government placed  

the country’s development within a radical and populist context, and  

promoted semi-socialist political and economic concepts. The Gaddafi  

government also provided significant aid to neighboring African states.  

However, Communist advocacy is suppressed, and the role of trade unions is  

marginalized inside Libya.



             It was also under Gaddafi, and with oil money, that Libya  

attained the highest per capita income among African states. However,  

there is now a campaign in the western press to belie this, and to paint a  

picture of widespread unemployment, gaping social inequality and poverty  

among the Libyan people. Indeed, neo-liberal reforms ushered in recent  

years have resulted in inequality, with social programs and subsidies for  

the poor being cut, and the country’s oil wealth increasingly being given  

to foreign corporations. The CIA is now even trying to pass off alleged  

“studies” showing that most Libyans are surviving on less than USD$2.00  

per day. However, such “studies” have no credibility, considering that  

Libya remains a favorite among expatriate workers in the Middle East,  

given the relatively higher pay and better working terms in Libyan work  

sites.



Gaddafi’s Propagation of his “Third Universal Theory”



             When Gaddafi started to propagate his “Green Book” (or the  

“Third Universal Theory”) internationally, he tried to win over sections  

of national liberation and anti-imperialist movements with financial  

support, and this caused opportunist schisms within some national  

movements. His “Third Universal Theory” is a strange mix of utopian  

socialism and Islam --- of non-class anti-capitalism and virulent  

anti-Communism.



             Libyan oil money fed Gaddafi’s megalomania, and he tried to  

play god by interfering in some parts of the developing world ---  

particularly in countries he considered economically inferior and with  

poor people ready to sacrifice as migrant workers with few rights just to  

retain jobs in Libya. He funded Islamic secessionist forces in southern  

Philippines and southern Thailand, claiming support for struggles against  

Christian or Buddhist domination of Moslem minorities.



             In the largely Moslem country of Indonesia, Gaddafi dabbled in  

tribal conflicts by funding the secessionist forces of the Acehnese, in a  

show of support for the supposedly more fundamentalist Sumatrans as  

against the dominant Javanese. Gaddafi’s interference in the internal  

affairs of the Philippines in the 1970s cost the lives of thousands of  

Filipinos, mostly in Mindanao. His interference in the internal affairs of  

other Asian countries cost the lives of thousands more.



             Gaddafi also tried to interfere in some parts of Southern  

Africa, casting aspersion upon the role of Communists, whites and women in  

the anti-apartheid struggle. For a time, he also dabbled in  

inter-Christian conflicts, and on this basis even supported the armed  

struggle of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. He gave the  

impression of leading a great international anti-imperialist movement (the  

Mathaba or “center”), which in reality was mainly composed of  

anti-Communist ultra-left and fundamentalist Islamic groupings. While  

vociferous in his anti-imperialist rhetoric and antics --- which drew  

sanctions from imperialist countries --- he was objectively sowing  

divisions within anti-imperialist movements, as well as within the  

anti-zionist national liberation movement of the Palestinian people.



             In 1986, Reagan and Thatcher cooperated in an attempt to  

assassinate Gaddafi by bombing his residences in Tripoli and Benghazi.  

Gaddafi survived, but his adopted infant daughter and many more were  

killed, with hundreds also maimed and wounded. Despite Gaddafi’s extremist  

and reactionary policies, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930),  

through its mass organizations, condemned the US-UK terrorist attack on  

Libya. Thereafter, imperialist sanctions were ratcheted up against Libya,  

and more assassination plots were prepared against Gaddafi, finally  

intimidating Gaddafi.



             In 2000, a weary Gaddafi again played god in the Philippine  

south, this time for the purpose of mending fences with the imperialists.  

The Abu Sayyaf, a bandit break-away group from the Islamic secessionist  

movement in Mindanao had taken 21 hostages (including 10 European and  

other western tourists) from the Sipadan dive resort in Malaysia, and kept  

them captive in the southern Philippine island of Sulu. Gaddafi offered  

ransom of USD$1-Million for each hostage. The release of the European and  

other western hostages from the clutches of his former subalterns became  

his first offering to appease imperialism, never mind if the hefty ransom  

he gave only further emboldened these bandits to undertake more terrorist  

activities in our country.



             Further cozying up to imperialism after the Bush-Blair  

invasion of Iraq, Gaddafi dismantled Libya’s nuclear program in 2003,  

which step however gave relief to the whole world. This was followed by  

the payment of compensation to the victims of the bombing of the Pan-Am  

flight over Lockerbie (Scotland), and the granting of privileges to US and  

UK companies in the Libyan oil and other business sectors. Reports then  

have it that Libya disclosed to US intelligence agencies information on  

all the sundry armed groups that it had previously supported. Gaddafi’s  

many concessions to imperialism over the past decade have further  

diminished his credibility among progressive and anti-imperialist forces,  

and understandably, not a few of these forces have declared their  

solidarity with the Libyan revolt.



Prospects



             Some have characterized foreign interference in the Libyan  

conflict as poetic justice, considering Gaddafi’s earlier interference in  

the internal affairs of other countries. But what is at stake in Libya  

today is not just the future of Gaddafi and his family. What is at stake  

are Libya’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is a  

different matter to support steps toward democratic changes in Libya, and  

to support imperialist interference under the guise of assisting  

pro-“democracy” protesters.



             The popular masses of the Libyan people are demanding civil  

rights and democratic freedoms (including workers’ rights), an open system  

of laws not merely based on Sharia (Islamic law), a political system that  

would enhance the role of trade unions and other organizations of the  

working masses, and immediate measures for the amelioration of declining  

living standards.



             The PKP-1930 supports these demands of the Libyan masses who  

truly stand for democratic changes. The taking of immediate steps for the  

realization of these demands could help Gaddafi maintain his dwindled grip  

on power ; however, the Gaddafi regime has no long-term prospects, and  

could not be expected to take these steps while busy fighting for survival.



             It would also be an illusion to expect that the stooges of  

imperialism among the protesters --- the NFSL, the monarchists, the Muslim  

Brotherhood, or other pliant groups that imperialism could find among the  

latest defectors from the Gaddafi camp --- would support real democratic  

changes in Libya. The realization of democratic changes can only come with  

the quick organizing and mobilization of truly democratic Libyan mass  

forces in the midst of the present turmoil.



             While supporting the democratic demands of the Libyan working  

masses, the PKP-1930 at the same time opposes imperialist interference in  

Libya. In particular, the PKP-1930 strongly condemns imperialist plots to  

push a civil war in Libya in order to pave the way for imperialist  

military intervention and the eventual control of Libya.



             No to imperialist intervention in Libya ! Let the Libyan  

people make their own decisions and determine their own future, while  

preserving the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their country !



             No to imperialist interference in Libya and the other  

countries of the Middle East and North Africa !



Antonia E. Paris is General Secretary of  PKP-1930, The Philippines

204

South Tyneside Stop the War / Of revolutions which never were, and model Arab countries, which also never were

« on: February 28, 2011, 05:40:53 PM »

Of revolutions which never were, and model Arab countries, which also never were

by Nader Naderi

I am writing from Tehran amidst the “revolution”, and the uprising that BBC so assiduously has broadcast the
“eye witness account” of. The same “revolution” Hillary Clinton has come out in support of, and Obama has
promised to protect.

As you can all see, the electricity is off, so I am using a pedal generator; I have a lend of the hamster and the
hamster-wheel thereof, from my next door neighbour's little daughter, in an attempt to couple up the little critter to the generator for the benefit of running my computer, although I might add that I am not personally
exploiting the hamster, and I am typing away in the candle light! Oh the hardships, and the travails of it all.

It is getting so tiring, so repetitive and no longer even worth urinating on the so called “Media” in the “West”
(US and toadies Inc.), and the scoundrels posing as the political leadership of the “West”.

You all know that BBC, is busy pioneering cutting edge techniques of divining news of the events taking place
in Tehran from afar, through new methods developed; under the tutelage of Mystic Meg, whom is secretly
employed as a technical advisor (Wikileaks files soon to be released will tell of the project “newscasters whom
stare at crystal balls” (or for that matter any kind of balls they could have found to get busy with fondling,
polishing, etc. ####Editor's note; This last bit of revelations could have been put there to discredit the already
discredited money grabbing, and potential sex pervert, Julian Assange####)). This kind of reportage from the
doyen of broadcasting, leave the standards of other Media organisations to imagination, and it appears given the worst scenarios imagined somehow seem to fall short of the so called news disseminated for the consumption of the Western Audiences.

You will all recall the reportage on Tunisia as; “A Modern Arab State, that is a Model for other Arab states”, was getting broadcast around the clock at the beginning of the uprisings in Tunisia. This kind of venal reportage of the Embedded Media (embedded with the elite, and special interest groups) portrayed the
demonstrators on the streets of Tunis; getting shot at by the thugs of bin Ali, as; “Muslims Jihadists”, disaffected youth, and bread rioters.

All of the news snippets about Tunisia singularly failed to outline the repression exercised by bin Ali in the name of Modernism, and the humiliation he subjected the Tunisians to, in the name of Secularism. Fact that Tunisians had to apply for permits to attend Mosques for worship never made any news headlines, and even if these ugly actualities had been exposed in the current anti Islam, and anti Muslim hysteria sponsored and globally franchised by the Zionists would not have made much of an impact on the Western Audiences of the “news feeds” of the Embedded Media.

Map Showing Iran and the Persian Gulf as part of the Middle East

Illustration 1: As it can be clearly seen “no child left behind” is working at
Fox, hence the rearranged Geography. Now it all is clear why the
“Arabian” and not Persian Gulf.

The subsequent Egyptian uprising was portrayed as bread riots, and caution was advised for a “smooth reform”
whilst “I am a Zionist Biden” the US VP went on record defending Mubarak; “he is not a dictator” Biden
proclaimed on NBC, or was it CBS? Also Obama offered advice; “smooth transition”, and behind the scenes;
Suliman the head of secret services (head torturer) was appointed as VP for Mubarak. This was hailed as a
giant step forward in Egyptian politics, which hitherto did not have a post of VP.

The almost infantile kidding along engaged in by the Western Embedded Media, shamelessly promoted the
interests of Zionistan (Israel). This was concomitant with the worried AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee) dignitaries scurrying around to pull favours and force the Obama administration into declarations
of unity with Zionistan, and the dangers of a “democratic Egypt” to Zionistan.

Netanyahu the head honcho in Zionistan , taking precautions; urged his lackeys to keep mum on all things
Egypt. As he was contemplating the report to Knesset (Zionistan talking shop) by his chief of military
intelligence; General Aviv Kochavi whom was singing the praises of Mubarak's solid and resilient rule as ever
in Egypt, and sounding all is well, just about two weeks prior to the “bread riots” in Egypt.

Netanyahu and gang coping with the difficulties of being unable to express an opinion (a great torture for the
psychotic Zionists), did not manage to keep mum for long. Then their pent up emotions broke loose, along with
the patent fears; there goes the neighbourhood stool pigeon, now what do these Zionist do? The trumpets of
doom began to be blown yet again by the frustrated and tortured Zionists; “Muslims are coming, and soon in a
minute “Sharia Laws” are to be passed in the Western Capitals”!

Well so much for being in touch with realities for the great and the good in the West. The fact that, the policies of all out Anti Islamic hatred sewn by assiduous, and careful efforts to discount all Muslims as human beings, as well as cultivation of the negative stereotypes portraying Muslims, and their religion Islam as a substitute for; reactionary regressive, unreasoning, with a penchant for; “Jihad” (foreign words sound a lot more vile, dangerous and; anti everything, as we know it), “Terrorism”, “Extremism”, “Stick in the mud, down right anti; progress, technology, and women too (just ask Kilroy Silk).

All the while these great and the good reliant on their hand picked sock-puppets installed as vassals in situ in
the Mid East; not to kick up a fuss about such patent racism and overt discrimination against one fifth of the
planet's population.

The simple truth belying the franchise of the Anti Islam, and Muslim hatred of the Zionists becoming so
prevalent and acceptable across the West, served a twin purpose;

A- Zionists engaged in the genocide of the Palestinians, could enjoy being left alone if not supported for
their ethnic cleansing of these undesirable Islamic Untermensch (German term; Sub-Human), which
Zionists so openly talk over these, and go about killing these at will, and destroy their homes,
businesses, and lives, all in the way of realization of “Eretz Israel” (Greater Zionistan). As well as
realizing the rationale of Arthur Balfour; “loyal little Ulster amidst the Arab heartlands” , by recreation
of the sad and sorry Irish problem in the Mid East.

B- Muslims under the charge of the sock-puppets having lost all forms of cohesive unity, and, any kind
of “people organisations” due to the systematic disassembly's of all forms of movements that could
become dangerous mass movements, that in turn could pose grave threats to the vassals and their
sponsors given the expressions of any kind of people power.

The policies of divide and rule solely rely on the divisions, and intend to break up the masses in their;
cohesions, unity of purpose. In a bid to simply drive home; resistance is futile. Therefore rendering the
probable and potential people power ineffective.

The symbiosis of hate of all things Islamic among the vassals and their overlords, made possible the repression
of one in five human beings an acceptable and as a matter of course issue, that has become so acceptable to the degrees; as to be debated freely and without any fuss at the dinner tables of the Western Audiences as pointed out by Baroness Warsi.

The response to Warsi statements has been a deluge of the flood of indignation in the Embedded Media,
making the path clear for the anti Multicultural speech of Prime Minster Cameron, whom joined the illustrious
ranks of the Islam haters in Europe and US, by declaring; multiculturalism has failed.
Fact that Cameron declared the unipolar world as the only alternative for governance, at home and abroad, was in line with speeches of Merkle, and Sarkozy, and designed to drive home the discount of all other cultures, and nations, and instead offer a standard thread size groove that is narrowly defined as “our values”. The reflections of the savages that ought to be civilized at the points of bayonets, and the white-man's burden
abound, the Embedded Media picked up that baton with glee, and ran with constituting a new political party;
EDL. The elevation of thugs, and football hooligans to politicians was the crowning glory of antimulticulturalism
week.

Alas these great and good have not understood the mechanics of riding the Dragon of Hate, that could be
somewhat tricky to state the least. The mathematics of keeping one in five Muslims in fear of their lives,
through the proxy vassals, as well as military attacks and invasions of certain countries. As we all discern these
already weakened and none functioning countries were the prime targets for “freeing the heck out of”. In return
for worthless, and miserable commodities such as oil, minerals, booty, as rewards for the liberators.

Despite the fact these equations smacking of unlogic, and wishful thinking, and having no roots in reality, the
all out propaganda thrust has been unabated. This has been tantamount to a declaration of Islam as an
undesirable and “evil” ideology, in a bid to reduce the propensity of the Muslims in joining hands together in
the face of the relentless onslaught of; hate, humiliation, and cultural, political, and physical coercion, dished
out by the anti-multicultural Western leadership.

Although these lines of thoughts of the Western leadership has been all but a pipe dream, because the
“ideology” (as Anthony Linton Charles Blair often portrays Islam as) was a conjecture contrived in the West,
and no one bothered to teach it to the Muslims. Muslims only have gone about their worship and if a few of
these have happened to debate the inequity and injustices they were drowning in, whilst attending the prayers in the mosques, because there are no other places than the Mosques for these to gather in, to have a chin wag, with relative freedoms.

Furthermore, for the West to rely on the “free” resources and oil taken through coercive measures, only has
served to exacerbate the endemic problems created through paucity of thought, bankruptcy of ideology,
corruption, greed, malfeasance of public funds, as well as private equity, introduction of regulation to stop
enterprise at the micro level, and start-up businesses, promotion of inequity and injustice, and the lawlessness
thereof, at the higher echelons of society, business and commerce. This simply put is akin to a crack addict
mugging little old ladies over and again, to feed his crack addiction. All the while thinking he will never face a
little old lady brave enough to fight back, and or the little old ladies will never unite, and fight back by ganging
up on him.

Well the little old ladies have ganged up, and despite the screeching Jets firing on revolutionaries in Libya, and or helicopter gunships firing on the revolutionaries in Bahrain, the crowds keep fighting back and are in no mood to give up. The birth pangs of a new Mid East as explicated by Spinster Condi Rice, are well and truly under way. The only trouble being, these pangs were not suppose to induce such pain in the
wallet/posterior/neck of the West.

There is a lot of talk in the area, and elsewhere; the unrest having been planned in the West. This is entirely
true, because the reign of inequity, injustice, discrimination, hunger, poor quality of life, were all dreamt up in
the West for these large chunks of planet's population. These factors are at the basis of the revolution all around in the Mid East. Alas this was an inevitable course of conduct, for the Muslims trapped. They would only put up with so much humiliation, injustice, hunger, joblessness, austerity, and poverty all around.

The events of the past few weeks, have clarified the hypocritical policies of US, which on one hand uses “democracy”, “freedom” as bludgeons to hit over the head of the sock-puppets to keep these in line and contract out the mass coercion of the Muslims to. However, additionally the same is used to bludgeon the cowed and humiliated Muslims further, by pointing out their miserable quality of life, to be their own fault for following Islam the “backward ideology”.

The win, win formulae of the West has only hit one snag; the slaves no longer buy into the dreams of “cultural”
superiority of the West. Furthermore the term “secular” is rapidly becoming an unbearable insult, resultant of
all the years of the humiliation endured by these Muslim nations in search of the “democracy” that was
supposed to be arrived at by ditching all their values and value systems. Therefore, regardless of the portrayal
of the Islamic roots of the revolutions as “protests”, as “bread riots”. Those taking the beatings, and shootings,
and watching their loved ones getting buried; know damn fine well, what they want; none of the Western
dreamt solutions.

Those Western leaders whom stood up and berated Multiculturalism, somehow failed to see; what is good for
the goose principles. The uncertain future has began, as vast swathes of the underclass stand up for their share of the bounties; the god given natural gifts, which so far have been transferred into the bank accounts of the filthy rich, super rich, and unbelievably rich. The simple fact is; these masses are not feeding their money and power addictions, they are fighting for survival and a livelihood, and a chance to live free from; malice, coercion, anxiety, hunger, humiliation. These latter are inalienable rights of every human being alive on this planet.

Therefore, to see the Western political leadership scurrying around, and trying to come up with new
arrangements for manning the deposed vassals posts. All in the hope of obtaining status quo ante; to go back
to business as usual is a pipe dream that will be resulting in many more deaths to come.

The fact that these failures of policies are so overtly apparent; Is seen in the plans for evacuation of Brits from
Libya. The civilian charter companies are being asked to send their assets; passenger liners, and crew thereof
into a war zone. The none compliance of the charter companies results in aircraft sitting on the apron of the
airports, whilst the ex-pat Brits are sweating it out in Libya, and the riots are breaking out in the airport, in a
scramble to get on board the last flights out of Dodge so to speak of. The Embedded Media pointing out the
sitting ducks on the aprons of airfields. However, singularly fail to question, where are the military aircraft to
simply fly out and engage in a routine cargo lift?

We all know the answer to this question; these military aircraft are in Afghanistan and Iraq theatres, engaged inpacifying Afghans/Iraqis whom are fighting to push back the invaders out of their country, and their homeland. However, as we all know stating this kind of proposition in the current fascist climate is a crime in itself, if not downright terrorism (any one daring to disagree causes instant terror in the hearts and minds of the liars whom have come to rely on everyone to be in locked step and to have fallen behind their great leadership, come what may). Simple fact that inconvenient questions open big cans of worms, are as welcome as a farts in the church service. Hence instead the Embedded Media come up with the stories of; “Poppy burning made Remembrance Day observer's 'stomach turn' ” as headlined by Guardian, and even more to the point (pointing out the target of the routine two minutes hate) was headlined by Metro (the free paper) as; “ War veteran's grandson: Islam poppy-burning demo 'sickened me'”, not forgetting the rest of the Embedded Media, whom also ran with the trial of this section five offence in a magistrate court, as it were a first degree murder case unfolding in the high courts.

Never mind the ugly fact that all Britons ought to come to grips with; you are on your own, and principles of
every man for himself, women and children last, fully apply. Instead of bothering to think about the
implications of the lack of public facilities, and reliance on contracted out services, best hate those Moslams
even more, because they burnt make-believe or replica poppies on armistice day and shouted out at the end of
the two minute silence.

http://tinyurl.com/5rwnjl5

The grandson of a Second World War soldier felt "sick inside" as Muslim extremists burned replica poppies on the
anniversary of Armistice Day in west London, a court has heard.

Tony Kibble said tears of anger and rage welled in his eyes as members of Muslims Against Crusades chanted "British soldiers burn in hell" while he attempted to mark a two minute silence.

 Mohammad Haque, 30, and Emdadur Choudhury, 26, are accused of jointly carrying out the burning of three oversized plastic poppies in a way that was likely to cause "harassment, harm or distress" to those who witnessed it.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Mr Kibble said: "They (The MAC) carried on shouting throughout the two minute
silence. Half way through, I looked up to see what was going on around and I saw a ball of fire fall to the ground. Literally, my stomach turned over."

He continued: "I felt sick inside. It is something that means so much to me and to see what I believed to be a wreath of poppies fall to the ground - it is just despicable."

As it is seen, the emotions of a grandson of a veteran (umpteen times removed wannabe participant in a war
that everyone but their granny was involved in one way or another in Europe and across the planet, after all it
was a world war). Has been alarmed or harassed, and distressed at seeing what he “thought” (but belief is used
because it is more positively absolutely thought) to be a “wreath” (oh the humanity of it, just to think of all
those little pretty paper cuttings, in the shape of flowers getting burnt, where do these savage Moslams come
from, why these coloured bastards just don't get lost and get out of our white lands?) Is seeking justice. On theother hand is this not the kind of Orwellian; we have always been at war with Eurasia?


Nice to know that our stenographers in the Embedded Media having exhausted the carnage under way in the
Mid East, and the causes of such a blow out in the pressure cooker environment imposed on the Mid East are
reporting on the agonies of poor little grandson of a veteran whom we never find out where he fought at? For
all we know the chap could have been serving with the home guard (that could be another extremists talk),
seeking justice in the courts. The same courts, which are getting shut down to save money, because the
coalition government is trying to make good the monies that the last bunch of fraudsters in charge gave to the
banksters to make good their losses, notwithstanding picking up the tabs for the wars that the same bunch of
crooks started based on packs of lies, and cheap stunts.

Hence as it is seen; Multiculturalism has failed, as the replica poppy burning Moslams, appearing in public,
clad in their menacing beards, hats, and tunics; causing alarm with their blood curdling shouts, and speaking in
tongues. Therefore, either these mad Moslams are kept under a close leash by a strong arm dictator, or they
could be free to set up a Moslam government and in no time pass “Sharia Laws” in the united nations, and force
everyone to burn replica poppies on armistice day, while munching on roasted poppy seeds and or nan bread
covered with poppy seeds.

In conclusion, the fact that Western policies are seen to have passed their sell by date so to speak of. As well as the unfolding events in Mid East being reminiscent of the beginnings of the breakup of the Soviet Union, in
which events in Libya are closely resembling the Romanian revolution. We can assume the breakup of the US
empire is under way. This giving way to emergence of a new kind of world, in which reason and logic, will
start to play a greater part, as opposed to the emotions and beliefs which have been the predominant diet of the Western Political discourse. Furthermore, rise of the emergent super powers, post the demise of the US, will
closely resemble the demography of the people on the planet, which makes Muslim block a sizeable force that
deserves a better deal, than the one offered to it for the duration of last few centuries.

Therefore, the futile Anti Islam rhetoric engaged in by the leaders of some of the European Nations, only serve
to inflame the already difficult relationship among differing groups residing in these countries. This is
extremely counter productive to progress of these nations into a future, in an emergent world where;
meritocracy, logic, justice, social justice, and freedom of culture, religion, freedom of choice in modes of
governance are prevalent. A future where exceptional-ism no longer is a shield against unreason, and it is
frowned upon, instead of being celebrated, and promoted.

At the expense of sounding crass; the train is leaving the old Arrangements Station, and those seeking to remain on the platform will have a tough job to get on the next train, because the railway line is no longer operational after this last train has left for the destination Future.

205

General Election 2010 / South Shields Hustings

« on: April 25, 2010, 03:16:49 PM »

Last night was the Hustings in South Shields organised by Faiths and Churches together in South Tyneside.  It was chaired  by Reverend Rowena Frances. There were two candidates missing one they genuinely could not get hold of .  The other BNP was not within the churches recommendation they seem more progressive than the electoral law as the urge people to vote only for candidates that include the whole community and of course the BNP  are openly excluding and targeting Muslims and demanding they "return to their own countries". Of course the big parties and the monopoly media are the real concern for us because responsible to this immigration racism and targeting Muslims and immigration, criminalising them but of course they don't openly say it in their manifestos.   About 60 people attended.  Our contributions were cut down to two minutes and then half way through one minute and it made it very difficult to  make our points and explain what this alternative to war was all about.  Someone in the audience said David Miliband seemed surprised that there was an uncompromising alliance against the war from Shirley and I and clearly when there is a conspiracy of silence in the election on Afghanistan it made him uncomfortable.   The Liberal candidate wanted to know why I spoke about this twice and hadn't realised that and alliance was developing against the bloc between the three big parties on this. You have got you pro-war bloc so we have our anti-war bloc is I think what I said to him and he laughed and  said fair enough.

206

General Election 2010 / Education

« on: March 02, 2010, 06:36:25 PM »

"Why we all should chase a dream":

New Labour's Nightmare Vision for Education

Reproduced from North East Workers & Politics, Vol.2 No.13, November 6, 2002

On October 29, 2002 an article by David Miliband MP, Schools Standards Minister, was featured in the North East Journal newspaper's education supplement. The article was entitled "Why we all should chase a dream". The author addresses the dream in the introduction when he says "education is vital to developing the region's potential and if we can get education right, by making the investments and supporting the teachers, we will have a real chance of reversing economic decline, improving the quality of life and strengthening communities". But the fact that the dream David Miliband is still chasing is really New Labour's nightmare vision is revealed if the reader happens to know the reality and if one is fully woken up to the facts. Schools, universities and colleges are all suffering massive cutbacks on all fronts. Whether it be the take-over of new schools for profit under PFI by the private sector, the worsening conditions and pay of teachers and lecturers, the increasing of fees to students, introduction of top-up fees, and so on. Even in David Miliband's own South Shields constituency, so far, the schools standards Minister has yet to take a stand against the proposed closure of sixteen junior schools and nurseries. Many of these schools belong to the poorest communities in the borough where the people consider these schools and nurseries to be at the heart of their own communities and do not think that their "quality of life is strengthening" when they are having to fight these proposed closures.

Undeterred by this thought, David Miliband then addresses himself to the question that "education remains the number one goal for the government in its second term". What is key in this, he explains is the "reform of the secondary level". And this means the government is "expanding specialist schools and the city academies, not giving up on the comprehensive principle, but modernising it so that it effectively serves the people who matter most – the pupils". He identifies the problem that a significant number of young people "turn off education between 11 and 14, but we also need to tackle the culture of pupils leaving school at 16, making sure they've got the skills that employers need".

Having in one sentence said who matters most – the pupils – David Miliband in the next sentence reveals this modernisation has nothing to do with the needs of the pupils and raising their level of education but is about "making sure that they have got the skills that employers need". Elaborating this point that the pupils must develop the skills that employers need he advocates that if the curriculum on offer is "more vocational, broader and practical, then it is more likely that young people will be enthusiastic about staying within education". He tries to clinch his self-serving argument by saying that "we must emphasise that learning is not uncool but something that will help them live their dreams" and "its important we remember that education doesn't just belong in the class room". He then goes on to argue for improvement in adult education emphasising only literacy and numeracy skills.

His words come at a time when the government is cutting back in general adult education and focusing the remaining resources on numeracy and literacy skill directly linked to the interests of the employer. So, according to the School Standards Minister, the youth will regain their enthusiasm to learn once the education system is in line with a curriculum that is "more vocational, broader and practical" and then an adult education system which concentrates on numeracy and literacy skills. In other words, the youth will "live their dreams" as long as they accept the status quo and remain marginalised. New Labour's vision is that education at school and afterwards must gear itself to a low wage mass unemployment economy, where workers get behind their employers in the global market, where people learn to accept that job security is a thing of the past and that they must switch in an out of work according to the needs of these employers who will come and go to make maximum profits out of what they produce, or what services they provide.

A modern education system, if it is to be progressive, must not narrow down education to a vocational level but must prepare the youth and adults with a broad understanding and scientific outlook towards the present day world. Education should enlighten people about the world and present day events and their history. Education should enable people so that they can better stand up for their rights and interests, and the rights and interests of the collectives to which they belong, in a world of global monopolies and cuts in social spending and public services and a world that is being plunged into war by the big powers. The youth need education that raises their level so that they can think and act for themselves and start to end their marginalisation from decision making in society so they can fully participate in society and change how it is run and how it is organised. Education is a right and society must raise the level of the education of the youth and all in society so that they are equipped to play their part in the fight to humanise society and the environment.

207

General Election 2010 / Torture

« on: February 15, 2010, 09:45:03 AM »

The Binyam Mohamed case: Top UK judges find US and Britain guilty of torture
WSWS, February 13 2010

The Appeal Court in Britain this week rejected efforts by the Foreign Office to suppress seven paragraphs of a report drawn up by British judges in August 2008, based on their access to more than 40 US intelligence documents. The paragraphs, now published in redacted form on the Foreign Office web site, find that Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was subjected to treatment that "could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities."

The posted document also states: "The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972."

Ethiopian-born Mohamed, a British resident, was arrested in Pakistan on April 10, 2002 as he was about to board a flight to Britain. After being imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan, he was turned over to the FBI.

A victim of extraordinary rendition at the hands of the CIA, he was flown to Morocco, where he was again tortured, including being slashed with scalpels or razor blades on his chest and penis. He was then moved to Afghanistan, where he was frequently tortured in the infamous "Dark Prison" before being finally detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

There he was held for four years, again suffering torture and abuse. He was released in February 2009 without charge, after nearly seven years in prison.

Mohamed is suing the British government on the grounds that the M15 intelligence agency was complicit in his torture and provided questions and information to his interrogators.

The legal attempt by Foreign Secretary David Miliband to suppress the incriminating paragraphs of the judges’ report is part of a broader effort to suppress findings that implicate the US and British governments in war crimes. The Obama administration has been a full partner in these efforts. It demanded that the British government suppress the findings on Mohamed on the grounds that their publication would damage security and intelligence cooperation between the two countries. Miliband cited the position of the US to argue that disclosure would threaten British national security.

In response to the British Appeal Court ruling and publication of the contested paragraphs, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Obama, stated, "As we warned, the court’s judgment will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship with (Britain), and it will have to factor into our decision-making going forward."

The British government’s arguments were dismissed by Sir Igor Judge, the lord chief justice; Lord Neuberger, the master of the rolls; and Sir Anthony May, president of the Queen’s Bench. In his ruling, May rejected the claim by the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown that disclosure would threaten the UK’s national security.

He said, "In principle, a real risk of serious damage to national security, of whatever degree, should not automatically trump a public interest in open justice which may concern a degree of facilitation by UK officials of interrogation using unlawful techniques which may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

The judges had little choice in rejecting Miliband’s appeal, given that Judge Gladys Kessler, in a US court case involving Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed, a Guantanamo prisoner from Algeria, had previously acknowledged that the account of Binyam Mohamed’s torture was based on "credible" evidence. In her now declassified ruling, Kessler stated, "Binyam Mohamed’s trauma lasted two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food.

"He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in plots to imperil Americans. The government does not dispute this evidence.... even though the identity of the individual interrogator changed (from nameless Pakistanis, to Moroccans to Americans)."

Lawyers acting for the British Foreign Secretary had previously accused the Appeal Court judges of "charging in" to a diplomatically sensitive issue and "jeopardising UK intelligence sharing." Miliband said that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the case, which was being followed carefully at the highest levels in the US "with a great deal of concern."

The Appeal Court judges agreed to withhold one paragraph, number 168, which is particularly critical of MI5. The legal parties were given until yesterday to oppose the decision to suppress paragraph 168.

The paragraph is already known to make even clearer the damning verdict against the US, MI5 and the British government. A leaked letter to the Appeal Court from David Miliband's defence lawyer, Jonathon Sumption QC, demanded that the paragraph be removed on the grounds that it was "likely to receive more public attention than any other parts of the judgments."

Sumption noted in his letter that in the still-suppressed paragraph of the draft judgement, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, refers to MI5 officers as having "deliberately misled" parliament and of sharing a "culture of suppression."

These observations, Sumption argued, "will be read as statements by the Court" that MI5 "does not in fact operate a culture that respected human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques," and "was in particular true of Witness B [the MI5 agent who visited Binyam in Pakistan in 2002 and is accused of collusion in his torture], whose conduct in this respect is characteristic of the service as a whole."

Neuberger apparently states that "'it appears likely that there were others."

In his letter, Sumption continues that it will be concluded that "officials of the Service deliberately misled the Intelligence and Security Committee" and that this suppressed information was shared "by the Foreign Office."

The letter warns that "the suggestion that the Court should distrust any UK government assurance based on the Service’s advice and information will unquestionably be cited in other cases."

Lord Neuberger told the court that, after receiving the letter, he had agreed to amend the relevant section "quite significantly." But his attempt to stem the tide has failed.

The partial publication of the suppressed paragraphs has already created a major political crisis. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg demanded to know if ministers were told the US had changed its rules on torture after the 9/11 attacks, stating that either the government knew, or MI5 was engaged in a cover-up.

"We can only conclude that the Security Services either kept the information to themselves, or they informed ministers who failed to act immediately," Clegg said. "Both of these would suggest at best a cover-up and at worst collusion in torture. Knowledge of Britain’s potential complicity in torture looks likely to have gone to the very top of government."

Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis told the BBC there were 15 other cases that suggested a culture of collusion or complicity in torture by both MI5 and MI6.

Kim Howells, the chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), launched a public defence of MI5 head Jonathan Evans, rejecting accusations that he had misled Parliament. He stated that he had seen no evidence that MI5 had colluded in torture, flatly contradicting the judges’ findings. Again contradicting the judges, he claimed that Evans had assured him that MI5 had not withheld any documents relating to Mohamed’s treatment from the ISC.
 

208

News Items / Sunderland Stop the War Coalition

« on: November 11, 2009, 07:58:37 AM »

Sunderland Stop the War Coalition
Afghanistan: Why We Should Bring the Troops Home

45 Stop the War supporters attended Tuesday's public meeting in
Sunderland with Clare Glenton, wife of Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, the
soldier who faces desertion charges for refusing to return to Afghanistan.
Disgracefully, he has now been arrested and charged with five further
offences for speaking against the war! http://stopwar.org.uk/content/
view/1593/1/

£86 was also collected and several more people joined the coach to the 'No
to NATO' demo in Edinburgh on Saturday (see below).

The coach is now full, but it may be possible to get a larger coach, so
please let me know if you still need seats.

The war effort in Afghanistan is starting to fall apart at the
seams. We will shortly reach the hundredth British soldier's
death this year, and there is talk in military circles of
withdrawing British troops from the frontline.

There is growing opposition amongst MPs as well as unease
amongst senior military figures. The Independent on Sunday
called for the end of the war on its front page yesterday and
other papers are becoming very critical of the war.

Most important of all, 73% of the population now believe the
troops should be brought home soon and there is growing
opposition to the war amongst the troops.
Now is the time to step up the pressure on government to bring
the troops home.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Stop the War groups will be organising protests and vigils
around the country on the tragic day when the hundredth
British soldier this year dies. The figure now stands at 95.
Please contact your local Stop the War group for details.
There will be vigils in both Newcastle and Sunderland at 5-6pm (more
details to follow shortly - supporters should bring their own suitable
banners and placards.

On December 21st, members of soldiers, ex-soldiers and
military families will be taking our Bring the Troops Home
Petition to Gordon Brown in Downing Street. More than 15,000
have already signed, but we want to get many more signatures
before December 21st. You can sign online at
http://bit.ly/ft6BP, but we are also asking everyone to
download a hard copy of the petition, get your colleagues and
friends to sign and return to the office.

209

For Your Information / The geopolitics behind the phoney US war in Afghanistan

« on: November 11, 2009, 07:56:34 AM »

The geopolitics behind the phoney US war in Afghanistan
by F. William Engdahl*

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Obama Presidential agenda is how little anyone has questioned in the media or elsewhere why at all the United States Pentagon is committed to a military occupation of Afghanistan. There are two basic reasons, neither one of which can be admitted openly to the public at large.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Behind all the deceptive official debate over how many troops are needed to “win” the war in Afghanistan, whether another 30,000 is sufficient, or whether at least 200,000 are needed, the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured.

Even during the 2008 Presidential campaign candidate Obama argued that Afghanistan not Iraq was where the US must wage war. His reason? Because he claimed, that was where the Al Qaeda organization was holed up and that was the “real” threat to US national security. The reasons behind US involvement in Afghanistan is quite another one.

The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia.

Geopolitics of Afghan Opium
According even to an official UN report, opium production in Afghanistan has risen dramatically since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. UNODC data shows more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This is no accident.

It has been documented that Washington hand-picked the controversial Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun warlord from the Popalzai tribe, long in the CIA’s service, brought him back from exile in the USA, created a Hollywood mythology around his “courageous leadership of his people.” According to Afghan sources, Karzai is the Opium “Godfather” of Afghanistan today. There is apparently no accident that he was and is today still Washington’s preferred man in Kabul. Yet even with massive vote buying and fraud and intimidation, Karzai’s days could be ending as President.

The second reason the US military remains in Afghanistan long after the world has forgotten even who the mysterious Osama bin Laden and his alleged Al Qaeda terrorist organization is or even if they exist, is as a pretext to build a permanent US military strike force with a series of permanent US airbases across Afghanistan. The aim of those bases is not to eradicate any Al Qaeda cells that may have survived in the caves of Tora Bora, or to eradicate a mythical “Taliban” which at this point according to eyewitness reports is made up overwhelmingly of local ordinary Afghanis fighting to rid their land once more of occupier armies as they did in the 11980’s against the Russians.

The aim of the US bases in Afghanistan is to target and be able to strike at the two nations which today represent the only combined threat in the world today to an American global imperium, to America’s Full Spectrum Dominance as the Pentagon terms it.

The lost ‘Mandate of Heaven’
The problem for the US power elites around Wall Street and in Washington is the fact that they are now in the deepest financial crisis in their history. That crisis is clear to the entire world and the world is acting on a basis of self-survival. The US elites have lost what in Chinese imperial history is known as the Mandate of Heaven. That mandate is given a ruler or ruling elite provided they rule their people justly and fairly. When they rule tyrannically and as despots, oppressing and abusing their people, they lose that Mandate of Heaven.

If the powerful private wealthy elites that have controlled essential US financial and foreign policy for most of the past century or more ever had a “mandate of Heaven” they clearly have lost it. The domestic developments towards creation of an abusive police state with deprivation of Constitutional rights to its citizens, the arbitrary exercise of power by non elected officials such as Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and now Tim Geithner, stealing trillion dollar sums from taxpayers without their consent in order to bailout the bankrupt biggest Wall Street banks, banks deemed “Too Big To Fail,” this all demonstrates to the world they have lost the mandate

In this situation, the US power elites are increasingly desperate to maintain their control of a global parasitical empire, called deceptively by their media machine, “globalization.” To hold that dominance it is essential that they be able to break up any emerging cooperation in the economic, energy or military realm between the two major powers of Eurasia that conceivably could pose a challenge to future US sole Superpower control—China in combination with Russia.

Each Eurasian power brings to the table essential contributions. China has the world’s most robust economy, a huge young and dynamic workforce, an educated middle class. Russia, whose economy has not recovered from the destructive end of the Soviet era and of the primitive looting during the Yeltsin era, still holds essential assets for the combination. Russia’s nuclear strike force and its military pose the only threat in the world today to US military dominance, even if it is largely a residue of the Cold War. The Russian military elites never gave up that potential.

As well Russia holds the world’s largest treasure of natural gas and vast reserves of oil urgently needed by China. The two powers are increasingly converging via a new organization they created in 2001 known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That includes as well as China and Russia, the largest Central Asia states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

The purpose of the alleged US war against both Taliban and Al Qaeda is in reality to place its military strike force directly in the middle of the geographical space of this emerging SCO in Central Asia. Iran is a diversion. The main goal or target is Russia and China.

Officially, of course, Washington claims it has built its military presence inside Afghanistan since 2002 in order to protect a “fragile” Afghan democracy. It’s a curious argument given the reality of US military presence there.

In December 2004, during a visit to Kabul, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld finalized plans to build nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia. The nine are in addition to the three major US military bases already installed in the wake of its occupation of Afghanistan in winter of 2001-2002, ostensibly to isolate and eliminate the terror threat of Osama bin Laden.

The Pentagon built its first three bases at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, the US’ main military logistics center; Kandahar Air Field, in southern Afghanistan; and Shindand Air Field in the western province of Herat. Shindand, the largest US base in Afghanistan, was constructed a mere 100 kilometers from the border of Iran, and within striking distance of Russia as well as China.

Afghanistan has historically been the heartland for the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy then was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.

Afghanistan is similarly regarded by Pentagon planners as highly strategic. It is a platform from which US military power could directly threaten Russia and China, as well as Iran and other oil-rich Middle East lands. Little has changed geopolitically over more than a century of wars.

Afghanistan is in an extremely vital location, straddling South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Afghanistan also lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, along with Enron and Cheney’s Halliburton, had been in negotiations for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant at Dabhol near Mumbai. Karzai, before becoming puppet US president, had been a Unocal lobbyist.

Al Qaeda doesn’t exist as a threat
The truth of all this deception around the real purpose in Afghanistan becomes clear on a closer look at the alleged “Al Qaeda” threat in Afghanistan. According to author Erik Margolis, prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, US intelligence was giving aid and support both to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. Margolis claims that “The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.” [1] The US clearly found other means of stirring up Muslim Uighurs against Beijing last July via its support for the World Uighur Congress. But the Al Qaeda “threat” remains the lynchpin of Obama US justification for his Afghan war buildup.

Now, however, the National Security Adviser to President Obama, former Marine Gen. James Jones has made a statement, conveniently buried by the friendly US media, about the estimated size of the present Al Qaeda danger in Afghanistan. Jones told Congress, “The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

That means that Al-Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan. Oops…

Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of Al-Qaeda are scarcely to be found. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hunted by US drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. For Arab youths who are al Qaeda’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”

If we follow the statement to its logical consequence we must conclude then that the reason German soldiers are dying along with other NATO youth in the mountains of Afghanistan has nothing to do with “winning a war against terrorism.” Conveniently most media chooses to forget the fact that Al Qaeda to the extent it ever existed, was a creation in the 1980’s of the CIA, who recruited and trained radical muslims from across the Islamic world to wage war against Russian troops in Afghanistan as part of a strategy developed by Reagan’s CIA head Bill Casey and others to create a “new Vietnam” for the Soviet Union which would lead to a humiliating defeat for the Red Army and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now US NSC head Jones admits there is essentially no Al Qaeda anymore in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is time for a more honest debate from our political leaders about the true purpose of sending more young to die protecting the opium harvests of Afghanistan.

 F. William Engdahl

Author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation.. He also authored A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press). His latest book is Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium Press).

 
 

210

News Items / The First Casualty Of War: News Reports Match Misperception Of Civilian Deaths,

« on: November 06, 2009, 07:57:11 AM »

The First Casualty Of War: News Reports Match Misperception Of Civilian Deaths, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 6, 2009) — Researchers reporting in BioMed Central's open access journal Conflict and Health found that the discrepancy in media reporting of casualty numbers in the Iraq conflict can potentially misinform the public and contribute to distorted perceptions and gross underestimates of the number of civilians killed in the armed conflict.

In February of 2007 Associated Press conducted a survey of 1,002 adults across the United States about their perceptions of the war in Iraq. Whilst the respondents accurately estimated the death toll of U.S. soldiers (the median estimate was 2,974 while the actual toll at the time was 3,100), they grossly underestimated the number of Iraqi civilian casualties (the median answer was 9,890 at a time when several estimates put the toll at least 10 times that number and some as high as 50 times that number).

To assess the potential reasons for this discrepancy, Schuyler W. Henderson and colleagues at Columbia University examined 11 U.S. newspapers and 5 non-U.S. newspapers to collate the number of Coalition and Iraqi fatalities reported in the media between March 2003 and March 2008. They specifically looked at tallies (numbers of death over a period of time) and the descriptions of specific casualty events.

The results of their study showed U.S. newspapers reported more events and tallies related to Coalition deaths than Iraqi civilian deaths, although there were substantially different proportions amongst the different U.S. newspapers. In four of the five non-US newspapers, the pattern was reversed.

The authors of the study suggest that as newspapers reflect the interests of their readers, it is not surprising that U.S. newspapers describe more casualties related to Coalition deaths than Iraqi civilians, however they go on to question whether this is consistent with the goals and tenets of ethical and accurate journalism.

"We feel that this study casts an important light on the role of the media in covering armed conflict and communicating the human costs of war to the public" said Schuyler. "Our paper calls into question the role of the media in providing a tool for civilians to accurately gauge the true effects and outcomes of military action and ongoing warfare."

Journal reference:

Schuyler W Henderson, William E Olander and Les Roberts. Reporting Iraqi civilian fatalities in a time of war. Conflict and Health, 2009; (in press) [link]
Adapted from materials provided by BioMed Central, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.