Time to let go of the Ring of Power!

From time to time on this blog I’ve covered the topic of the overseas polices of the Australian Greens – in an attempt to blow the whistle on polices I’ve seen as more and more at odds with Greens’ principles.

My efforts go back a few years now and I probably need to face reality: they’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Should I just shut up and forget about The Greens? Perhaps. Should I roll over and accept that Bob knows best? That at least is not an option. It might be nice to rejoin the fold, but I KNOW it would be based on a lie. Bob does not know best; he’s making a real hash of foreign policy.

Not ready yet to leave The Greens in peace to support war, this is my best attempt to portray graphically what’s most fundamentally wrong with decision-making in the Australian Greens on foreign policy issues. If it isn’t dominated to a most unhealthy degree by Bob Brown and a few close (and nameless) advisers, The Greens do a great job faking it.

Bob Brown’s expertise in foreign affairs doesn’t seem substantial to me. That’s a factual observation – not a judgment. The Senator has been an effective advocate in many other policy areas and his role in building The Greens in Australia already assures him a place in history. No-one can know everything.

Yet Bob Brown hogs the Foreign Affairs, Defense & National Security portfolios within the Greens and has done so for years, although (Burma, East Timor & West Papua have been spared Brown’s incompetence in the latest allocation of responsibilities – lucky for them!). It’s a real shame for most of the world, because these days whenever Bob says anything about somewhere overseas he’s rarely mentioned before (Libya and Syria spring to mind), it makes me feel like wincing. I can almost guarantee – even before I’ve heard his words – that he’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick and is poking it in the wrong direction.

Under his dismal mismanagement, the Party with an exemplary Charter that advocates non-violent conflict resolution, self-determination and grass roots democracy has morphed into a routine supporter of NATO military intervention and the crude imposition of forced ‘solutions’ on nations that were actually managing OK beforehand – and certainly gain nothing from bombing, infiltration by western spooks and all the rest of it. Oh – and I nearly forgot to mention, these weird neo-imperialist polices are issued like edicts by Bob and one or two other equally imperious Parliamentary “leaders”, without any regard to opposition from rank and file Greens members or (what remains of) Australia’s peace movement. So that’s “Grass Roots Democracy” Bob? Pull the other leg!

Under Bob Brown, the Australian Greens took almost a month, after the Israelis began savaging Gaza from air, sea and land back in 2008/9, before any of them said a word about it in public. When Bob’s statement came it was wishy-washy in the extreme.

It’s true the Greens now oppose Australia’s troops fighting in Afghanistan – but even there the record is blemished. As recently as 2007 Brown was criticising the USA for not putting more of its war offort into Afghanistan!

In the case of Libya last year, Bob Brown & co led the Greens into uncritical support for UN “intervention” – a euphemism for massive and sustained NATO aerial bombing over many months, funding and training of “rebels” with very dubious backgrounds and motivations, injecting special forces into the mix and actively formenting civil war that continues to this day.

After half a year of one-sided brutality, NATO’s bombing spree culminated in the destruction of both government and governance in a nation that prior to “humanitarian intervention” had achieved the highest UNDP Human Development Index rank in Africa and proudly boasted the continent’s highest life expectancy & lowest infant mortality.

Libya was a nation that,a year ago, had hundreds of billions of cash reserves, close to double digit economic growth, highly ambitious infrastructure projects and free public healthcare and education. It was noted for women’s rights. It had helped fund projects in Africa as a whole that had helped transform the life of hundreds of millions.

All this apparently didn’t impress Bob (if he was even aware of it – one can’t be sure because he never responded on these points to critics and needless to say the media never asked him to). Bob  knew best what was best for the Libyan people and rushed to join the pack of mainstream media and conformist politicians, as soon nas well-crafted zionist propaganda painted Ghadaffi as the devil incarnate and a gaggle of instant Libya experts, purportedly motivated by (one-off) concern for the well-being of Libyans appeared on the scense, shrieking in outrage about alleged Libyan Government atrocities that have since been exposed as falsifications.

After “humanitarian intervention” morphed into hell on earth, and a Libya “No Fly Zone” turned into 8,000+ bombing sorties entailing tens of thouands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of refugees and the ruination of a nation – I naively hoped Bob Brown & his advisers might at least realise they’d been fooled. Bob Brown’s lack of public contrition, I assumed, was the result of embarrassment.

But no, Senator Brown is now onto the Syria Crusade in much the same way – again backing the wrong horse, demanding the demise of one of the last remaining secular and pluralistic states in that region, on the say so (presumably) of the same knaves and charlatans who sold him the utterly disastrous Libya “intervention” a year ago. He made his first statement about Syria last July, hours after the zionist commentator Ted Lapkin goaded him in the media. Then a long silence… until last week, when Bob tried to upstage the Gillard Government in his passion for “regime change” in Syria by suggesting it’s time to close the Syrian Embassy in Canberra.

It’s even possible I played some small and inadvertant part in this latest debacle. Last week, I tweeted Brown regularly on the topic of Syria – mainly to beg him to raise questions in Parliament about the trashing of the Syrian Embassy in Canberra on February 4th, in which some 40 thugs invaded the Embassy, terrorised staff, vandalized the place then vanished. Australia’s burgeoning “Counter-Terrorism” forces (another charade?) have apparently been unable to find any of the culprits since. A day or so later, a Syrian man was shot three times in the legs by two armed assailants in Punchbowl, Sydney; he was shot on his doorstep and may be permanently crippled as a result. As he happened to be pro-Assad, the media showed little interest – and none at in recent days. I asked Bob Brown to take up both matters in the Senate. I received no reply to any of my requests, as usual – but perhaps Brown’s statement that the pesky Embassy should probably be closed was my answer.?

Under Bob Brown’s leadership, the zionist bias of the Greens has arguably become worse than that of the Australian Government itself – mirroring the disgusting pro-war, pro-Israel role played by Euro-Green zionists in countries like Germany. On the issue of whether or not to break diplomatic ties with Syria, Brown’s position approaches the one-sided mania of the fanatical zionist Labor MP for Melbourne, Michael Danby.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so very sad. But it’s worse than sad, it’s dangerous. Once Bob Brown issue a statement on foreign policy, the Greens’ loyalty syndrome kick. Once he passes judgment on who should be in power in Libya, Syria etc, few Greens are willing ro speak openly in favour of alternative approaches. Thus it is that a peace movement that’s already weak in this country is effectively throttled inside Parliament – silencing even the handful of politicans who were, in part, put there by activists who care passionately about peace and international justice.

It’s time Bob Brown hands on The Ring of Foreign Policy to safer hands within the Party.

The way things are heading now, The Greens should be challenged at the next Federal election by politicans and parties who WILL speak out loud and clear for PEACE and against this sordid revival of imperialism. Unless they change course fast, the Australian Greens need to be opposed by candidates who, not to put too fine a point on it, are sufficiently savvy about zionism to have graduated from wearing short pants. In the Senate contest there may well be a significant vote for outspoken peace candidates. At the very least, this would force the Greens to justify their own polices in open debate.

In this year, 2012, with the drums of war beating along the Road to Damascus and beyond – beating as loud as at any time over the last 50 years – we need articulate peace advocates in Australia like never before.

Sane, moral and courageous international policy is too precious to be one man’s personal possession.

_______________________________________

It takes about ten minutes to see through the lies and nonsense perpetrated during last year’s furore for “regime change” regarding Libya.

Have Bob Brown and his mysterious foreign policy advisers ever taken that time to understand the lies they helped to spread about a formerly prosperous nation that had done Australia no harm?

Who knows? They probably just rely on advice from a chosen few, such as “Amnesia International” (watch the vid!) and the creepy zionist Euro-Green Franziska Brantner whose named was sometimes mentioned in a reverential tone on the rare occasions critics were able to get anything resembling an answer from Greens HQ apologists for Bob Brown’s Libya policy.

More must-see videos at TheHumanitarianWar.com

Several days have passed since the dramatically memorable 20th of October, when news flashed around the world that Muammar Ghadafi had been captured – a story amended within an hour to the news he’d been captured and subsequently killed.

Within the ranks of Ghadafi supporters, there was much confusion. The initial reaction of many was disbelief. To be fair, even today, there’s no absolute certainty that the man seen savaged like a fox among hounds was actually Muammar Ghadafi. Some refuse to believe he was captured at all and insist this is yet one more case of media lies, fakery and psy-ops. For all I know, they could be right. I do hope so. The day a verifiable new video message from Ghadafi is tweeted around the planet would be the day the mainstream media’s credibility goes into free-fall.

My own assessment, for what it’s worth, is less optimistic. I think Ghadafi probably was murdered on October 20th – just as his son Moutassim was murdered around the same time (see Mutassim Gaddafi captured alive – but then shown dead (VIDEO).

In both cases, there appears to be genuine footage of some of their last moments, following their capture. In both cases, the prisoners are clearly alive, yet they died soon afterwards (Moummar was dead by the end of the video in all likihood – so it really is a ‘snuff movie’!)

Murder – whether pre-meditated or in an outburst of rage – is the only feasible explanation in the case of both father and son.

The footage of Muammar  Ghadafi’s last moments appears to cover the drama of his death. On the 20th October, the first item to be released by the mass media was a single frame (a still photo) from the video. It showed Ghadafi’s bloodied corpse.

About an hour later, the video from which that frame had been extracted was shown too. I initially came across it here: Gaddafi dead: Video of leader’s initial capture (EXCLUSIVE).

The hands of Ghadafi's killer? (screenshot at 2.20)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to download the flash video. Doubtless technology exists to do that, but I don’t have it. What I did do, on Oct 21st, just a few hours after the reported death, was take a few freeze frames (screenshots). I did this because someone on Twitter suggested to me that there appeared to be a few western special ops types in the mob surrounding Ghadafi.

I captured a couple of frames in particular – snapped at 2.20 and 2.22 respectively in the video as it was on October 21st. They show in one case a pair of hands and in the other a face, both of which look more European/Caucasian than Arab/Berber. I tweeted these images and speculated in my tweets whether this individual was the real killer.

Is this pink-faced man Ghadafi's killer?

Prior to that time in the video, Ghadafi was getting beaten and abused – but was still clearly alive and conscious. Seconds afterwards he seemed to be dying. Someone shot him. It’s since been reported there were two bullets. One was to the head. Ghadafi was most likely shot at close range, not ‘in crossfire’ as the NTC implausibly claims to this day.

My suspicion is Moummar Ghadafi was deliberately murdered by a trained killer. His survival was not left to chance.

Martin Iqbal, another commentator who’s been following the horros in Libya closely, wrote an article about the death of Ghadafi on October 22nd: The ‘rebel’ assassination of Muammar Gaddafi: a NATO operation from A to Z. It drew on a report in Debka.com. Iqbal is a first-class analyst and his website is a must for regular visits. Yet I disagree with this particular article. As he acknowledges, Debka.com is an Israeli website known to peddle Zionist disinfo. However, in this instance, Iqbal thinks its report may be accurate as the report doesn’t directly impact on Israeli interests. Personally, I doubt that it is fully accurate. I note that since the 24th Iqbal’s article features an update, referring to a Daily Telegraph article published on the 20th, entitled Col Gaddafi killed: convoy bombed by drone flown by pilot in Las Vegas. The gist of that article is not far from the scenario I believe to be accurate.

Debka’s theory is presented (as always) as fact (never as a hypothesis or possibility). Its theory/fact is that Ghadafi was actually captured by western special ops in Sirte days before, then shot in both legs to prevent his escape and released into the mob of angry NTC warriors to ensure a nice, bloody, pack execution – great propaganda.

One problem with this is there’s no evidence in the video that Ghadafi was crippled at the outset. Nor does Debka’s scenario seem plausible to me.  Had special ops really captured Ghadafi, I think they’d either have  killed him there and then – or set up a tidier photo-op for his staged death.

My own theory (which I emphasise is just a theory – I’ve no claim to divine knowledge), is that Ghadafi was captured more or less as the official narrative suggests. His convoy probably was hit by NATO strikes while attempting to leave Sirte. Amazingly, he escaped that strike and took shelter in a large drain by the road, but was pursued by NTC  ’rebels’.

He was then dragged out of that hiding place, which is when the video began rolling. The footage starts  from a higher vantage pint – presumably up on the road. The cameraman (in reality, this footage was likely taken by a mobile phone) followed the mob down to the side of the road. That’s where the killing took place.

The mob was clearly treating Ghadafi in a way that no military or police captive should ever be treated. He was being slapped around, punched and abused – but there were no signs of lethal assault. It’s likely a single assassin (two at most) delivered the bullets which actually killed him.

The video doesn’t enable me to conclusively identify the killer – although expert analysts may be able to do better. But  there are some rather interesting frames. I showed a couple above, which appear to depict a man of non-Libyan appearance who was in the right place at the right time to kill Ghadafi.

Is this man western special ops? It seems clear special forces operatives were ordered to keep an eye out for Ghadafi in Sirte – and kill him if located. Hillary Clinton’s comments in Tripoli only a day before affirmed that murdering him would be quite acceptable top the US Government. I think that was the public face of an official order to execute.

My theory is that the video was released shortly after the photo to allow time for it to be quickly checked. Presumably, the goal was to scrub any frames that might implicate westerners in the killing. However, the checking was rushed and a few frames slipped through that do suggest the involvement of a trained western killer.

Returning to the same video today (more than 3 days after it was first posted online), I notice possible use of digital white-out in some frames. Is this to obscure the identity of the killer?

Not being able to capture the original video to hard drive, I can’t now go through it frame by frame. However, I did take a couple of screenshots on the 21st. Today, I returned to the same URL to take more. This time I noticed a few more peculiarities, including one frame that  appears to have been subjected to the digital equivalent of white-out (see right). Have frames been changed since the video first went online? Without a downloaded version, I can’t check. Maybe someone else out there grabbed one?

Today GlobalPost is running a follow-up story with more video and the even more lurid title Gaddafi sodomized: Video shows abuse frame by frame. I won’t get into the sordid question of whether Ghadafi really was abused in this manner in his last moments. Even if he was, it didn’t kill him. Bullets killed him. What interests me more is that the video at the base of that page appears to have the same snuff movie shown by GlobalPost on October 20th – but when I try to extract frames from that version around the 2.22 mark, I get slightly different results (shown below). Again, there are frames suggestive of editing. But this time, no part of the face of the man I quipped is “Mr Special Ops’ appears in those frames I could capture as screenshots.

I’m speculating, but… it seems to me some attempt may have been made to ‘lose’ the pink-faced individual who featured rather clearly in the video I originally screen-shot on October 21st. The top-left frame above shows less of him than before. Has the top-right been retouched to present an Arab (as opposed to European) appearance? The two fames on the bottom both appear to have been whited-out. It may be purely an artefact of the camera/light, but it certainly looks like digital white-out. What was there originally?

Are the psy-ops artists gradually correcting the minor mistakes they made on the 20th in order to rush out the video? That’s my suspicion. The Debka story somewhat increases it. In Debka’s narrative, special ops actually let Ghadafi go. My theory is the opposite. Debka would probably run a deceptive story like that as a favour to its CIA/MI6 buddies.

The BBC also ran a story on 23rd September entitled Does new video provide clues as to who killed Gaddafi?, suggesting that a young dark-skinned man, shown on video being feted by his NTC colleagues, was the self-confessed killer. It’s possible that’s true, I suppose, but I can see no sign of his face in the death-sequence video (can you?). Today, there’s another “I killed Gaddafi“ story, this time via The Sun and RT. It names a man who’s allegedly confessed to the murder. His face seems different from the man in the BBC story. All very confusing. My suspicion is these stories are to throw us all off the track…

There's a lot of them around, usually off-camera. This western sniper in Sirte was captured on film a few days before Ghadafi's murder; when he saw the camera, he said "shit!" in an American accent

One way or another, the Libyan leader was killed by NATO. The NATO countries set up the execution, even if a Libyan pulled the trigger. But like so much of this war, I’d guess the murder of Moummar Ghadafi was so important to the imperialists they daren’t leave the outcome to chance. I suspect it was a westerner who pulled the trigger – and that there’s been a rather clumsy cover-up since to obscure this.

Zionists have wanted Ghadafi dead since 1973 if not before. Libya joined Egypt in the 1973 war against Israel and Libyan jets went into battle.

Zionists have long memories. Through their allies and agents in successive US Administrations – and within British and American spookdom – they kept the flame of hate alive, trying again and again to Ghadafi him as the decades rolled by. This year, it appears, they finally achieved their gruesome goal courtesy of western military and special forces.

With Moutassim also murdered, the assault on the Ghadafis is looking more and more like a systematic attempt to exterminate a family that was viewed as potential source of opposition to Empire. Over the decades, the Kennedy family in the USA, the Bhuttos in Pakistan and Ghandis in India have suffered similar ‘culls’. For the Ghadafis, exterminations have been concentrated within the span of a few months,

All surviving members of the family may well be in danger, including those who’ve left Libya such as Aisha Ghadafi. Seif Al-Islam is certainly a prime target and international public opinion should mobilize in his defense. We must DEMAND there are no more another ‘accidental’ killings!

The brutal murder of Muammar Ghadafi was just one of many, many thousands of murders in Libya in this evil, externally-fabricated war. Like the hero the western media said he wasn’t, Ghadafi died alongside his people. Like ALL Libyans whose lives have been snuffed out by murderers, his family and supporters deserve real justice.

It just so happens that in his case, unlike the other nameless thousands, we have real evidence to bring to bear, even though it may already be coated in layers of disinformation.

Murder most never go uninvestigated and should always be subject to justice. This is a basic hallmark of civilized society.

It’s time people everywhere demand that our global civilization is redeemed from further debasement by murderers in power.

UPDATE 26th Oct: A short video Gadaffi Death. NATO WAS THERE. PROOF! was posted on YouTube yesterday. It’s just come to my attention via Twitter. More evidence of western special ops in the mob that killed Ghadafi…

Ghadafi's murderer?

A video posted on the same YouTube account on October 22nd - GADDAFI. DEATH. The Liars - documents rather well the many highly contradictory ‘official’ statements about the deaths of Muammar Ghadafi, his son Mutassim and security chief Abdullah Al-Senussi who also died in captivity on the same day.

I also just came across another screen-shot, taken by someone else, from the video of Ghadafi’s death.

This may be the clearest image yet of the murderer of  Muammar Gaddafi (see right).

POSTSCRIPT (Nov 9th 2011):

Mahmoud Jibril, former chair of the executive board of Libya’s National Transitional Council was interviewed by CNN recently and expressed suspicions about the killing of Ghadafi that are essentially the same as my own.

Perhaps now Jibril has resigned from an NTC leadership role he feels more able to speak truthfully?

Below is the text of a recent message to Libyans from Aisha Ghadafi, daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi.

Until the unprovoked attack on Libya earlier this year, Aisha was a young international lawyer who also served as a United Nations Development Program National Goodwill Ambassador (focusing on the issues of HIV/AIDS, poverty and women’s rights).

Aisha Ghadafi

Having lost her husband and one of her children to NATO bombs, Aisha entered Algeria some weeks ago and almost immediately gave birth in a border hospital.

Despite western attempts to vilify her, she shows quite outstanding qualities of courage and decency.

At some point the west will come to its senses and realize Libya is yet another failure for its intevnetionist policies.

The imposed coup d’etat has no popular base and Libya is ungovernable without consent.

Yet again ‘western’ nations have been manipulated into a war by Zionist criminals, who care nothing for the prosperity of west nor east, north nor south – and whose rise to dominance is on a ladder made of the suffering of others.

We will need people of the caliber of Aisha Ghadafi to rebuild hope and help set Libya once again on the path to peaceful progress.

Aisha Gaddafi letter to the Libyan People

23rd September 2011

To the great people of Libya,

I salute you.

I will not tell you that victory is approaching, but that we live victorious every day for the last 8 months and we are lining up a victory which has never been witnessed in history.

40 countries, with their attacks using planes, missiles and technologies by air and sea and utilizing their agents on the ground. And the Libyan people are still resilient and fighting. I commend these heroes and I congratulate all of the Libyan people, along with your Great Leader, whom I bring relief to you and inform you is currently well. He is well Thank God, and is also faithful to God and remains in high spirits. He bears a weapon and is fighting on the battlefield with his sons, side by side with the Libyan fighters. This is Muammar Gaddafi, putting himself forward to become a fighter and a martyr with his sons.

The Emir of Qatar. An ugly Zionist stooge who overthrew his own father in 1995

Compare this sight with that of Qatar with the Prince who presents and puts forward a crown prince who cried like a girl because they were granted the World Cup 12 years from now.

This gives you (the Libyans) the right to be proud of your leader!

Shame and disgrace to the Arab leaders who were swayed and participated in the slaughter of The Libyan People. And it is unfortunate that Arab nations witnessed this slaughter for 8 months and have not flinched nor stood up and risen against it.

But I call on the lions of Tripoli, the lions of Tarhouna, the eagles of Wershifanna, and the lions of Assabia and Mashaseeya and Arshaydat and Ajaylat and Awayell to the Lions of the Ancient city of Sabha to the lions of Sirte, Abusleem and El-Hadhba (All tribes within Libya) and all of the heroes of Tripoli, the resilient. And to all Libyan fighters from the West to the South.

I call on you and I call on you, I call on you, I call on you! (Quoted in a way that a female muslim heroine once was depicted saying it in ancient Islamic battles) Link up! Persevere! Be Patient! Protest! God the holy the merciful said, “If there are 100 persevering and patient, they will defeat 200 and if there are 1000, they will defeat 2000. God is with the persevering and the patient.” – Quote from the Quran.

To the silent, I will say to them. What do you have to say about the humiliation that is the new regime, what sort of regime is this? These are familiar faces, which you know very well:

Starting with ABUSHENNA (Mustafa Abdul Jalil) that gave his loyalty and obedience to my Father and betrayed him. Mahmoud Jibril who gave his loyalty and obedience to my brother Saif El-Islam and betrayed him. Shalgam was loyal for 40 years and Betrayed. Trekki the idiot was loyal and obedient for 40 years and betrayed. Ghogha was the captain of the lawyers and loyal and betrayed. Bilhadj who gave an oath and a guarantee and broke it. Others, among others exist. All of these people betrayed and broke their oaths which they gave before, who says they will not break oaths and promises to you?

And to the NATO rebels, if you have any common sense or logic to use …. NATO, who when they wanted to invade Afghanistan and in Iraq, they landed boots on the ground, because they could not find any traitors who were willing to take up arms against their fellow countrymen. Sadly, they found such people within Libya who would take up arms against the chests of their fellow Libyan brothers. This is why I will say there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Believe in God (Allah), Believe in God (Allah). God (Allah) is all I need. He is the best guardian.

Finally, I would like to quote my brother, who when I asked him to be careful and look after himself on the frontline with his brothers …. I will never forget his words:

“I WILL MAKE A TRAIL WITH OUR BODIES SO THAT THE PEOPLE OF LIBYA CAN WALK ON THEM TO VICTORY!”

To the heroes of Libya, do not disappoint our martyrs. Avenge them, avenge them, avenge them!

“Victory cometh, only an hour’s patience.”

Peace be upon you and the Mercy of Allah and His Blessings.

___________________________________________

NOTE: this is an English language translation of Aisha Ghadafi’s 23rd September message, sourced here.

It’s a truism that whereas one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

The media knows this very well. At every stage in the premeditated heist to steal Libya’s wealth and attempt to negate it’s independence, the western media personalized the conflict.

In the beginning (c Feb 2011) we had “heroes” like the Benghazi journalist Mohammed Nabbous who poignantly predicted his own (apparent) death (but who was he really?). Later came ‘rape victim’ Iman al-Obeidi who burst into the Rixos Hotel and spread a trail of disinformation havoc until even her media minders tired of her antics. There have been more characters in this multi-act drama, each crafted to evoke the sympathy of a particular segment of opinion such as human rights advocates and feminists. In this way, a war has been sold to an effective majority of western public opinion as both reasonable and ethical, despite the rather obvious fact it has zilch to do with human rights and is likely to trigger a huge backwards step for womens’ empowerment in the nation concerned.

On the very top of the media ‘s Libya cake… it pours lashings of demonization! Vilification of the ‘enemy’ has focused on the Libyan leader, Muhammar Ghadafi and his family. We’ve heard again and again about old frame-ups such as the killing of PC Yvonne Fletcher and of course Lockerbie – the biggest anti-Ghadafi lie of all time, a lie so useful they simply refuse to let it die.

Since the bombed-out ruins of the ‘Ghadafi compound’ in Bab al-Aziziya have been trawled by CNN reporters, looters and other disreputables, there’s been a succession of post-invasion”evil Ghadafi” stories. And of course, each day brings another horror story of Ghadafi’s (alleged) ‘victims”. Each victim has a face, a name, an abbreviated life-story packaged into a minute or so of TV. It’s very sad what’s happened to them, of course, and as in Afghanistan, Iraq or Serbia (but with different identities in those cases) – it’s always the Great Evil One who’s to blame. “The west” is only there to help and record TV footage so we get to know about it, isn;t it?

Mohanned Magam at Tripoli's Million Man Rally for Ghadafi, July 1st 2011. Within a few weeks this fine young man would be dead.

Meanwhile, a real and quite atrocious war continues to grind on in Statistics Land, a war of which we hear little more than rumours.

A few days ago, a ‘rebel’ spokesman estimated 50,000 have now died in Libya civil war / bombardment by NATO. It’s a far higher figure than anything previously mentioned in the mainstream media. Yet the statistic seemed to elicit no expressions of surprise, regret or conscience on the part of any commentator. Not that I noticed. The new casualty figure was noted and passed over, as though that’s the kind of thing that “just happens” in war. N0 reference to the cause – deliberate, malevolent, persistent war-mongering on the part of vicious and duplicitous external aggressors – that’s brought this prosperous nations to a state of ruin in half a year.

Cities still under loyalist control are being bombarded mercilessly, as far as one can tell. The day Tripoli was first invaded by special operations forces landed by sea, some stories were run about how NATO bombing was set to tail off very soon. That hasn’t happened. Out of sight of western media, those in Libya who still resist, one presumes, are being pummeled by aerial bombing.

A few genuine independent journalists, while they were in Libya, helped rectify the balance for those of us around the world (a fairly small minority, of course) who followed their reports. Now they’ve been forced to leave. In a previous essay about Libya I used the analogy of the board game  ’Go’. ALL the reporting we have now is from one side only – one colour on the Go Board, It might be appropriate to use ‘white’ to signify that (pro-NATO) side of the conflict. Yet there are still large areas of Libya where the legitimate government is still effectively in control. By recent accounts, that applies to parts of Tripoli. We get only snippets from those areas, often described as ‘no go’ by western journalists.

Anyone resisting NATO probably has a lot more than the prospect of death from the sky to worry about. The basic infrastructure of the nation – including, crucially, the recently installed fresh water reticulation system system – has been trashed and restoring it is now a matter for the ‘rebels’. Is this ultrastructure working in places such as Sirte that hold out against the NATO-backed insurgency? I can’t get accurate reports on this, but somehow doubt it.

Like a medieval siege on a grand scale, population centres such as Sirte are RIGHT NOW undergoing collective punishment on a horrific scale. How long before 50,000 dead becomes 100,000? How long before there are mass epidemics?

A ‘UN intervention’ rationalized as necessary to protect civilians has morphed into an gigantic assault on civilians that may prove the bloodiest yet in Libya’s imperialism-ridden history. This is pure evil, on our watch.

The UN continues to fail. Where are demands in the UN Security Council for a ceasefire to distribute aid, restore infrastructure and above all stop the slaughter? Why hasn’t the General Assembly met to demand a stop?

An African Union with any self-respect would start behaving like equal members of the international community – not colonial side-kicks. UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 make no reference whatsoever to NATO, or to bombing. So how come that’s what was rolled out in practice?

The answer, at least in part, is that the US, UK and French rogue State simply took the initiative to start attacking using the “any means necessary” catchall. They bribed, bullied and cajoled to get this more generally accepted, and gradually dropped any real pretense their actions were designed to “protect civilians”. But by then they had forces deployed and a ferocious PR campaign in progress. The weak (and/or corrupt) UN Secretary General simply went along with this. Possession, as the saying goes, is “nine tenths of the law”.

What prevents the AU from doing the same? Why shouldn’t the African Union provide genuine humanitarian aid by direct aerial drops? Why not insist AU peace-keeping forces are put on the ground right now? What is NATO going to do? Attack South African planes for delivering water and food to cities in need? Sometimes a little aggression to save lives is necessary – even if NATO has just trashed the entire concept of R2P. Take a risk for peace, for God’s sake!

Lizzie Phelan, one of the heroic independent journalists who most certainly took risks reporting from Tripoli until NATO’s invasion, helped personalize the conflict in a way that even from afar affected me personally. I remembered from her report about Tripoli’s huge July 1st rally in support of the Ghadafi Government the rather haunting profile of a young man on the roof, with the vast crowd below. Thanks to Lizzie, he has a name, as well as a face, for those of us outside Libya: Mohanned Magam.

It turns out Mohanned was killed during the invasion of Tripoli by NATO proxies: see Mohanned Magam, Murdered by NATO’s terrorists in Libya. R.I.P.! Mohanned is a memorable symbol for the countless thousands of other human beings in Libya, whose lives have also been destroyed in this manufactured war, fine human beings who to outsiders like me don’t have names or faces…

Aisha Gaddafi: the first popularly elected President of Libya?

As for the alleged family of demons that do have names and faces, doubtless not all of Ghadafi’s family live exemplary lives. It would be rare to find any large family consisting only of saints. But the psy-op tittle-tattle circulated since February that Ghadafi had fled the country proved to be just that. Meanwhile, his family has been decimated by NATO bombs. He’s lost grandchildren, at least one son and a son-in-law. The western media tried to portray him as an unpopular, isolated coward, but he’s proven them utterly wrong. The Ghadafi family has directly shared in the suffering of the Libyan people. And resistance continues…

I’ve heard it said that the brightest and most charismatic of all Ghadafi’s children is his daughter Aisha. Trained as an international lawyer, she was part of Saddam Hussein’s defense team after his arrest in Iraq. She served as an Aids Ambassador for UNESCO until early this year, when her role was terminated abruptly by that increasingly compromised institution. On 27th August, with NATO bombs raining on Tripoli, Aisha gave an interview to the New York Times. The Daily Mail reported on it:

Speaking to the Western press for the first time in months, Ms Gaddafi, 36, gave an insight into the fatalistic outlook of the Libyan regime, describing how she talks to her children about death in order ‘to make them ready’. 

She said she likes to tell her three young children bedtime stories about the afterlife ‘because in a time of war you never know when a rocket or a bomb might hit you, and that will be the end.’

The Daily Mail chose to run this story with the twisted headline: Gaddafi’s daughter taunts Obama and Hillary Clinton and says: ‘You never know when a rocket or a bomb might hit you‘

What a rotten culture of deceit infests the western mass media!

A previous "act of aggression", 2011 years ago

On Monday August 29th, it’s reported that Aisha crossed the border into Algeria. She gave birth almost immediately on arrival in a small oasis town. Her husband already killed in the conflict, she sought a place of refuge, away from the bombing, to give birth to new life.

The response from the NATO-backed TNC? It described Algeria’s reception of the Ghadafis as “an act of aggression“.

So according to the ‘Government’ western nations are forcing on Libyans under pain of death, dropping 30,000+ bombs is humanitarian, while providing a manger in a stable is “an aggressive act“.

According to the old saying: ”The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

The walls of hell, it would appear, are plastered with unadulterated bullshit.