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How The Press Hides The Global Crimes Of The West

By Richard Lance Keeble – Media Lens – June 9, 2016

One of the essential functions of the corporate media is to marginalise or silence acknowledgement of the history – and continuation – of Western imperial aggression. The coverage of the recent sentencing in Senegal of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, for crimes against humanity, provides a useful case study.

The verdict could well have presented the opportunity for the media to examine in detail the complicity of the US, UK, France and their major allies in the Middle East and North Africa in the appalling genocide Habré inflicted on Chad during his rule – from 1982 to 1990. After all, Habré had seized power via a CIA-backed coup. As William Blum commented in Rogue State (2002: 152):

With US support, Habré went on to rule for eight years during which his secret police reportedly killed tens of thousands, tortured as many of 200,000 and disappeared an undetermined number.

Indeed, while coverage of Chad has been largely missing from the British corporate media, so too was the massive, secret war waged over these eight years by the United States, France and Britain from bases in Chad against Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi. (See Targeting Gaddafi: Secret Warfare and the Media, by Richard Lance Keeble, in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the ‘Arab Spring’, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, Abramis, Bury St Edmunds, 2011, pp 281-296.)

By 1990, with the crisis in the Persian Gulf developing, the French government had tired of Habré’s genocidal policies while George Bush senior’s administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for co-operation in its attack on Iraq. And so Habré was secretly toppled and in his place Idriss Déby was installed as the new President of Chad.

Yet the secret Chad coups can only be understood as part of the United States’ global imperial strategy. For since 1945, the US has intervened in more than 70 countries – in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. Britain, too, has engaged militarily across the globe in virtually every year since 1914. Most of these conflicts are conducted far away from the gaze of the corporate media.

Reporting of the Habré sentencing has been predictably consistent across all the leading newspapers in the UK and US. Thus the focus has been on the jubilant reactions of a few of the victims of Habré’s torture and rape, on the comments from some of the human rights organisations involved for many years in the campaign to bring the Chad dictator to justice – and on the fact that it was the first time an African country had prosecuted the former head of another African country for massive human rights abuses. Only a tiny part of the reporting has mentioned the West’s role in the genocide. None of the reporting has placed the Chad events in the broader context of US/Western imperial aggression.

The story in the Guardian, by Ruth Maclean, was typical. Some 21 paragraphs were devoted to the report. But only in the last one (appearing almost as an after-thought) was there any mention of US complicity:

The US State department and the CIA propped up Habré, sending him weapons and money in return for fighting their enemy, Muammar Gaddafi.

In a follow-up editorial on 1 June 2016, the Guardian again left mentioning the West’s role until the last paragraph:

Many questions still remain unanswered, including several concerning the responsibility or complicity of Western countries, such as France and the US, which actively supported Habré during the cold war years, turning a blind eye to his methods.

The Telegraph adopted a similar approach. Aislinn Laing, based in Johannesburg, reported briefly:

Mr Habré, 73, is a former rebel leader who took power by force in Chad in 1982 and was then supported by the US and France to remain at the helm as a bulwark to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

Adam Lusher, in the Independent, devoted just eight words to contextualising the trial:

Hissène Habré was once backed by America’s Cold War-era CIA.

In the New York Times, buried in paragraph 24 of a 27-paragraph report by Dionne Searcey are these words:

Mr. Habré took power during a coup that was covertly aided by the United States, and he received weapons and assistance from France, Israel and the United States to keep Libya, to the north of Chad, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, then the Libyan leader, at bay.

Similarly, in Paul Schemm’s 23-paragraph report in the Washington Post, his paragraph 15 reads:

Supported by the United States and France in his wars against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, Habré was accused of killing up to 40,000 people and torturing hundreds of thousands.

Neither the Los Angeles Times nor the Belfast Telegraph could find any space to mention the West’s complicity.

Intriguingly, the final paragraph in the Guardian‘s report also included a statement by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, which ‘acknowledged his country’s complicity’:

As a country committed to the respect for human rights and the pursuit of justice, this is also an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connections with past events in Chad.

But how hypocritical is this rhetoric given the fact that the US today is still supporting human rights offenders across the globe – including the current dictator of Chad, Idriss Déby. Moreover, the Western powers, the US and France in particular, are using Chad as a major base for their covert military operations in Africa.

A number of newspapers have commented on how the case set an important precedent for holding high-profile human rights abusers to account in Africa. Yet there has been little mention of the extraordinary background. For in June 2003, the US actually warned Belgium that it could lose its status as host to Nato’s headquarters if the Habré case went ahead on the basis of a 1993 law, which allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad. Campaigners determined to bring Habré to justice only then shifted their attention to Africa.

William Blum comments in the introduction to Killing Hope (p. 13) on the US’s secret wars:

With a few exceptions, the interventions never made the headlines or the evening TV news. With some, bits and pieces of the stories have popped up here and there, but rarely brought together to form a cohesive and enlightening whole; the fragments usually appear long after the fact, quietly buried within other stories, just as quietly forgotten…

How perfectly this both predicts and explains the corporate media’s coverage of the Chad dictator, Hissène Habré!

• Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln since 2003, has written and edited 36 books. In 2014, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association for Journalism Education.

June 10, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ireland Continues to Remember 1916 and Continues to Betray It (With Some Canadian Help)

By Aidan O’Brien | CounterPunch | June 9, 2016

Dublin.

Do you remember Ireland’s 1916 commemorations in late March? Do you remember the spectacle? Do you remember all those fighting words and strong images of national independence and national justice? The attention of the world was on Dublin for a few days and Dublin played the part of the rebel city. Well it was all a bit too real and too popular. And for that reason it had to be officially repressed as soon as possible.

The official repression occurred on May 26 when the Irish state honoured the British soldiers who butchered Dublin in 1916.

That’s right! It’s worth reiterating: a few weeks after glorifying the 1916 birth of modern Ireland, the Irish state on May 26 turned around and honoured the men who stuck a bayonet through the heart of modern Ireland. Think about that.

The Irish state needless to say was doing this on the sly. In a military graveyard somewhere in Dublin the Irish state together with the British army prayed for the British war dead of Easter 1916. It was a semi-secret ceremony because the Irish people would’ve been insulted otherwise.

You must remember that the Irish state isn’t the Irish people. The Irish state being more in tune with the UK and the EU (and of course with the USA) than with the Irish people.

One brave Irish protester (Brian Murphy) however did sneak into this prayer for the Empire to register the disgust of the Irish (the living and the dead). But the words “insult” and “disgust” were barely out of his mouth when the Canadian ambassador (Kevin Vickers) attacked him.

That’s right! It’s worth repeating: Canada’s representative in Ireland attacked a peaceful Irish protester at a gathering in Dublin to honour the Empire that viciously attacked Ireland in 1916. Think about that.

The Irish media thought this Canadian defence of the British Queen was funny. But the Irish media are so detached from the Irish people they might as well be located in Canada. So the “Irish” declared the Canadian ambassador to be a hero. And the peaceful Irish protester? He was arrested. Then mocked.

In contrast the Canadian media and the Canadian government understood the craziness of the incident and felt a bit embarrassed.

But not the Irish. Nothing it seems embarrasses the Irish state and the Irish media. They continue to feel around in the dark – looking for a Dollar here and a Euro there and to hell with Ireland.

So on May 31 Ireland’s memories of 1916 moved north of the border. In Belfast the Irish state continued to honour the British military. This time the object of “Irish” respect was the British navy. The excuse was the number of Irishmen who died at sea while fighting for Britain in the First World War.

Standing alongside British royalty the Irish state tossed “red poppies” into the sea. Why? Why honour cannon fodder if you’re not condemning at the same time the practice of using people like cannon fodder? Why honour the desperate Irishmen who joined the British army for economic reasons if you’re not at the same time condemning the economic conditions that turned the men into mince meat?

Why recall Irish mercenaries without questioning the system? Because the contemporary Irish state is a mercenary itself. One that is trapped in similar economic conditions to those of 1916. Conditions which force   one to betray oneself. And ethics in general.

On May 26, the same day that the  Irish state was praying for the British who butchered Dublin, the Irish Treasury was informing the Irish people that Ireland’s national debt amounts to €207 billion.

In 2007 Ireland’s debt was €47 billion. So the treasonous Irish bank bailout of 2008, and the equally bad EU enforcement of this bailout in 2010, more than quadrupled “overnight” Ireland’s debt burden.

And today? The Irish Treasury broke down the figures. Each Irish worker it said “owed” €102,000. And servicing this debt cost each Irish worker in tax€3,400 a year. In 2007, in comparison, the servicing of Ireland’s national debt cost each Irish worker €900 a year.

According to Bloomberg the Irish Treasury got its sums right. Ireland’s national debt per capita ($48,730) is the highest in Europe. Indeed on a per capita basis the “unsustainable” Greek public debt ($31,850) is more attractive than Irish debt. In fact in the world, only Japan’s per capita public debt ($77,660) surpasses Ireland’s. Tiny agricultural Ireland however is not mighty Japan.

And who does Ireland owe? According to Britain’s Daily Mail : in 2010 Ireland owed the British banks  £88 billion. This means, in short, that Ireland owes Britain £88 billion worth of “red poppies”. And to hell with 1916.

One might feel sorry for Ireland’s financial predicament. But it was self inflicted. Indeed the two political parties that emerged from Ireland’s revolutionary years (1916-1921) and have since ruled Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, both share the blame. The former pressed the “bailout button”. And the latter kept the finger on it.

And these two kamikaze decision makers are the ones who now decide to treat the butchers of Ireland and Ireland’s mercenaries with as much respect as Ireland’s Freedom Fighters. Ireland’s moral compass to put it mildly, is broken.

Ireland’s debt trap is an immoral trap in every way. Because it can only be serviced by nonstop payments to the Empire: the NATO establishment. And these payments are not just financial but political as well. Indeed the payments involve culture and history too. Ireland’s debt in a word is totalitarian. And it is swallowing the truth. The truth about the past as much as the truth about the present.

And Kamikaze “Ireland” continues to crash itself into 1916. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil managed to form an administration at the beginning of May. One acting as government and the other acting as opposition. Nonetheless the Irish people remain leaderless. And that probably is a good thing. Since the solution to the debt and to history remains in the streets.

At this point it’s worth repeating a few words from Ireland’s 1916 Proclamation of Independence:

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefensible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.”

Think about that. About the betrayal and the solution.

Aidan O’Brien is a hospital worker in Dublin, Ireland.

June 9, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Will Anyone on the Left Stand Up for Brexit?

By Oliver Pawley | CounterPunch | June 9, 2016

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, The IMF, David Cameron, George Osborne, Hillary Clinton, Mark Carney — it’s a list of names that many on the left would surely like rather see condemned than side with in a democratic debate. Yet the build-up to the forthcoming referendum on Britain’s EU membership sees them doing exactly that. While those figures emblematic of exiting the EU — Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage — aren’t very appealing to those of liberal instincts, allying with them offers a chance to shake-up the status quo. In an age where democracy is heavily curated by corporate power, is it not better to assume a disruptive islander mentality than a supine federalist one? Will anyone on the left stand up for Brexit?

Rousseau once mocked British democracy by claiming the British public were ‘free only during elections’. Given that it was 1975 last time we had a referendum on European membership and a great deal of power has been transferred from our parliament to the EU since then, by Jean-Jacques’ logic it’s 41 years since we were last ‘free’. Should Britain really fear being in charge of its own affairs more than continuing along its current path?

If we consider domestic politics in Britain we see a governing Conservative Party that in its last two budgets has attempted to rob from the poor and give to the rich to such an extent that it has caused national outcry. Plans to remove tax credits for low earners in 2015[i] and reduce benefits for the disabled this year[ii] have had to be rescinded. With some laughably optimistic predictions about fiscally beneficial future growth the Chancellor, George Osborne, manages to hang on to his tax cuts for the rich. The British public are starting to see what a Tory majority looks like in practice and it’s quite a shock compared to the coalition government that preceded it. Then, the Liberal Democrat party acted as set of humanitarian reins to steer the Conservatives away from their worst excesses and sacrificed itself electorally as a result. Up and down the land voters are feeling the effects of savage cuts to the budgets of their local councils: youth centres are closed, roads go unrepaired, and teachers lose their jobs in a manner that is completely incompatible with building a country fit for success in the twenty first century[iii]. Brexit would cause chaos in the Conservative party, fatally wound Cameron and Osborne, and yet commentators on the left shy away from urging voters to take a shot at this open goal. It’s as though Britain’s liberals are scared of the chance to run the country.

Goldman Sachs warn us that homebuilders and banks would be the worst affected if we chose to leave the EU[iv]. It’s hard to think of two sets of industries that have failed the British people more in recent years. The UK faces a housing crisis because the emphasis has been on serving vested interests by maintaining overly high property and land values rather than focusing on the need to house an expanding population. Banking is lauded in the media as an industry of huge importance to Britain but is there really much future growth to come from it? Banks’ main product is debt, which is something we in the developed world already have too much of. The future of UK banking looks rather more like the moribund loss-making and largely nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland[v] than a dynamic saviour. Brexit might force the UK to diversify its economy away from the dominant property and finance nexus, which provides economic growth but of a precarious, iniquitous and [spoiler alert] ephemeral kind.

At least twice George Osborne has warned the British that leaving the EU would cause house prices to fall, the second time he came out with a figure of 18 per cent as an upper bound. UK house prices could halve and they would still be high — particularly in London and the South East. The latest wheeze to extend the bubble appears to be the introduction of intergenerational mortgages.[vi] This kind of financial ‘innovation’ combined with ever rising student debt means Britain’s young graduates face a lifetime of debt servitude. If Brexit really could bring down house prices the millennials and the generation beneath them ought to be clamouring for it, yet the pollsters suggest they don’t and that three-quarters of 18 to 24 year-olds want to remain.[vii]

The threats from the Remain camp that leaving the EU will be a catastrophe for the UK’s economic cooperation with the continent are overblown. Anyone who has spent any time in central London recently will have noticed the huge quantity of continental Europeans employed in the capital. It seems very unlikely that their home countries, many of which are beset with economic difficulties, would want all these people delivered back to them. It is also hard to believe that those countries would wish to jeopardise tourism from the UK, or the spending power of British pensioners living out their days in the sunshine of Southern Europe. The idea that deals could not quickly be done to facilitate movement between Britain and the EU as well as mutually beneficial trade agreements is absurd given that it would be in nobody’s interests, least of all big business, to do otherwise. Angela Merkel’s recent hint that Britain ‘will never get a really good result’ in negotiations if it leaves the EU is unlikely to be popular with German firms which exported 90 billion Euros worth of goods and services to the UK last year.[viii]

Much of Britain’s left perceives the EU as some sort of enlightened force for good but this isn’t a notion that stands up to much scrutiny. Has it formed a bulwark against US imperialism as we were told it would? Not at all, European leaders have meekly followed America’s neo-conservative agenda leading to disaster. Indeed, Europe’s refugee crisis is the direct result of the Western establishment’s gauche attempts at terraforming Iraq, Libya and Syria into groves of economic opportunity for the few. Sadly, the recent terrorist attacks on European soil haven’t raised the right questions about events both at home and abroad. Instead of trying to curb civil liberties and drop more bombs, European leaders ought to be considering the deeper reasons for discontent. Is Brussels’ Molenbeek district really a hotbed of jihadist sentiment because of a few internet videos and radical clerics or does it have more to do with the 40 per cent unemployment rate of Muslim men?[ix] Is a foreign policy that supports the continued ruination of Muslim lives abroad ever going to be compatible with amicable relations at home? The EU’s eastward expansion has also played a part in the bloody civil war in the Ukraine and heightened tensions with Russia.[x]

Then we have economic policy which has been a disaster. Where was the European sense of fraternity when Greece as in trouble? It completely disappeared. Europe’s leaders chose to protect their failed bankers and broken single currency and throw the Greek people under a bus. Of the 240 billion Euros that was ‘given’ to Greece in 2010 and 2012 a miniscule amount actually went to improving the lot of the Greek people, the vast majority found its way into the coffers of financial institutions.[xi] Compare this to Iceland which sits outside of the EU. Its response to the financial crisis was not to kotow to bankers but to jail them. The government didn’t seek to absorb all the country’s private banking debt but put its people first and financial institutions second.[xii] The Icelandic economy has now recovered to a size above its pre 2008 peak, a target far away from the likes of Greece. While the Goldmanite European Central Bank chairman Mario Draghi prepares to pump money into a corporate black hole[xiii], the youth of Southern Europe see their futures evaporate into a sclerotic mist of unemployment, under-investment and hopelessness. Why does Britain’s left wish to support an EU that propagates such unfairness? Is it not time to admit that Europe has been captured by financiers and will not prosper until their influence is reduced and un-payable debts written-off? Ironically, by leaving the EU Britain may stimulate a shift away from the current failed orthodoxy.

Given seven years of economic stagnation in the Eurozone you might imagine that the lessons of letting unelected technocrats take the big decisions would have created a desire to move to a more democratic system. The truth is that even now EU officials attempt to bargain away our rights with the secretive TTIP agreement. Rumoured to be a corporate manifesto that relegates the role of the state to that of a butler for business interests it’s hard to reconcile it with the needs of the masses[xiv]. So when the most disappointing President of the United States ever, Barack Obama, warns us that we’ll be going to the ‘back of the queue’ for trade negotiations if we exit the EU, we should grab the opportunity with both hands. If the majority of British people were privy to the contents of TTIP it’s likely the idea of being in the queue at all would be deeply abhorrent.

Obama’s is just one of many voices from across the Atlantic urging Britain to stay in the EU. Eight former US Treasury Secretaries wrote to The Times newspaper urging us to stay in. Three names stand out: Larry Summers, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. These architects of neo-liberal disaster have overseen a huge transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in the United States. Summers helped sow the seeds of the 2008 financial crisis as a cheerleader for the Gramm­—Leach—Bliley—Act, which repealed much of the Glass—Steagal safety net[xv]. Casino capitalism came to the fore and after the inevitable financial collapse Paulson masterminded the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) giveaway to Wall Street[xvi]. Geithner continued in much the same vein, scandalously failing to stop executives of AIG being rewarded for failure with enormous bonuses effectively paid for with government money[xvii]. The only people whose interests apparatchiks like these represent are the very wealthiest, the rest of us can safely ignore their advice. Similarly, the warnings of the IMF’s Christine Lagarde should go unheeded; her organisation is there to protect the few not enrich the many[xviii]. Defying the wishes of the IMF is a rare democratic opportunity which should not be ignored by those who seek a fairer world.

The honourable intentions to use European integration as a means to avoid another European conflict as damaging as The Second World War were all well and good, but they are the solution to an obsolete problem. Today’s fight is no longer between nation states but between an exploitative global economic elite and the rest of us. Voting for Brexit is a blow to their ambitions and the natural choice for anyone who wishes to challenge the doomed status quo. Don’t vote for Brexit because you are a small-minded xenophobe, vote for Brexit because it is a chance to challenge the cabal of venal politicians who are dragging Western Civilisation towards crisis with their continued deference to corporate power, misguided use of military force, and disdain for democracy.

Notes. 

[i] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/25/george-osborne-u-turn-scrap-tax-credit-cuts-autumn-statement

[ii] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-osborne-on-the-retreat-as-budget-evaporates-in-wake-of-ids-resignation-a6944861.html

[iii] https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/cost-cuts-impact-local-government-and-poorer-communities

[iv] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/21/brexit-would-hit-banks-homebuilders-goldman-sachs

[v] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b9428ec-dc58-11e5-a72f-1e7744c66818.html#axzz4AQgnyN7u

[vi] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/the-mortgages-where-70-year-olds-borrow-to-help-their-grandchild/

[vii] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2016/04/18/the-generation-gap-how-young-voters-view-the-uks-referendum/

[viii]https://www.destatis.de/EN/FactsFigures/NationalEconomyEnvironment/ForeignTrade/TradingPartners/Tables/OrderRankGermanyTradingPartners.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

[ix] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/17/molenbeek-jihadi-isis-belgian-paris-attacks-belgium

[x] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10853278/The-EUs-to-blame-for-the-crisis-in-Ukraine.html

[xi] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/29/where-did-the-greek-bailout-money-go

[xii] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/three-charts-that-show-icelands-economy-recovered-after-it-imprisoned-bankers-and-let-banks-go-bust-10309503.html

[xiii] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2016/html/pr160602.en.html

[xiv] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html

[xv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

[xvi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

[xvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner

[xviii] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/

June 9, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

UK Illegally Harasses Russian Submarine Engaged in Lawful Passage of English Channel

By Craig Murray | June 9, 2016

Contrary to Article 44 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, to which the UK and Russia are both party, the UK has engaged in extensive illegal harassment of a Russian naval submarine engaged in fully lawful transit of the Dover Strait.

A Russian naval vessel en route between the Baltic and Black Seas is fully and specifically entitled under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea Articles 37 and 38 to the right of passage through the strait. This is in addition to the general right of passage through the territorial sea at Article 17. The Russian navy was in full compliance with the provision at Article 20 that, while in territorial waters, the submarine must be on the surface and displaying its flag, and in compliance with Articles 29 to 32 on warships.

Not only does the Russian Navy have every right to sail through the Dover strait on passage, it has been exercising that right – along with many other navies – for over a hundred years. The decision of the British government now to employ military harassment and threat is not only illegal, it is a gross and entirely deliberate act of provocation designed to sour international relations and disturb the atmosphere of world peace.

The author of this article, Craig Murray, is a former Head of the Maritime Section of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and former Alternate Head of the United Kingdom Delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. He is a retired British Ambassador.

June 9, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Iraq Inquiry: A Government U-Turn and an “Apology” from Tony Blair

By Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice | June 7, 2016

It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century. You don’t just invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.

— John Kerry, Meet the Press, March 2nd, 2014

If “a week is a long time in politics”, a quote attributed to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-1970 and 1974-1976), under David Cameron’s tenure – a man who has been kicked into myriad U-turns over feckless, reckless decisions – a day is an age.

On June 3rd it was announced that a summary of the long awaited Iraq Inquiry (November  24th, 2009 to February 2nd, 2011) chaired by Sir John Chilcot is to be finally released on  July 6th and to be given free to the families of the Iraq invasion’s 179 British victims. The summary costs £30, the hard copy of the full 2.6 million word Report a staggering £767. The families would have to foot the bill for the latter themselves.

The Inquiry has cost the British taxpayers £10 million, with Sir John Chilcot during his various and complex work since, garnering £790 a day, also courtesy of the taxpayer.

As the Independent points out (June 3rd, 2016):

The process of drawing up the final Report has been beset by years of delays. The most recent substantial delay came during the so-called ‘Maxwellisation’ process where people criticised in the report are given an opportunity to respond.

A mind bending concession to alleged war criminals.

Whilst: ‘A spokesperson for the Inquiry said the free summary given to the families of the war’s British victims would be “substantial” ‘ (Independent, June 3rd) to those whose sons and daughters lives were sacrificed for a swathe of mistruths, mega-incompetence and alleged illegalities, only every word, line, chapter and verse of the Report will do.

Also, the summary would only go to immediate families, not relatives.

Yes, the Report will be on line, but for those wishing to study in depth, hard copies are vital. And what would it cost even in ink cartridges and paper to download twelve volumes?

The bereaved families responded with fury, demanding that Tony Blair pay for their copies. For a man who has made up to to an estimated £100 million, the gesture of a mere £137,293 – the cost of 179 copies – to those who have given their children for his assertions of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction which could strike the West in forty five minutes etc., would be a minimal price to pay. It would be small change in Blair-land.

Perhaps he could sign each one, with a dedication. It would surely read something like:

Within these volumes you will find all my justifications for involving our great country in the invasion of Iraq. I took the view, which I still passionately believe, as I said at the time on national television ‘it was the right thing to do’, morally and legally. In making you this gift of the Report I would like to say that I am truly sorry for your loss.

Our great country is indebted through the sacrifice of your child who, by obeying orders and upholding my deeply held conviction that the Middle East would be a better place, which, of course, is the case. I also take the view that there was no need for any Inquiry or shameful pointing of fingers at myself or my government, intelligence agencies or military.

As my friend Madeleine Albright expressed so eloquently some years ago, there are times when the lives of the children of others are ‘a hard choice … but the price is worth it.’ As I said on television just prior to the invasion ‘I know I’m right.’ I still do. May my words be of some comfort to you in your grief.

However, back to reality. Rose Gentle, whose nineteen year old son Gordon was killed in Basra, said of the denial of the full Report:

It’s disgusting … Why should we have to pay – have we not paid enough times with the lives of our sons? The families should get a free copy of this, we have paid the cost with their deaths … (The Guardian,  June 2016)

Roger Bacon, whose son Major Matthew Bacon was killed in 2005, said: “ … we have already paid with our children’s lives.”

Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Defence Secretary, stated that it was “grotesque and offensive” that families should be asked to pay to read the findings. Indeed.

In respect of those who died in Iraq, they have suffered first the terrible loss of their loved ones, then the lengthy delay for an Inquiry to be launched, then the even lengthier delay for that report to be published. Do not now add insult to these already grievous injuries by making them pay to read that Report.

Liberal Democrat Leader, Tim Farron, wrote to the MoD demanding they give free copies to bereaved families on request:

It is unbelievable that after all these years of waiting, of stalling and uncertainty, we now find out that the families will have to pay for a copy of the Report … Families who have waited years, mother and fathers who have fought to have this Report see the light of day, should not have to pay for this … The government now needs to provide some form of closure to the victims of this illegal war. (Emphasis added.)

U-Turn

By the end of the day on June 3rd, after the furore from cross party MPs, the families and the public, No 10 Downing Street put out a statement saying that there was: “ … no question of families of service personnel who died in Iraq having to pay for copies of the Chilcot Report”.

Better shamefully late, than never.

Yet in all this, no government, Ministry of Defence (MoD) or relevant official has mentioned the disabled, limbless, chronically ill, resultant from the invasion. They and their families are forgotten, invisible, not to even get the summary free. Reported casualties are 5,970, but the total figures have not been released by the MoD.

There are those who came back from this disaster built on a lie with no arms and no legs, brain damaged, others generally incapacitated by mega, but lesser limb loss and trauma.

“During the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been reticent in publishing details of British casualties …” states Casualty Monitor, adding: “… there are still serious problems with the accuracy and incompleteness of the information they release.”

In other words the MoD, to use Sir Robert Armstrong’s memorable quote to an Australian Court in 1986, is “economical with the truth.”

Moreover, numbers of Field Hospital admissions and the very seriously injured requiring Aero-medical evacuations were simply not available from the MoD during 2003, 2004 and 2005. See last chart here.

In a further venture into fantasy land, the probably two million Iraqi families bereaved between the embargo and the invasion surely deserve a copy – courtesy of Mr “I know I’m right” Blair.

Meanwhile in Iraq, Bush and Blair’s body count continues thirteen years and five weeks after “Mission accomplished”, declared on USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1st, 2003, by George W. Bush. According to the United Nations at least 741 Iraqis, including more than 400 civilians, were killed and 1,374 wounded in April of this year alone, due to the ongoing violence – a monthly nightmare which in pre-invasion Iraq was unthinkable.

However, back to the Iraq Report.  As an astute Facebook friend commented:

To those looking forward to reading the Chilcot report, the one paid for by your taxes, I hope you have saved your pennies up. Classic British Government. You might have paid for it once but you have to pay for it a few more times before you can actually have it.

Another commented: “Only Tony Blair will be able to afford it.”

Further input redundant.

• With thanks to writer Lesley Docksey for inspired angle for Tony Blair’s “apology.”

June 8, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

UK training Saudi police in CSI techniques that risk torture

Al-Nimr-616x308

Reprieve – June 7, 2016

Britain’s College of Policing is teaching the Saudi Arabian interior ministry high-tech forensic skills that risk being “used to identify individuals who later go on to be tortured”, an internal police report obtained by human rights charity Reprieve reveals.

According to the document, released under Freedom of Information, the controversial training program began in 2009 and continued even after juvenile protesters were rounded up, tortured and sentenced to death following the Arab Spring uprisings.

British police now want to step up their training package to include advanced cyber-crime courses, which could be misused to target pro-democracy activists in Saudi Arabia.

Although the UK Foreign Office opposes the death penalty, the College of Policing wants to teach Saudi officers how to analyse mobile phone records, which could lead to activists being arrested and executed.

Ali al-Nimr was just 17 years old when he was sentenced to death for attending non-violent protests in 2012 and allegedly using his blackberry phone to invite friends to join demonstrations.  At trial the prosecution requested execution by “crucifixion”.

Many more juvenile protesters were swept up and tortured in the 2012 crackdown, including Dawood al Marhoon and Abdullah Hasan al-Zaher, who now face beheading at any time. Another teenage activist, Ali al Ribh, who was arrested at school, was among 47 people executed on a single day in January 2016.

That same month, the College of Policing proposed further courses for Saudi personnel despite noting that there was a risk “the skills being trained are used to identify individuals who later go on to be tortured or subjected to other human rights abuses”.

Other techniques on sale to Saudi detectives include decrypting hard drives, retrieving deleted files, voice recognition and trawling CCTV systems. The project is described as an “income generating business opportunity” for the College of Policing.

Some of the training has taken place at the College of Policing’s forensics centre outside Durham, and “over 120 fingerprint personnel are in the process of being trained”.

The document says that the Saudi officers are drawn from the gulf kingdom’s 300,000 strong interior ministry, which includes policemen, prison guards and national security staff.

The college claims to have developed a “trusted and professional partnership” with the ministry, which carries out beheadings, stoning and lashings. David Cameron faced outcry in Parliament last year over a Ministry of Justice project with Saudi prison guards.

Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at Reprieve said: “It is scandalous that British police are training Saudi Arabian officers in techniques which they privately admit could lead to people being arrested, tortured and sentenced to death.”

“The training Britain delivered included hi-tech skills that could easily have been used to target pro-democracy activists in Saudi Arabia. Let’s not forget that while this was going on, teenage protestors like Ali al-Ribh, Abdullah al-Zaher, Ali al-Nimr, and Dawood al-Marhoon were rounded up and sentenced to death.”

“The FCO has to explain how on earth helping execute juvenile protesters makes anyone safer in Saudi Arabia or the UK.”

June 8, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Anti-nuke activists begin month-long blockade of atomic facility

RT | June 6, 2016

Anti-nuclear activists are starting a month-long protest against Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons program, arguing it should not be renewed by Parliament later this year.

Peace campaigners are descending on AWE Burghfield in Berkshire, where Britain’s nuclear warheads are maintained and go through their final stage of assembly.

Throughout June, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) supporters will join activists from Trident Ploughshares and groups from across Europe to “blockade, to occupy, and to disrupt” the weapons manufacturing base.

Activists claim the renewal of Britain’s at-sea nuclear deterrent is expensive, unsafe, ill-suited for contemporary warfare and in violation of international commitments.

The nuclear site at Burghfield is run by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), a controversial weapons company which is partly owned by US firm Lockheed Martin.

Last August, AWE was censured by UK regulators for failing to show a long-term plan for handling radioactive waste at its Aldermaston site.

The nuclear weapons factory also faces further action for failing to meet legal obligations to treat radioactive waste by 2014, according to a report published by the ONR last July.

Among the activists will be veteran peace campaigner Pat Arrowsmith, who was the organizer of the historic 1958 march from London to Aldermaston which saw thousands of people march against nuclear weapons.

British protesters will be joined by anti-nuke groups across Europe, including Women for Peace (Finland), Action Pour La Paix (Belgium) and Maison de la Vigilance (France).

“The vast [nuclear weapons] complexes at Burghfield and Aldermaston are founded on a wealth of resources and extraordinary human skill,” CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said.

“What a tragedy that these are utilized for the production of weapons of mass destruction rather than being used instead to secure real human security and meet the real needs of our society.”

The cost of replacing Trident and maintaining a successor program is expected to reach £205 billion (US$296 billion), according to campaigners.

The biggest expense by far is expected to be the day-to-day running costs. At £142 billion over the system’s lifetime, they amount to 6 percent of the total UK defense budget.

Other expenses include decommissioning old warheads, the continued lease of warheads from the US and future refurbishment.

AWE Burghfield will undergo a £734 million upgrade as part of the Trident renewal.

June 6, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Questioning The Holocaust – Why We Believed (Part 1 of 2)

HolocaustHandbooks.com | April 2016

Why did we believe in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms?

June 4, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Skynet: UK to upgrade war satellites to expand global drone kill operations

RT | June 3, 2016

Britain’s military plans to replace its ageing Skynet war satellites to meet the bandwidth demands of its expanding Special Forces and drone operations.

It is the first sign of the UK’s ambitions to create the next generation of military space satellites to replace the Skynet A5, the original version of which came into service in the 1960s.

It is now considering how to proceed with its Future Beyond Line of Sight (FBLOS) program.

Given the shadowy nature of the project, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been vague about the specifics, telling Defence News : “We continue to consider a range of options for the FBLOS project and aim to submit the initial business case this summer.”

The existing system was produced by arms giant Airbus. Upgrades are required to increase bandwidth to support the UK’s increasingly clandestine operations using special forces, the forthcoming F-35 combat aircraft and, perhaps most significantly, its expanding drone fleet.

The forthcoming assessment of military requirements will be carried out from the early 2020s to the end of that decade.

The upgrade is indicative of emerging trends in warfare, at a time when public resistance to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars has made large-scale troop deployments politically untenable.

Chris Cole, of the NGO Drone Wars, wrote on the possibility of a connection between Skynet and British military drones as long ago as 2010.

However, in a blog on the topic he pointed out: “Skynet 5 however is not owned by the Ministry of Defence, but by a private company called Paradigm Secure Communication.”

This would render Skynet virtually impervious to freedom of information (FoI) requests regarding its links with drone warfare, which can only be put to public bodies.

Speaking to RT on Friday, Cole said that as well as “doubling the UK’s current armed drone fleet and investing heavily in the development of future drones” the UK is working quietly to install “secret communication systems to enable the UK to use its armed drones right around the globe.”

He warned: “The continuing development of Skynet is an integral part of the government’s strategy to follow the US down the path of being able to target those it considers to be a threat, anywhere in the world.”

June 3, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Dismantling Civil Society in Bahrain

By Rannie Amiri | CounterPunch | June 3, 2016

Like a vise which first grips its object and then slowly, deliberately and inexorably crushes it, the al-Khalifa regime has done similarly to civil society in Bahrain. It did not stop when peaceful, pro-democracy, reform protests erupted in 2011 and were violently put down by government forces aided by an invasion of Saudi troops in March of that year. Indeed, the vise continues to close and relentlessly so.

Nationalities have been revoked, mosques razed, citizens deported, human rights activists imprisoned on flimsy charges of insulting the monarchy at the least or plotting its overthrow at worst, and the most perfunctory of dialogues with the opposition abandoned. By smothering the figures and institutions who dare challenge the authority of the ruling dynasty in the most benign of fashions – a tweet, waving the country’s flag, tearing up a photo or merely questioning the tenure of the world’s longest serving prime minister – the Bahraini regime and its Gulf allies would like to believe monarchal rule has been preserved. Such desperate measures however, only speak to its precarity.

The stalwart activist Zainab al-Khawaja was given a sentence of three years and one month in Dec. 2014 for (again) tearing up a picture of King Hamad. She refused to be separated from her infant son whom she took with her to prison. Al-Khawaja has just been released on “humanitarian” grounds after serving 15 months in jail.

Her father though, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, remains imprisoned serving a life sentence on trumped-up charges of attempting to topple the government. While authorities may have set Zainab al-Khawaja free, they simultaneously doubled the sentence of Sheikh Ali Salman, head of al-Wefaq, an opposition political party. Initially given a term of four years incarceration for alleged incitement against the regime, it was increased to nine years on appeal. The unflinching President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) and founding Director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights Nabeel Rajab, remains banned from leaving the country despite the need to secure medical treatment for his wife.

Busy highlighting the nation’s cordial relations with the United Kingdom and United States, the latter of which headquarters its Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the capital Manama, the Western media has largely ignored the plight of Bahrain’s ordinary citizens. The arrest and torture of disabled youth has now been documented by the BCHR. Indeed, for more than a decade, the Center has meticulously chronicled the dismantling of Bahrain’s civil society in all its forms by the al-Khalifa regime.

Most recently, with the passage of a law preventing any religious figure from joining political societies or engaging in political activities, the BCHR issued a statement condemning, “… the Bahraini parliament and Shura Council’s passage of amendments to the Political Societies Law, which places a ban on participation in political decision-making based on discriminatory religious grounds. In defense of this draft amendment, lawmakers supporting this motion argued it would prevent religious acts from being politicized. This decision restricts people’s ability to freely engage in religious practices, as those members willing to join political activities pertinent to the legislative process in Bahrain would now need to refrain from any activities carrying religious connotations.”

In the face of widespread and open abuses in civil society, lack of proportional parliamentary representation, curfews, detentions, and imprisonment and torture of those who dissent, these practices have nonetheless failed to adversely impact the ties enjoyed between Bahrain and the United States. But when a regime becomes alienated from those whom it rules and for example, gives lengthy jail sentences for tweets it finds offensive, it speaks to a tenuous reign.

The pillars of civil advocacy in Bahrain – Nabeel Rajab, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, Maryam and Zainab al-Khawaja, Abduljalil al-Singace (sentenced to life in prison for participating in pro-democracy protests), Naji Fateel, Hussain Jawad and countless others both named and unnamed – have consistently engaged in purely secular, non-sectarian activism. Unlike the practice of the regime, the designations Sunni and Shia need not be applied when discussing the ongoing struggle for legal, political and socioeconomic rights in Bahrain. The people have waited too long for the West to recognize their demands are not based on sect, but on equity.

Despite an oppressive regime and the long shadow cast by the U.S. Fifth Fleet, resilient Bahrainis remain unintimidated.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on Middle East affairs.

June 3, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corbyn rips into BBC over biased coverage

Press TV – June 1, 2016

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has blasted the BBC for being “obsessed” with efforts to damage his leadership and accused some party members of playing into its hands.

Britain’s opposition leader made the comments in an interview with Vice News as part of a documentary about the workings of his office.

The film, which was aired on Wednesday, follows Corbyn over almost two months during the run-up to the May elections and features a series of interviews with Ben Ferguson, a Vice journalist and Labour member who voted for Corbyn.

In response to Ferguson expressing concern about Labour’s performance in May, Corbyn revealed the depth of his feelings about his portrayal in the media, launching a fierce attack against the BBC in particular.

“There is not one story on any election anywhere in the UK that the BBC will not spin into a problem for me. It is obsessive beyond belief. They are obsessed with trying to damage the leadership of the Labour party and unfortunately there are people in the Labour party that play into that,” he said.

Corbyn said one of the main lessons of being the leader is “how shallow, facile and ill-informed many of the supposed well-informed major commentators are in our media,” accusing them of shaping a debate that was “baseless and narrow.”

The Labour leader is filmed calling “utterly disgusting” a Guardian column that had accused him and his party of having an anti-Semitism problem.

The anti-Semitism row within the Labour Party became the center of media attention last month after the party suspended a number of its key figures for condemning Israeli crimes.

The latest uproar against Labour flared up when the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was suspended by Corbyn over denouncing Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and arguing that Adolf Hitler, the former leader of Nazi Germany, was a supporter of Zionism.

As the controversy deepened, David Abrahams, a major party donor, called for Corbyn to resign, saying “Labour needs strong leadership.”

However, Corbyn said in a statement that he would propose a new code of conduct banning any forms of racism in his party.

“There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour Party, or anywhere in society,” he said.

June 1, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Libya: How to Bring Down a Nation

By Patrick Howlett-Martin | CounterPunch | May 31, 2016

More than 30,000 Libyans died during seven months of bombing by an essentially tripartite force – France, Great Britain, United States – which clearly favored the rebels. “The most successful mission in NATO’s history”, in the imprudent words of NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a Dane, in Tripoli in October 2011[1].

French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s eagerness to support a military intervention with the purported aim of protecting the civilian population contrasts with the reception offered to the Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, when he visited Paris in December 2007 and signed major military agreements worth some 4.5 billion euros along with cooperation agreements for the development of nuclear energy for peacetime uses. The contracts that Libya seemed no longer willing to pursue focused on 14 Dassault Rafale multirole fighter jets and their armament (the same model that France sold or is trying to sold to Egypt´s General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the self-proclaimed marshal), 35 Eurocopter helicopters, six patrol boats, a hundred armored vehicles, and the overhaul of 17 Mirage F1 fighters sold by Dassault Aviation in the 1970s[2].

The major oil companies (Occidental Petroleum, State Oil, Petro-Canada…) working in Libya helped Libya pay the 1.5 billion dollars in compensation that the Libyan regime had agreed to pay to the families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103[3]. At the time, the compensation was intended to be one of the conditions for Libya to be reaccepted into the community of international relations.

The principal Libyan investment funds (LAFICO-Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company; LIA-Libyan Investment Authority) were shareholders in many Italian and British corporations (Fiat, UniCredit, Juventus, the Pearson Group, owner of the Financial Times, and the London School of Economics, where Gaddafi was addressed as “Brother Leader” during a video conference in December 2010 and his son Saif was awarded a PhD in 2008). The New York investment bank Goldman Sachs was sued in 2014 by a Libyan fund (Libyan Investment Authority) which had lost more than 1.2 billion dollars between January and April 2008 after the American firm took a commission of 350 million dollars for investing their money in highly speculative derivatives[4].

Muammar Gaddafi had been received with full honors by the major powers some months earlier: in addition to the reception in grand style in Paris, where he was a guest for five days in 2007, he was received in Spain in December 2007, in Moscow in October 2008, and in Rome in August 2010, two years after accepting the Italian gift of 5 billion dollars as compensation for the Italian occupation of Libya from 1913 to 1943. And also of note are the five trips to Tripoli in three years by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a paid senior advisor to the investment bank JPMorgan Chase[5]. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was received in Tripoli in July 2007, where he announced the beginning of a partnership for the installation of a nuclear power plant in Libya. The European Union was ready to facilitate access to the European market for Libyan agricultural exports[6]. Libya was invited by the NATO Chiefs of Defense to the Maritime Commanders’ Meeting (MARCOMET) in Toulon on May 25-28, 2008.

A policy that recalls the one towards the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was invited to Paris in June 1972 and September 1975; an agreement was signed in June 1977 for the sale to Baghdad of 32 Mirage F1 combat aircraft. A coincidence that didn’t do either of them any good in the long run.

Arab military leaders (veterans of Afghanistan and members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, with ties to Al-Qaeda) helped overthrow Gaddafi. One of the principal military leaders of the rebellion, Abdel Hakim Belhadj (a.k.a. Abu Abdullah al-Sadik), then Tripoli Security Chief and today the main leader of the conservative Islamist al-Watan Party had been arrested in Bangkok in 2004, tortured by CIA agents, and delivered to Gaddafi’s Abu Salim prison. He is now the main ISIL leader in Lybia. Jaballah Matar was kidnapped from his home in Cairo by the CIA in 1990 and then handed over to Libyan officials[7] Documents seized after the death of Gaddafi reveal close cooperation between Libyan, American (CIA), and British (MI6) intelligence services[8].

Under Gaddafi, Islamic terrorism was virtually non-existent. Prior to the U.S. led bombing campaign in 2011, Libya had the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy in all Africa. Today Lybia is a wrecked state.

In January 2012, three months after the end of hostilities, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, reported the widespread use of torture, summary executions, and rape in Libyan prisons. At the same time, the organization Doctors Without Borders decided to withdraw from the prisons in Misrata because of the ongoing torture of detainees[9].

The NATO intervention in Libya, involving most member countries under a humanitarian pretext, set an unfortunate precedent for efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis: the attack by French and British warplanes on the Warfallah tribe, who remained faithful to Muammar Gaddafi, and on the convoy carrying the Libyan leader and one of his sons, leading directly to Gaddafi’s death under deplorable circumstances. The images by videographer Ali Algadi and journalist Tracey Sheldon provide a graphic account of the Libyan leader being dragged from a drain pipe on October 20, 2011 and killed shortly thereafter. These circumstances belie the pseudo-humanitarian nature of the military intervention and tarnish the image of the “Libyan Spring”[10].

The death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens and one of his aides in a fire set in the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in September 2012, revealing the breadth of CIA activities, in which the Consulate served as a façade. The recruitment by the CIA on its Benghazi base[11] of combatants from the city of Derna for the conflict in Syria, fief of the Islamists (Al-Bittar brigade), against President Bashar al-Assad, has inescapable parallels with the recruitment in 1979, again by the CIA, of the mujahedeen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, with all the consequences that we are well familiar with, and particularly the birth of Sunni jihadism.

The car bomb attack on the French Embassy in Tripoli in April 2013; the escape of 1,200 detainees from the Benghazi prison; the murder of the human rights lawyer Abdel Salam al-Mismari in July; and the attack on the Swedish Consulate in Benghazi in October 2013 all highlighted the inability of the authorities to gain control over the security situation in Libya as it was overrun by heavily armed militias. In July 2013, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan threatened to bomb Libyan ports in the Benghazi region that were in the hands of militias who were profiting by exporting the oil now under their control. In October, the Prime Minister was kidnapped by 150 armed men in the center of Tripoli and held for six hours to protest the abduction on Libyan soil of Abu Anas al-Libi in a secret American airport operation. Al-Libi was accused of being one of the leaders of Al-Qaeda and later died while in custody in the United States.

The year 2015 began with Libya bereft of all institutions. It is ruled by a motley group of coalitions vying for power, based in Tripoli (Farj Libya, which controls the central bank), Benghazi (Shura Council, consisting of Ansar al-Sharia, facing off against the Libyan National Army of the renegade general Khalifa Hiftar), and in Tobruk-Bayda (offshoot of the National Transition Council, enjoying international diplomatic recognition after the June 2013 elections).

The security and health situation for the civil population is near disastrous. When I visited the country in 1994 it was a model for public health and education, and boasted the highest per capita income in Africa. It was clearly the most advanced of all Arab countries in terms of the legal status of women and families in Libyan society (half of the students at the university of Tripoli were women). The aggression against the presenter Sarah Al-Massalati in 2012, the poet Aicha Almagrabi in February 2013, and the women’s rights activist Magdalene Ubaida, now in exile in London, bear grim testimony to their legal status in post-Gaddafi Libya. The city of Benghazi is now semi-destroyed; schools and universities are mostly closed[12].

It is the theatre of fratricidal clashes between rival factions financed and armed by a series of sorcerer’s apprentices A general who has been stationed in the United States for 27 years commands a motley coalition with military backing from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia while Islamist groups claiming allegiance to ISIL and well entrenched in Sirte and Derna are able to spread their influence thanks to the institutional crisis. and, Qatar, Turkey, and Sudan supporting Farj Libya on the other.

Gaddafi, leader of the Libyan revolution, the Jamahiriya, in power from 1969 to 2011, gave a warning to Europe in an interview with French journalist Laurent Valdiguié of the Journal du Dimanche on the eve of the NATO intervention, in words that now seem prophetic:

“If one seeks to destabilize [Libya], there will be chaos, Bin Laden, armed factions. That is what will happen. You will have immigration, thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya. And there will no longer be anyone to stop them. Bin Laden will base himself in North Africa […]. You will have Bin Laden at your doorstep. This catastrophe will extend out of Pakistan and Afghanistan and reach all the way to North Africa”[13].

Libya has become a hub for illegal trafficking, particularly of African emigrants under conditions reminiscent of the slave trade. According to Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the refugee smuggling market in Libya was worth 323 million dollars in 2014. In the first five months of 2015, more than 50,000 undocumented immigrants have reached Italy from sub-Saharan Africa via Libya; 1,791 of them lost their lives at sea[14]. Prior to the initiation of hostilities, 1.5 million sub-Saharan Africans worked in Libya in generally menial jobs (oil industry, agriculture, services, public sector). Darker days at sea are still to come.

Notes.

[1] “NATO chief Rasmussen ‘proud’ as Libya mission ends”, BBC News, October 31, 2011.

[2]. Agence France Presse, December 11, 2007.

[3]. International Herald Tribune, March 24, 2011.

[4] Jeremy Anderson, “Goldman to reveal income linked to Libyan lawsuit”, International New York Times, November 25, 2014.

[5]. The Telegraph, March 23, 2012.

[6]. O´Globo, July 26, 2007.

[7] Souad Mekhennet, Eric Schmitt, “Libyan rebels seek to shed El Qaeda past”, International Herald Tribune, July 19, 2011.

[8]. Rod Nordland, “Files note close CIA ties with Qaddafi spy unit”, International Herald Tribune, September 5, 2011.

[9]. International Herald Tribune, January 28-29, 2012.

[10]. Borzou Daragahi, “Call for probe into Libyan Civilian Deaths”, Financial Times, May 14, 2012.

[11] Seymour Hersh, “U.S. Effort to Arm Jihadis in Syria. The Scandal Behind the Benghazi Undercover CIA Facility”, Global Research, Washington’s Blog, April 15, 2014.

[12] Abdel Sharif Kouddous, “Report from the Front: Libya’s Descent Into Chaos”, The Nation, February 25, 2015.

[13] Journal du Dimanche, March 5, 2011 (www.lejdd.fr)

[14] Source: International Organization for Migration and the European Commission.

Patrick Howlett-Martin is a career diplomat living in Paris.

May 31, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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