Libya: Media Manipulation

Libya: Media Manipulation

09.03.2011 | 11:32

As the journalists continue to follow the events in Libya, so does the public. Our new interactive format, which allows our readers to comment on the articles, has seen Pravda.Ru over the past few weeks receive numerous interesting comments from those who have been interested in this situation, which we are happy to synthesize below.

Let one thing be perfectly clear: those who manufactured those Libyan flags from the time of King Idris, those who are arming, aiding and abetting the "rebels" (terrorists according to the western media referring to the same types of actions in other countries) are responsible for what is going on. Suppose the western media is misleading us?

"He's gotta go," says David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom about Muammar Al-Qathafi. The thing is, who has done more for his people? From President Obama, surprisingly, the same call. Yet the Libyan is not a protagonist who is dying for his own war to become a hero, because his disastrous policies at home are making him unpopular.

Unlike David Cameron, Muammar Al-Qathafi has invested in his people; he has not slashed education funding, he has increased literacy rates from 10 to around 85%; maybe those who support the flags from the pre-Qathafi era would like to have a reminder of the statistics from those times, because for sure those who fabricated these flags and transported them across the Tunisian and Egyptian borders will send Libya and the Libyans back into the dark ages from which Muammar Al-Qathafi freed them.

Let another thing be perfectly clear: the western media is misleading us and is trying to hide the interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign member of the UNO. Let us see some of the many comments from - and a presentation of several points raised by - our readers...

1. Why did the Libyan "revolution" not start in the capital, Tripoli, but rather in the separatist region of Cyrenaica?

2. Is it important that Cyrenaica is the oil-rich region?

3. How come the terrorists in Libya are referred to as "rebels" yet in other countries in the region they are "terrorists"?

4. How come the authorities of any sovereign nation have the right to impose law and order after armed insurrection, but Muammar Al-Qathafi apparently does not (according to Western media)? What does any civilised nation do when rebels burn buildings, kill women and children (oh didn't the western media publicise this?) and slaughter and torture unarmed civilians? In most countries the authorities have the right to react.

In the case of Libya, it is facing an armed insurrection fuelled by interfering foreign powers, marauding gangs of terrorists aiming to settle tribal scores, all for the right price.

5. How is it possible that the poorly equipped "rebels" "now have access to more sophisticated equipment" (SKY News). Where did it come from?

6. How to explain the fact that Dutch and British special forces have been detained operating inside Libya?

7. Why does SKY News concentrate on the same screaming child in a Libyan hospital, every single day, a child who seems to be screaming because he is more afraid of a syringe than due to any injury? Is it correct to manipulate public opinion using images of children?

8. Why does the same news channel show a man with a flesh wound from "heavy weaponry" while the bullet is visible on the surface of his skin? Why is Dominic Waghorn reporting the "truth" when last Summer he came to Portugal to hide it?

9. Why did the western media report that civilians had been bombed, and then Saif Al-Islam Qathafi entered a Sky News vehicle, saying for them to take him where they wanted, and the SKY crew was unable to find the areas they had said his "regime" forces had bombed?

10. Why did the BBC lie about an air strike that never existed?

11. Why did the BBC admit that the Libyan Air Force had been purposefully not hitting human targets? Then say Muammar Al-Qathafi is a "dictator" "slaughtering his own people"?

12. Why has the western media been saying that Muammar Al-Qathafi has been throwing the full force of his military options against "unarmed civilians" when it is obvious the civilians are heavily armed and he has not yet even started to use all the weaponry at his disposal?

13. Allaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahu Akhbar!!   Allaaaaaaaaaahu Akhbar! God is great! Where have we heard this before? And now from the er...rebels.

14. Why is the unrest always worse after Friday prayer service? Are we seeing another CIA-Mujaheddin type alliance? The type that saw the launch of the Taleban in Afghanistan?

15. Why is it that whenever there is a western camera present, someone unfolds one of those idiotic flags from the time when the people of Libya were illiterate and oppressed?

16. How come Muammar Al-Qathafi turns up wherever and whenever he wants in Tripoli?

17. Has Muammar Al-Qathafi disrespected the UNO by using lies to attack sovereign nations outside the auspices of the UN? No.

18. Libya is a "carbon copy" of brutal, bloody aggression of NATO on Yugoslavia and Serbia. Looking at those people running away from Libya to Tunisia in their thousands and western media again doing same thing, telling us that they are running away from "Gadhafi's regime" not from a threat of NATO intervention and their bombs but just like what happened with the Albanians from Kosovo, the aggressor is intervening on "humanitarian grounds".

19. Gadhafi has to be put on trial for Genocide and violation of human rights but GW Bush, Tony Blair and Greschner should receive the "Nobel peace prize",

20. When the West waged its genocidal 1st war for the conquest of Kuwait and Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of third country nationals that fled from Iraq did so not because of having had to suffer any hardship due to Iraqi rule, but rather because of starvation and acholera epidemic resulting from an inhuman total blockade imposed by NATO (food items and chemicals--employed---in--water--treatment--plants were especially prohibited).

21. The WESTERN MAINSTREAM media has completely FORGOTTEN about the human right to life of all the Libyan civilians unopposed to Gaddafi who are being massacred or maimed by the foreign insurgents just to terrorise the remaining populace and make a point. Just as this very same media cared not a fig about the thousands of apolitical innocent civilians that were brutally executed (by stoning, electrocuting etc.) by the Bush & Hillarity-backed Taliban within days of having overran almost three-fourths of Afghanistan with NATO weaponry in the late 1990's.

22. Few other countries live in such a social comfort, as Libyans do. They have free health care system and treatment. Their hospitals are provided with the best medical equipment in the world. The education in Libya is free of charge. Talented youth have an opportunity to study abroad at the expense of Libya. After getting married, a couple can get more than 60 thousands dinar (50 thousand dollars) of financial help. State credits are non-interest-bearing, and often the principal is written off as well. Automobile's prices are considerably lower, than in Europe and affordable for everyone. Petrol costs 18 cent, and bread 4 cent. Libyans have been provided a very good environment as regards social and job-security, and their general educational level (both males and females can be seen pursuing all branches of university education) is better than that in so-called very affluent Arab countries like Saudi Arabia.

23. When a DUTCH helicopter carrying several mercenary Dutch soldiers including a jingoistic woman, (allegedly on a sabotage-cum-espionage mission to undermine Libyan national defence right in the hometown of the leader Col. Gaddafi ) were captured by Libyan defenders, the DUTCH government finally acknowledged that its warship:- the TROMP, has indeed been lurking in the high sea off SIRTE and the captured helicopter had lifted-off from there.

24.  When will the world understand the US modus operandi. Befriend, Praise, Infiltrate, Subvert, Destroy. It has become cliché and yet people still fall for it. It is true there is an upper limit to intelligence but stupidity knows no bounds. Let it be a warning to all those who believe that the US/Israel and other Zionist minions can be trusted allies. The process, preparing the world for the invasion of Libya, is so reminiscent of the one prior to the Iraq war, that only those severely challenged can fail to see it.

25. Surely the Libyan armed forces have shown restraint, more than aggression. Let's face it, they could raze the cities and towns if they wanted. They have been going in, causing limited damage to the terrorists and have pulled back out again limiting the human and material damage.

26. But when price increases in major Libyan cities sparked a wave of discontent, imperialism seized the opportunity. They concluded that it was time to get rid of Gaddafi, an always uncomfortable leader.

The riots in Tunisia and Egypt, protests in Bahrain and Yemen have created very favorable conditions to instigate demonstrations in Libya. It was no accident that Benghazi emerged as the hub of the rebellion. Major transnational oil companies operate in Cyrenaica, the ends of pipelines and gas pipelines are located there.

The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an organization financed by the CIA, was activated. It is instructive that it was the city to see the rapid emergence in the streets of the old monarchy flag and portraits of the late King Idris, the tribal chief Senussi crowned by England after the expulsion of the Italians. A "prince" Senussi suddenly appeared to give interviews.

27. In relationship to the status of women in Libya, "The delegation indicated that women were highly regarded in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and their rights were guaranteed by all laws and legislation. Discriminatory laws had been revoked." (Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, Human Rights Council, Jan. 4, 2011, p. 4)

Many thanks to our readers for making Pravda.Ru the interactive and interesting alternative must-read on the Net!

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru

 

 

George Kenney

Posted: March 7, 2011 05:44 PM

The U.S. Should Not Make War on Libya

In the early phases of the Bosnian civil war I thought — wrongly, in retrospect — that the west had a narrow window of opportunity to throw in our lot with a genuinely multi-ethnic Bosnian government, to bring the war to a swift and just resolution. One of my mistakes was in not seeing that the Sarajevo government contrived to maintain the veneer of multi-ethnicity but was, in fact, a Muslim enterprise whose penchant for atrocities was only slightly inferior to that of the official international villains, the Serbs. Nor did the Muslims have a much lower atrocity count than the historically blood-thirsty Croats. (It took me a couple trips wandering around the battlefield to become convinced.) The best outcome had always been a negotiated settlement but Washington waited almost five years before accepting that reality. By the end, in 1995, when all three sides were exhausted — front line fighters had largely stopped shooting — a few minor bombing campaigns got undeserved credit for clinching the Dayton deal but the bombing's harmful, longer term fallout became obscured.

In any case, in November 1992 I had co-authored an op-ed with former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael J. Dugan in the New York Times, laying out how a serious bombing campaign might work. This does not make me an expert but I did have an opportunity, at Mike's behest, to consult with a then currently serving Colonel who had planned the air war for Operation Desert Storm. Although the U.S. never undertook anything like our proposed "Operation Balkan Storm," I think it's fair to say that things would not have worked as expected.

The same could be said for a no fly zone in Libya.

The pro-intervention crowd makes the argument that after boxing in Gaddafi through economic sanctions, the threat of war crimes trials, etc., we're therefore responsible for the consequences of his having nothing left to lose from unleashing his full wrath against the Libyan people. It's the familiar common law principle of the responsibility of a good Samaritan but, as applied to Libya, it's sophistry, because the consequences are of a different order. To help save the Libyan people, or not, vastly oversimplifies the problem.

Several parts of the interventionist argument contain unexamined assumptions. One, mentioned repeatedly by Bob Gates, is that a no fly zone requires a small war to be put into effect. Before U.S. aircraft could safely enforce a no fly zone Libyan anti-aircraft assets must be wiped out. It's doubtful we know already where they all are so we'd have to find them, probably most of them, by running enough air raids to provoke government forces to turn on their radars, at which point those sites can be neutralized. On the other hand, it's also likely that Col. Gaddafi would salt mobile units into populated areas, near mosques, hospitals, schools, etc. The prospect both of a few U.S. planes being blown out of the Libyan sky and horrific "collateral damage" on the ground should give pause.

Cognizant of those dangers, a few interventionists are arguing, instead, for a limited no fly zone over the eastern, rebel controlled areas. This, they say, would be considerably less demanding and would give the rebels time to arm and train themselves. It would be as straightforward and as casualty free for us, they say, as the limited no fly zones over northern and southern Iraq (from the end of the first Gulf War through the beginning of the second).

But the circumstances are not the same. After being severely beaten in the first Gulf War Saddam Hussein was not about to precipitate another round of full scale warfare. Though he did try to shoot down coalition aircraft enforcing the zones he didn't try very hard. More importantly, the Iraqi no fly zones were formally static, having been intended to protect certain Kurdish and Marsh Arab populations from attack. In contrast, in Libya, logically, a limited no fly zone would have to have a somewhat elastic character because the rebels aren't so much fleeing from Col. Gaddafi as they are trying to seize power from him. After the establishment of a limited no fly zone, for example, if the rebels were to close on Tripoli, would the interventionists then tell them that they were henceforth on their own? No — most likely the no fly zone would follow the front.

All this prompts the question of who it is, exactly, getting arms and training under our no fly zone protection. Are they "the good guys?" Suppose not all of them are so good and that, just as in most civil wars, some of them commit horrible atrocities. At what point does our protection confer indirect responsibility?

Another consideration, one that interventionists generally don't address, is how a small war against Libya might motivate pro-government forces to fight back. To the extent that loyalists are wavering, calculating their options, it's reasonable to suppose that an outside threat could bring many firmly back into the fold. The same is true for a much larger number of "undecided" Libyans who must choose between the government or the rebels.

Moreover, outsiders with a militant anti-U.S. agenda would likely converge on Libya. For the most part they would be two-bit mercenaries but a few might have genuine talent. Prolonged combat could well create, in effect, a new graduate program for anti-American terrorism.

It's worth reminding ourselves that a small war is not necessarily going to be a quick war and that we can't count on Col. Gaddafi leaving Libya of his own volition. The fact is, even without intervention nobody knows how long the turmoil in Libya may last. It could be over tomorrow, or it could last a month, or two, or even as long as a few years.

While interventionists talk a good game about the sanitary, long-distance nature of a no fly zone, once started, a small war would create enormous political pressures to secure Libya's oil fields — the ninth largest reserves in the world — or even just the field that accounts for the most production (the Sirte basin, midway between government controlled Tripoli and rebel held Benghazi). Even assuming that the U.S. military could undertake such an effort it's a sure bet that U.S. political officers would not know how to handle Libyan tribal politics. Thus an introduction of U.S. ground forces could only add to the likelihood of a longer war.

With or without ground forces a small U.S. war against Libya could further agitate the rest of the Maghreb, the larger middle east, and even more distant areas, like Pakistan. Even under the best circumstances such agitation would be dangerous but, given the spirit of insurrection currently sweeping the Muslim world, this is perhaps the worst possible time to again offer ourselves as a potential target. Prudence suggests we not commit to unnecessary provocations until things have quieted down.

Interventionists, however, speculate that the opposite may be true: if a tyrannical regime with blood on its hands is left standing during this wave of reform then other repressive regimes may resort to force against "peaceful demonstrators" and those in opposition will be less likely to take risks. By not acting in Libya, they say, the impetus to democratization may wane. It's an interesting argument but, again, within it are important unexamined assumptions, most notably that the opposition groups who are protesting are peaceful. In Libya, manifestly they are not. So the other side of the coin is the question whether the U.S. wants to encourage violent insurrections against undemocratic regimes, either as a general policy or on a case by case basis. Perhaps, or perhaps not, but this is clearly a different — a more strategic — question than just whether we want to "help" Libya.

Then there's the issue of by what authority we would go to war. In the first two Gulf wars the U.S. managed to secure a fig leaf of legality. Here, that's not as easily done. Both Russia and China have made it abundantly clear that they disapprove of military action against Libya so it's unrealistic to expect any use of force resolution from the UN Security Council. The U.S. might be able to put together another 'coalition of the willing' within NATO but not even all NATO members think that the use of force is a good idea. If asked, the UK and France would probably participate in a U.S.-led effort, for example, but Germany would not. Once again the U.S. would strain the limits of international law and sow seeds of mistrust. In the longer run, in the same way that the Russians used the precedents of Bosnia and Kosovo in justifying their 2008 seizure of South Ossetia, other states might justify an ad hoc decision to go to war based upon what we do in Libya. If our goal is to inhibit wars of aggression — and it is — we have little choice but to play by the rules even if sometimes we don't like them.

And what about Congress? Nobody seems to be asking whether Congress might have a role in deciding whether to go to war with Libya but it's a legitimate question. If one goes by the Constitution it does; if one prefers to ignore the Constitution that's OK too, but the repeated precedent tends to accumulate a potentially dangerous power in the presidency. In the future, it would be neither reasonable nor expedient to depend upon all presidents to use that power judiciously.

To be honest, there is also a question of sincerity. I've no doubt that many of those who want a U.S. military intervention in Libya are completely sincere and are trying to understand the situation from the purest humanitarian perspective. But when one sees most of the same gang that argued for both Gulf Wars in full-throated synchronization over the virtues of going to war with Libya, one must consider the probability that other (murky) interests are involved.

The danger is that a large number of senior Obama administration officials believe, wrongly, that a little bit of bombing works. Bosnia, they say, proved it. But learning the wrong lessons from Bosnia could lead to a tragic mistake.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-kenney/the-us-should-not-make-wa_b_832603.html