While NATO's mandate enjoins it to protect civilians, the Alliance allows the forces of the Libyan National Transition Council to continue their abuses. After hunting down black Africans, the summary executions now extend to members of the Qadhadhfa tribe, that of the fallen Leader. Hundreds of thousands of African workers have already fled the country to escape death; the time has now come for certain Libyans to take the road to exile if they want to survive.
Critics of NATO's intervention in Libya have launched some of their harshest indictments against the international media, and particularly Doha based station Al Jazeera, which positioned itself as the greatest champion of the so-called Arab Spring. The resignation of Al Jazeera director general Wadah Kanfar following the release of Wikileaks cables which expose his links to the CIA is sure to give such critics a sense of vindication. With the channel being seen as the "voice" of the movement against Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, it also raises questions about the potential for Mr Kanfar and the channel's vested interests in NATO's intervention which brought that movement to power.
A number of news reports that were broken by the channel to make the case for the intervention have over the past six months been strongly contested by human rights organisations.
One of the most potent of these was the unfounded claim that "African mercenaries" were working for Muammar Gaddafi. Despite organisations like Amnesty International highlighting the lack of evidence for the claim, evidence that it has led to the systematic persecution of black Libyans and other black Africans by the rebels have streamed out of the country for the past six months.
Shortly before the fall of Tripoli, the town of Tawergha had been completely eradicated of all its mainly black population by rebels in nearby Misrata, who had marked their signature on the walls to the town: "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin". Just a few days before the rebels advanced into Tripoli, a friend who worked in a refugee called me to report that 1,000 people from Tawergha had shown up at the site in the early hours of the morning. […]
Upon his visit to Tripoli last week, David Cameron basked in the praise of NTC leaders, Mustafa Abdel Jalil and Mahmoud Jabril, for Britain's leading role in their "revolution" and he was keen to stress the success he had witnessed, with hospitals working and people in the streets. Cameron and other leaders of the NATO states have made no mention of the targeting of black people that is part of the wider witch hunts against anyone who is remotely associated with supporting the former government. […]
The witch hunt extends to non-Libyans who come from countries which were friendly to the former regime. As we boarded the fishing boat that was to evacuate us to Malta, an armed guard initially said that two Telesur journalists, one Cuban and Ecuadorian, would not be allowed to board because "South America is friends with Gaddafi." All eastern Europeans also face being barred from fleeing, and in this video Ukrainians and Russians who had been working in the country report being beaten and tortured by the rebels. People who belong to Libya's largest tribe, Wafalla, based in Beni Walid are amongst the prime targets. […]
In the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, and with Palestine never far from the thoughts of people on the Arab street, Al Jazeera has played a key role in convincing them that this "revolution" which the NTC have admitted would not have been possible without NATO's intervention, has been welcomed by ordinary Libyans.
But there was in reality no investigation prior to the start of the bombing campaign into the population's support for the rebels or a NATO intervention. And six months of NATO bombing to force the surrender of area after area, the NTC still unable to move its headquarters to Tripoli and ongoing witch hunts to root out any potential resistance to the new status quo, indicates it's a lot lower then the United Nations was led to believe.
Lizzie Phelan, "Witch hunts in 'free' Libya" (Voltairenet, 22 Sep 2011)
Where are all those loud-mouthed American 'Indologists' (especially those of WASP background…) who keep shedding (crocodile?) tears for the victims of Dafur, the suppressed people of Tibet, the slums of Bombay, and the trampled rights of Hindu women?
Reply only to WTC-911 (geopolitics), Mecca-Banaras ('Arab spring'), Dia-Gnosis (manipulation of mass media), or Ontological Ethics (self-deception)
Sunthar
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (23 Sep 2011)
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 1:29 PM
To: Abhinavagupta@yahoogroups.com; 'WTC-911'; 'MeccaBenares'
Cc: 'Akandabaratam'; 'Dia-Gnosis'; 'Ontological Ethics'
Subject: "Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera, and the triumph of televisual propaganda" (Thierry Meyssan, Voltairenet, 23 Sep 2011)
It may be some time before the English version of yet another exemplary piece of investigative reporting from Thierry Meyssan appears at Voltairenet
http://www.voltairenet.org/Wadah-Khanfar-Al-Jazeera-et-le (in French)
Sunthar
>
[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (19 July 2011)
"Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion" (John Rosenthal) - CIRET-AVT / CF2R report]
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