DEMOCRACY NOW! AND “PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA”: CHEERLEADERS FOR IMERIALISM AND WAR

Posted on July 12, 2012 

Syria 360°

Finian Cunningham

The major Western mainstream media outlets have been running a “shock and awe” propaganda offensive against the Syrian government of President Bashar Al Assad for nearly 16 months. The misinformation has been unrelenting, monolithic, unverified, one-sided and, frankly, increasingly preposterous.

With the suppression of mounting facts that Western governments are waging a covert war of aggression in Syria, the Western public is right to treat the conventional media sources with skepticism and outright contempt. Such media are seen as “politicized” and “unreliable”, serving a naked imperialist agenda for Western regime change. In a word, they are damaged goods.

This is where a segment of the so-called alternative media can play a valuable propaganda function for Western powers. Because such media are supposed to be independent, critical, non-corporate, the public tends to consider their reports as objective and unbiased.  One such “alternative” news service is “Democracy Now” hosted by Amy Goodman. Goodman is seen as something of a campaigning critical journalist shedding the light of truth on the depredations of the US government, corporations and the Pentagon. But a closer look at what Goodman’s “Democracy Now” is reporting on Syria shows that the purported critical broadcaster has become a purveyor of Western government propaganda. While the mainstream media’s propaganda function is obvious to the informed public, Goodman’s Democracy plays a more subtle role. Camouflaged with the trappings of critical, independent journalism, “Democracy Now” serves to sow powerful seeds of misinformation in a way that the “compromised” mainstream media cannot.

This misinformation from “Democracy Now” is valuable to the ruling elite because to many of its readers it is not seen as misinformation.

Rather, the “news” on “Democracy Now” is viewed as reliable and representing the views of the anti-war, anti-imperialist constituency. In this way, Goodman is a valuable asset to Washington and Wall Street because her broadcasts can serve to disorient and undermine a constituency that is normally opposed to Western warmongering and imperialism. Many of the subscribers to “Democracy Now” may see through the misinformation. Many, though, may not, and therefore will become embedded with the imperialist agenda. The fact that Democracy Now ratings appear to be holding up would indicate that a lot of its followers are oblivious to the insidious effect of such misinformation. As such, Democracy Now is more valuable to the powers-that-be than, say, the New York Times or the Financial Times. “Democracy Now” ensures that the agenda of the powerful becomes infiltrated in a constituency that would otherwise be opposed to that agenda.

First, let’s recap on the mainstream propaganda offensive against Syria.

Since mid-March 2011, when violence was initially reported in that country, the Western mainstream television, radio and press studiously ignored the evidence of covert foreign-backed subversion and terrorism. Instead these outlets have sought to portray the protests as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring popular movements that were seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. The mainstream media have run saturation coverage to demonise the government in Damascus as a “brutal, authoritarian regime” that is cracking down mercilessly on its civilian population demanding democratic reforms. The narrative is monolithic in the major media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Le Monde, BBC, ITN, the Irish national broadcaster RTE or the Middle East’s much-vaunted Al Jazeera – the “story” on Syria is uncannily uniform. A noble, civilian mass-based movement is being savagely crushed by a tin-eared dictator, so the story goes.

Every possible smear campaign against the Assad government has been indulged in and indeed fabricated. From the alleged killing of innocent civilians by the national armed forces, to the perpetration of massacres by pro-government militias, to self-inflicted car bombs in urban centres by Assad secret services, to the feckless shopping habits of the president’s wife. Russia Today, Press TV, Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Vatican News Service (Agenzia Fides), to name a few, have been honorable exceptions in mainstream media journalism for conveying a more accurate picture of what is really happening inside Syria – showing that “protesters” are far from peaceful civilians, and much of the violence is actually stemming from Western, Turkish and Arab-backed mercenaries that have infiltrated the country. As the facts of US and NATO-backed violence in Syria become more transparent and harder to conceal owing to the sheer volume of covert involvement, the Western public has rightly become more skeptical about what the mainstream media outlets are telling them. Indeed, the blatant misinformation and lies that are being sold as journalism is increasingly seen as contemptible.

The Houla massacre on the 24 May is a case in point. The BBC and other mainstream media outlets have been shown to be outrageously wrong in their initial rush to blame the atrocity on Syrian government forces when the evidence has slowly emerged that it was most likely the grisly work of Western-backed mercenaries.

It is all the more disquieting when a supposedly informed, alternative news service, Democracy Now, peddles such blatant misinformation – more than six weeks after the massacre occurred and after evidence has been reported that points convincingly to Western-backed perpetrators. On 9 July, Goodman broadcast an interview with Rafif Jouejati, a spokesperson for a Syrian opposition group called the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, based in Washington DC. Despite the mounting evidence of Western, Turkish and Saudi/Qatari covert operations, Goodman gave her guest a free rein to regurgitate the litany of mainstream media calumnies on Syria. Without a hint of scepticism from Goodman, her guest said:

“The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity… We have mountains of evidence indicating that [Assad’s] armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country.” 

Really? The majority of the country engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, democracy and dignity? That sounds more like the fanciful imagination of someone safely based in Washington DC. By contrast, sources in Syria have confirmed that people are terrified by Western-armed gangs running amok in their communities, kidnapping, murdering, evicting families from their homes and burning down business premises. According to the leaked Arab League Observer Mission Report, which had initially been commissioned by the Arab League at Washington’s request:

“In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed. “

“Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.” (League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012, 

Ironically, these fact-finding observations of the AL Observer Mission , went against the interests of its Western sponsors. It was barely reported by the mainstream media)

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ):

“Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.”

(Neue Erkenntnisse zu Getöteten von Hula.Abermals Massaker in Syrien, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 7, 2012 translated from the German,
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-abermals-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html)

The FAZ report quoted above echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Also of significance is the report of Der Spiegel (March 29, 2012) entitled “An Executioner for Syria’s Rebels Tells His Story”. A system of “burial brigades” for those executed confirms an organized process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings. This single “burial brigade”, according  to the executioner’s testimony, was responsible for the arbitrary execution of 350-400 people including “prisoners” and “traitors”.  The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the occupied urban and rural areas, who express their opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

“Since last summer, we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 29, 2012)

The Vatican News Service Agenzia Fides largely confirms that the Western backed  “opposition forces” rather than the Al Assad government were responsible for countless atrocities:
“In Homs, called the “martyred city”, “opposition forces have occupied two areas, Diwan Al Bustan and Hamidieh, where there are all the churches and bishoprics,” the Archimandrite told Fides. “The picture for us – he continues – is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.

The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks. “The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.” (Agenzia Fides, Vatican News Service, 4 June 2012)

Overblown Casualty Figures, Blamed on the Government
Goodman indulged in the overblown casualty figures from dubious Syrian opposition sources as if they were verifiable accurate data. She even sounded like Hillary Clinton in talking up the “defection” of the hapless former Syrian Brigadier General Manaf Tlass as “significant” when informed sources discount that news as a minor irrelevance.

In the interview between Goodman and her guest (whom sources describe as belonging to a family formerly aligned with the Syrian government), Bashar Al Assad was portrayed as an unhinged leader who is in denial over massacres – massacres, as we have noted, that have most likely been carried out by Western-backed death squads as confirmed by numerous reports.

Preposterously, Assad was described as guilty of much worse crimes than former Egyptian and Libyan rulers Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. Then the “alternative” Democracy Now broadcast this statement from the supposed opposition spokesperson as if it were normal discourse:

“I would like to think that we will proceed with full prosecution in the International Criminal Court. I think the longer this issue goes on and the more violence he [Assad] commits, the more likely he will wish to have a fate such as Gaddafi’s.” 

Recall that the Libyan leader was lynched on a roadside by a NATO-directed mob, and sodomised with a knife before being shot dead. It may also be recalled that “Democracy Now” gave prominent broadcasts supporting NATO’s intervention in Libya and justifying the criminal subversion of that country. Going by the latest coverage on Syria, Democracy Now is acting once again under a “progressive” cloak as a propaganda tool for US-led imperialist intervention. Given the misplaced respect among many of the public seeking independent, alternative, accurate news and analysis, this insidious role of Democracy Now is reprehensible. May it be suggested, in the name of media transparency, that the programme be aptly renamed “Imperialism Now”.

Democracy Now, Libya, Syria and its continued pro-intervention stance.

from Edifying Debate

Imperialism is desperately trying to expand itself by making Americans more poor, so Goodman’s support of imperialism in Libya must be checked. I am writing this not at all to embarrass Amy Goodman but to reach a greater understanding of how the American state can and will influence “independent” media to become no longer “independent” but polluted and eventually meaningless.
I sincerely hope Amy Goodman can respond to my query about her coverage of Libya and not sink any further in to the polluted mainstream of Americanism. –RF. 

From BAR

Is the independent media movement's flagship radio-TV show Democracy Now! pushing the State Department and Pentagon line on Libya instead of “going where the silence is” and telling the truth without fear or favor? Are its Libyan correspondents embedded with the US-backed Libyan rebels to such an extent that they have minimized and failed to follow up persistent reports of ethnic cleansing in Libya or investigate whether alleged “mercenaries” ever existed or Khadaffi's “massacres” ever took place?  - Are Democracy Now!'s Libyan Correspondents Feeding Us the State Department and Pentagon Line on Libya?

To Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now team:

I've been a devout listener for about 10 years and I've urged others to listen/watch Democracy Now. But DN's blatant, outrageous, pro-US Libya propaganda in today's edition has finally put me over the top. I'm finally coming to terms with the sad fact that I'd better not trust Democracy Now any more for basic honesty or integrity.

All those maudlin voices in Tripoli, supposedly celebrating their new US-brand "freedom"! Were they hired by a PR agency or have they just been badly fooled? Do any of them know the real story behind this occupation and bombing campaign, for whose benefit it's being waged, or for that matter the actual state of the campaign? Do any of them know what is being stolen from them?

No names, no background checks, no questioning, no investigation! Just fluffy celebration! What has befallen my beloved Democracy Now? Ruppert Murdoch must be laughing his head off.

For me, this is a grave occasion. Unless there's a drastic change in the right direction very, very soon, I feel obligated to advise our WZBC listeners specifically to be wary of the honesty or integrity of anything they see or hear on Democracy Now. I will also need to make this adjustment on our website and on our handouts, all of which have been promoting Democracy Now.

Stan Robinson, co-producer Truth and Justice Radio, WZBC 90.3FM Newton MA truthandjusticeradio.org (see more here)

Who pulls the Strings at the BBC?

We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war.

Posted on February 11, 2012
by Pam Field at the NEW LEFT
BIAS AND THE BBC

The BBC should be an important voice, not least because we, the people own it- and its users, ( so that’s us again) – fund it. We would hope to be able to trust it to provide quality educational material and to keep us informed about what is happening in the world, and honest and accurate reporting.

Today, rather than report on Ed Miliband’s letter to the House of Lords about the Health Bill, the BBC bombards us with articles about the Falklands, Syria and disgruntled Christians.

So what is happening at the BBC? We are kept well informed about the goings-on in the Falkland Islands. Is that a co-incidence in that as I remember it was the flag-waving and cheering of the departing ships, which led to a recovery for Margaret Thatcher in 1982 when the public-service cuts were hitting hard?

The BBC inform us of the coming-and-goings of managers of football clubs, and then about complaints from Christians about being marginalised. I am unsure as to why the BBC should be a voice for religious groups – isn’t that what churches are for?

While all this is going on, the most unpopular policies in recent years go unreported by the BBC, and by much of the Press.

HEALTH AND WELFARE

The Health Service Reform Bill amounts to privatisation of the National Health Service as the most unpopular policy in sixty years. It is the duty of the BBC to keep us informed, and News is being stifled. Why?

Neither of the Coalition parties have an overall majority, and, despite campaigning to protect the NHS, the Tory-led Coalition are railroading through privatisation of the health service at great cost to the British people, in terms of health, loss of assets and skills. Both Coalition parties must be held responsible for the destruction of the NHS.

While the Independent reports the cost of 600 million pounds, as a result of the redundancies from NHS cuts, the BBC do not. While the Guardian and the Scottish Herald briefly reported of The Spartacus Report and Disability Living Allowance and Welfare “Reform”, the BBC did not. While Sky News reports that Ed Miliband, Leader of the Labour Party, has written to the House of Lords asking it to drop the Health Bill, the BBC do not. It is the responsibility of the BBC to report and represent the Leader of the Opposition, the Government ensures its activities are reported as they wish them to be.

THE GLOBAL ISSUE

We are kept informed by the BBC of developments in Libya, in Iran and now in Syria, with the purpose of preparation for war. On Think Left CJ Stone writes of Manufacturing Consent for the Invasion of Iran. The media consensus is to ensure that the US and its allies can depend of governments of the world to open up markets to foreign investment – in other words to multinationals and through the global market ensure that the very rich remain rich and powerful, no matter how much poverty and starvation there is, or no matter what permanent damage to the planet results. Dr Tristan Learoyd’s (Think Left) article on the aftermath of the war in Libya questions whether the Libyan people face really freedoms or that of another tyrant, global unbridled capitalism.

The BBC are consistently failing to report accurately, if at all. They are failing to inform and to educate. Lies and propaganda cloak the facts.

The lack of BBC’s challenging reporting questioning the government’s viewpoint can be shown in their reporting of George Osborne’s agreement with the Swiss banks. The type of language used and the tone of delivery invited certainty in the desirability of this decision. The only caveat referred to was that because the agreement did not come into force until 2013, there was still plenty of time for the secret bank holdings to be moved to somewhere where no tax would be liable!

There was absolutely no recognition, acknowledgement or questioning of the Coalition government’s thinking or motivation in making this settlement. Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK makes clear why the ramifications of this deal should have been discussed:

To say that this is a quite extraordinary act by the UK government massively understates the irresponsibility of what they have agreed.

The UK is apparently going to accept settlement for past tax at around 30% of the assets held in a Swiss account. That might be reasonable if the funds placed in Switzerland had been taxed in the UK before being deposited in Switzerland and it was only the income on those funds that had been evaded since then. But what we know for sure is that most money held in Switzerland got their illicitly – it was not taxed before its arrival in the Alps. It’s tax evaded money.

As a result we would now expect 40% tax (at least) on the capital in all these accounts in Switzerland as a matter of course plus a 100% penalty that might reasonably be charged in a case of deliberate tax evasion (meaning in total 80% of the capital balance should be paid to settle the tax originally evaded) and then there is of course interest due on the late payment plus tax due on the income earned since. Nothing less than 100% is due on these balances – wiping them out of course – and anything else is a scandalous underpayment.

But George Osborne is not going to demand that sum. He’s instead going to accept a tiny part of what is owing. Richard Murphy(Tax Research UK)

In spite of these charges, there was no counterbalance on the BBC, to George Osborne’s extraordinary claim to be ‘cracking down on tax cheats’. But then again there all too rarely seems to be any serious attempt to question government explanation.

The importance of the Swiss settlement is that it is a significant part of a larger process, the ‘shadow economy’ of tax havens which has been so meticulously exposed by Nick Shaxton in his book “Treasure islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world.’ However, as Nick Shaxton himself described with surprise, in May 2011, ‘the BBC, the heart of British media, doesn’t seem interested.’

‘The argument at the heart of Treasure Islands is about as big as it gets. This really is the hitherto untold story of globalisation. This really is the dark heart of the global economy.’

‘With trillions of dollars – literally trillions – being cycled through this libertarian, anti-democratic system, stripping away taxation, financial regulation, criminal laws, and so on, bending and distorting markets and global capital flows in powerful ways that no economist could ever explain using current models. With Britain, as I mentioned, slap bang in the middle of it all.’

‘Nobody has said, … that there isn’t a gigantic global network of British tax havens quietly hoovering up trillions and funnelling them to the City of London. Nobody has said the City Corporation isn’t this utterly bizarre, ancient and massively powerful organisation at the heart of Britain and the British establishment. Nobody has accused me of making gross factual mistakes, distorting the historical or statistical record, or anything like that. The FT, for instance calls it “meticulously researched.’

‘…. the BBC is shirking on its responsibility to inform and to educate.’

THE DANGER IS LOSS OF FREEDOM

John Christensen was so disturbed by his interview with Evan Davis on the Today program that he wrote an open letter asking why

The frustration of Shaxton and Christensen with the BBC is increasingly being voiced on comment threads. For example:

“Richard, might I ask an unrelated question?

What do you think of the BBC’s current financial coverage? Do you think it is extensive, honesty, penetrating? Is it reflective of the real turmoil and double-dealing taking place in the City of London, or is it supine and obfuscatory? I was stunned to find that the BBC had dedicated part of its website to asking which ‘cuts’ people felt the government should make; and this in spite of the fact that the banks had been handed trillions of pounds of taxpayers money? No mention was made of the fact that the private debt of the the banking sector was transferred to the public’s balance sheet – nor was there any mention that this private debt crisis, because it was shirted onto the public balance sheet, helped to trigger a fiscal and thence sovereign debt crisis! Do you think we are seeing honest reporting of events? If not, how do you think we can go about solving this problem?

Thanks,

Jonah.”

‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ which means democracy requires us having access to information which we’re not getting from the BBC.

Inventing Reality : Michael Parenti

“Even if the [media] does not mold our every opinion, it does mold our opinion visibility; it can frame the perceptual limits around which our opinions take shape. Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us. The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about … the media teach us tunnel vision conditioning us to perceive the problems of society as isolated particulars, thereby stunting our critical vision. Larger casualties are reduced to immediately distinct events, while the linkages of wealth, power and policy go unreported or are buried under a congestion of surface impressions and personalities.

In sum, the media set the limits on public discourse.

They may not always mold opinion, but they do not always have to. It is enough that they create opinion visibility, giving legitimacy to certain views and illegitimacy to others … This power to determine the issue agenda, the information flow, and the parameters of political debate so that it extends from ultra-right to no further than moderate center is, if not total, still totally awesome.”

And so, eventually we know and believe only that which what we are permitted, because that is what suits the powers that be. In generations to come, history can be rewritten if it is allowed to be. Eventually we become nothing but zombies walking around with a false reality.

Western Media's call to war agains Iran

The return of the Keyboard Warriors
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times February 12, 2012

Waiting for the end of the world,
Waiting for the end of the world,
Waiting for the end of the world.
Dear Lord, I sincerely hope you're coming
‘cause you really started something.

Elvis Costello, Waiting for the end of the world

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Return of the Keyboard Warriors - a prized Return of the Living Dead spin-off - is at hand. From Republican chicken hawks to public intellectuals, right-wing America is erupting in renewed neo-conservative revolt. The year 2012 is the new 2002; Iran is the new Iraq. Whatever the highway - real men go to Tehran via Damascus, or real men go to Tehran



non-stop - they want a war, and they want it now.

Go ahead and jump
Exhibit A is an op-ed piece at the Wall Street Journal - similar to countless others popping up virtually everyday not only in this Masters of the Universe vehicle but also in the Washington Post and myriad rags across "Western civilization".

The festival of fallacies ranges from the usual "diplomacy has run its course" to "the sanctions are too late" - culminating in the right-wing weapon of choice; "Iran is within a year of getting to the point when it will be able to assemble a bomb essentially at will." Why bother to follow what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is doing, not to mention the National Intelligence Estimates released by the US intelligence community?

And why not add imperial disdain tinged with racism, as in "Iran is a Third World country that can't even protect its own scientists in the heart of Tehran". Of course not; they are being killed by the Iranian terror group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, merrily trained, financed and armed by Israel's Mossad, as US corporate media has just discovered. [2] Everybody in Iran has known this for months.

As a climax, still another fallacy - "the Islamic Republic means to destroy Israel" - unveils the real agenda; "the broader goal of ending the regime." Oh, if we could only have our Persian gendarme of the Gulf back.

This is what passes for geopolitical analysis in Rupert Murdoch-controlled US corporate media - read and relinked daily by the Masters of the Universe. Scary monsters, super freaks
Exhibit B is an op-ed piece at Tina Brown's The Daily Beast, signed by Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard, senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

Recently, I actually took the trouble of reading Ferguson's latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, during my favorite West-to-Rest flight, the 16-hour New York to Hong Kong (from the American century to the Asian century).

Ferguson sets out to refute the reasons why Israel should not attack Iran. He assumes "the Saudis stand ready to pump out additional supplies" of oil (wrong). He assumes a "military humiliation" will lead the regime in Tehran to collapse (wrong). He claims that Tehran will not "become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy ... because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction" (multiple wrong; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is very sober and calculating, and he has banned nuclear weapons as anti-Islamic).

Former US vice president Dick Cheney would have been proud to hire Ferguson as an apparatchik, as he states that "preventive war can be a lesser evil" and duly advocates "creative destruction".

Ferguson ranks Israel as "the most easterly outpost of Western civilization"; not bad for an isolated, supremacist theocracy/ethnocracy armed with at least 200 (undeclared) nuclear weapons whose favorite sport is to terrorize Palestinians and now Iranian scientists. Talk about a sponsor of terror state springing from the womb of "Western civilization".

Ferguson's toxic fusion of arrogance and ignorance - about the Middle East, about Persian culture, about Asia, about the nuclear issue, about the oil industry, about, in fact, "the Rest" - would be just innocuous hadn't he be hailed as a top public intellectual. The best thing about his piece are actually the comments, ranging from "I'm shocked that a research fellow at Jesus College would advocate the bombing of Muslims" to "What's with all these Brits that look to the USA as a platform to re-inflate their dreams of Empire?"

If this is what passes for intellectual analysis in the upper strata of the Anglo-American axis, no wonder the whole business of Empire is doomed.

Far more insidious than The Invasion of the Keyboard Warriors is its effect on the warrior-in-chief, US President Barack Obama. Recently, Obama has been conducting product placement for Robert Kagan's new book, The World America Made. Kagan, a neo-con stalwart, advises Mitt Romney - who may, or may not, become the Republican presidential nominee, assuming he wins over the visceral repulsion he provokes in extreme right-wing circles.

As Andrew Levine from the Institute for Policy Studies has shrewdly observed, Obama the neo-con may be a very clever move to pre-empt Mitt and win even more votes. But it may be an exercise in transparency, as Obama, even before his State of the Union address, has been reciting Kagan to the letter, as in forget Asia, this will be another American century, and I will be at the helm; thus remember, it is I that coined the only change you can believe in.

And that's when this really becomes a scary movie; if Obama the neo-con concludes that to get to his new, dominant American century first he needs to do some vacuum-cleaning in Southwest Asia, blowback or not, he'll do it - to the delight of the Keyboard Warrior brigade.

Gaddafi: The murderous western touch

Thursday, 27 October 2011
Herald SA


So now Muammar Gaddafi has died; apparently after being incapacitated by the fire power of US drones and French gunship bombers, and left to face a very primitively ruthless death at the hands of the NATO led rebels.

Jurist Special Guest Columnist and international lawyer Curtis Doebbler has indicated that the killing of Gaddafi was a violation of The Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, was a crime of aggression and also constituted the use of excessive force; in as much as it was a clear violation to the right to life, besides being in violation of Resolution 1973 which sought to protect civilians; not to bomb fleeing people as what happened to Gaddafi's convoy.

To some Barack Obama has emerged as the number one champion of the West's anti-terrorism war. Ironically Obama has teamed up with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda to take over Libya, leading to his drones incapacitating Gaddafi from the air so that his Al-Qaeda allies could summarily execute the defenceless and unarmed Gaddafi and his son, among others.
Obama now commands a remarkably bloody record - killing thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, killing Arch Terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, arming and backing Al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels all the way from Benghazi to Sirte, via Tripoli; killing over 50 000 Libyan civilians in the process, grazing down Sirte and Bani Walid so they submit to the Al-Qaeda thugs calling themselves the National Transitional

Council; and subsequently getting himself the trophy of Gaddafi's battered body.
Now the global witch-hunt for terrorists has reached remarkably impressive levels, with Gaddafi's death eliciting cheers for Obama and his sidekicks from brainwashed and hapless global citizens. It is somehow hard not to cheer the smart and fast speaking Obama even when he is announcing a murder act under his command. The man comes across like a genius.
The brainwashing of the global masses is so deep that a heartless and hell-hailing monster like France's Nicolas Sarkozy can also boast of admirers. This writer treats the barbaric murder of Gaddafi and all other callous and murderous Western schemes as purely satanic; apparently exposing the maggoty and inherently evil forces behind Western imperialism and white supremacy. No apologies.

The manhunt for Gaddafi was clearly not part of effecting a no fly zone, the pretext by which Western powers entered Libya, ostensibly to protect civilians they baselessly said were about to be wiped out by Gaddafi. The manhunt was undoubtedly orchestrated by the same people who founded and executed slavery on us Africans, the very people who occupied our continent by the power of colonial conquest, the people who brought to humanity two world wars, the people who helped create a murderous Zionist Israel, and the very people who today preside over a predatory imperialistic system.
The whole NATO operation in Libya cannot be separated from the work of those who founded the American constitution, and the so-called American exceptionalism. This is why Hillary Clinton brazenly bragged about her role in ordering the murdering of Gaddafi, declaring with a cruel laugh "We came, we saw, and he died."

The she-devil could have aptly put it like "We came, we bombed, and he died." Dear reader, you have to understand the language of this piece in the context of the invasion of a sovereign country that has suffered so much loss of civilian lives at the hands of foreigner aggressors reputed with a murderous history based on racial supremacy.
There are a number of reasons that makes it impossible for this writer to join the celebration over the death of Col Gaddafi, and supporting the man himself is not one of them. Col Gaddafi courted Westerners in the last years of his reign, and the revolution of Zimbabwe was not served well by this rather treacherous behaviour. In fact Gaddafi had as many admirable traits as he had deplorable ones, like supporting liberation movements, while trying the Arabisation scheme in Sudan, or supporting the British-sponsored Idi Amin in Uganda, even when the dictator was waging a war against Tanzania.

He is the same Gaddafi who helped train our own freedom fighters during Zimbabwe's war for independence, and the same Gaddafi who turned Libya into one of the richest countries on this planet from the second poorest country when he took over power. Talk of 42 years of massive economic progression and tightly controlled political monopoly of power.

The first reason I cannot and will not celebrate the death of Gaddafi is perhaps the fact that I am a cynic and somewhat a political pessimist by nature. Secondly, I hail from an international relations training background, and also from a media background. As such I am what you would charitably call an expert in the knowledge of how brainwashed this world is.

It is not easy to make someone like this writer an easy target of mass deception tactics; often sugar coated in humanitarianism; the rhetoric on democracy, liberties and freedoms; or any of the hoopla around which rivals and enemies of Western politicians are derided and denounced. This writer is a discerner and not only a listener to Western political voices. The third reason is I am an ideological creation that is allergic to imperialistic values and whatever they are meant to stand for. No sane person from the African continent can admire imperialism. Simply put, I believe monopoly capitalism practised at the expense of weaker nations is a program designed from the depths of hell, and by its very nature it is the number one crime against humanity. It is imperialism that breeds devil incarnates like Nicolas Sarkozy, and it is imperialism that deceives humanity to the point of elevating such a heartless murderer to the level of a liberator. Dear reader, if your idea of democracy has got anything to do with the actions of NATO in Libya over the last eight months, then this writer has got bad news for you. You are simply confusing sugar-coated imperialistic aggression for democracy and such an error is fatalistic by definition.

If your source of information over Libya has been the BBC "world service" or any of the mainstream Western media, again this writer has bad news for you. You have been lied to, misled, deceived, manipulated, cheated, brainwashed; and you have to work extremely hard to sieve the information so as to differentiate grain from chaff.

As a matter of principle and by the definition of personality this writer did not cheer American forces when they announced they had killed Osama bin Laden, and neither does he cheer them for ending the life of Muammar Gaddafi.
This writer does not count Obama a hero of whatever magnitude, just like it is increasingly becoming hard to keep counting Nicolas Sarkozy among humans.

The man is proving to be simply a heartless beast walking on two legs. His British sidekick David Cameron comes along as a beautiful looking angel from the Devil's kingdom. Libyan atrocities committed by NATO and its Al-Qaeda allies stink to high heavens, and they speak strongly on the characters of Sarkozy and Cameron. Displaying dead bodies in a shopping centre is something that infuriates the Devil himself, yet these

Allah preaching goons reckon its laudable conduct.
These views are figurative descriptions purely based on intellectual opinion from an angered writer. Let us start with Barack Obama, a man fitting so well into Malcolm X's "house nigger" description, dutifully doing

Uncle Sam's dirty work at home and abroad.

It is a fact that Obama has not used his eloquence and oratory skills to say anything tangible about racism in the United States, or about the deplorable conditions of the African American. Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

The BBC: NATO’s media partner-in-crime

25 October 2011
By William Bowles

Well they’ve finally silenced Muammar Gaddafi, the man the BBC calls “an oddball until the end”. The manner of his capture and death seems not to bother the BBC but then who cares about ‘oddballs’?

The video, with commentary by the BBC’s chief foreign correspondent propagandist for NATO John Simpson,

“looks back at the life of a man who “remained a one-off, an oddball right until the end”. — BBC News, 20 October 2011

Attacked by NATO jets, then tortured and shot in cold blood in front of jubilant ‘rebels’, all Simpson has to offer is the perpetuation of racist Western myths about the Arabs, about the ‘other’. Disgusting stuff but totally in tune with BBC’s role as NATO’s media partner.

Other commentators however, had a somewhat different take on events, for example:

“The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies’ are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,’ Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, described how the West treated the cold-blooded murder of Moammur Gaddafi.” — ‘Envoy slams ‘sadistic’ triumphalism‘, RT, 22 October 2011

Hence the BBC’s focus on Gaddafi the ‘oddball’ and the ‘last of the buffoon dictators’, anything to dehumanize the man, all the better to justify his murder.

Meanwhile, back in TV-land the BBC’s ‘coverage’ of Gaddafi’s death veered wildly, first in one direction and then in another as it attempted to adjust its wobbly spin on things. Strikingly, not a single story questions the nature of his capture and subsequent murder, and the role NATO played in Gaddafi’s murder is hinted at in only two pieces on the 20 October (see below).

(Earliest to latest)

20 October 2011
Fallen hero of Libya’s final battle (obviously not about Gaddafi but about the ‘heroic’ rebels focusing on a Brit who had joined the ‘rebels’, got shot and died)

VIDEO: Libyan forces ‘capture Gaddafi’ (12:37pm replete with talk that most were glad that “the hated dictator” had been caught and according to the text, “Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been captured and wounded in both legs, the National Transitional Council has said” though it’s not stated in the video).

VIDEO: Libyan TV announces Gaddafi ‘capture’ (13:01) (NTC TV announcement of Gaddafi’s capture “Libyan TV’s news presenter thanked God as he announced the reports that Col Muammar Gaddafi had been captured by rebels in Sirte.”)

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi ‘killed’ (22:01) This is the most disingenuous of the BBC’s propaganda blitz on behalf of NATO replete with the allegation that Gaddafi had a “golden gun” when he was captured, an allegation that disappeared almost immediately just like the ‘African mercenaries’ and ‘bombing of civilians’ disinfo that acted as the justification for unleashing the Dogs of War on defenceless Libya.

This is one of only two references to a NATO attack on Gaddafi’s convoy and it’s pretty much a NATO press release rehashed:

“Nato, which has been running a bombing campaign in Libya for months, said it had carried out an air strike earlier on Thursday.

“French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said French jets had fired warning shots to halt a convoy carrying Col Gaddafi as it tried to flee Sirte.

“He said Libyan fighters had then descended and taken the colonel.”

It then quotes Mr Jibril (ex)leader of the NTC who alleged that,

“When the car [with Gaddafi onboard and already wounded] was moving it was caught in crossfire between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces in which he was hit by a bullet in the head,” said Mr Jibril, quoting from the report.

Not content with presenting this allegation as news, the piece presents us with some of the other allegations doing the rounds, though the piece opened with the ‘crossfire’ version of Gaddafi’s murder, obviously the preferred one coming as it did from the NTC itself.

“Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril announced the death, and later said the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”

But just to be on the safe side, the BBC gives us some alternate endings to choose from later in the piece:

“Earlier, some NTC fighters gave a different account of the colonel’s death, saying he had been shot when he tried to escape.

“One NTC fighter told the BBC that he found Col Gaddafi hiding in a hole, and the former leader had begged him not to shoot.

“The fighter showed reporters a golden pistol he said he had taken from Col Gaddafi.

“Arabic TV channels showed images of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes where the reporters said Col Gaddafi was found.

None of which were true but the last fabrication about Gaddafi being found in a drain with its echoes of the image of Saddam Hussein down a hole made the headlines first, such is the power of the BBC to shape our take on events. The BBC even ran the footage as ‘news’.

Later on the same day, another BBC correspondent propagandist for NATO, Jeremy Bowen allegedly explains in‘How Gaddafi’s power collapsed‘ that the rebels, “helped” by NATO bombing overthrew Gaddafi.

Finally at 11pm, almost eleven hours after its first report, the BBC ran this story on its main news titled ‘Gaddafi’s demise: End of a dictator‘ which opens,”[Gaddafi] was found cowering in a storm drain after his convoy was attacked by NATO jets” though the voiceover tells us that he was found in a ditch and once more repeats the fabrication of (ex)-Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril that “the colonel had been killed in a crossfire between Gaddafi loyalists and fighters from the transitional authorities.”

Amazingly, the fact that the cellphone video shows Gaddafi, covered in blood and alive in the back of a pickup truck being kicked around and struggling, seems not to bother the BBC, allegedly anal about attention to detail. But who cares, what dramatic footage even if it’s only 2 megapixels-worth?

Three days later (23/10/11) the BBC ran a story titled, ‘Does new video provide clues as to who killed Gaddafi?‘ In it we are shown a Libyan ‘rebel’ surrounded by his mates who announce that this is the man who shot Gaddafi through the head, waving the pistol around. But the BBC, now in a bind over its punting of the “crossfire” story from day one leaves the last word to (ex) Acting Prime Minister Jibril who states once again that Gaddafi was “killed in crossfire”.

Thus the much-vaunted BBC, famed for its ‘impartiality’ is now quite happy to run barely legible footage shot on a cellphone, throw in a quote from the (ex) acting-prime minister and call it the truth.

The West is hijacking Arab revolutions to the benefit of Islamists

Sunday, 30 October 2011
Raghida Dergham
Al arabya

While the West speaks of the necessity of accepting the results of the democratic process, in terms of Islamists coming to power in the Arab region, there are increased suspicions regarding the goals pursued by the West in its new policy of rapprochement with the Islamist movement, in what is a striking effort at undermining modern, secular and liberal movements. The three North African countries in which revolutions of change have taken place, are witnessing a transitional process that is noteworthy, not just in domestic and local terms, but also in terms of the roles played by foreign forces, both regional and international.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is trying to hijack the youth’s revolution with the help of the West. This is while bearing in mind that Egypt is considered to be the “command center” for the Muslim Brotherhood’s network in different Arab countries. The followers of the Ennahda in Tunisia are wrapping their message with moderation as they prepare to hijack the democracy that Tunisia’s youth dream of, while being met by applause and encouragement from the West in the name of the “fairness” of the electoral process. Libya, where the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) is in a “marriage of convenience” with Islamist rebels, has become a hub of extremism and lawlessness, with a plethora of military aid being collected by an assortment of armed Islamists who aim to exclude others from power. In Yemen, where a struggle for power rages on, a war is taking place between extremism and a harsher and more violent brand of extremism, with so-called “moderate Islam” in the middle as a means of salvation, even as the latter’s ideology remains neither modern nor liberal, and is rather lacking when it comes to the fundamentals of democracy and equality. In Syria, where the battle for freedom is at its most difficult phase, the youths of the revolution fear what could very much be under discussion behind the scenes between the West and the Islamist movements, in terms of collaboration and of strengthening the Islamists’ hold on power, in a clear bid to hijack the revolution of a youth that aspires to freedom in its every sense, not to yet another brand of tyranny and authoritarianism.

Yet despite increasing talk and concern over the unnatural relationship between the West and Islamist movements in the Arab region, there is growing insistence among the region’s enlightened and modern youths that they will not allow this relationship to direct their lives and dictate their course. It would thus be more logical for the West to listen carefully to what is happening at the youths’ scene, as well as on the traditional secularist and modernist scenes, and to realize the danger of what it is doing for these elements and the road to change brought about by the Arab Spring.

The obsession of some Westerners with the so-called “Turkish model” of “moderate Islam,” able to rule with discipline and democracy, seems naïve, essentially because of its assumption that such a model can automatically be applied on the Arab scene, without carefully considering the different background and conditions that exist in Turkey and the Arab countries. There is also some naivety in assuming than the “Iranian model” of religious autocratic rule that oppresses people, forbids pluralism and turns power into tyranny, can be excluded as a possibility.

What the movements of modernity, freedom and democracy in the Arab region fear is the replication of the Iranian experience and its revival on the Arab scene. What took place in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution is that the Mullahs hijacked it, excluded the youths from it and monopolized power in the “Islamic Republic” of Iran for more than 30 years.

Perhaps the West purposely encouraged what happened to Iran and its exceptional civilization by taking it back to the Dark Ages, to live in seclusion and isolation as a result of the tyranny of the Mullahs. Perhaps taking Iran more than 50 years back in time was a Western goal, which would explain their encouragement for the peaceful nature of this revolution to be hijacked. It should be stressed here that it was Iran’s 1979 revolution that sparked, throughout the Arab region, the movement of reverting to social rigidity instead of modernity and advancement. The environment created by the rule of the Mullahs in Iran led to restricting efforts in neighboring Arab Gulf region, which became unable to embrace modernity for fear of its repercussions and consequences.

In fact, hawkishness gained more ground in the Arab Gulf as a means of containing religious extremism. Thus sectarianism increased hand in hand with extremism, and the whole region became thoroughly consumed by the struggle of religions, away from the social development necessary to accompany the structural development represented by buildings, installations and other basic infrastructure.

The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) play numerous roles, sometimes in concordance, and sometimes in contradiction and mutual opposition. The common denominator among them is preserving the monarchy and keeping the Arab Spring far from the Gulf region with a certain extent of reform, which could either be costly for the regimes or for their relationship with Islamists – be they moderates or extremists. What is even more noteworthy is what is being said about the Islamic Republic of Iran, in terms of its occasional support of groups allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, which it sees as a means to weaken the influence of Saudi Arabia in the region.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the United Arab Emirates is supporting the movement closest to modernism in Libya, by providing support in the form of training the police force and strengthening it with equipment. This is while Qatar supports Islamist movements with training and weapons, which undermines the ability of “non-Islamists” to compete for power, and in fact leads to excluding them from power. Regarding Syria, on the other hand, the UAE is worried about what regional interference could lead to, and fears what reaches the extent of preparing for after the revolution. This is why it hesitates to support the Syrian opposition despite its desire – which it has in fact sometimes acted on – to provide some support to non-Islamist forces.

GCC countries always have Iran on their mind, as it does them, especially through the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the many dimensions of the relationship between Sunnis and Shiites. Examining how the West’s policies have evolved regarding this aspect in particular, would require greater space and a more in-depth study. Yet it is noteworthy that former US President George W. Bush strengthened the standing of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its influence and its regional ambitions of hegemony, through his war in Iraq. As for the current President, Barack Obama, he seems to be in the process of strengthening “moderate Islam,” specifically among Sunnis, for it to be the means to confront both Sunni and Shiite extremism, in a policy of attracting “moderate Islam” even at the cost of undermining the forces of modernity, advancement and secularism, and pulling the rug from under their feet. This policy of Obama’s is no less dangerous than that of Bush. They both played the sectarian card at the expense of secularism, and they both adopted policies that lead to weakening the forces of moderation and strengthening the forces of extremism, regardless of whether it is “moderate extremism”, as it at the end of the day is based on the ideology of monopolizing power and not separating religion and state.

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian judge, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, addressed the women of the Arab awakening at the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France, and said: Do not repeat our mistake. She said that the separation of religion and state is the only guarantee of democracy, not because the flaw lies in the Sharia itself, but because it can be interpreted by men who want more domination, and who view democracy as an enemy of their monopoly, one that takes away powers they have hijacked and purposely kept women away from.

At the same conference, the Yemeni participant, a friend of Tawakel Karman, the first Arab woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said that Tawakel is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and that, compared to the “Salafists,” this group represents moderation itself, as well as salvation. This is an opinion which seems to have been embraced by the West, strengthened and driven forward amid the applause of Islamist movements that present themselves as the alternative moderation, blocking the way for movements of modernity by mounting the steed of democracy, most likely on a single path from which there is no return. They are inflating themselves and their size, and entering into a temporary marriage with the West – which in their opinion is naïve – a marriage of convenience that is to their benefit as long as it breaks the back of secularists and modernists. In truth, the Democratic US Administration is not the only one encouraging Islamist movements to take such a course, as there are also some Republicans like Senator John McCain. McCain made sure to address Islamists from the rostrum of the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea during a seminar on the American-Arab relationship, calling for respecting their rights to power, and thereby sending two messages: one to Islamists under the headline “we are with you,” and the other to the modernists under the headline “we do not care about you.”

There are two schools of thought that do not agree with the opinion that there is no escape from accepting the movements of “moderate Islam” because they have been victorious in the revolutions and base themselves on the change brought by the Arab Spring. Those two schools do not agree that the Arab Spring is the spring of Islamists, and they do not agree to the claim that they are the makers of the Arab awakening or spring. These two schools want to stop the Islamists from hijacking the Arab Awakening and climbing to power with the help of the West, whether the latter is naïve or ill-intentioned.

One school says: let the Islamists rule the Arab region, as this is an opportunity to prove their failure at controlling a people that does not want them. Those affiliated with this school point to Hamas and the Palestinian people’s reactions to it, in not accepting it and Islamist rule. They believe that the Arab people will defeat Islamist movements, and that they will fail. Then the modernists will return nearly victorious and welcomed by the people, and things will move forward. This then is an opportunity to prove the sure failure of Islamists, so let them fail.

The other school says: the greatest mistake is for the modernists to dwindle and withdraw from the battle now, because the Islamists reaching power will consolidate their rule for decades, not years. We must therefore immediately demand a transitional phase that would give these movements the opportunity to organize into political parties and enter the elections.

This is while bearing in mind that the only organized party is that of the Islamists, having been the only opposition movement under the former rulers. Those who are of this opinion insist on yielding neither to the cunning of the Islamists nor to the naivety of the West, and on launching an awareness campaign for world public opinion about Islamists and Western governments hijacking the Arab Spring in order to exclude the modernists, young and old equally.

It would be more logical for Western capitals to hear and to listen closely, because their partnership in hijacking the Arab youth’s ambitions of freedom, pluralism, democracy and modernity will come at high cost for them – not just for the path of change that has emerged from the soul of the youths of the Arab Spring.

How convieneint: Clinton says U.S. ready to work with Islamist groups

American media and the Libyan Lie.

The New York Times has a fluff piece entitled Sleeping in Gaddafi's Bedroom.

The 'reporter' describes as "a friend" a Libyan air force deserter "who used to be one of Gaddafi's Colonels in the Libyan Air force before fleeing." Apparently the 'reporter's' mother likes plunder too: "My mum would love a set of Gaddafi's tea cups," the 'reporter' tells us.

Hidden in the article is the fact that the villa was in fact rarely used by Gaddafi and is in fact not too luxurious, with fake leather sofas and a "tacky chandelier" and a lawn with sprinklers.

"I slept like a self-assured dictator" in Gaddafi's bed, this reporter tells us in closing.


Not to be outdone the Washington post has this ridiculous headline: Libyan women savor new freedoms after revolution.

In reality, sharia is being imposed, polygamy is being reinstated, the veil is becoming mandatory.

Meanwhile other media are more honest:

Residents said brigades from faraway Misrata had appeared at their doorstep a week ago, breaking into people's homes and looking for Gaddafi loyalists.

Dozens of young men have disappeared and four have been killed in detention, said Al Koni Salem Mohammad, the uncle of one of those killed.

Speaking at a mourning ceremony on the edge of town, he shook with grief as he showed the death certificate listing "electric shocks" as a cause of death. He said the body had been dumped outside the detention centre with its tongue and genitals cut off.

"After all this, our children and the children of our children will never be with this revolution," he said, bursting into tears and shaking his fist, as other men in traditional dress sat in the shade of a tent set up for the mourning period.

"If this does not stop there will be a reaction. Any build-up of pressure leads to an explosion ... There is a lot of anger. Doesn't the government have an army to handle this?"

Or this from the Australian.

"Mafia," says the member of the family who fought as a rebel, describing the behaviour of the militias. "This is just like the mafia in Colombia or Russia," he says. "Gaddafi was horrible, but I never knew of him capturing the relative of somebody if they could not find the person they wanted. They would have just kept looking. And I never heard of them threatening to take children."

..

The man who escaped from the rebels has returned home but fears they will return. He says he knows of one case where a man was taken away on suspicion he had been a Gaddafi supporter and was then beaten to death. The rebels telephoned his parents the next day to say the man had become ill in custody and died.

..

At present, however, revenge clearly prevails over rehabilitation. There is a growing list of human rights abuses by the Misratah brigades.

The latest atrocity linked to the rebels is the discovery of 53 bodies of Gaddafi fighters on the lawns of a hotel in Sirte, Gaddafi's home town and the place where he was captured. The bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshots to the head.

In one case the rebels beat to death a mentally ill man because he would not - or could not - give them the password of a walkie-talkie he was carrying. In another case, an African man was whipped as he was forced to run around a courtyard, then told to climb a pole while shouting, "Monkey needs a banana".

..

One pregnant woman who went for a check-up was told at the government-run hospital: "We don't treat Tawerghans here."

-------------------

Meanwhile the darlings of NATO are shooting up hospitals.

Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA

AUGUST 30, 2011
"Democracy Now?"
by JOHN WALSH


Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”

Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.

Cole claims to be a man of the left and he appears with painful frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning “expert” on the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts. First, can one be a member of the “left” and also an advocate for the brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy Now’s version of the “left.” Second, it appears that Cole’s essential function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war on Libya has been fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?

Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry way back in 2005 in Bush time. The source and reason for this leak and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown. Within a week of the Times piece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as an “interrogator.” Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of the White House request and was at the time employed at the National Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence Estimate.

It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time “consultant” for the CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy Now transcript.):

AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this information from you, said that you should get information?

GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a large number of experts of diverse views that the National Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones—I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work—who had consulted with him. (Emphases mine.)

That seems like strange toil for a man of the “left.” But were the consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep one? It would appear so. Again from the transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes it, he says, “Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.] Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear [that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’”

GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance, perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through interactions. (Emphasis mine.) I would characterize it more as the latter.

And later in the interview Carle continues:

On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing. There was no direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct—for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle questions or so on, to pass those along. (Emphasis mine.)That’s how I—which is totally unacceptable.

It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a “frequent guest,” in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?

This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.

Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the left as he spins out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to Goodman (3/29), “We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary people. We care about workers.” It is strange that a man who claims such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.

Whither the Left on the Question of Intervention?

None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a “humanitarian” hawk. But it is outrageous that he is so often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in Libya, with CounterPunch’s estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the left to have to debate the worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.

This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I have not heard a full-throated denunciation of the war on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s speechwriter on the famous speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 in which King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the militarism it entails.

If one reads CounterPunch.org, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative, one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive outlets, it’s all too clear where a big chunk of the so-called “left” stands, especially since the advent of Obama. In his superb little book Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the left for falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often pointed out that many progressives are actually quite fond of “humanitarian” interventionism. Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya . It is little wonder that the “progressives” are losing their antiwar following to Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the issue of anti-interventionism.

Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com After wading through Cole’s loose prose and dubious logic to write this essay, the author suspects that the rejection of Cole by the Yale faculty was the result of considerations that had little to do with neocon Bush/Cheney operatives.