I believe we are being lied to by our government regarding the military campaign in Libya, and that if you listen carefully to the Orwell-style double-speak employed by the BBC and other mainstream media, it is all too plain to see.
Just yesterday on the Today programme James Naughtie (I think it was) said these words; “We are bombing Libya for humanitarian reasons”. If it wasn’t so sickening it would be funny. Of course, this is the official reason as stated by the government, so the BBC must broadcast it, but I suspect Naughtie was well aware of the intrinsic irreconcileability of his statement.
Throughout the day there was much talk of how Gaddafi was “using human shields” and how the coalition forces had “called off an attack becuase civilians were identified in the area”. We have also heard how “killing Gaddafi is not the aim of the campaign.”
Now, I can report the same story in a totally different way:
“Supporters of Gaddafi have gathered at his residence. After an initial attack by coalition forces in which members of the public were killed, a second attack was decided against at the last minute, when foreign journalists were identified in the are.”
What do we see here? The coalition realised that as there were American journalists in the crowd outside Gaddafi’s home (or evil lair) they couldn’t get away with bombing it a second time. After reports of death and injury to civilians the first time it was attacked (which “could not be independently verified” ie. the coalition forces won’t admit to it) they daren’t risk their justification for action again. And what they thought was a carte-blanche justification for action has turned out to be a pistol shot to the foot. If the people of Libya actually support Gaddafi enough to do this, they have made themselves pretty impotent.
Just look at the pictures of the so-called “unwitting human shields” in today’s Daily Mail and tell me the UK media hasn’t mis-represented them.
Even in that newspaper, it is reported that Gaddafi’s own men (or henchmen as they are called by the DM) brought foreign journalists to survey the damage and see who and what the RAF was about to bomb to smithereens. And yet the headline “Mission Aborted on orders of SAS” and the subsequent paragraphs feasting on the detail of what damage our military could have done, implies how gracious and wisely restrained the RAF and SAS were in holding off from the attack in the face of Gaddafi’s cowardly use of his own people to protect him.
The reality is nothing of the sort, and any intelligent person can see it simply from that one article.
My knowledge CIA intervention is pretty thorough having researched many articles and documents over the last 10 years and worked with a Professor of American post-war foreign policy. CIA intervnetion has ranged from secret coup plans, assasination of foreign leaders and covert military & financial aid and training to the chosen “friendly” leader. In all of these cases (Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Argentina, Laos, Haiti, Indonesia, Ecuador, Congo and many many more) the result has been humanitarian disaster and corporate profit.
Tactics used have consistently included attacking “our own side” in order to paint the enemy leader who doesn’t comply, as a mad, evil villain. Native agents in the pay of the CIA are consistently used as mouthpieces for the USA agenda. You may hear a rebel on the radio saying that they need our military support and will turn against us if they don’t receive it – how do you verify that he isn’t in the pay of someone who’s agenda that is? And how does a journalist? How do we know that the CIA isn’t ultimately responsible for the attacks blamed on Gaddafi asfter his stated ceasefire?
I’m pointing all this out just to show how easy it is for us to sit here and listen to our radios, watch our TVs and assume that what we are being shown is the whole picture. Very often it is far, far from that. The job of the establishment media today is to portray the image that the government wants us to see, and therefore to CREATE public opinion, not to merely report it unbiasedly. I know many people (including journalists) will scream and shout that that’s not true but it’s time we all took several paces back and opened our eyes to how sophisticated propaganda techniques to win “hearts and minds” have become.
Do we really believe that killing Gaddafi and installing a more amenable leader (or dictator) is not the coalition’s real plan? At best this is a Civil War and at worst it’s a coup, fostered and created by US and other intelligence agencies.
I’m not defending Gaddafi or suggesting he hasn’t committed gross atrocities – I’m sure he has – but as Noam Chomsky so eloqunetly put it to Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight a few weeks back: this is not our fight. If anyone is going to intervene it should be the neighbouring countries of Libya.
I would urge everyone to judge our involvement in Libya crisis on our government’s actions, not it’s (or the media’s) words.
Pubic Hair. Porn. Abortions. Sex. Periods. Lust. Fat. Botox. Boob jobs. It’s all in ‘How To Be A Woman’. Which totally surprised me, because although I was vaguely familiar with Caitlin Moran’s writing, the title of the book had me fooled. I expected witticisms on modern life in the style of ‘Grumpy Old Women’. I didn’t think for a second that it was actually going to be about the reality of what it is to be a woman… Revelation!! Caitlin Moran has the balls to say out loud what women, on a daily basis, brush under their Ikea rugs. If you’re a woman, you know what I mean. If you’re a man you might like to find out. No wonder Jonathan Ross found it so revealing. 
