Well, here we go again. We are three days into another crusade against the Moslems. Western leaders inevitably deny it, but it has become essential for us to effect regime change over certain Moslem leaders, some of whom, like Gaddafi and the late Saddam Hussein, who used to be so much in favour that western arms dealers sold them billions worth of modern weapons. Only a few weeks ago, the latest grubby British leader to emulate the avaricious and unprincipled T Blair, “Dave” Cameron, was selling arms personally to Arab sheiks and kings. Now he is sending “our boys” to risk death flying over Libya to bomb the poor souls beneath, to save them from being bombed by Gaddafi! Could anything be more hypocritical?
The spokesman for the Arab League did not think so. He complained that the Arabs understood a “no fly zone” was to stop Gaddafi’s aeroplanes from flying, not to stop Libyans from living, whether supporters of Gaddafi or rebels. Plainly Cameron and his vile coalition, including Obama, intend to weight the civil war, which until last week looked favorable to Gaddafi, heavily towards the rebels. No one seems to know what proportion of the Libyans oppose Gaddafi. They quickly seemed to capture the north eastern corner of the country around Benghazi, then could make no more progress. The bulk of Libya seems to prefer their present leader to some western puppet.
“Dave” admits he wants to see regime change, admitting that his objectives are the same as Blair’s and Bush’s in Iraq, but pretends the terms of the UN resolution 1973 forbid it. Even so, almost the first blow struck was a cruise missile strike against an important administrative building in Tripoli where there was a chance that Gaddafi might be himself killed. While the direct objective cannot be Gaddafi, “Dave” explains, he can be legitimately targeted because the UN resolution said all means can be used to stop Libyan civilians from being killed, so killing one Libyan civilian can be legitimate on those grounds, and, naturally, many others might be killed colaterally—sad that!
Hypocrisy
Meanwhile the hypocrisy of taking precipitate action against some oil rich dictators while favoring other equally unpleasant or worse oil rich dictators passes by the half of our knowing electorate that happily soak up every lie the BBC, Murdoch and company sling at them. Simultaneously with the rebellion against Gaddafi the people of Bahrein rebelled against their king, who after being forced to say he was willing to concede some reforms, was obliged by an unyielding public, to bring in the Saudi Arabian army, an army that is the personal arm-twister of the Saud family who rule Arabia.
Arabia is the best friend of all opportunistic western leaders because of their oil, and their oil wealth, which again makes them prime customers for arms dealers. The arms they sold were used against a tiny island, just a causeway off Saudi Arabia, but where is the call for the king of Bahrein and the wicked Saud family to yield to the legitimate rebels? Why is there a no fly Zone over Arabia? For the same reason that Bush chose to bomb Iraq as punishment of the Moslems for the 9/11 attacks, even though the 9/11 bombers were almost entirely Saudi terrorists, not Iraqi terrorists—Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. But the Saudi’s are chums of the west, specifically of the Bush family, it was said at the time. There can be no one with a brain cell today who does not know this, but sadly our cynical rulers know full well that there is nothing easier than for the minority to rule the majority. Just use media manipulation.
In the UK, before the war in Iraq, a million people turned out against the war. It woke up the British ruling class and their media pals to the need for continuous propaganda, so a campaign began that is continuing still. Almost the only history taught in British schools these days is Hitler and WWII, the way our “brave boys” beat the Nazis. They were indeed brave boys… then… fighting against a right wing racist dictatorship that wanted to control the world from Europe to India, and most of them conscripted, not professional soldiers, but it gets our youth admiring warfare, and imagining that we only fight just wars—now a big lie.
Our “brave boys” today are more like the Nazis, fighting against poor foreigners thousands of miles away who just want to live their own lives. But the propaganda in the last decade has worked, and these—our own soldiers—though they are killing farmers and their families trying to wrest back the control of their own land from foreigners, are hailed as heroes! Well, they are called that when they return in a box, or with bits of themselves missing. In the UK a charity was set up for these heroes called, would you believe, “Help the Heroes”, when the people helping could have been more help marching in an angry mass to stop these boys, and girls, from wasting their lives for no good reason. Helping rich men grab someone else’s resources, mainly oil not carrots, is not heroic. They do not differ from heavies working for gangsters, except that the heavies know what they are doing, and do it for profit, while our soldiers are paid little more than KPs.
We can always afford a good war!
Now the Queen has given the little Wiltshire town of Wootton Basset the accolade of “Royal” because it hosted a regular mass line up of people grieving for the victims as each one, returned to Lineham air base, proceeded in a funeral procession through the town. Some will have grieved genuinely. But how much more valuable it would have been if they had instead been protesting against the war. Instead it became a neo Nazi showcase of tattooed bikers, war veterans who ought to have known better, various other rentacrowd types, and, of course, BBC and Murdoch’s TV camera men duly filming it several times a week, for its propaganda value. The town naturally loved it—business had never been better.
Now we learn that with the launch of the war against Libya, another propaganda charity has started, “Horses for Heroes”, in which disabled soldiers are riding from John o’Groats at the tip of Scotland to Land’s End at the tip of Cornwall, around 1000 miles, nominally to raise money, but, in fact, like “Help the Heroes”, to continue the war sympathy campaign on the British people. The UK is now like the US. It is on a permanent war economy, and even the media have to show some people, even veterans, saying so, and criticizing the hysteria for war sentiment. These wise people ask:
How can we afford these wars when we are bankrupt, and ordinary people are feeling the weight of government cuts through pay freezes and tax hikes. How can money be found, in these allegedly dire circumstances, for stupid overseas adventures which are of no concern for us.
The megarich financier class gets richer while ordinary people get poorer. The megarich, investment capitalists and bankers, get bailed out by poor people’s sacrifices, and arms dealers get rich by killing the poor, here allegedly being heroes, and abroad by being evil cowards blowing up our heroes to defend their land and homes. All is fair in war, as far as the rich are concerned, providing that the profits roll in. I wonder what they would do if we rebelled. Would they shoot rebels? It is what they have usually done. Does anyone seriously think they are different now?
