Libya! Here we come!!

With hindsight, my blog The Fall of the American Empire last February may have been a bit premature. I had underestimated the cunning and sheer ruthlessness of the USA Administration. The Americans, and their sidekick the NATO countries, are adept at turning a blind eye to the worst sort of barbarities so long as their interests are not threatened. Bahrain, the oil-rich state under the USA's thumb, is a good example where it is OK for the rulers to kill their own citizens without fear of condemnation by the USA or NATO.  Not so Libya, another oil-and-gas play not totally subservient to modern-day imperialist powers. 

I was taken by surprise at the speed with which the "conscience" of NATO countries has been aroused following the deaths of hundreds of Libyans at the hands of the tyrant Gaddafi. The hypocrisy of western governments and a lot of the comment in the newspapers is nauseating.

Not a mirage! Loaded with 'gifts' for Libya

French Mirage bombs Libya

  

      

The destruction

..... and the inevitable funeral

At this very moment the Indian Army in Kashmir is engaged in genocide - over 100,000 Kashmiris are said to have died over the last decade. Far from there being UN resolutions condemning the actions of India's government, the USA president and the British Prime Minister visit India so they can sell their goods and services there. They both act as if they are totally ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Indian army in Kashmir.

Israel continues to act against the Palestinians exactly as the German Nazis treated the Jews of Europe. As the recent Al-Jazeera/the Guardian revelations show, the USA is complicit in the macabre game of murder and humiliation in which the Israel government has been engaged for years.

For the last several years the USA has been regularly attacking Pakistan with pilot-less aircraft, the so-called drones, which rain down death and misery from the skies on the hapless Pakistanis. According to the USA journalists, over 97% of those who die are innocent citizens while fewer than 3% are "terrorists". The world is silent and Pakistan's puppet of a president declares he is "not worried about collateral damage"!

In Afghanistan routine killings of ordinary citizens are common, both by the foreign occupation forces and by the local Taliban. It is difficult to tell which of these two parties is more barbaric. The invasion of Afghanistan is a mystery, based on one-sided accusations by the USA. An Arab fugitive hiding in that backward country is said to have plotted, and successfully carried out, an ingenious and highly intricate attack on the "twin towers" of New York and on the Pentagon building! No one ever explained how the third tower collapsed mysteriously or why the evidence was removed from the scene of the crime and destroyed.

Then, there was Iraq, the oil producer. Its government was accused of possessing  weapons of mass destruction and the country was invaded. A million Iraqis have since died but the UN has done nothing to punish those who took the decision to invade. The war criminals Bush and Blair roam free!

When the dust has settled on the "liberation movements" of the resources-rich Middle East we'll probably find that the real winners are not the people of those lands but the governments of the USA and the NATO countries, who will somehow manage to install pliant yes-men as rulers. If you doubt this, take a good long look at the two stooges - Zardari and Gilani - who head the government of Pakistan. I still think the American Empire is heading towards a fall but it won't be a dramatic event similar to the breakup of the Soviet Union - it will be a slow collapse spread over a number of years. 

Tailpiece

Johann Hari is one of the foremost journalists in the UK. He writes for The Independent where his article, "We're not being told the truth on Libya", was published on 8 April. It is a compelling read, the link is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-were-not-being-told-the-truth-on-libya-2264785.html

My own comment on this article was:
"Johann Hari, you are spot on. The ruthless honesty you show in your articles seems to frighten a lot of people because, in moral terms, the western democracies appear little better than dictatorships and police states. Can you turn your formidable intellect to the question of how the rotten western political systems can be improved? A system that can transform the fresh-faced candidate Obama into the duplicitous monster he is today 
is hardly worth preserving."