Hypocrisy of British media over bombing of Libya

Marc Wadsworth

Not a single commentator in the British media I have seen today has stated the obvious - that the majority of the world is against the West's unprovoked bombing of Libya.

Opposed to the massive cruise missiles raining down on Colonel Muammar Gadaffi's cities are the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China as well the 53 nation-strong African Union. Already, according to the Libyan government, more than 50 people the UN-backed aggression was supposed to be protecting have been killed.

The hypocrisy of the West's war mongering leaders is only matched by their lap dog propagandists in big media. Bankrupt international politics has been used as a fig leaf. The rigged vote on the United Nation's "Security Council" went 10-0 in favour of imposing a "no fly zone" over Libyan air space enforced by "all necessary measures to protect civilians".

(The UN has never done this to protect defenceless Palestinian civilians from Israeli bombardment, on many occasions, because the Americans have always vetoed such a vote.)

Five mighty countries abstained over Libya: China, Russia - two of the five permanent members - India, Brazil and Germany. The UN vote proved that the New York-based world body is broken. Why? It demonstrated how the West, that dominates the all-powerful Security Council, cajole, bully and bribe to get the outcomes they want. Yemen were once punished by the US which withdrew millions of dollars of aid from the impoverished country when it dared to vote against it at the UN.

India, Brazil, Japan or an African nation are glaringly absent among the five  permanent members of the Security Council. And the much more representative General Assembly, that includes all the nations of the world, is ignored politically and in the big media.

What is more, the Arab League that backed the no fly zone ahead of the crucial UN vote, at the behest of US President Barack Obama and the UK's David Cameron, is packed with the very unelected royals and despots popular uprisings by the people, supposedly backed by the West, oppose. The Arab League sell-outs are dependent on the West to stay in power. And they reward their masters in Washington, London and Paris with oil and billion pound purchases, mainly of hi-tech arms.

Added to this, the slaughter by these Arab dictators of pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain and Yemen has not triggered a Western pushed UN resolution nor military intervention precisely because "they are our allies".

Like Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was armed to the teeth by the West in an attempt to defeat Iran and then overthrown and executed, Muammar Gaddafi has now be turned on by his former Western friends. Feisty Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has bluntly denounced the West's attack on Libya as "a grab for oil by the imperialists". But you will not see his comment quoted in big media.

The Goebbels machine of Fleet Street has softened up public opinion by portraying Gaddafi as a "Mad Dog" who kills his own people. Is not that what the Western-armed psychopath Suharto did in Indonesia? Gaddafi has been demonised like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe to paralyse rational public debate about a country's sovereignty and right not to be attacked by foreign powers. And now the British military are in action we are told we must patriotically back them, despite any misgivings.

If concerns were to be genuinely overridden by an international desire to protect civilian populations then why did the West not intervene in Rwanda in 1994 when almost a million people were butchered? Or in Southern Sudan's Darfur more recently?

The silent majority in the world must loudly protest at the murderous aggression in our name against Libya - a country that has not attacked us - otherwise who will be next? Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega are democratically-elected leaders the US wants rid of because they refuse to fall into line. So, if the dangerous precedent of Libya is allowed then why not oil-rich Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Bolivia or Nicaragua?

* Gaddafi ally Louis Farrakhan, leader of America's Nation of Islam that supported Barrack Obama's campaign to become US president, has spoken powerfully about his opposition to the military attack on Libya.