Sunday 13 March 2011

EU support for Arab rebels is shamefully late

[This is the headline over an article by Nick Cohen in today's edition of The Observer. On the subject of Libya and Megrahi, it reads as follows:]

Europeans did not investigate Arab suffering, because they did not believe they had a democratic duty to help it end. To add obfuscation to indifference, they could not admit their accommodation with autocracy honestly. Instead, the left pretended criticism of intolerable regimes was cultural imperialism; an "orientalist" interference in the affairs of "the other". The right hymned the virtues of "stability" and "strong rulers". (...)

Meanwhile the British know that BP lobbied Gordon Brown to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber. With luck, we may learn more if the rebels can reverse their defeats, and open the secret police archives in Tripoli. Those files may also explain why Silvio Berlusconi felt it necessary to corral 500 "hostesses" and "escorts", and send the perplexed ladies to hear Gaddafi read from the Koran at the Libyan ambassador's Rome residence.

However, readers who see corruption as a universal explanation should take a deep breath and remember Humbert Wolfe's line:
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."

Most of the apologists for dictatorship do not need bribes, whether they are Foreign Office Arabists, Little England columnists for the Tory press or the Livingstone/Galloway breed of brutal leftist. They will apologise when there is no prospect of profit for them. The Scottish Nationalist party released Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, not Labour, and no one has produced evidence that money made it hand Gaddafi a propaganda coup before Scottish appeal judges had ruled on al-Megrahi's guilt. Instead of looking like a bought man, Alex Salmond [RB: this should read Kenny MacAskill] posed as a tartan Che Guevara, who was defying the Yankee oppressors by freeing a criminal convicted of destroying a Pan Am plane and all its passengers and crew. [RB: Defying the Yankee oppressors, forsooth! Kenny MacAskill's principal stated reason for denying prisoner transfer was his (correct) belief that an obligation that Megrahi's sentence would be served in the UK had been undertaken towards the US and other countries, prior to devolution, by the UK government. Not much sign of defiance there.]

I guess that Salmond is typical and a majority of Europeans believe Libya is a distant land, whose affairs have nothing to do with us. (...)

26 comments:

  1. Beware of men with Jewish sounding names egging on the West to attack Arabs.
    I thought we were supposed to have learned the lesson from twenty years of 'killing' Arabs - the British public don't want another war-mongering government like the last Labour one.
    Let the Arabs take care of their own this time, if they are truly moved to (which I doubt).

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  2. I did not get first comment. :(

    This article is highly annoying to me, and manipulative. I'm suddenly feeling "brutal leftist" just to smack it a good one.

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  3. It ain't anti-semitic if that's your sensitivity, more the pro-Israeli lobby in this country don't want the opportunity to remove Gaddafi to pass by, no matter what the cost to British lives or the learnings of the past few years where we alienated the entire Muslim world.

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  4. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2011:

    In March of last year, ex Dr Seif el-Islam Gadhafi said, "The enemy of yesterday is the friend of today" (Great Britain was meant) !
    Today, read: the ingratiate friends of yesterday are the enemys of today !

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland

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  5. I thoroughly agree with your first comment Blogiston. It is a very fine post.

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  6. Six Degrees of Separation?: I turned on Al Jazeera (the channel you can trust because both the US and Arab countries hate it) to get the latest on the re-unification of Libya. On the news was a nuclear fission expert commenting on Japan's atomic plant disaster, "Yes, it's similar to the partial meltdown at the Chapelcross tritium plant in southern Scotland."
    (Chapelcross being a few miles from the Locherbie disaster site)
    Amazing, what you hear forty years later, isn't it?
    I'm assuming you were all evacuated and given iodine tablets? (irony)

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  7. Dear Blogiston,

    "20 years" of killing Arabs, is that all? Good heavens, we've been doing it ever since the bean feast of the 1919 Paris Conference when we dialled our casino economies into black gold. And those who claim to be representing our national interests, as defined by the corporations they serve will continue doing so until the wells run dry. We got a little early practice in by gunning defenceless Kurdish villages from the air in the 1920s, and would have gassed them too if Churchill had got his way. Then we (Churchill, Eden and Eisenhower) later on employed the much more economical, efficacious and sanitised method of funding an insurrection in Iran in 1953 to overthrow Moussadeq in order to ensure we got oil on our terms via the Shah. But of course Kurds and Iranians aren't Semitic as Arabs are. The Result of Operation Ajax (Iran 53) laid the foundation for us to appear detached from the murder and torture imposed by those we installed throughout the mineral rich Middle East (whether Iranian or Arab) whilst at the same time getting exactly what we want.

    But nevertheless, I guess you are right, it is only recently that we have behaved so overtly as the bully boys that we are and always have been. Tragic though that is, perhaps our current more blatant behaviour will serve to raise the consciousness in this part of the world a little regarding the hell that has been inflicted on the peoples of the Middle East, and the many other mineral rich parts of the world, in order to fire our markets.

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  8. The well-publicised partial meltdown at Chapelcross took place in 2001.

    Equally well-publicised is Lockerbie: Cameron's Nuclear Secret of 1989!

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  9. I am no scientist but I see today that sea water is now being used as a cooler. How long until corrosion occurs and does it mean that the authorities will immediately need to start installing new pipes on top of all the other serious problems they have?

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  10. When they use sea water, it means they are playing their last card, and writing-off the reactor. They are years old anyway, and were due to be phased out.

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  11. ...and sure enough, Malcolm Rifkind (the ex-Foreign Secretary who supports Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition) chimes in today with, let's implement a no-fly zone and depose Gaddafi. It is all so predictable from that quarter.

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  12. Yes, it comes as no surprise that former chairman of the private security firm Armor Group Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP wants Gaddafi deposed or, even better, executed.

    Rifkind's letter to The Times today is reported by America in the World (The London Centre for the Study of Anti-Americanism) which was launched in November 2008 by none other than David Cameron MP!

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  13. From the Evening News of 1 September 1998:

    The Libyan Government wants to question former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind over claims that Britain was involved in a plot to assassinate Libya's leader Colonel Gaddafi.

    Renegade spy David Shayler has claimed the Government paid an Islamic fundamentalist group £100,000 to try to kill Colonel Gaddafi in 1996. Sir Malcolm was Foreign Secretary at the time.

    The former MI5 officer has claimed the overseas secret service (MI6) made the payment, which would have had to have been authorised by the Foreign Secretary.

    The Foreign Office has denied the allegations, but the Libyan Government in Tripoli has made a formal request through diplomatic channels to question Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP.

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  14. If David Shayler wasn't a 9/11 no-planer who thinks he's Jesus, people might take what he says more seriously.

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  15. So Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in response to Bahrain's request, has decided to dispatch troops to the country to take part in a mission of 'maintaining order and security'.
    But have not lifted a finger to help the rebels in Libya.
    Conclusion: For Arabs, motivation to lift a finger to help your brother is only there when your own ass is on the line - aye, let the West handle Gaddafi versus the Libyan rebels, and we'll sit on the fence, until the West starts murdering our brothers when the bombing becomes a little over zealous.
    How do you say a big F. Off in Arabic?

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  16. Blogiston said: Beware of men with Jewish sounding names egging on the West to attack Arabs.

    That comment obviously applies to Nick Cohen and to Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

    I'm really hoping that Ed Miliband proves to be an exception to this particular blogiston rule!

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  17. Blogiston, thank you for answering that earlier question about the sea-water.

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  18. Yes, you have to love the US as they jump back and forth and contradict themselves so much that it becomes embarrassing.

    The Libyan rebels were to be backed because they were out there demanding that greatest of things, democracy.

    But, erm, the Bahrain seekers of democracy? Well, that's different and so not a peep of protest that Saudi has sent in troops (at the request of Bahrain's high heid yins) to help quell the protests.

    Now then, wasn't there a howl of two or protest at the very idea of Gaddafi bringing in help? Wasn't this another affront to democracy and to the rights of Libyans to demand change? Except those of a similar mindset in Bahrain aren't to be defended by the US' passionate belief in "democracy" because, well, just because.

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  19. I believe I heard Miliband saying he supported a no-fly zone.
    Btw - Look and learn how to conduct foreign policy - China.
    When this is all over, and Gaddafi is back with his hands firmly on the valve of his country's oil wells, he will have a number of countries in his wee green book; Switzerland (of course, at the top, for being the first to freeze assets), US and UK (by default), Italy (for being turncoats), all his former Arab allies. Only China will resume where it left off...even Israel has been non-interventionist (ironically).

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  20. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  21. Yes, blogiston, you heard correctly!

    Supporting the idea of a no-fly zone, this is what Ed Miliband told The Guardian yesterday:

    "I don't think we can stand by as Colonel Gaddafi takes greater hold of Libya."

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  22. Will any aspect of the Lockerbie affair be an election issue?
    Maybe not Lockerbie, but the SNP's stance on nuclear power is looking good this week.

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  23. By meekly supporting David Cameron's military ambitions in Libya, Ed Miliband indicates that he might be about to forgo the chance of toppling the Prime Minister tomorrow. Let's hope that Mr Miliband has the courage to grasp the opportunity.

    Every Wednesday the Leader of the Opposition is allocated five PMQs. Usually the Prime Minister fends off the questions or otherwise avoids answering. But tomorrow promises to be uniquely different.

    At Prime Minister's Questions, all Ed Miliband has to do is to ask David Cameron this series of five PMQs. The answers might be interesting but essentially do not matter (Hansard and the resultant publicity should do the trick and deliver the coup de grâce):

    PMQ1. Can the Prime Minister confirm that he visited apartheid South Africa just three months after the 21 December 1988 Lockerbie disaster which killed United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson?

    PMQ2. Does the Prime Minister share his ennobled Conservative predecessor’s view of the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia, which she visited in March 1989 and which she said made her “proud to be British”?

    PMQ3. Is the Prime Minister aware that the Rössing Uranium Mine is owned jointly by the Rio Tinto Group and the Iranian Government, and in 1989 was supplying Iran with uranium in contravention of the UN law which prohibited the exploitation of Namibia’s natural resources?

    PMQ4. Is the Prime Minister aware that UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, had warned prior to his death at Lockerbie that he intended to prosecute Iran and apartheid South Africa for illegally exploiting Namibia’s uranium and diamond gemstones?

    PMQ5. Can the Prime Minister confirm that Bernt Carlsson was targeted on Pan Am Flight 103 of 21 December 1988 by Iran and by apartheid South Africa, and therefore that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Muammar Gaddafi and Libya were wrongly accused of the Lockerbie bombing?

    References:

    1. Cameron’s freebie to apartheid South Africa

    2. Lockerbie: Cameron’s Nuclear Secret

    3. Bernt Carlsson and ‘The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds’

    4. ‘No doubt’ Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Pan Am bombing, says ex-British diplomat

    5. Lockerbie: Ayatollah’s Vengeance Exacted by Botha’s Regime

    © Patrick Haseldine, Facebook, 11 March 2011.

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  24. Dear Blogiston,

    I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the current Libyan situation vis-à-vis the quiet background diplomacy of Peking. For the last three decades approximately, the Chinese have slowly but ever so surely been mopping up whilst the West has been flouting this and flaunting that with the effect of digging its own economic grave. In that respect at least, I take my hat off to them.

    同志森林門將

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  25. The well-publicised partial meltdown at Chapelcross took place in 1967 and was not well publicised. My father and the plant manager at the time entered the containment vesel as was reported in he local press but there was no mention of the disaster that nearly happened.

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  26. Where can we find full details of the serious nuclear incident that took place in 1967 at Chapelcross?

    And when are we going to hear the truth about Lockerbie: Cameron's Nuclear Secret?

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