The answer to this question is a resounding No! and the following lines will prove beyond any iota of doubt that President Obama and the clique of nations which forms the outlet for Washington’s arms lobby – NATO – do not abide by international law, rather they act on impulse, follow the law of the jungle and implement mob rule.
“He’s a witch! Torch him!” whereupon a man is set upon by a baying lynch mob, doused with gasoline and set on fire, screaming his innocence. Such a scene was not uncommon until recently in parts of southern Africa. No right to defence, no trial, no due process. And this is precisely how the USA and NATO act.
Guantanamo Bay provides a prime example of how international law and justice is approached – people held for years without any legal process at all, some of them released just because the British asked for favours, after which they claimed they had been illegally detained and tortured by US personnel. If you follow international law, do you release someone because a friend asks you to, before the trial has started?
Tweet Print version Font Size Send to friendSlobodan Milosevic was kidnapped against every fibre of national, Federal and international law, illegally detained in The Hague and his timely death before he could reveal too much when he had started his own defence under illegal imprisonment would aggravate the sentence against NATO’s kangaroo court. Why was Hashim Thaçi not put on trial? Watch this space – Ratko Mladic will only be allowed to speak when he is too frail to say anything or else if he does, he will “have a stroke” or “have a heart attack” or “be suddenly taken ill” and will pass away.
Moving on to the demonology surrounding Saddam Hussein before NATO’s invasion, we remember the case of the yellowcake uranium that the British authorities told the Americans the Iraqi Government was trying to obtain from “Nigeria” (except Niger is the one selling this substance), an accusation scoffed at by IAEA Director Mohammed el-Baradei who said the papers were forged. Case dropped and relegated to silence. Then Colin Powell’s “wonderful foreign intelligence” at the UNHQ, which turned out to be a thesis copied and pasted from the Internet stuffed into a report and fast-forwarded from poodle London to master Washington.
We also remember the case of the disappearance and subsequent death of British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly and today’s decision by the British authorities not to re-open the suspended inquest. We remember the allegations that Iraq had WMD. A war was launched because the USA and NATO were convinced he had them and told everyone they not only had proof of this but they also knew where they were. Eight years on, where are they? So who is going to pay for the mass murder committed by NATO, who is going to pay for the torture, rape, kidnapping, sodomy, wanton destruction of property, loss of income?
And now, Libya. The same month that the UNO was about to, after careful investigation, award Muammar al-Gaddafi a prize for his humanitarian record, we have allegations by this same clique of discredited warmongers that the same man has been committing atrocities against civilians. Civilians, or terrorists? See the photos.
How can the UNO be preparing to give him an award for his respect for civilians and civilian rights if what these barefaced liars say is true? Or have Obama and NATO once again twisted the truth, exaggerated and manipulated half-truths, turned them around on their head, used the media to whitewash their side of the story, used cyber terrorist attacks to take out the Libyan government’s version of events and misrepresented what is called freedom of expression?
The Libyan Government has stated loud and clear from the beginning that it is ready for a ceasefire with the “rebels”. They have refused. The Libyan Government has stated loud and clear since the beginning that the international community is welcome to come and investigate any allegations on the ground. They have refused. The Libyan Government has stated loud and clear since the beginning that it is fighting armed terrorists (see the photos). Obama and NATO’s response: he is killing civilians.
I pose the question to Obama and that clique of European sycophants crawling round his feet and up his…anatomy… if their countries were attacked by thousands of those “innocent civilians” they see on the photos in this piece, what would they do? In London, a Brazilian electrician was murdered because he, er…”looked Asian”.
They said that Colonel Gaddafi had been bombing his civilian population indiscriminately and that was the green light for their imposition of a no-fly zone. Yet the “evidence” which kick-started UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011) was false, rendering them invalid. The Russian authorities stated at the time that their satellites showed there was no such violation by the Libyan Air Force.
SKY News told Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam al-Qathafi that the Libyan air force had bombed a civilian residence in Tripoli. He said “OK then take me there with your cameras”. They did. The so-called “hated family” was met by cheering crowds wherever SKY took him (they chose the places, not him) and they took him to a block of apartments. “Where is the bomb?” he asked. Embarrassed silence by SKY News and the admission “It does appear that the residence is intact” or words to that effect. End of allegations.
Then there is the “shelling of civilians”. They are not civilians, they are armed. Look at the photographs in this piece.
And now, we have “mass rape”. Interesting. Fascinating in fact. Do you know what the evidence is? A load of “condoms and Viagra pills” scattered in the mountains where some terrorists, sorry civilians, were holed up. Right so when you are going to commit rape, you don’t take the Viagra pill, you throw it on the floor, and you don’t place the condom on your anatomy, you stamp on it. Interesting they had nice western packages on them, what? And erm…has anyone tried to obtain a Viagra pill in Libya? Not hundreds, just one? K…..
It reminds one of the story of the poor kid in London who liked horses but could not afford riding lessons so he sat on the toilet lid and threw his dad’s Viagra down the toilet. In this case, it is not a joke and neither is it funny. These are serious allegations which if untrue amount to defamation and libel.
Do Obama and NATO really think their readers and viewers are that stupid to believe their nonsense? Or is the sickening truth the affirmation that, yes I am afraid they are, they’ve been brainwashed by decades of western TV? And now we are speaking about rape, what happened to that woman Iman al-Obeidi who rushed into a Tripoli hotel claiming she had been gang-raped? Now she disappeared from the scene conveniently, did she not?
I will tell you what happened to her. The Libyan authorities investigated, did forensic tests and found that she was lying through her teeth. The “lawyer” was in fact a “law student” according to her own mother and was from Benghazi yet decided to present her case in Tripoli. The four men she claimed raped her, and who were arrested and detained by the Libyan authorities pending the full investigation, are now suing her for defamation. These are the same Libyan authorities who were the first to issue an international arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden and against al-Qaeda.
The West quickly got al-Obeidi out of the country. Did Obama or NATO analyse the woman’s body language or eye movements when she was making her claims back in March when she ran into the Rixos Hotel? Have they asked for the opinion of an unbiased analyst? She was then spirited to Tunisia, then Qatar, apparently increasingly a deposit for US trash, from where she was not removed – but expelled – because according to SKY, the authorities may have found her too embarrassing and now?
Why, she turns up in Romania, where she is being held in a “transit center” receiving psychological counselling and where the spokesperson from the UNHCR states “It is a delicate case and I can’t say more”. OK, we understand.
Need anyone, in fact, say more? It is understandable that those behind this unfounded attack on Libya believed that doing nothing was not an option. Yet when taking action, the consequences have to be measured. When it becomes apparent that a grave and gross miscalculation has been made, the sensible thing to do is to pull back, find some way of saving face and allow negotiations to take place.
In this case Colonel Gaddafi was preparing a transition anyway since his aim was to move more into the African Union and away from the day-to-day issues in Libya where anyway he held no unofficial title and where power had been delivered to the people, along with the oil revenue. The cash he had “stashed away” was for telecoms projects for the African Union – telemedicine and e-learning facilities. As for the ICC at The Hague, it is time they learned what international law is, and the difference between an unfounded allegation and hard evidence, which has necessarily to pass through due process before a claim is made. Which court declares that someone is guilty before a trial? Right…the ICC at The Hague. Anywhere else it would invalidate the case before the trial started.
Once again, the USA and its NATO allies jumped the gun. You do not lynch someone “because he doesn’t understand the rules of cricket” and those of us in the international community will never forgive or forget this outrage. War crimes, murder and criminal damage have been committed by NATO and those responsible will be held liable.
More truth on Libya
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/09-06-2011/118156-nato_terrorist-0/
Photos: Innocent unarmed civilians waving feather dusters saying “I say! Anyone for tennis, eh what?”
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru