Hail to the true victors of Rupert’s Revolution

The British press celebrates the triumph of Libya’s “rebel” forces. And the British arms industry to

By John Pilger Published 09 September 2011

On 13 September, one of the world's biggest arms fairs opens in London, backed by the British government. On 8 September, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled "Middle East: a Vast Market for UK Defence and Security Companies". The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs. According to Amnesty International, 98 per cent of the victims of cluster bombs are civilians and 30 per cent children. RBS has received £20bn in public money. The blurb for the bank's arms party read: "The Middle East is one of the regions with the greatest number of opportunities for UK defence and security companies. Saudi Arabia . . . is the world's top defence importer, having spent $56bn in 2009 . . . a very worthwhile region to target."

Such are the Cameron government's priorities following the great "humanitarian" victory in Libya. As Margaret Thatcher once declared: "Rejoice!" And as the bankers and arms merchants raise their glasses, let us not forget the heroic RAF pilots who made Libya ours again by incinerating countless "pro-Gaddafi elements" in their homes and cots and clinics, and the unsung stalwarts of the British drone industry at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire who, before and after lunch, provide the information for targets so that Hellfire missiles can flatten homes and suck the air out of lungs. And cheers to QinetiQ's drone testing site at Aberporth and at UAV Engines Limited in Lichfield.

Heist of little interest

The west's humanitarian mission is not quite finished. Six months after securing a UN resolution authorising "the [protection] of civilians and civilian-populated areas under the threat of attack", Nato is raining fragmentation bombs on civilian-populated Sirte and other "Gaddafi strongholds" where, says a Channel 4 News reporter, "until they cut off the head of the snake, Libyans will not feel safe". I quote that not so much for its Orwellian quality, but as a model of journalism's role in justifying "our" bloodbaths in advance.

This is Rupert's Revolution, after all. Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative "insurgents". The action in Libya, says the Times, is "a revolution . . . as revolutions used to be". That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar al-Gaddafi's ex-cronies and spooks in collusion with Nato is hardly news. Their self-appointed leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, was Gaddafi's feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America's old friends - the mujahedin Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda. They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of Libya from Tripoli to Benghazi in order to control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little interest.

The entirely predictable indictment of Gaddafi before the "international court" at The Hague evokes the charade of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, whose "heinous crime" has been deployed to promote the west's ambitions in Libya. In 2009, al-Megrahi was sent back to Libya not for compassionate reasons, as reported, but because his appeal would have confirmed his innocence and described how he was framed by the Thatcher government, as the late Paul Foot's landmark exposé revealed. As an antidote to the current propaganda, I urge you to read the forensic demolition of Megrahi's "guilt" and its wider meaning in Dispatches from the Dark Side: on Torture and the Death of Justice (Verso) by the distinguished human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

This is not to detract from Gaddafi's awful dictatorship, a "rendition" destination for MI6, we now learn. But his odium is unrelated to the rape of his country by imperial caricatures such as Nicolas Sarkozy, a Napoleonic Islamophobe whose intelligence services almost certainly set up the coup against Gaddafi. US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks disclose the west's panic over Gaddafi's refusal to hand over the greatest reserves of oil in Africa and his overtures to China and Russia.

Get it right

Propaganda relies not only on Murdoch but on apparently respectable voices inducing historical amnesia. The Observer, which has yet to apologise for its catastrophic promotion of Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is in thrall to the "honourable intervention" of Sarkozy and Cameron and their "humanitarian and emotional" motives. Its political columnist Andrew Rawnsley completes an impressive double. As Media Lens reminds us, in 2003, Rawnsley wrote of Iraq: "The death toll has been nothing like as high as had been widely feared." A million dead Iraqis later, Rawnsley insists that, in Libya, Britain "got it right" and "the number of civilian casualties inflicted by the air strikes seems to have been mercifully light". Tell that to those with loved ones obliterated by corporate-friendly Hellfires.

Nato attacked Libya to counter and manipulate a general Arab uprising that took the rulers of the world by surprise. Unlike his neighbours, Gaddafi had come to power by denying western control of his country's natural wealth. For this, he was never forgiven, and the opportunity for his demise was seized in the usual manner. The American historian William Blum has kept the record. Since the Second World War, the United States has crushed or subverted liberation movements in 20 countries, and attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratic, and dropped bombs on 30 countries, and attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. Rejoice!

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View the discussion thread.

78 comments

Wed, 2011-09-14 20:05 — Mr Danger

I guess the Statesman typesetters had to order an extra large load of scare quotes for this one.

And I love how John, after launching into five paragraphs of hysterical venom and hatred directed at everything the west has done in Libya, pauses to note that "This is not to detract from Gaddafi's awful dictatorship".

No John, of course it isn't.

Whereupon we return to spewing utter loathing towards the west for the rest of the editorial. After this boilerplate criticism of Gaddafi, we never hear about him again. No, this half sentence is all the criticism of Gaddafi that Pilger could squeeze into his polemic, the other half of the sentence of course being needed for more damning criticism of the west.

Genocide accusations against Gaddafi are immediately rejected, whereas a long list of war crimes are confidently laid at the feet of rebels (sorry, "rebels") and NATO. Apparently our man John believes no civilians were harmed by Gadaffi's forces, or perhaps they just aren't worth mentioning? We'll never know.

Take the cluster bombs story. John opens with it, damning the west for selling them, clumsily trying to drag RBS and Murdoch into a story that has pretty much nothing to do with either of them. He then proceeds to tell us how NATO bombs are landing, at least as his descriptions imply, pretty much exclusively on children in their cots.

Oddly though, the only side to use cluster munitions in this conflict was Gaddafi's. Yet John makes no mention of it. How very odd. Now why would that be? Perhaps a simple oversight by John, an honest mistake which will surely be corrected in his next article? That's about as likely as his supporters exercising independent thought. No, as long as John gives them what they want to hear, they venerate him like a god. Keep lying to us John, and ban comments so we won't hear dissenting opinions!

"Nato attacked Libya to counter and manipulate a general Arab uprising that took the rulers of the world by surprise."

Come on. I mean really. Counter? How can that possibly make sense? Reading this, you picture a crazed man desperately trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

In any case, the NS is so enamored of Pilger they can't even bother putting up the whole article, it runs out mid sentence. Maybe they did run out of scare quotes after all?

Fri, 2011-09-09 21:45 — Dickie1

@ John Pilger (or anyone else with the answer)

"... that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence..."

This is not a toll, but are you saying that Gaddafi's forces attacking Benghazi was hyped up, because (going by the BBC's reports) that seemed to be a threat of at least mass killing.

The rest I can well believe, arms trade etc.

Fri, 2011-09-09 22:01 — writeon1

Probably nobody cares, I mean a lot of blood has passed under the imperial bridge in the meantime, but we've been led up the proverbial "garden path" again, and this is after Iraq and the non-existant WMDs.

Weeks ago... a tremendous amount of publicity was given by our media and politicians to a speech made by Gaddafi in Tripoli where he reportedly threatened to massacre, slaughter, or reign down "genocide" on the civilian population of Benghazi. Calling them "rats" and comparing his plans for them with what happened in Fallujah, Gaza, and Tienanmin Square.

I thought it was odd that he also mentioned Waco in Texas. Waco? Waco? What did he mean?

This speach was milked for every drop of propaganda value one could squeeze out of it, by hook or by crook, to justify Nato's attack on Libya, allegedly to protect civilians from harm, to save them from "genocide" which Gaddafi had threatened.

Now, my Arabic isn't perfect, far from it, but if one examines what Gaddafi said, yes, he mentioned Gaza and Waco, but not as examples of what he planned for Benghazi, but to show how much restraint he'd shown when faced with a "revolt" compared to how other counries had dealt with demonstrators.

So Gaddafi's speech, and its meaning, was cynically twisted around almost 100% by our corporate media and their tame politicians to serve a political agenda, the rush to war, yet again.

Gaddafi did use the word "rats" in his long and confusing speech, but he also raved about "cats", and was referring not to the civilians in Benghazi, but aimed his barbs at the armed "terrorist" rebels, and Israel, Nato, and the West in general.

The important point is that he never threatened to "massacre" the population of Benghazi, or committ "genocide", in fact, understandably he went out of his way to assure the civilian population, and the international community, that ordinary, peaceful, people had nothing to fear.

Now, obviously, one can say that he may have been lying and he had a sinister plan to slaughter Benghazi's population, but why? As he knew that Nato was looking for any excuse to attack Libya and destroy his regime, giving Nato ammunition by threatening "genocide" would have been extremely stupid and counter-productive, like putting his head on the chopping block.

But what kind of democracy do we really live in if our media and politicans can lie us into war again and again, and their is no scrutiny of their claims at all, and no one is ever held to account for their lies?

Fri, 2011-09-09 22:09 — Dickie1

@writeon

Thank you. I have no Arabic at all, but I think I see what you're driving at.

Fri, 2011-09-09 22:13 — Maria111

An explanation of the hatred towards the courageous John Pilger:

"Some have servility in their blood."

Sun, 2011-09-11 04:29 — Sam (not verified)

If we hadn't have intervened Pilger would have been banging on about how the west needs to have something in it for them before they intervene in a country.

Writeon - how do you know what the truth is? Where you in Libya at the time?

Also Gaddafi did say that he would go house by house and slaughter the people of Benghazi. I can translate it for you from Arabic if you like.

I don't know why the left insists on these pathetic propaganda attempts, they never work.

Mon, 2011-09-19 23:34 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

@writeon: First you wrote about the charred corpuses: 'Are we just to assume that these acts were carried out by Gaddafi's forces without any impartial international investigation?'

I would agree with you on this but then you wrote:

'And what do we do about the growing evidence that warcrimes of a horrific nature have been committed by the rebels who we support, do we just look away and pretend this hasn't happened?'

Growing evidence? Has this evidence been subject to impartial international investigation that you demand of the alleged acts of Gaddafi? And what exactly is this 'evidence' that is condemning the 'rebels'? Can you link to any sites so as I can read it?

I agree with you that we mustn't just assume that what we are told is the truth but we mustn't just assume that it is lies. Secondly you have assumed that what you heard about the rebels is the truth without 'impartial international investigation' as you called for.

Why are you questioning the authenticity of 'evidence' condemning one side but proclaiming the evidence condemning the other side is true? It appears to me that you have two standards.