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We are going to see the odd reporter saying that Gaddafi will now arm the dopy dissidents-

A no fly zone- why then are the british bombing the people on the ground-
does the brits want to turn libya into a no people zone

all this aggression makes me demoralised, might is right once again and putting uk citizens at greater risk of terrorism as a result

feel like emigrating!

2. nottinghammagpie

Blair and brown have a lot to answer for!!!

Jeffrey is a charlatan. He agrees that Israel should be allowed to attack civilians, while criticises Libya for doing the same. He praises the British army and they have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians over the past decade alone. The hypocrisy is shocking. Shame on them all. One rule for them, and another rule for the rest. They are pathetic, the lot of them!!!

As for Bahrain; N.Ireland mark2!!!

If Sinn Fein come out against the intervention in Libya they will only go further in displaying their reactionary isolation.

These air strikes are not the will of Westminster but of the United Nations, sanctioned by the Security Council. Gaddafi's forces have, it would appear, committed crimes against humanity and it is likely he will face indictment under the Rome Statute.

Calling for equal treatment for all (i.e. Israel) will not help the innocent people in Libya suffering these war crimes. In the same way that the inaction of Major, Clinton, Mitterrand and Kohl did nothing to protect the people of the former Yugoslavia from a similar fate.

In that case they waited until after the massacres before acting. One hundred thousand people died in these wars of secession, while the great and the good, wrung their hands and made excuses for doing nothing.

@#2

Pacifism is a facilitation of fascism. Some things are worth fighting for, not oil or the flag you salute but the protection of the innocent and the end of impunity.

Mark Devenport.

"..last week the DUP made it clear that they support the intervention in Libya."

they're in good company, every fascist and immature gun fetishist in this world does too.

'I haven't seen an official statement from the party yet, but a couple of tweets from Sinn Fein politicians point to republocan opposition to the air strikes'

Is it two much to sepll cheque you're articles?

if someone who had lost the plot was singlehandedly controlling the country I lived in and killing their own citizens I rather hope that someone at least would try to help - Have a bit of imagination or at least come up with a credible alternative before condemning anyones actions - I am just glad that the UN acted for once rather than dithering. Its easy from the luxury of democracy to wave away other peoples problems but if everyone were playing nice and fairly it wouldn't come to this.

7. xipde
"luxury of democracy"

If only we lived in a democracy!!!

Gaddafi's time is coming to an end, and rightly so. His bodyguards will soon get fed up with the humiliation of having to shout 'Gaddafi-duck' every time someone shoots at him!!!

Quack Quack!!!

@#5

Your '9/11 Death Ray / Web Conspiracist / New World Order' view of the UN is thankfully incorrect. On the 16th of this month, you quote Neo-Con former USA ambassador for the UN, John Bolton as saying.

"the United Nations can be a useful instrument in the conduct of American foreign policy."

Yet seem to completely misunderstand this man's wrecking agenda within the UN. Bolton was Bush's man at the UN. There to impede the humanitarian work of the organisation. Bush and his Neo-Con kin were threatened by the UN and saw it as the only thing that could challenge their global agenda.

Bolton's comment was made for one reason only and that was so that people like you would quote it and associate the organisation with US foreign policy. Bolton despised the UN and it's internationalist agenda.

It is sad that some people choose to see this intervention in the light of Iraq and Afghanistan and not in that of Rwanda or Bosnia.

Bolton (JINSA)(PNAC)(NRA) and the other Neo-Con hawks, who still have influence in Washington, see Gaddafi as an important strategic ally, just as they did Mubarak.

They know only too well what will replace their puppets in the region, in a matter of years. Sacrificing thousands of innocent Libyans to keep this ally in place is a price they would happily pay. A price however, too high for the rest of the civilised world to even consider.

Your view that an international response to protect civilians is fascist and hawkish is as ill-informed as it is isolationist.

DinD

"His bodyguards will soon get fed up with the humiliation of having to shout 'Gaddafi-duck' every time someone shoots at him!!!"

Superb! :-D

What a great example of Godwin's Law:

How can an attempt to prevent a leader waging war against his own people be Fascist?

10. Wolfe Tone
"Superb! :-D"

Thank you (",)

1. At 3:27pm on 20 Mar 2011, michaelhenry wrote:
We are going to see the odd reporter saying that Gaddafi will now arm the dopy dissidents-

A no fly zone- why then are the british bombing the people on the ground-
does the brits want to turn libya into a no people zone

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You can't enforce a no-fly zone while ground-based air defences are intact. I thought that much was obvious

When Margaret Thatcher allowed Ronald Reagan to use British bases to attack Tripoli back in 1986 Gaddafi responded by arming the IRA, who used his munitions in countless attacks. Sounds sort of fair to me (in its brutal sort of way). Don't forget that Gaddafi's daughter was killed during the Anerican bombings).
I'm afriad the DUP has been duped in their support for intervention in Libya. The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson's contention that the current operation illustrated the need to halt defence cuts in fact says just the opposite: Has he not seen the Libyan mayhem, the butchery, the damage to the infrastructure, the killing of civilians and the obvious attempt to kill even Gaddafi himself? Is Donaldson proud to enforce this butcherous interpretatrion of UN R 1973?
On Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Ulster's Inside Politics,the unionist Jeff Dudgeon predicted that the latest developments might spell the end for the campaign to win compensation for victims of Libyan linked IRA violence.
Why?
Libyan assets have been frozen in the UK and elsewhere. Just take it. Steal it. That's about as honourable as what is happening in Libya, and I'm sure the Coalition of the Willing will never give Gaddafi back what they have stolen anyway.
Thank you, Sinn Fein politicians for your thoughtful opposition to the air strikes. John O'Dowd, you are right about the double standards; I mean - why not Yemen, why not Somalia, why not Bahrain, why not Tunisia...?
And surely we have all marked the double standards that have been applied to Israel - the spoiled nation of endless occupation.
It's time.
It's time.
IT'S TIME!
For all reasonable people to stand up, open their mouths, speak up and call for justice before the American/imperial complex swallows all of us!!

Wolfe Tone #9.

"..seem to completely misunderstand this man's wrecking agenda within the UN."

or, perhaps, you did not understand the point made in that, and previous, comments.

if you care to check, I've been arguing for years that 'United Nations' makes a complete mockery of the ideals exactly because it has, since its inception, been misused by individual nation states in the pursuit of their agendas. personally, I'd like to see root and branch reform of the system, while not changing the stated purpose:

at any rate, wrt Libya, I would have prefer (again, on record) 'Blue Berets' on the ground.

"Your view that an international response to protect civilians is fascist and hawkish is as ill-informed as it is isolationist."

while your implied views, which appears to disregard the commercial imperatives, seem, well, naïve? do you really believe that the 'efforts' made against Libya are anything to do with the well-being of the 6m or so Libyan people?

(think, whose voices, (Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú) reporters and 'rebels' apart, have we actually heard?)



evilbungle #11.
(Wolfe Tone)

re fascism.

@#15

"...I've been arguing for years that 'United Nations' makes a complete mockery of the ideals exactly because it has, since its inception, been misused by individual nation states in the pursuit of their agendas..."

You seem unsure about the nature of the UN. The UN is not an 'it', more a 'they'. Every member state approaches the UN with it's own interests and agendas, as their number one priority. That is it's function. There never has been global unanimity of thought or priorities, there never will be.

The UN is not a global police force, it is a global debate. Every decision they have ever made, frustrated someones interests. The Secretary General is in fact, a secretary, not a general. His role is to listen and to confer. Not to make judgments and issue orders. The directives arise from a consensus of member states.



"...wrt Libya, I would have prefer (again, on record) 'Blue Berets' on the ground..."

Peace keepers can't fight wars and they can't keep the peace. They do however, make excellent human shields. The Blue Helmet experiments of the 1990's showed us that this type of intervention was fundamentally flawed.

Are you unaware or have you forgotten, how effective the Dutch Blue Berets were in Srebrinica? Where they provided the buses and aided the Bosnian Serbs in separating the men from women, for extermination.

Or what about the French and British Blue Berets, that were chained to bridges and military targets in other parts of Bosnia and used as propaganda. Stopping the air strikes and prolonging the suffering.

Or the Belgian Blue Berets in Rwanda, who were so poorly armed and unsupported that they could not even smuggle one Tutsi child out in their troop carriers.

When your commander in chief is every world leader, it is impossible to operate as an effective fighting force. When Clinton could no longer ignore the slaughter in Bosnia, it was NATO that carried out the attacks, not the UN.

The Peacekeeper idea failed utterly. Now they are only deployed when an actual peace exists and has a chance of lasting.

The people of Libya are more than capable of fighting their own revolution, they were having big successes, until Gaddafi started using heavy weapons and weapons of mass destruction. This intervention is to stop the war crimes and let the self determination of the Libyan people, play it's course.



"...while your implied views, which appears to disregard the commercial imperatives, seem, well, naïve? do you really believe that the 'efforts' made against Libya are anything to do with the well-being of the 6m or so Libyan people?..."

I believe that the Security Council's decision to intervene and allow the ICC to investigate Gaddafi for alleged crimes against humanity was at it's core, a humanitarian act. One that very definitely frustrated the hawks in Washington.

Gaddafi 'came in from the cold', a long time ago. He is a puppet and strategic ally of the very people you claim to have some interest in deposing him. Not the case. They already have his oil and his loyalty. They will only lose from his being removed from power. If he were half the statesman that Mubarak was (or half as sane), the US wouldn't have had to swallow this bitter pill.

It is this flawed and imperfect system that is the UN, that forced their hand. This and the fact that Bush and Bolton are not the powers they used to be internationally and the fact that Gaddafi was beyond redemption, in an international sense.

Your wiki quote re fascism, sounds like quite a good appraisal of Gaddafi's regime. Not of the UN, nor the bodies of International Justice, born out of the Nuremberg trials and the need for a global response to tyranny.

Wolfe Tone #16.

"You seem unsure about the nature of the UN. The UN is not an 'it', more a 'they'. Every member state approaches the UN with it's own interests and agendas.." etc

well of course, member states do approach the UN with their own interests and agendas. the point I've been making is that the UN has never been allowed to develop.

but anyway...

"The Peacekeeper idea failed utterly." and "..Blue Berets in Rwanda, who were so poorly armed and unsupported that they could not even smuggle one Tutsi child out in their troop carriers."

as I said, commercial interests outweigh human requirements; educate yourself, read up on , without those 800,000+ Hutus and Tutsis dying, we'd never have been able to get free mobile phones every six months on contract. (!!)

"Your wiki quote re fascism, sounds like quite a good appraisal of Gaddafi's regime."

sure, Libya is THE hotbed of corporatism, the UK and the US of A cannot compare..


well, Wolfe Tone, good thing is, I don't have to live with your conscience.

@#17

Had your points been about Libya alone, I would have let you have the last word on this but genocide denial pushes my 'conscience' a little far.

Approx 800,000 Tutsis were murdered during the Rwandan genocide. Many Hutus were killed in retaliation after the fact but the numbers were very small in comparison.

Your suggestion that the Coltan smuggling being carried out by armed groups in the DRC was only made possible because of a genocide that happened 10-15 years previously in a neighbouring country and that this genocide was facilitated to enable global communications companies to market their products, is very unfortunate.

The reasons and circumstances that caused the Rwandan genocide to occur are well known, documented and really somewhat out of place in the blog's comments section. Regardless of who had power in Rwanda or Uganda, they would both still have had a selfish interest in the natural resources of the DRC.

As for Libya, you are confusing corporatism with capitalism. Britain and the USA are not corporatist economies. Look at how Gaddafi structured the government, the army and the state oil industry.

Tony dixon thinks that only ground-based air defences are the target's in libya-
thats strange- can't see many of those tanks that were destroyed being able to shoot down any jets

Wolfe Tone

"but genocide denial pushes my 'conscience' a little far"

What has Rwandan genocide have to do with Libya or the price of Guinness cheese???

You feel the need to ignore other 'off topic' comments on Israel's attacking civilians, while at the same time you feel the need to comment 'off topic' on other genocidal regimes!!!

Just an observation!!!

'As he faced the sun he cast no shadow'...

Wolfe Tone #18.

"Approx 800,000 Tutsis were murdered during the Rwandan genocide. Many Hutus were killed in retaliation ... Your suggestion that the Coltan smuggling being carried out by armed groups in the DRC was only made possible because of a genocide that happened 10-15 years previously ... unfortunate."

unlike you I do not 'count' Hutus and Tutsis separately because I think both sides were victims; check out the timeline (conflict vs uptake of mobile technologies). v "unfortunate" that you (deliberately??) misread what is written.

"Britain ... not corporatist economies."

oh, don't take my word for it, how about Gregory Barker (Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change). ( of course, there are plenty more quotes by other public figures referring to 'UK plc'.

no matter though, there are none as blind as those who won't see, n'est pas? [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

DinD

This isn't the Guinness cheese thread :)

The connection is international intervention and peace keeping operations. I am really not that interested in tired, circular arguments and repetitive, rhetorical attacks against Israel, Jim Allister or the British.

I Googled your 'he cast no shadow' quote. It is an Oasis song. How dreadful. For someone who doesn't like the Brits, you do like Brit Pop. Just an observation.

Funny, I figured you for a fan of the even more dreadful Wolfe Tones :)

Don't worry, Devenport will mention Israel and it's atrocious human rights record, one day in his blog, then you me and Suze can all go 'on the piste' together.

Wolfe Tone

You cannot put the English, or British people for that matter, into the same basket as their government. These people believe what they are told; it's not the fault of the masses!!!

The members of the band Oasis are mostly all second generation Irish in any case, as were many other Brit pop groups such as the Beatles, but I listen to music from all sorts of musicians and genres. I'm also a big fan of Scots folk music, as well as American folk musicians such as Bob Dylan. Christy Moore is another favourite of mine... A man never afraid to speak his mind on the oppression of the Irish by the British and the Catholic church.

You see, just because you don't like an ideology, it doesn't mean you have to dislike those who are duped into being part of such an ideology!!!

Peace out!!!