U.S.Crusade | RaceandHistory | RastaTimes | HowComYouCom | News Links | Trini Soca | Africa Speaks
Trinicenter.com Trinicenter.com Trinidad and Tobago News
Online Forums
Create an AccountHome | Account | World News  

International Watch
  • Home
  • AvantGo
  • Feedback
  • Search
  • Stories Archive
  • Submit News

  • Categories
  • Africa Focus
  • Arab Spring
  • Audio & Video
  • Book Review
  • Caribbean
  • Inside U.S.A.
  • Invasion of Iraq
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Latin America
  • Medical
  • Pakistan
  • Pandora's Box
  • Racism Watch
  • Satire
  • US War on Iran
  • US War on N Korea
  • War and Terror
  • War on Russia
  • War on Syria
  • World Focus
  • Zimbabwe

  • Old Articles
    Friday, February 08
    ·
    Wednesday, February 06
    ·
    Tuesday, February 05
    · Savage Capitalism or Socialism: A Conversation with Luis Britto Garcia
    Sunday, February 03
    · Canada vs. Venezuela: The Background Gets Even Murkier
    Thursday, January 31
    ·
    Monday, January 28
    · The History - and Hypocrisy - of US Meddling in Venezuela
    · Canada Is Complicit in Venezuela's US-Backed Coup D'état
    Wednesday, September 26
    · Why Israel Demolishes: Khan Al-Ahmar as Representation of Greater Genocide
    Friday, September 21
    · US Disregard for International Law Is a Menace to Latin America
    Saturday, August 25
    · How Long is the Shelf-Life of Damnable Racist Capitalist Lies?
    Thursday, August 09
    · Martial Law By Other Means: Corporate Strangulation of Dissent
    Wednesday, August 08
    · North Korea and The Washington Trap
    · Venezuela Assassination Attempt: Maduro Survives but Journalism Doesn't
    Sunday, May 20
    · The British Royal Wedding, Feelgoodism and the Colonial Jumbie
    Friday, May 04
    ·
    Monday, April 09
    · The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News for the Planet
    Tuesday, March 20
    · Finally, Some Good News
    Thursday, March 15
    · Zimbabwe Open for Business, Code for International Finance Capitalism
    Friday, January 12
    · Shadow Armies: The Unseen, But Real US War In Africa
    Wednesday, December 13
    · The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

    Older Articles

    Features

    Sudan''s Crisis

    Zimbabwe: Land Reform and Mugabe

    U.S Coup in Haiti

    Venezuela and Chavez


      
    World Focus: Obama's bizarre way of protecting Libyans
    Posted on Sunday, May 08 @ 15:17:36 UTC
    Topic: Libya
    LibyaBy Tafataona P Mahoso
    May 08, 2011 - herald.co.zw


    ON Thursday April 21 2011, African Uni0n Commission Chairperson Jean Ping met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington DC over the matter of the Nato war of aggression against Libya.

    Ping did not announce anything but Clinton claimed that from then on the US and Nato would be following behind the African Uni0n in order to end the war and bring peace to Libya.

    Clinton was not convincing. The US-Nato war on Libya is itself an attack on the AU and AU resolutions.

    Then, on Friday April 22, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates announced that President Obama had just authorised the US Airforce to deploy "predators" (also called drones) in Libya, in order to enable Nato forces to take out certain strategic installations and, to murder members of critical Libyan administration and defence units without the aggressors incurring any causalities.

    This time the aggressors went silent on their claims to protect "civilians."

    Then on Saturday, April 23, the people of Pakistan amassed in Pashawar Province to condemn on-going massacres of civilians by similar US predators, which have been in use there for years and which now constitute a big spill-over into Pakistan of the Nato war against Afghanistan.

    Typically, when Gates made his announcement of Obama's authorisation of the use of predators against Libyans, he avoided any mention of what was happening in Pakistan at exactly that time: that the civilian population of that country had mobilised to condemn the criminal use of these monsters on people there.

    The moral equivalent in Zimbabwe for what is happening in Libya are the illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe since 2000-2001 which the aggressors and their internal collaborators say are targetted only at President Mugabe and his closest "cronies."

    One has to stop thinking properly to be able to swallow such criminal rationalisations.

    The way to enable people to understand how criminal these arguments are is to ask them to consider the amount of damage the Nato jets have been inflicting on infrastructure and business through daily bombings since March 19 2011.

    It is now already well over one month. Does anyone in his right mind believe that everything these super jets have destroyed all over Libya really belongs to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi or his family or even his cabinet?

    Europe and North America are destroying the wealth and patrimony of even unborn Libyans. If we look at the places where the same aggressors have finished their destruction and taken control, it is also obvious that they have not bothered to carry out any reconstruction.

    Recent examples of such wrecked countries and nations include Haiti, Grenada, Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

    Now that the empire is openly broke, there is no chimera of a chance that it is capable of rebuilding anything, even if it had the intention to do so, which in fact it does not.

    If those African countries that were fooled into voting for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ever needed any proof that the US and Nato do not and cannot wage wars to protect civilians - Obama's authorisation of predators for Libya is more than enough proof.

    The subsequent sending of combat advisors is even more dangerous and terroristic. It is an admission that there is no real homegrown rebellion and revolution in Libya.

    At least that is not what Nato is supporting. What Nato and the US are supporting is a puppet group with neither a proper organisation nor any national pride.

    So, almost everything has to be provided from outside and by outsiders - bombers, surveillance, intelligence, advice, predators, food, propaganda.

    That is why to date, no one has seen an autonomous programme or manifesto showing what the supposed rebels have to offer the Libyan people, which is more authentic and more popular than what the Libyan government has provided for the last 40 years.

    What exactly do the rebels intend to do after Nato destroys Libya in the process of removing Gaddafi's government?

    Full meaning of Nato's predatory policy

    Predators are preferred by US and Nato commanders not because of their precision but because they avoid causalities on the side of the aggressor. The Nato and US terrorists just push digital buttons from thousands of kilometres away against their human and other targets.

    The deployment of combat advisors and predators means that Nato and the US intend to occupy and run Libya for a long time.

    The first phase of the operation is a war of attrition intended to debilitate and dismantle Libyan social and political systems - small-piece-by-small-piece - until the aggressors find it safe to install their puppets and to occupy the ground.

    Above all, the deployment of predators signifies the automatic forfeiture of any human contacts, any human relationships, any dialogue at all with the supposed civilian population of Libya. White Europe and white North America would never deploy faceless predators against the Spanish or French ETA or the dissidents of French-speaking Quebec or the Irish Republican Army.

    Drones are the choice weapons used against a people with whom one does not really want to relate on a human level.

    They cannot be used by an invader whose purpose is the protection of civilians, because for such protection to happen and to be accepted and understood there has to be a human relationship which the predator policy has automatically forfeited.

    This is the clear meaning of the massive demonstrations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were going on at exactly the same time as Gates' announcement of Obama's decision to deploy predators in Libya. The Pakistani demonstrators told CNN on April 23 2011 that the use of pilotless predators on their territory meant that the US administration had nothing but utter contempt for the civilian victims of these monsters; that the predator policy represented the most cruel and cowardly form of denial and a criminal avoidance of responsibility and liability for massive losses of human life which that policy implies.

    The victims have no chance whatsoever of ever being heard or compensated because everyone involved uses the facelessness and distance as a permanent, premeditated alibi. The rest of the world has to mobilise both against the actual imperialist aggression of the North Atlantic states and against the totalitarian philosophy which provides the ideological foundation for imperialistic self-justification.

    The philosophy is the narcissistic linear perspective, which has now reached its moral dead-end in Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

    The eye and technique of linear perspective employs distance with all its ramifications as a means of increasing its unilateral power, its lethal precision and its room to manoeuvre and gain scope for deniability.

    Its roots go back to the religious revolutions which produced father-centred religion, and the vision of one jealous God who stands on the mountain peak, escapes to heaven, does not tolerate any other gods, and sends out militant prophets and evangelists who also do not tolerate any alternative ways of approaching God.

    The original symbols of this vision include the mountain peak, the straight and narrow path, the cross, the ladder of hierarchy and the window of retreat.

    Linear perspective has become hegemonic because it has penetrated so many levels of existence and consciousness. It operates as:
    • a paradigm or worldview;
    • a grand theory claiming a monopoly on logical explanations while condemning alternatives as irrational, unreliable, unreal, superstitious or obsolete;
    • the best and the most efficient technique, the most practical procedure for carrying out operations;
    • an aesthetic governing notion of beauty and efficiency in art, architecture, fashion and communication;
    • technology, spawning billions of contraptions, gadgets and other monstrosities that seem to stress the desire to annihilate the human being and, replace it with the machines of escape;
    • a philosophy and epistemology, self-confirming and closed to other philosophies and epistemologies; and,
    • an attitude to the world, to the other and to self.
    Some of the features of this linear perspective are crucial to the understanding of the Nato war against Yugoslavia and the current US-UK war against Libya and Afghanistan.

    The first one is the affinity between the fanatics of cyberism and militarism on one hand and, the fanatics of certain religious sects - the most backward and repressive religious sects armed with the most advanced laser weapons.

    This is demonstrated in the US creation and arming of the Taliban and the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.

    The second example of the operation of linear perspective is the Nato decision not to use ground troops in Yugoslavia and Libya, but instead to rely on distant and faceless pilots who also reduce all the people of those nations to faceless abstractions to be represented by the singular and self-confirming image of a demonised "Gaddafi" or "Milosovic."

    The shock and awe approach to Iraq in the first stages of the war in 2003 was typical of this view. This type of warfare demonstrates the characteristics of linear power in the following ways:
    • It shows the ability of the imperial power to pick and choose, not only victims and clients but also values, using the media of distance and technologies of retreat and leverage.
    The Kurds of Iraq and the Kosovars are fetishised into the most deserving receivers of the Western gift of humanity and human rights, while Serbs, Quebecers, and Irish nationalists are defined in the opposite way: as subversives and terrorists who deserve repression and stigmatisation.

    This is the strategy of dis-selection and apartheid, opposed to the relational and solidary strategy of the African in "unhu/ubuntu".
    • It uses weapons of distance and the media of retreat to make sure the bomber pilot never has to face his victims in person.
    That is why there are no ground forces. Where they have to be used they quickly barricade themselves behind razor wires and armoured tanks.

    The victims receive cluster bombs and depleted uranium but they are completely prevented from returning anything, not even a glance.

    This is because anything approaching a human encounter might give the aggressor same suggestion of the humanity of his victims. He might notice that the women are just like his own mother and aunt or sister.

    He might recognise his own daughter among the school children or the patients in the bombed children's ward of the hospital.

    So-called targetted sanctions also serve the same purpose. The targetted are so targetted because they might just convince the home population that they have a case.

    It seeks to silence all potential replies before they are uttered; just as the preacher on the mountain top telling the message of the straight and narrow path does not expect a contrary message or path to cross his own, the Nato generals ordered the bombing of television and radio stations and transmitters in Yugoslavia and Libya. The "truth" was not supposed to receive a reply (Javanovic, 1999, Kanth, 1999: 189)

    Finally, it maximises deniability and the alibi, which are then presented as evidence of "transparency", truthfulness.

    Indeed, despite all the documented evidence, both the Nato pilots and their commanders still deny that they murdered children and hospital patients while Senator Helms denied that the same pilots and commanders are indictable.

    Because they really were "not there", they fought the war via remote (retreat) control; they cannot be guilty of violating international humanitarian law.

    It is this linear perspective, this false philosophy of moral progress, which creates the delusion that digital tools will usher in a new ethics and new morality to replace the barbarism and brutality of the Hitler era, and the subsequent Cold War.

    In fact, possession of the technologies of speed, efficiency and precision among both the military and the mass media did not help to bring peoples, countries or communities together.

    As Hewitt (1997, page 123) states: "However, the disasters of full-scale modern wars depend less and less upon how individual soldiers and units behave.

    "They reflect ever greater use of targeting and warring at a distance. 'This involves long-range, high speed, automated and guided missiles; weapons of mass devastation; and strategies designed in distant centres and monitored remotely . . .

    "These distanced methods, mediated by high technology, have not only proved an ever greater threat to land and life.

    "They also promote and demand a geography of remoteness and abstract information that sees neither the pain of the victims nor the ravaged landscapes".

    In the case of Yugoslavia, statements issued by Nato from Brussels, London and Washington were identical in their alienated distance and abstraction to media reports of the mainstream organisations. The same has happened over Libya.

    The media tended to limit themselves to reporting those forms of damage, which the generals were willing to acknowledge.

    Hewitt (1997, page 132), uses research done by Mona Macksoud on Beirut to show the traumatic experiences which people can have when subjected to military aggression.

    Although Serbia was different from Lebanon in that there were no ground troops, the experiences of bombing, terror and deprivation are similar.

    In summary, the effect of Eurocentric linear perspective on Africa and the Africans has been the practical, economic, academic and epistemological dehumanisation of the African in the name of human rights.

    Source: herald.co.zw

     
    Related Links
    · More about Libya
    · News by admin


    Most read story about Libya:
    End Game for Benghazi Rebels as Libyan Tribes Prepare to Weigh In?


    Article Rating
    Average Score: 5
    Votes: 1


    Please take a second and vote for this article:

    Excellent
    Very Good
    Good
    Regular
    Bad


    Options

     Printer Friendly Printer Friendly



    Homepage | Trinidad News | Africa Speaks | U.S.Crusade | Fair Use Notice


    Copyright © 2002-2014 Trinicenter.com
    Trinicenter.com is a 100% non-profit Website
    You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php or ultramode.txt
    All logos, trademarks, articles and comments are property of their respective owners.
    PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2004 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL.
    PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.
    Page Generation: 0.24 Seconds