It is quite extraordinary to me how very little publicity is being given to the CIA sponsored military coup in Libya, following the same event in Egypt. The Arab Spring was front page headlines. The CIA and Saudi sponsored cooperation to turn it back to the deepest of freezes virtually gets no mention. This is even true of Libya, where we bombed tens of thousands of civilians to a pulp to ensure the changeover of regime, under the guise of installing democracy. The real aim was never democracy, but a neo-con friendly government, which is so much better secured under the auspices of the CIA.
The sheer arrogance of the political class and mainstream media in their hasty acceptance of the re-establishment of military dictatorship in Egypt, as though nothing wrong had happened, has been breathtaking – and almost entirely unchallenged. Tony Blair’s defence of the coup as the need to overthrow “political Islam” is not stated so openly by governments, but is indeed the motivation. Democracy is a good thing – except for Muslims, is their belief. Yet the government of Saudi Arabia is the most appalling example of entrenched “political Islam” in the world. But as it is unabashedly billionaire and neo-con friendly and pro-Israel, the Arab Gulf State model of political Islam is acceptable to the West. Only democratic, popular, political Islam must be overthrown.
I find amusing that the neo-cons are supported in this by the hard left in the West. It is fascinating to go back to this post and see the comments from those who supported the overthrow of Morsi as a left wing democratic revolution. In many instances, they are precisely the same deluded people who accept without question or query even the most obviously faked Russian propaganda about events in Ukraine (such as the obviously faked photo of the “strangled pregnant woman” in Odessa).
One particularly vile outcome of events in Egypt is David Cameron’s attempt at post hoc justification of Britain’s support of the military coup, by an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood here as a terrorist organization. As with the periodic persecution of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the UK is sending a very dangerous message. First we are telling Muslims, with good sense, that they should not support their aims through violence but through democratic political activity. But then we are telling them that they must not do that either, and in fact the only course which is permitted is to adopt the same opinions as ourselves.
Personally I am deeply opposed to theological government. But those who wish to espouse it should have every right to do so by peaceful means. If we seek to remove all outlet for political Islam in the field of free thought and debate, we can scarcely complain if it turns to violence.
Are you seriously suggesting the Odessa massacre never happened ? I watched all of it live .I accept your reservations about the pregnant woman pic making speculations about still photos is not really forensic science .
So, the lefties support humanitarian intervention in Arab countries but OPPOSE it in Ukraine?
I’m a lefty and I oppose it all — because it is all the same creature, a bit like the scene in the Exorcist where Karras is explaining to Merrin how many demons are inside the girl.
“There is only one,” Merrin interrupts.
From Serbia to Ukraine — the one fascist neo-con Empire.
Wikipedia has three little pages that may both supply and benefit from links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Libyan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2014_Benghazi_clashes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2014_Tripoli_clashes
Is it Hifter in charge?If so its a straightforward CIA coup (as opposed to a disguised one) .
Patrick Cockburn’s report on Libya from September 2013 – “lawlessness and ruin”, oil productions down to an eighth, government on the verge of collapse:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-we-all-thought-libya-had-moved-on–it-has-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html
Yes its Hifter (Hafter) saw through that cunning ruse
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/03/pers-m28.html
Nothing I said remotely indicates the Odessa massacre never happened. Pro-Russian thugs have, by brute force, taken over central administrative districts of several Eastern Ukrainian cities, where ethnic Russians are still a minority but particularly concentrated in the urban provincial centres. Ukrainians have been beaten up, murdered and intimidated on a massive scale. The Russian tactics rely entirely on brute force – the prevalence of Kalashnikovs and baseball bats is ubiquitous.
In Odessa these tactics of forcefully taking over the administrative centre backfired because it was a city with a large enough concentration of Ukrainians to fight back. They did fight back, and the resulting callousness of the scenes in and around the Trades union buildings was disgraceful, and indefensibly inhuman.
But for the Russians to initiate takeovers by force and violence, and then complain when their own people get killed too, is ludicrous hypocrisy.
Nice going, site censors, erasing my post without comment.
The hard left? No, the left is demoralized, the support you see is from democrats. There was coup in Ukraine, now the east is being shelled with tanks. He’s restarting the cold against Russia. Obama sent a letter justifying his use of the WPA to go into Nigeria, Syria is a bloody mess and head chopping, liver eating, crucifying jihadists are receiving anti aircraft weapons; he’s droning civilians in Yemen, threatening Venezuela, and says anywhere else that he’s helping kill people (Mexico, Colombia) is a national security secret. Oh, the Egyptian coup got support, now 600 are on death row, and the state dept declared that Thailand was not a coup, but the military just announced it was. The state the Susan Rice helped chip off, South Sudan has melted down, and the soros project in Burma are starving the Royhinga. Oh. CAR Christians are slaughtering Muslims.
Anyway, why don’t you specify exactly who you are referring to when you say the hard left, because the don’t really exist anymore. There’s just the regular left now. Only Bill Orielly uses that term.
A different coup on a different continent.
Thai military seizes power in coup
Thai army chiefs announce coup
Thailand’s army says it has taken control of the government, suspended the constitution and will enact reforms after months of political turmoil.
(22 May 2014)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27517591
~~
el Sisi has had Morsi sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
Three-year jail sentence for Mubarak
A court in Egypt sentences ousted President Hosni Mubarak to three years in prison after finding him and his two sons guilty of embezzlement
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27499325
~~
and Libya descends into fascism.
Libyan renegade general urges new ‘crisis cabinet’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-27507539
Bullshit — Russia reacted to Western aggression. Have you forgotten McCain and the Svoboda leader sharing a fucking platform? Russia knew fine well what would happen to their Black Sea base if they didn’t move quickly.
You’ve got a real blind spot here, Craig.
Pilger and Milne know the score — the butchering cunts in Washington, London and Paris. And now Prince Charles leading the charge, trying to brainwash us all with this crap about Russia behaving like Nazis.
They’ll be throwing babies out of incubators next.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/break-the-silence-a-world-war-is-beckoning
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/22/coups-terror-nato-war-in-libya-west-intervention-boko-haram-nigeria
How many demons did Karras and Merrin find?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/new-york-times-admits-russia-sending-pro-russian-fighters-ukraine.html
Mr. Murray, if you swapped out each place you used Ukrainians, for one of these terms [federalists, separatists, Russian speakers, eastern self protection groups, or pro-Russians], and where you refer to Russian thugs [pravy sektor, Kiev junta, banderites, neonazis, ultras, proto-fascists, Ukrainian military] then your comment would bear resemblance to what is actually going on. There are no Russians there.
Censorship by ommission Craig,and it’s getting worse.There was a time when a war was a news worthy item. There are so many that when they go wrong for the fomenters,then it disappears as if there was no more conflict.
Libya has been smouldering since our bombers left Sirte in rubble and thousands dead behind.We destroyed a functioning state with a welfare system that put many European nations to shame.
The US promised no boots on the ground which from the beginning was a lie.In the evenings under the cover of darkness,our and US special forces paved the way and made progress only to disappear like the vampires they are at sunrise.Hifter is perhaps trying to consolidate Gov. forces,but Ghadafi was an artist that through decades had won the trust and respect of the various tribes that are necessary to have on your side for a cohesive society in Libya.He will never achieve what Ghadafi did.The CIA will not succeed either.This is the 3rd or 4th over throw in a short space of time.It won’t be the last.
I do try to sift the news and make my own decisions about what is true,propaganda and outright BS.Odessa was an atrocity,and it was carried out by anti Russian groups.Fire very easily gets out of control as do crowds.Now we’ve had the Ashton tapes,the Nuland tapes, the fact that Senator McCain popped up, CIA visits to the Ukraine, billions in so called aid and then the big coincidence when Yanukovich said “no”, somebody changed gear and all hell broke loose with events unfolding just as Nuland had said. What about the West’s propaganda ? Are you of the opinion that this has all been orchestrated from Moscow ? If it looks ,feels,smells,and tastes like shit,then its NATO.my opinion.
What gets my goat is that we are worse than Russia on all counts these days and I dont need RT to make me feel that way.
Russian media are reporting that the efforts of Russian online propagandists in Europe have been so successful, the activity will be scaled up to include North America. I saw the report in Ukrainian siting a Russian source and the recent Guardian story. Hard to judge the real scale without further research.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/04/pro-russia-trolls-ukraine-guardian-online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/
Oh, you mean like me?
Timely reminder, Mark. And if there aren’t several hundred Academi mercenaries in Ukraine supporting their Nazi brothers, I’ll eat something unfeasibly indigestible.
Thanks for posting the Pliger Break the Silence article Mike.
Since the Ukraine interference it occurs to me that what we’re seeing since 9/11 is indeed all part of a grand plan. Your post Craig is a conundrum. On the one hand you report the doings of the CIAs and describe its tell tale finger print around the world and then on the other hand you seem to be able to ignore, overlook or just plain deny evidence of that self same finger print on Ukraine. I just don’t get it?
Posted yesterday about Swedish press reporting that the Nazi thugs from Maidan had just finished their basic training and been armed and reckoned there would be trouble by the weekend.
Just heard on RT ( I know ,pure propaganda) that unknown armed militia’s are beginning to shoot on the outskirts of cities in Donetsk.Seems they couldn’t wait for the weekend.
But then they were put up to it by Putin of course.Deserve everything that’s happening to them.The nazi thugs with guns have been made bonafide brothers in arms of Blackwater aka Greystone , AKA Academi, AKA NATO and that makes it allright.
For me, Johnstone, it goes back to the signing of the Iraq Liberation Act by Bill Clinton in 1998. Hobbled by the Lewinsky scandal, Bill gave the neo-cons what they wanted (which included Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo) in exchange for seeing out his term.
9/11 was a necessary part of the process, a springboard to widen the scope of what the exceptionalists within PNAC saw as America’s manifest destiny. It came with the usual moral trimmings, of course, but a pig wearing lipstick is still just a pig.
To lefties, we can give it a simpler name — the permanent arms economy — or, if you prefer, The Shock Doctrine (a la N. Klein)
The sting is in the tail?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/23/tony-blair-ukraine-putin-_n_5196236.html?1398239712&utm_hp_ref=uk-politics
Thanks for the link Mike, Pilger, just as other commentators can see the polarising world, but he also knows that the traditional lefties, as you call, couldn’t pull a dead herriong off a platter, i.e. our normal reactions such as demonstrating have been proven as ineffective, controlled and inconsequential.
So unless people scream for more salt on the butter, the situation in the Ukraine will deteriorate. The world has become more dangerous since Brezcinskis planned advice for a ‘world shattering event’ ( in the ‘grand chess board’)to galvanise countries behind US foreign policy, was followed up.
US global hegemony will lead to another war and it will be worse than ever because Russia and China are not fighting each other over the Ussuri river anymore, but they are in a cohesive and advancing long term union that will/is already running rings around US world trade and its banking/petrodollar hegemony.
being holed up near Mildehall my end should be swift and without a trace.
Just Tony trying to get on the winning side – what he failed to do when he too, like CIA’s George Tenet, claimed falsely that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, and must pay for it.
Twin Towers – When you murder 3000 citizens and try to make on the foreknowledge the ripple assumes an eternal form at the origin.
@ 6:02 mins
http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/160676-attacks-hood-disease-atheists/
I agree that Craig, so accurate in other evaluations, even on this current thread, really has developed a blind spot regarding Ukraine. Private armies are in Ukraine supplied by the US. Jack Straw and Tony Blair paved the way for Tim Spicer and company to take control and protect the oilfields and minerals because it would look bad if our armed forces did this.
I am not at all sure the pregnant woman photograph was faked. People who know how to kill apparently know of a pressure point that immobilises the body to prevent struggle. Anyway this is Global Research which includes, allegedly, the woman screaming but the video link is not there (CIA?).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-neo-nazi-thugs-supported-by-kiev-regime-killed-odessa-inhabitants-photographic-evidence/5380504
Here is the video and you can definitely hear a woman screaming frantically until the great roar of approval goes up from the evil thugs below when a flag is raised through the window allegedly next door to where the woman was killed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvnLsshOJ18#t=33
Why would anybody stage a lie in the same roll of film from which enough disturbing images are already in evidence that presumably are not disputed. These fascists in power now need to be opposed. I would have thought Craig, like Pilger, would have been one of the first to oppose them.
This article suggests that Putin is backing down because Russia too is an oligarchy beholden to its billionaires who get very nervous when populists start taking matters into their own hands. According to the author the Ukrainians clamoring for autonomy are more of a complication than evidence of Russian plans going smoothly.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/16/putin-blinks-in-ukraine-standoff-with-the-us/
Craig, you say: ”Nothing I said remotely indicates the Odessa massacre never happened. Pro-Russian thugs have, by brute force, taken over central administrative districts of several Eastern Ukrainian cities, where ethnic Russians are still a minority but particularly concentrated in the urban provincial centres. Ukrainians have been beaten up, murdered and intimidated on a massive scale. The Russian tactics rely entirely on brute force – the prevalence of Kalashnikovs and baseball bats is ubiquitous.
”In Odessa these tactics of forcefully taking over the administrative centre backfired because it was a city with a large enough concentration of Ukrainians to fight back.”
If these Pro-Russian thugs at the trade union building in Odessa had guns, why didn’t they use them?
Earlier in the day the pro-Kiev march was attacked, shots were fired and some were killed but who did the shooting?
Where were these Pro-Russian thugs in Odessa?
So, what’s in the DIA’s ‘staggering’ accessment of Edward Snowden’s leaking – a 39-page report of which less than one page is made available.
What he disclosed is still the biggest intelligence coup of all time. Even bigger than those of Peter Wright.
Must have talked even about all the murders, starting with those of Williams and Wheeler.
CIA – Gently Connecting the Dots…
According to Jim Rickards in his book ‘Death of Money” the CIA at Langley were monitoring insider transactions on 11th September 2001.
Wall Street expert Max Keiser witnessed traders indicating ‘Buzzy’ Krongard was the source of this prior knowledge.
Krongard was appointed outside US director and coordinator to the Global Board of Directors of Anglo-American multinational law firm, Dibb Lupton Alsop (DLA) Piper, the worlds largest law firm by revenue.
DLA Piper, came from Charles Lupton, former Lord Mayor of Leeds.
DLA Piper has a family link to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge’s Yorkshire ancestors.
In February 2001 in an undisclosed visit George W Bush had an audience with HM Queen Elizabeth II to gain authority for war.
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/latest-news/top-stories/the-leeds-connection-1-2070041
John Goss
Nobody even vaguely in their right mind could consider anything in that video as evidence of anything happening to a pregnant woman. The cheer is very very obviously for a Ukrainian flag being flown out the window – it coincided with the flag’s appearance and the people visibly cheering are all pointing to the flag.
There is indeed a woman screaming evident in the background. There is a building on fire and people are dying inside it – that is not in dispute. Though my own interpretation is that it is more likely those are the cries of someone outside desperately screaming with anxiety for those inside. But we can’t know. No evidence whatsoever of anybody attacking anybody in that particular video.
I will say again. Nobody even close to being in their right mind could claim that video as evidence of a woman being killed. Your link to other evidence which isn’t there, with the tame claim the CIA have spirited it away, is not worth discussing.