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A note on the ‘disappointed Palestinians’ letter to Cynthia McKinney

22 June 2011 30,872 views 34 Comments

By the Editor. (Last updated 24 June 2011)

Yesterday yansoon.net published an ‘Open Letter to Gaddafi Supporter Cynthia McKinney from Disappointed Palestinians’.  This group of completely anonymous ‘disappointed Palestinians’ slams McKinney for appearing on Libyan State TV and ‘praising Gaddafi’, as they put it.  What exactly gives these unknowns the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people is beyond me. Before I tackle this disingenuous letter, some background on Yansoon.

Yansoon claims to be a blog dedicated to providing news, opinion and analysis on Arab issues, primarily from young, progressive Arab perspectives.   There is no information about the people behind Yansoon however – the blog contains nothing on their founders and funders.

The blogroll featured on the front page provides a clue to Yansoon’s general ideological leanings.  Listed here are pro-war Al Jazeera (along with a banner reading “Demand Al Jazeera in the USA”), Enough/Khalas! (enoughgaddafi.com), and Feb17.info.

Enough/Khalas! is a US-based group that was initiated by Libyan-Americans living in the United States.  What really exposes this group as an organ of the US is the fact that enoughgaddafi.com’s webmaster is listed on the US State Department’s Movements.org as the ‘Twitter feed to follow’.

A March 22 article posted by Yansoon completely lays bare its support for the NATO war on Libya.  In a piece titled Why I Support Foreign Intervention in Libya, Sarah El Neweihi repeats a number of the lies and myths that were spread by the likes of Al Jazeera, Enough/Khalas!, and the Feb17 movement.

When a brutal dictator makes repetitive threats to his people on the radio that his well- equipped forces will hunt those who oppose him “dar, dar” (house by house) and “zenga, zenga” (street by street), and actually starts to follow through on these threats, he leaves no choice to the international community but to try to stop him from massacring his own people.

The full context of Gaddafi’s words tell a very different story:

He said, “We will have no mercy on them” — but by “them,” he plainly was referring to armed rebels (“traitors”) who stand and fight, not all the city’s inhabitants.

“We have left the way open to them,” he said. “Escape. Let those who escape go forever.” He pledged that “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.”

Like Al Jazeera, Yansoon is not capable of providing a shred of evidence for either actual massacres of civilians, or a credible threat of impending massacres.  Instead, all they can do is offer the same old tired ‘house by house’ quote that the pro-war corporate media has parroted relentlessly.

Yansoon continues:

Also, the only reason the protesters took up arms in the first place was because they were being brutally attacked during their peaceful demonstrations.

Even an article that the editor boasts of as being ‘anti-war’, and which she heralds as demonstrating how balanced Yansoon is, repeats more of these known lies. Its writer, Simon Assaf, heaps gushing praise on the TNC, attempting to paint the civil war as a ‘revolution’, a popular movement. Any honest commentator knows that this is a civil war being backed on one side with NATO being the ‘air arm’ of the rebels (not to mention the NATO ground troops in Libya since February). It gets better still, with Assaf repeating the sensationalist ‘massacre’ stories (of course without feeling the need to prove anything):

“His attacks on civilians, the aerial bombardment of demonstrations, the mass round-up and executions”

Anybody who has put an iota of effort into doing some independent research knows that the Pentagon has admitted to having no confirmation of Gaddafi firing on civilians.  On top of this, the Russian military stated that the alleged ‘airstrikes on protesters’ reported by the BBC and Al Jazeera simply did not take place.  More on that here.

Another article published by Yansoon on March 21, titled Libya and the State of Humanity, makes bold claims of Gaddafi having killed ‘somewhere around 8,000 civilians’, but makes no attempt to prove anything, or provide a single source.

In her ‘Libya 101 for Uninformed Americans‘, Shirien D. (the editor of Yansoon) writes a passage that would make Obama beam with pride, and Orwell turn in his grave:

The US didn’t exactly declare war on Libya. The military intervention taking place is a multi-lateral intervention. The intervention is enforcement of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which supports a no-fly zone and air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya. NATO is one of the foreign bodies enforcing the no-fly zone, and the US is heading the NATO intervention. Also, there are no ground troops in Libya. It’s not a war in the same sense as the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You really have to read these articles in their entirety to grasp the level of dishonesty and downright barefaced hypocrisy.  Many other lies and popular talking points are repeated such as the ridiculous notion that the US-NATO-backed rebels are a popular representation of the Libyan people, and that “there are no troops on the ground”.  Troops have been on the ground since February, and worrying signs are emerging that a full-scale invasion is on the cards.

The “disappointed Palestinians'” open letter is quite slickly written, and quite honestly it reads as if it could have been penned by a member of the US State Department.  The letter regurgitates the same lie that the rebels are a popular movement, it derides the Nation of Islam, repeats the propaganda about Gaddafi attacking civilians, and disingenuously paints the NATO-backed civil war as a ‘revolution’, but my favourite part is:

…you might support Gaddafi for ideological reasons, like Chavez or Castro.

It most certainly is curious that these anonymous ‘Palestinians’ choose to single out these two figures who have been more supportive of Palestine than most other leaders in the world.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the Palestinian cause has been trotted out in order for the Libya war effort to garner the support of Palestine’s (good-hearted) supporters in the West and the Arab world. In early March the Hebrew-language news site Inyan Merkazi reported that an Israeli company was supplying mercenaries to Gaddafi.  The company concerned, Global CST subsequently denied this and no evidence has surfaced to prove the ‘Israeli mercenaries’ claim. I’d argue that this claim was fabricated for a reason; the war propagandists behind it know that association with Israel is the kiss of death for any Arab leader.

Yansoon is unashamedly pro-war, and this anonymous letter from unknown ‘disappointed Palestinians’ raises a lot of questions. It’s doing a damn good job of marginalising McKinney. As an ex-US Congresswoman and Presidential candidate she is the only high profile person giving the Libyans a voice, a voice that the Americans & NATO do not want to be heard. It’s also doing a damn good job of aligning the anti-war pro-Palestine demographic in the West (and Arab world) behind NATO’s war on Libya.

Considering the above and the fact that this letter reads like it was written by Hillary Clinton, one should be very cautious. I suspect there’s a very good reason for these ‘disappointed Palestinians’ to be anonymous.

Update 1: 24 June 2011

Today Yansoon posted an ‘Open Letter to Our Haters from the Founders of Yansoon‘. Their hyperventilating diatribe accuses me of ‘probably’ being ‘privileged’ and ‘white’ (wrong and wrong). On top of this, they don’t address any of the central issues here, and my response to them (just in case they refuse to publish it – it’s still ‘awaiting moderation’) was as follows:

You have not addressed any of the substance of my article. Instead you’ve focused your letter on my observation that there is no info on Yansoon’s founders/funders on the blog (albeit a legitimate question considering your pro-war pseudo-progressive stance).

“Those seem to be the only two questions we would be able to adequately answer,” you got that right.

How about you address the real issues here? The fact that the articles Yansoon posts consistently repeat the same verified lies that have been used to justify the war on Libya. Your ‘pro’ and your ‘anti’ articles (as you put it) both repeat the same myths. If you wish me to elaborate on this, read my article again.

Because judging by this irrelevant response, you didn’t read my article properly the first time. Or perhaps, as I suspect, you simply can’t defend the lies you’ve been printing.

Update 2: 24 June 2011

Exactly as I had suspected, a matter of minutes after I posted my reply Yansoon refused to publish it, and disabled comments on the post. They added the following to the end of their letter. Notice their use of the very same “real issues” language that I used in my response:

P.S. Comments for this specific blog post will be disabled. We will no longer waste our time in petty debates that distract us from the real issues at hand and won’t result in anything positive. Also, this isn’t a matter of opinion. We said what we have to say. Keep it moving.

34 Comments »

  • shishibean said:

    Yansoon posted two views on the NATO intervention that you didn’t mention

    Anti:
    http://yansoon.net/2011/03/24/how-western-powers-blackmailed-the-libyan-revolution/

    Pro:
    http://yansoon.net/2011/03/22/why-i-support-foreign-intervention-in-libya/

    Maybe you should write a counter-article and submit it. If it’s well-written, clear and rational, maybe the editor will post it.

  • Brian Souter said:

    they are both anti…well written clear and rational? thats what the above article is

  • nit2am said:

    Thanks. I have already included your ‘Pro’ article, and I will update the article to include your ‘Anti’ piece (if that’s what you wish to call it). Sadly it only bolsters my case; it repeats the same known lies as all of the other pieces on Yansoon:

    “His attacks on civilians, the aerial bombardment of demonstrations, the mass round-up and executions”

    These events have not been verified by anybody, least of all by Yansoon. And to make matters worse, here’s the Department of Defense admitting that they had no confirmation at all:

    http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4777

    …and the Russian military stating that the ‘aerial bombardment of civilians’ simply did not happen:

    http://rt.com/news/airstrikes-libya-russian-military/

    The article heaps gushing praise on the unelected, Western-backed TNC as if they are in any way a representative of the Libyan people. It mentions a few claims the TNC made in the ‘the first days of the uprising’, but neglects to mention the establishment of a new Central bank and oil company:

    http://empirestrikesblack.com/2011/06/libya-war-is-about-theft-of-state-assets-total-restructuring-of-nation/

    Hell, the TNC has already shipped its first batch oil to the United States.

    Put that on Yansoon.

  • Ramsey said:

    I’m personally torn by the Libya issue. I hate that NATO is blowing stuff up, but I also hate Ghaddafi because of how corrupt and tyrannical he is against his own people. I don’t care if a million people marched for him or not, he’s still killing tons of people mercilessly. But it’s a little harsh and somewhat comical to accuse yansoon of being state department material. If yansoon was the state department, the Israel lobby can start pissing themselves anytime now. I’m actually pretty envious that people can take a stance on it.

    I love Cynthia McKinney, but I don’t like her stance on the issue. How can you support a tyrant who has massacred his own people and continues to do so? I get the feeling that anyone who wants to spite the US government says they support Ghaddafi in order to do so. That bothers me. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

  • Brian Souter said:

    sure you are ramsey…your absolutely outraged by NATOs actions…BUT the insurgents are not!

  • brian said:

    thanks for that Martin..that dodgy yansoon site seems to want the racist insurgents to win!

  • Vermondo said:

    I feel that you missed a lot of what was uploaded in these months about the way your precious brother Gaddafi acts towards his people (he never speaks of human beings, only of “rats”) and towards his mercenaries.

    For instance:

    civil victims in Misurata (from casual shelling of residential areas, no miliary objective aimed at):
    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/06/22/libya.misrata.aftermath/index.html

    cluster bombs used in residential areas:
    http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/following-up-part-i-battlefield-refuse-social-media-and-qaddafis-cluster-bombs/

    http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/following-up-part-ii-down-the-rabbit-hole-arms-exports-and-qaddafis-cluster-bombs/

    A tank smashing a civilian car and not stopping
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg9gmjKSwls&feature=player_embedded

    people kidnapped and disappeared:
    http://www.itele.fr/video/libye-misrata-cherche-ses-disparus

    Documents about mercenaries
    http://www.tap.info.tn/fr/fr/culture/4606-un-documentaire-accablant-contre-les-mercenaires-a-la-solde-de-kadhafi.html

    Mercenaries with booty stolen from civil houses
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlcHhrikpXE&feature=share

    and so on and so on…
    If you haven’t yet seen any of these, either you are blind or you are an accomplice.

  • Brian Souter said:

    if vermondo must quote CNN, :
    lets see the milllion or so people who gathered in Tripoli top support Gadafi and the libyan govt
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ul23Y39uE&feature=player_embedded

  • Vermondo said:

    “million or so”… Well, I feel that it is more “so” than a “million”. I know how a crowd of much less than that, say 50,000 people is. You cannot find a square foot free, you cannot see anything beyond the crowd. This well organised self-celebration has no more than some thousands, maybe 2 o 3 . And it seems that most of them are paid…

  • Brian Souter said:

    you know? well thats not convincing. Not well organised…does that look like organisation? Your ‘seems that most of them are paid…’ no wonder you faded away..as these people show spontenarity..not what you get even from paid actors

  • Vermondo said:

    A fact is that these people are far, far less than the million you and your “dear leader” boast. Concerning the payment of many of them, I have personal sources who say so, but you would consider them as biased, so I wrote “it seems”. Anyway, I have no doubt that some of them are really Gaddafi supporters: his TV is his most efficient weapon, and as an Italian I know what a well aimed TV campaign can do: in spite of all his “bunga-bunga’s”, still a lot of TV watchers believe that Berlusconi is a righteous political leader.

  • Brian Souter said:

    your personal sources are as fake as you and those ‘palestinians are! I have sources that say they are not paid../.and as you cant provide the evidence…so you are lying

  • Vermondo said:

    I positively know that I’m not fake. My sources about the payment are mostly (but not only) anti Gaddafi twitters, so let’s say “wa Allahu Aalam” (ask Cynthia what this means since she knows everything about Libya). But let’s come back to the point: the unanimous support Gaddafi has by all Libyans. If it was not NATO who burned the People’s Hall in Tripoli around Feb 22, who did it? His supporters?
    http://twitpic.com/5gpx35

  • Brian Souter said:

    but you cant prove your sources arent fakes…like the Free Generation Movement http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-libya-tripoli-networks-idUSTRE75N3RY20110624

  • brian said:

    shishibean..your ‘anti’ is pro

    ‘The Western military assault on Muammar Gaddafi has been welcomed by millions of people horrified by the cruelty he is unleashing on the Libyan people. This war is being sold as a “humanitarian intervention” with strict guarantees that there will be no ground invasion.’

    what millions of people? where? certainly NOT where it matters: in Libya… the anti piece is full of so many lies that it almost reads like the NYT or Fox!

    Alan Kuperman dealt with the above lie: that Gadaffi has unleashed hell on the libyan people:

    ‘EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

    But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

    Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.
    etc
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27889.htm

    the rest of the Yansoon article is on the same dismal level of factuality!

  • brian said:

    as for ramsey:
    ‘I’m personally torn by the Libya issue. I hate that NATO is blowing stuff up, but I also hate Ghaddafi because of how corrupt and tyrannical he is against his own people. I don’t care if a million people marched for him or not, he’s still killing tons of people mercilessly’

    Thisis laughable…Its not even a good lie…who the devil is ‘Ramsey’? no, youre not torn in two…you dont hate NATO but you do hate Gadaffi.You hate him and heres the reason why:

    ‘On February 16, 2009, Gaddafi took a step further and called on Libyans to back his proposal to dismantle the government and to distribute the oil wealth directly to the 5 million inhabitants of the country.
    However, his plan to deliver oil revenues directly to the Libyan people met opposition by senior officials who could lose their jobs due to a parallel plan by Gaddafi to rid the state of corruption.
    Some officials, including Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi, Ali Al-Mahmoudi and Farhat Omar Bin Guida, of the Central Bank, told Gaddafi that the measure could harm the country’s economy in the long term due to “capital flight.”
    “Do not be afraid to directly redistribute the oil money and create fairer governance structures that respond to people’s interests,” Gaddafi said in a Popular Committee.
    The Popular Committees are the backbone of Libya. Through them citizens are represented at the district level.
    “The Administration has failed and the state’s economy has failed. Enough is enough. The solution is for the Libyan people to directly receive oil revenues and decide what to do with them,” Gaddafi said in a speech broadcast on state television. To this end, the Libyan leader urged a radical reform of government bureaucracy.
    Despite this, senior Libyan government officials voted to delay Gaddafi’s plans. Only 64 ministers from a total of 468 Popular Committee members voted for the measure. There were 251 who saw the measures as positive, but chose to delay their implementation.
    Given the rejection of the Committee, Gaddafi affirmed before a public meeting: “My dream during all these years was to give the power and wealth directly to the people.”
    http://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/reason-for-war-gaddafi-wanted-to-nationalise-oil/

    As you can see Gadafi works for the people you say hes killing. And yes those millions in support do show that your fool….or worse.

  • Simon Assaf said:

    I oppose the western military intervention in Libya because I support the independence of the revolution. Despite all my disagreements with those who welcomed the West – and they are many – the blame for this war is with Gaddafi and his regime.

    Those who deny, or attempt to whitewash, the scale and brutality of this regime, and the ferocious and savage attack on civilians and peaceful demonstrations, simply reinforce that feeling among many Libyans that they have no choice but subjugate their revolution to the needs of western powers.

    The articles in Yansoon are part of a debate about the future directions of the Arab revolutions – anti- and pro- western intervention. This is a real debate among people who have grasped the difficulties faced by the revolutions, and its dangers. There is certainly no place for those who seek to justify, deny or excuse, the actions of a despotic mass murderer.

    I hope to continue the arguments with those who support intervention, as a debate between people who think the revolution is worth fighting for. To justify or excuse Gaddafi’s actions, or paint him as some kind of anti-imperialist hero, is in my opinion, beyond comprehension.

  • Ramsey said:

    Well “brian,” you seem to be a huge Ghaddafi fan because he wanted to distribute oil revenue. Congrats on that. Just because you get a boner every time you see Ghaddafi holding an umbrella doesn’t mean you can pretend to know what I think.

    You can’t judge Ghaddafi by that one feat. He’s had a long history of torture and killing people he considers real opposition. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you since you seem to be a fan of dicatorship. The whole point of the Arab Spring is for democracy to finally fruit in the Arab World. Arabs are tired of dictators who do nothing more than collect their dues and invest lavishly in Europe and around the world.

    Just because you hate the US government doesn’t mean that you should hate the concept behind the revolution. If Ghaddafi was such a great guy throwing money at people 5 million people in a country of 6 million, then why don’t the people rise up and crush the revolt? According to your stats, the rebel armies would only be made up a couple dozen loonies right?

    Like I said before, I don’t like that NATO is “helping” the rebels, but that’s not my call. It’s theirs. And yes, they are selling to the imperialists. Just like Egypt and Tunisia’s new governments are doing and all the other revolutionaries are planning on doing and whose dictators have been doing for decades. Revolutions are unfortunately just as much a business as it is a change in government. Maybe you’ll realize that one day.

  • Brian Souter said:

    its Brian, ‘Ramsey’…NOT ‘Brian’…its my real name…The insurgents are full of hate:
    1. they hate black africans and have slaughered them, while propping their corpses up for the western media as ‘african’ mercenaries.
    2. They hate freedom: as they are endorsing a king and sharia law.
    3. They hate a free press, as they dont like the truth coming out in sites like this one.
    4. They hate the libyan people as they have endorsed NATOS illegal invasion to terrorise them/
    5. They hate the Jamahirya, and the multitude of benefits it has broughjt the Libyan people….under the insurgents, Libya will either be a medievel islamic cailphate complete with chopped hands and women under veils, or a privatised poverty stricken satrapy of the EU/US colonials, with a few fate greasy billionaires with real palaces, tossing out crumbs to the scrambling multitudes…
    6. They hate themselves as they have to call in the infidels to cow the libyan people…no wonder the people of Libya despise these traitors.

  • brian said:

    ‘Those who deny, or attempt to whitewash, the scale and brutality of this regime,’

    What brutality? 90% of libyans support Gadaffi and the govt…you dont get that with ‘brutal regimes’.Nor can you back up your lie Simple Simon.
    You may think if you keep lying, people will believe you.
    LOLOLOL
    what a card…ive no idea what you hope to achieve by your support of NATO and the racist jihadis of Benghazi!

    ‘ simply reinforce that feeling among many Libyans that they have no choice but subjugate their revolution to the needs of western powers.’

    who are these ‘many libyans’? you mean these guys?
    http://tarpley.net/2011/03/24/the-cia%E2%80%99s-libya-rebels-the-same-terrorists-who-killed-us-nato-troops-in-iraq/

    racists who massacred black libyans and black african workers
    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/race-and-arab-nationalism-libya

    lets take a look at another branch of theb ‘revolutionaries’:
    http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-is-oppostion-in-libya-part-i.html

    jihadis, racists, and free marketeers..these are the’revolutionaries Simon is supporting. No wonder hes shy about telling us who they are.

    Simon hopes by manufacturing revolutionaries , he can confuse readers…To me Simon is hoping that if he lies and lies he will be believed

  • brian said:

    then theres ramsey, who hopes by billygoat his way into the readers consciousness.

    ‘Congrats on that. Just because you get a boner every time you see Ghaddafi holding an umbrella doesn’t mean you can pretend to know what I think.’

    i know youre a liar and a fraud…

    ‘You can’t judge Ghaddafi by that one feat. He’s had a long history of torture and killing people he considers real opposition’
    he has no history of torturing people..you may be confusing him with Bush…

    if you mean the NFSL, you mean the guys who were trained by the CIA to assasinate Gadaffi…Libyas govt has every right to execute assassins.

    and meet the ‘rebels’:
    http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/forte200411.html

    ‘If Ghaddafi was such a great guy throwing money at people 5 million people in a country of 6 million, then why don’t the people rise up and crush the revolt? ‘

    they have..but then NATO was called in by the insurgents…

    and yes you do like NATO helping the insurgents because they have very little support among the people of Libya.

    Let me repeat: the insurgents of Benghazi are racists who massacred black african workers and black libyans, they tweeted these as ‘african’ mercenaries(such is the ‘rebels’ hatred of black africans and africa), they demand NATO enter…it does and starts massacring libyans…this angers the libyan people, who as you put it rise up against the ‘rats’…NOW all thats left are stragglers and NATO.

    Naturally the truth is too much for you to handle…you cant wait for Libya to be a fiefdom of EU/US and a playground for freemarketeers.

  • brian said:

    meet the guys Simon and Ramsey cheer:

    ‘The testimony of black African victims is most disturbing. “We were being attacked by local people who said that we were mercenaries killing people. Let me say that they did not want to see black people,” 60-year-old Julius Kiluu, an African building supervisor, told Reuters. Even in Tripoli, where the regime is not in full control of neighborhoods, Somalis told journalists they were “being hunted on suspicion of being mercenaries” and “feel trapped and frightened to go out.” Ethiopians told of being “dragged from their apartments, beaten up and showed to the world as mercenaries.” Ethiopian News and Opinions reported that “Muammar Gadhafi haters are taking revenge on black Africans for money Gadhafi threw for many African dictators. The mob attacked and killed many Africans including Ethiopians for being only black.”
    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/race-and-arab-nationalism-libya

    no wonder these guys are hated by the black libyans! NATO is giving airsupport to racists

  • brian said:

    meet the ‘rebels’:

    http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-is-oppostion-in-libya-part-i.html

    http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-is-opposition-in-libya-part-ii.html

    These guys would sell their mothers! as it is they are loathed by 90%+ of libyans…thats why they need NATO…how else are they to gain power? they can never be elected…their plan is to terrorise the people and hope that they will bow to their rule.

  • brian said:

    ‘The Libyans entirely support Muammar Gaddafi – well-known Italian documentary film maker Fluvio Grimaldi has debunked the main myth about the situation in Jamahiriya.

    “The Ambassador to Rome turned out to be one of the few high-ranking Libyans who happily sided with the strong partner. “If you want a visa to Benghazi you will get it in no time. If you want to go to Tripoli there will be no visa for you’, the Embassy declared. I joined a group of British peace-makers who also wanted to know the truth about what’s going on in that country,” Grimaldi writes.

    The expedition flew to Tunisia from where it proceeded to Libya by land. The itinerary was prompted by the western press – the group visited places where the situation was especially difficult, according to the media.

    In Tripoli the foreign visitors were controlled by young functionaries of the current regime appointed to stay with the group. However, Grimaldi and his fellow-travellers were allowed to stop in any place and talk to anyone on any subject. This was a freedom unavailable to journalists accredited in Benghazi.

    National unity and firm resolution to defend their country was what impressed the group most of all. School lessons have not stopped for a second, and now schools also provide additional training how to use weapons. This training is both for boys and girls. The so-called human shields, which are in essence cannon fodder, turned out to be voluntary units. Cities on the Mediterranean coast, ravaged and cut off by Gaddafi’s troops, according to the western media, in reality are very picturesque places with a good water supply system and strong agriculture. In any allegedly oppressed city, people told the Italian journalist that they heard about Muammar Gaddafi’s tyranny from their relatives and friends abroad, and a real disaster came only when NATO bombings began with the aim of protecting the people. Each interview, Fluvio Grimaldi says, gradually destroyed the western story of the horrible aggression of the Libyan leader.
    etc

    http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/22/52254887.html

  • brian said:

    ‘I hope to continue the arguments with those who support intervention, as a debate between people who think the revolution is worth fighting for. ‘

    there is no revolution…their is an armdef insurgency with its toxic mix of jihadis, racists, free marketeers, and human/organ traffickers..these are not the sort of people the Libyan majority want to govern their country

  • brian said:

    ‘From the very beginning the US-backed Libyan unrest played out in oafish measures, crutched along by the most irresponsible, intellectually dishonest “journalism” to date. A week before the unrest began, it was the the London based National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO) that called for the February 17th “Day of Rage,” not Libyans in the streets of Tripoli or Benghazi.

    The NCLO itself was created in London in 2005 by Ibrahim Sahad and his National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), which in turn has been one of the leading Libyan opposition groups since the 1980’s. The Daily Globe and Mail has reported that Sahad’s NFSL had been behind several attempted armed uprisings and assassination attempts against Qaddafi in the 1980’s, while records found in the US Library of Congress indicate Sahad’s NFSL had CIA support and training.’
    http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-is-oppostion-in-libya-part-i.html

  • brian said:

    13h/ Before NATO and the U.S. started bombing Libya, the United Nations was preparing to bestow an award on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the Libyan Jamahiriya, for its achievements in the area of human rights. (document). That’s right–the same man, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, that NATO and the United States have been telling us for months is a “brutal dictator,” was set to be given an award for his human rights record in Libya. How strange it is that the United Nations was set to bestow a human rights award on a “brutal dictator,” at the end of March.
    http://libyasos.blogspot.com/p/news.html

    not bad for a ‘brutal dictator’!

  • brian said:

    so simon and ramsey are pro-nato and pro racist insurgents and oppose the will of the Libyan people, which we can see here:
    http://lizziesliberation.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/cnn-breaks-western-media-silence-of-pro-gaddafi-masses/

    all the while oozing a air of liberal rationality…but thats just a fraud,like the fraud that Gadafi has no support in Libya, that the people want him removed, that the insurgents are peaceful protestors demanding democracy.

  • Brian Souter said:

    Civilian casualties have raised serious misgivings about NATO intervention in Libya, even among supporters of the ongoing aerial campaign. And while the international community is taking sides in the conflict, it is the Libyan people who suffer most.

    Salma and her family escaped from the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi to hide in a refugee camp in the west of the country when life in their native city turned into a nightmare.

    “It’s not safe there anymore. It’s become dangerous. And that’s not only because of explosions and gunshots. One day, people from the government in Benghazi – you call them rebels, we call them terrorists – came to me and told me, ‘we have to arrest your daughter, because we know that she supports Gaddafi,” Salma told RT.

    The escape has been long and hard for the women and their family, says Moona, another refugee.

    “I had to hide for some time from them, as they’ve been searching for me. Then we knew that there was a bus coming from Benghazi to Tunisia, the bus with the rebels, for their purposes. We took that bus, with our faces covered, and everybody was against Gaddafi there. We told them that we are also against and they let us in. We kept silent till we went to Egypt and from there via Tunisia we were sent here,” she recalled.

    Salma’s brother Sabri, a surgeon, has also fled the city. He says they have made three attempts on his life, but he only left when he saw a killing.
    etc
    http://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/%E2%80%9Crebels%E2%80%9D-are-power-hungry-terrorists-say-libyan-refugees/

  • Brian Souter said:

    thousands of libya women say YES to Gadaffi and a free Libya and NO to privatising NATO and the islamic caliphate:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL5ov-738Qc&feature=player_profilepage

  • Brian Souter said:

    ‘Above all, it’s clear NATO has grossly misrepresented its arguments at the United Nations, in order to justify military action against Gadhaffi. Britain and France trusted bad intelligence from unreliable sources, trying to gain power from the conflict. A more careful investigation shows that it is the NATO Rebels who are guilty of serious war crimes—not Gadhaffi’s soldiers at all. Sanctions should be thrown out, and NATO should shift its military forces to back Gadhaffi in defending the Libyan people.

    http://lizziesliberation.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/the-ugly-truth-videos-of-atrocities-committed-by-libyan-rebel-and-nato-war-crimes/

  • Dfd said:

    oh my good, measly performance of this NGO/CIA front YANSOON.

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