anti-war

The disconnect between the Western and Russian narratives in the current conflict could prove fatal to the world, writes Scott Ritter.

It seems that many of the leading ‘social change’ agents are enthusiastically piling on the bandwagon to reinforce, not change, one of the most significant problems now threatening society at both the global and local scale.

In solidarity with the people of Ukraine and Russia, a call has gone out to the international peace movement to hold rallies and actions during the week of March 1 – 7, 2022.  The Independent and Peaceful Australian Network proposes national rallies are held across Australia on Wednesday 2nd March in solidarity with international peace actions and with the people of Ukraine and Russia in their demands for peace. Please let them know if you are organising any actions earlier or interested in organising a rally/protest action in your state on Wednesday 2 March. 

On this episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi speaks to Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger about the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Pilger demonstrates a really solid grip on history here, rendering almost irrelevant most other discussions of recent events in Afghanistan. He describes the US military as a killing machine and discusses why the Afghanistan war must be viewed through the lens of Western imperialism, the scale of civilian casualties, and destruction of Afghanistan by NATO countries, how the US created today’s situation by supporting Afghan jihadist forces against the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, the social progress and progressive reform lost to history with the fall of the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, and much more! Pilger also discusses the anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile and the trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

- Monumental foreign policy decisions cannot be made without any public engagement behind closed doors.
- A nuclear-powered submarine fleet will represent a fundamental threat to global peace.
- Aukus cements Australia as a subordinate of the U.S. (Independent Peaceful Australia Network - IPAN)

"The shocking announcement of a trilateral security partnership between the U.S., U.K. and Australia (Aukus), which will be tied to Australia receiving nuclear submarines, is a blow to Australia’s independence and peace in the region.

The security partnership, Aukus, was announced without any public scrutiny or engagement.
While China was not mentioned in the announcement it is clear that this partnership is designed to confront and contain China, in a belligerent and dangerous manner." (IPAN)

Comments from China

A Global Times article by Yang Sheng, entitled “Nuke sub deal could make Australia ‘potential nuclear war target,’ reports Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a press briefing that "China will pay close attention to the development of the AUKUS deal. Relevant countries should abandon their Cold War and zero-sum game mentality; otherwise, they will lift a rock that drops on their own feet." (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234460.shtml)

Zhao also said that the 'AUKUS' alliance “seriously damages regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race, and undermines the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” And that, “Countries should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties. In particular, they should shake off their Cold-War mentality and ideological prejudice.”

Subordination to Washington

IPAN stated, "Australia’s receiving of a nuclear submarine fleet as part of Aukus will only cement Canberra’s subordination to Washington.

There are also serious practical considerations to having nuclear submarines that received no public consideration.

Australia will be the only country that has nuclear submarines without nuclear weapons and domestic nuclear industry. While Prime Minister Morrison has said the submarines will not necessitate the development of said industries - despite the Government's close relationship to the pro-nuclear lobby - this only highlights our further dependence on, and integration into, the U.S.

Furthermore, this deal will likely see an end to the $90 billion contracts with the French company Naval Group, which marks one of the most egregious wastes of public funds.

During an economic downturn and a pandemic spending on public healthcare, education and public services should be the priority, sinking billions into submarines that will only put Australia in danger is irresponsible."

IPAN spokesperson, Dr Vince Scappatura, said:

"Embracing Aukus means undermining Australia's sovereign defence capabilities and contributing to further militarisation of the region. Australia should be working to reduce tensions and promote peaceful relations. Never has such a monumental decision been made with such little consultation and public engagement."

"We have only just withdrawn from Afghanistan, a generation-long invasion that is still causing untold devastation. Without taking a breath we have gone from following the U.S. into one catastrophe to committing ourselves to another."

The deaths of about 3000 United States citizens and residents, however individually tragic, pale into insignificance against the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of deaths, resulting from continuous wars the United States has launched, using 9-11 as a pretext. The 2021 western-media commemoration hype, solely deploring the 2001 New York events, seems obscenely disproportionate, when considering the far greater human costs in ongoing economic, ecological, and political destruction, and looting of resources, in Central Asia and the Middle East, set in motion by a purported hunt for Osama-bin-Laden.

This ‘manhunt’ has resulted in a shocking cascade of Western invasions and sieges built on shocking lies, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran – with further targets in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

The United States and the world have so far received nothing officially but incoherent responses to their demand to know what actually happened, and who was responsible. The overall silence on the massive profits, and who profited, from the subsequent wars is breathtaking.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, which dates back to 2004, has probably not been bettered. It is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. (Link to free online version by clicking picture). It stands out for its immediacy, in time and content, and its documented account of the Bush family and Bush regime’s links to oil investments, Saudi Arabia, and the installation of investment friends in the new government of Afghanistan, and the concept of both a domestic and a foreign war on terror.

Documentation

Michael Moore has made a full text documentation and detail of the claims in the film at https://web.archive.org/web/20040715020956/http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/.

In the absence of the release of relevant documents, little new has emerged to explain the who and why of the crime, since Michael Moore’s film. President Trump promised to release classified 9-11 documents, unredacted, about the role of Saudi-Arabia, but in the end only highly redacted ones were made public.
President Biden has made similar promises, but we have yet to see the results.

Cause of collapse of the towers

Various groups have, however, made many allegations about the material facts of the crime. Notably there has been serious questioning of the role of the aeroplanes and their relationship to the crumbling of the first two towers, soon after the planes impacted, and then a third adjacent building, which suffered no contact with planes at all. Most people assumed that the first two towers collapsed due to impact of the planes, not thinking through the unlikelihood of this. Huge towers like the World Trade ones are expected to easily withstand the impact of a plane, although it would obviously do some damage. Additionally, most people did not know of, or did not attempt to explain to themselves, the collapse of an adjacent third tower (WT7), which no plane had flown into. Within these considerations, the impact of the aeroplanes would be irrelevant to any of these collapses. One would therefore assume that these apparent suicide flights were designed by someone to create a visual impression that many would take to be a cause, but that the actual destruction of the towers was accomplished in some other way, which could not have been accidental.

"A classic case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relates to international law." Most Australians seem to get their opinions on world events from some well-known ABC, Murdoch and Fairfax commentators, and some newer ones sourced from corporate 'think tanks' like the Lowy Institute, and some questionably alternative sources like the Green Left Weekly, who all basically run the same line. If that is how you get your news, then you won't have any idea of what happened to Libya in 2011. To have any understanding of events in the Middle East, it is necessary to read much more widely. I came across this book recently and snapped it up because it was by an international US law professor who personally represented Mohamar Qadaffi in Libya's defense against the Lockerbie airplane bombing accusations and documented successive NATO attempts to draw Libya into war. Written very clearly, with a proper thesis, the book proved to be a fascinating and moving document of one man's attempt to represent his people honestly and truly and to synthesise a way forward for Muslims, men and women together, as a national participant in global affairs.

This is a book review of Destroying Libya and world order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution by Francis A. Boyle. ISBN: 978-0-9853353-7-3.

This book gives us a perspective that no newspaper can on the repetitive accusations against Eastern and Middle Eastern states of weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapon stockpiles and airplanes falling out of the sky.

It tells of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's legal fight to defend himself against US and UK allegations of being responsible for the Lockerbie Aircraft bombing in 1988. Libya filed two World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom so that they would not attack Libya again as they had done before.

After these two World Court lawsuits were filed, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. Thus Libya managed to avert war with the United States. Because of these legal suits, as Francis Boyle records, "There was no war. No one died."

Unfortunately that was not the end of NATO attempts to bring chaos to the Middle East and war to the world.

Boyle describes how, time and again, the United States would invade Libya's coastal waters and attempt to draw fire. The US seemed to make up the law as it went and NATO went along with it all. Qaddafi followed Francis Boyle's legal advice and documented Libya's peaceful responses in world legal forae. You would think, reading of these considered documents, that the US, the UK, and NATO would have desisted for fear of being tried for war crimes. But they did not. They went further to support Qadaffi's enemies who pursued Libya's leader with guns and knives and killed him along with about 60 of his supporters, in a war-crime as yet officially uninvestigated. One concludes that the leaders of the countries involved truly believe they can get away with anything. They must think they are beyond punishment.

Francis Boyle describes Colonel Qaddafi's rule as 'secular-nationalist'. He decreed that women in Libya were equal to men. He wrote a 'Green Book' that attempted to find a third way between capitalism and communism, consistant with Islam. Although most Libyans were moderate Sunni Muslims, Qaddafi's biggest opponents were Muslim fundamentalists in Libya itself.

In order to overthrow Qaddafi in 2011, the U.S. and NATO states worked hand-in-glove with Libyan and imported foreign Muslim fundamentalists including elements of Al Qaeda and Salafists. There were many assassination attempts by the West and, in 2011, when the bombing of Libya campaign began, Qaddafi went to ground, trying to stay alive. Eventually he was assassinated in the most brutal way, defending his country. In the wake of his removal, Libya has fallen into chaos. Extremism of the most brutal kind has sprung from this chaos, radiating outwards. This was not the fault of Qaddafi, but of the international forces that armed his enemies.

Francis Boyle explains how the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect evolved to be abused. In 2011 the Obama administration directly took over Libya’s oil fields under the pretext of the so-called Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

- Sheila Newman

From the publisher's website at http://www.claritypress.com/BoyleXLibya.html

AUTHOR FRANCIS A. BOYLE is a leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993.

In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Tackling America's Toughest Problems, and The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka.
He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour. Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.” Muammar Qaddafi* (“Qaddafi website publishes ‘last will’ of Libyan ex-leader”, BBC News, 23/10/2011)

Synopsis

It took three decades for the United States government—spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II , and Obama)—to terminate the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution, seize control over Libya’s oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with that from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it.

Francis Boyle provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the 2011 NA TO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change, and beyond.

He sets the record straight on the series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra, exposing the Reagan administration’s fraudulent claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism put forward over his eight years in office.

Boyle reveals the inside story behind the Lockerbie bombing cases against the United States and the United Kingdom that he filed at the World Court for Colonel Qaddafi acting upon his advice—and the unjust resolution of those disputes.

Deploying standard criteria of international law, Boyle analyzes and debunks the UN R2P “responsibility to protect” doctrine and its immediate predecessor,“humanitarian intervention”. He addresses how R2P served as the basis for the NATO assault on Libya in 2011, overriding the UN Charter commitment to state sovereignty and prevention of aggression. The purported NATO protection in actuality led to 50,000 Libyan casualties, and the complete breakdown of law and order. And this is just the beginning. Boyle lays out the ramifications: the destabilization of the Maghreb and Sahel, and the French intervention in Mali—with the USA/NATO/Europe starting a new imperial scramble for the natural resources of Africa.

This book is not only a classic case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relates to international law, but a damning indictment of the newly-contrived R2P doctrine as legal cover for Western intervention into thiird world countries.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction

Chapter 1.
Using International Law to Analyze American
Foreign Policy Decision-Making.

Chapter 2.
The Confrontation Between the Reagan
Administration and Libya
over the Gulf of Sidra and Terrorism

Chapter 3.
The Reagan Administration’s Criminal Bombings of
Tripoli and Benghazi

Chapter 4.
Resolving the Lockerbie Dispute by Means of
International Law.

Chapter 5.
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) versus International
Law.

Chapter 6.
The 2011 U.S./NATO War Against Libya.

Conclusion