Clinton

[kk67]

Who was Gaddafi? http://www.globalresearch.ca/libya-ten- ... ow/5414289

1. In Libya a home is considered a natural human right

In Gaddafi’s Green Book it states: ”The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others”. Gaddafi’s Green Book is the formal leader’s political philosophy, it was first published in 1975 and was intended reading for all Libyans even being included in the national curriculum.

2. Education and medical treatment were all free

Under Gaddafi, Libya could boast one of the best healthcare services in the Middle East and Africa. Also if a Libyan citizen could not access the desired educational course or correct medical treatment in Libya they were funded to go abroad.

3. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project

The largest irrigation system in the world also known as the great manmade river was designed to make water readily available to all Libyan’s across the entire country. It was funded by the Gaddafi government and it said that Gaddafi himself called it ”the eighth wonder of the world”.

4. It was free to start a farming business

If any Libyan wanted to start a farm they were given a house, farm land and live stock and seeds all free of charge.

5. A bursary was given to mothers with newborn babies

When a Libyan woman gave birth she was given 5000 (US dollars) for herself and the child.

6. Electricity was free

Electricity was free in Libya meaning absolutely no electric bills!

7. Cheap petrol

During Gaddafi’s reign the price of petrol in Libya was as low as 0.14 (US dollars) per litre.

8. Gaddafi raised the level of education

Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans were literate. This figure was brought up to 87% with 25% earning university degrees.

9. Libya had It’s own state bank

Libya had its own State bank, which provided loans to citizens at zero percent interest by law and they had no external debt.

10. The gold dinar

Before the fall of Tripoli and his untimely demise, Gaddafi was trying to introduce a single African currency linked to gold. Following in the foot steps of the late great pioneer Marcus Garvey who first coined the term ”United States of Africa”. Gaddafi wanted to introduce and only trade in the African gold Dinar – a move which would have thrown the world economy into chaos.

The Dinar was widely opposed by the ‘elite’ of today’s society and who could blame them. African nations would have finally had the power to bring itself out of debt and poverty and only trade in this precious commodity. They would have been able to finally say ‘no’ to external exploitation and charge whatever they felt suitable for precious resources. It has been said that the gold Dinar was the real reason for the NATO led rebellion, in a bid to oust the outspoken leader.

Of all the refugees I've seen interviewed, the ones who had travelled through Libya seemed to be the most frightened. A very tatty but fairly professional bloke who had travelled from Eritrea used words to the effect of: 'In Libya rape and murder are everywhere'.

[rowan]

& to think it was Afric's most prosperous nation under Gaddafi. But we can't tolerate successful role models, now can we? We didn't tolerate Zaire or Iran or Afghanistan or Cuba when they threatened to thrive under an ideology we did not agree with. So we assassinated, overthrew, destabilized with terrorists and crippled with sanctions to destroy them; then pointed the finger at Russia and China as a diversion tactic

[kk67]

While I was having a flick through the Huffington post to find details of the rape case I found this article .....about Martin Wolf's article in the FT.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dem ... s_politics

[Lizard]

& to think it was Afric's most prosperous nation under Gaddafi. But we can't tolerate successful role models, now can we? We didn't tolerate Zaire or Iran or Afghanistan or Cuba when they threatened to thrive under an ideology we did not agree with. So we assassinated, overthrew, destabilized with terrorists and crippled with sanctions to destroy them; then pointed the finger at Russia and China as a diversion tactic

Did you go to Gaddafi's Libya?

When I was there, I asked about the Green Book and not a single person I spoke to was anything other than derisory about it. Even my government approved guide/driver/minder said it was bullshit. This was a guy who had reasonable connections to the regime (an uncle high up in the military, I think) and was doing pretty well for himself running his tour company. He had been to Britain and his absolute dream was to work in a pizza joint in London and drink beer and be allowed to talk about whatever he wanted.

Yes, there was plenty of state cash from oil but most of that seemed to go to the Kleptocracy. The nice buildings and new cars were all government. You could tell it was a relatively well off place because of the huge numbers of illegal immigrants from Niger and Chad looking for labouring work. Of course, "relative" is a pretty important word when you are speaking of Chad and Niger. (A mate of mine did Red Cross work in Chad for a few years, mostly negotiating with bandits/warlords/respected local chiefs (pick your terminology) as to how much of each aid shipment they could steal in return for letting the rest through and not raiding the Red Cross compound again.)

The man made river project was hugely behind schedule. The official reasons included "unforeseen evaporation." Remember this is a project involving open canals in the fucking Sahara Desert. It was viewed by those I spoke with as a vanity project, make work scheme and trough for corrupt officials.

When I walked over the border into Tunisia, I went past vast queues of shitty old Peugeot pick ups. Apparently the deal was that you filled up in Libya with massively subsidised petrol, drove into Tunisia where you siphoned as much fuel out as you could without stranding yourself, sold the fuel, used the proceeds to buy consumer goods (blankets and cooking pots seemed popular), drove back to Libya pretending the goods were your personal items (I suspect money changed hands to help the border officials pretend as well) and sold them.

When basic consumer items need to be sourced through a corrupt black market, your country has problems.

Yes, this is all anecdote and not hard data, but as far as I could tell people were pretty unhappy about living under Gaddafi. I'm not saying that the current situation is justified, or an improvement, but let's not pretend Gaddafi's regime created some sort of utopia.

[rowan]

No, haven't been there. I've worked with a lot of Libyans in Turkey, however. There was a huge influx after NATO destroyed the country. Before we were overrun with Syrians, we had the Libyans! The prevalent theory seems to be Gaddafi was taken out because he had planned to introduce an African currency, with which to purchase oil and other resources, and this would have shifted the economic balance in the world. Incidentally, many have also linked the invasion of Iraq to Saddam Hussein's plans to negotiate oil sales in euros, not dollars...

[rowan]

Good piece on Clinton here:

Her views on the military and on a long history of events from the FBI Waco massacre (she advocated for aggressive FBI action to get the event out of the headlines) and the bombing of Belgrade (which she advocated privately to her husband) to the invasion of Iraq (which she supported as a Senator) and the death of Libya’s Gadhafi (there’s her infamous, “We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha, ha,” quote as Secretary of State) to the employment of paid terrorists and poison gas in Syria (an operation she oversaw as Secretary of State), could provide a good working definition of a tyrant’s temperament.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/31/ ... as-legacy/

[Sandydragon]

No, haven't been there. I've worked with a lot of Libyans in Turkey, however. There was a huge influx after NATO destroyed the country. Before we were overrun with Syrians, we had the Libyans! The prevalent theory seems to be Gaddafi was taken out because he had planned to introduce an African currency, with which to purchase oil and other resources, and this would have shifted the economic balance in the world. Incidentally, many have also linked the invasion of Iraq to Saddam Hussein's plans to negotiate oil sales in euros, not dollars...

Good grief. An african currency that would challenge US economic control. Not in a million years would even a continental wide currency manage that. I don't think Washington was losing too much sleep over that particular threat. You also need to consider that the US was a very reluctant partner in the removal of Gadaffi.

Some nice conspiracy theories fro ma region that is rife with them. But equally the truth behind Gadaffis removal might simply have been that there was a humanitarian crisis unfolding and the UK and France intervened.

[Lizard]

There's also the fact that the only African leader who thought Gaddafi's Libya should have a leading role in Africa was Gaddafi.

He had some great billboards depicting himself as the sun rising over Africa. Africa noticed, however, that it was very much second choice after the Arab world stopped paying Gaddafi any real attention.

[rowan]

Sure, there are always humanitarian crises in the world's most oil-rich nations which require NATO intervention. There are also many more crises in nations which are not rich in oil and NATO does not intervene in them. But as far as the African dinar goes, I was only repeating what my many Libyan acquaintances here had informed me of, and all of them are directly involved in the oil industry. Meanwhile, I do know that since WWII the US and NATO have been responsible for the bulk of the wars and suffering in this world with now approaching 100 foreign interventions, and that soon after 9/11 former US general Wesley Clark included Libya - along with Iraq & Syria - among a list of nations that America wanted to take out out:

[Sandydragon]

There's also the fact that the only African leader who thought Gaddafi's Libya should have a leading role in Africa was Gaddafi.

He had some great billboards depicting himself as the sun rising over Africa. Africa noticed, however, that it was very much second choice after the Arab world stopped paying Gaddafi any real attention.

Indeed.To an extent, even the west didn't see him as much of anything, other than an opportunity to sell second hand stuff (thanks Tony Blair).

[rowan]

Who in hell are England and France to invade Libya anyway? That's racist Neo-Colonializm, pure and simple, from two of history's most warmongering nations. But the truth is they were simply doing their NATO master's bidding for them (as Turkey is doing in Syria now), because the USA had already lost so much credibility after the invasion of Iraq for oil. There was no reason to invade Iraq, there was no reason to invade Libya. There was, however, a need for foreign intervention during the genocide in Rwanda - but it never came.

[kk67]

No, haven't been there. I've worked with a lot of Libyans in Turkey, however. There was a huge influx after NATO destroyed the country. Before we were overrun with Syrians, we had the Libyans! The prevalent theory seems to be Gaddafi was taken out because he had planned to introduce an African currency, with which to purchase oil and other resources, and this would have shifted the economic balance in the world. Incidentally, many have also linked the invasion of Iraq to Saddam Hussein's plans to negotiate oil sales in euros, not dollars...

Good grief. An african currency that would challenge US economic control. Not in a million years would even a continental wide currency manage that. I don't think Washington was losing too much sleep over that particular threat. You also need to consider that the US was a very reluctant partner in the removal of Gadaffi.

Some nice conspiracy theories fro ma region that is rife with them. But equally the truth behind Gadaffis removal might simply have been that there was a humanitarian crisis unfolding and the UK and France intervened.

It depends on how you define control. It potentially could have broken the oil cartels with surprising ease.

[Sandydragon]

Who in hell are England and France to invade Libya anyway? That's racist Neo-Colonializm, pure and simple, from two of history's most warmongering nations. But the truth is they were simply doing their NATO master's bidding for them (as Turkey is doing in Syria now), because the USA had already lost so much credibility after the invasion of Iraq for oil. There was no reason to invade Iraq, there was no reason to invade Libya. There was, however, a need for foreign intervention during the genocide in Rwanda - but it never came.

So intervention failed in Rwanda but you criticize the Libyan intervention? You do realize that the policy o western intervention came from Rwanda? You do recall the issues around Benghazi?

[Digby]

Our latest intervention in Libya clearly hasn't worked as hoped, but for all the mistakes involved I'd not label the actions racist, and too it seems very unlikely there was any sort of plan to colonise the region. Again it feels like Rowan starting with the narrative, and then somehow trying and failing to make that fit with reality.

[rowan]

Who in hell are England and France to invade Libya anyway? That's racist Neo-Colonializm, pure and simple, from two of history's most warmongering nations. But the truth is they were simply doing their NATO master's bidding for them (as Turkey is doing in Syria now), because the USA had already lost so much credibility after the invasion of Iraq for oil. There was no reason to invade Iraq, there was no reason to invade Libya. There was, however, a need for foreign intervention during the genocide in Rwanda - but it never came.

So intervention failed in Rwanda but you criticize the Libyan intervention? You do realize that the policy o western intervention came from Rwanda? You do recall the issues around Benghazi?

I'll allow multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger to answer that one:

The Nato attack on Libya, with the UN Security Council assigned to mandate a bogus “no fly zone” to “protect civilians”, is strikingly similar to the final destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999. There was no UN cover for the bombing of Serbia and the “rescue” of Kosovo, yet the propaganda echoes today. Like Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar Gaddafi is a “new Hitler”, plotting “genocide” against his people. There is no evidence of this, as there was no genocide in Kosovo. In Libya there is a tribal civil war; and the armed uprising against Gaddafi has long been appropriated by the Americans, French and British, their planes attacking residential Tripoli with uranium-tipped missiles and the submarine HMS Triumph firing Tomahawk missiles, a repeat of the “shock and awe” in Iraq that left thousands of civilians dead and maimed. As in Iraq, the victims, which include countless incinerated Libyan army conscripts, are media unpeople.

In the “rebel” east, the terrorising and killing of black African immigrants is not news. On 22 May, a rare piece in the Washington Post described the repression, lawlessness and death squads in the “liberated zones” just as visiting EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, declared she had found only “great aspirations” and “leadership qualities”. In demonstrating these qualities, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the “rebel leader” and Gaddafi’s justice minister until February, pledged, “Our friends… will have the best opportunity in future contracts with Libya.” The east holds most of Libya’s oil, the greatest reserves in Africa. In March the rebels, with expert foreign guidance, “transferred” to Benghazi the Libyan Central Bank, a wholly owned state institution. This is unprecedented. Meanwhile, the US and the EU “froze” almost US$100 billion in Libyan funds, “the largest sum ever blocked”, according to official statements. It is the biggest bank robbery in history.

[kk67]

There's also the fact that the only African leader who thought Gaddafi's Libya should have a leading role in Africa was Gaddafi.

He had some great billboards depicting himself as the sun rising over Africa. Africa noticed, however, that it was very much second choice after the Arab world stopped paying Gaddafi any real attention.

Indeed.To an extent, even the west didn't see him as much of anything, other than an opportunity to sell second hand stuff (thanks Tony Blair).

None of the Arab states supporting the no fly zone wanted regime change. And they were his economic competitors.

[rowan]

I really don't know how much more stupid people can be than to believe the same old rhetoric time after time after time - that 'We are going in there to save them from themselves!' The white man saving the non-white, the Christian nation saving the non-Christian, and always in parts of the world richest in resources that we covet, or else of vital strategical importance. That's been around since the colonial age and it's barely altered at all in the neo-colonial age - which is racist by definition.

Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten".

The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers.

For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency".

The "humanitarian war" against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing "genocide" against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-the- ... -the-issue

[Digby]

I'll allow multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger to answer that one:

The same PIlger as supports the alleged rapist Assange? Doesn't this feel a bit like when you note people didn't want certain actions against Libya, and those were people like Mugabe?

[kk67]

Gold backed Dinar,......gold that Libya had been stockpiling for exactly this plan.
Then comes the crash and he has to die.

This is how economics works.

[Sandydragon]

Carpet bombing of Libyan cities did not happen. That is a lie, pure and simple. In fact, British bombing raids were called back if there was an excessive risk of collateral damage.

And anyone who has seen the mass graves in areas of the former Yugoslavia will know damn well that genocide in that area was a fact.

[rowan]

I'll allow multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger to answer that one:

The same PIlger as supports the alleged rapist Assange? Doesn't this feel a bit like when you note people didn't want certain actions against Libya, and those were people like Mugabe?

This is clear evidence of the extent to which you have been brainwashed by the media and turned into an unthinking zombie. No woman has accused Assange of rape. The two women involved have repeatedly said that nothing happened and expressed their irritation at being dragged into this obvious attempt at character assassination. But you would readily embrace this blatant propaganda, and dismiss the views of one of the most respected, experienced and courageous journalists in the world, because you are obviously resentful of a man who had the courage to bring to light American war crimes.



While I periodically have written commentaries dissecting and pillorying news articles in the New York Times to expose their bias, hypocrisy half-truths and lies, I generally ignore their editorials since these are overtly opinions of the management, and one expects them to display the elitist and neo-liberal perspective of the paper’s publisher and senior editors.

That said, the August 17 editorial about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent four harrowing years trapped in the apartment-sized Ecuadoran embassy thanks to a trumped-up and thoroughly discredited political rape “investigation” by a politically driven Swedish prosecutor and a complicit right-wing British government, moves far beyond even the routine rampant bias and distortion of a Times editorial into misrepresentation and character assassination. As such it cries out for criticism.

Headlined “A Break in the Assange Saga,” the editorial starts off with the flat-out lie that “Ecuador and Sweden finally agreed last week that Swedish prosecutors could question Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he has been holed up since 2012.”

The casual reader fed only corporate media stories about this case might logically assume from that lead that such an interview has been held up by a disagreement of some kind between Ecuador and Sweden. In fact, Ecuador and Assange and his attorneys have stated their willingness to allow Swedish prosecutors to come to London and interview Assange in the safety of their embassy for several years now. The prosecutor in Sweden, Marianne Nye, who has been pursuing Assange all that time like Ahab after his whale, has not only never taken up that offer, but by her refusal to go to London in all this time, demanding instead Assange’s enforced presence in Stockholm, has allowed any possible rape charges, if any were even appropriate, to pass the statute of limitations. The paper doesn’t mention this. Nor does the editorial mention that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group on Arbitrary Detention last February found that Assange is effectively being held in arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish governments, and called for his release, and for the lifting of British government threats to arrest him and extradite him if he leaves the safety of the embassy.

The paper fails to mention the important point that there are no rape charges pending against Assange, and never were. Swedish prosecutor Nye, at one point, was trying to build a case that Assange committed a rape in 2010 by proceeding to have sex with a woman (she had invited him to stay in her house for the night and to sleep with her), after his condom had allegedly broken during consensual intercourse — a circumstance that in most countries would not qualify for a rape charge. (The woman by her own account later went out to buy breakfast for Assange, and subsequently tweeted boasts about having bedded him, but later took those down.) A second woman, who also had consensual sex with Assange the same week has said her complaint was only made in order to make Assange take an AIDS test, which he subsequently did, and she subsequently dropped her complaint. Although no formal legal charge of rape was ever filed against Assange, Sweden succeeded years ago in getting an overly enthusiastic Interpol to issue an unusual “red alert” warrant for him, which led to his arrest in Britain and to his seeking asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy. None of this important history got mentioned in the Times editorial.

The Times claims Assange’s real reason for not wanting to go to Sweden to undergo questioning is that he “presumed: that extradition there would also lead to his extradition from Sweden to the United States to face charges over the Chelsea Manning leaks” about US war crimes in Iraq.

This sentence leaves the same casual reader to assume that Assange is just being paranoid. Unmentioned is the fact that throughout Assange’s whole ordeal, the US Justice Department has possessed a sealed and active indictment charging Assange with espionage — a charge which, if ever brought to trial, could result in his being sentenced to life in prison in some US maximum-security hellhole, or worse. That is not paranoia. It is what the US does to perceived enemies of the state, who are generally prevented by the courts from offering genuine defenses, such as a First Amendment argument in Assange’s case. Also unmentioned is the fact that Sweden has never promised not do make such an extradition to the US after questioning him.

The Times, which enthusiastically published articles based upon many of the very leaks that Assange brought to light via Wikileaks, including Pvt. Manning’s devastating in-flight video of a US attack helicopter slaughtering innocents in Baghdad (as the pilot and gunner laugh), cites others who have “accused” Assange, “even those who have hailed his exposes of government secrets,” of being “reckless with personal information,” and of “using leaks to settle scores.” As an example of “those” people, the editorial cites film director Alex Gibney, who authored a Times Op-Ed piece. It doesn’t note that Gibney’s claim to fame was producing a documentary film on Wikileaks that was little more than a fact-challenged hit piece on Assange.

As evidence of Assange’s alleged lack of principles, the Times cites Wikileaks’ release of recently hacked Democratic National Committee emails disclosing the DNC’s efforts to throw the party’s nomination to Hillary Clinton, and to undermine and destroy the campaign of her rival, Bernie Sanders. The release, the Times writes archly, came “days after Mr. Assange’s denunciation of Hillary Clinton and just before she was officially named the Democratic presidential nominee.”

Now hold on there. The Times during the course of this primary season, repeatedly used its supposedly unbiased news pages to ignore, ridicule and redbait Sanders, while repeatedly declaring Clinton the likely nomination winner, even as she lost primary after primary. It joined in a corporate media stampede to declare the race over before the June 7 primary in which California and six other jurisdictions had yet to vote in primaries that could have still handed the victory to Sanders. Meanwhile, the Times is known to have held stories from publication in the past that could have been devastating to President George W. Bush back in his 2004 race against John Kerry. These concerned evidence of a hitherto unknown massive warrantless spying campaign on American citizens by the National Security Agency, and even a fully written and edited report that Bush had likely cheated in his three debates with Kerry. Both were held until after Bush was re-elected, and the latter article was never published by the Times.

Is that what the Times was suggesting a “principled” Assange should have done with information he had in his possession exposing a corrupted DNC working for Clinton? Withhold it from publication?

Apparently so.

The real issue here is not Assange’s principles, which have always been about giving Americans and the rest of the peoples of the world access to secret information that is being improperly hidden from them by people in power, but is rather the lack of principles at the New York Times, which seems long ago to have forgotten that the role of the so-called Fourth Estate is supposed to be openness, and, as Joseph Pulitzer put it, “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”

Instead, the Times, with its sycophantic news pieces blaming Russia, on the basis no evidence, of being behind the DNC hack, and of being an aggressive threat to the sovereignty of eastern European nations, with its gentle reporting on Clinton, which glides over the epic corruption at her and husband Bill’s Clinton Foundation, and with its one-sided coverage of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories on the West Bank and the decades-long Israeli siege of Gaza, is little more than a propaganda organ of Washington.

It is symptomatic of this propaganda role that the Times sees nothing wrong with the Justice Department’s finding no cause to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her willful violation of the Freedom of Information Act and of State Department regulations in handling all her communications as Secretary of State on a private server in her own home, and sees nothing wrong in Attorney General Loretta Lynch rejecting an FBI request to investigate corruption at the Clinton Foundation, but at the same time, finds it perfectly acceptable for that same Justice Department to have a four-year active secret espionage indictment sitting ready on the shelf to file against journalist Assange, should prosecutors manage to get their hands on him.

Maybe that’s because the Times is unhappy that Assange and Wikileaks have been doing what the Times is so clearly unwilling to do: aggressively pursue real journalism that matters.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/19/ ... s-assange/

[kk67]

Carpet bombing of Libyan cities did not happen. That is a lie, pure and simple. In fact, British bombing raids were called back if there was an excessive risk of collateral damage.

And anyone who has seen the mass graves in areas of the former Yugoslavia will know damn well that genocide in that area was a fact.

There wasn't a reason to enter Libya. You f*ck with the middle east and you pay the price.
You extend the middle east and you can go f*ck yourself.

[kk67]

Carpet bombing of Libyan cities did not happen. That is a lie, pure and simple. In fact, British bombing raids were called back if there was an excessive risk of collateral damage.

And anyone who has seen the mass graves in areas of the former Yugoslavia will know damn well that genocide in that area was a fact.

Nato performance is very gentle.

[Digby]

This is clear evidence of the extent to which you have been brainwashed by the media and turned into an unthinking zombie. No woman has accused Assange of rape. The two women involved have repeatedly said that nothing happened and expressed their irritation at being dragged into this obvious attempt at character assassination. But you would readily embrace this blatant propaganda, and dismiss the views of one of the most respected, experienced and courageous journalists in the world, because you are obviously resentful of a man who had the courage to bring to light American war crimes.

I didn't bother reading most of your post because as with so many of them it's just too boring to carry on reading copious amounts of unhinged ranting. However, I do find it disturbing you or anyone could conclude there's no charge of rape, or indeed conclude there was no rape. The Swedish legal system does operate a little differently in this area, and additionally I really wouldn't care to tell some who's been subject to assault where the boundaries of rape begin. As to the two women saying nothing happened, well they're reported to have said a number of things, and I could well believe they've often wished the intrusion into their lives would go away.

On the leaks I'm not sure what prompts you to conclude I'm resentful as I didn't know I'd ever made a comment about them on here, so forming a tentative conclusion would seem specious, forming a view I'm 'obviously resentful' is back into unhinged territory. For the record I take a mixed view on the leaks, the public should get to learn a lot of the information that was put out which would likely have never been released in the ordinary way, and where that's just embarrassing or even damning of national governments I really don't care, however where the leaks put people at risk, or individual personal details have been made available as information was just dumped en masse without sufficient scrutiny I find the action to be irresponsible and indeed abhorrent, the latter isn't the action of an experienced and courageous journalist it's an abnegation of journalistic responsibilities and the act of a selfish attention seeker.

[rowan]

You called a man a rapist when there is no accusation against him and not the slightest shred of evidence, then claim that "foming a tentative conclusion would seem specious."

Julian Assange's only crime is that he leaked information about American war crimes and a whole lot more dirty laundry from around the world. That's what journalists should be doing; not simply relaying the propaganda of their masters, teaching people to hate one another and beating the drum for war - as 98% of the mainstream media in America did prior to Bush & Blair's invasion of Iraq.

John Pilger, an Australian, has twice been named Britain's international Journalist of the Year and has won countless other awards for his on-the-ground reporting from countless war zones since cutting his teeth in Vietnam in the 1960s, and many more for his numerous books and, more recently, his documentary films - a number of which have themselves received awards. It is doubtful that there is a more widely respected, experienced and courageous journalist alive in the world today.

Digby, on the other had, is a guy on a chat board.