NOVANEWS

Claims Gaddafi Given “Clean Bill of Health” Debunked

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

(Full Amnesty International Links Below)

It isn’t often I find myself in line with Newsweek or the New York Times but Libya is just such an occasion.

This is a complex issue, one few understand, least of all many of those who believe they are reporting on Libya for the alternative press.  They simply aren’t doing the work, they don’t have the resources, people on the ground there.  We do, on both sides.

Libya, under Gaddafi, is a 42 year old dictatorship run by the equivalent of the worst trade union in the world, petty thugs and secret police, armies of busybodies and informants, who spy and snitch while those who speak up disappear, end up in prison, “lost in the desert” or are butchered in the streets.

A real discussion is needed simply to get some of the liberal left back to earth. Well meaning people are being hoodwinked into taking the wrong side.  The Libya “sideshow” has been used to end any effective antiwar movement to stop Afghanistan, a very real slaughter.  This isn’t by accident.  There are certainly ways to defend Gaddafi, especially when worse is happening in Syria and Bahrain, Israel and Gaza, also, and nothing is being done.

Instead, members of sectors of the press have gone “over the top” and are peddling fantasies about Libya.  We tracked down Gaddafi’s public relations slush fund, and long ago found him to be firmly entrenched in the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party.

One of the protocols of the recent budget deal was an assurance that no military aid be given to rebels in Libya or the US would be pushed into debt default.  This was put forward by the same group of right wing extremists that demand an immediate invasion of Iran.  Who’s hand is visible in this?

This is how CNN put a spin on it:

Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week that cutting funding for the mission was an option that the Republican-controlled House will consider when it takes up a defense appropriations bill this week. He contended that President Barack Obama has failed to comply with the War Powers

Inseparable

Resolution, and that the main tool Congress has to respond is to control the spending.

Boehner, Gaddafi’s “monkeyboy” in congress is also Netanyahu’s “monkeyboy” in congress.

Gaddafi, years ago, became a neocon, aligning himself with big oil, Bush and Blair.  Gaddafi is a fascinating person, so is Hannibal Lector, but he is fictional.

People who, under any honest circumstance, would be calling for Gaddafi’s removal and free elections are now inventing wild plots, telling bizarre “Al Qaeda” scare stories, and doing hasty paraphrasing jobs of press releases.  Their new rhetoric, of course, is pure neocon bunkum.

I have two issues.  One is “spontaneous demonstrations.”  Our people inside Libya, not hotel guests eating lobster and drinking “Dom” by the magnum, put us straight long ago.  When Gaddafi wants a crowd in the streets, his thugs arrange it and anyone who doesn’t attend pays for it dearly.  The least that is done is family members are beaten.  “Journalists” who provide cover for these brutalities are not excused.

This is a real report from Libya:

Debbie, Gordon, Jim,

You have to understand how things work in Libya, Syria and other countries with similar regimes. When I was living in Libya, and many years after I stopped supporting Gaddafi, I used to go on pro-Gaddafi demonstrations and rallies. In fact, I never missed one.

That’s a fact.

The reason is simple. Every state employee (i.e. 100 per cent of the working population) had no choice but to go on these or else go to prison instead.  Here’s how it worked: you arrive at work in the morning, only to find loads of coaches parked outside. Upon entering your work premises, you will find armed security agents outside asking you to submit your work ID.

They take the ID and give you a permit to the demo in its place. You are directed to the coaches, the coaches take you to the demo and they bring you back to your work premises. Upon returning, the piece of paper you were given in lieu of your work ID is stamped and taken away, and your ID is returned to you.  If you manage to circumvent this process, one of two things will happen:

(1) You get a visit from the internal security organization (Al-Amn al-Dakhili) during the night and you are taken away. If you’re lucky, they’d beat the hell out of you and release you in a few days. If you’re unlucky, you vanish. And some people, including former work colleagues, friends and two neighbours of ours, have vanished and have never been seen again. Their only crime was not to go on a demo.

(2) You go to work the very next day and, upon arrival, you are bundled away and suffer the same fate as No. 1 above.

And what about at the pro-Gaddafi demos themselves. What happens there? From my own personal experience, when you get there you find the whole damn gathering is infested with secret police. Everyone is listening, observing, some taking notes and pictures.

If you are seen to “lack enthusiasm”, i.e. not shout slogans for hours on end, then hell is your destiny. You can guarantee — and it has happened to me three times in the late 1990s — you will get visited, again in the dead of night, questioned, questioned again and again, warned and threatened that you will be watched, and then released.

If you are married or have children, insinuations will be made about what could hypothetically happen to them.

There you have it! I am talking from my own personal, direct experience.

Regards,

The other is that some journalists claim Amnesty International has given Gaddafi a “clean bill of health.”  To check for yourself, this is the Libya page there: http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/libya

As a simple clarification, we will link all recent stories on Libya and we can all look for that “clean bill of health” I have read about so many times.  Perhaps on their main page there is an apology to Colonel Gaddafi.  I have yet to find it.  All articles are included, the list is, as you can easily verify, unedited.  Hundreds of charges are made and investigations are demanded.  Not all are proven true, only the vast majority.

Mispreporting such things as some have done is very suspicious.  Facts tend to totally debunk claims that Amnesty international has now rescinded its charges against Gaddafi.  In fact, a review of the documents linked below will be very enlightening.  Unless every charge made has been formally rescinded in writing, each and every one, we have journalists whose broad statements now appear to be purposefully misleading in service of an agenda very much in favor of money, power and brutality.  Nothing new there.

• News and Publications

• Report 2010

• Report 2009

• Report 2008

• Report 2007

• News and Publications

• Report 2010

• Report 2009

• Report 2008

• Report 2007