Britain and the 'war on terror' throughout the ages

A review of the Oxford Literary Festival 2013

Dr Brydon - the only survivor of the 18,000 strong British retreat from Kabul in 1842

There is an unfortunate tendency in this country – including, perhaps especially, on the ‘left’ – to think of the ‘war on terror’ and its attendant horrors as a US crime. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, drone strikes…all have become bywords for US atrocities; virtually household names. But how many are aware that the modern system of secret prisons, the interrogation techniques used in the prison abuse scandals, and the use of aerial bombing to suppress resistance, were all pioneered by the British, and still used by British governments today? Likewise, US-sponsored coups in Guatemala and Chile are notorious, as is the Vietnam war – but British crimes, in Malaysia, Kenya, Korea and elsewhere remain largely hidden from public discourse (despite valiant attempts by such historians as John Newsinger and Mark Curtis).

                So it is good to see a number of authors at the festival tackling the specifically British role in the perpetration of bloody injustice across the centuries.

                The path that led journalist Ian Cobain to write “Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture” began with his reporting on   a number of ‘terrorism trials’ over the past decade. He noticed that identical accounts about the presence of MI5 officials in between bouts of torture in Pakistani jails began to emerge time and again from the defendants in these trials. Each time, after a bout of torture, two British men would enter the room and introduce themselves. They would question the suspect for ten minutes or so, during which time no physical mistreatment would take place. They would begin by asking the same set of questions as the Pakistani interrogators had done during the torture, but would then move on to a set of new questions, before leaving the room. The torment would then begin again, with these new questions forming the basis of the next session of interrogation and torture. After travelling to Pakistan to meet the lawyer of one of the accused – who confirmed that torture is standard for terror suspects in the country, as is the presence of MI5 officials in the case of British citizens – he began to suspect there might be an official British torture policy. Eventually, he discovered that there was – the “Agency policy on liaison with foreign intelligence service in relation to suspects who may be subject to mistreatment”, created by the Labour government in 2002 to allow British agents to interrogate prisoners undergoing torture. The discovery of this document then led him to look further back, discovering that Britain had run a string of secret prisons during World War Two in locations such as Berlin, Hanover, Cairo and Casablanca, as well as an interrogation centre in Kensington Gardens where not only defendants, but also witnesses, at war crimes trials were regularly tortured. Intriguingly, the wartime organization set up to run these secret prisons – the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre – preceded the establishment of a US organization of the same name, and trained its staff. Not surprisingly, the techniques of torture were then honed during the brutal suppression of rebellions in the colonies. What became known as the ‘five techniques’ – hooding, sleep deprivation, starvation, stress and noise – the very techniques so familiar to us from recent images from Iraq – were crafted during Britain’s colonial wars in Kenya and Malaya in the 1950s – with the fifth technique being added in 1970 in Ireland. The legal case around the death of Baha Mousa in British custody in Iraq revealed that these techniques are still being used today.  

Victoria Brittain’s latest book “Shadow Lives” also deals with the British role in the war on terror, not so much its impact on British citizens abroad, as on foreign citizens in Britain - specifically, the families of people placed under ‘house arrest’. Initially, in the weeks following September 11^th, the British government decreed that foreign citizens could be detained without charge indefinitely. This policy was ended by the House of Lords, and the government’s response was the introduction of “control orders”, a form of house arrest whereby the victim of such an order must stay in their house – indeed, often in only one specific portion of their house – for almost the whole day, with just a short window for leaving the house to travel only in the immediate surrounding area. Any visitors to their house must have gained prior approval from both the Foreign Office and the security services. As Brittain pointed out, when one member of a family is under ‘house arrest’, in effect “the whole family is put under house arrest”. Since these laws, however, only apply to foreign nationals, the British government ingeniously passed a law in 2003 to allow the government to strip British citizens of their citizenship. Theresa May has been particularly keen on using this law, and as the Independent exposed recently, has used it 16 times since coming to office. Two of those stripped of citizenship went on to be killed in drone strikes abroad, but as they were no longer ‘British citizens’, the government was able to wash their hands of any responsibility. Brittain discussed in particular the example of Mehdi Hashi, a young Somali-British man who grew up in Kentish Town, who was stripped of his British citizenship last June and has now very likely been subjected to ‘extraordinary rendition’ in Somalia.

The novelist William Sutcliffe, sharing the panel with Victoria Brittain, noted that this model of turning people into ‘non-citizens’ in order to strip them of their rights, is precisely the Israeli method of dealing with Palestinians. Palestinians are not citizens of any state, and therefore have access to neither the minimum wage, nor to civilian courts, subject only to Israeli military law, where they are not allowed to see the evidence against them, and the conviction rates are more than 99%. Sutcliffe’s novel ‘The Wall’ is set in a “mythical version” of the West Bank, where Joshua, a Jewish boy living next to the apartheid wall, who has grown up being told the other side is full of unimaginable horrors, one day finds a tunnel underneath, and ventures down it. Thus, Sutcliffe explains, the novel is an inversion of the classic ‘fantasy portal’ plot – rather than the portal (tornado, wardrobe) providing a way out of mundane reality and into a world of fantasy, the tunnel provides an escape from his fantasy life and into a world of brutal reality. Sutcliffe said he was drawn to the Wall as a setting for his story as it epitomized the “division between haves and have-nots [which] seems to be the story of our times”.

The other story of our times – and one similarly symbolized by the apartheid Wall – is the story of occupation, imperial hubris and the illusion of military security. As Michael Burleigh explains, in a discussion of his latest book “Small wars, far away places”, the “conceit” of the British is that “we think we know how to fight counter-insurgency wars”. The British love to contrast their supposed ‘success’ in Kenya and Malaya with French and US failures in Algeria and Vietnam, but, Burleigh reminds us, this was not so much down to technique as luck. Whereas the French were up against genuinely national mass movements in Vietnam and Algeria, the British were fighting movements rooted in a particular ethnic minority (the Kikuyu and the Chinese Malays) – and even then, it still took them twelve years to achieve victory in Malaya. The British delusion remains, however, that victory was actually due to success in ‘winning hearts and minds’, combined with superior intelligence and special services. The other delusion, of course, surrounds the reasons for the war. Burleigh notes that the Malayan war (1948-60) was a war to maintain the exploitation of Malayan tin and rubber, pure and simple. The dollar-earning capacity of these industries was necessary “to build the New Jerusalem, whilst retaining a ‘place at the top table’ in foreign affairs – and Attlee and Bevin shared that goal as much as any Tory imperialist”. Likewise, Burleigh notes, “one is struck by the air of self-congratulation that surrounds decolonization”. The reality is that decolonisation was forced on Britain, who then proceeded to make a mess of it, “screwing up” the partitions of India and Palestine, leaving “legacies that haunt us to this day”. These things matter, says Burleigh, because our failure to understand the reality of the disasters created by our past colonial wars, means we remain deluded that we have the ability to impose military solutions on “faraway places” today.

William Dalrymple’s latest offering “The Return of the King” – a new history of Britain’s doomed occupation of Afghanistan between 1839 and 1842 – suffers from no such delusions. Based on meticulous research - referencing no fewer than nine previously untranslated contemporary Afghan accounts of the war – Dalrymple offers a blow-by-blow account of the biggest British military disaster of the nineteenth century. He explains how, just as in 2002, the relative ease with which the ‘fall of Kabul’ was accomplished lulled the imperial troops into a fatal complacency. A fort was established in a completely indefensible valley, such was the “smugness” of the British occupiers. Things started to go wrong, however, when austerity started to bite. As Dalrymple explains, it is not the conquest of Afghanistan that is difficult – “The Greeks, the Turks, the Mughals, Nadir Shah, all conquered Afghanistan”, he reminds us. “What is impossible is paying for the occupation of Afghanistan.” Unlike Iraq, there are no oil wells to loot; and unlike India, there are not enough productive farmers to tax: the army of occupation cannot be paid for by the exploitation of native people and their resources. It drains money. The East India Company, in charge of the operation, was making a fortune selling India-grown opium to China, but its entire profit ended up being poured into the Afghan adventure. So, then as now, the British began training an Afghan army “to keep the puppet in place” – and then expropriated the local nobles to pay for it. In addition, they cut the subsidies being paid to local tribes in order to keep the passes open. The last straw was when the occupying army began “turning Kabul into a brothel”. If they are not stopped, wrote one Afghan chronicler, “the English will ride the donkey of desires into the field of stupidity”. Armed insurrection followed - and the rest is history. Within 24 hours, the British army’s supplies and ammunition stores had been captured. Under bombardment from the surrounding hills, the garrison ate “first the beagles, then the horses, and then the rats” - and then surrendered. Of the column of 18,000 who embarked on the long retreat out of the country, only 1 reached their final destination (Dr Brydon), the rest having either been shot, frozen, starved or kidnapped en route. Al Qaeda’s chilling warning to the latest generation of occupiers – that “this time, there will be no Dr Brydons” was universally understood by all the Afghans who heard it. Zawahari, the Al Qaeda leader who made the comment, well understands the link between occupation and the draining of resources, and drawing the West into expensive and unwinnable wars is the key tenet of his strategy for bringing down the infidels and their Empire. He is certainly familiar with the lessons of the 1842, as expressed so succinctly by Mirza Attah: “The English love gold and money, but what did Afghanistan bring them other than the exhausting of their Treasury and the disgracing of their army?”

Dalrymple finishes his talk on a salutary note: he reports that China has just bought up the mining rights to Afghanistan, and thus “by doing business without sending in a single soldier, I think the Chinese will succeed where Britain has failed four times over”. The question is - will the British learn the lesson?

An edited version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star

Leaflet for the "Occupy" demonstrations

The problem is not lack of money

According to the Sunday Times “Rich List”, the 1000 wealthiest individuals in Britain increased their wealth by £60billion between May 2010 and April 2011. This is not on the back of economic growth; the economy, as we all know only too well, has been stagnant. Therefore, this money has come directly from other sections of society; a redistribution of wealth from the working and middle classes to the very richest (75% of British people saw their real incomes decline in the same time period). Warren Buffet, the world’s third richest man, put it very clearly: “It’s class warfare. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war. And we’re winning.”

Three years ago, the banks were bailed out with public money, to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. We are now told that we need to lose the bulk of our hard-won public services in order to pay off the huge debt this bailout incurred. Cameron said “frontline services” would not be affected, but this was a lie, as is now becoming more and more obvious. Bristol Council has already announced plans to close ten of its twelve residential nursing homes, and to abolish homecare services for the elderly completely. Even the NHS, who Cameron told us would be exempt from cuts, has now been told to find £20billion “efficiency savings”.

We are often told that there is “no alternative” to public spending cuts, because we need to “reduce the deficit”. This is nonsense. The total private wealth in Britain amounts to £9000 billion (£9 trillion). Just under half of this - £4trillion – is owned by the richest 10% of the population. A one-off wealth tax of just 20%, to be paid only by the richest 10%, would pay off the entire national debt of the country (£800billion) in one go. A Yougov poll commissioned by the Glasgow Media Group found that 74% of the British population supported this idea. But this alternative does not even get an airing anywhere in the mainstream media. Instead, we are told that public spending cuts are the only solution, despite the fact that they will not only cause misery and unemployment to millions, but will not even begin to pay off the national debt, and will in fact plunge the economy into an even deeper recession.

So why is the establishment (all three mainstream parties and the entire media circus) so committed to this path, and so deaf to the calls to do something to challenge the power of the banks? In a word, because they are all owned by the banks (in the case of the media) or sponsored by them (in the case of the politicians). They rely on them for election campaign donations and for advertising income. They will not bite the hand that feeds them. But they do not feed us; they rob us – and we most definitely should be biting their hand.

The problem is too much capital

So why do the banks want the government to close down all our public services? The big problem for the banks at the moment is that they have more money than they know what to do with. If money cannot be profitably invested, it loses its value. But in a recession, there are very few places to profitably invest. They are nervous of investing in the housing market, because another big crash is looming. There is no point investing in manufacturing (e.g. the car industry etc), because markets are already glutted- there are already too many products that cannot be sold. This is where public spending cuts come in. Cameron says he expects the private sector to step in where the public sector gets cuts back. Put into plain English, this means you will increasingly have to pay private companies to do what you used to get for free from the state (good quality schooling, weekly rubbish collections, a local library, decent healthcare provision, etc). All of this will open up whole new avenues of investment for those billionaires desperately looking for somewhere to invest their money, as once-public services are turned into profit-making concerns.

This is the first part of the strategy. The other big problem now facing the owners of massive wealth is that their use of the third world as a source of dirt cheap labour and raw materials is seriously threatened by the shifting balance of power in the world. For five hundred years, the ruling elites running the Western world have been able to use their overwhelming firepower and technical superiority to force their own terms of trade onto the nations they impoverished in Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, this period of history is now coming to an end with the rise of places like China, India and Brazil as powerful, economically developed countries. They are not only less reliant on the export markets of the West to sell their goods, but are also increasingly demanding higher wages and fairer prices for their raw materials – and giving a lead to the rest of the global South in doing so. This threatens the ability of the world’s richest to continue making money out of global poverty in the way they have been doing for generations.

All this is increasingly pushing the billionaire bankers and the governments to which they dictate policy in the direction of war. Only war can reverse the tide of economic development in the third world, and ultimately only war can destroy enough of the world’s surplus capital (products, housing, factories etc) to pave the way for a successful new round of profitable investment.

We have been here before. Capitalism always has periodic booms and crashes, but there have only been two crashes gigantic enough to bring about the near total collapse of the world economy similar to that we face today. The first was the “Great Depression” of 1870 – 1896, and the second the “Great Depression” of the 1930s. Both had the same causes as today’s crisis – the drying up of profitable avenues for investment – and both were ultimately ‘solved’ by colonialism and world war, the second of which was so successful a solution, that it paved the way for the “golden era” of capitalism – an unprecedented two-decade long boom period of growth based on rebuilding what had been destroyed in the world’s biggest ever mass slaughter.

Sirte, Libya, after pounding from NATO's "hellfire" missiles

This is the context in which we have to see Britain, the USA and France’s destruction of Libya. Anyone who thinks the British ruling class was momentarily distracted from dealing with its profitability crisis by a small group of Arabs in distress is living in cloud cuckoo land. 50,000 bombing raids were carried out against Libya, totally destroying huge swathes of advanced infrastructure, not to mention entire cities (in the case of Sirte) and at least 35,000 people. Within days of the conquest of Tripoli, Britain’s Defence Minister Philip Hammond was calling on British companies to “pack their suitcases and head for Libya” in search of the lucrative “reconstruction” contracts that will soon be dished out by NATO’s puppet government. Furthermore, in destroying Libya – a wealthy oil state which was continent’s leading force pushing for African unity and economic independence, and had $30billion set aside for African development and a new African currency – the old imperial states are intending to put the clock back on African development for generations. Most importantly of all, Libya will soon host the first sizable African base for the USA’s new AFRICOM section of the US army, set up in 2007 to invade African countries. This is part of the overall drive to use war in order to resolve this crisis of profitability, a war ultimately aimed at China, but likely to take in Syria, Iran, Algeria, South Africa and Venezuela along the way.

David Cameron is, for once, telling the truth, when he says “Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world – we’ll do it.” ‘Whatever it takes’ means not only the destruction of our public services; it also means the destruction of entire countries. We need to recognise that the attacks on public services and living standards here in Britain is part of a much bigger picture - the class warfare being waged by the rich against the poor, and especially against the most organised and independent sections of the third world. The constant warfare waged by the Western world for the last ten years has all been part of this struggle to maintain the class power and privilege of the dominant elites.

Their only solution is poverty and war

There are many in the third world who are resisting this onslaught, and we need to make common cause with them. When the next victim is being lined up for destruction by the media propaganda machine, we need to stand in solidarity with those under attack. We should learn the lessons of the destruction of Libya, a war which was sold to us with lies even more preposterous than those used to justify the destruction of Iraq. Do you remember the stories about 10,000 killed by Gaddafi in Benghazi? According to Amnesty International, the true figure was 110 - including those killed by the rebels - who we now know were armed from the first day of the insurrection. Do you remember the claims that Gaddafi was feeding his soldiers Viagra so they could carry out mass rape? Again, after looking into these allegations for months, Amnesty could not find a single credible case of rape by government troops. Do you remember the claims that Gaddafi had carried out aerial assaults against Tripoli? This too was false – as later verified by Russian satellite pictures. Do you remember the reports about rebel militias rounding up and lynching innocent African migrant workers by the dozen, from the very start of the revolt? Of course you don’t – although true, they were rarely reported. “But surely Gaddafi was a bad man” many people say. Even if this were true – and there are millions of Libyans who would dispute this – it is surely better to live in a functioning, peaceful and prosperous country with a bad leader, than in a dysfunctional wreck of a society like those that have been created in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But there is plenty of hope in the world. Latin America has been at the forefront of a successful, popular and organised rejection of the rape of their continent by the financial institutions of the Western world. Every major economy on the continent – with the sole exception of Colombia – is now governed by popular movements committed to the use of their natural wealth and labour to raise living standards for all, rather than simply as sources of profit for financial vampires. Venezuela’s slum dwellers now have free healthcare and education – and a constitution they actually helped to draft – for the first time ever. These governments have been involved in discussions with other independent-minded third world countries – including China, Iran and Libya before the invasion - about how to defend themselves against the war and poverty long imposed on them. We need to learn from and unite with these movements – and, above all, to reject any attempts by our own government to try to destroy them by force.

The views expressed here are only those of myself and (sadly!) do not necessarily represent those of the movement as a whole…

The Occupy movement provides a forum for all those disgusted with the exploitation, degradation and war they see being imposed by the world’s financial elites to come together and share their thoughts, analyses and strategies. Get involved and join the movement to end the dictatorship of capital.

The Rebellious Media Conference, London, October 8-9 – A Reflection.

Sirte

Who better to open a conference on “Rebellious Media” than Noam Chomsky? The arch-rebel of US academia and proponent of the ‘propaganda model’ of the media, at 82 years old he is now not only the best-known but probably also the longest-serving celebrity critic of US foreign policy in the world. And unlike many academics, he is not scared to ‘get his hands dirty’ by discussing – and critiquing – strategy with the resistance movements of which he most definitely considers himself to be a part.

            So it should perhaps be no surprise that his talk today focuses on the weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Whilst overall, of course, he considers the protest, and its rapid, ‘wildcat’ spread around the US, to be a good thing, he is not so enamoured with its public demands. “Here are some of the phrases that are missing from the Occupy Wall Street programme”, he explains: “Iraq. Afghanistan. War. Industry. Factory. Women. Healthcare.”

            But there was another word that was missing – not only from the protesters’ programme, but from Chomsky’s critique, the questions from his audience, and indeed from almost the entire conference. Libya.

            As the conference opened, the Libyan town of Sirte was experiencing its 30^th successive day of full scale bombardment and siege from NATO and their Libyan allies, leaving the population “dying from lack of water, medicine and electricity”, according to the Telegraph. Into the town’s housing blocks, “rebels were pouring rocket after rocket from launchers mounted on pickup trucks” it continued, whilst “gunmen assured reporters that there were few families left inside”. Indeed, 20,000 are reported to have fled the city. This leaves 80,000 to face the rockets and enforced malnutrition. 

            John Pilger does touch on this later in the proceedings, in response to a question from the audience: “As we speak”, he says, “Sirte is being blasted with iron fragmentation bombs and hellfire missiles in an attack comparable to that on Fallujah”. He has been vitriolic in his condemnation of NATO atrocities against Libya ever since his excellent article on the subject, published on April 6^th,, two weeks after NATO began their blitzkrieg and six weeks after the Libyan contras lynched their first group of fifty unarmed African migrant workers. But until then, he – and many others – had been silent. When it was most important to speak out was before the invasion, when the die was being cast, when “consent” was being “manufactured” (to use Chomsky’s phrase) with lies about ten thousand dead, mass rape, mercenaries and the aerial bombing of demonstrators. As it turned out, none of these were actions perpetrated by Gaddafi’s forces, but were the fantasies of NATO and their Libyan allies about what they themselves were about to unleash. But neither Pilger nor Chomsky warned of this nor exposed these lies during that crucial phase.

            So the question I want, urgently, to discuss at the conference is – what is the role of radical media during the demonization phase - the inevitable prelude to any war? I brought it up at every session I went to, and when I did, many people were eager to discuss it. But, sadly, it was never discussed on any of the panels. 

            Later in the day, Zahera Harb gave an excellent presentation on Hezbollah’s media tactics, most effective of which was their use of what they termed “media traps”. After the 1996 Israeli bombardment and occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah devised a new strategy aimed at appealing to the Israeli public. But to do this, they needed to gain credibility. They began by taking professional cameramen, with hi-tech equipment, with them on each of their operations. After an operation, they would then release a press release saying how many Israeli soldiers they had killed and injured. The Israeli government would inevitably issue their own statement denying the story. Hezbollah would then release some grainy, far off footage of the attack in support of their claims, which Israel would again rebuff. Then came the trap. The high quality footage would finally be released, proving that Hezbollah had been telling the truth – and the Israelis lying – all along. They successfully used this tactic no less than four separate times. Harb argued that it played an important role in undermining support for the occupation amongst the Israeli public, and thus in persuading Israel to eventually pull out almost all its forces in 2000.

            It occurs to me that we too have been caught in a media trap, albeit an unintentional one of our own making, borne of our own prejudices. Almost all of Gaddafi’s claims – of Al Qaeda involvement in the uprising, of systematic racist atrocities carried out by rebel forces, of the rebels being in the pay of foreign interests aiming to destabilise and conquer the country – have been proven correct. And we, including a huge number on the left, have been caught lying – that the uprising was essentially a liberal democratic one, that the rebels were a nonviolent protest movement, that Gaddafi was a genocidal rapist and on and on.

            An insight into why so many journalists were so ready to credulously repeat these lies was provided by Andy Williams’ presentation on the growing influence of Public Relations companies in the media. His research found that the amount of copy expected from journalists has tripled in recent years, with half of those interviewed reporting less time to properly check facts. As a result, they are becoming increasingly reliant on press releases, often from Public Relations firms working for private companies (and, we can safely assume, for governments, intelligence agencies, and military forces). Of the 2000 articles he analysed, 1 in 5 were wholly plagiarised from press releases, with no additional information whatsoever. A further 1 in 3 relied on press releases for more than half of the copy. Only 1 in 10 contained no obvious “pre-packaged” material. His conclusion was that mainstream journalism was increasingly being reduced to “cutting and pasting press releases” – and therefore increasingly manufactured by political and business elites. In the case of Libya this was absolutely clear, with even easily checkable (dis)information – such as Gaddafi’s supposed bombing of parts of Tripoli, easily disproved by a simple visit to the areas in question – being reported as ‘fact’.

            Elsewhere, Greg Philo summarised the findings of the Glasgow Media Group’s meticulous research into media presentation of the Palestine-Israel conflict. “There are a great range of positions [on the conflict] amongst journalists”, he explained, “but when you look at their output, this is not reflected”. The reasons are pretty clear; the power of the Israeli lobby, the prejudices of the Murdoch press, and the geostrategic interests of British ruling elites all dictate a heavily pro-Israeli bias.  So where does that leave mainstream journalists personally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause? Presenting the actual Palestinian point of view – documenting the daily reality of life under military occupation, explaining how the Israeli army broke the 2008 ceasefire, or, god forbid, talking about a genuine ‘national liberation struggle’ – is simply “too dangerous” for their careers. So, in place of this, journalists showed what one called an “endless procession of grief”. This effectively served as a proxy in place of the “Palestinian side of the argument” that was simply not allowed an airing. In other words, during the Gaza massacre of 2008-9, viewers were treated to pictures of Palestinian suffering – but the analysis was consistently pro-Israeli, emphasising the themes favoured by their spokesmen (rocket fire, the obligation to protect its citizens, Hamas breaking the ceasefire, etc). As a result, the focus groups used in Philo’s research, whilst horrified by the tragedy of the Palestinian situation, dutifully trotted out the Israeli propaganda that had been their staple diet from the news coverage – that the Palestinians had brought it all on themselves.

            Again, this seems to be true of the war on Libya – but this time, it is not only true of the mainstream media, but a substantial portion of the “radical” media and intelligentsia as well. Once the bombing is well underway, the liberal left – who had been either applauding or silent about the outbreak of the pro-NATO contra rebellion – were happy enough condemning the resulting atrocities. But the analysis (albeit often implicit on the left) remains – as with Palestine – that the pro-Gaddafi forces had “brought it on themselves” by being intolerably repressive, or using violence on peaceful protesters, etc etc. Where is the actual analysis from the other point of view? Where is the explanation of the serious material and financial contribution that Gaddafi was making to African unity, or to keeping the continent free of US bases? Where are the comments pointing out that all 700 imprisoned members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group involved in previous violent uprisings against the Libyan state had been freed in a process of reconciliation in the eighteen months preceding the rebellion - the last batch being released even as the early stages of the uprising was already underway? Where were the voices explaining that the neo-liberal credentials of all leading NTC members would surely sign the death knell for Libya’s four decades history of generous social provision, that had resulted in the highest life expectancy on the continent?

            Cameron has said the Libya intervention was the “model” for the coming colonial wars (he called them humanitarian interventions of course). Knowing this, radical media has a duty to learn the lessons. Will we be fooled into supporting contra rebellions in Syria, Iran, Algeria, China, too? Or will we reject the media’s duty to “keep people ignorant” and defend the sovereignty of independent nations threatened by imperial aggression?

An edited version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star