Here we go again. Once more the Western world is interfering militarily in the Middle East, as the UK, France, and the US, fire dozens of missiles into Libya.
It’s a conundrum: on the one hand, criticism for allowing a brutal dictator to wreak revenge on his own people for daring to stand up to him, and on the other, the potential repercussions of another war with the Arabs.
There was a simple solution. The UN mandate authorizing this latest action was fully supported by the Arab League. Why then, once the vote was agreed, did the West not turn round to Saudi Arabia and say, “Okay, then, you’ve got your mandate. Off you go.”
The Saudis have an abundance of fighter aircraft and other military hardware; they’ve been buying them from the UK and US for years. Abdullah has no hesitation about sending Saudi jet fighters and tanks into Yemen, at the request of that country’s president, to carry out attacks on rebelling Yemeni nationals.[1] Attacks similar to those Gaddafi is presently inflicting on the Libyan people.
Why then is the West so willing to do the Arabs’ dirty work for them?
The clue, perhaps, lies in the trigger for this military offensive against Libya. The prime mover was Sarkozy of France, closely followed by the UK’s Cameron. The US lagged behind until it became obvious that the UN was relatively united.
Sarkozy is exceedingly unpopular in his own country. Polls show his ratings with the French public to be dismal. Cameron is struggling to maintain credibility in Britain, as his austerity measures bite against the working people.
As Margaret Thatcher taught politicians, when the going gets tough the best popularity medicine is a good old war, so long as its far enough from home not to inconvenience the populace. In her case, it was with Argentina over the Falklands.
Involving the US in another Middle-Eastern war is far more likely to cause Obama political grief, hence his distancing himself from the action, even to the point of not being in the country when the first shots are fired.
As always, the excuse is humanitarian, but the true reason we’re doing the Arabs’ dirty washing for them is entirely political.
The ‘war on terror’, a phrase coined to good propaganda effect here in the United States by George W Bush, is not, of course, a war at all. The Iraq invasion of 2003 was a war, as is the occupation of Afghanistan. The ‘war on terror’ consists of a series of covert operations often based on intelligence as dodgy as that which was used to precipitate the attack on Iraq.
It must be quite fun to sit at a computer desk in the office of an air force base in Arizona and guide a Predator drone aircraft to kill a group of people in some remote area of Pakistan; the ultimate in video games, one might say.
Unfortunately, the game can take an ugly turn when those people are innocent civilians: tribal elders, local traders, and members of the tribal police.
Forty innocents died in this latest US unmanned drone attack, including thirteen children.
The tribal elders have vowed revenge against America:
Tribal leaders in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan have vowed revenge against the US after drones killed more than 40 people near the Afghan border.
“We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy,” the elders said in a statement.
Thursday’s attack has caused fury – most of the dead were tribal elders and police attending an open-air meeting……
“The world should try and find out how many of the 40-odd people killed in the drone attack were members of al-Qaeda,” the elders said in their statement following the attack near North Waziristan’s regional capital, Miranshah.
“It was just a jirga being held under local customs in which the prominent elders of Datta Khel sub-division, and common people were participating to resolve a dispute.
“But the Americans did not spare our elders even.
One of the elders, Malik Faridullah Wazir Khan, said he reached the scene 30 minutes after the missiles hit – four of his relatives were killed.
“The area was completely covered in blood,” he told the BBC.
“There were no bodies, only body parts – hands, legs and eyes scattered around. I could not recognise anyone. People carried away the body parts in shopping bags and clothing or with bits of wood, whatever they could find.”
He said 44 people died at the scene, including 13 children – one as young as seven.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s army chief condemned the raid by US unmanned drones in unusually strong terms, calling it “intolerable… and in complete violation of human rights”.[1]
The ‘war on terror’ is completely out of control.
It leaves one wondering who to fear more – al Qaeda, or the US Pentagon.
We can all sympathize with the Japanese people in this, their darkest hour since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. No amount of technological expertise could prevent the devastation and enormous loss of life that occurred over the last few days, following the huge earthquake and accompanying tsunami, sweeping all before it like matchwood in a mill race.
Added to these horrors is another; the conceivable meltdown of three nuclear reactors with potentially catastrophic results, not just for the people of Japan, but possibly for the whole planet.
Scaremongering? I think not.
If you are less than twenty-five years of age, you weren’t even born when the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred. In 1986, the number four reactor at a nuclear power station in what is now Ukraine blew up, sending clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. That was Chernobyl. You might have heard of it.
While the media made much of the event (when it eventually became known in the West) official sources, both here and in Russia, played down the effects of the accident. It’s now thought over one million people were effected as a result of the Chernobyl explosion by four hundred times the amount of radiation as was released from the bomb exploded over Hiroshima.
A report into the nuclear accident at Chernobyl concluded serious human error was the cause. The potential nuclear problems in Japan have resulted from a freak natural event. Neither of these can ever be ruled out when dealing with a power source so dangerous it has the ability to kill or maim us all.
Nuclear industry lobbyists are already hard at work playing down the likely scenarios unfolding at Fukushima. They would, it’s their job. Only today, US President Obama has poo-pooed any freeze on new nuclear power development programs in the United States.
Why?
The Japanese are world leaders in nuclear technology. Just a few days ago, interviewed on American TV, a leading US nuclear expert clearly stated that if a similar incident were to occur in the US, they would immediately turn to the Japanese for technological assistance.
Yet the Japanese are in trouble. Their reactors are presently out of control and on the verge of meltdown.
Nuclear energy is not renewable energy. Uranium, mined mainly in Australia, is a rare element. It’s incapable of being safely stored after use. We don’t need it. The only people on this planet who need nuclear energy are the corporations that grow rich off it. All our energy requirements can be met through a mix of solar-thermal power plants, wind farms, hydroelectric power, and the various uses of biomass. Germany is set to become the world’s first major renewable energy economy by 2050, though the nuclear industry is doing everything possible to prevent it.[1]
Meanwhile, America stagnates as corporate-controlled politicians kill off any environmental legislation that might cause corporate pockets to be picked, and bolster the nuclear industry to the tune of $54 billion tax dollars this year alone.[2]
In the UK, it’s not generally known how badly the Chernobyl incident effected the British Isles, even though it was 1,400 miles away. Politicians played down the radiation hazard that fell upon the nation, and much was brushed under the political carpet.
It was twenty-five years ago, but a May 2010 article from ‘Wales Online’ clearly indicates problems still exist, particularly for Welsh sheep farmers:
Latest figures show 369 UK farms continue to be restricted in the way they can use land and rear sheep because of fallout from the world’s worst nuclear power accident. But the vast majority of the restricted farms – 355 – are in Snowdonia, involving 180,000 of the 190,000 affected sheep.
When the disaster happened in April 1986, some 9,700 farms and more than four million sheep were under restriction across the UK after downpours rained radioactive material onto land across northern Europe. Bans in Northern Ireland were lifted in 2000.
For the hundreds of Welsh farmers still living with Chernobyl’s legacy, the restrictions mean their animals are only allowed to enter the food chain after rigorous safety tests. It is understood the restrictions could continue for many years to come.[3]
Lobbyists will argue that nuclear power stations are much safer now than twenty-five years ago. They may be right, but none are built to withstand the forces unleashed on Japan this week.
In the span of a human lifetime, natural disasters occur rarely, but looked at through geological time-spans they happen with unnerving frequency. Add to that the inherent ability of human beings to make mistakes, and every nuclear power station on the planet becomes a potential catastrophe in the making.
In the space of thirty years we’ve experienced Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now, Fukushima. At least, those are the ones we’ve heard about.
It’s time we said a loud and insistent, “NO!” to nuclear power, once and for all.
Same old, same old
Man’s inhumanity to man
Nuclear insanity