More breathtaking hypocrisy.................

[glasnost]

"Last month, at the international tribunal on crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor came to an end.

The chief prosecutor, U.S. law professor David Crane, informed The Times of London that the case was incomplete: The prosecutors intended to charge Moammar Gadhafi, who, Crane said, ?was ultimately responsible for the mutilation, maiming and/or murder of 1.2 million people.?

But the charge was not to be. The U.S., U.K. and others intervened to block it. Asked why, Crane said, ?Welcome to the world of oil.?"

NOAM CHOMSKY, 4 april 2011.

So are we all decided now the "allied" interventions are based on securing and/or maintaining oil supplies? The above news was censored in mainstream media. Hoorah for western democracy.

Could you link or signpost the full article? It's not clear why Taylor's trial at ICSL is "incomplete" - has a bit been elided? Thanks.

Chomsky article in full here

Thanks for the link: this remains somewhat opaque to me - Crane stood down from SCSL in 2005 - that would have been just after Ghadaffi ceased to be an international pariah when he abandoned his WMD programmes and allowed UN inspectors in: more than just oil going on.

Taylor's trial finished in November 2010 (verdict still awaited), so this article pre-dated the rebellion by some months.

"So are we all decided now the "allied" interventions are based on securing and/or maintaining oil supplies?"

No. We are not 'all decided'. If all we'd wanted was Libya's oil reserves we would have not bothered with years of sanctions and diplomacy and would be turning a blind eye to the current situation. I don't understand Crane's remark to be honest. It is vital that the UN is not seen as being on some anti-Arab anti-Muslim crusade which is why the support of the Arab League is key in all this and why Obama is so reluctant to take any kind of lead role. If Gaddafi is guilty of crimes against humanity, it is essential that it is his own Libyan people and not Western governments that initiate the process that brings him to justice. Should think that was obvious.

"ceased to be an international pariah"...you mean when he rolled over and had his tummy tickled by western powers and started buying arms off us. Right. One man's pariah is another man's ally in the "war against terror" (gives us oil accepting bribes here and there). The fact of US/UK blocking prosecution of Gadhafi a mere couple of months prior to the outbreak of civil war in Libya and the supposed allied defence of the rebels is the only issue here.

Chil your faith in all things good ole Brit is so touching. However, your persistence in doggedly defending "our" self serving hypocrisy is not and smacks to me of bad faith.

'Self-serving' simply means 'looking after our interests'. And 'hypocrisy' might be interpreted as sometimes having to be two-faced or unprincipled in order to achieve that. Be realistic. International politics is a messy, nasty business and whilst there are certain boundaries that I'd rather my government didn't cross, I don't want them passing up chances because they're sat in the morality corner having a fit of the vapours.

If we blocked prosecution of Gaddafi it is because we couldn't afford to be seen to be 'victimising' a leading Arab figure

International politics is a nasty, messy business precisely because of western governments double standards, hypocrisy, corruption and dodgy deals in cahoots with despots in oil rich countries. If they were only upfront and honest about it instead of lying to us as if we were all idiots with no capacity for critical, autonomous thought then we could have more of an adult debate. I for one don't want them wreaking havoc round the globe in the name of maintaining our relative prosperity and selfishly wasteful lifestyles. At the end of the day anyway they're keeping their corporate puppetmasters rich - not us - and anyone who thinks otherwise is misguided or misinformed.

The reality is the UK is a country where censorship and media manipulation is as rife as in certain others we profess to export democracy to. That's the main point I wanna make with this thread.

'Upfront and honest' guys tend to get knocked down in the crush, unfortunately. And if we the people were party to every conversation about every subject, every deal, every international plot twist and every threat, we'd probably be incapable of getting on with life. Censorship & media manipulation doesn't seem to have squashed this story very effectively, does it? And you've really got to think of a new phrase to replace 'corporate puppetmasters' glasnost, old bean. You're starting to sound hackneyed.

This story wasn't covered in the Brit press hence my comment re censorship. I read it on truthout.org/ that has recently been vandalised and had its contents deleted.

Moi, hackneyed? Methinks not old chilli bean. It's a sadly trite but true fact that governments are in thrall to corporate interests. The Exxons, the BPs, the Newscorporations, the Halliburtons. Yawn but true.

It was covered in the UK press - you just have to go back to 2004 when Crane was saying it, eg this BBC report. 2004 was however also the year that Tony Blair made his triumphal visit to Ghadaffi in Libya, offering all sorts of restored relations and apparently offering UK military training, in return for abandonment of WNd and co-operation in TWAT. There is far more than oil in the picture here, and from 2004 to the release of Al Megrahi is a very dubious period.

What is TWAT? Is that a New Labour thing?

The War Against Terror (the acronym was used on a poster in the early noughties).

thanks. I wouldn't have guessed that acronym.