November
13, 2016, as this viewer waited for an exciting game between the New
England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks to begin, and listened to the
Star Spangled Banner, the TV camera brought into focus a US flag so huge
that it covered the entire playing field. This brought a flash back to
2011, and an even larger mile long green national flag of Libya held
above the heads of thousands among a near million Libyans wildly
demonstrating on the outskirts of Tripoli for their revolutionary hero
Gaddafi and their Green Book Arab Socialist wealthy nation as British
and French warplanes and warships bombed Tripoli and Libya's defense
force and militias, and hunted its beloved revolutionary leader, who had
brought their Libya up from the poorest nation in Africa to its
richest, an independent African nation with a UN Quality of Life Index
higher than nine European countries including Russia.[1]
The
difference between the flag featured in a pre-game show of proud and
comfortable patriotism with young Americans smartly saluting, and the
flag honorded in a flash back to 2011 and a small African nation's brave
and desperate show of patriotism is of course an explosive difference.
Americans like any other nation's citizens should want to be happy and proud of their country.
Americans unlike
the citizens of other nations (so very many of which have been bombed
and or invaded by Americans), are at the same time citizens of the
single superpower whose leaders demand the right to police all other
nations.
Therein
lies a bit of a hitch. Americans help draft a set of laws in 1945 under
which the leaders of a nation whose leaders had demanded and pursued
the right to police other nations with bombings and invasions were
prosecuted in an international court of justice. When Americans salute
their flag (often as US warplanes soar overhead), are they saluting as
well a government whose leaders claim the right to bomb and invade at
their own discretion in defiance of the very Nuremberg Principles of
International Law used by the USA and other members of the United
Nations to hang leaders and media celebrities of Nazi Germany?[2]
Then
too, your author always assumed that everyone's mother and father
taught their children not to go into someone else's home uninvited, let
alone go in and break something or push anyone around.
With
this recollection in mind, this writer watched to see if any of these
wonderful football stars were kneeling instead of standing at attention
during the playing of the national anthem.
Post Script: Some game! Seattle by only a few points.
End Notes
1.
The massive rallies of nearly a million within a total Libyan
population of a little over six million, expressed the Libyan people's
firm opposition to US led NATO's 'humanitarian intervention' to such an
astounding degree that Libya's well educated personable spokesperson
Seif Gadaffi seemed happily convinced that the NATO attack would have to
end in the face of such huge demonstrations against it.
Your author
shall never forget seeing on a European news site, an overjoyed Saif
Gaddafi elated, smiling happily, trilled, relieved, convinced that the
nightmare was over because a million, or more Libyans in a total
population of little more than six, were wildly demonstrating with green
flags for Gaddafi and their Jamahiriva or green book government on the
outskirts of Tripoli even as NATO warplanes bombed within earshot. His
elation was contagious, and for a moment or two I too naively thought
yes, they would have to stop bombing for this overwhelming evidence that
it was wrong.
Then I remembered the incredible seeming omniscient
ability of Western media to blackout news. Of course, with world opinion
always in it craw, 'mainstream media' simply never reported these
massive demonstrations for Gaddafi and against the US NATO UN sponsored
continuous bombing then already at this juncture three and half months
long. (Non-Western media covering the demonstrations did note that the
bombings of Tripoli "had declined since the rise of the marches in
Tripoli with a shift to increased bombing of other parts of Libya.")
.
Readers
may view a few of the non-Western reports with videos and photos and if
interested read the full translation of Gaddafi's long speech of July
1, 2011 and HUGE PRO GADDAFI RALLY IN TRIPOLI - RAW FOOTAGE, 7/2/2011, www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=14505 or videos can be seen with Gadaffi addressing the multitude by hookup to remote location at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSnlIlATIKw and
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3lJAbRkzQ4
Neither would conglomerate US media ever
report that only one month BEFORE Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
gloating and bragging as having had a hand in Gadaffi's (brutal) death,
long term Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had made an abject
belated public confession, speaking before Italian reporters regarding
huge Italian protests against NATO's war on Libya and its current
relentless terror bombing during a strike for better work conditions in
Rome in which the cry of union members was, "There is a silent massacre
going on in Libya!" and "Don't let Sirte, Bani Walid and Sebha become
the new Fallujah or the new Guernica".
Berlusconi, also known to own ninety percent of Italian media, confessed
as follows: "Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi hasn't been the victim of a
popular uprising!" That is the conviction of Italian Prime Minister
Silvio
Berlusconi, who has been a friend of Gaddafi till Italy became one of
the leading countries behind NATO's war against Libya in March spoke as
follows:
"This has nothing to do with a popular uprising. The
Libyan people love Gaddafi, as I was able to see when I went to Libya",
Berlusconi said on Friday during a party meeting in Rome.
He said he suspects there was a plot against Gaddafi.
"Powerful
people decided to give life to a new era by trying to oust Gaddafi,"
Berlusconi said, according to Italian news agency ANSA. Earlier, in July,
Berlusconi already said he was against NATO intervention in Libya but
"had to go along with it", therewith exposing the fragility of the
alliance trying to murder Gaddafi.
He added: "What choice did I have
considering America's pressure, President Georgio Napolitano's stance,
and the Parliament's decision?" [Berlusconi says Libyans love Qaddafi: as Italians protest against NATO, Voltairenet.org www.voltairenet.org/article171382.html]
Let the reader look at a peaceful and prosperous Libya, just five weeks
before the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was urging the UN
Security Council vote to bomb it, to the first week of February 2011,
when the UN Quality of Life Index of 2010 had Libya ranked the 53rd
highest nation, ahead of nine European nations (including Russia), a
beautiful well kept Arab Socialist country, where everyone owned their
own home, enjoyed free and modern health care, free good education up
through PhD, a low infant mortality, the cheapest imaginable gasoline
for cars - everyone was by law free from exploitation as even all wage
labor was strictly forbidden in the Libyan constitution of a real
decentralized democracy in which everyone participated at the local
assemblies level where all issues of state concern were discussed before
sending delegates to the central assembly of government in Tripoli.
Political parties, or gangs of foreign backed profession politicians,
were illegal.
Gaddafi's Libya was Africa's Most Prosperous Democracy, Zimbabwean
Garikai Chengu a fellow at the Du Bois Institute for African Research at
Harvard University, writes, "Contrary to popular belief, Libya, which
western media described as "Gaddafi's military dictatorship", was in
actual fact one of the world's most democratic States," and describes
this in detail. "Even the New York Times, which was always highly
critical of Colonel Gaddafi, conceded that in Libya, the intention was
that "everyone is involved in every decision." Tens of thousands of
people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote
on everything from foreign treaties to building schools."
CNN, NY Times et al. have never reported that Libya, as opposed to
desperately poor Egypt and Yemen had been enjoying a higher standard of
living than nine European nations including Russia. Rather, they
continued emphasizing Western media concocted misnomer 'Arab Spring' and
long term condemnation of Gaddafi over his entire four decades of
leadership of Libya and funding the movement for African Union as it
Chairman.
For almost as long as Cuba's Fidel Castro, Gaddafi had been slandered in
the world's monolithic corporate powerful daily news media by innuendo
and lies denigrating Gaddafi ever since 1969, when he led the bloodless
revolution that replaced a British imposed King with a solid Arab
socialist government. Using revenue from the oil that had been
previously stolen by Britten and France, Gaddafi brought ht Libya up
from the poorest to the most prosperous nation in Africa, and was
building the largest Aquifer ever created. A great underground river was
bringing water to Benghazi and greening the desert.
Gaddafi had revived Nkruma's African Union and was funding organizations
that were fighting against the genocidal machinations of continuing
European exploitation of Africa through financing tribal strife as the
colonial powers have always done. Gaddafi was blocking US military's
AFRICON penetration in North Africa. Highly dangerous for the US and
European establishment, Libya had begun minting part of the 44 billion
US$ in gold held in Libya's State Bank, threatening the US dollar as
world currency.
Gaddafi, whose position officially was Defender of the Revolution, had
made himself a greater target of assassination and vilification than
Fidel Castro was for the speculative investors in neocolonial plundering
who dominate the planet. In addition, Gaddafi, by his recent apology to
African leaders on behalf of Arab nations for past Arab involvement in
the African slave trade had infuriated extremists in neighboring Arab
nations tightly allied with, and serving the foreign policy of Western
powers.
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