DOES RAPE CHARGE = INVASION?

 

LIBYA - Behind the phony ICC 'rape' charges: ARE NATO FORCES PREPARING A GROUND ATTACK?

The following is an article by Sara Flounders for    International Action Center.

        Without presenting a shred of reliable evidence, NATO and International Criminal Court conspirators are charging the Libyan government with conspiracy to rape -- not only rape as the "collateral damage" of war, but rape as a political weapon.

This charge of an orchestrated future campaign of rapes was made at a major press conference called by the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on June 8, 2011. The even wilder unsubstantiated ICC charge that Libya plans to mass distribute Viagra to its troops confirms this as the most tawdry and threadbare form of war propaganda.

          It is important to understand that NATO countries with the full complicity of the corporate media and the ICC are spreading this Big Lie in order to win support for and close down all opposition to a ground assault of Libya, something that would otherwise be unpopular both in Europe and the United States. This wild charge adds to the evidence of a massive escalation in bombing urban targets in Libya, the use of British and French helicopters that give close support to ground troops and the positioning in the Mediterranean off Libya of U.S. warships that can quickly land troops. The NATO alliance is desperate to put Libya beyond all discussion or defense and raise the NATO war to the level of a Holy Crusade to defend women.

         The charge of rape as a political weapon was spread -- without evidence -- against Serb forces to justify U.S. plans for the first NATO bombing campaign in the history of the military alliance in 1994 in Bosnia and was used again in 1999 in Serbia in the first NATO occupation. The rape charge was used to soften up the U.S. and European population for the criminal war against Yugoslavia. Now a similar plan is in the works for Libya.

        All too often widely fabricated lies are spread to justify imperialist wars. In 1991 the first war against Iraq was justified by outrageous charges that the Iraqi army had grabbed Kuwaiti babies from incubators and smashed the babies to the floor. This was presented as reliable “testimony” to in the U.S. Congress and in the UN. Months later it was confirmed as a total fabrication. But the lie had served its purpose. In 2001 the corporate media and U.S. politicians claimed that they had to bomb and then massively occupy Afghanistan to win rights for women that the Taliban taken away. The situation for women in Afghanistan and for the entire population has deteriorated further under U.S. / NATO occupation.

       Despite video and photo evidence that the entire world has seen through WikiLeaks, the International Criminal Court has never considered for a moment filing criminal charges against U.S. British, French or German troops. The pictures, videos and reports in major newspapers of sexual torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by U.S. soldiers, the testimony by the U.S. soldiers involved in rapes, tortures, mutilations and executions in Iraq and Afghanistan confirms the brutal reality of U.S. wars. These wars have never been to ‘save’ women.

      As an African country, Libya can hardly expect a fair hearing or any form of justice from the ICC. The International Criminal Court created with high hopes of international justice in 2002 has been used against 7 countries – all in Africa. Meanwhile, the ICC has never examined U.S. drone attacks on defenseless civilians in at least 8 African, Arab and South Asian countries. Nor has it even touched U.S. invasions and occupations. Israeli bombing of the Palestinian people is “off limits”.

        This is an essential time to remind all people concerned about the rights of women that U.S. intervention or any imperialist intervention has never protected women. Even women serving within the U.S. military machine are not “safe”. According to a study published by the Journal of Military Medicine, 71 per cent of women soldiers have been sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the U.S. military. Women who have been assaulted consistently report poor medical treatment, lack of counseling, incomplete criminal investigations and threats of punishment for reporting the assaults. In 2009 the Pentagon admitted that approximately 80 per cent of rapes are never reported – making it the most under-documented crime in the military. In addition U.S. military bases are all too often surrounded by an entire sex industry of abused women forced by hunger, dislocation and lost families into work in bars and clubs.

      Rape in every society has little connection to sexuality and desire. It has always been about imposing power and domination. The "political rape" charge in this case makes no sense and has no basis beyond the U.S.-NATO desire to justify expanding the war against Libya.

Stop U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya.

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POWER IS NOT A MEANS, IT IS AN END.

     

      History:  Dec. 2, 1823:

       United States announces Monroe Doctrine: essentially, that the US is entitled to do whatever it wants in Western Hemisphere.

       Quote: 

      "No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." -- George Orwell - 1984

       With Iraq still burning and Afghanistan still a murder zone it is difficult to visualise a world without war and more difficult to contain your anger when you look at the part played in this world carnage by an American lead West. The shear brutal force unleashed on the innocent Iraqi people and the continuing slaughter of the Afghan people is just a follow on from other brutal American acts of imperialism. We should not forget the Vietnam slaughter, what the Vietnamese went through was the longest war in recent history.

        The following extract from John Pilger's excellent article on this war and its aftermath, found on "informationclearinghousereminds" reminds us of the part played by our own Margaret Thatcher in adding to the misery of the Vietnamese people after the war.

         “ ---- I walked down into the rain and followed the children through a labyrinth to the Young Flower School, an orphanage. A teacher hurriedly assembled a small choir and I was greeted with a burst of singing. "What are the words of the song?" I asked Tran, whose father was a GI. He looked gravely at the floor, as nine year olds do, before reciting words that left my interpreter shaking her head. "Planes come no more," she repeated, "do not weep for those just born … the human being is evergreen."

       The year was 1978. Vietnam was then being punished for seeing off the last American helicopter gunship, the war’s creation, the last B52 with its ladders of bombs silhouetted against the flash of their carnage, the last C-130s that had dumped, the US Senate was told, "a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, destroying much of the ecosystem and causing a fatal catastrophe," the last of a psychosis that made village after village a murder scene.

        And when it was all over on May Day, 1975, Hollywood began its long celebration of the invaders as victims, the standard purgative, while revenge was policy. Vietnam was classified as "Category Z" in Washington, which imposed the draconian Trading with the Enemy Act from the first world war. This ensured that even Oxfam America was barred from sending humanitarian aid. Allies pitched in. One of Margaret Thatcher’s first acts on coming to power in 1979 was to persuade the European Community to halt its regular shipments of food and milk to Vietnamese children. According to the World Health Organization, a third of all infants under five so deteriorated following the milk ban that the majority of them were stunted or likely to be. Almost none of this was news in the west.---”

 

 

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