THE PRICE OF ‘SELECTIVE INATTENTION’ – IRAQ, UKAINE, LIBYA AND THE CLIMATE APOCALYPSE<\/strong><\/p>\n Humanity\u2019s great Achilles\u2019 heel, the flaw that may well determine our fate, was summed up in a couple of lines in the classic Simon & Garfunkel\u00a0song<\/strong><\/a>, \u2018The Boxer\u2019:<\/p>\n \u2018Still a man hears what he wants to hear Women, too! Erich Fromm discussed this remarkable phenomenon of \u2018selective inattention\u2019: man\u2019s capacity for \u2018not observing what he does not want to observe; hence, that he may be sincere in denying a knowledge which he would have, if he wanted only to have it\u2019. (Fromm, \u2018Beyond The Chains Of Illusion\u2019, Abacus, 1989, p.94)<\/p>\n A key influence shaping the \u2018selective inattention\u2019 of corporate journalism was described by Lord Halifax:<\/p>\n \u2018A Man that should call every thing by its right Name, would hardly pass the Streets without being knock\u2019d down as a common Enemy.\u2019 (Lord Halifax, \u2018The Complete Works Of George Savile Marquess of Halifax\u2019, Digital Library of India, 1912, p.246)<\/em><\/p>\n For example, the truth of the 2003 conquest of Iraq was so criminal, so brutal, so shameful, that a journalist who \u2018should call everything by its right Name\u2019 certainly risked being \u2018knock\u2019d down\u2019 from his or her salaried perch. So what\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0the truth?<\/p>\n General John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM with responsibility for Iraq,\u00a0commented<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Of course it\u2019s about oil, it\u2019s very much about oil, and we can\u2019t really deny that.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In 2007, US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said:<\/p>\n \u2018People say we\u2019re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America\u2019s national interest. What the hell do you think they\u2019re talking about? We\u2019re not there for figs.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n This has always been pretty much obvious, but corporate journalists have never seriously discussed it, just as they have never discussed who eventually got their hands on Iraqi oil. You wouldn\u2019t guess from the blanket silence that any casual reader can Google \u2018BP and Iraq\u2019 and immediately find\u00a0this<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018In 2009, bp became the first international oil company to return to Iraq after a period of 35 <\/em>\u200e<\/em>years\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018<\/em>\u200e<\/em>Today, bp, PetroChina and BOC are working in partnership to develop Rumaila, the <\/em>\u200e<\/em>second-largest producing field in the world, estimated to have around 17 billion barrels of <\/em>\u200e<\/em>recoverable oil remaining.<\/em>\u200e<\/em>\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Or that anyone can Google \u2018Exxon and Iraq\u2019 and find\u00a0this<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018In January 2010, ExxonMobil Iraq Limited (EMIL), an affiliate of Exxon Mobil Corporation, signed an agreement with the South Oil Company of the Iraq Ministry of Oil to rehabilitate and redevelop the West Qurna I field in southern Iraq\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018In October 2011, ExxonMobil signed six Production Sharing Contracts covering more than 848,000 acres in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n This week,\u00a0while<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0South Asia\u2019s unprecedented heat wave \u2018leaves a billion people in danger of related health problems\u2019, the BBC and other media\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018BP\u2019s profits for the first three months of this year have more than doubled after oil and gas prices soared.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018The energy giant reported an underlying profit of $6.2bn (\u00a34.9bn) compared to $2.6bn in the same period last year \u2013 ahead of expectations.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Journalists are not stupid: they know they cannot call the lie-driven, mass-murdering, Iraq oil grab \u2018by its right Name\u2019. Instead, \u2018a man hears what he wants to hear\u2019 \u2013\u00a0\u2018this\u2019<\/em>career-friendly topic is \u2018important\u2019,\u00a0\u2018that\u2019<\/em>\u00a0career-hostile topic is\u2026 simply ignored. They select and avoid themes and emphases in a way that protects their salaries, security, prospects, careers. Thus, even on truly momentous issues like the destruction and robbery of Iraq at the cost of one million lives, all journalists, facing the same pressures, fall silent,\u00a0everywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n Consider, also, the war in Ukraine. The overwhelming impression given by essentially all US-UK state-corporate media is that this is an almost biblical battle between Good and Evil, between David and Goliath, with Zelensky in a career-defining role as Che Guevara, complete with green combat T-shirt and fatigues. Zelensky (or Zelenskiy, or Zelenskyy) is presented as a latter-day saint to such an extent that journalists initially appeared terrified that they might misspell his name and be subject to politically corrective \u2018cancellation\u2019.<\/p>\n For fear of being lumped in with the \u2018common Enemy\u2019, almost no journalist is willing to offer the far more plausible assertion that this is, in fact, a battle between Goliath and Super Goliath; with the impoverished, powerless civilian population of Ukraine \u2013 exactly the kind of people traditionally viewed as \u2018unpeople\u2019 by the billionaire Western elites who stole the oil from Iraq\u2019s \u2018unpeople\u2019 \u2013 being ruthlessly sacrificed by both sides in a classically inhuman Great Power struggle.<\/p>\n Journalists know that this cannot be discussed. The West has simply invested too many billions to control Ukrainian \u2018democracy\u2019, sent too many weapons ($20 billion more\u00a0on the way<\/strong><\/a>); and, having defied the US in Syria, Putin is far too bitter an enemy. And so the typical editor and journalist believes, or claims to believe, what best suits them and their careers, and \u2018disregards the rest\u2019.<\/p>\n Not, it has to be said, without clear signs of self-awareness and embarrassment.<\/p>\n David Aaronovitch of The Times, for example, has had comparatively little to say about Ukraine. He knows that if he noisily condemns Russia\u2019s war of aggression, critics will politely ask how Russia\u2019s crime is worse than the US-UK wars of aggression\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0eagerly supported. He knows he has no answer. On the other hand, he has to say\u00a0something<\/em>. But what? In his column in The Times, Aaronovitch\u00a0commented<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>recently:<\/p>\n \u2018But ordinary people also invest, albeit more gently, in official lies. If you want to have a quiet life and not be complicit in crime, you square the circle by denying the criminality and backing the leader.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Astonishing comments for anyone who has read Aaronovitch over the last 30 years. But even this was topped by his critique of Russian media:<\/p>\n \u2018A genuinely independent media, uncontrolled and uncontrollable by government or politicians, operating to high standards of evidence and promoting debate, is a primary guarantee of our democracy.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Without it we are all \u2013 bar the bravest of us \u2013 in danger of becoming accomplices.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Wonderful sentiments. And published in Murdoch\u2019s flagship viewspaper, The Times; the press equivalent of writing from an address that ends \u2018Mount Doom, The Black Land of Mordor, Middle Earth\u2019.<\/p>\n In the Guardian, Adam Tooze, professor of history at Columbia University, argues that the US position is:<\/p>\n \u2018If\u00a0Russia<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has chosen to smash itself on the rock of Ukraine, if Ukraine is willing to fight, so be it.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n And yet Tooze writes of US \u2018aid\u2019 to Ukraine:<\/p>\n \u2018The sums of money being contemplated in Washington are enormous \u2013 a total of $47bn, the equivalent of one third of Ukraine\u2019s prewar GDP.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Given this vast level of superpower investment, does anyone seriously believe that Ukraine has a choice on whether to keep fighting or not?<\/p>\n Learning To Say \u2018Welcome\u2019 In Ukrainian<\/strong><\/p>\n On March 21, children\u2019s author and poet Michael Rosen\u00a0tweeted<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>an appeal, short and sweet, to his readers:<\/p>\n \u2018We are learning how to say<\/em><\/p>\n welcome<\/em><\/p>\n in Ukrainian.<\/em><\/p>\n Could we learn to say it in<\/em><\/p>\n some other languages too?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In reality, it is not so much that we have been \u2018learning\u2019 to welcome Ukrainians. Rather, we have been taught, trained, all but commanded to care for them by a mega-tsunami of openly biased state-corporate propaganda rooted, not in sentiment, not in love, but in Great Power politics.<\/p>\n According to the authoritative Tyndall Report, in March, the evening news programmes of the three dominant US television networks\u00a0devoted<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0more coverage to the war in Ukraine than in any other month during all wars, including those in which the US military was directly engaged, since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq:<\/p>\n \u2018Combined, the three networks \u2014 ABC, CBS, and NBC \u2014 devoted 562 minutes to the first full month of the war in Ukraine. That was more time than in the first month of the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 (240 mins), its intervention in Somalia in 1992 (423 mins), and even the first month of its invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001 (306 minutes), according to a commentary published Thursday by Andrew Tyndall, who has monitored and coded the three networks\u2019 nightly news each weekday since 1988.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Tyndall observed:<\/p>\n \u2018Astonishingly, the two peak months of coverage of the [2003] Iraq war each\u00a0saw less saturated coverage\u00a0than last month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March of 2003 and 455 minutes in April). The only three months of war coverage in the last 35 years that have been more intensive than last month were Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 (1,208 minutes) and his subsequent removal in January and February 1991 (1,177 and 1,033 minutes respectively).\u2019 (Our emphasis)<\/em><\/p>\n In March, these three broadcasters devoted about a third more time to foreign news than they have in recent years \u2018when international news coverage has fallen to all-time lows\u2019. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has, thus, \u2018overturned all normal patterns of journalistic response\u2019. Other stories received minimal attention: North Korean missile tests, the China East airliner crash, U.S.-China talks (which also focused on Ukraine), and Venezuela\u2019s release of two US oil executives.<\/p>\n It is quite wrong to call this coverage \u2018news\u2019. As Glenn Greenwald\u00a0tweeted<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018The vast majority of claims and beliefs about Ukraine come from one of two sources:<\/em><\/p>\n \u20181) corporate media using the anonymous \u201cUS officials said\u201d framework to disseminate unverified claims;<\/em><\/p>\n \u20182) think tank \u201cscholars\u201d funded by Western governments.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n A tragicomic element is added by the fact that the same commentators unwilling to call the Ukraine war \u2018by its right Name\u2019 also have a track record of not calling the\u00a0West\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0record of war \u2018by its right Name\u2019.<\/p>\n The picture illustrating this media alert indicates a prime example: The Economist magazine supported US-UK wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya with gung-ho covers such as: \u2018The case for war\u2019 and \u2018WHY WAR WOULD BE JUSTIFIED\u2019. But in response to Russia\u2019s war of aggression, The Economist\u2019s stark, text-free cover depicted the Ukrainian flag dripping with blood.<\/p>\n Apparently inspired by Chaplin\u2019s heart-rending anti-war speech in \u2018The Great Dictator\u2019, Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California and star of the film \u2018Jingle All The Way\u2019,\u00a0reached<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0out to the Russian people:<\/p>\n \u2018The strength and the heart of the Russian people have always inspired me. That is why I hope that you will let me tell you the truth about the war in Ukraine.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Arnie\u2019 pleaded with Russians to open their eyes and hearts, to see the propaganda for what it so clearly was:<\/p>\n \u2018This is an illegal war. Your lives, your limbs, your futures have been sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In 2003, the same Gandhian peace activist visited US troops in Iraq to celebrate their invasion,\u00a0commenting<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Congratulations for saying \u201chasta la vista, baby\u201d to Saddam Hussein. I play the Terminator, but you guys are the true terminators.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n True enough, the invasion eventually\u00a0terminated<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0more than one million Iraqi lives.<\/p>\n In 2004, as mass death engulfed Iraq, Schwarzenegger visited Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany,\u00a0telling<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0US troops:<\/p>\n \u2018Do you know how they translate \u201cRamstein\u201d in the English language? It means, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna kick some ass\u201d.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Before being suspended from Twitter for Thought Crimes (as determined by a corporate ethical arbiter\u00a0worth<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0$44bn), former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter\u00a0noted<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018The assistant division commander of 1st Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, John Kelly, expresses shock at Russia\u2019s \u201cunprovoked invasion of Ukraine\u201d, noting that anyone who violates international law in such a manner is \u201ca thug\u201d.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In similar vein, Fox News host Harris Faulkner turned sagely to former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and\u00a0commented<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with regard to Putin:<\/p>\n \u2018When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Rice nodded in solemn agreement. She, of course, had played a leading role in the US invasion of sovereign Iraq \u2013 one of history\u2019s greatest war crimes, a classic war of aggression.<\/p>\n Unlimited examples of such surreal hypocrisy abound. In the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley\u00a0fulminated<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018A large and despotic power is hurling its military might at a smaller, democratic neighbour.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Rawnsley continued:<\/p>\n \u2018The barbaric battering of Ukraine is the savage expression of a global contest for the soul of our planet. It is a struggle between the democracies and an axis of autocracies led by China and Russia who seek to impose their authoritarian systems not only on their own populations, but on people beyond their borders.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In the corner defending the \u2018soul of our planet\u2019, then, \u2018the democracies\u2019: the great, imperial US Rogue State and the vassal states that do its bidding (\u2018the international community\u2019), the UK among them. Nothing\u00a0at all<\/em>\u00a0has changed in the century and more since Mark Twain observed:<\/p>\n \u2018I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonoured from pirate-raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her the soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.\u2019 (Quoted, Norman Solomon, \u2018The Twain That Most Americans Never Meet,\u2019 ZNet Commentary, 19 November 1999)<\/em><\/p>\n In 2011, Rawnsley\u00a0responded<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>to Nato\u2019s overthrow of the Libyan government:<\/p>\n \u2018Libyans now have a chance to take the path of freedom, peace and prosperity, a chance they would have been denied were we to have walked on by when Muammar Gaddafi was planning his rivers of blood. Britain and her allies broadly got it right in Libya.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In reality, this was a clear example of powers \u2018large and despotic\u2019 imposing their \u2018authoritarian systems\u2026 on people beyond their borders\u2019. The threatened \u2018rivers of blood\u2019 were all fake. On 9 September 2016, even a UK foreign affairs committee\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018the proposition that Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence\u2019.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Libya currently produces around 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. Its main export markets are in southern Europe and China. In 2011, Real News interviewed Kevin G. Hall, the national economics correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, who had studied WikiLeaked material on Libya. Hall said:<\/p>\n \u2018As a matter of fact, we went through 251,000 [leaked] documents\u2026 Of those, a full 10 percent of them, a full 10 percent of those documents, reference in some way, shape, or form oil.\u2019 (\u2018WikiLeaks reveals US wanted to keep Russia out of Libyan oil,\u2019 The Real News, 11 May 2011)<\/em><\/p>\n Hall concluded:<\/p>\n \u2018It is all about oil.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In August 2020, Middle East correspondent, Bethan McKernan,\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the Guardian under the title, \u2018Gaddafi\u2019s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya\u2019s oil\u2019.<\/p>\n McKernan noted that, in August 2011, two months before his murder, Gaddafi had delivered a speech calling on his supporters to defend the country from foreign invaders:<\/p>\n \u2018There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan land, to colonise Libya once again.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Nine years on, McKernan commented, \u2018Gaddafi\u2019s proclamation is not far from the truth\u2019 \u2013 \u2018a constellation of emboldened regional powers has descended on Libya\u2019, a \u2018potential showdown over control of Libya\u2019s oil wealth is looming\u2019. At stake: \u2018the largest oil reserves in the entire African continent. The majority of the country\u2019s oilfields are in the Sirte basin, worth billions of dollars a year\u2019.<\/p>\n This was a vanishingly rare \u2018mainstream\u2019 reference to the fate of Libyan oil.<\/p>\n In 2018, Frank Baker, UK Ambassador to Libya, penned an\u00a0article<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0titled: \u2018Libya: UK leads the way as Libya re-opens for business\u2019. Baker commented of a Libyan British Business Council [LBBC] event:<\/p>\n \u2018The LBBC event \u2013 themed, \u201cBuilding Bridges Together\u201d \u2013 brought together over 60 representatives of the UK oil and gas industry to meet more than 120 of their Libyan business counterparts. I am delighted to hear some of the leading British oil companies are gradually resuming their work in Libya to support the NOC\u2019s [the Libyan National Oil Company] goal of increasing oil production to 2 million barrels a day by 2020\u2026 In 2017, trade between the UK and Libya more than doubled (up 138%).\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Also in 2018, Bloomberg\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018In another sign the sector is stabilizing, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc have agreed to annual deals to buy Libyan crude.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Last November, Reuters\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that \u2018Shell eyes return to Libya with oil, gas, solar investments\u2019. This week, as the planet burns, the BBC\u00a0supplied<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0more happy news:<\/p>\n \u2018Energy giant Shell has reported its highest ever quarterly profits as oil and gas prices surge around the world.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Shell made $9.13bn (\u00a37.3bn) in the first three months of the year, nearly triple its $3.2bn profit it announced for the same period last year.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In the Guardian, Simon Tisdall\u00a0observed<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018In terms of democratic norms and human rights, the full or partial subjugation of Ukraine would spell disaster for the international rules-based order \u2013 and a triumph for autocrats everywhere.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Compare with Tisdall on the invasion of Iraq. In 2005, two years into the bloody occupation, he was bursting with optimism:<\/p>\n \u2018Groundbreaking elections in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Palestine and Iraq, extolled in President Bush\u2019s \u201cdawn of freedom\u201d inaugural address, have encouraged western hopes that democratic values are gaining universal acceptance.\u2019 (Tisdall, \u2018Bush\u2019s democratic bandwagon hits a roadblock in Harare,\u2019 The Guardian, February 16, 2005)<\/em><\/p>\n Tisdall later\u00a0commented<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on Nato\u2019s subjugation of Libya:<\/p>\n \u2018The Arab spring had claimed another infamous scalp. The risky western intervention had worked. And Libya was liberated at last.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In 2018 Tisdall\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s time for Britain and its allies to take concerted, sustained military action to curb Bashar al-Assad\u2019s ability to murder Syria\u2019s citizens at will.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n What did that mean?<\/p>\n \u2018It means destroying Assad\u2019s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad\u2019s and Russia\u2019s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Sentiments surely being echoed now, word-for-word, by Tisdall\u2019s Russian equivalents as they call for an escalation of Putin\u2019s \u2018disaster for the international rules-based order\u2019.<\/p>\n Although Britain is not technically at war \u2013 certainly no one is bombing Britain or attacking UK armed forces \u2013 \u2018man of the people\u2019 and staunch Nato supporter, Paul Mason, was\u00a0initially<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0incandescent with rage that Russian media had not been censored:<\/p>\n \u2018Right now RT is telling blatant lies about Ukrainian fascists using Mariupol residents as human shields\u2026 with no evidence and over a looped generic shot of conflict damage. Why is it still on the air @ofcom? Why is it still on @YouTube?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Mason\u2019s wishes soon came to pass. Quite what the danger is, we don\u2019t know: the British war effort cannot be undermined by Russian propaganda for the simple reason that \u2018we\u2019 are not at war.<\/p>\n Of course, Mason would never say anything comparable of the BBC, the Guardian, The Times, or the Telegraph. But why not? After all, who told us that Saddam had lethal weapons of mass destruction, that they could be fired within 45 mins, that Gaddafi was planning a massacre in Benghazi and ordering Viagra-fuelled mass rape?<\/p>\n In 2017, Mason\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018David Cameron was right to take military action to stop Gaddafi massacring his own people during the Libyan uprising of 2011: the action was sanctioned by the UN, proportionate, had no chance of escalating into an occupation.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n As we have seen, this was fake news.<\/p>\n With Russian tennis players \u2013 including a favourite for the men\u2019s singles title \u2013\u00a0banned<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from competing at Wimbledon, we wonder if the All England Lawn Tennis Club will be cancelling the trophy won by Scotsman Andy Murray in 2013, shortly after Britain wrecked Libya in the process of liberating its oil. To his credit, Murray has refused to support the Wimbledon ban, but should\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0be allowed to play, given Britain\u2019s criminal role in Saudi Arabia\u2019s\u00a0devastation<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of famine-stricken Yemen?<\/p>\n In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland\u00a0implored<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>his readers:<\/p>\n \u2018This, then, is the choice. Do we want to live in the world described by Zelenskiy, where democratic states are protected by an international system of rules, however flawed and inconsistent that system might be? Or do we want to live in Putin\u2019s world, governed by the law of the jungle and where the only right is might?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Freedland emoted:<\/p>\n \u2018We think we know which side we\u2019re on. We want to stand with those bleary-eyed children, clutching their colouring books as they bed down in a Kyiv subway station. We tell ourselves we stand with them and against Putin and his war of aggression.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In 2011,\u00a0writing<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from the dark heart of the same lawless jungle he affects to deplore, Freedland was more upbeat:<\/p>\n \u2018Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong \u2013 Not to respond to Gaddafi\u2019s chilling threats would leave us morally culpable, but action in Libya is fraught with danger\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Alas, there was no \u2018international system of rules\u2019 to protect the Libyan people from the catastrophe inflicted by Nato and the oil-hungry corporations it was serving. Freedland continued:<\/p>\n \u2018The grimmer prospect is that Putin understands something about the 21st century few of us want to face: that this is an age of impunity, especially for those who have a vast and deadly arsenal but no shame.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Remembering the Nuremberg tribunals, and being himself one of the beneficiaries in this \u2018age of impunity\u2019, we can only say: You said it, Jonathan!<\/p>\n Lindsay Hilsum, Channel 4\u2019s international news editor,\u00a0tweeted<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>a comment from Rossiya 1, Russia\u2019s most popular TV channel:<\/p>\n \u2018Today Russia has begun a special military operation aimed at protecting people who for the last eight years have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Hilsum\u2019s horrified comment:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/rsz_the_economist-e1651739312430-300x146.jpg\")
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\n\u2018And disregards the rest.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n