Australian government affirms support for Afghan war after bin Laden killing

Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

[The Prime Minister Julia Gillard travelled to Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan to visit Australian soldiers based there. (AdelaideNow, October 04, 2010)]

The Australian Labor government has seized on the death of Osama bin Laden on Sunday to again emphasise its commitment to the indefinite occupation of Afghanistan.

Having previously stated her intention to keep Australian troops fighting in the neo-colonial war for the next ten years, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has now declared that the “one message we should take from all of this [i.e., bin Laden’s killing] is persistence pays.”

Like their American counterparts, senior figures in the Australian political and media establishment have rushed to glorify the US military, while voicing their enthusiasm for the killing of the Al Qaeda leader.

The Labor government’s response was marked by an open contempt for any consideration of basic precepts of international law. Gillard was interviewed on ABC Radio yesterday and casually referred to bin Laden being “executed.”

While admitting that she was not privy to the details of the US operation, the prime minister condemned bin Laden for using his wife as a “human shield”—an allegation the White House has since admitted was false. “As I understand the report, it is said someone used a woman as a human shield,” Gillard declared. “Whoever did it is, obviously, what a huge moral wrong and what a despicable act.”

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd was asked if the world was “now a safer place” and replied: “I think the core question is fulfilling our legal responsibilities, to bring to justice those who have committed acts of mass murder ... we have, therefore, together with our friends, partners and allies around the world, a legal obligation to bring such individuals to justice and his [bin Laden’s] case has taken nearly a decade.”

In reality, the Al Qaeda leader’s killing has nothing to do with “legal responsibilities” or delivering “justice” for the victims of his criminal activities. The US operation in Pakistan was a direct violation of international law—it is clear that the US special forces sent into bin Laden’s compound were on what has been described as a “kill mission.” The terrorist was not even armed when he was shot dead.


The killing of Osama bin Laden: Obama’s “historic moment”

David North
WSWS

Of all the images that have emerged from the morally unclean events of Sunday night, the most politically significant and, one has reason to believe, enduring will prove to be the official photograph, released by the White House, of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other high officials of the United States government seated together in the situation room as they witnessed the killing of Osama bin Laden and several other human beings, including one woman.

Normally, the witnesses to an execution are not photographed. But the White House clearly wanted this “historic moment” captured for posterity. The eyes of all the participants in this ghoulish tableau—with the exception of a military officer who is working his computer—are apparently focused on a television screen. Obama, leaning forward, is stone faced as he stares ahead. Gates wears the sour expression of a man who is too well acquainted with such operations. Hillary Clinton’s right hand is raised over her mouth, a gesture that betrays the horror of what is unfolding before her eyes.

After bin Laden had been liquidated, the White House and the media moved quickly to orchestrate the celebration of what was, in fact, an extra-legal state killing. The president chose the East Room to inform the nation, late Sunday night, of bin Laden’s death.

Obama, so desperately anxious to associate himself with the killing, no doubt believes that this is the “defining” event of his presidency. But what does this conception—so enthusiastically endorsed by the media—say about the political and moral condition of the government of the United States?


Media Lies and Misinformation on Bin Laden

Stephen Lendman


[This image may be a US government forgery.]

Corporate media manipulators love a big story they can hype, distort and falsify to attract large audiences, unaware they're getting managed news, not truth.

Moreover, the bigger the event, the worse the reporting, and no matter how often they're fooled, madding crowds rely on proved unreliable sources like US cable and broadcast TV, as well as corporate broadsheets and popular magazines publishing rubbish not fit to print.

After Obama's May day announcement, round-the-clock coverage now features "story one" ad nauseam, cheerleading the death of a dead man with no one allowed on to refute it. A previous article did, accessed through this link.

Separating fact from fiction, it explained:

(1) Significant facts from David Ray Griffin's important book titled, "Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" In it, he provided objective and testimonial evidence of his December 2001 death, likely from kidney failure, not a special forces hit squad getting their man then or now.
(2) Forensic evidence that post-9/11 videos and audios were fake.
(3) Bin Laden's role as a CIA asset, as well as called "Enemy Number One," using him advantageously both ways.
(4) Also, reports of his 2001 hospitalizations in Pakistan and Dubai where (in July) the emirate's CIA station chief visited him in his hospital room. Why not if he was a valued asset, his likely status until his natural, not violent, death.

Nonetheless, Western politicians and media, notably America's, never miss a chance to report fiction, not fact, especially on headline news like bin Laden's death, a decade after it happened.


Parable Y

Andrew Jeromski
The Fifth Dentist

We have seen the darkest of days.

We have seen our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers poisoned by the very air they breathe. We have watched the rivers and lakes turn stagnant. We have seen the earth rise up beneath us and swallow our cities whole. We have run from the churning seas when they would wash us away like grains of sand. We have stood both as victims and as accomplices; we have shared the same fate as those who bear the greatest blame for the state of our world. We have all finally become equal.

If there ever was such a being as “God,” he has long since abandoned us to our fate.

My father used to say: “There is no glory in banging your head against the wall. You’ll find that your skull will always yield first.”

He was right.

At first, as people started to grasp what was happening, there was a great uproar.

“They are destroying the environment for the sake of greed,” was a commonly heard term on network news shows. “They,” of course, being big business.

There were oil spills, nuclear meltdowns and documented cases of companies brazenly dumping volatile chemicals into water supplies. There were cancer clusters, workers with more toxic chemicals in their bloodstream than would be found in a year’s supply of 10W-30 motor oil and the ever-present slick black marine life, covered in petroleum, desperately trying to survive in a world that humans were killing at an increasingly rapid pace.


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