Libya’s Link to Manchester’s Tragedy

Whenever a horrific terror attack hits the West, the media/political etiquette rejects any linkage between the atrocity and the West’s wars in the Arab world, a blackout now applying to the Manchester bombing, notes John Pilger.

By John Pilger

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this: The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was killed on Oct. 20, 2011, in Sirte, Libya.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review.”

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years. The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organization, which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida.”

The “smoking gun” is that when Prime Minister Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on May 22?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the May 22 attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial West and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

The ‘Manchester Boys’                                                   

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys.” Implacably opposed to Muammar Gaddafi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gaddafi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the fatal attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 12, 2012. (State Department photo)

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gaddafi in the 1990s – bankrolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the U.S. seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by NATO under cover of a United Nations resolution to “protect civilians.”

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa.” The Commons committee quoted what it called President Barack Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show.”

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show,” urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew … that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.” The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”

Destroying Libya

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 “strike sorties” of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the U.N. children’s organization, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were under the age of ten.”

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton honor the four victims of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony held at Andrews Air Force Base, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Sept. 14, 2012. [State Department photo)

More than “giving rise” to Islamic State — ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Tony Blair and George W. Bush invasion in 2003 — these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator,” or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To the Americans and British, Gaddafi’s true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the U.S. as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships.”

After losing control of Tripoli, Gaddafi fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was captured and sodomized with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as “a rebel.”

Having plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south, terrorizing towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida,” the menace they had helped create.

On Oct. 14, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending Special Forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, U.S. combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

Selling Weapons  

In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya.” The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies.” The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with British Prime Minister Theresa May in the White Room No. 10 Downing Street in London, U.K., on July 19, 2016. [State Department Photo]

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms, which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The Manchester atrocity on May 22 was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. “Iraq!” he said. “We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.”

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered “Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly. Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that “the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. … The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly”.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show,” so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on May 22.

The spin is back, not surprisingly: Salman Abedi acted alone; he was a petty criminal, no more than that; the extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed.” As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. His new film, “The Coming War on China,” is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com

50 comments for “Libya’s Link to Manchester’s Tragedy

  1. nathan
    June 5, 2017 at 15:09

    Some ‘facts’ are reported here (no sources, but could be true and verifiable). Some generalisations are asserted. However, too many implied links between the ‘facts’ and the consequences of the Manchester bombing and the wider issues in the Middle East. Political agenda needs to be left behind when reporting. Will look forward to a re write that is tighter and without any agenda.

  2. tony Catalioto
    June 4, 2017 at 10:44

    The attacks in Libya/Syria/Afghanistan, (Iran next) are smoke screens/False Flags. It is modern day colonization.

  3. Patricia Victour
    June 1, 2017 at 11:59

    Anyone with two brain cells to rub together has known for a long time exactly where ISIS, etc., etc., etc., came from – W’s illegal wars on Afghanistan/Iraq, followed by Libya, Syria, even Desert Storm by W’s dada. The chickens are coming home to roost in Britain and France, our enablers. But no one dares point the fingers, save sites like Consortiumnews and a few others, including RTAmerica/International on cable, if you’re lucky, or online. Just waiting now for the inevitable here in America – not if, but when, another attack. For a good understanding of the tragic Libyan story, read “Slouching Towards Sirte – NATO’s War on Libya and Africa,” by Maximilian Forte.

  4. June 1, 2017 at 06:11

    Thanks, F. G., for another of your very creative writings, this one more poignant, what a sad situation and so unknown to the propagandised American people. Stephen J., as always, thanks for your informative posts. We can be grateful that Ron Paul started his Institute, he is a truth teller.

    • mike k
      June 1, 2017 at 09:43

      Checked out Ron Paul’s Institute site. Interesting. I live in Ky. He seems to be a real independent in the senate, as distinct from the faux “socialist independent” Bernie Sanders. Bernie turns out to be a false light, like the one’s that took sailors to their doom….

      • mike k
        June 1, 2017 at 09:44

        OOps! Should be Rand Paul.

      • Skip Scott
        June 1, 2017 at 10:26

        Hi Mike-

        Rand Paul is a chip off the old block, but I think his Dad was better. I’m more socialist in my tendencies, but I’d take a Libertarian over a “Deep State” candidate any day.

  5. von Col
    June 1, 2017 at 04:34

    RON PAUL:

    “Are We Fighting Terrorism, or Creating More Terrorism?”

    • Skip Scott
      June 1, 2017 at 10:21

      It is a shame that voices like Ron Paul’s and John Pilger’s are consigned to our “sound proof free speech zone.”

  6. dave
    June 1, 2017 at 01:14

    All very interesting. Where are the links to everyone and thing he refers too. Its one thing to have an analysis, its quite another to back it up. It seems strange to accuse people of secrets and bias while perhaps doing the same.

  7. hillary
    June 1, 2017 at 00:21

    In 1992, Ramadan Abedi the father of the Manchester sucide bomber was sent back to Libya by Britain’s MI6 and was involved in a British-devised plot to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi.

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article196455.html

  8. Zachary Smith
    June 1, 2017 at 00:13

    Even as an American I found this to be painful reading, so I wonder how the Brits react. Or for that matter, if many of them will ever see it.

  9. May 31, 2017 at 23:43

    October 30, 2011
    The War Criminals Who Bombed Libya
    By Stephen J. Gray

    “First, the [Libyan] war is illegal under the United States constitution and our War Powers Act, because only the US Congress has the authority to declare war and the president has been unable to show that the US faced an imminent threat from Libya.”
    (Dennis Kucinich, American Congressman, writing in the Guardian U.K Newspaper July 6, 2011.) [1]

    Libya has been bombed non-stop for around eight months all in the name of a “humanitarian mission.” The main perpetrators of this atrocity are the so-called “civilized political leaders” of the western world. Their partners in war crimes are NATO and the Al-Qaeda [2] led rebels. The propaganda merchants for the war were mostly the mainstream media who gave credibility to its illegality and mostly covered up the Al-Qaeda led connection to the rebels. The victims of this war are the Libyan people, men women, and children. Their homes destroyed and reduced to “smithereens.” [3] Thousands killed or maimed all in the name of a “humanitarian mission,” and a “responsibility to protect.” Orwellian doublespeak is the vocabulary of this political filth that rule over us: Killing civilians and children [4] in order to save them! Destroying a country in order to protect it! And “proud”[5] of their obscene and dirty work in the process. No words are strong enough to describe the sick hypocrisy and insane rhetoric coming out of the mouths of these so called political “leaders” who call themselves “The Friends of Libya.”…
    [read more at link below]
    http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2011/10/war-criminals-who-bombed-libya.html

    • mike k
      June 1, 2017 at 08:00

      Thanks Stephen. Keep your truth telling coming……….

  10. May 31, 2017 at 23:30

    Excellent article by John Pilger.
    I believe we are in the hands of: The Scumbags of the Western World and Their “Allies” that Fund and Arm Terrorists. …
    There is mountains of evidence that our so-called “leaders” (past and present) are up to their dirty political necks along with their head chopping “allies” in funding, supporting, arming, and funding the terrorists they are supposed to be fighting….
    [read more at link below]
    http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/03/the-scumbags-of-western-world-and-their.html

  11. F. G. Sanford
    May 31, 2017 at 17:37

    Sung to: “El Paso” by Marty Robbins

    https://www(dot)youtube.com/watch?v=spaPETdoRVM

    Out in the African town of Benghazi
    I loved a Libyan girl sweet and true
    We had free housing and free education
    The Great Man-Made River was quite a breakthrough

    There was a future for me and Fatima
    Oil reserves paid for all of our needs
    Healthcare and wages were part of the bargain
    There were no Western bank fiscal misdeeds

    One day some wild jihadis arrived
    Then demonstrations were staged
    Vulgar and brutal, resistance was futile
    War for regime change was now to be staged

    So then they
    Said that Gaddafi would murder his people
    No-fly zone bombs could provide an escape
    They said Gaddafi would pass out Viagra
    He would encourage his soldiers to rape

    Just for a moment I stood there in silence
    Shocked at the horror that they could invent
    Those evil Neocon think tank ringleaders
    Cooked up this plot with demonic intent

    Out with Fatima I ran to the desert
    Out to the wild countryside
    Bombs began falling, the sight was appalling
    We searched in vain for a safe place to hide

    Just as fast as we
    Could from the violent mayhem and panic
    Far from the satanic murdering spree

    Romance would end in this brutal regime change
    Bombs would rain down and destroy all we knew
    All of our plans would be ruined forever
    Thanks to the work of a British air crew

    Some were American, others were French
    A wench named Theresa would gloat
    Under the desert sun bodies decaying
    There’s nothing worse than that godawful stench

    And at last all around
    There are bombs and explosions
    Planes overhead and there’s nowhere to hide
    Rebels are shooting at me and Fatima
    I feel a terrible pain in my side

    I tell Fatima that she must keep running
    If they should catch her I know what’s in store
    My blood is draining and consciousness waning
    I fall in the sand and can’t run any more

    Something is dreadfully wrong when I wake
    Fatima is still by my side
    I hold her hand but it’s lifeless and cold
    Evil regime change has taken my bride

    But my love for
    Fatima lives on and I’d die to avenge her
    Wouldn’t an Englishman rise to the task
    If life should offer divine retribution
    A chance to get even is all that I ask

    Some would console me and argue for pity
    Others advise to forgive and forget
    When they dropped bombs on beloved Fatima
    Their bloody heroes had not one regret

    • Sam F
      May 31, 2017 at 19:10

      Superb, FG, and thank you. You have evoked sympathy with the diabolism du jour of empire, a noble task.

    • backwardsevolution
      May 31, 2017 at 21:48

      F.G. Sanford – wow, great story. Excellent job! Thank you.

    • LarcoMarco
      June 1, 2017 at 01:04

      Brilliant, F.G. I heard Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” on the radio Monday night, so I was able to mentally “sing” all the way through your well-crafted lyrics!

    • Skip Scott
      June 1, 2017 at 10:19

      FG-
      You’ve got real talent. Keep ’em comin’!

  12. May 31, 2017 at 15:47

    Many are suspicious that fraud is regularly orchestrated and committed in elections, over and over again, Mario. That was widely suspected in the 2004 “reelection” of George Bush (appointed first time by Supreme Court). Sorry, elections are “democracy” in name only. Sam F is completely right, the so-called elites manipulate to get their way over the “unwashed masses”.

    • Sam F
      May 31, 2017 at 18:55

      Thanks, it is a sad truth that needs a strong remedy. You probably know these first quotes on the oligarchy of wealth:

      Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
      “There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest”
      Addison “An honest private man often grows cruel… when converted into an absolute prince”
      Bacon “as the baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue”
      Bancroft “the prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest”
      Bellamy “Until… economic equality shall give a basis to political equality, the latter is but a sham”
      Beveridge “it is a grave danger – the purchase by corporations… and… wealthy people… of so many newspapers”
      Hugo Black “the first… symptom [of Fascism] is… the placing of some groups in a preferred class”
      Brandeis “We can have democracy [or] great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
      Bryan “The money power… is more despotic than monarchy… it denounces, as public enemies, all who… throw light upon its crimes”
      Burke “Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.”
      “among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist”
      “those… intoxicated with power… can never willingly abandon it”
      Butler, N. “The wicked have a solid interest that the good never seem to possess… The cohesive power of public plunder remains on the job.”
      Butler, Smedley “I spent 33 years (in the Marines)… a racketeer for capitalism… this racket can be… smashed only by taking the profit out of war.”
      Cicero “Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches.”
      Cleveland “the communism of combined wealth and capital… which insidiously undermines… free institutions”

  13. May 31, 2017 at 14:29

    Only through speaking absolute truth such as illustrated by John Pilger, and many other moral, principled, courageous men and women around the Earth, will humanity end war.

  14. Mario64
    May 31, 2017 at 14:09

    What about the responsibility of the people that elected such monsters to be their rulers?
    What was the reaction of the American and English people to the Albright interview On May 12, 1996 on CBS’ 60 Minutes, one of the most widely followed TV program since almost 50 years? Just a shrug and quickly forgotten. Can they affirm that they haven’t been informed of such unspeakable atrocity committed by their government? Did it change anything? How does it come that after G. W.Bush’s carnage in Iraq the American people overwhelmingly elected him to a second term? UK, the US and France are democracies, which means that rulers are chosen by the people, so how does it come that the people that chose them are never called to bear responsibility for the crime of the leaders they elect and cheer? No complicity whatsoever? Wasn’t the Jewish people responsible when they chose to send Jesus Christ to be crucified and let the felon Barabba to go free in what must be considered the most outstanding example of direct democracy in the history of humanity?
    Have we forgotten that in March 1933 the Germans gave 17,277,180 votes to Hitler?
    Have we forgotten how the French people supported genocide in Algeria from 1954 till 1962?
    Please have a look at:
    Karl Jasper, La culpabilté allemand, Paris, Édition de Minuit, 1948 and Primo Levi, Le Naufrage et Les Rescapés. Quarante ans après Auschwitz. Paris, Gallimard 1989 and Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954-1962.Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2001

    • turk151
      May 31, 2017 at 17:02

      Mario, you are making a major assumption that we live in a functioning democracy, I am sorry to inform you that we don’t, we live in an oligarchy, with some representation by organized interest groups; or to put it more simply an aristocracy. One person, one vote, is mostly fiction; a tiny group of families receive all the ill gotten gains. The implication of that premise is that the overwhelming majority of Americans,are not responsible for producing these monsters, so relax and have a beer with your American friends.

    • Frank
      June 1, 2017 at 03:09

      I think that you will find that the NSDAP vote in Marc h 1933 took place AFTER Reichstag fire and the Enabling Acts which gave Hiter, who at that time had been appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, sweeping powers. These Acts severely restricted opposition parties, particularly the KDP/SDP, but left bloc still managed to gain 32% of the vote compared to the Nazi’s 43%. Bear in mind also that the SA paramilitaries had been unleashed on the opposition parties and there was a virtual civil war going on in Germany at this time. The Nazis were never able to gain an absolute majority in the German parliament.

    • Trantorian
      June 5, 2017 at 15:37

      Bush was re elected because of election fraud. It was hardly overwhelming unless you use the electoral college as your gauge.

  15. May 31, 2017 at 14:05

    An excellent article, thank you, John Pilger, about a horrible situation, an article that should be copied and circulated. Truly disgusting, the hypocrisy of the murderous western regimes. I was in Peace Corps Chad many years ago; Africa has struggled for so long under the yoke of colonialism, what a travesty was done to Qaddafi and Libya, so tragic.

    • BannanaBoat
      May 31, 2017 at 16:57

      Q planned three banks , perhaps had already established one , in three different African Nations, which taken together would replace every function of the IMF and locked out financial colonialism from Africa.Libyan Citizens received $50,000 when marrying. Syria, Libya, Iraq , high standard of living and socialist. Sudan, Somailia, and Lebanon are also on the Neo/ Penta / Con/ Gon list Nato will invade made public a few years ago by General Wesley Clarke.

  16. exiled off mainstreet
    May 31, 2017 at 13:39

    This is another one of Pilger’s great articles connecting the dots between western war crimes and the sponsoring of terrorist thugs and the blowback, which the Manchester attack indisputably was. All of those involved in the destruction of Libya, including the harpy as secretary of state and Obama who went against his instinct to support war crimes, France’s Sarkozy and Britain’s Cameron and others, should be put on trial for war crimes, although it is unlikely because only those not protected by yankee power, or often those victimized it who are falsely accused, face such consequences.

  17. May 31, 2017 at 11:48

    Check out Non-intervention.com. He goes through all of this and is the world’s authority (Michael Schurer). Former CIA in charge of the Bin-Laden killing. He used to be on the cable news shows but they could not take his HONESTY.

  18. Bill Bodden
    May 31, 2017 at 11:43

    It is time for another Nuremberg-type trial with the national leaders of the U.S., Britain and France in the dock.

    Patrick Cockburn has a supporting article: “We Can’t Let Britain Become a Vast ISIS Recruiting Station” – http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/30/we-cant-britainbecome-a-vast-isis-recruiting-station/

    Follow the link at the bottom of the article for more articles by Patrick Cockburn and check “We Know What Inspired the Manchester Attack, We Just Won’t Admit It.”

  19. mike k
    May 31, 2017 at 11:27

    I love John Pilger, and anyone who speaks out for truth. If enough of us will do that, we can have a different world.

    • exiled off mainstreet
      May 31, 2017 at 13:40

      Pilger may be the greatest of the writers presently exposing the crimes of the imperial borg today.

  20. mike k
    May 31, 2017 at 11:19

    There is one simple reason people do not want to hear things like what John Pilger reveals: They do not want to convict their government and themselves of the horrible crimes that are being committed. They would like to continue to believe that either none of this is happening, or at least they have no part in it. This is a lie, and they are cowards of the worst sort for failing to admit it, and do something to atone for it.

  21. May 31, 2017 at 11:19

    What we will never read in the Guardian, Ney York Times or Washington Post. Great analysis Mr. Pilger.

  22. Joe Tedesky
    May 31, 2017 at 11:08

    I believe that the Manchester bombing is the happening whereas the terrorist give rise to enforce more of the police state. This is called protecting us. If this keeps up martial law will become a way of life. This is Terrorist Inc. just doing their job. Now take your shoes off, and let’s seem what’s in that bag…welcome to the Free World.

  23. mike k
    May 31, 2017 at 11:05

    John Pilger is another heroic truth teller. Underneath the rock he turns over swarms the ugliest and most evil swarm of vermin known to man: the established governments and deep states of the west. We are the ultimate terrorists on Earth. Our foul deeds far transcend any petty crimes of those we brand as terrorists.

    We have met the enemy of Mankind, and it is US. IT IS US. We are the scourge of Earth, the enemies of everything true and beautiful and loving. Our leaders hate and destroy all of that, while speaking in the name of it. Their hypocrisy is hideous beyond belief.

    And what are we to say of the deluded many who unknowingly enable these masters of evil to carry out their crimes unopposed? They are complicit in all that is being done in their unresisting names. Every human being has the duty to seek the truth and defend it. Ignorance is not a defense; it is a crime.

    • Sam F
      May 31, 2017 at 12:07

      Yes, the enemy is the upper or upper middle class oligarchy and their Repub and Dem leaders, and of course their groupthink excuses their war crimes on the grounds that:

      1. We the rich are comfortable and therefore must be virtuous, and any virtuous person would of course also choose to be rich, therefore the unwashed masses are not virtuous and deserve whatever we do to them, and must be excluded from government;
      2. Anyone who doubts that the oligarchy government and mass media do their duty to god and country is a loony conspiracy theorist and a threat to high society;
      3. Anyone of the middle or lower middle class who aspires to wealth or even employment stability had better pretend to agree, and we do keep records and attack those who dissent.

      As H.L. Mencken put it (approx.) “The average man avoids truth [because] it is dangerous, no good can come of it, and it doesn’t pay”

      • June 2, 2017 at 13:05

        Mc Cain and Dis-Able

    • Simon Bennett
      June 2, 2017 at 00:01

      Love your comment…as we see evil, corruption and deceit beyond description, how do we explain it? Where has it come from and where is it going? Thirty years ago I asked these questions as a young PPE student at Bristol University. I found the answer in what I thought was the old and irrelevant book the Bible; in Revelation 17-19 and 13. Payback will come to the West, the latest incarnation of Babylon; the first was the bloodthirsty Roman Catholic Empire of the 16 Century. America typifies Babylon the whore now. Despite the current chaos and mayhem, justice will ultimately be served. Peace to you.

  24. Higuchi susumu
    May 31, 2017 at 10:49

    I Wonder how the suicide bombers are psychologically engineered so as to sacrify their lives to apparently meaningless objectives. Why did they have to kill a concert audience? Why do they rush into such an irrelevant deed to the Islamic doctorines? Hate is blind? This theory is valid?.

    • FobosDeimos
      May 31, 2017 at 10:58

      Outstanding report by John Pilger. Corbyn should expose the criminal behaviour of Cameron and May with regards to the LIFG and their direct responsibility in the Manchester massacre. Perhaps he thinks that the electors will not like a “political use” of this tragedy, but I bet that hundreds of thousands, or milliins of Britons would vote the Conservatives out of power if they knew what Pilger says.

      • mike k
        May 31, 2017 at 11:09

        People just don’t want to look at the truth – it’s too upsetting to their complacency.

    • mike k
      May 31, 2017 at 11:06

      Did you read the article? If you did, you would know why.

      • mike k
        May 31, 2017 at 11:07

        The above reply was meant for the first commenter.

    • exiled off mainstreet
      May 31, 2017 at 13:45

      In direct response to Mr. Sisumu, my guess from Japan, it is classic brainwash blowback. When you employ insane barbarians for your own ends, some of them stray from the reservation and engage in their destruction within the empire employing them.

      • Lonkal
        June 2, 2017 at 04:53

        Frankly i wouldnt put it past “the shadowy movers” to have allowed this attack to take place with the thinking that it would help Mays election. Who will protect us from these beasts, soft watery-eyed kind-hearted mild mannered Corbyn with his reluctance and doubts on the use of violence, or fearsum hard-nosed May eho will nuke you in the face if you mess with Britain and llaughs scornfully at these ideas of yours about… ‘human rights’. The people of Britain are stupid enough to falp for it too, beleive me i live here. Show em some soldiers patrolling the streets, a few militarised police wandering about and they’re happy, safe, condfidence restored. Grrrreat Britain and all that crap. No one here has made any kind ot connection with Tory policies in Libya anr what happened in Manchester… the British mind is quite simply for the most part incapable of making assilosiations like that. If anything, one is to be condemed for suggesting the use of jihadists and bombs in one part of the world could lead to the use of jihadists and bombs in another. Meanwhile, onward our close billion pound frindship with the kingdom of Wahhab.

        • Rip van Wrinkle
          June 5, 2017 at 05:24

          I couldn’t agree more. Personally, think the rabbit hole is much, much deeper than anyone can seriously imagine. However, trying to get people to put pieces of a jigsaw, particularly when they see them as random pieces from different jigsaws, is nigh on impossible. You try to give them the picture so they can fit them together….simply doesn’t compute…I’m a ‘conspiracy theorist’, pure and simple. Every time.

    • Rob Freeman
      May 31, 2017 at 17:50

      Re-read the article; I think you’ll understand, then

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