Libya is last year’s news. Hillary Clinton famously commented on Gaddafi’s death “We came, we saw, he died”. NATO had won. The dictator was dead and a new government promising ‘democracy’ had been installed. End of story, move on. Libya has disappeared from the front pages of the news like many stories where the real story is the ongoing consequences of the initial event or sequence of events. The story of Libya’s ongoing crisis is covered, however, by the (more) independent media. The following two videos are from Journeyman Pictures:

The first video is a short but very moving documentary shot in Sirte. It shows the effect of the war on children and their relations with each other. The documentary seems to assume that getting rid of the former regime was a good thing but there were bad consequences for some people particularly in places like Sirte where there was support for Gadaffi.

http://youtu.be/mWBcynarS2U

The second video shows a still chaotic Libya in which the NATO installed NTC apparently have no power over armed militias that routinely imprison and torture black people and supporters of the former regime.

http://youtu.be/hioSFBCYZUI

The failure to mainstream the discussion of the consequences of NATO intervention enables Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy and their sponsors to literally get away with murder and enables the preservation of whatever veneer of moral, ration and political legitimacy that still covers their venality.

All the evidence shows that the intervention was prosecuted on a ‘false prospectus’ and knowingly so. An article in Counterpunch, The Top Ten Myths in the War Against Libya, neatly summarises these lies.

NATO continues to dismiss its responsibility for civilian deaths caused by its direct actions but the evidence is there in the devastation of Sirte, Bani Walid and in Zlitan as shown in this short video by Lizzie Phelan:

Libya matters because people matter but it also matters because it is a particularly graphic and accessible illustration of a pattern wherein public perception is manipulated by the popular media so despite any contradictions there is an acceptance of whatever action the US led alliance chooses to take.