Libya, 5 years later

It's been five years since the Atlantic Empire "liberated" Libya - turning the once prosperous North African nation into a jihadist hellhole. The very same governments that conspired to overthrow the regime of Col. Gadhafi in 2011 now bemoan that Libya is becoming a sanctuary for Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists.

Oh? You mean the Western "estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids" (as my friend Ilana Mercer so aptly described it) didn't result in a liberal-democratic republic based on diversity and human rights? I'm shocked.

Back in September 2011, when the Empire was basking in its "victory" in Libya, I went on CrossTalk to argue that the intervention was wrong on principle. The relevant passage is about 14 minutes in:

"This is no way to run the world. You can’t run a dog-catching operation like this without it backfiring... What we saw happening in Libya was basically the entire circle of Balkans interventions accelerated to hyperspeed – within weeks instead of years – and you ran through the whole gamut of excuses, from refugees to mistreatment of minorities to this and that and the other, to install in power a shadowy movement that we don’t really know much about – except that it’s composed of Al-Qaeda veterans (which isn’t supposed to bother us at all). But that’s sort of not the point. It doesn’t matter how this ended. The outcome of it is frankly irrelevant. It’s the principle of the thing."

A death and a reminder

Zdravko Tolimir (1948-2016) died in The Hague today, of causes unknown.

Reports of his passing will without exception note he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. None will say the verdict was passed in a kangaroo court, established by the Atlantic Empire to conjure a fig leaf of legitimacy for its conquest of Yugoslavia.

Everyone will quote the pious proclamations of presiding "judge" Theodor Meron, who said Tolimir "was aware of the genocidal intent of the Bosnian Serb leadership and was responsible for genocide.”

Likewise, everyone will bring up Srebrenica, and the supposed Serb massacre of Muslim "men and boys" (always that phrase), not missing to call it the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two.

Just about no one - in the West, anyway - will mention Prisca Matimba Nyambe, a Zambian judge appalled by her colleagues' abominable standards of evidence. Buried behind 534 pages of farcical "fact" findings, Nyambe's brave dissent calls out the other "judges" for failing to prove even a single charge in the indictment.

“Without a single piece of evidence adduced during this trial of a written plan of a JCE to Murder, or any evidence of direct statements showing such an intent, the Majority relies upon circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions of a culpable mens rea,” Nyambe wrote. 

By JCE she meant the notorious doctrine of "Joint Criminal Enterprise," concocted by an American lawyer for the specific purpose of securing convictions of people the Tribunal sought to convict on the basis of who they were, rather than what they may or may not have done.

The entirety of the Tribunal's evidence against Tolimir, Nyambe wrote, was circumstantial and based on presumptions and suppositions of the other judges.

"On the totality of the evidence on the record, I am wholly unpersuaded that the Accused is
guilty of any of the charges alleged in the Indictment," she concluded.

Not only was Tolimir not guilty, but the prosecutors - and the judges that sided with them - failed to prove that many of the things in the indictment actually happened, Nyambe argued. For heaven's sake, this is the court that decided the killing of three people represented "genocide."

Not seven months after convicting Tolimir, Meron cited as credible third-hand hearsay "evidence" accusing the Bosnian Serbs of a plot that was actually a WW2 Nazi Croatia plan targeting the Serbs themselves. So much about his credibility, or that of the actual joint criminal enterprise that is the ICTY.

I have little doubt the kangaroo court will sink to even lower depths before its fell purpose is served. Until then, however, Zdravko Tolimir will remain a prime example of what Empire's "truth" and "justice" really look like.