disaster in Japan = good news for Gaddafi

COMMENT

Ever since news of the earthquake and accompanying tsunami in Japan emerged yesterday morning, the rolling news channels have shown us what they are ideally suited for by devoting blanket coverage to the increasingly horrific events. Thousands have died, but far fewer than in Haiti's disaster of last year. This is hardly surprising: Japan is one of the world's wealthiest economies, and many of its buildings have been "earthquake-proofed", especially since the Kobe quake of 1995. Haiti is one of the world's poorest countries, and most people's houses (if indeed they had one) were made of cardboard.

But now, unheeded by most of the world, this wall to wall coverage has left Gaddafi an open field in which to take back the rapidly diminishing Rebel held areas of Libya. And despite the mass murder that will inevitably result from this crackdown; certainly now everyone has realised how unrealistic the idea of imposing a no-fly zone would be in practice, Gaddafi will be allowed to re-assert his total control over the hapless population of that country. Only Al Jazeera has continued to devote any more than the most cursory coverage to the uprisings in the Arab world, which now include protests in Yemen, and even, incredibly (given the absolute repression that obtains in that country), Saudi Arabia.

We have seen all this before. In May of 1982, when the world's attention was focused on the Falklands War, Israel launched their invasion of southern Lebanon. Once there, they openly colluded with the Lebanese Falangists when they descended on the refugee camps at Chatilla and Sabra and massacred thousands of innocent men, women and children. It took years for the true extent of the horror, presided over by Ariel Sharon, to come to light...