There has been another massacre in Northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, the ISIS aligned Islamist terror group. At least 150 Muslims, including small boys, machined gunned during Ramadan prayers.
Andrew Coates notes the past history of reaction to calls for Britain to support efforts against Boko Haram by the likes of Stop The War UK (cf 'Stoppers'). Many people regard STWUK as a front for the notorious Socialist Workers Party. The Stoppers include MPs Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn and have the ear of much of the left as well as celebs like Brand and Boyle as well as foreign allies like the 'journalist' Glenn Greenwald. They have influence.
Coates notes that when Boko Haram's kidnap of 200 girls made international headlines that the Stoppers reaction was that "the "'free press' have exploded into a fit of pro-interventionist hysteria." Rather than the group's rise being due to insufficient Sharia law in the North of Nigeria - what the group actually said - the Stoppers knew better and reckoned it was "a response to severe economic inequality."
This is Stopper boilerplate. It writes itself.
So how about this when next you are hearing the persistent, mosquito-like Stopper drone .. recall the cries about how the French intervention against Islamists on the march in Mali would backfire. How it was ALL because of the intervention of the West in Libya. How it was ALL EVIL OUR FAULT BAD US FLAGELLATE FLAGELLATE.
Whilst you're recalling those events note how this news has seemingly been missed.
Mali: Peace Deal Raises Hopes of Stability
19 June 2015
Tuareg rebels finally appear to be willing to sign the May peace accord. While the Malian population welcomes this as a step toward more security, it has little faith in the UN stabilization mission, MINUSMA.The article quotes a survey of Malians expressing disappointment with the UN peacekeepers. Why? Because "people thought the rebellion could be put down immediately and permanently." There are still some attacks by Islamists going on in the North and, as Jean-Hervé Jezequel notes, the deal has flaws and "risks collapse as international interests shift to other hotspots." Peace deals are inevitably imperfect.
The new peace accord has been on the table for a while now. In fact, Mali’s government, international mediators and some armed groups already signed it on May 15, 2015, in the capital, Bamako.
The agreement calls for the recognition of the government in Bamako; in return it gives the north of the country more rights.
Representatives of a Tuareg-dominated alliance called the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) have now agreed to sign the accord on Saturday (20.06.2015). Negotiations repeatedly failed in the past.
But the survey's results should not be surprising considering the numerous reports at the time, even in the righteous Guardian, that the French paratroopers were being welcomed by ordinary Malians with open arms.
So as we await another drone from the Stoppers on Boko Haram let us also recall that time that Glenn Greenwald launched an anti-French tirade in the Guardian just when French troops were being welcomed to halt the Islamist advance. And that he was also saying that even if surveys showed Malians wanted the French troops he would still not support intervention.
Gary Brecher wrote about his Twitter scrap with Greenwald at the time, which ended with Greenwald saying that he could not give a toss for Malian opinion.
Greenwald wrote in the Guardian that the Mali intervention "will obviously provoke even more anti-western sentiment." Well obviously La Greenwald was W.R.O.N.G.
Will the Stoppers reflect that maybe they were wrong that one time about Mali? That actually the Malians were right to ask for and get French help? That maybe the Sierra Leonians asking 'war criminal' Blair for help 15 years ago might also have turned out to be a good thing? Or how about that a bit more intervention might have helped save some from the Rwandan genocide maybe?
Will they heck because the arrogant bastards know better than some black Africans who, as Greenwald makes clear, should know their place – isn’t that the sum total of these people's worldview?
- For more on Greenwald's history see section ''Bros' and white privilege' in my report on Greenwald and privacy; The left must challenge Greenwald.
- Via @AgeofMockery, Casey Michel takes on Greenwald and his outlet's reporting on Ukraine and Russia; "pure, unalloyed farce."
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