Gadhafi's Libya faces similar MI6/CIA invasion as per Henry Kissinger/Rothschild

[agentbluescreen]

I don't buy anything that the media are telling us about Libya. It's all lies.

This whole Libya thing is staged so the US can invade Libya and put their hands on Libyan oil.
Reminds me of Saddam with the WMDs and Iraq all over again.

Yeah Col Gadhaffi is another one of those "dictators" who knew too much, time to protect the "brown Vietnamese".  Problem is they are all the minority old-guard Tory-Fascist Sunni Al-CIAdans who are counter-rebelling to re-establish the old Caliphate

[No2NWO]

Gaddafi addresses crowd in Tripoli

Libyan leader spoke to supporters in the capital's Green Square and said he would be arming people against protesters.

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has made an unexpected appearance in Green Square, speaking to a crowd of his supporters.

"We can defeat any aggression if necessary and arm the people," Gaddafi said, in footage that was aired on Libyan state television on Friday.

"You, the youth, be comfortable… dance, sing, stay up all night," he said.

His last speech, on Thursday evening, had been made by phone, leading to speculation about his physical condition.

The footage aired on Friday, however, showed the leader standing above the square, waving his fist as he spoke.

His speech came even as thousands of protesters against his regime across Libya focused their attention on the capital on Friday afternoon, following the midday prayer.

As demonstrators in Tripoli took to the street, security forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly began firing on them. At least six had been killed, according to the Associated Press news agency.

There was heavy gun fire in various Tripoli districts including Fashloum, Ashour, Jumhouria and Souq Al, sources told Al Jazeera.

"The security forces fired indiscriminately on the demonstrators," said a resident of one of the capital's eastern suburbs that has seen previous clashes between opponents of the regime and its remaining loyalists.

"There were deaths in the streets of Sug al-Jomaa," the resident said.

The death toll since violence began remains unclear, though on Thursday Francois Zimeray, France's top human rights official, said it could be as high as 2,000 people killed.

Much More: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/2011225165641323716.html

[No2NWO]

UN draft sanctions names 23 Libyan officials

Security Council speeds up efforts to impose international sanctions on Libyan regime; draft resolution includes arms embargo, travel ban and asset freezes for country's senior officials, Gaddafi's eight children, close relatives

WASHINGTON – The draft sanctions resolution on Libya presented by the United Nations includes an arms embargo, as well as travel bans and asset freezes for the country's top 23 leaders.
 
Diplomats in New York stated that the Security Council has already discussed the proposal, which was drafted by France and Britain, and is similar in content to the proposal approved by the European Union on Friday.

It is still unclear when the Security Council is scheduled to vote on the draft resolution, but diplomats estimate it may happen in the next 24 hours.
 
In addition to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, the list includes his eight children, Khamis, Hannibal, Muhammad, Saif al-Islam, Saif al- Arab, Mutassim, Saadi and Ayesha.

The document also names Libyan army Commander Massoud Abdelhafid, Defense Minister Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber, Intelligence Commander Abdallah al-Sanusi, senior officials in the Libyan secret service and Gaddafi's cousins – Sayyed and Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam – who are suspected of involvement in arms sale and terror activity aimed against Libyan citizens living abroad.

On Thursday, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam announced that he is defecting to Egypt in protest of "the serious violations of international law and human rights by Libyan authorities."
 
Security Council members were also considering imposing a "no-fly" zone over Libya, as was enacted in Iraq between the years 1991-2003.
 
The proposal came on the backdrop of reports that Gaddafi is using the Air Force to bomb protesters in cities and towns around the country.
 
Following United States President Barack Obama's public statement against the violence in the North African country, Washington has been applying pressure on Security Council members in order to quickly approve the sanctions.
 
The Obama administration on Friday said it is freezing all assets in the United States held by the Libyan government, Gaddafi and four of his children, and abandoning the US Embassy in Tripoli.

On Friday night, Obama accused Gaddafi of violating "human rights, brutalization of its people and outrageous threats."
 
In a statement issued by the White House, the president said "Gaddafi, his government and close associates have taken extreme measures against the people of Libya, including by using weapons of war, mercenaries and wanton violence against unarmed civilians."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4034224,00.html

[bigron]

 
Libya: Is Washington Pushing for Civil War to Justify a US-NATO Military Intervention?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
 
Global Research, February 25, 2011


Is Tripoli being set up for a civil war to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention in oil-rich Libya?

Are the talks about sanctions a prelude to an Iraq-like intervention?

Something is Rotten in the so-called “Jamahiriya” of Libya

There is no question that Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi (Al-Qaddafi) is a dictator. He has been the dictator and so-called “qaid” of Libya for about 42 years. Yet, it appears that tensions are being ratcheted up and the flames of revolt are being fanned inside Libya. This includes earlier statements by the British Foreign Secretary William Hague that Colonel Qaddafi had fled Libya to Venezuela. [1] This statement served to electrify the revolt against Qaddafi and his regime in Libya.

Although all three have dictatorship in common, Qaddafi’s Libya is quite different from Ben Ali’s Tunisia or Mubarak’s Egypt. The Libyan leadership is not outright subservient to the United States and the European Union. Unlike the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, the relationship that exists between Qaddafi and both the U.S. and E.U. is a modus vivendi. Simply put, Qaddafi is an independent Arab dictator and not a “managed dictator” like Ben Ali and Mubarak.

In Tunisia and Egypt the status quo prevails, the military machine and neo-liberalism remain intact; this works for the interests of the United States and the European Union. In Libya, however, upsetting the established order is a U.S. and E.U. objective.

The U.S. and the E.U. now seek to capitalize on the revolt against Qaddafi and his dictatorship with the hopes of building a far stronger position in Libya than ever before. Weapons are also being brought into Libya from its southern borders to promote revolt. The destabilization of Libya would also have significant implications for North Africa, West Africa, and global energy reserves.

Colonel Qaddafi in Brief Summary

Qaddafi’s rise to power started as a Libyan captain amongst a group of military officers who carried out a coup d’état. The 1969 coup was against the young Libyan monarchy of King Idris Al-Sanusi. Under the monarchy Libya was widely seen as being acquiescent to U.S. and Western European interests.

Although he has no official state or government position, Qaddafi has nurtured and deeply rooted a political culture of cronyism, corruption, and privilege in Libya since the 1969 coup. Added to this is the backdrop of the “cult of personality” that he has also enforced in Libya.

Qaddafi has done everything to portray himself as a hero to the masses, specifically the Arabs and Africans. His military adventures in Chad were also tied to leaving his mark in history and creating a client state by carving up Chad. Qaddafi’s so-called “Green Book” has been forcefully portrayed and venerated as being a great feat in political thought and philosophy. Numerous intellectuals have been forced or bribed to praise it.

Over the years, Colonel Qaddafi has tried to cultivate a romantic figure of himself as a simple man of the people. This includes pretending to live in a tent. He has done everything to make himself stand out. His reprimanding of other Arab dictators, such as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, at Arab League meetings have made headlines and have been welcomed by many Arabs. While on state visits he has deliberately surrounded himself with an entourage of female body guards with the intent of getting heads to turn. Moreover, he has also presented himself as a so-called imam or leader of the Muslims and a man of God, lecturing about Islam in and outside of Libya.

Libya is run by a government under Qaddafi’s edicts. Fear and cronyism have been the keys to keeping so-called “order” in Libya amongst officials and citizens alike. Libyans and foreigners alike have been killed and have gone missing for over four decades. The case of Lebanon’s Musa Al-Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement, is one of the most famous of these cases and has always been a hindrance to Lebanese-Libyan relations. Qaddafi has had a very negative effect in creating and conditioning an entire hierarchy of corrupt officials in Tripoli. Each one looks out for their own interests at the expense of the Libyan people.

Fractions and Tensions inside the Hierarchy of Qaddafi’s Regime

Because of the nature of Qaddafi’s regime in Tripoli, there are a lot of internal tensions in Libya and within the regime structure itself. One of these sets of tensions is between Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and his father’s circle of older ministers. Libyan ministers are generally divided amongst those that gather around Saif Al-Islam and those that are part of the “old guard.”

There are even tensions between Qaddafi and his sons. In 1999, Mutassim Al-Qaddafi tried to ouster his father while Colonel Qaddafi was outside of Libya. Mutassim Qaddafi holds a Libyan cabinet portfolio as a national security advisor. He is also famously known amongst Libyans for being a playboy who has spent much of his time in Europe and abroad. There is also Khames Gaddafi who runs his own militia of thugs, which are called the Khames militia. He has always been thought of as possible contender for succession too against his other brothers.

There have always been fears in Libya about the issue of succession after Colonel Qaddafi is gone. Over the years, Qaddafi has thoroughly purged Libya of any form of organized opposition to him or prevented anyone else, outside his family, from amassing enough power to challenge his authority.

The Issue of Loyalty and Defection in Libya

Undoubtedly, little loyalty is felt for Qaddafi and his family. It has been fear that has kept Libyans in line. At the level of the Libyan government and the Libyan military it has been both fear and self-interest that has kept officials, good and corrupt alike, in line. That mantle of fear has now been dispelled. Statements and declarations of denunciation against Gaddafi’s regime are being heard from officials, towns, and military barracks across Libya.

Aref Sharif, the head of the Libyan Air Force, has renounced Qaddafi. Interior Minister Abdul Fatah Al-Yunis (Al-Younis), who is from Benghazi (Bengasi) and oversees a branch of the special operations work in Libya, has resigned. Yunis is reported to be Qaddafi’s “number two” or second in charge, but this is incorrect. Abdullah Sanusi, the head of Libyan Internal Intelligence and Qaddafi’s relative through marriage, is the closest thing to a “number two” within the structure of power in Tripoli.

Reports have been made about two Libyan pilots defected to Malt and Libyan naval vessels refusing to attack Benghazi. Defections are snowballing amongst the military and government. Yet, there must be pause to analyze the situation.

The Libyan Opposition

At this point, however, it must be asked who is the “opposition” in Libya. The opposition is not a monolithic body.  The common denominator is the opposition to the rule of Qaddafi and his family. It has to be said that “actions of opposition or resistance against an oppressor” and an “opposition movement” are also two different things. For the most part, the common people and corrupt Libyan officials, who harbour deep-seated hate towards Qaddafi and his family, are now in the same camp, but there are differences.

There is an authentic form of opposition, which is not organized, and a systematic form of opposition, which is either external or led by figures from within the Libyan regime itself.  The authentic people’s internal opposition in Libya is not organized and the people’s “actions of opposition” have been spontaneous. Yet, opposition and revolt has been encouraged and prompted from outside Libya through social media networks, international news stations, and events in the rest of the Arab World. [2]

The leadership of the internal opposition that is emerging in Libya is coming from within the regime itself. Corrupt officials that have rebelled against Gaddafi are not the champions of the people. These opposition figures are not opposed to tyranny; they are merely opposed to the rule of Colonel Qaddafi and his family. Aref Sharif and Al-Yunis are themselves Libyan regime figures.

It has to also be considered that some Libyan officials that have turned against Qaddafi are doing it to save themselves, while others in the future will work to retain or strengthen their positions. Abdel Moneim Al-Honi, the Libyan envoy to the Arab League in Cairo, can be looked at as an example. Al-Honi denounced Qaddafi, but it should be noted that he was one of the members of the group of Libyan officers who executed the coup in 1969 with Qaddafi and that later in 1975 he himself tried to take power in a failed coup. After the failed coup, he would flee Libya and only return in 1990 after Qaddafi pardoned him.

Al-Honi is not the only Libyan diplomat to resign. The Libyan ambassador to India has also done the same. There is an intention on the part of these officials to be members of the power structure in a Libya after the ouster of Qaddafi:

Libyan Ambassador to India Ali al-Essawi told the BBC that he was quitting, opposing his government's violent crackdown on demonstrators.

Mr. Al-Essawi was reported to be a Minister in Tripoli and could be an important figure in an alternative government, in case Libyan President Muammar Qadhafi steps down.

The second Libyan diplomat to put in his papers was Tripoli's Permanent Representative to the Arab League Abdel Moneim al-Honi, who said in Cairo that he had quit his job to “join the revolution” in his country.

“I have submitted my resignation in protest against the acts of repression and violence against demonstrators, and I am joining the ranks of the revolution,” said Mr. Al-Honi. The Second Secretary Hussein Sadiq al Musrati, announced his resignation from China, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, and called on the Army to intervene in the uprising. [3]

Again, these revolting officials, like Al-Yunis and Sharif, are from within the regime. They are not mere diplomats, but former ministers. There is also the possibility that these types of “opposition figures” could have or could make arrangements with external powers.

External Forces at Play in Libya

The governments of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy all knew very well that Qaddafi was a despot, but this did not stop any of them from making lucrative deals with Tripoli. When the media covers the violence in Libya, they should also ask, where are the weapons being used coming from? The arms sales that the U.S. and the E.U. have made to Libya should be scrutinized. Is this a part of their democracy promotion programs?

Since rapprochement between the U.S. and Libya, the military forces of both countries have moved closer. Libya and the U.S. have had military transactions and since rapprochement Tripoli has been very interested in buying U.S. military hardware. [4] In 2009, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lieutenant-Colonel Hibner, affirmed this relationship best: “[The U.S.] will consider Libyan requests for defen[c]e equipment that enables [Libya] to build capabilities in areas that serve our mutual interest [or synchronized U.S. and Libyan interests].” [5] The qualifier here is U.S. interests, meaning that the Pentagon will only arm Libya on the basis of U.S. interests.

In what seems to have happened overnight, a whole new arsenal of U.S. military hardware has appeared in Libya. American-made F-16 jets, Apache helicopters, and ground vehicles are being used inside Libya by Qaddafi. [6] This is a shocking revelation, if corroborated. There are no public records about some of this U.S. military hardware in the the arsenal of the Libyan military. In regards to the F-16s, Libyan jets are traditionally French-made Mirages and Russian-made MiGs.

Silvio Berlusconi and the Italian government have also been strong supporters of Qaddafi’s regime. There is information coming out of Libya that Italian pilots are also being used by the Libyan Air Force. [7] Mercenaries from Chad, Sudan, Niger, and Nigeria are also being used. This has been verified through video evidence coming out of Libya. The Libyan regime is also considering contracting American or European security firms (mercenaries). [8]

The Politics of Al Jazeera

MORE

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23375


 

[bigron]

 
Battles rage in Libya; Gaddafi loyalists launch counter-attack

 
Global Research, February 26, 2011
Pak Tribune 

Global Research Editor's Note

What is occurring in Libya is a carefully planned armed insurrection rather than a peaceful protest movement as in Tunisia and Egypt.

There are indications that the armed militia groups are supported by the US.

The objective is not democratization but "humanitarian intervention" and regime change, with a view to eventually installing a pro-US government as well as taking control of one of the World's largest oil producers. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Battles rage in Libya; Gaddafi loyalists launch counter-attack

Death toll in fighting for Zawiyah 23

Friday February 25, 2011 (1123 PST)

BENGHAZI: Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi launched a counter-attack on Thursday, fighting gun battles with rebels who have threatened the Libyan leader by seizing important towns close to the capital.
The opposition were already in control of major centres in the east, including the regional capital Benghazi, and reports that the towns of Misrata and Zuara in the west had also fallen brought the tide of rebellion closer to Gaddafi’s power base.

Gaddafi loyalists attacked anti-government militias controlling Misrata, Libya’s third-biggest city, and killed several people in fighting near the city’s airport.

Soldiers were reported along the roads approaching Tripoli, and fighting broke out in the town of Zawiyah, an oil terminal just 50 kilometres west of Tripoli. Witnesses said people in civilian clothes, who appeared to be pro and anti-Gaddafi forces, were firing at each other in the streets
 
 MORE

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23395

[bigron]

Libya: Dreams of Western Intervention


by Susil Gupta, February 26, 2011

http://original.antiwar.com/susil-gupta/2011/02/25/libya-dreams-of-western-intervention/

The crisis in Libya is quickly becoming an international embarrassment. Not, this time, because of Gadhafi’s clowinsh antics, but because it provides a spectacular opportunity for the world to see just how much Western power has declined during the last decade.

Despite being the most powerful nation on earth, and having a military apparatus on a scale greater than the sum of every other country, the US has patently failed to impose its solutions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Far from America being able to force the Ayatollahs into submission, Iran gains strategic ground every day. The financial crisis has paralyzed the power of Western finance. Western central bankers have had to go begging to China and the oil rich countries for loans. The Arab revolt of 2011 has now destroyed the exclusive grip Anglo-American rule once had in the region.

And now Libya promises to make explicit the powerlessness of the West. As Laurence Pope, ex-political advisor to the US "Central Command" and ex-ambassador to Tripoli told Le Monde in a sobering assessment, "Washington finds itself in a situation where there are only bad options and others that are worse."

What has been the response in Europe? The European Left and the liberal bourgeoisie remain very interventionist and are firm believers in "humanitarian bombing." They are clamoring for a muscular Nato intervention along Balkan lines. An editorial in Left-leaning Guardian supports the call by liberal Lord Owen that "military preparations should be made and the necessary diplomatic approaches, above all to the Russians and the Chinese, set in train to secure UN authority for such action." Should the crisis continue, the Guardian argues, "intervention on the ground would have to be considered. The Egyptian army has the means, other Arab countries could contribute, and western forces could help." Yes, and it would all be over by Christmas.

It is obvious that these war enthusiasts have not thought this through – but then they would not be doing any of the fighting. The plain fact is that there are no feasible military interventions even if the major powers could agree on an intervention plan, which is very far from being the case. Consider the options.

Imposing a no fly zone. This would require extensive air patrols by foreign air forces. They would have little effect since air power is not key to Gadhafi’s strategy. It would, however, create an atmosphere of major war and give Gadhafi a propaganda boost.

Creating a military barrier or cordon sanitaire around eastern Libya to protect rebel positions.  Likewise this would crystallize the situation into a two-sided war, which could only play into Gadhafi’s hands. It is to the advantage of those that want to topple Gadhafi to avoid a war of entrenchment or fixed positions, preventing them from permeating every level of society and undermine further his crumbing power base. In any case such Western intervention would be impossible to implement. No Western commander is going to deploy troops at short notice into a theater unknown to his troops but well-known to an enemy who, in any case, cannot be easily distinguished from friendly forces. It is a recipe for disaster.

Sending in a "peace keeping" African Union force to separate the parties. One way to unite every Libyan behind Gadhafi, given the reputation of such forces in the past.

Sending in a "peace keeping" force made up of troops from Arab countries as The Guardian recommends. One way to unite every Libyan behind Gadhafi and infect and inflame the whole of the Middle East with the vicissitudes of a Libyan civil war.

Bomb. But where? Tripoli? Gadhafi’s hideout?  In addition to the lack of any meaningful target, Western bombing might give others the idea of bombing targets that are indeed of great strategic value: oil wells and pipe lines.

Sanctions. Libya’s massively long borders are totally porous and populated by peoples and countries keen to do business and who don’t give a damn about UN Security Council resolutions.  On the contrary, given the strategic importance of Libyan oil and gas to several European nations, Libya is the only country in a position to apply effective sanctions against anyone else. The price of oil has already shot up to $110.  Watch how the Italians start screaming in the next couple of weeks if the crisis goes on much longer.

Unsurprisingly, Cameron and Sarkozy are making angry statements but otherwise are just looking at their shoes.

http://original.antiwar.com/susil-gupta/2011/02/25/libya-dreams-of-western-intervention/

[No2NWO]

Exile an option for Gaddafi, White House says

(Reuters) - Going into exile would be one way for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to meet international demands that he leave power, the White House said on Monday.

After days of violent unrest in Libya, President Barack Obama said on Saturday it was time for Gaddafi to leave, but he did not spell out how he envisioned that happening.

"Exile is certainly one option for him," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday.

Carney would not discuss whether the United States would help facilitate such an exile.

At a news briefing, Carney also said the United States and its allies are in talks on whether to create a no-fly zone over Libya.

He also said the United States was in contact with opposition groups in the country.

"We are actively reaching out to ... those in Libya who are working to bring about a government that respects the rights and meets the aspirations of the Libyan people," he said.

"It's premature to make decisions about recognizing one group or the other," he said.

Carney said Washington had a variety of ways to contact groups in Libya through diplomats, non-governmental organizations and the business community.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/28/us-libya-usa-obama-idUSTRE71R4WK20110228

[agentbluescreen]

Well somehow I just can't see him living peaceably up the road from the exiled Bush-family in Paraguay

[Optimus]

Is Libya The New Iraq? U.S. Prepares Libyan Invasion
http://noworldsystem.com/2011/02/27/is-libya-the-new-iraq-u-s-prepares-libyan-invasion/
NoWorldSystem.com
February 26, 2011

Many signs are pointing to the potential U.S. military invasion of Libya, much like how the U.S. invaded Iraq for oil, to topple Saddam and replace him with a brand new puppet dictator.

Obama announced that he will send CFR member and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns to Europe and the Middle East. According to Obama, Mr. Burns will “intensify our consultation with allies and partners.” In other words Burns will serve as the point man ahead of the coming intervention in Libya, where there is around 46 billion barrels of estimated oil reserves.

According to the White House spokesman Jay Carney, “no options” have been taken off the table when it comes to the situation in Libya. “Our job is to give options from the military side, and that is what we are thinking about now,” “We will provide the president with options should he need them.” By saying that “all options” are being considered, that is basically a way for the Obama administration to threaten Gadhafi without actually coming right out and threatening him.

It’s quite humorous how Obama is calling out Gaddafi when it was only just last year that Obama contributed $400,000 to Gaddafi’s family. This should be no surprise as the U.S. routinely gives military and monetary aide to dictators including Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak.

The similarities of the Iraq invasion and the coming Libyan invasion are overwhelming, According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. government is concerned about “weapons of mass destruction” Gaddafi apparently has:

“The government of Col. Moammar Gadhafi hasn’t destroyed significant stockpiles of mustard gas and other chemical-weapons agents, raising fears in Washington about what could happen to them—and whether they may be used—as Libya slides further into chaos.”

The Wall Street Journal article also stated that U.S. officials believe that Gadhafi possesses “1,000 metric tons of uranium yellowcake” which they believe are a serious threat to the international community.

There are also rumors of Al-Qaeda being in Libya, earlier today it was reported that Al-Qaeda has set up an Islamic emirate in eastern Libya, headed by a former U.S. prisoner from Guantanamo Bay.

Does this sound familiar? Remember the Bush administrations main reasons for invading Iraq were; 1) Saddam has WMDs 2) Al-Qaeda was there. But currently the excuse to invade Libya would be about humanitarian issues.

(Libya’s Justice Minister is saying Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie Bombing)

More troubling signs that the U.S. is preparing for something. The U.S. embassy in Libya has been closed, sanctions imposed, and U.S. personnel have been pulled out of the country.

The White House said on Thursday that enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya was among the options on the table. “When we are examining all options, and that option has been tabled, at least in the press, but certainly has been discussed in other venues, that by exploring those options we are looking at feasibility, and I mean that broadly,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

This was one of the options ordered by the Bush administration that impacted the military and the citizens of Iraq on almost a weekly basis, especially after the intense “Desert Fox” bombing campaign of 1998. The Anglo-American military used these zones to prevent Saddam’s government from using military aircraft to attack the Kurds and Shiite Muslims, but in time the no-fly zones became a means to force Iraq to comply with the UN and Coalition demands to search for prohibited weapons in Iraq. A likely scenario would be implementing a no-fly zone over Libya to stop the government from bombing protesters again if the protest situation persists.

Ynetnews.com says that an anonymous “European official” is claiming that the U.S. and NATO have already been very busy making plans for military action against Libya….

“The source said NATO and US warplanes stationed in Italy may be ordered to take down Libyan planes, and that electronic warfare against them may already have been implemented.”

“The source told al-Quds al-Arabi that NATO forces may launch an aerial attack on Libya or fire missiles from warships positioned in international waters near Tripoli. Libyan army weapons caches may also be targeted, the source said.”

The truth is that Libya is not a place we want to be sending U.S. troops to take out Gaddafi and his government. Like Iraq, Libya is a deeply divided nation made up of a large number of tribal factions that hate each other. That isn’t a place we want troops in the middle of.

Not only that, but the people of Libya are not too fond of the United States. Any U.S. military intervention, no matter how desired, would soon be deeply resented. Our soldiers would rapidly become targets just like they are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not only that, but when the U.S. military gets into a country they almost never leave. The U.S. would remove Gaddafi and replace him with a better U.S. puppet dictator who will also be hated if not more by the Libyan people.

The U.S. military is stretched way to thin to even think about invading another country, the U.S. is in a financial crisis and have already spent over $2.5 TRILLION dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Neocons Fueling Another Invasion

Military intervention “is something which I hope doesn’t happen, but it looks as though at some point that it should happen,” Simon Henderson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told CNN.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a fanatical neocon operation. It supports the positions of the Likud and other racist warmongers in Israel. It was founded by Martin Indyk, the former research director of AIPAC.

WINEP is also involved with the Council on Foreign Relations in policymaking on the bogus war on manufactured terrorism and the intelligence created network of radical Islamists.

“What’s an acceptable number of civilian deaths? I don’t know. Choose your figure,” Henderson said. “At the very least, instead of having a casualty list certainly in the hundreds, possibly in the thousands, we don’t want a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands, or 100,000 or so.”

WINEP was intimately involved with Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans making the case – including cooking up bogus intelligence and scary WMD stories – for the illegal invasion of Iraq that ultimately resulted in the murder of over a million Iraqis, so any crocodile tears over the lives of Arabs is disingenuous, to say the least.

Bush era diplomat Nicholas Burns, who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and is more or less a permanent fixture at the Pentagon psyop CNN these days, says Moammar will probably go out in destructive fashion. “You’ve got to assume the worst about Moammar Gaddafi,” he said. “With his back to the wall, he’s going to go out in a blaze of vicious attacks.”

Other prominent neocons seem to be a bit more reticent. Propagandist Robert Kagan, who served as an advisor for the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq – or rather the committee for the invasion and destruction of Iraq – told CNN the global elite are not “talking about immediate military actions now.” In other words, attacking Libya is a distinct possibility. It may just take some time to get things rolling.

Kagan is a founding member of Project for the New American Century – the organization most responsible for creating the ideological underpinnings of the Iraq invasion – and is also a globalist stooge at the Council on Foreign Relations. He worked in the State Department.

Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, interpreted Kagan’s statement as indicating that military force remains a possibility. “In my opinion, it’s still premature to talk about U.S. military intervention in Libya at this point, but we should not eliminate it completely,” Sharqieh said.

The Brookings Institute takes money from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the United Nations, JP Morgan Chase, Shell Oil, the World Economic Forum, and no shortage of other transnational banks and corporations. It is a premier globalist operation.

Finally, it should be noted that Libya has refused to obey the IMF and the Wall Street banksters. It’s not just about oil, dictator Gaddafi made a fatal mistake by attacking his own people thus allowing the globalists the opportunity to invade his country.

The people of the Middle East and Libya are pawns in this Anglo-American New World Order of the middle east and are doing their bidding by buying into the protests that are engineered by the U.S. and Britain.

Organizers who ran the “Egyptian Revolution” attended a CIA-coup college that is partnered with a neocon institution called International Republican Institute (IRI) that includes the board of directors John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Brent Scowcroft.

There will be no change for the Libyan people when Gaddafi is gone, but they will be in for a surprise after their oil is stolen and they are reduced to groveling at the feet of the banksters and their loan sharking operations run out of the IMF and the World Bank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_J76ddRJRE

[No2NWO]

Cameron: UK working on 'no-fly zone' plan for Libya

Britain is working with its allies on a plan to establish a military no-fly zone over Libya, says David Cameron.

The prime minister said the threat of "further appalling steps" being taken by Col Muammar Gaddafi to oppress his own people was behind the talks.

He said he did not rule out "the use of military assets" in Libya and said the "murderous regime" must end.

Fewer than 150 British citizens are thought to remain in Libya and only a "very small proportion" want to leave.

The government would continue to do "all we can" to get them out, he said.

In a statement to MPs after returning from a tour of the Middle East, Mr Cameron said there was a "precious moment of opportunity" and in many parts of the Arab world "hopes and aspirations which have been smothered for decades" were surfacing.

He said they were "taking every possible step to isolate the Gaddafi regime".
'Military assets'

The UK has frozen Col Gaddafi's British-held assets and those of his family, and withdrawn their diplomatic immunity and an export ban has been imposed on Libyan banknotes, which are printed in Britain.

Mr Cameron told MPs there would be "further isolation of the regime by expelling it from international organisations" and further use of asset freezes and travel bans to encourage those "on the fringes of the regime, that now is the time to desert it".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

    I do think it's one thing we need to look at, look at it urgently and plan for, in case we find, as we may well do, that Col Gaddafi is taking further appalling steps to oppress his people”

End Quote David Cameron

He added: "And we do not in any way rule out the use of military assets, we must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people.

"In that context I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone."

He said later they would comply with international law but planning for a no-fly zone had to start now because no-one knew what Col Gaddafi would do to his own people and one might have to be put in place "very quickly".

The Labour MP Ann Clwyd told him that a no-fly zone could "save thousands of lives if he's [Col Gaddafi] going to bomb his own people from the air".

Mr Cameron said trying to secure a no-fly zone over a country as large as Libya was "not without its difficulties": "We would be trying to cover a vast area, it would take a serious amount of military assets to achieve it."

And he pointed out there were other ways for Col Gaddafi to attack Libyans, other than by helicopter gunship or by plan. "But I do think it's one thing we need to look at, look at it urgently and plan for, in case we find, as we may well do, that Col Gaddafi is taking further appalling steps to oppress his people and that is why the conversations are taking place today."
'Day of reckoning'

Some 50 Britons and 150 foreign nationals have arrived in Malta on HMS Cumberland.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for an immediate end to violence against anti-government demonstrators in Libya and warned Col Gaddafi's supporters that there will be a "day of reckoning" for anyone involved in human rights abuses.

Addressing a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mr Hague said there must be "no impunity" for those involved in violence against protesters.

He said: "We have signalled that crimes will not be condoned, will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten.

"This is a warning to anyone contemplating the abuse of human rights in Libya or any other country: Stay your hand. There will be a day of reckoning and the reach of international justice can be long.

"We must now maintain the momentum we have attained to ensure that there can be no impunity for crimes committed in Libya and to help bring about an immediate end to the violence."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12598674

[No2NWO]

US, Europe pressure Gaddafi; send aid to rebels and refugees

GENEVA - U.S. and Europeans leaders took new steps Monday to tighten the noose on Libya's besieged government--sending aid to rebels and refugees, toughening sanctions and calling for the ouster of longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi.

The European Union, meeting in Brussels, voted to approve wide-ranging sanctions similar to those adopted over the weekend by the United States and the United Nations. The EU also slapped Libya with an arms embargo and imposed a visa ban for members of Gaddafi's inner circle, as world powers moved quickly and in virtual lockstep to punish the Libyan government for its violent crackdown on demonstrators.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressing a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, catalogued the atrocities Gaddafi's regime is alleged to have committed, and said the international community is "speaking with one voice" in demanding his immediate removal.

"They have used heavy weapons on unarmed civilians. Mercenaries and thugs have been turned loose to attack demonstrators," Clinton said. " There are reports of soldiers executed for refusing to turn their guns on fellow citizens, of indiscriminate killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022802797.html?hpid=topnews

[Dig]

US, Europe pressure Gaddafi; send aid to rebels and refugees

GENEVA - U.S. and Europeans leaders took new steps Monday to tighten the noose on Libya's besieged government--sending aid to rebels and refugees, toughening sanctions and calling for the ouster of longtime leader Moammar Gaddafi.

The European Union, meeting in Brussels, voted to approve wide-ranging sanctions similar to those adopted over the weekend by the United States and the United Nations. The EU also slapped Libya with an arms embargo and imposed a visa ban for members of Gaddafi's inner circle, as world powers moved quickly and in virtual lockstep to punish the Libyan government for its violent crackdown on demonstrators.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressing a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, catalogued the atrocities Gaddafi's regime is alleged to have committed, and said the international community is "speaking with one voice" in demanding his immediate removal.

"They have used heavy weapons on unarmed civilians. Mercenaries and thugs have been turned loose to attack demonstrators," Clinton said. " There are reports of soldiers executed for refusing to turn their guns on fellow citizens, of indiscriminate killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022802797.html?hpid=topnews

Just a sanity check...

Britain is telling a sovereign country how to deal with acts of insurrection.

Again, let us see how Great Britain has dealt with high treason (from our NSA friends at wikipedia):

Hanging, drawing and quartering was from 1351 a penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the ritual is first recorded during the reigns of King Henry III (1216–1272) and his successor, Edward I (1272–1307). Convicts were fastened to a wooden hurdle and dragged by horse to the place of execution, where they were hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Their remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burnt at the stake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered
And now what does Britain do?

They fabricate false evidence about you, assassinate you, and tell the world it was a suicide!

[No2NWO]

Chavez: U.S. distorting situation in Libya 'to justify an invasion'

(CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claims U.S. criticism of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has a clear aim: military invasion.

"Let's not get carried away by the drums of war, because the United States, I am sure that they are exaggerating and distorting things to justify an invasion," Chavez said Monday, according to Venezuelan state media.

At a Monday meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was exploring "all possible options," and that "nothing is off the table so long as the Libyan government continues to threaten and kill Libyan citizens."

Asked at a news conference Monday whether the United States planned an imminent military response in Libya, Clinton said, "No."

Speaking in Caracas Monday, Chavez proposed sending an international committee to Libya to mediate and help develop a peaceful solution to unrest in the North African country.

"Instead of sending marines and tanks and planes, why don't we send a goodwill commission to try to help so that they do not continue killing in Libya? They are our brothers," he said in a speech televised on the government-run network.

Chavez and Gadhafi have a close relationship, having bonded partly over shared opposition to U.S. global influence.

Full Story: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/01/libya.venezuela.chavez/?hpt=T2

[No2NWO]

Gadhafi Gets Autotuned, Clowned In Viral Vid Dis

Admit it. If you got YouTube dissed like this, you’d probably try to squash social media in your country, too.

In Libya, embattled dictator Moammar Gadhafi is clinging to his rule despite losing hold of cities on the outskirts of his capitol, all while the U.S. openly calls for his departure. But online, Gadhafi is already pursuing inadvertent extracurricular activities, like putting in a cameo appearance on a Pitbull and T-Pain track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBY-0n4esNY&feature=player_embedded

“Zenga Zenga,” created by Israeli musician Noy Alooshe, remixes and Autotunes Gadhafi’s rambling speech last week vowing to stay in power and crush the Libyan revolution. Gadhafi’s repeated mention of the word “zanqa,” Arabic for “alleyway” — where he’d kill his enemies — and his wild gesticulations gave the parody a natural name and rhythm, Alooshe told the New York Times. Alooshe’s video has over a million views in less than a week since its creation.

Little wonder, then, that Ghadafi’s goons are now hunting revolutionaries via their Facebook and Twitter accounts, the Washington Times reports. Social media has played a less prominent role in the Libyan uprising than it has in Egypt or Tunisia, but Ghadafi still tried to shut down the Libyan Internet when the revolution crested two weeks ago. That’s led revolutionaries to physically drive to the Egyptian border to smuggle out video of Ghadafi’s bloody repression on thumb drives and DVDs, all in the hope of going viral.

Most of the videos emerging from Libya purport to show, very explicitly, Ghadafi loyalists killing protesters (NSFW). But narcissistic rulers have a hard time with mockery. Now the Libyan Revolution has its own Numa Numa.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/gadhafi-gets-autotuned-clowned-in-viral-vid-dis/

[citizenx]

US UK, French forces land in Libya

By wmw_admin on March 1, 2011

Akhtar Jahmal – Pakistan Observer March 1, 2011

The United States, Britain and France have sent several hundred “defence advisors” to train and support the anti-Gadhafi forces in oil-rich Eastern Libya where “rebels armed groups” have apparently taken over.

According to an exclusive report confirmed by a Libyan diplomat in the region “the three Western states have landed their “special forces troops in Cyrinacia and are now setting up their bases and training centres” to reinforce the rebel forces who are resisting pro-Qaddafi forces in several adjoining areas.

A Libyan official who requested not to be identified said that the U.S. and British military gurus were sent on February 23 and 24 night through American and French warships and small naval boats off Libyan ports of Benghazi and Tobruk.

continued:

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=21161

original link:

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=78009

[Optimus]

US, France, Britain set up bases in Libya
Tue Mar 1, 2011 2:49AM

Britain, France and the United States have dispatched hundreds of military advisors to Libya to set up military bases in the country's oil-rich east, reports say.

Several Libyan diplomats have been quoted by news outlets as saying these forces are setting up bases in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Tobruk -- the two oil-rich cities that have been liberated by the opposition forces.

British and US special forces entered Libyan port cities of Benghazi and Toburk on February 23 and 24.

Three Indian navy warships are also expected to be deployed in the region. Earlier on Monday, the US military confirmed it has deployed naval and air forces around Libya.

A Pentagon spokesman said various contingency plans are considered to provide options and flexibility once decisions are made.

Earlier on Monday, the US military confirmed it has deployed naval and air forces around Libya.

More: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/167578.html

[iks83]

hmm military advisors... where did I hear that before...

If everything is a CIA color twitter facebook revolution like tarpley says then why do they need that much military around?

[citizenx]

Simpley the left and right arms of the beast, iks. There is no reason they can't use both.  In fact the one might have just been the set-up for the other.

An oil and land grab might have been the plan of these engineered revolutions in the Middle East all along.

Funny it all starting there, huh?

All that oil in the ground and the average person gets only grief because of it.

[Dig]

This is all part of the Pentagon's New Map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map

I read this book about 5-6 years ago now, and everything happening right now is explained in that book. And when it all started to happen, I was the least bit surprised.

Anyone who is watching the stuff in the Middle East and north Africa would benefit from reading this book.

[No2NWO]

This is all part of the Pentagon's New Map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map

I was looking at that last night after Ghost posted it. I didn't see any mention of Israel. I'm I to assume that Israel is just an appendage of the United States? I'll try and find the book... 

[No2NWO]

Dating Site Is the New Hotspot for Libyan Protest

On a Muslim dating site called Mawada, there’s a man with a profile titled “Where Is Miriam?” He will frequently receive messages from other Muslim women which read something along the lines of “may your day be filled with Jasmine.” He’s also quite popular with the ladies, amassing over 171,000 admirers. But neither “Where Is Miriam,” nor his admirers are interested in love. They’re interested in toppling the Libyan regime led by Muammar Gaddafi.

According to ABC News, the dating site had been used over the past couple of weeks as a clandestine location to exchange information and words of encouragement regarding the citizen uprisings in Libya. Many of the 171,000 admirers who follow “Where Is Miriam?” (aka Libyan opposition leader Omar Shibliy Mahmoudi) on Mawada aren’t even women. But because the dating site forbids contact between men, male dissidents had to forge female identities such as “Girl of the Desert” and “Sweet Butterfly.”

Messages posted to Mahmoudi’s page, like the one above, were essentially written in code to further conceal their actions (the Jasmine mention is referring to the Jasmine revolution.) When referring to liberty, users would often use the word love, and when they wanted to meet up, they would express a desire to call one another. Using these methods, they were not only able to contact Mahmoudi, but each other as well, helping to spur on the Libyan revolt. [ABC News via Discover]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/dating-site-is-the-new-hotspot-for-libyan-protest/

[All4truth]

Russian Military Claims Libya Air Strikes Did Not Happen
Images from space suggest attack was contrived to create pretext for "humanitarian" military intervention

According to Russia Today correspondent Irina Galushko, top officials from Russia's Joint Chiefs of Staff monitoring images from space satellites have concluded that, "Some of the reports made by western media are not entirely corresponding to the pictures they are getting."

Specifically, the supposed air strikes that took place on February 22 over Benghazi and Tripoli, which were widely reported by the likes of the BBC and Al Jazeera, were not registered by the Russian military chiefs studying the images coming in from the satellites.

The pictures show that, "nothing of that sort has been going on on the ground," states Galushko, adding that there is also no evidence from footage shot by television cameras which suggests that any airborne attacks took place.

Although there seems little doubt that Gaddafi's regime is currently using air strikes to fight back against rebels who have seized eastern areas of the country, the initial claim that air strikes were used against protesters was unquestioningly parroted by the mass media last week despite there being scant evidence of such an attack.

The horror of death raining down from above and slaughtering innocent people (let's not mention predator drones), was endlessly hyped by western media and political leaders as a clear justification for a United States and NATO-led military campaign to topple Gaddafi on "humanitarian" grounds, of course having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Libya holds the largest oil reserves in the whole of Africa.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)



History tells us that almost every single conflict involving the United States has been kick-started by a contrived pretext to justify military intervention, whether it be a pre-emptive attack or a so-called "humanitarian" campaign. "Humanitarian" wars are a lot easier to sell to the public because contrived crises focused around manipulating people's emotions and empathy for human suffering are relatively simple to concoct.

Who could forget the Iraqi incubator babies hoax, in which it was claimed that Saddam Hussein had ordered his henchmen to remove babies from their incubators in Kuwait and leave them for dead on hospital floors. The story was aggressively hyped by the western media and graciously exploited by George H.W. Bush for war propaganda before the first Gulf War.

Of course, the whole story was subsequently discovered to be a carefully crafted hoax cooked up by the Kuwaiti government in exile along with American PR firm Hill & Knowlton, led by by the firm's CEO and former Bush staffer Craig Fuller, who was tasked to "devise a campaign to win American support for the war."

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2011/020311_air_strikes.htm

[No2NWO]

Ahmadinejad Warns Against US Military Intervention in Libya

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is warning the United States against military intervention in Libya, saying the action would create a graveyard for U.S. soldiers.

Mr. Ahmadinejad made the remarks Wednesday in an address in the western Iranian province of Lorestan.

He said the current situation is completely different to what it was ten years ago during the tenure of former U.S. President George Bush, when the United States and its allies first went into Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Iranian president vowed that North African and Middle Eastern nations will rise up and fight if the West launches a military action in the region again.

Mr. Ahmadinejad also accused the U.S. government of supporting what he called “dictators” in the region.

The Iranian president spoke as two U.S. amphibious assault ships entered Egypt's Suez Canal en route to waters off Libya. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he ordered the warships to deploy off the Libyan coast in case they are needed for emergency evacuations or humanitarian relief.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that Washington and its NATO allies are considering enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi's forces from carrying out more alleged attacks on opposition forces. However, Gates says NATO has not reached a consensus on the use of military force in Libya.

[Optimus]

US warships enter Egypt's Suez Canal
Wed Mar 2, 2011 7:41AM

The USS Kearsarge and the Ponce, two US amphibious assault ships, have entered the Suez Canal on their way to Libya as Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi continues his harsh crackdown on anti-government protesters, a canal official says.

The two US warships with hundreds of Marines on board headed towards Libya on Tuesday and entered Egypt's Suez Canal on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

The ships were at the southern mouth of the canal, the official said, adding that they were expected to pass through by 3:30 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. local time.

Earlier on Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious ship capable of carrying up to 2,000 Marines, and the USS Ponce assault ship will be passing through the Mediterranean shortly.

More: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/167786.html

[bigron]

Middle East
Mar 3, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC03Ak03.html   

THE ROVING EYE

War porn is back in Libya

By Pepe Escobar

Forget "democracy"; Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, is an oil power. Many a plush office of United States and European elites will be salivating at the prospect of taking advantage of a small window of opportunity afforded by the anti-Muammar Gaddafi revolution to establish - or expand - a beachhead. There's all that oil, of course. There's also the allure, close by, of the US$10 billion, 4,128 kilometer long Trans-Saharan gas pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria, expected to be online in 2015.

Thus the world, once again, is reintroduced to war porn, history as farce, a bad rerun of "shock and awe". Everyone - the United Nations, the US, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - is up in arms about a no-fly zone. Special forces are on the move, as are US warships.

Breathless US senators compare Libya with Yugoslavia. Tony "The Return of the Living Dead" Blair is back in missionary zeal form, its mirror image played by British Prime Minister David Cameron, duly mocked by Gaddafi's son, the "modernizer" Saif al-Islam. There's fear of "chemical weapons". Welcome back to humanitarian imperialism - on crack.

And like a character straight out of Scary Movie, even war-on-Iraq-architect Paul Wolfowitz wants a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, as the Foreign Policy Initiative - the son of the Project for the New American Century - publishes an open letter to US President Barack Obama demanding military boots to turn Libya into a protectorate ruled by NATO in the name of the "international community".

The mere fact that all these people are supporting the Libya protesters makes it all stink to - over the rainbow - high heavens. Sending His Awesomeness Charlie Sheen to whack Gaddafi would seem more believable.

It was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to introduce a note of sanity, describing the notion of a no-fly zone over Libya as "superfluous". This means in practice a Russian veto at the UN Security Council. Earlier, China had already changed the conversation.

In their Sheen-style hysteria - with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton desperately offering "any kind of assistance" - Western politicians did not bother to consult with the people who are risking their lives to overthrow Gaddafi. At a press conference in Benghazi, the spokesman for the brand new Libyan National Transitional Council, human-rights lawyer Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, was blunt, "We are against any foreign intervention or military intervention in our internal affairs ... This revolution will be completed by our people."

The people in question, by the way, are protecting Libya's oil industry, and even loading supertankers destined to Europe and China. The people in question do not have much to do with opportunists such as former Gaddafi-appointed justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who wants a provisional government to prepare for elections in three months. Moreover, the people in question, as al-Jazeera has reported, have been saying they don't want foreign intervention for a week now.

The Benghazi council prefers to describe itself as the "political face for the revolution", organizing civic affairs, and not established as an interim government. Meanwhile, a military committee of officer defectors is trying to set up a skeleton army to be sent to Tripoli; through tribal contacts, they seem to have already infiltrated small cells into the vicinity of Tripoli.

Whether this self-appointed revolutionary leadership - splinter elements of the established elite, the tribes and the army - will be the face of a new regime, or whether they will be overtaken by younger, more radical activists, remains to be seen.

Shower me with hypocrisy

None of this anyway has placated the hysterical Western narrative, according to which there are only two options for Libya; to become a failed state or the next al-Qaeda haven. How ironic. Up to 2008, Libya was dismissed by Washington as a rogue state and an unofficial member of the "axis of evil" that originally included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

As former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark confirmed years ago, Libya was on the Pentagon/neo-conservative official list to be taken out after Iraq, along with Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and the holy grail, Iran. But as soon as wily Gaddafi became an official partner in the "war on terror", Libya was instantly upgraded by the George W Bush administration to civilized status.

As for the UN Security Council unanimously deciding to refer the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court (ICC), it's useful to remember that the ICC was created in mid-1998 by 148 countries meeting in Rome. The final vote was 120 to seven. The seven that voted against the ICC were China, Iraq, Israel, Qatar and Yemen, plus Libya and ... the United States. Incidentally, Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in two weeks around new year 2008 than Gaddafi these past two weeks.

This tsunami of hypocrisy inevitably raises the question; what does the West know about the Arab world anyway? Recently the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) praised a certain northern African country for its "ambitious reform agenda" and its "strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector". The country was Libya. The IMF had only forgotten to talk to the main actors: the Libyan people.

And what to make of Anthony Giddens - the guru behind Blair's "Third Way" - who in March 2007 penned an article to The Guardian saying "Libya is not especially repressive" and "Gaddafi seems genuinely popular"? Giddens bet that Libya "in two or three decades' time would be a Norway of North Africa: prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking". Tripoli may well be on its way to Oslo - but without the Gaddafi clan.

The US, Britain and France are so awkwardly maneuvering for best post-Gaddafi positioning it's almost comical to watch. Beijing, even against its will, waited until extra time to condemn Gaddafi at the UN, but made sure it was following the lead of African and Asian countries (smart move, as in "we listen to the voices of the South"). Beijing is extremely worried that its complex economic relationship with oil source Libya does not unravel (amid all the hoopla about fleeing expats, China quietly evacuated no less than 30,000 Chinese workers in the oil and construction business).

Once again; it's the oil, stupid. A crucial strategic factor for Washington is that post-Gaddafi Libya may represent a bonanza for US Big Oil - which for the moment has been kept away from Libya. Under this perspective, Libya may be considered as yet one more battleground between the US and China. But while China goes for energy and business deals in Africa, the US bets on its forces in AFRICOM as well as NATO advancing "military cooperation" with the African Union.

The anti-Gaddafi movement must remain on maximum alert. It's fair to argue the absolute majority of Libyans are using all their resourcefulness and are wiling to undergo any sacrifice to build a united, transparent and democratic country. And they will do it on their own. They may accept humanitarian help. As for war porn, throw it in the dustbin of history.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC03Ak03.html

[EvadingGrid]

They want yet another military base . . .

[bigron]

Middle East
Mar 5, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC05Ak05.html 
 

THE ROVING EYE

The lion wants his juice back


By Pepe Escobar

You're Muammar Gaddafi, and you're sitting in your Bab al-Azizia bunker sipping green tea and surveying the odds of staying in power. Let's see. You control some neighborhoods in Tripoli; some cities in the far west, near the Tunisian border; your birthplace, Sirte. And that's it.

You may have lost like 90% of your country. You tried to get Zawiya (west of Tripoli) back and failed; those god-damned tribals betrayed you. You tried to get Misrata (east of Tripoli), and failed. You tried to get Brega - the second-largest processing and oil shipping terminal in Libya - and failed.

The Americans and Brits are dying to invade. "Experts" say you're boxed in and have only Zimbabwe as an exile destination. Venezuelan President "brother" Hugo Chavez wants to send a multinational delegation to negotiate. Negotiate what? This is your country. L'Etat, c'est moi - the state is me, King Muammar. Nobody can steal my mojo.

They froze your multi-billionaire assets from A to Z. They shut down your banks. But you've still got some dough. A whole lot of weaponry. A few (malfunctioning) jets. You have those thousands of black African mercenaries. You have the 10,000-strong special brigade led by your son Khamis. You got state TV.

So what do you do? You double down. And go for broke.

The lion sleeps tonight
Danger: the African king of kings in his bunker is like a lion resting under a tree. He knows that from the west the "rebels" - or in shorthand official narrative "al-Qaeda zombie youths on drugs" - haven't got a chance to hurt him unless they organize a very complex attack army out of many rag-tag bands with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades in scattered towns.

He knows that the rebels in the east have to do the same - plus travel, unprotected, along an infinite desert highway just to get to Sirte, where they can be smashed by his jets and tanks.

So he knows they can defend - Zawiya, Misrata, Brega - but they don't have what it takes to attack. That gives him enough time to better plan how to go for the kill.

There's only one problem with this Lion King scenario. What if he runs out of oil?

No less than 80% of Libya's oil fields and refineries are now in the hands of those "al-Qaeda zombie youths on drugs". Gaddafi knows he needs to get Brega back - and quick. He'll go for it, again, and with a more lethal strategy. He still holds Ras Lanouf, 80 kilometers west of Brega - the refinery (220,000 barrels a day), the port and the airport. But he can't afford to lose Brega.

Brega is not exporting any oil. There are no tankers coming and going. Oil production in the southeastern fields that feed Brega has been downsized, from 90,000 barrels a day to just 11,000; there's nowhere to store them. There's no oil flowing at the Nafoora field, part of the Sirte Basin. Italy's ENI, the top foreign oil major, is repatriating all non-essential personnel. Libya's daily production dropped from 1.6 million barrels to 850,000, and will fall further.

More than this oil on storage, Gaddafi needs working refineries pumping out juice for his already cranky military machine. The crowds in liberated Benghazi say that they don't need oil money - because they never got much of from central government anyway in Cyrenaica. The problem is sooner rather than later they will need more weapons. Thus they will need oil money to buy them.

Benghazi is convulsed by rumors of Gaddafi's secret police infiltrated everywhere gathering local intel - even inside the courthouse which has been transformed into eastern liberated Libya's Revolution Central. No wonder al-Jazeera is reporting that people in Brega and Ajdabiya badly want a no-fly zone - to the horror of pan-Arab media.

It's stalemate time - and the lion is biding his time, never more dangerous when he maneuvers in the shade. Although the Algerian government has vociferously denied, officially, it is helping Gaddafi, Algeria, with 40% unemployment and across the board pent-up rage, is also on the brink. Frightful Fortress Europe, meanwhile, prays. While the Greenstream gas pipeline from Libya to Sicily is now closed (Italians are not yet freaking out), Spain dreams of the new US$1.4 billion gas pipeline from Algeria set to open in a few days.

Doomsday practitioners already visualize Algeria's oil production - 1.4 million barrels a day - soon going down the drain alongside Libya's. No wonder the head of oil research at Barclays Capital, Paul Horsnell, says things can potentially be worse than Iran 1979; "The world has only 4.5 million barrels per day of spare capacity."

Thus speculation will be king for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the lion sleeps, tonight and in subsequent nights, musing how he'll get his juice back while a sinister chill envelops Libya all over again.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC05Ak05.html

[bigron]

Middle East
Mar 5, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC05Ak03.html 
 

 
 

Introduction by Asia Times Online staff


Libyan rebels holding the strategic coastal town of Brega on Wednesday repulsed an assault by pro-Muammar Gaddafi forces, amid signs that a 17-day uprising against Gaddafi's rule is descending into full-blown civil war.

On the ground, rebels armed with AK-47 assault rifles, shotguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers faced mortar and artillery strikes by Gaddafi loyalists. In the air, low-flying MiG 23 Floggers raked the insurgents with strafing and bombing runs, according to media reports.

At the end of the day's fighting, rebel leaders said their forces had driven regime forces to Ras Lanuf, some 96 kilometers west of the battle, at a cost of 14 killed. At time of press Tripoli had released no casualty figures.

Coffins holding the bodies of rebels were on Thursday carried in processions through the streets of the eastern stronghold Ajdabiya, with crowds of angry mourners shooting guns in the air and shouting "Down with Gaddafi!"

Foreign governments and international organizations are heaping pressure on the leader to leave, following a brutal crackdown that reportedly saw him turn foreign mercenaries and fighter-jets on his own people.

While his jets were pounding Brega, Gaddafi gave a rousing, two-hour speech to loyalists in Tripoli, "We will fight until the last man and woman in defense of Libya," he said, blaming al-Qaeda for the revolt and warning of "thousands and thousands of" deaths should the US or North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervene.

In a sign of the tug-and-war battle raging for Brega, government forces on Wednesday morning claimed they had secured the oil facility, according to the Associated Press. However, rebel forces dismissed it as "psychological warfare".

On the ground and in the firing line for Asia Times Online, these photos by Derek Henry Flood gives unparalleled insight into how the battle for Brega unfolded
 
PHOTO ESSAY HERE

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC05Ak03.html


 

[bigron]

I smell a rat


By William Bowles

http://uruknet.info/?p=m75534&hd=&size=1&l=e

Strategic Culture Foundation, March 3, 2011

From the very beginning of the Libyan uprising/coup, call it what you will, something didn’t strike me as 'right’, events unfolded in a vacuum as if overnight, chaos took over. As I reported in an earlier piece, all the videos coming out of Libya, were grainy unattributed snatches of events, it was impossible to tell what was really going on, and accompanied by all manner of rumours about what it was alleged Ghadifi’s regime was doing.

Fertile ground for turning fiction into 'fact’ and, as it has transpired, much of the current hysteria in the Western media rests on two, key rumours that surfaced almost concurrently with the uprising itself:

The 'African mercenaries’
Libyan Airforce bombing civilians


The revelation that Russian military satellites reported no Libyan airstrikes[1] as well as the now all but vanished 'African mercenaries’[2] rumour all leads me to suspect that the USUK meddling in the internal affairs of Libya is at the root of the uprising. If not directly implicated then at the least 'assisting’ via its various fronts, especially the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, a CIA-NED front organization based in Washington DC created during the Cold War period, and itself the source of rumours concerning what was actually going on during those crucial first few days of the uprising. It’s the Empire up to its usual old dirty tricks.

MUCH MORE

http://uruknet.info/?p=m75534&hd=&size=1&l=e

[bigron]

Taking the Cake: The Creeping Militarization of the Libyan Crisis


by Chris Floyd


Empire Burlesque, March 3, 2011

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2098-taking-the-cake-the-creeping-militarization-of-the-libyan-crisis.html

The howling hypocrisy of the American response to the uprising in Libya has been so jaw-dropping and nauseating that I've hardly been able to address it. Fortunately, Seamus Milne is on the case, and voices much of my thinking about the matter:

The same western leaders who happily armed and did business with the Gaddafi regime until a fortnight ago have now slapped sanctions on the discarded autocrat and blithely referred him to the international criminal court the United States won't recognise.

Yes, does this not, as they say, take the cake ... and the plate and the forks and the napkins too? The United States pushing through a measure to refer Libyan leaders to an international court which the United States resolutely refuses to recognize -- lest its own leaders and their underlings find themselves in the dock for the most monstrous war crimes of this century? Yet even today, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was sternly wagging his finger at Gaddafi and his underlings, telling them they "will be held accountable" for their actions before the august institutions of international justice, which weigh the whole world in the balance ... except for the Peace prize-winning drone assassin and Continuer-in-Chief of a worldwide campaign of state terror, that is. But now back to Milne:

With Colonel Gaddafi and his loyalists showing every sign of digging in, the likelihood must be of intensified conflict – with all the heightened pretexts that would offer for outside interference, from humanitarian crises to threats to oil supplies.

But any such intervention would risk disaster and be a knife at the heart of the revolutionary process now sweeping the Arab world. Military action is needed, US and British politicians claim, because Gaddafi is "killing his own people". Hundreds have certainly died, but that's hard to take seriously as the principal motivation.

When more than 300 people were killed by Hosni Mubarak's security forces in a couple of weeks, Washington initially called for "restraint on both sides". In Iraq, 50,000 US occupation troops protect a government which last Friday killed 29 peaceful demonstrators demanding reform. In Bahrain, home of the US fifth fleet, the regime has been shooting and gassing protesters with British-supplied equipment for weeks.

The "responsibility to protect" invoked by those demanding intervention in Libya is applied so selectively that the word hypocrisy doesn't do it justice. And the idea that states which are themselves responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in illegal wars, occupations and interventions in the last decade, along with mass imprisonment without trial, torture and kidnapping, should be authorised by international institutions to prevent killings in other countries is simply preposterous.

One key point Milne makes here deserves underlining: Western military intervention would be "a knife at the heart of the revolutionary process now sweeping the Arab world." But of course, that's exactly what Peace prizeniks and Etonian schoolboys now leading the "Free World" would like to see happen. As Milne notes, the Arab Awakening is threatening some of the West's favorite dictators and tough guys, from the religious extremists in Saudi Arabia to the ever-complaisant corruptocrats in Bahrain to the client brutalists in Iraq and elsewhere.The dullards directing world affairs have been desperately casting about for a way to put the kibosh on the movement - and Libya might give them the opening they've been fumbling for. Milne again:

The reality is that the western powers which have backed authoritarian kleptocrats across the Middle East for decades now face a loss of power in the most strategically sensitive region of the world as a result of the Arab uprisings and the prospect of representative governments. They are evidently determined to appropriate the revolutionary process wherever possible, limiting it to cosmetic change that allows continued control of the region.

In Libya, the disintegration of the regime offers a crucial opening. Even more important, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, it has the strategic prize of the largest oil reserves in Africa. Of course the Gaddafi regime has moved a long way from the days when it took over the country's oil, kicked out foreign bases and funded the African National Congress at a time when the US and Britain branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
Along with repression, corruption and a failure to deliver to ordinary Libyans, the regime has long since bent the knee to western power, as Tony Blair and his friends were so keen to celebrate, ditching old allies and nuclear ambitions while offering privatised pickings and contracts to western banks, arms and oil corporations such as BP.

Now the prospect of the regime's fall offers the chance for much closer involvement – western intelligence has had its fingers in parts of the Libyan opposition for years – when other states seem in danger of spinning out of the imperial orbit. ... Military intervention wouldn't just be a threat to Libya and its people, but to the ownership of what has been until now an entirely organic, homegrown democratic movement across the region.

Again, that would be -- will be? -- the very point of any type of Western military intervention in Libya: to kill a popular, democratic movement that is at present beyond the control of the imperial militarists along the Potomac. Such an intervention would allow Gaddafi and other tyrants under threat to paint opponents to their rule as "tools of the imperialists," while rallying many who oppose them back to their side, to defend the nation against outsiders. This in turn would help "stabilize" the revolutionary situations -- and the leaders, now safe once more, could then turn back to their cynical backroom deals with the West, and hoarding the blood and toil of their people in the cool vaults of Swiss banks. Hey, it's a win-win situation all around.

Events are in free, chaotic flow right now. The Libyan opposition might be able to oust Gaddafi before President Peacey and Prime Minister Fauntleroy go in with guns blazing. And events elsewhere might suddenly erupt and draw off attention and resources. But we are certainly seeing a creeping militarization in the response to the Libyan uprising -- and behind the exigencies of this crisis, there is the deeper shadow that Milne discerns: the longer-range project to diffuse and destroy the Arab Awakening before it further spreads its genuine threat to the business-as-usual dominance of Western elites
 
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2098-taking-the-cake-the-creeping-militarization-of-the-libyan-crisis.html

[Optimus]

Obama: US Ready to ‘Act Rapidly’ Against Libya
Military to Move Refugees Away From Tunisia
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/03/03/obama-us-ready-to-act-rapidly-against-libya/
by Jason Ditz, March 03, 2011

In some of his most specific comments yet, Barack Obama insisted that the deployment of a growing number of US forces around the Libyan border was to allow the US to ‘act rapidly’ if he decided to launch an attack.

Obama also said that the military aircraft deployed to the region would be used to move refugees around, with the US forces being used to transfer Egyptian refugees who fled into Tunisia back to Egypt.

Though the early threats to invade have been somewhat backed off of, the continued deployment of US military forces to the area has increased concerns that a full on invasion is in the offing.

And while Gadhafi has made some vague threats around a possible US invasion, the real concern is coming from opposition figures, who are concerned that their rebellion, which has netted nearly the entire country, would be hijacked by a US military occupation.

[Optimus]

Libyan Internet service cut again: monitors
Mar 4 02:17 PM US/Eastern

Internet service has been completely severed in violence-torn Libya for the second time in two weeks, US online traffic monitoring firms said Friday.

Arbor Networks said all Internet traffic in and out of Libya "abruptly ceased" between 1630 GMT and 1700 GMT on Thursday.

"This outage follows several weeks of periodic Internet outages and reduced traffic volumes likely related to the ongoing social and political events in the country," it said.

Fierce clashes were reported in Libya on Friday between rebels and forces loyal to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

Another Web traffic monitoring firm, Renesys, said Internet service from Libya went down shortly after 1635 GMT on Thursday.

"It looks like this is more than a blip -- radio silence for 12 hours and counting," Renesys said in a blog post on Friday.

More: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.0a1882d76ed94d3003a2f19a81162455.371&show_article=1

[bigron]

The Yugoslavian option for Libya


by Andrei Fedyashin

RIA Novosti, March 4, 2011

 http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20110304/162866224.html

President Barack Obama has finally come out and said that all options are on the table for Libya, including military options.


Now that hopes for a quick and relatively bloodless overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi have faded, both internal and external pressure are being brought to bear in an effort to force the dictator out. Diplomacy has been tried. Sanctions have been imposed. Military force is all that's left.

"Liberal intervention"

The old term used to describe such actions, "gunboat diplomacy," is no longer politically correct. Now "liberal intervention" is preferred. But while the name may have changed, the methods have not. Libya appears to be maneuvered down the same path of action that culminated in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which started on March 24, 1999, after a no-fly zone was announced.

Gaddafi is certainly not a likable person. You can even despise the man. But his opponents in the international community are going somewhat over the top, utilizing a very familiar arsenal of trickery and guile. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said on March 3 that the ICC will investigate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his inner circle, including some of his sons, for possible crimes against humanity in the violent crackdown on anti-government protesters. Conveniently enough, the UN Security Council had approved the investigation on February 26, which was a necessary prerequisite, as Libya is not a signatory of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The most interesting aspect of this is, however, that the resolution was approved by 15 of the Security Council's 15 members, even though the United States and Russia have not ratified the ICC treaty, do not recognize its jurisdiction and therefore are not legal signatories, whereas China does not recognize the court at all.

The United States even insisted that the resolution be amended to include a clause exempting its citizens from the court's jurisdiction. It was a prudent, if hypocritical, move, providing cover for the United States in the event that it chooses to deploy troops in Libya as part of a humanitarian intervention.

Options

The United States and NATO started gathering a strike force near Libya in early February. The amphibious assault ships USS Kearsarge and USS Ponce and the nuclear submarine Scranton passed through the Suez Canal and reached Libya's Gulf of Sidra by March 4. They are part of the group led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which is said to be carrying some 42 helicopters on board. Libya is within striking distance.

So far, only Russia and China have spoken out against a military intervention. The other permanent members of the Security Council are insisting that all options are on the table, while acknowledging that any intervention must be approved by the UN.

The quest for UN approval is an essentially meaningless but nevertheless indispensable political ritual that always precedes violations of international law. The same thing happened before NATO's Operation Allied Force (Noble Anvil) in Yugoslavia.

In spring 1999, Russia and China blocked approval of a military operation in Yugoslavia, but NATO still bombed the country under the authority vested by its own charter. However, a broad interpretation of the charter allows almost any kind of intervention in any country.

Yugoslavia did not attack a NATO member state and therefore did not threaten the alliance. The decision to bomb Yugoslavia was made by Democratic President Bill Clinton. Some claim Clinton was just wagging the dog - using the intervention in Yugoslavia to distract Americans from the Lewinsky scandal and the threat of impeachment Clinton was facing for lying to Congress about the affair.

Barack Obama is not involved in any scandal and is already waging two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq. He hardly needs to add a third. But helping the Libyan rebels oust Gaddafi will not necessarily lead to a war. The dictator only has the support of security forces that are dependent on his regime.

On the other hand, Obama is facing a problem that would impact U.S. interests more directly than Yugoslavia: rapidly growing oil prices threaten to curtail America's economic recovery, thereby greatly reducing Obama's chances for re-election next year.

A little more blood should do the trick

Sending warships to Libya is only a demonstration of force meant to pressure Gaddafi. The United States and NATO need a convincing reason (or pretext) to intervene militarily.

The invasion of Afghanistan was justified by the September 11th attacks. President Bush was seen as having no other option. But there was no convincing reason to invade Iraq, just the manufactured pretext that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So far, there are no solid legal grounds to justify an invasion of Libya.

However, Gaddafi could provide the justification. No one in the West has said a military intervention is being planned, but no one has denied it either. Politicians are beating the drum for war, saying that an invasion cannot be ruled out if the bloodshed continues in Libya.

Recent reports from Libya claim that forces loyal to Gaddafi are attacking cities held by rebel forces, and that the death toll is in the hundreds. If the West continues to pressure Gaddafi, he will spill enough innocent blood to justify an invasion, which the Republicans in the United States are openly demanding.

The military preparations underway in the Mediterranean go beyond the simple redeployment of U.S. warships "just in case." These preparations always have a critical mass - the line beyond which war becomes unavoidable.

There are sufficient material and financial incentives for crossing this line, and after all, the warships positioned off the coast of Libya are not children's toys.

USS Kearsarge is one of the world's largest assault vessels of its kind. It has dozens of helicopters on board, missiles, landing craft, and over 2,000 Marines. The ship was used in the Yugoslavian operation in 1999 to deploy Marines, reconnaissance groups and special forces.

USS Ponce and the nuclear submarine Scranton were also involved in Yugoslavia. Scranton-class submarines are armed with cruise missiles and are designed to land troops covertly and to conduct subversive operations.

The planes that bombed Yugoslavia were based on the aircraft carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, as well as Italian and French bases and aircraft carriers deployed by Italy, France and Britain. Similar warships and aircraft have approached much closer to Libya than they ever were to Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile, London has announced that it is sending in a SAS unit to save about 20 British oil workers stranded in southeast Libya (the SAS is an elite fighting force on par the U.S. Navy SEALs or the Alpha counterterrorism unit of the Russian special forces).

This may be just the beginning.

 
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20110304/162866224.html

[No2NWO]

Gunfire and "V" symbols in Tripoli


Anti-Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi rebel, flashes V sign after capturing the oil town of Ras Lanouf, in eastern Libya, Saturday, March 5, 2011. The anti-Gadhafi rebels fared better elsewhere, capturing the key oil port of Ras Lanouf from regime forces on Friday night, their first military victory in a potentially long and arduous westward march from the east of the country to Tripoli. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla


Gunfire has broken out in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Frequent bursts of gunfire could be heard around Tripoli early Sunday, one day after government forces in tanks rolled into the opposition-held city closest to the capital. Also Saturday, rebels captured a key oil port and pushed toward Moammar Gadhafi's hometown in a seesaw for both sides in the bloody battle for control of Libya.

The rival successes signaled an increasingly long and violent battle that could last weeks or months and veered the country ever closer to civil war.

It was not immediately clear who was firing on Sunday.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=13067927


Libya unrest: Heavy gunfire rocks Tripoli

Heavy and sustained gunfire has broken out in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

A BBC correspondent said machinegun and heavy weapons fire could be heard across the city.

It is not clear what the source of the fire was or who started it but it is the heaviest in Tripoli since the rebellion against Col Muammar Gaddafi began two weeks ago.

There have been protests against Col Gaddafi's rule in Tripoli but the city has so far remained in his control.

The BBC's Wyre Davies in Tripoli says the gunfire was heard all over the city, although authorities have been saying it is celebratory gunfire.

Two residents who contacted the BBC said one key area in which gunfire had been heard was around the airport.

The city has been Col Gaddafi's main stronghold as he attempts to reassert control over the country from rebels who have taken much of the east of the country as well as some towns closer to Tripoli, in the west.

Residents of rebel-held Zawiya, 50km (30 miles) west of Tripoli, said Col Gaddafi's troops had fired indiscriminately on civilians on Saturday as they attempted to capture the town.

And in the east, rebels said they were advancing westwards on Sirte, the heavily defended hometown of Col Gaddafi.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12658405

[No2NWO]

Libyan rebels make efforts to rearm as fighting intensifies

Gadhafi forces advance on rebel-held areas as country slides toward civil war

BIN JAWWAD, Libya — Libyan rebels said Monday they will regroup and bring in heavy weapons after forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pounded opposition fighters with helicopter gunships, artillery and rockets to stop the rebels' rapid advance toward the capital.

Mohamad Samir, an army colonel fighting with the rebels, told The Associated Press that his forces need reinforcements from the east after Sunday's setback.

On Monday, rebel forces appeared to have lost ground as forces loyal to Gadhafi advanced on the rebel-held oil port of Ras Lanuf, with airstrikes on the outskirts of the city, in a counter-attack that forced residents to flee and rebels to hide their weapons in the desert.

The Libyan army was moving down the strategic Mediterranean coastal road east of the recaptured town of Bin Jawad, heading toward Ras Lanuf which is about 40 miles away and which has a major oil complex, witnesses told Reuters.

A Reuters correspondent had seen Gadhafi's forces about 3 miles east of Bin Jawad on Sunday evening, suggesting the Libyan leader's troops were making a slow but steady progress.

Witnesses told Reuters there were several trucks heading to Ras Lanuf.

A BBC reporter also showed Reuters footage from Monday of a truck and warplane near Bin Jawad, heading toward Ras Lanuf.

The taking of Ras Lanuf had represented a major victory for the rebels on Friday but their advance toward Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte on the road to Tripoli was stopped in its tracks at Bin Jawad where rebels retreated under withering fire.

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41944617/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

[No2NWO]

NATO Places Unblinking Eyes Over Libya, 24-7

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley aren’t so eager to stop Moammar Gadhafi’s aircraft from attacking Libyan rebels.

But not only is NATO still considering a no-fly zone over Libya, it’s placing its eyes in the sky over the country, around the clock. And there are a range of other steps under consideration to aid the anti-Gadhafi forces — maybe, just maybe, including giving them weapons from Saudi Arabia.

A Monday meeting of the NATO council still hasn’t yielded firm steps to establish a no-fly zone, U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder told reporters on Monday. But Daalder said that “towards the end of the week,” NATO would be “in a position to know what it would take to do a no-fly zone. Britain and France are already on board: they’re preparing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for the imposition of a no-fly, though veto-holding Russia signaled its opposition.



But even without a resolution, Daalder announced that NATO decided to step up surveillance flights of AWACS planes over the Mediterranean to 24 hours a day, “to have a better picture of what’s really going on in this part of the world.” (NATO’s got its own AWACS aircraft, so it wouldn’t require sending additional U.S. planes.) With the powerful radar aboard AWACS near or over Libya, NATO could conceivably coordinate an air campaign, keep tabs on where Libyan planes are, and monitor movements of pro-Gadhafi forces and weaponry on the ground.

Daalder cautioned that a no-fly zone is no panacea. It would have “a limited effect” on Gadhafi’s helicopters and ground forces. But the dictator subjected rebel strongholds in the east, like Ras Lanuf, to what the New York Times called “steady attacks from the air,” with planes “swooping low” to bomb rebel positions around the town’s oil refinery.

At the least, the use of surveillance planes underscores that “international justice has a long reach and a long memory,” as British Prime Minister David Cameron has put it. It’s also an implicit test of a theory — supported within the Pentagon’s policy shop — that military assets like spy planes or jammers can make a big difference in humanitarian catastrophes without putting U.S. troops at risk. But it’s worth noting that the AWACS planes have already been flying for ten hours a day near Libyan airspace, and the violence has only accelerated.

But there are also more coercive measures reportedly under consideration. Like giving the rebels their own guns to fight off Gadhafi’s forces.

According to the Independent’s Robert Fisk, the U.S. secretly asked Saudi Arabia to ship the Libyan rebels ground-to-air missiles, anti-tank rockets and mortars. The idea is to enable the rebels to bring down Gadhafi’s aircraft themselves, alleviating the pressure on international forces to do the job for them — and keeping U.S. planes out of the reach of Libyan air defenses. That would echo the caution that Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen recently sounded against viewing a no-fly zone as a bloodless affair.

Saudi Arabia acted as the U.S.’ arms courier during the Afghan insurgency of the 1980s. But State Department spokesman Mark Toner called Fisk’s piece “inaccurate,” without further specification. Still, NBC’s Richard Engel tweets today that a U.S. official told him “saudi arming some rebels to counter al-qaeda influence.” And without confirming the story, White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that “providing weapons” is “one of the range of options that is being considered,” though he said it would be “premature to send a bunch of weapons to a post office box in eastern Libya.”

And how: a British special forces mission to liaise with the Libyan rebels turned into a farce over the weekend, with anti-Gadhafi fighters actually detaining the Brits after mistaking them for mercenaries hired by the regime. Perhaps the stepped-up AWACS flights can also clear up that kind of confusion.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/nato-places-unblinking-eyes-over-libya-24-7/

[endof]

im sure none of us of forgot the pnac document, libya was in there too.

[bigron]

Middle East
Mar 10, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC10Ak03.html 
 
Arab revolt reworks the world order

 
By M K Bhadrakumar


India, Brazil and South Africa have put a spoke in the American wheel, which seemed up until Tuesday inexorably moving, turning and turning in the direction of imposing a "no-fly" zone over Libya.

Arguably, the United States can still impose a zone, but then President Barack Obama will have to drink from the poisoned chalice and resurrect his predecessor's controversial post-Cold War doctrine of "unilateralism" and the "coalition of the willing" to do that. If he does so, Obama will have no place to hide and all he has done in his presidency to neutralize America's image as a "bully" will come unstuck.

New Delhi hosted a foreign minister-level meeting with Brazil and South Africa on Tuesday, which was to have been an innocuous occasion for some rhetorical "South-South" cooperation. On the contrary, the event soared into the realm of the troubled world order and shaky contemporary international system. The meeting took a clear-cut position of nyet vis-a-vis the growing Western design to impose a "no-fly" zone over Libya.

All indications are that the US and its allies who are assisting the Libyan rebels politically, militarily and financially have been hoping to extract a "request" from the Libyan people within a day or two at the most as a fig-leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council for a mandate to impose sanctions under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Libyan rebels are a divided house: nationalist elements staunchly oppose outside intervention and the Islamists among them are against any form of Western intervention.

'Unilateralism' only option on table

NATO defense ministers held a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to give practical touches to a possible intervention by the alliance in Libya. That the meeting was attended by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was indicative of the importance attached to the run-up to the alliance's proposed intervention in Libya. Gates missed an earlier informal NATO defense ministers' meeting on Libya held on the outskirts of Budapest a fortnight ago.

United States-British diplomacy was moving on a parallel track drumming up a unified position by the Libyan rebels to seek an international intervention in their country and specifically in the form of a "no-fly" zone. The Arab League and the African Union also maintain an ambiguous stance on the issue of such a zone.

Obama's calculation is that if only a Libyan "people's request" could be generated, that would in historical terms absolve him and the West of the blame of invading a sovereign member country of the United Nations - from a moral and political angle, at least - as well as push the Arab League and African Union into the enterprise.

Being a famously cerebral intellectual also, Obama is a politician with a difference and can be trusted to have an acute sense of history. His predecessor George W Bush would have acted in similar circumstances with "audacity", an idiom that is ironically associated with Obama.

Obama's tryst with history is indeed bugging him in his decision-making over Libya. Robert Fisk, the well-known chronicler of Middle Eastern affairs for the Independent newspaper of London, wrote a sensational dispatch on Monday that the Obama administration had sought help from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for secretly ferrying American weapons to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi, for which Riyadh would pick up the tab so that the White House would need no accountability to the US Congress and leave no traceable trail to Washington.

The moral depravity of the move - chartering the services of an autocrat to further the frontiers of democracy - underscores Obama's obsessive desire to camouflage any US unilateral intervention in Libya with "deniability" at all costs.

Now comes the body blow from the Delhi meeting. The three foreign ministers belonging to the forum that is known by the cute acronym IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) thwarted Obama's best-laid plans by issuing a joint communique on Tuesday in which they "underscored that a 'no-fly' zone on the Libyan air space or any coercive measures additional to those foreseen in Resolution 1970 can only be legitimately contemplated in full compliance with the UN Charter and within the Security Council of the United Nations".

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota told the media in Delhi that the IBSA statement was an "important measure" of what the non-Western world was thinking". He said, "The resort to a 'no-fly' zone is seen as expedient when adopted by a country but it weakens the system of collective security and provokes indirect consequences prejudicial to the objective we have been trying to achieve." Patriota added:

It is very problematic to intervene militarily in a situation of internal turmoil, Any decision to adopt military intervention needs to be considered within the UN framework and in close coordination with the African Union and the Arab League. It is very important to keep in touch with them and identify with their perception of the situation.
He explained that measures like a no-fly zone might make a bad situation worse by giving fillip to anti-US and anti-Western sentiments "that have not been present so far".

Equally significant was the fact that the trio of foreign ministers also penned a joint statement on the overall situation in the Middle East. Dubbed as the "IBSA Declaration", it reiterated the three countries' expectation that the changes sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa should "follow a peaceful course" and expressed their confidence in a "positive outcome in harmony with the aspirations of the people".

A highly significant part of the statement was its recognition right at the outset that the Palestinian problem lay at the very core of the great Middle Eastern alienation and the "recent developments in the Region may offer a chance for a comprehensive peace ... This process should include the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... that will lead to a two-state solution, with the creation of a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestinian State, coexisting peacefully alongside Israel, with secure, pre-1967 borders, and with East Jerusalem as its capital."

'P-5' loses shine

Israel will be hopping mad over the declaration. That apart, does it matter to Obama and NATO if three countries from three faraway continents stand up with a common stance on a "no-fly" zone? Who are these countries anyway? But, it does matter. Put simply, the three countries also happen to be currently serving as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council and their stance happens to have high visibility in the world's pecking order on Libya.

The indications in Delhi are that at least one more non-permanent member of the Security Council is their "fellow-traveler" - Lebanon. Which means the "Arab voice" in the Security Council. In short, what we hear is an Afro-Asian, Arab and Latin American collective voice and it cannot be easily dismissed. More importantly, the IBSA stance puts at least two permanent veto-wielding great powers within the Security Council on the horns of an acute dilemma.

Russia claims to have a foreign policy that opposes the US's "unilateralism" and which strictly abides by the canons of international law and the UN charter. China insists that it represents developing countries. Now, the IBSA stance makes it virtually impossible for them to enter into any Faustian deal with the US and Western powers over Libya within the sequestered caucus of the veto-holding powers of the Security Council - commonly known as the P-5.

Therefore, the IBSA joint statement, much like the Turkish-Brazilian move on the Iran nuclear problem, is virtually mocking at the moral hypocrisy of the P-5 and their secretive ways.

Ironically, Delhi adopted the IBSA communique even as US Vice President Joseph Biden was winging his way to Moscow for wide-ranging discussions on the future trajectory of the US-Russia reset. Any US-Russian tradeoff over Libya within the ambit of the reset would now get badly exposed as an act of unprincipled political opportunism.

China's predicament will be no less acute if it resorts to realpolitik. China is hosting the summit meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in Beijing in April. Three "brics" out of BRICS come from IBSA. Can the BRICS afford to water down the IBSA joint communique on Libya? Can China go against the stance of three prominent "developing countries"?

On balance, however, China may heave a sigh of relief. The IBSA position may let the US pressure off China and delist the Libyan "no-fly" zone issue from morphing into a bilateral Sino-American issue. China cooperated with last week's Security Council resolution on Libya. It was an unusual move for China to vote for a resolution that smacked of "intervention" in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.

Western commentators were euphoric over the shift in Chinese behavior at the high table of world politics and were egging on the leadership at Beijing to finally shape up as a responsible world power that is willing to work with the West as a "stakeholder" in the international system - like Russia does.

Clearly, China is being cajoled to go a step further and jettison its other red line regarding a "no-fly" zone. There is no indication that China is about to concede its red line by succumbing to flattery. But, now, if China indeed does, it will be in broad daylight under the gaze of the developing countries. And it will be very difficult for Beijing to cover up such "pragmatism" with the veneer of principles. In a way, therefore, pressure is off China on the "no-fly" zone issue.

India regains identity

An interesting thought occurs: Is India forcing China's hand? Delhi has certainly taken note that the Libyan crisis provided China with a great opportunity to work with the US in a cooperative spirit that would have much positive spin-offs for the overall Sino-American relationship. The "no-fly" zone issue would have been turf where China and the US could have created an entirely new alchemy in their relationship. Beijing knows that Obama's presidency critically depends on how he acquits in the Middle East crisis.

All the same, Delhi's move cannot be dismissed as merely "China-centric". In geopolitical terms, it constitutes a highly visible slap on the American face. And there will be a price to pay in terms of Obama's wrath. That Delhi is willing to pay such a price - when so much is at stake in its bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council - makes the IBSA move highly significant. Indeed, it is after a very long time that Delhi will be refusing to stand up and be counted on a major American foreign policy front.

It is much more than a coincidence, too, that the declaration vociferously supported the Palestinian cause. India has taken the calculated risk of incurring the displeasure of Israel and the Israel lobby in the US. Besides, there are other signs, too, that Delhi has embarked on a major overhaul of its Middle East policies and the IBSA is only one template of the policy rethink - and, possibly not even the most far-reaching in the geopolitics of the region.

Even as the IBSA adopted its stance on Libya and the Middle East situation staunchly favoring Arab nationalism, India's National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, a key policymaker of high reputation as a consummate diplomat and who works directly under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was engaged in an engrossing and meaningful conversation elsewhere in the Middle East - with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Away from the glare of television cameras, Menon handed over a letter from Manmohan to Ahmadinejad. According to the statement issued by Ahmadinejad's office, the Iranian leader told Menon:

Iran and India are both independent countries and they will play significant roles in shaping up the future of the international developments ... The relations between Iran and India are historic and sustainable. Iran and India due to being [sic] benefited from humanitarian viewpoints towards the international relations, should try to shape up the future world system in a way that justice and friendship would rule.

The ruling world is coming to its end and is on the verge of collapse. Under the current conditions, it is very important how the future world order will take shape and care should be taken that those who have imposed the oppressive world order against the mankind would not succeed in imposing it in a new frame anew ... Iran and India will be playing significant roles in the future developments in the world. Our two nations' cultures and origins are what the world needs today.
 
Menon reportedly told Ahmadinejad:

New Delhi is for the establishment of comprehensive relations with Iran, including strategic ties ... many of the predictions you [Ahmadinejad] had about the political and economic developments in the world have come to reality today and the world order is going under basic alterations [sic], which has necessitated ever-increasing relations between Iran and India ... The relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of India are beyond the current political relations, having their roots in the cultures and the civilizations and the two nations and both countries have great potentials for improvement of bilateral, regional and international relations.


Nothing needs to be added. Nothing needs to be said further. In sum, this sort of Iran-India high-level political exchange was unthinkable until very recently and it highlights how much the Middle East has changed and Iran's role in it, and Delhi's perceptions and the Indian thinking regarding both.

Most important, Menon's arrival in Tehran at the present tumultuous juncture on a major path-breaking political and diplomatic mission to energize India-Iran strategic understanding also underscores the growing recognition in the region that the era of Western dominance of the Middle East is inexorably passing into history and the world order is not going to be the same again.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC10Ak03.html
 

[America2]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/af_libya

Gadhafi forces hit oil facilities in central Libya
By PAUL SCHEMM and MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Paul Schemm And Maggie Michael, Associated Press – 44 mins ago 3/9/11

RAS LANOUF, Libya – Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi struck an oil pipeline and oil storage facility Wednesday, sending a giant yellow fireball into the sky as they pounded rebels with artillery and gunfire in at least two major cities.

At least four people were killed in Wednesday's fighting, officials said.

Gadhafi appeared to be keeping up the momentum he has seized in recent days in his fight against rebels trying to move on the capital, Tripoli, from territory they hold in eastern Libya.

An Associated Press reporter near the front saw an explosion from the area of the Sidr oil facility, 360 miles (580 kilometers) east of Tripoli. Three columns of thick smoke rose from the area, apparently from burning oil.

read more

[bigron]

14 Potential Justifications For An Invasion Of Libya By The U.S. Military

That Are Currently Being Floated In The Mainstream Media

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/14-potential-justifications-for-an-invasion-of-libya-by-the-u-s-military-that-are-currently-being-floated-in-the-mainstream-media

Over the past couple of days, top government officials from both the United States and the EU have been openly discussing the possibility of military intervention in Libya. In fact, it has seemed like there has been a full court press in the mainstream media to sway public opinion toward supporting a potential invasion.  We are being told that we simply cannot stand by as Libyan civilians die.  We are being told that this would be a "humanitarian" mission.  We are being told that this would not be like Iraq or Afghanistan.  Even now, the U.S. military is moving the USS Enterprise and other warships closer to Libya in case they are "needed".  Other nations are also sending warships into the Mediterranean and are preparing for military action.  It really does appear that authorities in the United States and Europe really are serious about potentially going into Libya.  But is there really any way that the United States can really justify getting involved in another war in the Middle East?  Will the American people ever be convinced that an invasion of Libya by the U.S. military is a good idea?

Fortunately, so far it appears that the mainstream media propaganda is not working.  A recent Rasmussen poll found that a whopping 67 percent of Americans do not want the U.S. to get more involved in the unrest going on in Arab countries and only 17 percent of Americans do want the U.S. to get more directly involved.

But that doesn't mean that top politicians in the U.S. and in Europe are not going to continue to try to change our minds.

British Prime Minister David Cameron sure sounds like he is ready to go to war....

"If Col Gaddafi uses military force against his own people, the world cannot stand by."


On Monday, Hillary Clinton made it clear that the U.S. government considers military action to be very much "on the table"....

"Nothing is off the table so long as the Libyan Government continues to threaten and kill Libyans."
It is almost as if they want us to believe that their hands are being forced.

Of course nobody in the mainstream media seems to be bringing up the fact that the United States has stood idly by and watched millions and millions of Africans be slaughtered in bloody civil wars and genocides over the past couple of decades.

For decades the U.S. has looked upon the suffering of millions of Africans with indifference but now they are trying to convince us that it is a "moral imperative" that we intervene in the civil war in Libya.

It is funny how things can change when oil is at stake.  Libya is the biggest producer of oil in Africa and that makes it a very important nation to the global elite.

Fortunately, it appears that the American people are starting to get sick and tired of sending our young men and women off to the Middle East to fight these endless wars.

American blood should never be spent cheaply.  Each American life is precious, and our military men and women should never be sacrificed unless there is a darn good reason for it.

Well, right now the global elite are working overtime to try to create some "good reasons" for going into Libya.

The following are 14 potential justifications for an invasion of Libya by the U.S. military that are currently being floated in the mainstream media....

#1 "We Can't Stand Aside And Watch Gaddafi Kill His Own People"

#2 "It Would Just Be A Humanitarian Mission"

#3 "Libya Is Torturing Prisoners"

#4 "The Libyan Rebels Will Not Be Able To Take Down Gaddhafi With Our Help"


#5 "U.S. Interests Are Being Threatened"

#6 "Gaddafi Is Crazy"

#7 "Gaddafi Has Weapons Of Mass Destruction"

#8 "Gaddafi Will Use Chemical Weapons If We Don't Stop Him"


#9 "Gaddafi Has "1,000 Metric Tons Of Uranium Yellowcake"

#10 "European Energy Companies Are Deeply Invested In Libyan Oil And Gas Fields"

#11 "Millions of Dollars Worth Of Infrastructure Will Be Destroyed If We Don't Intervene"

#12 "The Crisis In Libya Is Bad For The Global Economy"


#13 "Someone Has To Protect The Oil"


#14 "We Have Got To Go Into Libya To Keep Al-Qaeda From Getting A Foothold"


Al-Qaeda?

Really?

Yes, they are being trotted out once again as a reason for us to invade someone

MORE

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/14-potential-justifications-for-an-invasion-of-libya-by-the-u-s-military-that-are-currently-being-floated-in-the-mainstream-media