U.S. in full spectrum War with Libya, Pentagon plans to exterminate civilians

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http://www.rense.com/Madsen.html

Madsen - No Sign Of 'Rebels' In Western Libya
Western Libya Portrait Is Not What Western Media Claim

By Wayne Madsen
http://WayneMadsenReport.com
6-5-11

TRIPOLI, LIBYA -- Western media reports continue to indicate that Libyan rebels trying to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi from power, backed by daily NATO air strikes, are gaining ground in western Libya. During a six-hour drive from the Tunisian border to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, this reporter saw no signs of Libyan rebel successes in western Libya. In fact, I witnessed a spontaneous pro-Qaddafi demonstration on the main Tunisia-Tripoli highway in a town about one and a half hours west of Tripoli.

The green flag of the Libyan Arab Jamahiryah not only adorn flag poles in towns from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, but a number of private residences are flying the green flag from their rooftops, on flag poles, and even from outside of top floor windows in medium size and small towns alike along the main highway.

There are some telltale signs of previous fighting in the western part of the country -- bullet holes in the walls of some buildings and even some more extensive structural damage -- but there are no signs that the rebels, backed by the United States, NATO, and the European Union, have any substantial support in western Libya.

The one major sign of the Libyan civil war lies not in western Libya but across the Tunisian border where several refugee tent cities have been set up to accommodate thousands of refugees, most of them black African guest workers from sub-Sahara and Sahel nations who were set upon by rebels who said the workers were "mercenaries"brought to Libya by Qaddafi to fight on his behalf. In fact, there is a strong anti-black racialist element within the Libyan rebel movement that used the mercenary meme to justify heinous war crimes by rebel units against blacks from other African nations, as well as native Libyan blacks.

While many of the refugee camps on the Tunisian side of the Libyan frontier are sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, one is funded by the United Arab Emirates, one of the nations participating in President Obama's "coalition of the willing" that is waging a war on behalf of the Libyan rebels. From our hotel on the Mediterranean coast, we expect to see and hear the attacks conducted against military and some civilian targets a further few miles inland in downtown Tripoli.

The EU and NATO sanctions on Libya are being severely felt by Libya's civilians. Petrol stations are rationing gasoline and long lines of cars sit waiting for gasoline to be delivered to the pumps. The NATO, EU, and U.S. policy of "collective punishment" of western Libya's civilian population is being compares to Israel's collective punishment of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, many Libyans believe that Obama's crippling sanctions on western Libya were crafted by Israel's lobby in Washington, which pressured the Obama administration into adopting them.

NATO has conducted nightly air strikes against western Libya, including downtown Tripoli, since March 19. The attacks begin around 12 midnight local time and at the time of this report we are expecting another NATO bombing of Tripoli in a little less than an hour.

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http://www.rense.com/Madsen.html

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http://www.rense.com/NATO.html

NATO War Crimes In Libya Exposed

By Wayne Madsen
http://WayneMadsenReport.com
6-5-11

TRIPOLI, LIBYA -- In the current NATO war on Libya, the citizens of European and North American NATO countries are being treated to the largest propaganda blitz by their governments in cahoots with corporate media outlets since the U.S.-led invasions and occupation of Iraq. The situation on the ground in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, could not more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers.

The NATO missile attack that killed Muammar Qaddafi's son, Seif al Arab Qaddafi, on April 30, was an attempt to kill Muammar Qaddafi himself. This editor visited the devastated home where Seif was killed, along with his friend and three of Muammar Qaddafi's grandchildren. The only reason why Muammar Qaddafi survived the blast was that he was away from the main residence tending to some animals, including two gazelles, kept in a small petting zoo maintained for his grandchildren. Muammar Qaddafi escaped the fate of his son and grandchildren by only about 500 feet. The residence was hit by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane. One of the warheads did not detonate and was later removed from what remained of a bedroom in the home. Libyan authorities do not have the technical capabilities to determine if the warhead contained depleted uranium.

NATO and the Pentagon claimed the residence was a military compound, yet there is no evidence that any military assets were located in the residence that was flanked by the homes of a Libyan doctor and businessmen. The Qaddafi residence actually is owned by Qaddafi's wife. The neighbors' homes were also badly damaged in the U.S. air attack and are uninhabitable. Only a few hundred yards away from the Qaddafi compound sits the embassy of Cote d'Ivoire.

The presence of a foosball table and swing set in the yard of the Qaddafi compound belies the charge by the Pentagon that the home was a military target. However, considering that Qaddafi was present in the compound during the attack, it is clear that President Obama violated international law and three Executive Orders signed by three past presidents -- Ford, Carter, and Reagan -- in trying to assassinate the Libyan head of state. In fact, while Obama's order to kill Qaddafi was being carried out, the President of the United States was preparing to yuck it up with Washington's illuminati and Hollywood's glitterati at the White House Correspndents' Dinner in Washington.

Obama's order to kill Qaddafi is reminiscent of George W. Bush's order to kill Sadaam Hussein at the outset of the U.S. war against Iraq, an assassination order that was also a violation of international and U.S. law.

Above, tracing the footsteps that Muammar Qaddafi took from his wife's residence to his grand children's petting zoo at the rear of the backyard. Moments after Qaddafi left the residence for the mini-zoo, NATO missiles struck the residence in a residential and diplomatic quarter of Tripoli, killing his son and three grandchildren. There are still small body parts lying underneath the rubble of the residence.

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http://www.rense.com/NATO.html

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Related story about: U.S. in full spectrum War
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25137

How the Empire will Prevail: Will Washington Foment War Between China and India?

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, June 6, 2011

What is Washington’s solution for the rising power of China?

The answer might be to involve China in a nuclear war with India.

The staging of the fake death of bin Laden in a commando raid that violated Pakistan’s sovereignty was sold to President Obama by the military/security complex as a way to boost Obama’s standing in the polls.

The raid succeeded in raising Obama’s approval ratings. But its real purpose was to target Pakistan and to show Pakistan that the US was contemplating invading Pakistan in order to make Pakistan pay for allegedly hiding bin Laden next door to Pakistan’s military academy. The neocon, and increasingly the US military position, is that the Taliban can’t be conquered unless NATO widens the war theater to Pakistan, where the Taliban allegedly has sanctuaries protected by the Pakistan government, which takes American money but doesn’t do Washington’s bidding.

Pakistan got the threat message and ran to China. On May 17 Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, as he departed for China declared China to be Pakistan’s “best and most trusted friend.” China has built a port for Pakistan at Gwadar, which is close to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. The port might become a Chinese naval base on the Arabian Sea.

Raza Rumi reported in the Pakistan Tribune (June 4) that at a recent lecture at Pakistan’s National Defense University, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, asked the military officers whether the biggest threat to Pakistan came from within, from India, or from the US. A majority of the officers said that the US was the biggest threat to Pakistan.

China, concerned with India, the other Asian giant that is rising, is willing to ally with Pakistan. Moreover, China doesn’t want Americans on its border, which is where they would be should Pakistan become another American battleground.

Therefore, China showed its displeasure with the US threat to Pakistan, and advised Washington to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, adding that any attack on Pakistan would be considered an attack on China

I do not think China’s ultimatum was reported in the US press, but it was widely reported in India’s press. India is concerned that China has stepped up to Pakistan’s defense.

The Chinese ultimatum is important, because it is a WWI or WWII level of ultimatum. With this level of commitment of China to Pakistan, Washington will now seek a way to maneuver itself out of the confrontation and to substitute India.

The US has been fawning all over India, cultivating India in the most shameful ways, including the sacrifice of Americans’ jobs. Recently, there have been massive US weapons sales to India, US-India military cooperation agreements, and joint military exercises.

Washington figures that the Indians, who were gullible for centuries about the British, will be gullible about the “shining city on the hill” that is “bringing freedom and democracy to the world” by smashing, killing, and destroying. Like the British and France’s Sarkozy, Indian political leaders will find themselves doing Washington’s will. By the time India and China realize that they have been maneuvered into mutual destruction by the Americans, it will be too late for either to back down.

With China and India eliminated, that only leaves Russia, which is already ringed by US missile bases and isolated from Europe by NATO, which now includes former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire. A large percentage of gullible Russian youth admires the US for its “freedom” (little do they know) and hates the “authoritarian” Russian state, which they regard as a continuation of the old Soviet state. These “internationalized Russians” will side with Washington, more of less forcing Moscow into surrender.

As the rest of the world, with the exception of parts of South America, is already part of the American Empire, Russia’s surrender will let the US focus its military might on South America. Chavez will be overthrown, and if others do not fall into line, more examples will be made.

The only way the American Empire can be stopped is for China and Russia to realize their danger and to form an unbreakable alliance that reassures India, breaks off Germany from NATO and defends Iran.

Otherwise, the American Empire will prevail over the entire world. The US dollar will become the only currency, and therefore be spared exchange rate depreciation from debt monetization.

Gold and silver will become forbidden possessions, as will guns and a number of books, including the US Constitution.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25137

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No deadline set for Libya war, UK says

Mon Jun 6, 2011 9:14AM




Britain says the deployment of Apaches to the Libya war does not represent a mission creep, and there is no deadline for military operations against the Gaddafi regime.


Foreign Secretary, William Hague who has just returned from Benghazi, after a series of ministerial-level talks with the Libyan revolutionary forces, acknowledged that the UK military would be involved in the conflict beyond December this year as there is no deadline for the NATO military alliance in its war against Libyan ruler Gaddafi.


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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/183419.html


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Libya: NATO's War Of Aggression Against A Sovereign African State


by Obi Nwakanma

June 5, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78378&hd=&size=1&l=e


-The use of Western troops in Africa – particularly in the case of France – the use of its paratroopers, first in Ivory Coast, and now in Libya, represents a new strategic declaration of war against Africa, the African interest, and the African continent. In NATO’s disregard of AU, there is without doubt a remanifestation of that ontological disease of the Western mind that regards Africa as simply a place without history and without agency.

France and Great Britain, leading a NATO alliance, are effectively at war in Libya on the pretext of a United Nations’ mandate. The United States, led the early charge against Libya’s Ghadaffi from the air, but has taken something of a back seat, and allowed Britain and France to continue what can now be considered a war of aggression against a sovereign African state, far beyond the mandate of the UN.

They have been bombing Libya relentlessly from the air. They have killed Ghadaffi’s son in a direct personal attack on the home of the Ghadaffis. The relentless strafing of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in the past two weeks has also led to serious civilian casualties which the Libyan authorities have reported and which NATO has denied. The NATO alliance at the fore of this new colonial war in Africa has now moved beyond its mandate to seek regime change; to undermine the sovereignty of Libya, and create a civil war situation in this North African country and member-nation of the African Union.

The French have positioned their aggression against Libya as a fight to free Libyans from the tyranny of Moumar Ghadaffi. They have not hidden the fact that they wished to make it impossible for a transition of power from Ghadaffi to a newer generation of Libyan nationalists who may follow in the state policies of Ghadaffi, particularly as it affects oil. It is not a secret that Libya sits on the vastest oil field in Africa and that Ghadaffi has prevented the international oil cartel from exploiting Libya’s oil and had forced them to comply with the strictest standards in oil production.

It is no longer a secret that behind this NATO alliance war on Libya, and far beyond the "do-good" face it places or wears as its mask as its reason for bombing Libya to smithereens, is the quest to control the oil fields of Libya, guarantee Western access to energy sources in the face of growing concern over the rise of China and India and their own emergent gluttony for oil, and, of course, solve the problem of an intransigent African nationalist challenge to Western shenanigans. It is the 19th century all over again.

Libya is the first flashpoint in the resource war that is bound to once more make Africa the battlefield of the great industrial powers. Once they take out Ghadaffi, that challenge to organise and fund a formidable African resistance against a new colonial mandate using the UN will weaken.

The new scramble for Africa will more than likely commence. It is, therefore, ridiculous that Nigeria, a more than likely victim of this potential threat sits idly, voting with those who have launched a new aggressive war on Libya. The Nigerian government under President Goodluck Jonathan has failed to understand the wider dimensions of this NATO campaign on Libya.

The Nigerian delegation was among those African countries who sided with the voters in the UN to commence the operations in Libya. The mandate, of course, was for a low-grade, protective operation against the potential of the Libyan military use of force against civilian populations, particularly in Benghazi, the so-called outpost of the Libyan resistance.

Last week, at the G-8 meeting in France, and, in justifying America’s participation in the fight in Libya, the US President Barack Obama said it was a pre-emptive action by the NATO alliance, presumably the world’s chief defenders of humane mores and democratic freedom, to prevent a possible massacre of wide proportions against the Libyan civilian opposition against Ghadaffi. But the Libyan opposition is not a civilian opposition, it is an armed rebellion.

The UN decision in which Nigeria participated basically tied the hands of the legitimate government of Libya behind its back, gave ammunition to a fringe rebellion, and has aided a civil war in Libya in which Libya’s national Armed Forces was prevented through relentless air attack from defending the territorial integrity of the Libyan state for which it is established. The West has aided a small fissiparous and ill-organised militia to destroy an African country.

It is like NATO deciding to bomb the Nigerian Armed Forces if it goes after the increasingly organised Boko Haram militia in the North. Nigeria has in voting with France and Great Britain and the NATO alliance given ammunition to the new conquest of Africa and this is why she is seen roundly in Africa and by most Africans as the handmaiden of the West. This image of Nigeria as a consistent ally of the West against the interests of a free, independent, and prosperous continent is why most Africans and African nations do not take Nigeria seriously, and even, in fact, are amused by its claims of leadership in Africa.

They think her quest for the UN seat is a joke given the weakness of its leadership and the inconsistency of its foreign policy. But contrast this with the strategic position of the South Africans on this matter, leading the African union to demand an immediate NATO cessation of the bombing of Libya. Last week, Jacob Zuma, the South African President went to Tripoli for consultations with the Libyan authorities, and the African Union issued a demand for NATO to stop bombing Libya.

It is a follow-up to AU’s earlier intervention in which they have proposed a negotiated settlement between Tripoli and Benghazi. But NATO countries, busy setting up new embassies, and cutting new oil deals with the Libyan rebels against the long-term interest of Libya, are fobbing off any attempts for the Africans to sort out the situation in Libya and ease off Ghadaffi with less sanguinity. It is remarkable that Nigeria’s own president has continued to play possum to this NATO disregard of the African Union. Indeed, within the week of Zuma’s visit to Tripoli, NATO announced heightened military action against Ghadaffi’s Libya, and the use of more direct boots on the Libyan streets.

The use of Western troops in Africa – particularly in the case of France – the use of its paratroopers, first in Ivory Coast, and now in Libya, represents a new strategic declaration of war against Africa, the African interest, and the African continent. In NATO’s disregard of AU, there is without doubt a remanifestation of that ontological disease of the Western mind that regards Africa as simply a place without history and without agency. It is not surprising that Sarkozy is leading this war in Africa. Here was a man who came to Africa, at the Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar to declare that "the African man has not entered history;" he is still a hewer of wood fit only for the enlightened charity of France and the West.

At the core of Sarkozy’s racist mind lies this quest to cut Libya and Ghadaffi down to size and seize her property – the oil. But here is the irony: the West had to wait for a weakened Ghadaffi, weakened by his decision to dismantle his nuclear arsenal and open up to the West, before the NATO alliance in a joint and cowardly effort decided to attack him from the air using a UN mandate.

What is the lesson here? Nigeria must be alert to its duties to the continent and join the AU effort to more forcefully demand NATO’s cessation of her bombing operations in Libya, failing which it must then regard further operations in Libya as an open act of war and aggression against an African country. Africans have a right to defend themselves and their continent by all means necessary. Perhaps, it is time to re-open the discussions about an African High Command.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78378&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

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OPEC Upstaged by Qaddafi in Most-Hostile Meeting in 21 Years

By Ayesha Daya - Jun 6, 2011


OPEC’s decision on production quotas this week may be complicated by hostilities in Libya as members meeting in Vienna find themselves supporting opposing camps of a military conflict for the first time in 21 years.

Not since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 has the producer group gathered with some nations giving financial and military support to a movement seeking to topple the government of a fellow member. While Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is trying to quash a rebellion in a country that holds Africa’s largest crude reserves, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are backing the insurgents.

The conflict underlines the difficulties the 50-year-old organization, which accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s oil, may have in deciding production levels. Oil has gained 9.5 percent this year to trade at about $100 a barrel amid signs that the pace of the global economic recovery may be slowing. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will probably leave its output target unchanged on June 8, according to a Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts conducted May 24-31.

“Amid issues surrounding representation of Libya and oil prices correcting towards $100 a barrel, OPEC is likely to sit on the fence, deferring a decision on quotas for later,” Harry Tchilinguirian, the head of commodity-markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London, said in an interview on June 1. “This does not mean individual countries may not take discretionary steps to increase output. OPEC has yet to fill the gap in the market left by Libya.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-05/opec-overshadowed-by-qaddafi-in-most-hostile-meeting-since-1990-gulf-war.html

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Gaddafi's Stolen Billions:

Max Keiser Explains 'Financial Terrorism'

Video

International Banks like Goldman Sachs have been looting Libyans money and were able to siphon billions of dollars from that country as they excel in raping countries cheating and stealing through monopoly deceit and lies , Max Keiser has a message for you "Revolt now or be a debt slave" for life.

Posted June 06, 2011


WATCH VIDEO

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28262.htm

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America's Imperial War on Libya

by Stephen Lendman


June 7, 2011
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78436&hd=&size=1&l=e

Obama's claimed humanitarian intervention, if fact, is lawless imperialism by any standard, America's latest target to be conquered, colonized, controlled and pillaged for greater power and profit.

As a result, daily NATO atrocities continue, a shocking display of imperial arrogance against another nonbelligerent state, targeted for other than declared reasons.

Begun on March 19, NATO announced June 1 that Operation Unified Protector (the renamed Operation Odyssey Dawn) will continue unabated through September to inflict mass casualties and turn Libya to rubble like Serbia/Kosovo in 1999, Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Afghanistan in 2001, and earlier campaigns since (and during) WW II by bombing, killing and destroying gratuitously. In fact, doing so violates international law and moral principles, ones Western powers long ago abandoned, especially Washington.

Arranged in Brussels, America and key NATO allies extended operations with no deadline. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan, in fact, said concluding them "depends on conditions on the ground" to assure mission objectives are accomplished, including killing Gaddafi and those around him by attacking his private compound repeatedly with bunker-buster bombs for that purpose.

Relaying orders given him by Washington, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said extended intervention "sends a clear message to the Gaddafi regime - we are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya."

In fact, imperial Washington, Britain, France and other involved states ignore humanitarian concerns. They're participating solely for war spoils, whatever share America allows after taking everything it most wants, including another colonial conquest, its resources, material wealth, and sites for one or more new Pentagon bases for greater regional control.

In the process, Libyans are being slaughtered to "save" them, victimized by thousands of sorties, intensified in recent days, supplemented by US/UK/French/and Egyptian commandos, private mercenaries, insurgent cutthroats, and attack helicopters introduced June 4, preparatory perhaps for a ground invasion though whether one comes isn't certain.

Pentagon Apache Helicopter Gunship Killing Machines

Boeing calls its radar controlled AH-64D Apache Longbow "the world's most capable multi-role combat helicopter (gunship)....today and in the future," produced for numerous countries, including America, Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

Its enhanced capabilities include:

-- "Longer-range weapons accuracy and all-weather/night fighting," compared to earlier models;

-- "Detection of (moving or stationary) objects without being detected;" and

-- Ability to prioritize "up to 128 targets in less than a minute."

In fact, for low level combat, it's the ultimate killing machine, discussed on June 5 by London Guardian writer Kim Sengupta in his article headlined, "NATO strike force in Libya enjoys quick success with apache gunships," saying:

Deploying them "brings greater versatility to NATO's patrolling of Libya from (the) air" by destroying targets aerial bombardments miss, including ground radar, commercial trucks called military vehicles, and anything on the ground of interest. Civilians are also attacked, pretending it's done to save them.

In response, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov both condemned the escalation, saying it's heading toward a land operation.

Perhaps with combat troops aboard a large naval task force offshore, able to invade and/or unleash "shock and awe" capability full force if ordered, including powerful bunker-buster terror bombs and other mass destruction weapons.

Already, extensive casualties have occurred, including hundreds of civilians killed and thousands injured, many seriously, the toll mounting daily. They're largely omitted from Western media reports, ordered to suppress all bad news, sticking to the official humanitarian intervention line - the Big Lie promoting war, not condemning it responsibly.

On June 1, even the UN Human Rights Council fell short, issuing a "Report of the International Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya," claiming both sides committed crimes of war and against humanity, saying but not highlighting:

It's "established that some acts of torture and cruel treatment and some outrages upon personal dignity in particular humiliating and degrading treatment have been committed by (rebel forces), in particular against persons in detention, migrant workers and those believed to be mercenaries."

In fact, insurgents have committed mass atrocities against suspected pro-regime sympathizers. Gaddafi responded defensively, not preemptively, notions airbrushed from Western media reports, including information from a March 1 Pentagon briefing in which Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen admitted no knowledge that he attacked his own people.

On June 4 from Tripoli, independent UK journalist/activist Lizzie Cocker told Progressive Radio News Hour listeners she found strong regime support, including widely displayed Libyan flags and school children singing: "Allah, Moammar, Libya bas, Libya (under him), it's all we need."

On Tripoli state television, moreover, former US congresswoman/2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney expressed solidarity with Libyans against Western imperial aggression.

Also reporting from Tripoli, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said Libya's Western-backed Transitional National Council looted hundreds of millions of dollars of state and private funds, spending or offshoring it in foreign banks. Their larceny, in fact, is so extreme that Washington refused more funding from ITS looted billions.

In addition, insurgent rebels "obtained brand new weapons not found in Libyan stockpiles at the outset of" fighting. Little reported is that Washington, Britain and France enlisted, armed and funded them well ahead of hostilities.

Further, reports suggest that "rebels have agree to recognize Israel and (let IDF forces) maintain a 30-year lease for a military base in eastern Libya" to be used against Egypt in case relations deteriorate.

Killing Gaddafi and Extending War

On April 30, Gaddafi's personal compound was bombed, killing his youngest son Seif and three grandchildren, a war crime by any standard. Falsely calling it a military site concealed its gravity. Gaddafi, in fact, survived by being 500 feet away. Next time, he may not be as lucky.

On June 2, the House defeated Rep. Brad Sherman's (D. CA) amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill to prohibit funding Pentagon operations in Libya.

On June 3, H. 51 was also defeated, "Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove" US forces from Libya.

Bipartisan leadership, in fact, supports war, including in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Obama, they disdain peace, no matter the cost in human lives or growing domestic opposition.

In America, only bankers, war profiteers, Big Oil, and other corporate favorites matter. Peace, democratic values, and vitally needed social services be damned when budget priorities focus most on enriching them.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78436&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

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Going Rogue: NATO War Crimes in Libya


by Susan Lindauer

June 7, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78427&hd=&size=1&l=e

It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot. If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of "neutral homes" are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.

These are daily occurrences, not isolated events. And Gaddafi’s soldiers are not responsible. In fact, pro-Gaddafi and "neutral" families are targeted as the victims of the attacks. Some of the NATO tactics may have occurred in hopes of laying blame on Gaddafi’s door. However the attacks are back firing.

Flashback to Serbia

The events are eerily reminiscent of Serbia’s conflict in the Balkans with its notorious rape camps — except today NATO itself is perpetrating these War Crimes — as if they have learned the worst terror tactics from their enemies.

Their actions would be categorized as War Crimes, just like Serb leader, Slobadon Milosevic—except that NATO won’t allow itself to face prosecution. According to NATO, International Law is for the other guy.

NATO is wrong. So long as NATO governments provide the funding, assault rifles, military training, ground advisers, support vehicles and air power, they are fully responsible for the actions of their soldiers in the war zone. Libya’s rebels are not a rag tag fighting force, either. Thanks to NATO’s largesse, financed by U.S. and British taxpayers, they’re fully decked out in military uniforms, parading through the streets with military vehicles for all the people to see.

And they do see. In Washington, Congress likes to pretend that America has not become involved in the day to day actualities of military planning. However refugees have observed U.S, British, French and Israeli soldiers standing by as rebel soldiers attack civilians.

"Rape parties" are the most graphic examples of NATO’s loss of moral control. One weeping father told the fact-finding delegation how a couple of weeks ago NATO rebels targeted seven separate households, kidnapping a virgin daughter from each pro-Gaddafi family. The rebels were paid for each kidnapped girl, just as they are paid for each Libyan soldier they kill — like mercenary soldiers. They hustled the girls into trucks, and took them to a building where the girls were locked in separate rooms.

NATO soldiers proceeded to drink alcohol, until they got very drunk. Then the leader told them to rape the virgin daughters in gang bang style. When they’d finished raping the girls, the NATO leader told them to cut the breasts off the living girls and bring the breasts to him. They did this while the girls were alive and screaming. All the girls died hideous deaths. Then their severed breasts were taken to a local square and arranged to spell the word "whore."

The grieving father spoke to a convention of workers, attended by the global fact-finding delegation. He was openly weeping, as all of us should. NATO’s offenses in Libya are as terrible and unforgivable as Syria’s castration and mutilation of the 13 year old boy that shocked the world. Yet so long as NATO’s the guilty party, the western media has looked the other way in distaste.

Some of us are paying attention. We can see that NATO has gone rogue in Libya. And the Libyan people themselves consider it unforgivable. Last week, 2000 Tribal Leaders gathered in Tripoli to draft a Constitution for the country, as demanded by the British government. Notoriously, British warships and U.S. drones pounded the streets of Tripoli with bunker bombs and missiles for days and nights close to where the Tribal Leaders were meeting. From Tripoli, it felt awfully like the British were trying to stop the Libyan people from bringing this Constitution to life.

Tribal Leaders Condemn British Aggression

Here’s what those 2,000 Tribal Leaders had to say about British aggression, in a statement approved unanimously on June 3. Sheikh Ali, head of the Tribal Leaders, delivered it to Joanna Moriarty and other members of the global fact finding mission:

The Libyan people have the right to govern themselves. Constant attacks from the skies, at all hours of the day have completely disrupted the lives of the families of Libya. There has never been any fighting in Tripoli, yet we are bombed every day. We are civilians and we are being killed by the British and NATO. Civilians are people without guns, yet the British and NATO protect only the armed crusaders from the East by acting as their attack army. We have read the UN resolutions and there is no mention of bombing innocent civilians. There is no mention of assassinating the legitimate authorities in all of Libya.

The Libyan People have the right to select their own leaders. We have suffered occupation by foreign countries for thousands of years. Only in the last 41 years have we Libyans enjoyed property ownership. Only in the last 41 years have we seen our country develop. Only in the last 41 years have we seen all of the Libyans enjoy a better life, and know that our children will have a better life then we have had. But now with the British and NATO bombings of our country, we see the destruction of our new and developed infrastructure.

We leaders see the destruction of our culture. We leaders see tears in the eyes of our children because of the constant fear from the "rain of terror" in the skies of Libya from the British and NATO bombings. Our old people suffer from heart problems, increased diabetes and loss of vigor. Our young mothers are losing their babies every day because of the stress of the British and NATO bombings. These lost babies are the future of Libya. They can never be replaced. Our armies have been destroyed by the British and NATO bombings. We cannot defend ourselves from attacks from anyone.

As Tribal Leaders of Libya, we must ask why have the British and NATO decided to wage this war against the Libyan people? There are a small percentage of dissidents in the east of Libya that started an armed insurrection against our legitimate authority. Every country has the right to defend itself against armed insurrection. So why cannot Libya defend itself?

The Tribal Leaders of Libya demand that all acts of aggression, by the British and NATO, against the Libyan People stop immediately.

June 3, 2011

Does that sound like NATO’s got a winning strategy? If so, they should think again. Even if Gaddafi falls, NATO has no hope of eliminating the entire tribal structure of the Libya, which embraces all families and clans. Instead NATO is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the people with every missile that smashes into another building.

Tribal Backlash

The Libyan people are fighting back. This report arrived from Tripoli today. It is not edited, and describes a backlash in tribal warfare from the City of Darna in the East, where the rebellion is supposed to be strongest:

People found the body of Martyr Hamdi Jumaa Al-Shalwi in Darna city eastern Libya. His head was cut off and then placed in front of the headquarters of the Internal Security Dernah. That was after being kidnapped from a checkpoint complex Herich. In response to this Al-Shalwi family erected a funeral tent to receive condolences in which the green flag [of Libya] was raised. After the funeral the whole city of Darna rose up with all its tribes which include:- the Abu Jazia family, Al-Shalwi family, The Quba families, Ain Marra families. After that, Al-Shalwi family and Bojazia tribe attacked the headquarters of the Transitional Council and shot all the rats (rebels) and green flags were raised. Furthermore, the son of Sofian Qamom was killed, also two members of Al- Qaeda got killed by residents of the city of Darna. The flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya was raised above Darna after the clashes.

CNN has reported none of this. The corporate media continues to lull Americans into false confidence in the progress of the Libyan War. Americans are way out of the loop as to the failures of the War effort. As a result, Libyans are losing trust in the potential for friendships with the West. An unlikely champion might restore that faith. Right now a team of international attorneys is preparing an emergency grievance on behalf of the Tribal Leaders and the Libyan people. The International Peace Community could contribute substantially to restoring Libya’s faith in the West by supporting this human rights action. Indeed, the Libyan people and Tribal Leaders deserve our support. Together we must demand that NATO face prosecution for War Crimes, citing these examples and others.

NATO governments must be required to pay financial damages to Libyan families, on par with what the U.S. and Britain would demand for their own citizens under identical circumstances. The world cannot tolerate double standards, whereby powerful nations abuse helpless citizens. The International Geneva Conventions of War must be enforced, and equal force of the law must be applied.

The Fight for Misurata

Though attacks are widespread, some of the worst abuses are occurring in Misurata. The City has the only mega port in Libya, and handles transportation for the country, including the largest oil and gas depots. NATO will stop at nothing to take the City.

Refugees report that the Israeli Star of David flag was draped over the largest Mosque in Misurata on the second day of fighting, actions guaranteed to humiliate and antagonize the local population.

NATO forces have cut off food and medical supplies throughout Libya. But the seas are plentiful with fish in Mediterranean waters. Brave fishermen have taken their boats out of port, trying to harvest fish for the hungry population. To break their perseverance, American drones and British war planes steadily fire missiles on the fishing boats, deliberately targeting non-military vessels to chase them out of the waters.

Yet for all of its superior fire power and tactical advantages, NATO still appears to be losing. According to the fact-finding delegation, reporting today, many rebels have left Misurata and have taken boats back to Benghazi. The big central part of Misurata is now free and under central military control. The Libyan people shot down two helicopter gunships near the town of Zlitan. And although Al Jazeera played a grand story about a major uprising against Gaddafi in Tripoli, one of the Tribal leaders’ wives lives on the street that claims to be the center of the demonstration, and declared that she saw no crowds out of her window. Buses pictured in Al Jazeera video do not run in Tripoli.

One has to ask: What kind of society does NATO think it’s creating, if in fact Gaddafi can be deposed — which looks very unlikely? Have Washington and London learned nothing from their failure in Iraq? The cruelty and debasement of NATO’s forces is already fueling profound hatreds that will continue for the next generation.

Who could be proud of such "allies?" Not the Libyan people, surely.

NATO soldiers are no better than thugs. Anyone else would be labeled terrorists. Most worrisome, NATO’s actions are guaranteed to have serious consequences for long term political stability in Libya. Vendettas are forming between tribes and family clans that will carry over for decades. It is extremely short-sighted and self destructive.

NATO should take this warning to heart: Its soldiers are not legal-proof. The International Peace Community is already taking action to uphold Libya’s natural rights at the United Nations. Many of us in the International Peace Community shall defend Libya’s women. And we shall demand War Crimes prosecution and major financial damages against NATO governments, on behalf of the people.

Nobody’s fooled by NATO’s story that Gaddafi’s the guilty party. We know that Washington, Britain, France, Italy — and Israel are the real culprits.

The murdered women of Misurata shall have justice. NATO can count on it.

Susan Lindauer covered Libya at the United Nations as a U.S. Asset from 1995 to 2003, and started talks for the Lockerbie Trial. She is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.
http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Prejudice-Terrifying-Story-Patriot/dp/1453642757


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78427&hd=&size=1&l=e




 

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Libya: a deafening silence

By Jody McIntyre

June 7, 2011

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/07/libya-a-deafening-silence/

So now we are sending Apache jets to bomb Libyan civilians. An escalation in yet another bloody NATO war. Or, in the words of Colonel Jason Etherington, "it just brings something else to the party."

The entire media have fallen into line. This is a war to protect civilians. This is a war to force Gaddafi to leave. As if Western governments, with their proud histories of human rights abuses across the world, have any moral right to make judgements on the government of Libya. Etherington’s rhetoric reveals a despicable truth, this war is a game for us, a 'party’ worth extending.

Even Al Jazeera run the accepted story of 'rebels’ capturing town after town. But they don’t broadcast pictures from Tripoli, the capital, where, except for the NATO bombing campaign, people are continuing with their normal lives. And they never show images of the crimes of this so-called 'rebel’ brigade, who violently attacked black Libyans and black African citizens in the east of the country, labelling them as 'African mercenaries’ hired by Gaddafi, despite the fact that all Libyans are in fact African. None of this is reported, because it wouldn’t fit into the accepted narrative. The lovely rebel leadership, many of whom worked for Gaddafi until a few months ago, are our allies. Muammer Gaddafi, the useful villain, is our sworn enemy.

But why such a silence? Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, which provoked huge outcries across the world, the reaction to Libya has been relatively muted. We have been sold on a false premise, and, as Noam Chomsky would say, have allowed the manufacture of our consent.

Now that the initial smokescreen has been proven a success, the British government, for one, have no need to disguise their aims any more. Not that they ever did. "We’re not going to set a deadline," says William Hague. Of course not, because imperialism knows no bounds when a war is underway.

It has always struck me that people are most hysterical in their reactions when it comes to a war our country is involved in. If you observe the reality of the situation, then you are accused of not caring about Libyan civilians, or supporting a dictator. Actually, it is our government that is fond of supporting dictatorships, and our government that is bombing Libyan civilians. As Frank Natter wrote on his blog, 'Straight Talk’, earlier this week, "Everyone of us who is taxed is tacitly consenting and indirectly funding the bombs that are currently being used to kill Afghani and Libyan peoples. To quote Sartre, 'you are not wonderful, you are murderers’."

This is nothing to do with protecting civilians, and everything to do with re-establishing a waning military and economic domination in the region. When you consider a list of the few countries in the world that do not have US military bases on their soil, it becomes a lot clearer why our "enemies" are who we are taught they are.


http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/06/07/libya-a-deafening-silence/

 

[bigron]

Cost of Libya war soaring for US


Fri Jun 10, 2011 9:38AM




A US Air Force F-16CJ Fighting Falcon jet operating in Libya

The costs of the United States' military operations in Libya have risen to millions of dollars more than the Pentagon's earlier estimate.

MORE

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/184023.html

[bigron]

   
 

NATO Inflicted Libyan Deaths, Injuries Not ‘Propaganda’: Cynthia McKinney


By Deborah Dupre

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28292.htm


June 10, 2011 "Bay View" -- In the CIA kick-started war on Libya, The New York Times report Monday by John F. Burns, calling Libyan civilian casualties “propaganda,” does not square with a series of WBAIX in-hospital interviews (posted below) by Joshalyn Lawrence that show civilian victim survivors of U.S./NATO intensifying bomb raids, both witnessed by a human rights fact-finding mission including Cynthia McKinney and former members of parliament, who report it is NATO spin that mainstream media is reporting.

“Sightings of civilian casualties have been rare,” reported Burns on June 6. “Visits to bombing sites, hospitals and funerals have produced a succession of blunders, including patients identified as bombing victims who turned out not to be, empty coffins at funerals and burials where some of those interred turned out not to be airstrike victims at all.”

The Lawrence videos, on the WBAIX channel, of hospitalized civilians is evidence that, rather than injuries and killings by bombs being “rare” or reporting “blunders,” they are realities. Graphic images of the wounded are documented in the WBAIX videos created by Joshalyn Lawrence.

In the videos, one after another wounded innocent civilian described atrocities to Cynthia McKinney, in a fact-finding mission with a team including a delegation of former MPs and professors from France, all now in Tripoli.

The live-stream Lawrence videos on DeBar’s channel document the NATO attacks and the injured, showing their wounds and describing friends and co-workers killed.

McKinney’s fact-finder team is seen entering one hospital room after another, each with the injured and the doctor explaining how the injury occurred and showing the injuries.

Houses are “completely destroyed” and meanwhile, according to McKinney, NATO has its own psychological operation in progress.

In a June 7 statement by McKinney, she refutes NATO claims about making “significant progress” in “protecting Libyan civilians” and “targeting military intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli.”

The fact-finder team, of which McKinney is a delegate, planned a program to visit camps of internally displaced persons in the area but this could not occur because of U.S./NATO attacks.

“[W]e are not able to complete our program while Tripoli is under attack. I will do my best to visit some of the areas bombed today when and if this attack lets up.”

Like The New York Times, The Washington Post headlined “Libya government fails to prove claims of NATO casualties” and the Los Angeles Times headline was “Libya officials put a spin on a conflict.”

“These bombs and missiles are not falling in empty spaces: People are all over Tripoli going about their lives just as in any other major metropolitan city of about 2 million people,” stated McKinney.

Why?
“I don’t understand why they want to kill us,” said one young woman seen standing with others outside the Tripoli hospital room, explaining that the old are also being injured and killed.

“Why?” is the question repeatedly asked by the injured who are able to speak.

Political analyst Webster Tarpley answered that question Monday, June 6, on Press TV, stating that the “goal of all this all along has been to smash Libya into various parts to drive Qaddafi out of power and to seize control of the oil to re-impose the yoke of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in still more severe form than we ever had it.”

“And I think right now desperation is growing, especially in London and Paris, that old Suez 1956 combination of unreconstructed imperialists,” said Tarpley.

“They are desperate now because their methods so far are not working. They tried high level bombing, combined with this rebel rabble underground with a lot of al-Qaeda fighters included in it and that’s not working.”

Wayne Madsen, who was among those in the hospital with McKinney and others, seeing the patients and witnessing the injuries, has reported that early mainstream media reports included photos of Libyan rebels waving weapons and discharging them into the air, while “NATO member nations were supposedly locked in debate as to whether or when to provide weapons to the rebels.”

“Someone in the media finally pointed out that the weapons being waved about in the photos were NATO standard issue,” reported Madsen.

Foreign Secretary William Hauge has said that NATO’s almost three month long mission is intensifying and it could last many more months, according to Press TV.
 

Tarpley speculates that the U.S. aggression on Libya could bring President Obama down. Republicans who have been long-time warmongers “are now seizing on the Libyan war as a means of attacking Obama.”

The War Powers Act “would have required Obama to get congressional approval for what he is doing within 60 days, meaning by about May 20,” stated Tarpley. “At May 20, the second clock starts which gives him 30 days to pull out. If Obama does not pull out of the attack on Libya by about the 20th of June, he could be brought down by the Republicans in the House, who might use that as a vehicle to express their resentment so they build up some other issues.”

African Americans in Harlem urged public support on Wednesday as they protest the U.S./NATO attacks on Libyan Africans and the targeting of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadaffi, the man praised by Nelson Mandela for supporting the anti-apartheid struggle and the man who has said No to the establishment of a U.S. military command (Africom) on the African continent to take African resources. (See “African Americans’ emergency gathering to stop Qadaffi assassination” by Deborah Dupré, National Human Rights Examiner.com.)

McKinney asked June 7, “What were you doing today between 1:00 p.m. and now? The people of Tripoli endure the trauma of repeated bombings in their immediate environment.”

Referring to “imperialist” Nuremberg crimes against humanity in Libya, Tarpley said that “undoubtedly,” depleted uranium and cluster bombs are being used, “and all the rest.”

Investigations have revealed that the U.S. Navy used cluster bombs on Libyans that injured the innocent, including children.

“[A]nd that’s what they call democracy these days.”

Deborah Dupre holds American and Australian science and education graduate degrees and has 30 years experience in human rights, environmental and peace activism. Email her at Gdeborahdupre@gmail.com and visit her website, www.DeborahDupre.com. This story first appeared at Examiner.com.
 

VISIT PAGE FOR LINKS

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28292.htm



 
 

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NATO Chief Rasmussen Grilled Over Libya Assault

By RT

Russia and NATO have an open channel for talks, but there are still fundamental points in which they have trouble seeing eye-to-eye. From how to handle Libya and Syria through to missile defence, the hurdles are clear. To see if that might change any time soon, we can talk to NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Posted June 10, 2011

WATCH VIDEO HERE

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28289.htm

[bigron]

   
 

Muammar Qadhafi Pens Letter to Congress


By Jennifer Epstein


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28298.htm


June 10, 2011 " Politico" --  In what appears to be a letter from Muammar Qadhafi to members of Congress, the Libyan leader calls on the United States to take the lead in negotiating a cease fire, while also flattering Congress for its “thoughtful discussion of the issues” on Libya.

Qadhafi appeals to the United States “as the great Democracy, to assist us to determine our future as a people” in the letter and promises to implement reforms if he has the support of Americans behind him. It’s his hope he says, to “exercise[e] power through a direct democracy which will choose the senior officials who will provide the administration of the Libyan Government and take care of its own affairs.”

Sent to congressional leaders and the White House, the three-page letter comes as reports continue to emerge suggesting that Qadhafi is looking for a way to end the fighting in Libya and as NATO looks for ways to scale back its activity there, which began in March. In the letter, he asks for “a cease fire, the funding of humanitarian relief and assistance in fostering and furthering accommodation between the parties within Libya that are at odds.”

In exchange, Qadhafi promises that he’ll allow a congressional fact-finding team into the country to examine humanitarian conditions and to “observe the true democratic sincerity of all Libya men and woman (sic).” The team would also be able to investigate “claims that have been made about systematic violations inside Libya during this tragic civil war.”

The letter also includes passages in which Qadhafi seeks to flatter his recipients, writing: “I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues. We are confident that history will see the wisdom of your country in debating these issues.”

Recipients of the letter aren’t spending much time responding to the letter.

“We have received a letter but we’re not spending much time trying to confirm authenticity because we don’t much care what he has to say unless it includes a resignation,” said Jon Summers, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) communications director.

House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement that “[if] authentic, this incoherent letter only reinforces that Qadhafi must go. There’s no disagreement about that.”

“That’s why so many Americans have questions – which the White House refuses to answer – about the administration committing U.S. resources to an operation that doesn’t make his removal a goal,” he said.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28298.htm   
 
 

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Gaddafi regime staked £12bn on secret deal in bid to open peace talks

Memo seen by The Independent reveals Tripoli negotiations


By Kim Sengupta and Solomon Hughes


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28293.htm


July 10, 2011 "The Independent" - -The Libyan regime has been negotiating a secret deal with Greece to use $20bn (£12bn) of its funds that are frozen abroad for humanitarian relief to benefit both sides in the civil war. Officials in Tripoli say the move is intended to pave the way for the opening of peace talks.

The Independent has learned that talks were held in Tripoli between a team led by a former diplomat close to the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and regime members including the Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi. The meetings resulted in a memorandum of understanding that has remained unsigned because, diplomatic sources said, of warnings by the French government to the Greeks that any such agreement would appear to give Muammar Gaddafi legitimacy as Libya's ruler and undermine the policy of the Western coalition to keep him isolated.

Sources within the Libyan regime maintain that an agreement on the use of its assets for aid could lead to a ceasefire agreement and a process under which Colonel Gaddafi would relinquish power while a caretaker administration can be formed that includes members of the Benghazi-based opposition.

Those involved in the negotiations also claim that some officials from the United States were aware of the talks taking place for using unfrozen funds for aid, but have refrained from making public comments due to French sensitivities. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State , said yesterday she was aware of "numerous and continuing" overtures by people close to the Libyan leader to negotiate his departure from power, but did not give further details.

The memorandum, a copy of which has been seen by The Independent, says that Libya and Greece "decided to put in place urgently a humanitarian operation fulfilling the imperative need to serve all the Libya citizens as well as persons of other nationalities living in Libya in urgent need and on an equal footing applying the international humanitarian criteria".

A senior Libyan official, who is currently outside the country, claimed that there was now "personal enmity" – with the French Prime Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Emir of Qatar, another prominent supporter of the rebels, against Colonel Gaddafi – which was hindering a peace deal and humanitarian efforts.

"We firmly believe that this could start a process of dialogue. This is Libyan money being held by foreign banks. The proposal was that it would have been used to benefit all Libyans on both sides of the terrible division in our country," the official said.

"There is also little doubt in Tripoli that Muammar Gaddafi will have to go. Whether he goes out of the country or somewhere in the desert is something which can be decided later. But making Gaddafi going the pre-condition for talks, which the TNC [Transitional National Council, the opposition administration] and Nato are doing, is simply delaying the talks from taking place.

"The UK has to go along with the French, but we think there are influential people Washington who also want to see the fighting end."

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people have been killed on both sides in four months of fighting in Libya, according to a UN panel.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has said he is investigating whether Colonel Gaddafi provided Viagra to Libyan soldiers to promote rape. The regime yesterday denied the claims.

A Western diplomatic source also said that French pressure has stymied the projected deal between Athens and the Libyan regime. But he denied suggestions that the French had raised the issue of Greek indebtedness to the European Union as a lever, before adding: "They did not have to, it was pretty implicit in the message."

A bipartisan group in the US Congress has urged Barack Obama to use frozen assets of the Libyan regime to pay for humanitarian supplies. At the same time, Mr Obama is facing increasing criticism from Republicans and Democrats over his backing for the war.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the "Libyan contact Group" in Abu Dhabi yesterday, the rebels received pledges of $1bn in aid. But the figure fell short of the sum requested by the TNC in Benghazi. The opposition administration said it needs at least $3bn.

   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28293.htm
 

[bigron]

An open letter to the African Union for feasible and practical action on the Libyan Crisis

By Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78544&hd=&size=1&l=e


June 11, 2011

Note: The following letter, which is self-explanatory, was emailed to various officials of the African Union, whose email addresses were available on its web site, on June 8, 2011. So far, I have received no response and none is expected. In the sinister post-communist imperialist dominated world reality, there are unprecedented types and levels of the mutilation, distortion, perversion, and atrophy of human soul, spirit, intellect, reason, rationality, justice, and truth; not only in the imperialist countries, but worldwide. Almost everyone is absorbed in worshipping money, things, and power, and has no time, courage, or desire to see the nature of this reality and what is going on in it, including to themselves. In spite of knowing all this, the author considers it his duty and responsibility to do what is essential to be done by the requirements of authentic and un-mutilated human soul, spirit, intellect, and rationality. That is why he wrote this letter and sent it to the African Union.

An open letter to the African Union for feasible and practical action on the Libyan Crisis


I am an interdisciplinary researcher and writer. I am writing this letter about yet another great Western imperialist crime and atrocity against yet another Third World country, Libya, which is one of the most important members of the African Union (AU), in the formation and funding of which, the Libyan Leader Muammar Gadhafi had played a key role. In spite of his crucial practical support to the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, against the apartheid regime, as well as to many other African and Third World nations and national liberation movements around the world, some AU members, including South Africa, voted for the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 of 2011, while some others abstained. That resolution was a self-evident Western imperialist and colonialist plot to invade Libya, overthrow its legitimate government, replace it with a puppet regime, and establish much greater control over its huge energy and other resources and wealth. This has been obvious to every person, even with a minimum of intelligence, common sense, and knowledge of the history of imperialism and colonialism, especially in Africa that suffered the most brutal and devastating forms of them, from which it is still struggling to recover. It is simply not possible or credible that the African leaders could not see through this demonic imperialist plot. The only explanation for their actions and non-actions is that they chose to collaborate with the US and NATO imperialism in this great historical moment of truth, in this great historical moment of test. It is indeed a great shame for the mankind in general and African Union in particular that such great imperialist crime and atrocity is not only being allowed to be committed, but was voted for by some members of the African Union, among others, at the UNSC.

I wrote an in-depth article, "Gadhafi, Libya, counter-revolution, and the imperialist pack of hyenas", on March 25, 2011, on this matter, which has been published on many web sites in the US, UK, China, Pakistan, Ghana, and Nigeria. Following is a web link to it on one of those sites:
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/gadhafi-libya
-counter-revolution-and-the-pack-of-imperialist-hyenas-by-fa ...

For your convenience, I am also sending it in the attachment with this email.

At the current stage, the greatest danger lies in the possible invasion of Libya by the ground forces of NATO. They have already stretched and violated the UNSC Resolution 1973 in every possible way, with impunity. The least African Union can do now is to counter that very real danger by a credible threat of its own, as the US and the West only understand and pay attention to force and the language of force. African Union now has the absolute duty and responsibility to publicly declare that if there is an invasion of Libya by the NATO ground forces, the African Union will send its own ground forces to counter them and to prevent further violations of UNSC Resolution 1973 and more slaughters of Libyan and African people. Such a position is quite feasible and practicable. It will also elevate the African Union to high moral, political, and rational ground and will boost its international prestige enormously. It is almost certain that if the African Union takes such a principled and firm stand, powerful countries, like China and Russia, will also put their weight behind it. This is now the only effective way to thwart the imperialist aggression and its plot of plunder, robbery, and colonialism of a fellow African Union country.

I request that this proposal be presented to the highest officials of the African Union and given the most serious consideration.

Sincerely,
Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Email: Unpollutedfaz@aol.com
June 8, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78544&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

[bigron]

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war


By Glenn Greenwald


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

Salon, June 11, 2011

When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."  This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force.  We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West.  That's not even a debatable proposition at this point.

Continue reading
What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this.  Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war?  Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval?  Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war?  And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?

Whatever the answers to those mysteries, no responsible or Serious person, by definition, would suggest that any of this  -- from today's Washington Post -- has anything to do with it:


The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .

Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .

When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya's unusually "sweet" and "light," or high-quality, crude oil.

By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya's 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism." It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son made similar remarks in 2007.

Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .

The entire article is worth reading, as it details how Gaddafi has progressively impeded the interests of U.S. and Western oil companies by demanding a greater share of profits and other concessions, to the point where some of those corporations were deciding that it may no longer be profitable or worthwhile to drill for oil there.  But now, in a pure coincidence, there is hope on the horizon for these Western oil companies, thanks to the war profoundly humanitarian action being waged by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his nation's closest Western allies:


But Libya's oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.

With the country torn by fighting, the big international oil companies are treading carefully, unwilling to throw their lot behind Gaddafi or the rebel coalition.

Yet when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition. In another meeting in Washington, Ali Tarhouni, the lead economic policymaker in Benghazi, said oil contracts would be honored, Mintz said.

"Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi," Saleri said. "Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves."

"Five years from now," he added, "Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

I have two points to make about all this:

(1) The reason -- the only reason -- we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts.  Virtually the entirety of the Post article -- like most significant revelations over the last 12 months, especially in the Middle East and North Africa -- are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures.  That's why we know about Gaddafi's increasingly strident demands for the "Libyanization" of his country's resource exploitation.  That's how we know about most of the things we've learned about the world's most powerful political and corporate factions over the last 12 months.  Is there anything easier to understand than why U.S. Government officials are so eager to punish WikiLeaks and deter future transparency projects of this sort?

(2) Is there anyone -- anywhere -- who actually believes that these aren't the driving considerations in why we're waging this war in Libya?  After almost three months of fighting and bombing -- when we're so far from the original justifications and commitments that they're barely a distant memory -- is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya?  Is there anything more obvious -- as the world's oil supplies rapidly diminish -- than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests, and that protecting civilians was the justifying pretext for this war, not the purpose?  If (as is quite possible) the new regime turns out to be as oppressive as Gaddafi but far more subservient to Western corporations (like, say, our good Saudi friends), does anyone think we're going to care in the slightest or (at most) do anything other than pay occasional lip service to protesting it?  Does anyone think we're going to care about The Libyan People if they're being oppressed or brutalized by a reliably pro-Western successor to Gaddafi?

In 2006, George Bush instructed us that there was a "responsible" and an "irresponsible" way for citizens to debate the Iraq War: the "responsible" way was to suggest that there may be better tactics for waging the war more effectively, while the "irresponsible" way was to outrageously insinuate that perhaps oil or Israel or deceit played a role in the invasion:


Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton hosted a meeting of top executives from a wide array of corporations -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Halliburton, GE, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum, etc. etc. -- to plot how to exploit "economic opportunities in the new Iraq."  And one WikiLeaks "diplomatic" cable after the next reveals constant government efforts to promote the interests of Western corporations in the developing world.  Nonetheless, the very notion that the U.S. wages wars not for humanitarian or freedom-spreading purposes, but rather to exploit the resources of other nations for its own large corporations, is deeply "irresponsible" and unSerious.  As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.

It's certainly possible to contend reasonably that (as was true for Iraq) removing a heinous dictator and other humanitarian outcomes will be the incidental by-product of our war in Libya even if not its purpose (although, as was also true in Iraq, one would need to see the regime that replaces Gaddafi to know if that's true).  And it's fine -- or at least candid -- to argue, as Ann Coulter often does, that "of course we should go to war for oil. . . .We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." But to believe that humanitarianism (protection of Libya civilians) was why we went to war in Libya requires a blindness so willful and complete that it's genuinely difficult to describe.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

 

[bigron]

'US likely to prevent DU probe in Libya'

Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:21AM


Interview with Khaled Elshami, political editor of al-Quds daily

Reports indicate that Western coalition forces have been using depleted uranium in their airstrikes on crisis-hit Libya, despite the forces' denial of using the highly-poisonous material.

VIDEO AND ARTICLE HERE

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/184286.html

[Protean]

Soetoro the NWO puppet and his 6 wars raging, here's a view from Libya---

Gaddafi's chess boss battle: Colonel vows to stay till endgame

RT Video--
http://youtu.be/uv39GkhB4Ps

He may be faced by an ongoing rebellion, an increasingly destructive NATO bombing campaign and world-wide condemnation - but Colonel Gaddafi has vowed he'll stay in Libya to the bitter end. His remarks came over a game of chess with the visiting President of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. After the event - which was broadcast on state TV - the chessmaster expressed his shock at the scale of destruction in the capital - Tripoli. Nevertheless, NATO has once again declared its intent to expand military operations in the country. It follows reports of fierce fighting during which Libyan government forces wrested control from the rebels, of the city of Zawiya - just 30 kilometres from the capital.

[Protean]

'NATO bombs civilians!' - Cynthia McKinney from Tripoli with truth

RT--Video
http://youtu.be/48J_DIZBNyE

Former US congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney told RT she went to Libya because she wanted to know the truth.

[Sasha]

A must watch video if you missed if the first time.

Perhaps the single greatest testimony to Obama's war mongering continuity of government plans with the Bush administration is the laundry list of countries on the Pentagon hit-list, circa March 2nd 2007.  The confession was from NATO mass murdered General Wesley Clark bragging/leaking to Amy Goodman and it outlines the Bush administration's plans to 'take-out' 7 countries in 5 years:  Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7hMj2NKTc

[bigron]

Making Bush's Lawyers Look Smart

Obama's Libya Defense

By DAVID SWANSON

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78732&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 17, 2011

The arguments made to "legalize" war, torture, warrantless spying, and other crimes by John Yoo and Jay Bybee and their gang are looking rational, well-reasoned, and impeccably researched in comparison with Obama's latest "legalization" of the Libya War.

Here's the key section from Wednesday's report to Congress:

"Given the important U.S. interests served by U.S. military operations in Libya and the limited nature, scope and duration of the anticipated actions, the President had constitutional authority, as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and pursuant to his foreign affairs powers, to direct such limited military operations abroad. The President is of the view that the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require further congressional authorization, because U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of 'hostilities' contemplated by the Resolution's 60 day termination provision. U.S. forces are playing a constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition, whose operations are both legitimated by and limited to the terms of a United Nations Security Council Resolution that authorizes the use of force solely to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under attack or threat of attack and to enforce a no-fly zone and an arms embargo. U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors."

Whatever the president's "foreign affairs powers" may be, they do not, under the U.S. Constitution, include the power to launch "military operations" or "hostilities" or "wars." Nor has the distinction between "military operations" that involve what ordinary humans call warfare (blowing up buildings with missiles) and "hostilities" that qualify for regulation under the War Powers Resolution been previously established. This distinction is as crazy as any that have come out of U.S. government lawyers in the past.

The War Powers Resolution forbids unconstitutional wars unless the United States is attacked. But even ignoring that fact, as is the custom, the Resolution says right at the top:

"It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations."

Anything from imminent involvement in hostilities to hostilities is covered. There doesn't seem to be a gap left through which to exclude bombing people's homes in a non-hostile manner with non-combat troops as part of an overseas contingency operation.

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey remarks: "To say that our aggressive bombing of Libya does not rise to the level of 'hostilities' flies in the face of common sense and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people."

Further down, the same resolution makes clear:

"For purposes of this joint resolution, the term 'introduction of United States Armed Forces' includes the assignment of members of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities."

So, the "constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition" is completely irrelevant, and would be even if it were true that a UN resolution was being adhered to.

The Obama report to Congress spends half its time claiming that the United States is not part of the NATO operation in any major way, and the other half warning that the NATO operation would collapse without the United States:

"If the United States military were to cease its participation in the NATO operation, it would seriously degrade the coalition's ability to execute and sustain its operation designed to protect Libyan civilians and to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo, as authorized under UNSCR 1973. Cessation of U.S. military activities in support of OUP would also significantly increase the level of risk for the remaining Allied and coalition forces conducting the operation, which in turn would likely lead to the withdrawal of participation in the operation."

The "limited nature, scope and duration of the anticipated actions" is irrelevant. The War Powers Act specifically sets a limit of 60 days, which has passed. Moreover, not that it matters legally, but the House resolution to which this report was a response asked for some information that the report does not provide, including:

"The anticipated scope and duration of continued United States military involvement in support of NATO activities regarding Libya."

The report says the duration is limited, but that merely suggests it's not infinite.

I have my doubts even about that claim.

David Swanson is a writer in Charlottesville, Va.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78732&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

[bigron]

Oil companies prepare for post-Gaddafi Libya


By Patrick O’Connor


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78750&hd=&size=1&l=e


WSWS, June 17, 2011

The major American and European oil conglomerates previously active in Libya are preparing to resume business in the event that the illegal NATO-led war achieves its objective of "regime change", with Muammar Gaddafi forced from power and a more pliant administration installed in Tripoli.

The International Energy Agency yesterday forecast a relatively slow but steady resumption of oil production. "By next year, the political dynamics should be settled, one way or another, and by 2013 capacity restored to just below pre-crisis levels, with a full recovery by 2015," an IEA report declared. Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of Italian oil giant ENI, similarly declared on Wednesday: "We think that everything will return to normal in Libya ... any government that comes to power in Libya will have to re-start production working with the companies that already know the country. When we look a year from now, we look with optimism."

Executives with other major oil firms that have suspended operations in Libya—including America’s ConocoPhillips and Britain’s BP—have been more circumspect, while scrambling behind the scenes to secure their stake in the oil-rich North African state.

The Washington Post last week noted that representatives of ConocoPhillips and other American oil companies recently met with a delegation from the so-called Transitional National Council based in "rebel"-held Benghazi. The executives reportedly received assurances that all the contracts they negotiated with the Libyan government would be honoured.

Nansen Saleri, chief executive of Houston-based oil engineering firm Quantum Reservoir Impact, told the Washington Post: "Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi. Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves... Five years from now, Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

Despite the suspension of extraction operations due to the war, the transnational oil companies continue to actively pursue new opportunities in Libya and across the North African region. According to a report published last week in the Oil & Gas Journal, Canadian-based Sonde Resources has assessed as commercially viable a field in the Mediterranean Sea shared by Libya and Tunisia that contains an estimated 362 million barrels of oil and 981 billion cubic feet of gas.

A Reuters report yesterday, "Arab spring likely to leave oil firms unscathed", noted that the energy giants are striving to ensure that the uprisings of workers and young people across North Africa and the Middle East do not disrupt the lucrative arrangements previously worked out with various deposed despots. "In the past, big political shifts in the Middle East have often been followed by the eviction of foreign oil producers," the article stated. "Oil companies have beaten a path to new leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, and, an Italian ministerial source told Reuters last month, even to Libyan rebel leaders. Companies say the signals received so far do not point to widespread asset seizures."

These developments underscore the nakedly predatory and neo-colonial character of the US-European assault on Libya. The Obama administration and its European allies now make little pretence of complying with the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1973, or its stated objective of "protecting civilians". Gaddafi and his family have survived numerous assassination attempts, many civilian infrastructure facilities have been systematically targeted, and the bombardment has been steadily intensified, leading to more civilian casualties. The real agenda is to replace the Libyan government with a puppet administration as a means of advancing the imperialist powers’ geostrategic and economic interests in the country and the wider region.

Control over Libya’s oil is central to these objectives. Previously accounting for nearly 2 percent of total world oil output, Libyan oil is of especially high quality. Moreover, there are believed to be vast reserves not yet explored, with about 70 percent of the country reportedly still to be surveyed.

US diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks have shed light on the sordid operations of American and European oil companies in Libya.

The Washington Post summarised the content of the various cables: "In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier... Yet even before armed conflict drove the US companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more US government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence US policies."

One State Department cable in December 2004 reported that ConocoPhillips executives described a recent deal they struck with the Libyan government as "not good", but "said the company views it as 'dues-paying’ in order to return to the Libyan market".

By November 2007, however, another State Department cable reported "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism". US officials disapprovingly cited a speech Gaddafi delivered in which he declared that "Libyans must take their place to profit from this [oil] money". The cable concluded: "Those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves."

In 2008, another cable reported that the Libyan government had warned an ExxonMobil executive that it could "significantly curtail" its oil production in order to "penalise the US", after Congress had passed legislation making it easier for families of the victims of the Lockerbie aeroplane bombing to target Libyan commercial assets in the courts.

The cables make clear that the major oil companies are looking to not merely preserve the existing contracts they negotiated with Gaddafi, but to redraft the agreements on much more favourable terms. At the same time, escalating great power rivalries are fuelling the scramble for Libya’s oil. There is no question that the American, British, and French conglomerates will expect any post-Gaddafi client regime to favour them over the Russian, Chinese, Italian, and German firms that have been active in Libya.

One cable published by WikiLeaks reveals that in April 2008, US diplomatic officials urged the State and Treasury departments to lobby the Italian government to challenge a deal struck between oil giant Eni and Russia’s Gazprom. In return for Eni assisting Gazprom in the construction of a pipeline across the Black Sea, the Italian company planned to sell a part of its stake in the lucrative "Elephant" oil field in Libya. The confidential cable stated: "Post would like to push the new Berlusconi government to force Eni to act less as a stalking horse for Gazprom interests ... seems to be working in support of Gazprom’s efforts to dominate Europe’s energy supply, and against US-supported EU efforts to diversify energy supply,"

The war has effectively sabotaged the proposed deal—on April 20, Eni executives announced they were indefinitely postponing the Libyan oil field selloff.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78750&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

[bigron]

French lawyers sue Sarkozy over crimes against humanity in Libya


By Antoine Lerougetel


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78749&hd=&size=1&l=e


WSWS, June 17, 2011

Two high-profile French lawyers, Jacques Vergès and former Socialist Party minister Roland Dumas, have announced that they plan to sue French president Nicolas Sarkozy on charges of crimes against humanity committed in the on-going NATO military intervention in Libya. They are acting for some thirty Libyan families who have lost family members in the NATO bombings.

At a press conference May 29 in Libya they declared that they would initiate legal proceedings in the French courts on Monday, May 30. There has been an almost complete blackout of the announcement in the French media. Only the Socialist Party-leaning newsweekly Marianne commented, attacking Dumas and Vergès for "a grotesque accusation against the president of the Republic."

At a press conference in Libya on Sunday Dumas said, referring to the NATO bombing, "this mission, which is supposed to protect civilians, is in the process of killing them." He said the war in Libya was "a brutal aggression against a sovereign nation."

Calling the NATO alliance nations "murderers", Vergès denounced "a French state led by thugs and murderers ... We intend to break the wall of silence." He said he had seen several civilian victims at a hospital and had been told by one of its doctors that there were as many as 20,000 victims.

Dumas said he was ready to take the defense of Gaddafi himself if he was to appear at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague. On May 16, acting at the behest of the major Western powers, the ICC prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity against Gaddafi.

Dumas questioned the authority of Sarkozy and NATO to conduct bombing based on UN Security Council Resolution 1973, calling it "the artificial—very artificial—cover of the United Nations."

The lawsuit comes at a time when the NATO allies have stated that the war will be extended for at least 90 days, until September, and when Britain and France have announced the stepping up of the military bombardments, which have already involved several attempts at targeted political assassination through the bombing of homes of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s family.

British ex-SAS elite troops and other mercenaries employed by NATO are helping identify targets in the Libyan port city of Misrata, They are there with the blessing of Britain, France and other NATO countries, which have supplied them with communications equipment. They are likely to be providing information for the pilots of newly deployed British and French attack helicopters.

The French government was the main protagonist of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, a flimsy legal cover for the naked neo-colonial, imperialist intervention supposedly to protect civilians from the Libyan armed forces. In reality, it is part of the scramble for Libya’s oil and gas resources and the imposition of a pliant pro-imperialist government being assembled and groomed in Benghazi.

Other lawyers acting for Aïcha Gaddafi, the daughter of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, have reportedly filed charges against NATO in a Belgian court. They declared, "The decision to target a civilian home in Tripoli constitutes a war crime."

The charge concerns a NATO air raid on April 30 that killed Gaddafi’s youngest son and three of his infant grandchildren. The two lawyers are also suing for the annulment of the EU ministers’ decision to freeze the accounts of the Libyan regime in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

It is not clear whether the octogenarian Vergès and Dumas, with long and close ties to the French state, are directly working with sections of the French state but certainly serious doubts have emerged in French ruling circles on Sarkozy’s decision to embark on the military intervention in Libya.

The TTU defense information web site commented on an unpublished 50-page report issued after a three-week visit to Libya by intelligence experts headed by Yves Bonnet, former chief of the French national intelligence agency, the DST. According to the TTU site, the intervention is overstepping resolution 1973 and "the control of energy resources is at the heart of the current strategy. The US would like to overthrow Gaddafi in order to kick China out of the country. Egypt, which has never accepted the attachment of Cyrenaica and its oil reserves to Tripoli, can see nothing but advantages from the partitions of the country."

The site adds: "The report expresses alarm at this 'thoughtless’ involvement by Paris, which plays into the hands of the American administration, which has taken care not to show its hand and let France take all the risks." It expresses serious doubts as to whether the Benghazi transitional council could "preserve the interests of the powers involved," implying most especially those of French imperialism.

The military commentator Jacques Borde has also suggested that, while France is futilely overreaching its military capacities, its Arab and Western allies will be reaping the rewards in terms of the share-out of the spoils. There is also the danger of the "Somalisation" of Libya – that is its disintegration into warring tribes and warlords.

The two aging lawyers have long political and legal histories. Dumas, born 1922, was a close collaborator of François Mitterrand, Socialist Party (PS) president of France from 1981 to 1995, and served as a minister in several PS governments. He has never been a policy-maker, but rather a trusted errand boy for the executive.

He was part of the corrupt relations of French imperialism with African governments known as Françafrique. In 1983 he was Mitterrand’s special envoy to Gaddafi. His task was to persuade Libya not to invade Chad in support of a rebellion in the north of the country against the pro-French government. Finally, with the complicity of Gaddafi, the government was kept in power thanks to France’s intervention.

In 1995 Dumas was nominated President of the Constitutional Council, the French constitutional court, by Mitterrand. He resigned in January 1999 because of the Elf corruption affair.

Vergès was born in 1925 of a Vietnamese mother and a Réunionese father. Among the most famous legal defenses he carried out were that of the terrorist Carlos "the Jackal" and the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, "the butcher of Lyon" in occupied France. He accused French imperialism of committing similar crimes in Algeria to those of the Nazis.

Dumas has admitted that he and Vergès were approached by the Gaddafi régime to take the case. Whatever their motivations, however, there is no doubt that the indictment they are making of French and Western imperialism’s criminal action against the Libyan people is a source of some embarrassment for the Sarkozy government and its imperialist allies. So it is also for the PS, the PCF, and the fake lefts of the NPA in France, who have peddled the lie that the intervention is "humanitarian" and designed to protect the Libyan people.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78749&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

[bigron]

Middle East
Jun 21, 2011 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF21Ak01.html 
 
THE ROVING EYE


NATO, the ultimate transformer


By Pepe Escobar



To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
http://atimes.com/atimes/others/Pepe2011.html
 

Forget about the Hollywood Transformer franchise; as facts on the ground go, the ultimate transformer in real life is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

NATO has just admitted it was "probably" responsible for the humanitarian liberation of nine Libyan civilians, plus 18 injured, via an early morning strike against an apartment building in a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood.

Liberating Northern Africans in their sleep under tons of debris now adds to NATO's - and the Pentagon's - routine liberation of Pashtun wedding parties.

Forget about the Ministry of Truth-style non-denial denials enveloped in newspeak of the "weapons system failure" or "great care in conducting strikes" variety. Or don't - as the war on Libya, under the newspeak moniker Operation Unified Protector, slouches towards its fourth month and over 4,300 "humanitarian" strikes.

After all, NATO's wars - now already spanning the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from Northern Africa though the Middle East towards Central Asia - are as much against "unsavory" regimes (as in "not our bastards") as against civilians.

One model army

In the dizzying labyrinth of NATO's Ministry of Truth - which includes schemes such as Partnership for Peace, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Mediterranean Dialogue, to name but a few - one now finds virtually every certified or aspiring member of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club (also known as GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council), as well as monarchic minions Jordan and Morocco. These paragons of democracy are all involved in liberating the wretched of the world for "humanitarian" reasons.

Unctuous Danish opportunist and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is on overdrive across Europe. He has just boasted that, "NATO is more needed and wanted than ever, from Afghanistan to Kosovo, from the coast of Somalia to Libya. We are busier than ever before."

This enthusiastic, across-the-board embrace of Atlanticist weaponry though is still not enough for US Defense Secretary Robert Gates - for whom NATO is not lethal, or overreaching, enough. Considering that NATO is no more than the weaponized European arm of the Pentagon, that was a classic case of once again Martian Americans deriding wimpy Venusian Europeans.

Yet the most sinister Rasmussen utterance was that, "we can help the Arab Spring well and truly blossom". That is code for never-ending bombing of Libya, fierce lobbying for a "humanitarian" intervention in Syria, and, why not, weaponized "humanitarian liberation" slouching towards Algeria and even Lebanon.

As for Egypt and Tunisia, Rasmussen has already stated NATO wants to re-train their military establishments - an operation modeled on the ongoing retraining in Iraq. The Transformer's tentacles are ubiquitous.

The war on Libya started as the Pentagon's Africom first African war - remember Odyssey Dawn? - and then merged into NATO's first Mediterranean and also first African war. NATO's overt agenda is to rule the Mediterranean - Ancient Rome's mare nostrum - as a NATO lake.

That explains the current Pentagon/NATO Sea Breeze 2011 naval exercise in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine and quite close to the Sebastopol-based Russian Black Sea fleet.

The Pentagon is being joined by the United Kingdom, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Belgium, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Macedonia, Moldova, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine. All of these - except Algeria and Moldova - fall into another NATO scheme; they are Troop Contributing Nations for NATO's war in Afghanistan.

Sea breeze is not a pop song; it is an overt intimidation directly related to Syria. Russia's Black Sea fleet has a base in Syria - that is, in the Mediterranean. The Pentagon/NATO want it gone. Thus the categorical imperative of regime change in Syria.

So Libya is just the beginning. Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin has been quick to point out, "the war in Libya means ... the beginning of [NATO's] expansion south."

Transformer NATO - the global Robocop - is on a roll, from Southeastern Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean; from the Persian Gulf to South and Central Asia. All hail the One Model Army. As for civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, duck for cover.

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://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF21Ak01.html

[bigron]

Why Regime Change in Libya?

By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
 
Global Research, June 20, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25317


In light of the brutal death and destruction wrought on Libya by the relentless  US/NATO bombardment, the professed claims of “humanitarian concerns” as grounds for intervention can readily be dismissed as a blatantly specious imperialistploy in pursuit of “regime change” in that country.

 

There is undeniable evidence that contrary to the spontaneous, unarmed and peaceful protest demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, therebellion in Libya has been nurtured, armed and orchestratedlargely from abroad, in collaboration with expat opposition groups and their local allies at home. Indeed, evidence shows that plans of “regime change” in Libya were drawn long before the insurgency actually started in Benghazi; it has all the hallmarks of a well-orchestrated civil war [1].

 

It is very tempting to seek the answer to the question “why regime change in Libya?” in oil/energy. While oil is undoubtedly a concern, it falls short of a satisfactory explanation because major Western oil companies were already extensively involved in the Libyan oil industry. Indeed, since Gaddafi relented to the US-UK pressure in 1993 and established “normal” economic and diplomatic relations with these and other Western countries, major US and European oil companies struck quite lucrative deals with the National Oil Corporation of Libya.

 

So, the answer to the question “why the imperialist powers want to do away with Gaddafi” has to go beyond oil, or the laughable “humanitarian concerns.” Perhaps the question can be answered best in the light of the following questions: why do these imperialist powers also want to overthrow Hugo Cavez of Venezuela, Fidel Castro (and/or his successors) of Cuba, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Rafael Correa Delgado of Ecuador,Kim Jong-il of North Korea, Bashar Al-assad of Syriaand Evo Morales of Bolivia? Or, why did they overthrow Mohammad Mossadeq of Iran, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, Kusno Sukarno of Indonesia, Salvador Allende of Chile, Sandinistas in Nicaragua,Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haitiand Manuel Zelaya in Honduras?

 

What does Gaddafi have in common with these nationalist/populist leaders? The question is of course rhetorical and the answer is obvious: like them Gaddafi is guilty of insubordination to the proverbial godfather of the world: US imperialism, and its allies. Like them, he has committed the cardinal sin of challenging the unbridled reign of global capital, of not following the economic “guidelines” of the captains of global finance, that is, of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and World Trade Organization; as well as of refusing to join US military alliances in the region. Also like other nationalist/populist leaders, he advocates social safety net (or welfare state) programs—not for giant corporations, as is the case in imperialist countries, but for the people in need.
 

This means that the criminal agenda of Messrs Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, and their complicit allies to overthrow or kill Mr. Gaddafi and other “insubordinate” proponents of welfare state programs abroad is essentially part of the same evil agenda of dismantling such programs at home. While the form, the context and the means of destruction maybe different, the thrust of the relentless attacks on the living standards of the Libyan, Iranian, Venezuelan or Cuban peoples are essentially the same as the equally brutal attacks on the living conditions of the poor and working people in the US, UK, France and other degenerate capitalist countries. In a subtle (but unmistakable) way they are all part of an ongoing unilateralclass warfare on a global scale—whether they are carried out by military means and bombardments, or through the apparently “non-violent” processes of judicial or legislative means does not make a substantial difference as far as the nature or the thrust of the attack on people’s lives orlivelihoods are concerned.
 

In their efforts to consolidate the reign of big capital worldwide, captains of global finance use a variety of methods. The preferred method is usually non-military, that is, the neoliberal strategies of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), carried out by representatives of big business disguised as elected officials, or by the multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the WTO. This is what is currently happening in the debt- and deficit-ridden economies of the United States and Europe.But if a country like Libya (or Venezuela or Iran or Cuba) does not go along with the neoliberal agenda of “structural adjustments,” of outsourcing and privatization,and of allowing their financial system to be tied to the network of global banking cartel, then the military option is embarked upon to carry out the neoliberal agenda.
 

The powerful interests of global capitalism do not seem to feel comfortable to dismantle New Deal economics, Social Democratic reforms and welfare state programs in the core capitalist countries while people in smaller, less-developed countries such as Libya, Venezuela or Cuba enjoy strong, state-sponsored social safety net programs such as free or heavily-subsidized education and health care benefits.Indeed, guardians ofthe worldwide market mechanism have always been intolerant of any “undue” government intervention in the economic affairs of any country in the world. “Regimented economies,” declared President Harry Truman in a speech at Baylor University (1947), were the enemy of free enterprise, and “unless we act, and act decisively,” he claimed, those regimented economies would become “the pattern of the next century.” To fend off that danger, Truman urged that “the whole world should adopt the American system.” The system of free enterprise, he went on, “can survive in America only if it becomes a world system” [2].
 

Before it was devastated by the imperialist-orchestrated civil war and destruction, Libya had the highest living standard in Africa. Using the United Nations statistics, Jean-Paul Pougala of Dissident Voice reports,
 

“The country now ranks 53rd on the HDI [Human Development Index] index, better than all other African countries and also better than the richer and Western-backed Saudi Arabia. . . . Although the media often refers to youth unemployment of 15 to 30 percent, it does not mention that in Libya, in contrast to other countries, all have their subsistence guaranteed. . . . The government provides all citizens with free health care and [has] achieved high coverage in the most basic health areas. . . . The life expectancy rose to 74.5 years and is now the highest in Africa. . . . The infant mortality rate declined to 17 deaths per 1,000 births and is not nearly as high as in Algeria (41) and also lower than in Saudi Arabia (21).
 

“The UNDP [United Nations Development Program] certified that Libya has also made ‘a significant progress in gender equality,’ particularly in the fields of education and health, while there is still much to do regarding representation in politics and the economy. With a relative low ‘index of gender inequality’ the UNDP places the country in the Human Development Report 2010 concerning gender equality at rank 52 and thus also well ahead of Egypt (ranked 108), Algeria (70), Tunisia (56), Saudi Arabia (ranked 128) and Qatar (94)” [3].
 

It is true that after resisting the self-centered demands and onerous pressures from Western powers for more than thirty years, Gaddafi relented in 1993 and opened the Libyan economy to Western capital, carried out a number of neoliberal economic reforms, and granted lucrative business/investment deals to major oil companies of the West.
 

But, again, like the proverbial godfather, US/European imperialism requires total, unconditional subordination; half-hearted, grudging compliance with the global agenda of imperialism is not enough. To be considered a real “ally,” or a true “client state,” a country has to grant the US the right to “guide” its economic, geopolitical and foreign policies, that is, to essentiallyforgo its national sovereignty. Despite some economic concessions since the early 1990s, Gaddafi failed this critical test of “full compliance” with the imperialist designs in the region.
 

For example, he resisted joining a US/NATO-sponsored military alliance in the region. Libya (along with Syria) are the only two Mediterranean nations and the sole remaining Arab states that are not subordinated to U.S. and NATO designs for control of the Mediterranean Sea Basin and the Middle East. Nor has Libya (or Syria) participated in NATO's almost ten-year-old Operation Active Endeavor naval patrols and exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and neither is a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership which includes most regional countries: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania [4].
 

To the chagrin of US imperialism, Libya’s Gaddafi also refused to join the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), designed to control valuable resources in Africa, safeguard trade and investment markets in the region, and contain or evict China from North Africa. “When the US formed AFRICOM in 2007, some 49 countries signed on to the US military charter for Africa but one country refused: Libya. Such a treacherous act by Libya’s leader Moummar Qaddafi would only sow the seeds for a future conflict down the road in 2011” [5].
 

Furthermore, by promoting trade, development and industrialization projects on a local, national, regional or African level, Gaddafi was viewed as an obstacle to theWestern powers’ strategies of unhinderedtrade and development projects on a global level. For example, Gaddafi’s Libya played a leading role in “connecting the entire [African] continent by telephone, television, radio broadcasting and several other technological applications such as telemedicine and distance teaching. And thanks to the WMAX radio bridge, a low cost connection was made available across the continent, including in rural areas” [3].

 

The idea of launching a pan-African system of technologically advanced network of telecommunication began in the early 1990s, “when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country. . . . An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of $400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a $500 million annual lease” [3].

 

In pursuit of financing this project, the African nations frequently pleaded with the IMF and the World Bank for assistance. As the empty promises of these financial giants dragged on for 14 years,

 

“Gaddafi put an end to [the] futile pleas to the western ‘benefactors’ with their exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put $300 million on the table; the African Development Bank added$50 million more and the West African Development Bank a further $27 million – and that’s how Africa got its first communications satellite on 26 December 2007.

 

“China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. The first totally indigenously built satellite and manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at ten times less the cost, a real challenge.

 

“This is how a symbolic gesture of a mere $300 million changed the life of an entire continent. Gaddafi’s Libya cost the West, not just depriving it of $500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent”[3].

 

Architects of global finance, represented by the imperialist governments of the West, also viewed Gaddafi as a spoiler in the area of international or global money and banking. The forces of global capital tend to prefer a uniform, contiguous, or borderless global market to multiple sovereign markets at the local, national, regional or continental levels.Not only Gaddafi’s Libya maintained public ownership of its own central bank, and the authority to create its own national money, but it also worked assiduously to establish an African Monetary Fund, an African Central Bank, and an African Investment Bank.
 

The $30 billion of the Libyan money frozen by the Obama administration belong to the Central Bank of Libya, which

 

“had been earmarked as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would add the finishing touches to the African Federation – the African Investment Bank in Syrte(Libya), the establishment in 2011 of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Yaoundé (Cameroon) . . ., and the Abuja-based African Central Bank in Nigeria, which when it starts printing African money will ring the death knell for the CFA franc [the French currency] through which Paris has been able to maintain its hold on some African countries for the last fifty years. It is easy to understand the French wrath against Gaddafi.

 

“The African Monetary Fund is expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International Monetary Fund which, with only $25 billion, was able to bring an entire continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatization like forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies. No surprise then that on 16-17 December 2010, the Africans unanimously rejected attempts by Western countries to join the African Monetary Fund, saying it was open only to African nations” [3].

 

Western powers also viewed Gaddafi as an obstacle to their imperial strategies for yet another reason: standing in the way of their age-old policies of “divide and rule.” To counter Gaddafi’s relentless efforts to establish a United States of Africa, the European Union tried to create the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM) region. “North Africa somehow had to be cut off from the rest of Africa, using the old tired racist clichés of the 18th and 19th centuries,which claimed that Africans of Arab origin were more evolved and civilized than the rest of the continent. This failed because Gaddafi refused to buy into it. He soon understood what game was being played when only a handful of African countries were invited to join the Mediterranean grouping without informing the African Union but inviting all 27 members of the European Union.” Gaddafi also refused to buy into other imperialist-inspired/driven groupings in Africa such as ECOWAS, COMESA, UDEAC, SADC and the Great Maghreb, “which never saw the light of day thanks to Gaddafi who understood what was happening” [3].

 

Gaddafi further earned the wrath of Western powers for striking extensive trade and investment deals with BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), especially with China. According to Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce, China’s contracts in Libya (prior to imperialism’s controlled demolition of that country) numbered no less than 50 large projects, involving contracts in excess of $18 billion. Even a cursory reading of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) strategic briefings shows that a major thrust of its mission is containment of China. “In effect, what we are witnessing here,” points out Patrick Henningsten, “is the dawn of a New Cold War between the US-EURO powers and China. This new cold war will feature many of the same elements of the long and protracted US-USSR face-off we saw in the second half of the 20th century. It will take place off shore, in places like Africa, South America, Central Asia and through old flashpoints like Korea and the Middle East” [5].
 

It is obvious (from this brief discussion) that Gaddafi’s sin for being placed on imperialism’s death row consists largely of the challenges he posed to the free reign of Western capital in the region, of his refusal to relinquishLibya’s national sovereignty to become another unconditional “client state” of Western powers. His removal from power is therefore designed to eliminate all “barriers” to the unhindered mobility of the US/European capital in the region by installing a more pliant regime in Libya.
 

Gaddafi’s removal from power would serve yet another objective of US/European powers: to shorten or spoil the Arab Spring by derailing their peaceful protests, containing their non-violent revolutions and sabotaging their aspirations for self-determination.Soon after being caught by surprise by the glorious uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the imperialist powers (including the mini Zionist imperialism in Palestine) embarked on “damage control.” In pursuit of this objective, they adopted three simultaneous strategies. The first strategy was to half-heartedly“support” theuprisings in Egypt and Tunisia (of course, once they became unstoppable) in order to control them—hence, the military rule in those countries following the departure of Mubarak from Cairo and Ben Ali from Tunis. The second strategy of containment has been support and encouragement for the brutal crackdown of other spontaneous and peaceful uprisings in countries ruled by “client regimes,” for example, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. And the third policy of sabotaging the Arab Spring has been to promote civil war and orchestrate chaos in countries such as Libya, Syria and Iran.
 

In its early stages of development, capitalism promoted nation-state and/or national sovereignty in order to free itself from the constraints of the church and feudalism. Now that the imperatives of the highly advanced but degenerate global finance capital require unhindered mobility in a uniform or borderless world, national sovereignty is considered problematic—especially in places like Libya, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries that are not ruled by imperialism’s “client states.” Why? Because unhindered global mobility of capital requiresdoing away with social safety net or welfare state programs; it means doing away with public domain properties or public sector enterprises and bringing them under the private ownership of the footloose-and-fancy-free global capital.
 

This explains why the corporate media, political pundits and other mouthpieces of imperialism are increasing talking about Western powers’ “responsibility to protect,” by which they mean that these powers have a responsibility to protect the Libyan (or Iranian or Venezuelan or Syrian or Cuban or …)citizens from their “dictatorial” rulers by instigating regime change and promoting “democracy” there. It further means that, in pursuit of this objective,the imperialist powers should not be bound by “constraints” of national sovereignty because, they argue, “universal democratic rights take primacy over national sovereignty considerations.”In anotoriously selective fashion, this utilitarian use of the “responsibility to protect” does not apply to nations or peoples ruled by imperialism’s client states such as Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. [6].
 

This also means that the imperialist war against peoples and states such as Libya and Venezuela is essentially part of the same class war against peoples and states in the belly of the beast, that is, in the United States and Europe. In every instance or place, whether at home or abroad, whether in Libya or California or Wisconsin or Greece, the thrust of the relentless global class war is the same: to do away with subsistence-level guarantees, or social safety net programs, and redistribute the national or global resources in favor of the rich and powerful, especially the powerful interests vested in the finance capital and the military capital.
 

There is no question that global capitalism has thus woven together the fates and fortunes of the overwhelming majority of the world population in an increasingly intensifying struggle for subsistence and survival.No one can tell when this majority of world population (the middle, lower-middle, poor and working classes) would come to the realization that their seemingly separate struggles for economic survival are essentially part and parcel of the same struggle against the same class enemies, the guardians of world capitalism. One thing is clear, however: only when they come to such a liberating realization, join forces together in a cross-border, global uprising against the forces of world capitalism, and seek to manage their economies independent of profitability imperatives of capitalist production—only then can they break free from the shackles of capitalism and control their future in a coordinated, people-centered mode of production, distribution and consumption.
 

Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

 

Notes
 

1.Michel Chossudovsky, “When War Games Go Live: Staging a ‘Humanitarian War’ against ‘SOUTHLAND’ Under an Imaginary UN Security Council Resolution 3003,”Global Research  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24351   
 

2. D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins (New York: Double Day, 1961), p. 436.
 

3. Jean-Paul Pougal, “Why the West Wants the Fall of Gaddafi?”Dissident Voice: http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/why-is-gaddafi-being-demonized/
 

4. Rick Rozoff, “Libyan Scenario for Syria: Towards A US-NATO ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ directed against Syria?” Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24562
 

5. Patrick Henningsten, “WEST vs. CHINA: A NEW COLD WAR BEGINS ON LIBYAN SOIL,” 21st Century Wire: http://21stcenturywire.com/2011/04/12/2577/
 

6. For an insightful and informative discussion of this issue see (1) F. William Engdahl, “Humanitarian Neo-colonialism: Framing Libya and Reframing War—Creative Destruction Part III,” Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24617; (b) Marjorie Cohn, “The Responsibility to Protect - The Cases of Libya and Ivory Coast,” Counter Punch: http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn05162011.html
 

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25317

[Goldman]

Great info!

[bigron]

Obama flouts legal deadline on Libya war


by Patrick Martin

WSWS, June 20, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78804&hd=&size=1&l=e

On Sunday, June 19, the US-backed NATO war against Libya became illegal under US law. The War Powers Act, adopted by Congress in 1973 after overriding a veto by President Richard Nixon, mandates that any presidential dispatch of US military forces into "hostilities" in any other country must receive congressional approval within 60 days. If the president fails to gain such approval, he has an additional 30 days to carry out the safe withdrawal of all US forces.


The Obama administration sent US forces into combat against Libya on March 20, 2011, with the bombing of Libyan anti-aircraft installations and radar sites. The 60-day deadline passed on May 20, without any effort by the administration to gain congressional approval. The 30-day period for withdrawal of US forces elapsed on June 19, but the war continues, with no significant opposition by any section of the US ruling elite.


The White House issued a document last week supporting its claim that the War Powers Act does not apply to the Libyan conflict because the US forces are not engaged in "hostilities" as defined by the law, a claim that is self-evidently a sophistry. "US operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of US ground troops, US casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors," the White House statement declares. The one-sided character of the war, however, does not exempt it from the scope of the War Powers Act.


The White House also argued that the transfer of direct command of the attack on Libya from the United States to NATO has allowed American military forces to step back into a "support" role. This is another transparent sophistry. Aside from the fact that US forces continue to participate in occasional air strikes, as well as employing Predator drones and other weapons of war, NATO itself is a largely American operation. The US provides 75 percent of NATO funding and an American general is NATO commander-in-chief, overseeing the actions of Canadian General Charles Bouchard, who directs the day-to-day operations against Libya.


As the New York Times revealed Saturday, Obama received legal advice from both the Pentagon counsel and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—the agency that traditionally provides rulings on the legal obligations of the government—that the War Powers Act required congressional approval for the war in Libya. Obama chose to ignore these opinions, and relied instead on advice from the White House counsel’s office and the State Department counsel—the direct legal subordinates of Obama himself and Hillary Clinton—that Congress could be bypassed.


From the standpoint of waging war in flagrant defiance of the law, Obama has gone a step beyond even the criminal machinations of the Bush administration. The wars Bush launched in Afghanistan and Iraq were exercises in imperialist plunder, aimed at securing territory that was strategically critical for the domination of the oil resources of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. But the Bush administration went through the formality of seeking congressional approval in advance of each act of aggression, using first the pretext of 9/11 and then a bogus campaign against alleged Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" to push through resolutions authorizing military action.


Obama feels no such obligation in waging war against Libya (or for that matter, the escalating attacks in Yemen). Although the war in Libya, like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is deeply unpopular and his policy is opposed by the majority of the American people, Obama is confident that this popular sentiment will find no serious reflection within official American politics.


Leading congressional Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have endorsed Obama’s defiance of the War Powers Act. As for the House Republicans, who passed a resolution criticizing Obama’s disregard of the law, they have already voted to increase the Pentagon budget by more than the total cost of the war in Libya, insuring that regardless of noises on Capitol Hill, the US war machine will have the resources to continue raining death and destruction on the Libyan people.


Particularly important is the role of American liberalism and the pseudo-left groups, who embraced the "humanitarian" pretext for the United States intervening in the civil war in Libya. The New York Times, in a mealy-mouthed editorial headlined "Libya and the War Powers Act," bemoaned the White House failure to gain congressional support. But the starting point of the commentary was support for the war, with the newspaper declaring, "It would be hugely costly—for this country’s credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya—if Congress were to force President Obama to abandon military operations over Libya."


The Times calls on Obama to "go to Congress and make his case." But it says nothing at all about the implications for American democracy of a president defying the law as well as public opinion to intervene in a major overseas conflict.


Equally duplicitous is the standpoint of the Nation, the standard-bearer for left-liberals oriented to the Democratic Party. An appeal from the editors earlier this month, addressed to the US president, declared, "Obama, You’re Your Only Hope." It urged the administration to adopt a more aggressive stance against the Republicans by rejecting budget cuts in Medicare and proposing emergency measures to create jobs for the unemployed.


Notably missing from this appeal, which endorsed the "Rebuilding the American Dream Tour," a summer-long political campaign by the Progressive Caucus of the congressional Democrats, was any mention of war or foreign policy. The Nation could not even propose that the hundreds of billions of dollars expended on imperialist war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya should be redirected to a program of domestic job-creation.


Nor did the Nation take seriously Obama’s defiance of the War Powers Act and his assertion of an essentially unrestricted right of the president to wage war when and how he pleases, regardless of constitutional limitations or popular sentiment. That is because they have long supported the Obama administration’s foreign policy, apologizing for the war in Afghanistan by citing the supposed gains for women freed from Taliban rule, and covering for the fiction that Obama intervened in Libya to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Benghazi.


The liberals and pseudo-lefts who politically dominated the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, when it was a matter of opposing a right-wing Republican president, are now the camp followers of his Democratic Party successor, the new commander-in-chief. They have called no demonstrations against the war in Libya or Obama’s defiance of the War Powers Act.


This only underscores the political responsibility that now confronts the American working class. The struggle against imperialist war can be waged only through a political break with the bourgeois parties and their liberal and "left" apologists, and the building of a mass, independent political movement of working people, based on a socialist and internationalist program.


Patrick Martin


The author also recommends:

Obama defends Libya war, rejects need for Congress vote
[16 June 2011]

Obama’s illegal war against Libya
[8 June 2011]

US House leaders block resolution against Libya war
[6 June 2011]


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78804&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

[Kilika]

The Times calls on Obama to "go to Congress and make his case." But it says nothing at all about the implications for American democracy republic of a president defying the law as well as public opinion to intervene in a major overseas conflict.

[bigron]

Middle East
Jun 22, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF22Ak04.html   

 
NATO at a crossroads in Libya


By Victor Kotsev


TEL AVIV - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is running low on time to make some critical decisions in Libya, if it has not already done so secretly. The current campaign is growing increasingly desperate, and is beginning to attract intolerable levels of international condemnation; it is hardly sustainable for a very long time, and if it continues at the same pace, it could take many months before Muammar Gaddafi is brought to his knees.

This is assuming that the latter were to happen at all. For, while Gaddafi has reverted mostly to defensive actions in response to the ever-more fierce bombing raids, he has also kept his most important military cards close to his chest, and can still put up a significant fight.

The alliance is facing fairly straight-forward binary choices, attesting to the fact that the war is not going well for it. It can either escalate further its military involvement, up to and including a ground invasion, or it can force a partition of the country between Gaddafi and the rebels. Ironically, the spate of reports that has come out of Libya in the past week or so, underscoring the severity of the rifts between all the main participants in the fighting, can point to either scenario.

Gaddafi seems to believe that a ground operation is in the works; Russian officials have been talking about it for a while, and more recently additional countries have dropped hints.

Gaddafi's offer, voiced last week by his most prominent son Saif al-Islam, to hold elections within three months, and to step down if he loses, [1] attests to his efforts to avert such a scenario.

So does his defensive posture in the past weeks - while his army has inflicted severe casualties on the rebels, it has done so mostly by ambushes and by using heavy artillery against advancing enemy units. A few counter-attacks have taken place, but these apparently lacked much energy and were followed by swift withdrawals.

The rebels' blunt rejection of the colonel's offer, on the other hand, reveals surprising confidence. "We tell him [Saif al-Islam] that the time has passed because our rebels are at the outskirts of Tripoli, and they will join our people and rebels there to uproot the symbol of corruption and tyranny in Libya," a high-ranking rebel spokesman told al-Jazeera.

By all accounts, this statement does not nearly match the situation on the ground. There are currently three main fronts in Libya: in the east near the town of Brega, in the west between the rebel stronghold Misrata and several towns near the coast on the way to the capital Tripoli, and further west in the mountains.

The last front has witnessed the most significant rebel gains recently, but this is largely due to the withdrawal of Gaddafi forces from the area. In any case, the mountain rebels are very different from the rest of the anti-Gaddafi bloc: they are Berbers, arguably fighting for greater autonomy. Most analysts believe that they are unlikely to attack Tripoli, and Gaddafi has chosen to leave them alone for now, concentrating instead on more urgent threats.

The other two fronts have been moving slowly at best for the rebels. They frequently claim successes, but their advances are just as frequently reversed despite NATO cover, and their casualties are mounting. Dozens have recently been killed and hundreds wounded near Misrata alone; several attacks on Brega were repulsed with heavy losses as well.

My earlier assessment that the rebels would not be able to advance far due to their lack of military experience in non-urban conditions [2] is being confirmed by the reports. "We had a strategy to finish everything today, but some of the fighters think it's a game," a rebel commander told Reuters on Friday. His words two days later suggested that lessons were not being implemented quickly enough: "We made a mistake today ... We sent the boys out on foot before the vehicles."

"The Misrata rebels honed their fighting skills in close-quarter street battles," writes Reuters, "wresting the city center from pro-Gaddafi forces and then pushing them back on three fronts to break an artillery siege ... They are proving less successful in open ground." [3]

The frustration of the rebels is evident in their frequent outbursts against NATO, accusing the West of not providing enough of either military or financial assistance. As concerns the latter, their oil minister Ali Tarhouni issued a particularly grim warning a few days ago. "We are running out of everything," he told Reuters. "It's a complete failure. Either they [Western nations] don't understand or they don't care. Nothing has materialized yet. And I really mean nothing."

"The economy in eastern Libya, where much of the oil that once made Libya a major OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] exporter came from, is in a shambles," Reuters warns. [4]

Despite the rants and the setbacks, the rebels' bravado does match the ever-increasing NATO involvement in the operations. Attack helicopters are flying combat missions; the rebels are almost openly receiving heavy artillery and training in how to use it, even though reports neglect to mention by whom (NATO insists it is supplying only non-lethal equipment such as body armor and communications gear).

The air campaign, in general, has become bolder and deadlier. More and more strikes are carried out during the day time, and civilian casualties are mounting. In the past two days, international media broadcast gruesome pictures of the aftermath of NATO attacks on housing complexes.

According to the Gaddafi regime, seven civilians were killed by NATO on Sunday and 19 on Monday (and over 700 since the start of the operation); NATO acknowledged an "error" on Sunday while claiming that Monday's raid hit a military facility. The house in question belonged to a man from Gaddafi's inner circle, and the dead were his relatives.

The civilian casualties threaten to undermine what is left of the international legitimacy of the operation, and to force an abrupt end to it down the road. "NATO is endangering its credibility; we cannot risk killing civilians," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini warned on Monday.

International pressure is piling up. Last week, South African President Jacob Zuma joined a chorus of voices accusing NATO of overstepping its mandate. [5]

The alliance also faces considerable political and financial pressures at home. The operation's costs are mounting, and they are proving to be a considerable burden to individual members. In the United States, which has played a crucial role in the war, the administration of President Barack Obama faces threats from congress to have its war funding cut.

Obama has come under heavy criticism for ignoring the War Powers Act, which stipulates that a president who has not received authorization from congress for a military operation must conclude it after 60 days, and has an additional 30 days to do so. He did not apply or receive authorization, and the 90-day deadline expired last week.

All this does not exhaust NATO's troubles. Nobody will admit it, but it is likely that the alliance is running low on significant strategic targets that are legitimate to bomb. The escalating civilian casualties and the repeated targeting of empty buildings, including Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia complex in Tripoli, support this hypothesis.

Moreover, this is what usually happens during prolonged air campaigns, and there is no reason to believe that the Libya war is any different. It takes significant effort, time and intelligence-gathering to identify such high-value targets, and it takes just a few hours to bomb them.

NATO has been increasingly desperate, trying to shock and awe Gaddafi with strong "messages" for quite some time, and simple math indicates that the pool of targets is probably getting depleted much faster than it is being replenished.

Tactical targets such as tanks and artillery installations have also become more and more difficult to hit due to Gaddafi's improved tactics of hiding them in populated and difficult-to-bomb areas.

In other words, NATO is facing prohibitive costs and dubious gains if it continues with its current strategy. Gaddafi has been weakened appreciably as well, but he seems to be nowhere near breaking point. The question of what comes next looms; the Western alliance does not have many options.

A campaign to kill the colonel from the air has arguably been underway for some months, but it has not accomplished the objective. Failing that, and since the alliance has made the goal of its campaign to remove Gaddafi, the colonel only has to survive in power in order to create the perception that he has won (wars are fought largely over perception, as military scientists openly admit).
The main question is, will NATO be willing to concede such a defeat - for example, by forcing the division of Libya into two and allowing Gaddafi to rule the western part - or will it go all the way to send ground forces to remove him.

Speculation is running wild - from an imminent ground invasion in the next few days to complicated diplomatic initiatives involving members of the royal household, exiled by Gaddafi in 1969. Reliable information is scarce, but the rapid proliferation of reports and speculation is revealing by itself.

When tensions are rising so rapidly and new information is coming out at such a pace, it is safe to assume that the ground is being set for something new; however, it is hard to say, sometimes even for the participants themselves, whether more or less violence will ensue.

Both concessions and threats can be bluffs - aiming either to bolster the international support and legitimacy of the respective sides, to shore up a more advantageous negotiating position, or to prepare the public for whatever comes next.

Right before dramatic diplomatic announcements, negotiators with many years of experience often say, there is usually a palpable hardening of rhetoric on both sides; it serves both to pay lip-service to the demands of hardliners on each side and to warn the other side of what would happen if it did not keep its commitments. This is also true of the time immediately preceding large-scale military operations, unless the attack is meant to be a surprise.

Very often, the real threat of massive bloodshed is what finally persuades both sides to negotiate a ceasefire; sometimes, however, the threat materializes. What will happen in Libya is hard to predict, perhaps even for those who call the shots.

Notes
1. Gaddafi son offers Libya elections, al-Jazeera, 16 June 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/06/201161613564341905.html

2. Libya: The land of make believe, , Asia Times Online, 13 June 2011.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF14Ak03.html

3. Inexperience costing rebels in advance on Tripoli, Reuters, 19 June 2011.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/19/us-libya-rebels-advance-idUSTRE75I1CB20110619
 
4. Libyan rebels blame West for lack of cash, , Reuters, 18 June 2011.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/18/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110618
 
5. Libya: Jacob Zuma accuses Nato of not sticking to UN resolution, The Telegraph, 14 June 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8575984/Libya-Jacob-Zuma-accuses-Nato-of-not-sticking-to-UN-resolution.html
.

Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv.


http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF22Ak04.html



 
 
 

[bigron]

No-Life Zone: Deeper and Deeper Into the Mire


by Chris Floyd

Empire burlesque , June 20, 2011

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2140-no-life-zone-deeper-and-deeper-into-the-mire.html

Obviously, there was a typo in the UN resolution approving NATO’s operations in Libya. It was widely reported that the resolution authorized the establishment of a "no-fly" zone in Libya to protect civilians from being killed by military attack. However, it’s clear now that what the international body really greenlighted was a "no-life" zone, designed to, er, kill people with, er, military attacks.

It’s an easy mistake to make, really, transposing the "f" and "l" like that; a UN transcriptionist probably misheard the original intention, then mentally "corrected" it with the "y" to make it read in the more accustomed manner. Happens all the time.

In any case, a "no-life" zone is what we have in Libya, as the latest story of civilian casualties from NATO bombs makes clear. In this case, the slaughter was so open and egregious that NATO actually had to admit killing Libyan civilians for the first time; previously, we’ve been asked to believe that dumping tons of high explosives in the middle of a heavily populated city had not harmed the hair of a single innocent head.

(The three young grandchildren of Moamar Gadafy that were killed by NATO bombs last month obviously don’t count – because, duh, they were kin to Gadafy! They bear the blood taint of evil. Stalin, who ruthlessly condemned family members of "enemies of the people," and Hitler, who killed anyone with the slightest tincture of Jewish blood in them, would no doubt be proud to see their rigorous standards of hygiene being adopted by the moral paragons of the "Western alliance.")

Yet even as the Nobel Peace Laureate and Constitutional law scholar continues a war in Libya that his own top legal advisers tell him is patently unlawful and unconstitutional, he is racheting up yet another illegal war that has already reaped a rich harvest of civilian deaths: in Yemen.

As Jason Ditz notes, the Peace Laureate is using the increasingly violent civil strife in Yemen as a cover for a vast expansion of his drone missile assassination program in that country. These attacks are ostensibly aimed at "eradicating" yet another handful of cranks calling themselves "al Qaeda;" the alleged involvement of this group in a couple of failed "terrorist actions" so ludicrous and inept (exploding underwear!) that a cynic might be tempted to say they were designed to fail is, evidently, a dire and imminent existential threat to the United States, requiring billions of dollars, thousands of missiles – and the lifeblood of hundreds of innocent people – to combat. So saith the Nobel Peace Prizewinner.

In the first half of June alone, the Peace Laureate killed at least 130 people in daily assaults with his big, bold, brave drone missiles, fired by big, bold, brave American operatives back in the States or at some other imperial installation hundreds or thousands of miles out of harm’s way. Some of these attacks have been aimed at alleged members of the local AQ, including, of course, the American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been publicly condemned to death, without trial, for the crime of exercising his constitutional right to say stupid and hateful things. (Apply that stricture universally, and the entire American political class would be drone food.)
Other attacks have been aimed at – well, we don’t know. We’re not even sure if the CIA – the increasingly powerful and militarized Praetorian Guard in charge of this particular mass killing program – knows who most of the missiles are being aimed at. All we do know is that innocent people are being slaughtered in their dozens and hundreds by American missiles in Yemen.

Yet with that wise, far-seeing, 11th-dimensional chess brain that the Peace Laureate is famed for, he is already looking to the future. Now that the government upheaval in Yemen has deprived him of a reliable dictator to assist his illegal war of mass assassination, Obama has decided to build yet another secret base somewhere in the volatile region – at a cost of unknown secret billions – for the express purpose of escalating the Praetorian Guard’s robotic killing spree.

There is no rhyme or reason to any of this. Regardless of the ever-shifting explanations our leaders offer – to the public, and, who knows, to themselves – the killing machine has long taken on a momentum of its own. They are now killing people – innocent people, around the world, every day – simply because they can do it. And because it’s the only thing they know how to do, the only way they know how to maintain and extend the brutal domination of world affairs that the American ruling class believes is the sole purpose of our national existence. And because too many elites are making too much money from killing people. And because too many leaders are getting too much pleasure, and filling too many holes in their own crippled souls, from wielding an unaccountable power of life and death over the nations of the earth.

And no one will stop them because too many ordinary people, battered by too many years of the relentless class warfare that has hollowed out their lives and society, and by an endless tsunami of self-righteous, self-glorifying propaganda, have adopted the perverted values of the elite, and given up all notion of a common good or a common humanity, or else have been beaten and broken and driven into hopeless despair, as each turn of the political gyre makes things worse – more harsh, more brutal, more unfeeling, more insecure, more grating, more shallow, more hollow, more deadly, more corrupt.

Yet every day, at every turn, we are told by earnest progressives that we must support the leader of this system, a man who has entrenched and exacerbated its bloodiest and most brutal currents in almost every way. We must support, encourage, and enable assassination, slaughter, corruption and mass murder; we must, as I noted the other day, be prepared to tear small children into bloody pieces, day after day, for no other discernible reason than to preserve the unlawful, immoral domination of a bloodthirsty militarist elite. That’s what it means to be a "progressive" today. (If you want to see this hideous argument demolished with remarkable power, eloquence and savage wit, read the latest posts from Arthur Silber here and here.)

But there is nothing new in this. Even before the Peace Prizer was gifted with the laurel, his zeal, his love for the killing machine was evident. I’ll close here with an excerpt from a piece written in September 2009 that describes where we were then – and, unfortunately, where we are now.

At some point earlier this month, Barack Obama took a moment out of his busy day to sign an "execute order." That is, he ordered American agents to kill a man without any legal procedure whatsoever: no arrest, no trial, no formal presentation – and disputation – of evidence, no defense…and no warning. They killed him on the open road, in a sneak attack; he was not engaged in combat, he was not posing an imminent threat to anyone at the time, he had not been charged with any crime. This kind of thing is ordinarily regarded as murder. Certainly, if you or I killed someone in this way – or paid someone to do it – then we would find ourselves in the dock, facing life imprisonment or our own execution. But then, you and I are subject to the law; our leaders are not.

Let's say it again, just to let the reality of the situation sink in a bit further: at some point last week, Barack Obama ordered men in his employ to murder another human being. And not a single voice of protest was raised anywhere in the American political and media establishments. Churchmen did not thunder from the pulpits about this lawless action. The self-proclaimed patriots and liberty-lovers on the ever-more militant Right did not denounce this most extreme expression of state tyranny: the leader's arbitrary power to kill anyone he pleases. It is simply an accepted, undisputed fact of American life today that American leaders can and do – and should – murder people, anywhere in the world, if they see fit. When this supreme tyranny is noted at all, it is simply to celebrate the Leader for his toughness -- or perhaps chide him for not killing even more people in this fashion.

I wrote a great deal about this theme when George W. Bush was president. I began back in November 2001, after the Washington Post reported that Bush had signed an executive order giving himself the power to order the killing of anyone he arbitrarily designated a terrorist. Year after year, I wrote of how this murderous edict was put into practice around the world, and of its virulently corrosive effects on American society.  Now Barack Obama is availing himself of these same powers. There is not one crumb, one atom, one photon of difference between Obama and Bush on this issue. They both believe that the president of the United States can have people killed outside of any semblance of a judicial process: murdered, in cold blood, in sneak attacks, with any "collateral damage" regarded as an acceptable by-product – just like the terrorists they claim to be fighting with these methods.

Nor does this doctrine of presidential murder make any distinction between American citizens and foreigner. Indeed, one of the first people known to have been killed in this way was an American citizen living in Yemen. So let us put the reality in its plainest terms: if the president of the United States decides to call you a terrorist and kill you, he can. He doesn't have to arrest you, he doesn't have to charge you, he doesn't have to put you on trial, he doesn't have to convict you, he doesn't have to sentence you, he doesn't have to allow you any appeals: he can just kill you. And no one in the American power structure will speak up for you or denounce your murder; they won't even see that it's wrong, they won't even consider it remarkable. It's just business as usual. It's just the way things are done. It's just the way we are now.

....The murder will also serve as lesson for would-be terrorists around the world – the same lesson that the War on Terror has been teaching day after day, year after year, from the day it was launched by George W. Bush to its continuance and expansion by Barack Obama today. That lesson is stark and simple: Murder works. Murder is the way to advance your agenda. Murder is what "serious" players on the world stage do. There is no law but the law of power; there is no way but the way of violence. There is no morality, there is no liberty, we share no common humanity.

This is the example that America now sets for the world. This is what we teach our children – and the children of our victims. This is what Barack Obama affirmed once again when he signed his "execute order."



http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2140-no-life-zone-deeper-and-deeper-into-the-mire.html

[bigron]

Attacking Libya -- and the Dictionary


If Americans Don’t Get Hurt, War Is No Longer War


By Jonathan Schell



http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175407/tomgram%3A_jonathan_schell%2C_the_war_on_the_word_%22war%22/#more

The Obama administration has come up with a remarkable justification for going to war against Libya without the congressional approval required by the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

American planes are taking off, they are entering Libyan air space, they are locating targets, they are dropping bombs, and the bombs are killing and injuring people and destroying things. It is war. Some say it is a good war and some say it is a bad war, but surely it is a war.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration insists it is not a war. Why?  Because, according to “United States Activities in Libya,” a 32-page report that the administration released last week, “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.”

In other words, the balance of forces is so lopsided in favor of the United States that no Americans are dying or are threatened with dying. War is only war, it seems, when Americans are dying, when we die.  When only they, the Libyans, die, it is something else for which there is as yet apparently no name. When they attack, it is war. When we attack, it is not.

This cannot be classified as anything but strange thinking and it depends, in turn, on a strange fact: that, in our day, it is indeed possible for some countries (or maybe only our own), for the first time in history, to wage war without receiving a scratch in return. This was nearly accomplished in the bombing of Serbia in 1999, in which only one American plane was shot down (and the pilot rescued).

The epitome of this new warfare is the predator drone, which has become an emblem of the Obama administration. Its human operators can sit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada or in Langley, Virginia, while the drone floats above Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Libya, pouring destruction down from the skies.  War waged in this way is without casualties for the wager because none of its soldiers are near the scene of battle -- if that is even the right word for what is going on.

Some strange conclusions follow from this strange thinking and these strange facts. In the old scheme of things, an attack on a country was an act of war, no matter who launched it or what happened next.  Now, the Obama administration claims that if the adversary cannot fight back, there is no war.

It follows that adversaries of the United States have a new motive for, if not equaling us, then at least doing us some damage.  Only then will they be accorded the legal protections (such as they are) of authorized war.  Without that, they are at the mercy of the whim of the president.

The War Powers Resolution permits the president to initiate military operations only when the nation is directly attacked, when there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”  The Obama administration, however, justifies its actions in the Libyan intervention precisely on the grounds that there is no threat to the invading forces, much less the territories of the United States.

There is a parallel here with the administration of George W. Bush on the issue of torture (though not, needless to say, a parallel between the Libyan war itself, which I oppose but whose merits can be reasonably debated, and torture, which was wholly reprehensible).  President Bush wanted the torture he was ordering not to be considered torture, so he arranged to get lawyers in the Justice department to write legal-sounding opinions excluding certain forms of torture, such as waterboarding, from the definition of the word.  Those practices were thenceforward called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Now, Obama wants his Libyan war not to be a war and so has arranged to define a certain kind of war -- the American-casualty-free kind -- as not war (though without even the full support of his own lawyers). Along with Libya, a good English word -- war -- is under attack.

In these semantic operations of power upon language, a word is separated from its commonly accepted meaning. The meanings of words are one of the few common grounds that communities naturally share. When agreed meanings are challenged, no one can use the words in question without stirring up spurious “debates,” as happened with the word torture. For instance, mainstream news organizations, submissive to George Bush’s decisions on the meanings of words, stopped calling waterboarding torture and started calling it other things, including “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but also “harsh treatment,” “abusive practices,” and so on.

Will the news media now stop calling the war against Libya a war?  No euphemism for war has yet caught on, though soon after launching its Libyan attacks, an administration official proposed the phrase “kinetic military action” and more recently, in that 32-page report, the term of choice was “limited military operations.” No doubt someone will come up with something catchier soon.

How did the administration twist itself into this pretzel? An interview that Charlie Savage and Mark Landler of the New York Times held with State Department legal advisor Harold Koh sheds at least some light on the matter.  Many administrations and legislators have taken issue with the War Powers Resolution, claiming it challenges powers inherent in the presidency. Others, such as Bush administration Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, have argued that the Constitution’s plain declaration that Congress “shall declare war” does not mean what most readers think it means, and so leaves the president free to initiate all kinds of wars.

Koh has long opposed these interpretations -- and in a way, even now, he remains consistent. Speaking for the administration, he still upholds Congress’s power to declare war and the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution. “We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” he told the Times. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”

In a curious way, then, a desire to avoid challenge to existing law has forced assault on the dictionary. For the Obama administration to go ahead with a war lacking any form of Congressional authorization, it had to challenge either law or the common meaning of words. Either the law or language had to give.

It chose language.

Jonathan Schell is the Doris M. Shaffer Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a Senior Lecturer at Yale University.  He is the author of several books, including The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Schell discusses war and the imperial presidency, click here, or download it to your iPod here


http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175407/tomgram%3A_jonathan_schell%2C_the_war_on_the_word_%22war%22/#more

[Protean]

Video of crashed NATO helicopter drone in Libya

RT - Video
http://youtu.be/FzYn3CDzjwA

[bigron]

'NATO countries panicky over Libya fail'

Fri Jun 24, 2011 8:28AM


Interview with Jim Brann, Stop the War Coalition, London


NATO, which was originally mandated by the UN to intervene for humanitarian purposes in Libya, has turned into 'a rogue aggressor' in Libya.


Press TV talks with Jim Brann from the Stop the War Coalition in London, who shares his ideas about the increasing war spending for the UK in Libya, the carelessness of the strikes on the North African country and the aims of what has resulted in a drawn-out war of aggression with no end in sight. Following is a transcript of the interview


VIDEO & ARTICLE

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186020.html

[bigron]

Three Little Words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil


Media Lens


June 23, 2011
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78912&hd=&size=1&l=e


'Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects.’

So reported the Washington Post on June 11, in a rare mainstream article which, as we will see, revealed how WikiLeaks exposed the real motives behind the war on Libya.

So what happens when you search UK newspaper archives for the words 'WikiLeaks’, 'Libya’ and 'oil’? We decided to take a look.

From the time prior to the start of Libya’s civil war on February 17, and of Nato’s war on Libya on March 19, we found a couple of comments of this kind in the Sunday Times: 'Gadaffi’s children plunder the country’s oil revenues, run a kleptocracy and operate a reign of terror that has created simmering hatred and resentment among the people, according to the cables released by WikiLeaks.’1

The Telegraph described political wrangling over the alleged Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi:

The documents, obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to this newspaper, provide the first comprehensive picture of the often desperate steps taken by Western governments to court the Libyan regime in the competition for valuable trade and oil contracts.2

From the time since Nato launched its war, we found this warning from Jackie Ashley in the Guardian:

…cast aside international law, and there is nothing but might is right, arms, oil and profits.

Well, you might say, but isn’t that where we are already? Not quite. Many of us may feel great cynicism about some of the west’s war-making and the strange coincidence of military intervention and oil and gas reserves. I do.3

This hinted in the right direction, but no facts were cited in support of the argument, certainly none from the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables.

The Guardian's Alexander Chancellor managed to discover a leaked cable revealing that Libya 'sometimes demands billion-dollar "signing bonuses" for contracts with western oil companies’.4

Other cables offer more significant insights, but Chancellor made no mention of them.

George Monbiot’s March 15 Guardian article contained all three search terms – his sole mention of Libya in the past 12 months – but he was writing about Saudi Arabia: 'We won’t trouble Saudi’s tyrants with calls to reform while we crave their oil.’ The article had nothing to say about the looming assault on Libya, just four days away. Monbiot has had nothing to say since.

Johann Hari wrote about the Libyan war in his sole article on the subject in the Independent on April 8, commenting:

Bill Richardson, the former US energy secretary who served as US ambassador to the UN, is probably right when he says: "There’s another interest, and that’s energy… Libya is among the 10 top oil producers in the world. You can almost say that the gas prices in the US going up have probably happened because of a stoppage of Libyan oil production… So this is not an insignificant country, and I think our involvement is justified".

This was a rare affirmation of the role of oil as a motive, albeit one that emphasised the specious claim that the US concern is simply to keep the oil flowing (Hari did mention, vaguely, that results were intended to be 'in our favour’). And again, Hari appeared to be innocent of any relevant information released by WikiLeaks. A lack of awareness which perhaps explains why he had 'wrestled with’ the alleged moral case for intervention before rejecting it.

Soured Relations: Gaddafi And Big Oil

Remarkably, then, we found nothing in any article in any national UK newspaper reporting the freely-available facts revealed by WikiLeaks on Western oil interests in Libya. And nothing linking these facts to the current war.

By contrast, in his June 11 article for the Washington Post, Steven Mufson focused intensely on WikiLeaks exposés in regard to Libyan oil. In November 2007, a leaked State Department cable reported 'growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism’. In his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi had said: 'Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.’

Gaddafi’s son made similar comments in 2007. As (honest) students of history will know, these are exactly the kind of words that make US generals sit up and listen. The stakes for the West were, and are, high: companies such as ConocoPhillips and Marathon have each invested about $700 million over the past six years.

Even more seriously, in late February 2008, a US State Department cable described how Gaddafi had 'threatened to dramatically reduce Libya’s oil production and/or expel… U.S. oil and gas companies’. The Post explained how, in early 2008, US Senator Frank R. Lautenberg had enraged the Libyan leader by adding an amendment to a bill that made it easier for families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing to 'go after Libya’s commercial assets’.

The Libyan equivalent of the deputy foreign minister told US officials that the Lautenberg amendment was 'destroying everything the two sides have built since 2003,’ according to a State Department cable. In 2008, Libyan oil minister Shokri Ghanem warned an Exxon Mobil executive that Libya might 'significantly curtail’ its oil production to 'penalize the US,’ according to another cable.

The Post concluded: 'even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies’.

Similarly, compare the chasm in rational analysis separating the mainstream UK media and the dissident Real News Network, hosted by Paul Jay. Last month, Jay interviewed Kevin G. Hall, the national economics correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Jay concluded with a summary of their conversation discussing oil shenanigans in Libya:

So you’ve got the Italian oil companies already at odds with the US over Iran. The Italian oil company is going to, through its deals with Gazprom, allow the Russians to take a big stake in Libyan oil. And then you have the French. As we head towards the Libyan war, the French Total have a small piece of the Libyan oil game, but I suppose they would like a bigger piece of it. And then you wind up having a French-American push to overthrow Gaddafi and essentially shove Gazprom out. I mean, I guess we’re not saying one and one necessarily equals two, but it sure – it makes one think about it.

Hall responded:

Yeah, it’s not necessarily causation, but there’s – you might suggest there’s correlation. And clearly this shows the degree to which oil is kind of the back story to so much that happens. As a matter of fact, we went through 251,000 [leaked] documents – or we have 250,000 documents that we’ve been pouring through. Of those, a full 10 percent of them, a full 10 percent of those documents, reference in some way, shape, or form oil. And I think that tells you how much part of, you know, the global security question, stability, prosperity – you know, take your choice, oil is fundamental.’ (Our emphasis)

Jay replied with a wry smile:

'And we’ll do more of this. But those who had said it’s not all about oil, they ain’t reading WikiLeaks.’

Hall replied: 'It is all about oil.’

In March, we drew attention to a cable released by WikiLeaks sent from the US embassy in Tripoli in November 2007. The cable communicated US concerns about the direction being taken by Libya’s leadership:

Libya needs to exploit its hydrocarbon resources to provide for its rapidly-growing, relatively young population. To do so, it requires extensive foreign investment and participation by credible IOCs [international oil companies]. Reformist elements in the Libyan government and the small but growing private sector recognize this reality. But those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves. Effective U.S. engagement on this issue should take the form of demonstrating the clear downsides to the GOL [government of Libya] of pursuing this approach, particularly with respect to attracting participation by credible international oil companies in the oil/gas sector and foreign direct investment. (our emphasis)

The US government has certainly been 'demonstrating the clear downsides’ since March 19.

US analyst Glenn Greenwald, asks:

Is there anyone – anywhere – who actually believes that these aren’t the driving considerations in why we’re waging this war in Libya? After almost three months of fighting and bombing – when we’re so far from the original justifications and commitments that they’re barely a distant memory – is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya? Is there anything more obvious – as the world’s oil supplies rapidly diminish – than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests, and that protecting civilians was the justifying pretext for this war, not the purpose?

'The Urge To Help’

It does seem extraordinary that anyone could doubt that this is the case. But the fact is that the WikiLeaks cables cited above, the Washington Post’s facts, and Greenwald’s conclusions, have been almost completely blanked by the UK media system. Notice that they have been readily accessible to us, a tiny website supported by public donations.

As though reporting from a different planet, the BBC reported last week: 'Nato is enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians in Libya.’

Is this Absolute Truth? Holy writ? In fact, no. But it does reflect the mainstream political consensus and so the BBC feels content to offer it – by way of a service to democracy – as the only view in town. And yet, we need only reflect on three obvious facts: while UN Resolution 1973 did authorise a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians, Nato is now openly seeking regime change and rejecting all peace overtures out of hand. The UN did not authorise regime change.

An Observer leader entitled, 'The west can’t let Gaddafi destroy his people,’ told the same tale in March:

'the only response that matters now is a common position which brooks no more argument… to pledge, with the honest passion we affect to feel that, whether repulsed in time or not, this particular tyranny will not be allowed to stand’.5

Like a cut and paste from Orwell, the paper insisted:

This is a regional uprising of young people seeking freedom, remember? Do you recall all the power of the tweet, as lauded only a fortnight ago?

The millions who began this revolution won’t be much impressed by a democracy defined only by inertia. They won’t thank the west – or China, India, Russia, the African Union – for letting this Arab spring die in a field of flowery promises.

The Guardian also focused on the 'ethical’ motivation. In a February 24 leading article entitled, 'Libya: The urge to help,’ the editors simultaneously mocked and reversed the truth:

'It is hard to escape the conclusion that European leaders are advocating these moves in part because they want to be seen by their electorates at home to be doing something, and in part because they want to be seen by people in the Middle East as being on the right side in the Arab democratic revolution. They may hope that a dramatic line on Libya will go some way toward effacing the memory of the dithering and equivocation with which they greeted its earlier manifestations in Tunisia and Egypt, France being particularly guilty in this regard.’

Compared to the analysis discussed above this reads like a bed-time story for children. The deceptive words 'dithering and equivocation’ refer to the West’s iron-willed resolve to protect tyrannical clients and to thwart democratic revolution in the region while appearing (the key word) to be 'on the right side’.

The conclusion: 'a no-fly zone should become an option. Lord Owen was therefore right to say 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’.

The Guardian's argument was shorn of the political, economic and historical facts that make a nonsense of the idea that Western military action 'should become an option’. There may indeed have been a moral case for action by someone. But not by Western states with a bitter history of subjugating and killing people in Libya, and elsewhere in the region, for the sake of oil. But then it is a trademark of Guardian liberalism that Britain and its allies are forever Teflon-coated, forever untainted by the evident brutality of 'our’ actions. This is the perennial, vital service the paper performs for the establishment.

We are asked to believe that the facts sampled in this alert are somehow unknown to the hard-headed corporate executives who write of 'The urge to help’ and the 'common position which brooks no more argument’. And yet, the Guardian was one of WikiLeaks’ major 'media partners’ at the time the cables were published – it is well aware that 'a full 10 percent of those documents, reference in some way, shape, or form oil’. Like the rest of the corporate media, Britain’s leading liberal newspaper knows but is not telling.

Michael Sheridan, 'Libya froths at plundering by junior Gadaffis,’ February 6, 2011, Sunday Times. [↩]
Christopher Hope and Robert Winnett, 'Ministers gave Libya legal advice on how to free Lockerbie bomber,’ The Daily Telegraph, February 1, 2011. [↩]
Ashley, 'Few would weep for Gaddafi, but targeting him is wrong: In war, international law is all we have. If we cast it aside there’ll be nothing left but might is right, arms, oil and profits,’ The Guardian, May 2, 2011. [↩]
Chancellor, 'The bonanza of kickbacks and corrupt deals between Libya and the west have helped Gaddafi cling on to power,’ The Guardian, March 25, 2011. [↩]
Leading article, 'Libya: The west can’t let Gaddafi destroy his people,’ The Observer, March 13, 2011. [↩]
Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The second Media Lens book, NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. Visit Media Lens's website.
http://www.medialens.org/


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78912&hd=&size=1&l=e




 

[bigron]

US-Led Terror Bombings Target Civilians


by Stephen Lendman

June 23, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78892&hd=&size=1&l=e


US air and ground operations strategically target civilians, Pentagon (and NATO) denials notwithstanding. They lie despite clear evidence refuting them. Their latest crime claimed 19 Libyans, all civilians, including women and eight children, apologies not forthcoming and deceitful when they do.

NATO (code for the Pentagon) duplicitously called it a "precision strike on a legitimate military target - a command-and-control node which was directly involved in coordinating systematic attacks on the Libyan people."

False! It targeted Gaddafi ally Khweildy al-Hamidy's private estate, murdering civilians inside beneath the rubble, government spokesman Moussa ibrahim saying:

"This is very twisted logic. So you kill children. You kill mothers. You kill fathers, aunts and uncles, and then you try to explain it by twisted political military logic."

Since NATO terror bombings began March 19, an average of nearly nine daily civilian deaths followed, besides unknown hundreds killed by rebel cutthroats in their controlled areas, murdering any suspected pro-Gaddafi supporters - what Western media reports and governments won't explain.

Numerous reports confirm it, including TeleSUR on June 3 saying:

"British activists have verified the consequences of NATO attacks against civilians in Libya. A spokesman for British Civilians for Peace (BCP)" there with French, German, Italian and regional activists confirmed noncombatant deaths. They also "found no evidence of the Libyan army shelling civilians," but observed NATO terror bombing atrocities firsthand.

BCP spokesman Dale Roberts said in two Libyan visits:

"I have seen and witnessed the effects of bombing on civilians. This has included schools, hospitals, infrastructure and civilian areas," unrelated to military sites.

Roberts added that UK and Western media suppress truths because:

"European public opinion is against a war that was not debated in Parliament, even in my country, Great Britain," adding:

"One of the main reasons why" UN Resolution 1973 passed was because "Libya was being blamed and made responsible for attacks on unarmed civilians. They are false. We visited the areas in Tripoli (the UN Resolution) cited....and it is clear that these areas were not attacked."

Like all US-led wars, lies facilitate terror bombing Libya. They include baseless allegations, claiming despots massacre civilians or threaten neighboring states with WMDs to stoke fear and enlist popular support.

In his book "War is a Lie," David Swanson explains "common themes in the war lying business, lies that keep coming back like zombies that just won't die." And no matter how often they're later exposed, they're used again effectively because major media managed news repeat them, knowing they're spurious but do it anyway complicit with state crimes.

Except in self-defense, wars aren't ever justified, legitimate or legal, especially America's, the only global superpower facing no external threats, so manufactured ones assure more conflict for imperial expansion and unchallenged dominance, no matter the body count to achieve it.

As a result, the same pattern repeats, segueing from one aggression to another or multiple ones simultaneously, illegally, and disastrously, heading America for tyranny, ruin, and eventual bankruptcy. Morally it's had that status for generations, notably since WW II.

"In a world with so many uncertainties and unpredictable actors," says Immanuel Wallerstein, "the most dangerous 'loose gun' is....the United States."

For example, so-called Pentagon "Kill Teams" murder with impunity. Some collect body parts as souvenirs or trophies the way US military personnel did in WW II, mutilating dead Japanese, as well as later in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, exhibiting depravity inculcated in young recruits during training.

US death squads have also been used in US wars since WW II. During the Korean War, tens of thousands were murdered, and in Vietnam, Counterspy magazine called Operation Phoenix "the most indiscriminate and massive program of political murder since the Nazi death camps," perhaps exceeded post-9/11 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and numerous proxy wars, taking a horrendous human toll from combat operations alone.

Moreover, since WW II, US terror bombings killed millions of noncombatants to cow enemies into submission, what's now commonplace in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, as well as earlier in Iraq and could be resumed if ordered.

Sociologist Emile Durkheim once said, "The immorality of war depends entirely on the leaders who willed it." In America, of course, it's top administration and Pentagon officials. In his opening Nuremberg address, Justice Robert Jackson denounced the:

"men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberative and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched."

He called them "men of station and rank (who don't) soil (their) hands with blood," but use "lesser folk" to do it, committing crimes of war and against humanity to enhance their status and privilege.

As a result, in Iraq and Afghanistan, US forces still order troops to kill every military-aged man on sight. Moreover, during training, enemies are dehumanized to make it easy, programming recruits to feel guiltless about horrific crimes.

Yet international and US laws are clear and unequivocal, including US Army Field Manual (FM) 27-10 standards that incorporate Nuremberg Principles, Judgment and the Charter and The Law of Land Warfare (1956):

-- FM's paragraph 498 states that any person, military or civilian, who commits a crime under international law is responsible for it and may be punished;

-- paragraph 499 defines a war crime;

-- paragraph 500 refers to a conspiracy, attempts to commit it and complicity with respect to international crimes;

-- paragraph 509 denies the defense of superior orders in the commission of a crime; and

-- paragraph 510 denies the defense of an "act of state" to absolve them.

Two points are key:

-- these provisions apply to all US military and civilian personnel, including top commanders, the Secretary of Defense, his subordinates, and the President and Vice President of the United States; and

-- under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause (Article VI, paragraph 2), all international laws and treaties are the "supreme Law of the Land."

Nonetheless, US forces commit regular atrocities, in Afghanistan for nearly a decade, Pentagon commanders dismissively saying operations will continue to achieve goals that include killing civilians, no matter how many alienated Afghans become willing Taliban recruits against a hated occupier.

Why not when terror bombings kill entire families, including young children. When thuggish troops conduct middle-of-the-night home intrusions, intimidating, arresting, and at times killing gratuitously. When remote control droning kills like sport. When people are homeless, hungry, unemployed and deprived because America came, occupied and doesn't give a damn about human need.

After terrorizing Iraqis, in June 2009, Stanley McChrystal took charge of US/NATO Afghanistan forces to do it there. Earlier, he headed the Pentagon's infamous Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), de facto death squad operations to kill with impunity.

After his sacking a year later, David Petraeus (CIA director designate) doubled NATO air strikes and increased Special Forces terror raids to inflict more death and destruction against people who won't stop resisting until America's occupation ends.

Of course, mostly civilians suffer, what major media reports won't explain, regurgitating Pentagon lies about successful militant strikes, suppressing truths to let imperial wars rage, bogusly called liberating ones.

In fact, when Washington wants war, nothing deters officials from waging it or several simultaneously, inventing reasons to justify what only naive masses and co-conspirators believe.

So when Obama says "we" have moral authority to liberate Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans or other nations he attacks, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter once reflected in January 2000 on then lawless 1999 Serbia/Kosovo operations, saying:

"When they said '(w)e had to do something,' I said: Who is this 'we' exactly that you're talking about?....Under what heading do 'we' act, under what law? And also, the notion that this 'we' has the right to act,' I said, presupposes a moral authority of which this 'we' possesses not a jot! It doesn't exist!"

In fact, it's as immoral, unethical and illegal as for serial killers, motivated by whatever drives them, including a passion for violence, real or delusional rewards.

When they're nations, not sociopaths, Orwellian doublespeak disguises real motives deceptively. For example, Obama calls Libyan attacks a "time-limited, scope-limited military action," not war, no matter how much death and destruction is inflicted.

So claiming constitutional Article 2, Section 2 authority as armed forces commander in chief, in fact, violates Article 51 of the UN Charter, prohibiting attacks against other nations except in self-defense, and only until the Security Council acts.

Moreover, the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 is violated, granting Congress sole power to declare war, never the executive unilaterally, for any reason or with doublespeak mumbo jumbo disguising it.

War is war. It's also hell on the receiving end, harmful to combatants, and detrimental domestically when popular needs go unmet.

As chief executive, Obama is responsible for mass murder and destruction. If rule of law standards mattered, he'd be impeached, convicted and jailed for high crimes - in fact, the supreme international one against peace and others related to it.

Instead, he'll finish his current term, likely be reelected, and leave office rewarded with multi-million dollar book deals and six-figure lecture offers to extol a record demanding condemnation in a court of law, holding him fully accountable for high crimes, demanding harsh punishment. In fact, only victims face that fate.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78892&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

[bigron]

McCain/Kerry Support Imperial War on Libya



by Stephen Lendman


June 23, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78914&hd=&size=1&l=e

On November 6, 1971, a remorseful John Kerry told Washington, DC's WRC-TV that "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals," protesting against America's Vietnam War involvement.

On April 22, 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), saying in part:

He came to discuss an investigation involving "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans," who admitted committing Southeast Asian war crimes, explaining:

"stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, bl(ew) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages (like) Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Calling it a "Winter Soldier Investigation," he said "there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America." Linking America's involvement "to the preservation of freedom....is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy...."

"We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime....We rationalized destroying villages....to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very cooly a My Lai," and many others like it. "We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals."

"We have come here....because we believe this body can be responsive to the will of the people (saying) we should be out of Vietnam now...."

Adding much more, he condemned America's illegal, immoral war, wanting no further part in it. That was then. This is now. Since 1985, Kerry represented Massachusetts in America's Senate, chairing the Foreign Relations Committee he testified before in 1971.

In fact, one of many congressional millionaires, he's the Senate's richest approaching $300 million in net worth as heir, through his wife, to the HJ Heinz fortune.

Now hawkish, he and five other senators co-sponsored John McCain's May 23 "S. 194: A Resolution expressing the sense of the Senate of the United States military operations in Libya," saying:

It "(s)upports the aspirations of the Libyan people for political reform based on democratic and human rights. Commends the service of the men and women of the US Armed Forces and our coalition partners who are engaged in military operations to protect the Libyan people....to achieve the departure from power of (Gaddafi) and his family so that a peaceful transition can begin to a government that ensures freedom, opportunity, and justice for the people of Libya."

In fact, America abhors these rights and freedoms, pursuing imperial wars of conquest, plunder and exploitation for wealth, power, and unchallenged dominance.

In 2001 and 2003, Kerry supported wars against Afghanistan and Iraq for those purposes, not liberation, human rights or democratic values. He now backs terror bombing Libya for the same reasons, spurning Libyans who want no part of America's involvement.

In fact, Western media ignored a June 20 one million strong pro-Gaddafi Tripoli rally, raging against NATO terror bombings, killing civilians, targeting schools, hospitals, residential areas, and other non-military sites, what few in the West know about or understand.

On Press TV, independent journalist Lizzie Phelan said "from my sources, I have information that 90% of the tribes in Libya are supportive of the government, including the largest."

In fact, Libyans are known for being "non-confrontational people (who'll) go to the ends of the earth to resolve in a non-confrontational way."

Washington's led NATO war changed that, pursuing America's undefined "national security policy interests," that include mass slaughter, pillaging, colonization, destruction, and exploitation, common themes of Pentagon terror wars.

On June 22, AP reported that Kerry and John McCain with other Senate Democrats and Republicans introduced a resolution giving "Obama limited authority" in Libya retroactively from March 19 when terror bombing began.

Majority Leader Harry Reid calls it a "clear statement to our allies, to the world, to the Libyan people and to Gaddafi that we support the administration's actions," no matter how lawless, immoral, and defiant of democratic values.

Kerry said ending funding will be a "moment of infamy." Supportive media reports concur, including a June 16 New York Times editorial headlined, "Libya and the War Powers Act," saying:

"It would be hugely cost - for (America's) credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya - if Congress were to force (Obama) to abandon military operations over Libya....(It) needs to authorize continued American support for NATO's air campaign," no matter how ignoble the cause, mass slaughter, destruction, and human misery inflicted, issues ignored by Times editors, endorsing the rape and plunder of another US imperial target.

The Republican controlled House will likely accede, despite duplicitous posturing for maximum advantage, perhaps concessions for other hard right legislation, harming working Americans most.

As a result, Speaker John Boehner responded to the Senate measure, saying:

"They're pushing for an authorization in Libya and I don't think that is where the House is. The fact is the president has not made his case to the members of Congress. He's not made his case to the American people. We've been in this conflict for 90 days and the president hasn't talked to the American people for four or five weeks about why we're there, what our national interest is and why we should continue."

Omitted from his comments were international and constitutional law references, standards all US wars violate, including against Libya, considerations never raised in either House.

House Republicans may vote this week on one of two resolutions - either to continue Libyan operations for one year, bar US ground forces, require Obama to report regularly to Congress, or end involvement entirely. AP says a Thursday vote is likely.

Supportive congressional members from both parties use duplicitous rhetoric for it, including Reid saying it's "to stop mass murder and chaos" that didn't begin until America and NATO intervened, and that Gaddafi's "repressive dictatorship is a threat to the region and to the United States national security," when, in fact, he threatens no one, especially America, the very notion laughable on its face.

Nonetheless, terror bombing Libya will continue, perhaps ending after turning targeted areas to rubble and inflicting mass casualties in the process, what America means by liberation.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m78914&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

[bigron]

Patrick Cockburn: Don't believe everything you see and read about Gaddafi

World View: Both sides in this conflict are guilty of spreading propaganda – and foreign journalists
have on occasion been all too eager to help

Sunday, 26 June 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-dont-believe-everything-you-see-and-read-about-gaddafi-2302830.html


In the first months of the Arab Spring, foreign journalists got well-merited credit for helping to foment and publicise popular uprisings against the region's despots. Satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, struck at the roots of power in Arab police states, by making official censorship irrelevant and by competing successfully against government propaganda.


Regimes threatened by change have, since those early days, paid backhanded compliments to the foreign media by throwing correspondents out of countries where they would like to report and by denying them visas to come back in. Trying to visit Yemen earlier this year, I was told that not only was there no chance of my being granted a journalist's visa, but that real tourists – amazingly there is a trickle of such people wanting to see the wonders of Yemen – were being turned back at Sanaa airport on the grounds that they must secretly be journalists. The Bahrain government has an even meaner trick: give a visa to a journalist at a Bahraini embassy abroad and deny him entry when his plane lands.

It has taken time for this policy of near total exclusion to take hold, but it means that, today, foreign journalistic coverage of Syria, Yemen and, to a lesser extent, Bahrain is usually long-distance, reliant on cellphone film of demonstrations and riots which cannot be verified.

I was in Tehran earlier this year and failed to see any demonstrations in the centre of the city, though there were plenty of riot police standing about. I was therefore amazed to find a dramatic video on YouTube dated, so far as I recall, 27 February, showing a violent demonstration. Then I noticed the protesters in the video were wearing only shirts though it was wet and freezing in Tehran and the men I could see in the streets were in jackets. Presumably somebody had redated a video shot in the summer of 2009 when there were prolonged riots.

With so many countries out of bounds, journalists have flocked to Benghazi, in Libya, which can be reached from Egypt without a visa. Alternatively they go to Tripoli, where the government allows a carefully monitored press corps to operate under strict supervision. Having arrived in these two cities, the ways in which the journalists report diverge sharply. Everybody reporting out of Tripoli expresses understandable scepticism about what government minders seek to show them as regards civilian casualties caused by Nato air strikes or demonstrations of support for Gaddafi. By way of contrast, the foreign press corps in Benghazi, capital of the rebel-held territory, shows surprising credulity towards more subtle but equally self-serving stories from the rebel government or its sympathisers.

Ever since the Libyan uprising started on 15 February, the foreign media have regurgitated stories of atrocities carried out by Gaddafi's forces. It is now becoming clear that reputable human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been unable to find evidence for the worst of these. For instance, they could find no credible witnesses to the mass rapes said to have been ordered by Gaddafi. Foreign mercenaries supposedly recruited by Gaddafi and shown off to the press were later quietly released when they turned out to be undocumented labourers from central and west Africa.

The crimes for which there is proof against Gaddafi are more prosaic, such as the bombardment of civilians in Misrata who have no way to escape. There is also proof of the shooting of unarmed protesters and people at funerals early on in the uprising. Amnesty estimates that some 100-110 people were killed in Benghazi and 59-64 in Baida, though it warns that some of the dead may have been government supporters.

The Libyan insurgents were adept at dealing with the press from an early stage and this included skilful propaganda to put the blame for unexplained killings on the other side. One story, to which credence was given by the foreign media early on in Benghazi, was that eight to 10 government troops who refused to shoot protesters were executed by their own side. Their bodies were shown on TV. But Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, says there is strong evidence for a different explanation. She says amateur video shows them alive after they had been captured, suggesting it was the rebels who killed them.

It is a weakness of journalists that they give wide publicity to atrocities, evidence for which may be shaky when first revealed. But when the stories turn out to be untrue or exaggerated, they rate scarcely a mention.

But atrocity stories develop a life of their own and have real, and sometimes fatal, consequences long after the basis for them is deflated. Earlier in the year in Benghazi I spoke to refugees, mostly oil workers from Brega, an oil port in the Gulf of Sirte which had been captured by Gaddafi forces. One of the reasons they had fled was that they believed their wives and daughters were in danger of being raped by foreign mercenaries. They knew about this threat from watching satellite TV.

It is all credit to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that they have taken a sceptical attitude to atrocities until proven. Contrast this responsible attitude with that of Hillary Clinton or the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who blithely suggested that Gaddafi was using rape as a weapon of war to punish the rebels. Equally irresponsible would be a decision by the ICC to prosecute Gaddafi and his lieutenants, thus making it far less likely that Gaddafi can be eased out of power without a fight to the finish. This systematic demonisation of Gaddafi – a brutal despot he may be, but not a monster on the scale of Saddam Hussein – also makes it difficult to negotiate a ceasefire with him, though he is the only man who can deliver one.

There is nothing particularly surprising about the rebels in Benghazi making things up or producing dubious witnesses to Gaddafi's crimes. They are fighting a war against a despot whom they fear and hate and they will understandably use black propaganda as a weapon of war. But it does show naivety on the part of the foreign media, who almost universally sympathise with the rebels, that they swallow whole so many atrocity stories fed to them by the rebel authorities and their sympathisers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-dont-believe-everything-you-see-and-read-about-gaddafi-2302830.html

[Protean]

More hypocrisy from the Bilderberg/CFR/NATO(US-British) civilian killers--

Arrest warrant for Gaddafi: Libya leader charged for 'civillian death order'

RT-Video
http://youtu.be/vKC1httjtRQ

It appears that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is not only being targeted by NATO jets, but the International Criminal Court also has him in its sights too. Judges in the Hague have issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi and his closest allies on charges of * crimes against humanity. RT correspondent Irina Galushko reports.

* The pot calling the kettle black!

[Protean]

West judges the rest: 'ICC pushes Gaddafi to fight to very end'

RT-Video
http://youtu.be/y1NlBbRrC00

To discuss the possible consequences of the ICC decision to bring Muammar Gaddafi to justice - RT's joined live by Patrick Hayes, a London-based reporter for online magazine Spiked.