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

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Middle East
Jun 30, 2011 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MF30Ak02.html 
 
THE ROVING EYE


What's really at stake in Libya

 
By Pepe Escobar


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


Way beyond the impenetrable fog of war, the ongoing tragedy in Libya is morphing into a war of acronyms that graphically depicts the tortuous "birth pangs" of a possibly new world order.

On one side there's NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and AL (the Arab League; on the other side, the African Union (AU) and the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Alternatively, this may be seen as the Atlanticist West and its counter-revolutionary Arab allies, against Africa and the emerging global economic powers.

Lies, lies and more lies

Much rumbling has emanated from the US Congress on Libya - centered on technicalities around the War Powers Act. Essentially, US lawmakers are so far refusing to authorize what walks like a war and talks like a war (and, according to the White House, isn't a war). There will be no more funds for increased US involvement in this NATO adventure; but funds will keep flowing anyway.

As the semantic contortions involved in the Libya tragedy have already gone way beyond newspeak, this means in practice US drones will keep joining NATO fighter jets in bombing civilians in Tripoli.

Unlike the irrepressible Vijay Prashad from Trinity College in Connecticut, few in the West may have noticed what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has had to say about all this. In a June 23 op-ed for the Financial Times titled "How China Plans to Reinforce the Global Recovery", Wen states that China is ready to exercise its political muscle in MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa) via the BRICS.

Beijing is not exactly happy that it has been elbowed out of its sizable energy investments in Libya - over 30,000 workers evacuated in a matter of only two days; it wants to make sure it remains a major player whatever happens in Libya.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, for its part, has already stressed the "physical destruction of [Muammar] Gaddafi and members of his family raise serious doubts". Gaddafi's daughter, Aisha, is suing NATO in Brussels for the killing of her daughter, Mastoura, her brother and Gaddafi's two other grandchildren.

Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, has reported after spending three months in Libya that there's absolutely no evidence Libyan troops on Viagra engaged in mass rape of women (that is a fact as far as the International Criminal Court is concerned).

Amnesty also found no evidence of mercenaries from Central and West Africa fighting the "rebels". According to Rovera, "those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly released ... Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without documents."

Some though were lynched and even executed. Cyrenaica has historically been prejudiced against black Africans.

Civilians have been bombed by both the Libyan army and by NATO. Yet there's no evidence the Libyan Air Force bombed "rebel" towns wholesale; and no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen. In a nutshell; the Gaddafi regime may hold a record of brutal repression against any sort of opposition. But it has not committed genocide. That buries the humanitarian hawks' rationale for war six feet under.

Hypocrisy rules. The International Criminal Court accuses Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam - the one who used to be a darling of the London School of Economics - and intelligence czar Abdallah al-Senoussi of "crimes against humanity" while the ghastly dictatorship in Burma/Myanmar and the al-Khalifas in Bahrain walk away.

When in doubt, balkanize

One must be privy to the cavernous NATO halls in Mons, near Brussels, to gauge how much this swarm of military bureaucrats is impermeable to reality. NATO still believes that it "won" the war against Slobodan Milosevic by bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999. What in fact "won" that war was Milosevic losing political support from Russia.

After more than 100 days of bombing Libya, with 12,000 sorties and 2,500 targets, NATO continues to spin that it is "winning". Yes, just like it is "winning" in Afghanistan.

Newspeak rules - in the context of a relentless disinformation war. NATO refuses to admit straight away it is engaged in humanitarian liberation of Libya via regime change - which by the way is not authorized by UN resolution 1973.

The US for its part cut off Libyan TV from the ArabSat satellite - of which Libya is a shareholder. The new Libyan representative to the United Nations was refused a US visa. This means only the dodgy motley crew of "rebels" is allowed a forum in global English-language media.

Even with much-lauded "precision bombing" NATO loses at least one missile in 10. This accounts for the increasing rate of "collateral damage". Targets are not only military; they are increasingly economic, such as the Libyan Mint, which prints dinars.

There is no national uprising against the regime. Tripolitania - Western Libya - has rallied behind Gaddafi; after all he is regarded as defending the country against a neo-colonial foreign attack.

As for those in Benghazi who believe opportunist neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy loves them so much he wants to "liberate" them the Rafale way, they are regarded as patsies - if not traitors.

Northern African al-Qaeda jihadis for their part are having a ball manipulating NATO to reach their ends - performing the odd lynching or amputation in selected "liberated" environment.

NATO's mix of arrogance and incompetence is inevitably leading towards a balkanization of Libya - a scenario Asia Times Online has already predicted. Considering almost two million machine-guns have already been distributed among the population, and assuming NATO will end up daring to put boots on the ground - the only way to win a decisive "victory" - one may imagine the absolutely dire consequences in terms of very bloody urban combat.

A new NATO protectorate
 
Libya is already a graphic case of post-modern neo-colonial plunder.

NATO "winning" means in practice Cyrenaica as an independent republic - although the "rebels" would rather restore the monarchy (the candidate can barely conceal his impatience in London). That also happens to be what Saudi Arabia and Qatar - major backers of regime change - want.

This "independent" eastern Libya would-be emirate is already recognized by a few countries, Sarkozy's France included. No wonder; it is already configured as a NATO protectorate. The ultra-dodgy Transitional Council cannot even let its members - opportunist defectors, US Central Intelligence Agency assets, jihadi-linked clerics - be known.

Moreover, billions of dollars of Libyan assets have already been - illegally - seized by the US and the European Union. And part of the national oil production is being commercialized by Qatar.

This mongrel NATO war now has absolutely nothing to do with R2P (Responsibility to Protect) - the new gospel of humanitarian hawks that has turned international law on its head. Civilians are not being protected but bombed in Tripoli. There's a refugee crisis - a direct consequence of this civil war. Against repeated pleading by Turkey and the AU, the humanitarian hawks didn't even bother to organize a humanitarian corridor towards Tunisia and Egypt.

The only feasible way out is a ceasefire - with NATO out of the picture. The monitoring on the ground would fall to UN blue helmets - preferably composed by Africans. The West has absolutely no credibility to act as a mediator; Africans would be the first to oppose it. So what's left would be the Arab League and the AU.

The Arab League is pro-Benghazi. In fact a fake Arab League vote (only nine out of 22 countries, six of them part of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club, also known as GCC), manipulated by Saudi Arabia, allowed the Arab endorsement of what became UN resolution 1973; in fact this was a trade-off for the House of Saud having its hands free to repress pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, as Asia Times Online has reported (see Exposed: The US/Saudi deal, Asia Times Online, April 2). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

The AU has been repeatedly scorned by the Anglo-French-American regime change consortium - even after it got a commitment from Gaddafi to enter negotiations. The AU is meeting again this Thursday in Equatorial Guinea. The AU Libya panel's chair - the President of Mauritania, Mohamed Abdel Aziz - has already said on the record that Gaddafi "can no longer lead Libya", which is a considerable step beyond for the AU.

But that does not mean that the AU - unlike NATO and the "rebels" - wants regime change right here, right now. Gaddafi relinquishing power will have to be a natural outcome of detailed negotiations. In a nutshell; the AU has a road map towards a solution; NATO has bombs. And the BRICS, especially via China, Russia and South Africa, privilege the AU strategy.

Expect the US/NATO consortium to fight to the death. For obvious reasons - all linked to the Pentagon's eternal, irremovable full-spectrum dominance doctrine plus a crucial subplot, NATO's new strategic concept adopted in Lisbon in November 2010 (see Welcome to NATOstan Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010). http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LK20Ak02.html

NATO's definition of "winning" implies Benghazi as the new Camp Bondsteel - the largest US military base in Europe, which happens to double as an "independent" state under the name of Kosovo. Cyrenaica is the new Kosovo. Balkanization rules.

This is a sort of dream scenario for the compound NATO/Africom. Africom gets its much-wanted African base (the current headquarters is in Stuttgart, Germany) after participating in its first African war. NATO extends its crucial agenda of ruling over the Mediterranean as a NATO lake. After Northern Africa there will be only two Mediterranean non-players to "take out": Syria and Lebanon. The name of this game is not Libya; it's Long War.

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/MF30Ak02.html
 

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U.S. Media Imagine Nonexistent Mass Rape in Libya,

 But are Blind to Mass Murder of Black Africans

by Glen Ford

BAR, June 28, 2011

U.S. media show no remorse for falsely reporting that Libyan soldiers were using rape as a weapon of war, although Amnesty International has "not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped." Yet these same fraudulent journalists are blind to the murder of hundreds of Black Africans – including Libyans – by rebels. A Black neighborhood of Misrata has been emptied by rebels who vow to wipe a nearby Black town off the face of the earth.

"The U.S. corporate media do not search for truth, they search for whatever buttresses the American government’s version of the truth."

Cynthia McKinney says she now harbors "almost a hatred for the special interest press, because they are actively lying to us." I feel the same way about the U.S. corporate media, whose incessant, daily lies about Libya are killing people and robbing them of their country. The U.S. press trumpeted the entirely unsubstantiated mega-lie, that Libyan soldiers were being fed rations of Viagra and ordered to engage in the mass rape of Libyan women. It was a total invention of the U.S.-backed rebels in Benghazi and, no doubt, their American and European handlers. Now, even Amnesty International, which has never been a friend of Moammar Gaddafi’s government, reports they "have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped." Nothing. The rebels and their foreign friends made the story up out of whole clothe. Such lies were used to justify continued NATO bombing of Libya as necessary to protect the Libyan people – to protect Libyan women from rape by soldiers.

The massed corporate media have far more resources than Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch, which also found no evidence of rapes. The New York Times and CNN and the rest could have checked the allegation, and exposed it. Instead, they parroted the damnable lie as if it were fact. Why? Because the lie about mass rape conforms to the foreign policy objectives – the war aims – of the U.S. government. The U.S. corporate media do not search for truth, they search for whatever buttresses the American government’s version of the truth. They are whores, mercenaries and propagandists, posing as journalists. In times of war, that makes them complicit in every war crime committed by the U.S. government. The U.S. media are killers, facilitators of the most horrible crimes.

If they had bothered to check the rape allegations, they would have had to contradict Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who falsely accused Col. Gaddafi of using rape as a weapon of war. The U.S. media would have had to discredit Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the shameless, U.S.-butt-kissing prosecutor for the International Criminal Court. Moreno-Ocampo now admits he doesn’t have any evidence connecting Gaddafi to rapes, but he’s indicted him, anyway, for various and sundry "crimes" that are just as illusory.

"The rebels have put up signs vowing to "purge slaves [and] black skin."

These same media pretend not to see that which has been obvious from the very beginning of the Libyan crisis: The rebels use anti-Black racism as a tool of war. They have slaughtered many hundreds of Black immigrant workers as well as fellow Libyans who are Black. Right in front of the eyes of western reporters in Misrata – who have made heroes and saints of the rebels – a whole neighborhood of Black Libyans was ethnically cleansed, the residents sent in hiding with bounties on their heads. Fortunately, the Wall Street Journal saw fit to print this story, probably on the theory that businesspeople need real facts to safeguard their money. Rebels in Misrata are threatening to erase the mostly Black city of Tawergha, just 25 miles south of, off the face of the earth, and to bar the Black Libyans from working or going to school ever again in Misrata. Along the road, the rebels have put up signs vowing to "purge slaves [and] black skin."

It has taken four months for one major U.S. media outlet to report on the race war the U.S. has instigated in Libya. So, yes, Cynthia McKinney, I hate them, too. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/us-media-imagine-nonexistent-mass-rape-libya-are-blind-mass-murder-black-africans



 

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What America Stands for in Libya

By Cynthia McKinney

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28441.htm

June 29, 2011 "Information Clearing House" --  At a time when the American people have been asked to tighten their belts, teachers are receiving pink slips, the vital statistics of the American people reveal a health care crisis in the making, and the U.S. government is in serious threat of default, our President and Congress have decided that a new war, this time against the people of Libya, is appropriate. This comes at a time when the U.S., by one estimate, spends approximately $3 billion per week for war against Iraq and Afghanistan. The President and Congress continue to fund the war against Libya despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the U.S. had no strategic interest in Libya; and despite the fact that the Senate Chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence admits that the U.S. really does not know who the “rebels” are; while the rebels themselves, according to a Telegraph report of 25 March 2011, admit that Al Qaeda elements are among their ranks. So while the apparatus of our government has been used for over ten years to inform the American people and the global community that Al Qaeda is an enemy of freedom-loving people all over the world, our President chooses to ally our military with none other than Al Qaeda elements in Libya and other people whom U.S. intelligence say they do not know.

Additionally, U.S. Admiral Locklear admitted to a Member of Congress that one of NATO’s missions was to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi. And, indeed, NATO bombs have killed Qaddafi’s son and three grandchildren, just as US bombs in 1986 killed his daughter. NATO bombs just recently killed the grandchildren of one of Qaddafi’s associates in a targeted assassination attempt. Targeted assassination is not within the scope of the United Nations Security Council Resolution and targeted assassination is against U.S. law, international law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. Targeted assassination is also a crime. We certainly cannot encourage others to abide by the law when we so openly break it.

While in Libya, I witnessed NATO’s targeting of civilians: NATO bombs and missiles landed in residential neighborhoods, hit schools, exploded near hospitals, destroyed parts of the public broadcasting infrastructure, and narrowly missed killing students at Al Fateh University. When civilians are targeted in war, or “low kinetic” activities, (1) crimes are committed.

NATO practices in Libya are exactly like Israel’s practices in Gaza: fishermen are killed as they go about their fishing business, a naval blockade allows arms to flow to NATO’s Libyan allies, but stops food, fuel, and medicine from entering non-NATO ally-held areas. The entire population suffers as a result. Collective punishment is illegal when Israel practices it against the people of Gaza and collective punishment is illegal when NATO practices it.

NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase. Approximately 50% of Libya looks like me. Innocent darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed, and killed.

The people of Libya have the right to self-determination. They have a right to “resource nationalism.” They have a right to live in peace. They have a right to determine their future and they need not exercise their rights underneath the shock and awe of NATO bombs and missiles.

Notes

I guess this is what President Obama would call low kinetic military activity:
 
The US Corporate Media, and the US government, continue to methodically hide, from the public, the fact that the Libyan rebels they are supporting have been, and continue to, rape, mutilate and brutally murder Black Africans within Libya. The rebels are not who they say they are—they are brutal racist killers who are completely being supported by the US government and its corporate media minions.

   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28441.htm

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.Published on Thursday, June 30, 2011 by McClatchy
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/30-3


Libya Mission Becomes a Burden for Obama

by Nancy A. Youssef

 
WASHINGTON — More than 100 days after the United States and NATO allies launched what was supposed to be a quick air campaign in Libya, Pentagon officials concede that the effort has little strategic value for the U.S., and the alliance's desired outcome there remains unclear.

President Barack Obama’s news conference Wednesday was his first formal news conference since March. Separately, and undercutting Obama's rationale for war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a series of exit interviews ahead of his retirement, has begun to describe the U.S. involvement as payback to NATO nations — which depend on Libya's oil reserves — for joining American troops in fighting in Afghanistan, which was mainly a war about U.S. strategic interests and misguided notions about fighting "terrorism". (AP Carolyn Kaster)
  

Instead, with NATO unable to bring an end to the fighting, the mission has run into stiff opposition from both parties in Congress and led military officials to fret privately that even the limited U.S. role will generate more ill will in the Arab world.

What's become an open-ended conflict, military officers and experts say, illustrates ill-defined U.S. objectives, the limits of relying solely on air power and the lack of diplomatic tools to broker an end to Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime. Thousands of anti-Gadhafi rebels have been killed, and some at the Pentagon worry that the mounting deaths and reduced U.S. involvement have jeopardized what President Barack Obama called a campaign to protect Libyan civilians.

"We are losing the goodwill this was supposed to create," said one senior military officer who wasn't authorized to be quoted by name.

Perhaps undercutting Obama's rationale for war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a series of exit interviews ahead of his retirement, has begun to describe the U.S. involvement as payback to NATO nations — which depend on Libya's oil reserves — for joining American troops in fighting in Afghanistan, which was mainly a war about U.S. strategic interests.

"These allies, particularly the British and the French, and the Italians for that matter, have really been a big help to us in Afghanistan. They consider Libya a vital interest for them. Our alliance with them is a vital interest for us. So as they have helped us in Afghanistan, it seems to me that we are in a position of helping them with respect to Libya," said Gates, who opposed U.S. involvement in Libya from the beginning, last week on the PBS NewsHour.

On Wednesday, Obama vigorously defended the campaign, saying that, "We've protected thousands of people in Libya, we have not seen a single U.S. casualty, there's no risks of additional escalation, the operation is limited in time and scope."

But Obama also said that Gadhafi "needs to go" and that no political settlement is possible with him in power.

U.S. military officers say that NATO's commitment of military force doesn't match that goal.

The NATO effort is almost exclusively an air campaign, which is designed to ground Gadhafi's warplanes and strike at his weapons sites. But at times it appears that NATO has tried to topple Gadhafi, which experts said demands ground forces, a larger air campaign and a clear plan for who will lead Libya in the aftermath of the regime.

The hope was that by only using air power, NATO would reduce the costs and risk to troops. But experts say that air power only rarely leads to regime change and isn't always cheaper.

"It is very hard to create desired political outcomes merely using air power," said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"There is a firm commitment to not put boots on the ground. And diplomacy with the Gadhafi government has always been unpredictable. So what are the instruments and what are the objectives?"

For the U.S., Libya wasn't a clear threat. Indeed, there were signs that Libya was helping America in the war against terrorism.

Gadhafi had expressed willingness to take back Libyan detainees released from Guantanamo Bay. In March 2004 he tipped off American intelligence officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency about a shipment of nuclear weapons components believed to have come from Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, who'd worked closely with al Qaida.

An April 2008 State Department cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by McClatchy, said that the Libyan government "had recently undergone 'an awakening' to the fact that there was a real problem with extremism in the east and was now making serious efforts to counter the threat."

The Obama administration said that it decided to intervene to save Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and the de facto opposition capital, from an imminent threat from charging Gadhafi forces in March. NATO believed that without Gadhafi's air power, the rebels could claim control of the country within weeks — as quickly as the regimes fell in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

But instead, the rebels now control less ground than they did when the NATO intervention began. While they've made tenuous gains in the western mountains, they've lost ground between Benghazi and Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown.

There have only been sporadic rebellions in Tripoli, where Gadhafi remains in control.

The operation began with strong support from the 22-member Arab League. But outgoing leader Amr Moussa told the Guardian newspaper last week that he had second thoughts and called instead for a ceasefire and a political settlement that eased Gadhafi out of power.

"You can't have a decisive ending," Moussa told the British newspaper. "Now is the time to do whatever we can to reach a political solution. "That has to start with a genuine ceasefire under international supervision."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week passed, on a bipartisan vote, a measure allowing the operation to continue for another year — but it included a provision that barred ground troops except in very limited circumstances. The full Senate will take up the measure in July, but lawmakers from both parties don't want the mission to expand.

"The question that has not been answered is what happens after Gadhafi falls — what do we do?" said Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, a Democrat who sponsored the provision.

Some believe that the fight has evolved into a battle over finances. Intelligence officials have said Gadhafi has billions in cash reserves that he's using to buy weapons, pay off mercenaries and bribe supporters.

For the U.S. and NATO, the rising costs of a prolonged conflict increasingly are causing controversy.

By Sept. 27, when NATO's authorization in Libya expires, U.S. officials believe the war will have cost the U.S. at least $1 billion. According to an estimate by a British newspaper, the U.K.'s involvement will have cost about $1.6 billion.

Last week, Italy's foreign ministry called for an immediate end to hostilities in part because of the costs of the war.

NATO has said it is committed to supporting the rebels if the Gadhafi regime falls. But at the same time there's concern about how long it could take. And it's unclear who will be in charge.

"The way this will be judged is in the political outcome, which is as unclear now as it was two months ago," Alterman said.

(William Douglas and David Lightman contributed to this report.)

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/30-3

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Rape, Mercenaries, and Bloodbaths on the Scale of Yemen?


The Media Blank Amnesty's Failure To Find Evidence In Libya

Media Lens

June 30, 2011
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79127&hd=&size=1&l=e


In the Independent on June 24, Patrick Cockburn reported a vital development countering official propaganda on Libya:

Human rights organisations have cast doubt on claims of mass rape and other abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have been widely used to justify Nato’s war in Libya.

Nato leaders, opposition groups and the media have produced a stream of stories since the start of the insurrection on 15 February, claiming the Gaddafi regime has ordered mass rapes, used foreign mercenaries and employed helicopters against civilian protesters.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have checked the claims and found flat zero evidence.

And yet, earlier this month, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told a press conference: 'we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi] used it to punish people’.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was 'deeply concerned’ about reports of widespread rape in Libya by Gaddafi’s forces.

By contrast, Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who spent three months in Libya after the start of the uprising in February, said: 'we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped’.

Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at HRW, said of the rape claims: 'We have not been able to find evidence.’

The Amnesty investigation also found no evidence of mercenaries fighting for Gaddafi. Rovera commented:

'Those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly released. Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without documents.’

And what about the massacres? Cockburn writes:

'During the first days of the uprising in eastern Libya, security forces shot and killed demonstrators and people attending their funerals, but there is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen.’

Not quite the impression given by the flood of media propaganda.

Cockburn followed up his June 24 piece with another excellent report on June 26: 'Don’t believe everything you see and read about Gaddafi.’

At time of writing, there has been a single low-profile response to Cockburn’s reports in Roy Greenslade’s Guardian blog.

Greenslade quoted Cockburn, adding only that these findings of course do not mean that Gaddafi’s forces have not committed crimes.

There have been no other mentions in the UK media that we can find of this credible information challenging key claims justifying the war on Libya.

But shouldn’t a media system that so eagerly advanced these claims against the latest target of Western violence be equally willing to publicise counter-evidence?

Media Performance – The 'Gut-Churning Atrocities’

For once, let’s sample from the performance of The Sun, which hosted a piece by TV celebrity and chat show host Lorraine Kelly:

Of all the gut-churning atrocities to come out of Libya, the use of mass rape as a weapon of war is the most horrific.

Over the years despot Gaddafi has been accused of many heinous crimes. But now he has been charged with procuring container loads of Viagra-like pills which are given to his troops so they can rape their victims more "efficiently".

The thought of civilians being terrorised by troops on drugs who are being positively encouraged to rape is utterly monstrous and chills the blood.

Amnesty’s Rovera noted that rebels meeting with the foreign media in Benghazi showed journalists packets of Viagra, claiming they came from burned-out tanks. Cockburn commented 'it is unclear why the packets were not charred’.

The Daily Mail and numerous other media repeated the same claims ad nauseam.

A leading article in the Guardian expressed some caution in mentioning the presence of mercenaries on February 21: 'If the widespread reports of African mercenaries being used to shoot Libyans are accurate, he has few qualms about mowing down his own people.’

The caution had vanished from a leading article on March 10: 'air activity is not the deciding factor in the firefights between the rebels and regime loyalists and mercenaries’.

The Times went even further, claiming that Gaddafi depended on mercenaries: 'his regime imposes ever greater atrocities against Libya’s people (not, incidentally, "his" people, for he leads no legitimate government and relies on foreign mercenaries)’.1

A leading article in the Independent, Cockburn’s own paper, observed on February 21: 'Colonel Gaddafi is said to have deployed heavy weapons and African mercenaries in an effort to reassert his rule.’

Cockburn wrote on the alleged mercenaries: 'The Amnesty investigation found there was no evidence for this.’

On the use of 'heavy weapons’, there was also 'no evidence that aircraft or heavy anti-aircraft machine guns were used against crowds. Spent cartridges picked up after protesters were shot at came from Kalashnikovs or similar calibre weapons’.

Rovera commented: 'The politicians kept talking about mercenaries, which inflamed public opinion and the myth has continued because they were released without publicity.’

No Lessons Learned (Again!)

It ought to be surprising that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch exposed US-UK propaganda in a way that the entire pack of Western media hounds was unable or unwilling to do. But as we have described many times, with rare exceptions, journalists function as stenographers to power. Arguably, as democracy has rapidly eroded in Britain – with all main political parties increasingly serving the same privileged interests – journalists have become even less inclined to challenge the powerful.

The tales of mass rape and vicious mercenaries recall the infamous claim in 1990 that Iraqi soldiers had stormed a Kuwait City hospital, taken hundreds of babies out of incubators, and left them to die on the floor. Journalist John MacArthur, author of The Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, commented:

Of all the accusations made against the dictator [Saddam Hussein], none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City.

In their book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton described how the most powerful testimony came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, initially known only as Nayirah:

Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City… "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

In fact, Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Ambassador to the US. Stauber and Rampton noted that Nayirah had been coached by US PR company Hill & Knowlton’s vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado 'in what even the Kuwaitis’ own investigators later confirmed was false testimony’. The story of the 312 murdered babies was an outright lie.

Needless to say, the mainstream media have learned nothing from this and numerous similar cases.

However appalling media performance has been in facilitating yet another bloody war on yet another defenceless country – just a few years after the great Bush-Blair deception on Iraq – the failure of the media to report Amnesty and HRW’s claims is almost beyond belief. These are highly credible sources making highly controversial claims (which means they will have been extremely careful to check their facts) about alleged crimes that have been used to help justify war. And the media have responded with a single mention in a blog.

It seems oddly appropriate, as we approach our ten-year anniversary next month, that we should be witnessing one of the most striking examples of media servility to power we have seen.

Leading article, 'Essence of Indecision,’ The Times, March 4, 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.


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79127&hd=&size=1&l=e

[Sasha]

The MRAPs and M1s are gonna have a hell of a time with 105+mm recoiless rifles on all those pickup trucks; 20 and 30mm autocannons all over the place too.  Sure a Toyota or Ford truck can't take a 120mm round either, but I doubt the US will show up with a tank for every super-pimped Libyan 4-wheel drive weapon's platform.  2+ million AK's too.



Since Peace Prized O'bomb'ya said definatively and repeatedly in speeches reciently that he's not sending in ground troops, it seems that he'll require a false-flag or the like to create the pretext for a full scale invasion.  Or, perhaps O'bomb'ya and NATO are hoping to push Ghaddafi into retaliation, either way it only gets worse from here.

[bigron]

The US policy of assassination



by Joseph Kishore



WSWS, 1 July 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79138&hd=&size=1&l=e

More than one hundred days into the Libya war, the US-NATO strategy is ever more nakedly aimed at political assassination.

US and European war planes have repeatedly bombed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s compounds, killing his relatives. Frustrated by the duration of the operation, which is stuck in an effective stalemate, military strategists are increasingly focusing on attempts to remove the Libyan head of state, transferring power to other forces within the regime. This is to be accomplished through a revolt within Gaddafi's inner circle or, absent that, assassination.

Earlier this week, Mike Turner, a Republican Congressman and member of the House Armed Services Committee, reported a discussion with Admiral Samuel Locklear, in which the commander of NATO in Italy explicitly acknowledged the assassination policy. According to Taylor, Locklear "explained that the scope of civil protection was being interpreted to permit the removal of the chain of command of Gaddafi's military, which includes Gaddafi."

On Tuesday, Stratfor, a think-tank with close ties to the US state apparatus, commented that war crime charges against Gaddafi from the International Criminal Court "provides added impetus to NATO's current strategy of using airpower to try to assassinate the Libyan leader as a means of accomplishing the mission: regime change."

Then on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama weighed in during a press conference that was largely focused on plans for massive cuts in social programs in the US. As a result of US action, Obama said, this "guy who was a state sponsor of terrorist operations against the United States of America is pinned down and the noose is tightening around him." It was not the first time that Obama chose to evoke language of a lynching in referring to Gaddafi.

The US-NATO policy of assassination, like the Libya war as a whole, is clearly illegal, under both international and national law. In attempting to explain why it is not in violation of the War Powers Act, which requires Congressional authorization for military action, the Obama administration has claimed, absurdly, that the Libya bombing does not rise to the level of "hostilities." If this is the case, however, the policy of assassination stands exposed as a naked attempt by a major imperialist power to murder a foreign head of state.

In the course of his press conference, Obama made a series of extraordinary statements in relation to Libya. He dismissed the constitutional questions raised by the War Powers Act—passed following the revelations of massive state lying and criminality during the US war in Vietnam—as "noise about process and congressional consultation and so forth." The president, supposedly a student of constitutional law, derisively attacked critics of the illegality of the Libyan war for making a "fuss."

Then—lacking even a pseudo-legal argument for his policy—Obama fell back on the argument that Gaddafi, "prior to Osama bin Laden, was responsible for more American deaths than just about anybody on the planet."

No one in the press corps sought to press the president on this declaration. Before the decision to bomb Libya in March, Gaddafi enjoyed friendly relations with all the major powers, including the United States. In 2003, Libya scrapped its nuclear and biological weapons program in a move that was hailed by the Bush administration as a model for Iran and North Korea.

In April 2009, Gaddafi’s son, then Libya’s national security minister, was greeted warmly by Hillary Clinton at the State Department, an event that was followed two months later by a well-publicized handshake between Gaddafi and Obama.

During this period, Gaddafi was signing major oil deals with US and European corporations. Then, for reasons that have never been clearly explained but are clearly bound up with the geostrategic interests of the European powers and the US, a decision was made to topple the Gaddafi regime and install a government that was even more beholden to the interests of imperialism.

After first attempting to remove the government through support for the "rebels" in the east and west, the US and NATO are now adopting a more direct method.

The US policy of assassination is not limited to Gaddafi, however. On Wednesday, the Obama administration released its "National Strategy for Counterterrorism," which outlines a strategy of "targeted killings" wherever the US sees a threat to its interests. Counterterrorism advisor John Brennan declared in unveiling the strategy that "our best offense won’t always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us."

By "targeted, surgical pressure" is meant the use of aerial drones operated by the military and the CIA, along with Special Forces groups like that which assassinated Osama bin Laden. Under the Obama administration, the US has vastly increased its use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and now Libya to kill anyone declared to be a "militant" or "terrorist." A sixth country was added to the list last week, when US drone aircraft fired missiles at alleged leaders of an Al Qaeda-affiliated organization in Somalia.

In an earlier historic period, sections of the American ruling class recognized the immense dangers raised by such policies. In 1965, after coming to power and confronted with the evidence of US assassination plots in various parts of the world, President Lyndon Johnson famously stated that the US was "operating a damned Murder, Inc."

In 1976, the Church Committee, which conducted the Senate investigations into CIA assassination plots, concluded that a policy of assassination "violates moral precepts fundamental to our way of life." An executive order issued in the wake of the committee explicitly barred the practice.

There was, of course, never a golden age of American imperialism. However, the past 35 years have witnessed a collapse of any pretense of legality and a democratic accountability. A policy of state killing is the culmination of a process that includes unending wars of aggression, torture, detention without charge, and the erosion of democratic rights in the United States itself. This has been closely bound up with the transformation of social relations within the US, the rise of a parasitic financial aristocracy and the extraordinary growth of social inequality.

Policies like pursuing Gaddafi’s assassination as military strategy will have profound consequences. The Obama administration and the American ruling class have established their willingness to extra-judicially kill anyone they view as an obstacle. It is not only a warning, moreover, to political organizations or heads of state in foreign countries; there can be no doubt that US government personnel would utilize similar measures against any significant domestic opposition.

Joseph Kishore

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79138&hd=&size=1&l=e



 

[Protean]

Re-post--Tarpley interviewed and calling for help from Russia


Tarpley from Tripoli: Take fishing boat and you'll be drone-bombed

RT-Video
http://youtu.be/-Sjt22q3Bb4

Moscow has raised concern over France supplying weapons to Libyan rebels and over ambigious interpretations of the UN Security Council resolution on Libya. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also once again said that the sides in the Syrian conflict should resolve their differences through dialogue only. Investigative journalist Webster Tarpley, who's in Tripoli, shared his views with RT.

[Protean]

http://rt.com/news/interview-gaddafi-libya-usa/

US looks on Libya as McDonald’s – Gaddafi’s son

RT-Video Interview
http://rt.com/news/interview-gaddafi-libya-usa/

USA looks upon Libya as fast food expecting a fast war and a quick victory, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader wanted by the ICC, told RT. But the West will never get what they want, he added.

­“Many countries, Iran and North Korea are among them, told us it was our mistake to give up, to have stopped developing long-range missiles and to become friendly with the West. Our example means one should never trust the West and should always be on alert – for them it is fine to change their mind overnight and start bombing Libya,” said Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

“One of our biggest mistakes was that we delayed buying new weapons, especially from Russia, and delayed building a strong army. We thought Europeans were our friends; our mistake was to be tolerant with our enemies”.

Gaddafi’s son was charged by the International Criminal Court on June 27 for a “state policy aimed at deterring by any means, including lethal force, the demonstrations of civilians against the Gaddafi regime” alongside his father Muammar Gaddafi and his military intelligence chief General Abdullah al-Sanoussi. However the Libyan leader’s son sees the charge differently.

“They do not accuse me of policy, they accuse me of killing people, and everybody knows it. For me to be responsible for killing people was a joke. This would have happened anywhere in the world if people in the street moved towards a military site trying to steal ammunition or arms. Of course the military would prevent them!” stated Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

The son of the Libyan leader denied either he or his father had ordered the killing of protesters.

“No, nobody ordered to kill them, the guards just fired, that’s it. And they do not need permission to do that.”

“It’s a fake court. Under the table they are trying to negotiate with us a deal. They say if you accept this deal, we will take care of the court. What does that mean? It means this court is controlled by those countries which are attacking us every day! It is just to put psychological and political pressure on us. That’s it. Of course, it won’t work. The court is a joke here in Libya,” concluded the son of the Libyan leader.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the West has only one target – Libya. “The country is a like a piece of cake for them – it is rich, it has gas, oil and money, so they must kill my father to get the cake. What they don’t understand is that the fighting will not stop if my father goes. Libyans will continue fighting until one day the country will be back to the Libyans,”concluded Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

“We told them ‘You want elections? OK – let’s do elections. We will bring observers from Russia, from America, from the African Union, from the European Union, from the United Nations to supervise the elections. And if we win – you should accept the results, if we lose – congratulations.’ They answered ‘no.’," Saif al-Islam Gaddafi went on. "Our goal is to march to Tripoli. We have to march to Tripoli and occupy Tripoli. By force. So, you want to fight? OK, we will fight. And you will lose. And soon, because you have no chance. You have 40 ships in front of our coast, you have hundreds of airplanes, you have 17 satellites from America and France, you have everything, but you are losing every day. Why? Because the people are not with you."

All--
http://rt.com/news/interview-gaddafi-libya-usa/

[Sasha]

Camp Lejeune Marines To Libya To Strike At Qadhafi Forces
By WCTI Staff
March 20, 2011
http://www.wcti12.com/news/27257042/detail.html

ONSLOW COUNTY -- We've seen Camp Lejuene Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and now they are joining the fight against Libya.

About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit will take part in support operations based aboard USS Kearsarge at sea. Those support operations have thus far included air strikes and one rescue operation. The overall mission is to help end the violence directed at the Libyan people.

UPDATE: To date, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit has conducted numerous successful airstrikes against Muammar al-Qadhafi regime forces as part of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn supporting the international response to protect civilians in Libya under threat of attack by Qadhafi military forces. The 26th MEU has also conducted a successful Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel mission in support of two U.S. Air Force F-15 pilots after their airplane crashed east of Benghazi, Libya, Mar. 21.

All of these missions were launched from the USS Kearsarge more than 100 nautical miles from the coast. Other than the small TRAP force sent to locate the Air Force pilots, no U.S. Marines from the 26th MEU have landed ashore.

"The ability to launch these and other missions directly from naval vessels illustrates the unique and valuable capacity of the Navy/Marine Corps team called 'sea-basing'", said Captain Timothy Patrick, spokesman for II Marine Expeditionary Force. "Having these forces embarked aboard amphibious ships means that at any time we can execute a variety of tactical missions with little or no footprint on foreign territory."


A Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit's AV-8B Harrier jump jet returns to USS Kearsarge for fuel and ammunition resupply while conducting air strikes in support of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, March 20, 2011. Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn is the U.S. Africa Command task force established to provide operational and tactical command and control of U.S. military forces supporting the international response to the unrest in Libya and enforcement of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973.  UNSCR 1973 authorizes all necessary measures to protect civilians in Libya under threat of attack by Qadhafi regime forces.  JTF Odyssey Dawn is commanded by U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, III.

Patrick said that Marines from the 26th MEU are coming on the end of their deployment. They will be replaced with Marines from the 22nd MEU.

A press release from the 26th MEU reads, in part:

"Protecting the innocent and conducting combined operations are what we are designed to do, our forces are doing both as part of the U.S commitment to protect Libyan citizens."
 

[Sasha]

Camp Lejeune Marines Rescue Downed Pilot In Libya
By Jon Erickson / Reporter
March 22, 2011
http://www.wcti12.com/news/27282287/detail.html

ONSLOW COUNTY -- A U.S. fighter jet crashed in Libya after an apparent equipment malfunction but both crew members were able to eject and were back in American hands with only minor injuries, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The F-15E Strike Eagle jet was conducting a mission Monday night against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses when it crashed at 2130 GMT (5:30 p.m. EDT), said Lt. Cmdr. Karin Burzynski, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command.

Officials from Camp Lejeune and New River Air Station said the US military used an Osprey and a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter from 26th MEU to recover the aircraft and the pilots. This tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel mission is called "TRAP" for short.

Lejeune Marines rescued one pilot. Anti-Gadhafi forces rescued the other and then returned that pilot to the 26th MEU.

One pilot is in good condition, the condition of the other is unknown; they both suffered minor injuries.

While spokespeople for Camp Lejeune and New River Air Station could not comment on any civilian casualites from this mission, a release from the 26th MEU noted: "United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973 authorizes all necessary measures to protect civilians in Libya under threat of attack by Qadhafi regime forces."

*NewsChannel 12's Carly Swain and John Swartz contributed to this report

[Protean]

http://twitter.com/#!/WebsterGTarpley/

Controlled US & European media including #BBC and #AlJazeera boycott peaceful anti-war demo in Libya today +1 million peaceful protestors

Video of million peaceful protest in Libya against Obama's NATO War for the Bankster Crime Syndicate's Greed
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/al-libiya#utm_campaigne=synclickback
or
http://t.co/fRvra7q

[ekimdrachir]

The report from Tripoli today was troubling. Reading this thread makes it worse. People have no idea this is taking place.

[Kilika]

Looks like they are intent on putting boots on the ground. Now that the global arrest warrant has been issued, they can use that as an excuse.

And reports locally from military family is that some units are being shipped to France of all places. Locally the wife knows of 2 different families that go to her clinic that have mentioned their family member was shipping out or just left for France.

[Sasha]

Looks like they are intent on putting boots on the ground. Now that the global arrest warrant has been issued, they can use that as an excuse.

And reports locally from military family is that some units are being shipped to France of all places. Locally the wife knows of 2 different families that go to her clinic that have mentioned their family member was shipping out or just left for France.

Makes pretty good sense.  Joint task force kind of a thing.  Plus, Sarkozy seems to be the surrogate through which the shadowly higher-ups are calling the shots:  Euro Obama - CIA and all.

[bigron]

  
 

Libya's Neighbors Prepare for NATO's Boots



By Franklin P. Lamb
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28460.htm

July 02, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---  At ten a.m. Tripoli time on 6/28/11 the Libyan Ministry of Health made available to this observer its compilation entitled Current Statistics Of Civilian Victims Of Nato Bombardments On Libya, (3/19/11-6/27/11).

Before releasing their data, which will be made public this afternoon, it was confirmed by the findings of the Libyan Red Crescent Society and also by civil defense workers in the neighborhoods bombed, and then vetted by researchers at Tripoli’s Nassar University.

As of July 1, 2011, Military casualties have not been officially released by the Libyan armed forces.

In summary, the MOH compilation documents that during the first 100 days of NATO targeting of civilians, 6121 were killed or injured. The statistical breakdown is as follows: 3093 Men were injured and 668 were killed; Women killed number 260 and 1318 injured; Children killed number 141 and 641 injured. Of those seriously injured 655 are still under medical care in hospitals while 4,397 have been released to their families for outpatient care.

Gender    Killed    Injured    Total
Men        668     3093        3761
Women    260     1318        1578
Children   141       641         782
Total     1069      5052       6121

NATO claims that private apartments and homes, schools, shops, factories, crops, and warehouses storing sacks of flour were legitimate military targets are not believed by anyone here in Libya, and, to date, NATO has failed to provide a scintilla of evidence that the 15 civilians, mainly children and their aunts and mothers, who were torn to pieces by 8 NATO rockets in the Salman neighborhood last week were legitimate military targets.

Tripoli’s 3,200 neighborhoods, independently from the Libyan Armed Forces, are intensively preparing for the possibility that NATO forces or those they are seen as increasingly arming and directing, might invade the cosmopolitan greater Tripoli area during the coming weeks or months.

This observer has had the opportunity to visit some of these neighborhoods the past couple of nights and will continue to do so. As noted earlier, contrary to some media reports by the BBC, CNN and CBS, Tripoli’s neighborhoods during the cool evenings with wafting sea breezes, are not tense, “dangerous for foreigners and in control of trigger happy soldiers or militias.” The latter assessment is nonsense. Americans and others are welcomed and their presence appreciated. Libyans are anxious to explain their points of views, a common one of which is that they are not all about Qaddafi but about protecting the family, homes, and neighborhoods from foreign invaders. A majority does support the Qaddafi leadership which is what they received with their mother’s milk, but nearly all emphasize that for them and their friends it is very much about defending their revolution and country first. They appear to this observer to be very well informed about the motives of NATO and those countries that are intensively targeting their leader and their officials without regard to civilians being killed. It’s about oil and reshaping Africa and the Middle East.

Sitting and chatting with neighborhood watch teams are actually an extremely enjoyable way to learn about and to get to know the Libyan people and how they view events unfolding in their country. It certainly beats hanging out at “the bar” at the hotel where the western main stream media often gather their journalistic insights and pontificate about what “the real deal is” as one told me the other day. I could not figure out much that he was talking about.

On the evening of 7/1/11 as many as one million Libyan citizens are expected to gather at Tripoli’s Green Square to register their resistance to NATO’s intensifying civilian targeting blitz. Some western journalists will not attend this news event because they are afraid of potential danger or their stateside bureaus are suggesting they stay away “so as not to legitimize the gathering”. What has become of orientalist journalism?

The neighborhoods in Libya are preparing for a ground invasion and to confront directly the invaders with a plan that one imagines would not be unfamiliar to a General Giap of Vietnam or a Chinese General Lin Peio, being a massive peoples’ defense. It has been organized with a house by house, street by street defense plan for every neighborhood and will include all available weaponry.

The defenders are not military although many of the older ones had done one year compulsory service following high school. Their ranks include every able bodied woman and man from age 18 to 65. Younger or older will not be refused.

Following a Hezbollah model, they are organized into 5 person squads once they complete their training. It works like this: Anyone over 18 years of age can report to his neighborhood “Tent”. Knowing virtually everyone in the area, the person will make an application and will be vetted on an AK-47, M-16 or other light arm. Depending on her/his skill level, he will be accepted and given a photo ID that lists the weapons the applicant qualified on. If he needs more training or is a novice it is provided at the location which includes a training area, tent with mattresses for sleeping, a make shift latrine and canteen.

The basic training for those with no arms experience, including women, is 45 days. Past that, the commitment is four months. Each accepted individual is issued a rifle (normally an AK-47 “Klash” along with 120 rounds of ammo.) Each individual is asked to return in one week to discuss their training and show that they did not waste their bullets which cost around one dollar each. If approved, they will be issued more.

Those who begin their duty work one eight hour shift. Women tend to work during the day when kids are in school but I have seen many women also on the night shift. Most men have regular jobs and proudly explain than they volunteer one work shift daily for their country. They appear to be admired by their neighbors.

I agreed not to describe other weapons that will be used if NATO appears besides rifles, grenades, booby-traps, rocket propelled grenades (RPG’s) but they appear formidable.

But besides preparing for armed defense of their families and homes and neighbors, these neighborhood volunteer civil defense teams explained to me what their main work involves. When an area is bombed, they quickly help the residents exit their bombed building, get medical help on the scene for those who need it, help the families assure the frightened children that things are OK, make notes of needed repairs, provide temporary shelter nearby if needed, and countless tasks the reader can imagine would be required from a humanitarian, civilian perspective.

Each check point becomes a neighborhood watch security center for the community. Cars are cursorily checked, usually just the trunk. Often the drivers are known to the security forces, many of whom are university students, because they are also from the area. Occasionally a car will stop and a citizen will exit and deliver a tray of fruit or pastries or a pot of Libyan soup etc. A very congenial social atmosphere.

Because NATO has been increasing its bombing of these civilian manned checkpoints, about 50 of which are along the road from the Tunisian border to Tripoli, the neighborhood watch teams are now operating without lights at night.. Those on night duty have each been issued one of those small heavy duty five inch mini flashlights which have a powerful beam. This observer was presented one as a souvenir and can attest to its fine quality.

They are civilian because they are volunteers and the regular policemen and women have in large numbers joined an army unit hidden elsewhere.

In addition to its current problems, NATO will face another major one if they decide to invade Western Libya.

Lawyer and former Board member of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation ; Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace (Beirut-Washington D.C.) ; Former Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon.

 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28460.htm

[bigron]

Qaddafi Did NOT Threatens Attacks on Europe
 

Huge Pro Gaddafi Rally In Tripoli


1 Minute Video

Gaddafi is challenging Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama to switch on their TV and watch the crowd. He is saying that they will find out that they are delusional because they entered a war which they will never win, he also says if you continue targeting our houses we can do the same because Europe is not far away but he said lets not do this.

Look at the crowds, children and women. They are not here because I ordered them to come, they are here by their free will. In this war you are not facing me you are facing these crowds.

I am nothing, If you want peace with Libyans, it is up to the crowds.

If you want anything negotiate with the crowds. The regimes is not a Gaddafi regime, it is a Libyan regime.


Posted July 01, 2011

WATCH HERE

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28458.htm

[bigron]

Manufacturing Consent For Boots On The Ground In Libya

Libya Can Sting Europe Like 'Swarm of Bees': Kadhafi


By Hassen Jouini

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28449.htm


July 02, 2011 "AFP" -- Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi threatened retaliation against Europe on Friday unless NATO ceases its operations, saying loyalist forces can launch stinging attacks like "locusts and bees."

The embattled leader also urged supporters to retrieve weapons that France supplied to rebels battling his regime, in a speech broadcast by loudspeakers to crowds in Tripoli's emblematic Green Square.

"The Libyan people are capable, one day, of taking the battle to Europe and the Mediterranean" region, Kadhafi said in the message, as thousands of supporters massed in the landmark square in the centre of the capital.

"They could attack your homes, your offices, your families (who) could become legitimate military targets because you have transformed our offices, headquarters, homes and children into military targets which you say are legitimate," Kadhafi said.

"If we decide to do so, we are capable of throwing ourselves on Europe like swarms of locusts or bees.

"So we advise you to back-track before you face a catastrophe," he warned in a speech to mark 100 days of the NATO military campaign against the North African country.

The flamboyant Kadhafi was speaking from a secret location, but his voice boomed across the square, where the authorities were hoping to gather one million regime supporters.

The crowds, waving green flights and carrying portraits of Kadhafi, chanted slogans of allegiance to "God, Kadhafi and Libya," while some fired guns into the air in celebration as the night sky was lit by fireworks.

"March on the jebel (Nafusa) and seize the weapons that the French have supplied. If later you want to pardon them (the rebels), that's up to you," Kadhafi said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Friday that this week's arms drop was meant only to defend peaceful civilians from Kadhafi's forces and thus fell in line with existing UN resolutions on the conflict.

"Civilians had been attacked by Kadhafi's forces and were in an extremely vulnerable situation and that is why medicine, food and also weapons of self-defence were parachuted," Juppe said France Inter radio.

"It is not a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions" under which France and other allies launched air strikes and imposed embargoes to protect civilians from Kadhafi, he added.

On a visit to Moscow he later told reporters: "We believe that within the frameworks of Resolutions 1970 and 1973 -- and 1970 as a whole -- it is clear that all means are legitimate for protecting peaceful civilians."

The first resolution bans all arms deliveries to Libya -- a move Russia backed -- and the second authorises nations "to take all necessary measures" to help protect civilians against Kadhafi's forces.

Kadhafi vowed that his forces will defeat NATO and called on European leaders to talk to his people "and heads of tribes" to find a solution to the protracted crisis, saying he was ready to help.

"Pull back, you have no chance of defeating this brave (Libyan) people," he told the NATO alliance. "The Libyans will defeat the Crusader NATO forces."

"I advise you to stop your campaign and not to be led by a handful of traitors in Benghazi," he said of the rebels' eastern coastal stronghold.

He also directly addressed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, "poor" French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, asking them to "listen to the Libyan people who want peace."

"The people are masters of their own destiny. Discuss with them a solution to the crisis and I will help you," he said.

He promised to pursue "the fight until victory" and again said he will never leave Libya.

"We will never leave our country. We will die for it," he said.

Kadhafi urged loyalists "to liberate inch by inch" Misrata, Libya's third-largest city which is under rebel control and is a significant insurgent enclave in the west of the country.

Meanwhile, an African Union summit on Friday said African nations will not execute an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Kadhafi, saying it "seriously complicates" efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

The ICC on June 27 issued warrants for Kadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam, and the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, for atrocities committed in the bloody uprising.

   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28449.htm

[bigron]

   
 

Libya: Unending American Hostility

By William Blum

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28453.htm

July 02, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- If I could publicly ask our beloved president one question, it would be this: "Mr. President, in your short time in office you've waged war against six countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. This makes me wonder something. With all due respect: What is wrong with you?"

The American media has done its best to dismiss or ignore Libyan charges that NATO/US missiles have been killing civilians (the people they're supposedly protecting), at least up until the recent bombing "error" that was too blatant to be covered up. But who in the mainstream media has questioned the NATO/US charges that Libya was targeting and "massacring" Libyan civilians a few months ago, which, we've been told, is the reason for the Western powers attacks? Don't look to Al Jazeera for such questioning. The government of Qatar, which owns the station, has a deep-seated animosity toward Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and was itself a leading purveyor of the Libyan "massacre" stories, as well as playing a military role in the war against Tripoli. Al Jazeera's reporting on the subject has been so disgraceful I've stopped looking at the station.

Alain Juppé, Foreign Minister of France, which has been the leading force behind the attacks on Libya, spoke at the Brookings Institution in Washington on June 7. After his talk he was asked a question from the audience by local activist Ken Meyercord:

"An American observer of events in Libya has commented: 'The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent.' That comment was made by Richard Haass, President of our Council on Foreign Relations. If Mr. Haass is right, and he's a fairly knowledgeable fellow, then what NATO has done in Libya is attack a country that wasn't threatening anyone; in other words, aggression. Are you at all concerned that as NATO deals more and more death and destruction on the people of Libya that the International Criminal Court may decide that you and your friends in the Naked Aggression Treaty Organization should be prosecuted rather than Mr. Gaddafi?"

Monsieur Juppé then stated, without attribution, somebody's estimate that 15,000 Libyan civilians had been killed by pro-Gaddafi forces. To which Mr. Meyercord replied: "So where are the 15,000 bodies?" M. Juppé failed to respond to this, although in the tumult caused by the first question, it was not certain that he had heard the second one. (For a counter-view of the Libyan "massacre" stories, see this video.)

Human Rights Watch shows that Gaddafi was not deliberately killing civilians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02uvYMKbh4&feature=player_embedded


 
It should be noted that, as of June 30, NATO had flown 13,184 air missions (sorties) over Libya, 4,963 of which are described as strike sorties. You can find the latest figures on the Allied Command Operations website.

If any foreign power fired missiles at the United States would Barack Obama regard that as an act of war? If the US firing hundreds of missiles at Libya is not an act of war, as Obama insists (to avoid having to declare war as required by US law), then the deaths resulting from the missile attacks are murder. That's it. It's either war or murder. To the extent there's a difference between the two.

It should be further noted that since Gaddafi came to power in 1969 there has virtually never been a sustained period when the United States has been prepared to treat him and the many positive changes he's instituted in Libya and Africa with any respect. For a history of this hostility, including the continual lies and scare campaigns, see my Libya chapter in Killing Hope.

America and its perpetual quest for love

Why can't we "get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us."

– President Dwight D.Eisenhower, in a March,1953 National Security Council Meeting 1

The United States is still wondering, and is no closer to an understanding than Good Ol' Ike was almost 60 years ago. American leaders still believe what Frances Fitzgerald observed in her study of American history textbooks: "According to these books, the United States had been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history, it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. ... the United States always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took." 2

In 2007 I wrote in this report about the US military in Iraq:

I almost feel sorry for them. They're "can-do" Americans, accustomed to getting their way, accustomed to thinking of themselves as the best, and they're frustrated as hell, unable to figure out "why they hate us", why we can't win them over, why we can't at least wipe them out. Don't they want freedom and democracy? ... They're can-do Americans, using good ol' American know-how and Madison Avenue savvy, sales campaigns, public relations, advertising, selling the US brand, just like they do it back home; employing psychologists and anthropologists ... and nothing helps. And how can it if the product you're selling is toxic, inherently, from birth, if you're totally ruining your customers' lives, with no regard for any kind of law or morality, health or environment. They're can-do Americans, accustomed to playing by the rules — theirs; and they're frustrated as hell.

Here now the Google Cavalry rides up on its silver horse. Through its think tank, Google Ideas (or "think/do tank"), the company paid for 80 former Muslim extremists, neo-Nazis, U.S. gang members and other former radicals to gather in Dublin June 26-28 ("Summit Against Violent Extremism", or SAVE) to explore how technology can play a role in "de-radicalization" efforts around the globe. Now is that not Can-do ambitious?

The "formers," as they have been dubbed by Google, will be surrounded by 120 thinkers, activists, philanthropists and business leaders. The goal is to dissect the question of what draws some people, particularly young people, to extremist movements and why some of them leave.

The person in charge of this project is Jared Cohen, who spent four years on the State Department's Policy Planning staff, and is soon to be an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), focusing on counter-radicalization, innovation, technology, and statecraft. 3

So ... it's "violent extremism" that's the big mystery, the target for all these intellectuals to figure out. ... Why does violent extremism attract so many young people all over the world? Or, of more importance probably to the State Department and CFR types: Why do violent extremists single out the United States as their target of choice?

Readers of this report do not need to be enlightened as to the latter question. There is simply an abundance of terrible things US foreign policy has done in every corner of the world. As to what attracts young people to violent extremism, consider this: What makes a million young Americans willing to travel to places like Afghanistan and Iraq to risk their life and limbs to kill other young people, who have never done them any harm, and to commit unspeakable atrocities and tortures?

Is this not extreme behavior? Can these young Americans not be called "extremists" or "radicals"? Are they not violent? Do the Google experts understand their behavior? If not, how will they ever understand the foreign Muslim extremists? Are the experts prepared to examine the underlying phenomenon — the deep-seated belief in "American exceptionalism" drilled into every cell and nerve ganglion of American consciousness from pre-kindergarten on? Do the esteemed experts then have to wonder about those who believe in "Muslim exceptionalism"?

This just in! American leaders do have feelings!

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's criticism of US and NATO forces in his country grows more angry and confrontational with each passing week. Recently, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was moved to reply to him: "When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost — in terms of lives and treasure — hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people ... they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here. ... We begin to lose our inspiration to carry on."

That certainly may apply to many of the soldiers in the field. But oh, if only American military and political leaders could really be so offended and insulted by what's said about them and their many wars.

Eikenberry — who has served in Afghanistan a total of five years as a senior US Army general and then as ambassador — warned that if Afghan leaders reach the point where they "believe that we are doing more harm than good," then Americans may "reach a point that we feel our soldiers and civilians are being asked to sacrifice without a just cause," and "the American people will ask for our forces to come home."

Well, if Eikenberry is really interested, a June 8 BBC World News America/Harris Poll found that 52% of Americans believe that the United States should move to get its troops out of Afghanistan "now", with only 35% believing that the troops should stay; while a Pew Research Center poll of mid-June showed 56% of Americans favor an "immediate" pullout.

"America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world," the ambassador continued. "We are a good people." 4

How nice. Reminds me of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, after the 1999 78-day bombing of the helpless people of the former Yugoslavia, a war crime largely instigated by herself, when she declared: "The United States is good. We try to do our best everywhere." 5

Do these grownups really believe what comes out of their mouths? Does Mr. Eikenberry actually think that "America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world"? Sixty-six years after World War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; 58 years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea; for over a century, the United States has occupied Guantanamo Bay in Cuba against the fervent wishes of the Cuban people. And what other term shall we use to describe the American presence in Iraq for more than eight years? And Afghanistan for almost ten?

George W. Bush had no doubt: The Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied," he said. "I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either." 6

However, the current Republican leader in the House, John Boehner appears to be a true believer. "The United States has never proposed establishing a permanent base in Iraq or anywhere else," he affirmed a few years ago. 7

If 18th century Americans could resent occupation by the British, when many of the Americans were British themselves, then how much easier to understand the resentment of Iraqis and Afghans toward foreign occupiers.

Notes
New York Times, August 10, 2003 ↩
Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (1980), pp.129, 139 ↩
Foreign Policy, "State Department Innovator Goes to Google", September 7 2010; Washington Post, June 24, 2011 ↩
Washington Post, June 19, 2011↩
Washington Post, October 23, 1999 ↩
Washington Post, April 14, 2004 ↩
United Press International, July 26, 2007 ↩
–

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28453.htm

 
 

[Sasha]

In summary, the MOH compilation documents that during the first 100 days of NATO targeting of civilians, 6121 were killed or injured. The statistical breakdown is as follows: 3093 Men were injured and 668 were killed; Women killed number 260 and 1318 injured; Children killed number 141 and 641 injured. Of those seriously injured 655 are still under medical care in hospitals while 4,397 have been released to their families for outpatient care.

Gender    Killed    Injured    Total
Men        668     3093        3761
Women    260     1318        1578
Children   141       641         782
Total     1069      5052       6121 

This is not even a not-war, or a euphamistic kinetic hickup.  This a just a plain old massacre.

[bigron]

The Sorman Massacre


For once, Thierry Meyssan is not offering us a clinical analysis of geo-political developments. He is reporting on facts that he witnessed firsthand: the story of his friend, Engineer Khaled K. Al-Hamedi. A story of horror and blood where NATO embodies the comeback of barbarism.

By Thierry Meyssan

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28474.htm

July 03, 2011 "Voltairenet" --- It was a family celebration, the Libyan way. Everyone had gathered to celebrate the third birthday of little Al-Khweldy. The grand-parents, the brothers and sisters and cousins were crowding inside the family house located in Sorman, 70 Kms West of the capital: a big garden where small houses had been built for the various members of the family, plain, one-floor houses.

No big luxury, just the simplicity of desert people. A quiet and harmonious atmosphere. The grand-father, Marshall Al-Khweldy Al-Hamedi, used to raise birds here. - He is a hero of the Revolution who took part in the overthrow of the monarchy and in his country’s liberation from colonial exploitation. All are very proud of him. - The son, Khaled Al-Hamedi, President of IOPCR, one of the most important Arab humaitarian associations, used to raise does. About thirty children were running around among the animals.

They were also preparing the wedding of his brother Mohammed, gone to the front lines to fight against NATO-trained foreign mercenaries. The ceremony was to take place here in a few days’ time. His fiancee was already beaming.

Nobody noticed that, among the guests, a spy had sneaked in. He was pretending to twitter his friends. In reality, he had just marked the targets and was relaying them through the social network at NATO Headquarters.

The next day, during the night of 19 to 20 June 2011, at around 2.30 am, Khaled went back home after having visited and assisted compatriots who had fled the Alliance’s bombings. He was close enough to his house to hear the hissing of missiles and their explosions.

NATO fired eight of them, of 900 kilos each. The spy had placed markers in each house, including the children’s bedrooms. The missiles were dropped a few seconds apart. The grand-parents had time to get out of their house before it was destroyed. It was already too late to rescue the children and grand-children. When the last missile hit their house, the Marshall had the instinctive reaction to shield his wife with his body. They had just stepped out of the door when they were flung fifteen meters away by an explosion. But they survived.

When Khaled arrived, there was only devastation. His wife, whom he loved so much, and the child she was bearing were gone. His children, for whom he would have given anything, were crushed by the explosions and collapsing ceilings.

The houses were left in ruins. Twelve mutilated bodies were lying under the rubble. The does, hit by fragments, were agonising in their pen.

The neighbours who rushed to their rescue silently searched through the debris for any sign of life. Unfortunately, there was no hope. The children didn’t stand a chance of escaping the missiles. The corpse of a beheaded child is extracted. The grand-father is reciting verses of the Coran. His voice is firm, he does not cry. His pain is too strong.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, NATO spokespersons declared to have bombed the headquarters of pro-Ghaddafi militia in order to protect the civilian population from the tyrant who is repressing it.

It is not known how the whole thing was planned by the targets committee, nor how the chiefs of NATO’s general staff followed the unfolding of the operation. What is clear is that the Atlantic Alliance, with its spruced-up generals and right-thinking diplomats, has decided to murder the chidren of Libyan leaders to break their psychological resistance.

Since the XIIIth century, European theologists and jurists have prohibited the assassination of families. Only the mafia has broken this absolute taboo. The mafia and now NATO.

On 1st July, when 1.7 million people were demonstrating in Tripoli to defend their country against foreign aggression, Khaled went to the front to bring relief to refugees and the injured. Snipers were waiting for him. They tried to kill him. He was seriously injured; however, according to the doctors, his life is no longer in danger.

NATO’s dirty work is not yet finished.
   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28474.htm

[bigron]

NATO Is An Outlaw, The ICC Is Its Accomplice


By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28471.htm


July 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The International Criminal Court at The Hague is a pariah in the world of Justice and International Law; those who work for it are traitors to their cause, the Institution itself is an insult to every fibre of civilisation and a knife in the back of the notion that the law prevails and is applied without bias.

It is patently clear nowadays that the ICC is a tool in the hands of NATO - a cynical tool which bases itself on the pseudo-precept that it follows the law, a manipulative organism which twists legal principles and applies them with two weights and measures. What is amazing, is that those behind the ICC and NATO think that the public will believe them.

NATO has committed war crimes in Kosovo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. NATO has committed terrorist attacks occasioning murder in all three theatres of war. Nothing happened, the ICC remained silent. Arrest warrants have been served for David Cameron and Barack Obama in police stations near their places of work and residence for the murder of Colonel Gaddafi's three grandchildren and other civilians in Libya. Monitoring the situation, we see that nothing has yet happened.

NATO's violation of the law

NATO's remit in Libya were UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011) which, summarised, concentrated on no boots on the ground in Libya among NATO forces and this is not the case - violation 1; the enforcement of a no-fly zone, which does not include strafing civilian structures - violation 2; measures to protect civilians from being attacked does not mean attacking government forces fighting hundreds of heavily armed terrorists - violation 3.

Under the UN Charter it is illegal to take sides in an internal conflict - violation 4; it is illegal to murder or attempt to murder government officials - violation 5; with no formal declaration of war, with no remit from the Military Committee of the UNSC, any action occasioning murder is illegal - violation 6; ditto attempted murder - violation 7; ditto actions occasioning grievous bodily hard - violation 8; ditto actual bodily harm - violation 9; ditto criminal damage - violation 10.

Under the Geneva Conventions it is illegal to attack civilian structures with military hardware - violation 11; it is also illegal to deploy in theatres of conflict munitions and weaponry which will have an affect after such conflict. The alleged use of cluster bombs by NATO and of Depleted Uranium (there are several precedents) could provide violation 12.

At least eleven, possibly 12, violations of international law in Libya, countless others in other operations, and the ICC says nothing. The judges of the ICC receive their instructions and insult their academic area, the fundamental principles of law and their professional class with barefaced arrogance. I challenge Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo to investigate the above charges and to pronounce himself.

The joke which is the ICC

Two international lawyers have exposed the joke which the ICC is. Within just a few hours, lawyers Themba Langa (South Africa - Counsel to Muammar al-Qathafi, Saif al-Islam al-Qathafi and Abdullah al-Senussi) and Fabio Maria Galiani (Italy - Legal advisor and member of the defence team) uncovered no less than eight points of law proving that the ICC is a kangaroo court without one iota of legal validity, yet again proved in this case. Their points are summarised as follows, my observations in brackets.

They point out that for a start the Court has no jurisdiction in Libya because it was never ratified there, that anyway notwithstanding this, under international customary law a Head of State has immunity (did they take Saddam Hussein to The Hague?. Indeed the ICC has no jurisdiction in the USA, so why should it have any in Libya?)

Secondly they point out that the referral to the ICC by the UN Security Council is a violation of jurisdiction, independence and impartiality because it instructs the Court to exclude prosecution for certain persons and in following this directive, the ICC itself is in violation of its own constituent Statutes; thirdly the UNSC does not have the power to dictate terms over Libya to the ICC and anyway under international customary law, the ruling yesterday by the ICC is invalid in countries not signatories to the Rome Treaty which set up the Court.

Fourthly, if in the following instances, the Prosecutor has still not decided whether to open a case on Georgia (because the evidence is being considered) since 2008 (three years); on Guinea since 2009 (two years), on Colombia since 2006 (five years) why then was all the evidence on Libya read, digested and treated legally within just three days when the investigation was opened? (Where is the case against Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi? Where are the cases against the Islamist terrorists who massacred Black Libyans and children? Where is the case against NATO, against Obama, against Cameron, against Sarkozy, against Berlusconi?)

Fifthly the ICC did not even notice that the referral by the UNSC violated the Court's Statute; sixthly, if NATO respects the Court and its deliberation, (why is it continuing to perpetrate 100 terrorist attacks a day protecting terrorists?) then the defendants should have the right to defence themselves. Seventh, NATO is accountable for murder, destruction of property and injury to civilians (acts of terrorism) and eighth, the entire campaign has been based on manipulation through the media (rendering the legal tenets void under any normal court of law. But then again, the ICC is no court of law, is it?)

Next, on the impartiality of this "Court", the lawyers mentioned above claim in their statement:

"One of the judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I, Mr. Cuno Tarfusser, recently made statements to the Italian media on the situation in Libya which indicated that the ICC is not impartial".

One last question, why do the USA, UK and France prohibit the delivery of baby food to Libyan children? Isn't it enough for Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy to murder them by bombing? If them enjoy murdering children, why don't they start at home? When they look at their children, do they hear the screams of Colonel Gaddafi's grandchildren as they fried in their own blood?

So, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, what, as a judge and a lawyer, do you have to say to THAT? Nothing, of course, because we know who and what you are.

This item was first posted at Pravda.ru
   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28471.htm

[bigron]

Journalism as a Weapon of War in Libya


By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28472.htm

July 02, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The truth has been turned on its head in Libya. NATO and the Libyan government are saying contradictory things. NATO says that the Libyan regime will fall in a matter of days, while the Libyan government says that the fighting in Misrata will end in about two weeks.

During the night the sound of NATO jets flying over Tripoli can be heard in the Mediterranean coastal city. Tripoli has not been bombed for a few days, but the sound of the flyovers have been numerous. The Atlantic Alliance deliberately picks the night as a means to disturb the sleep of residence in an attempt to spread fear. Small children in Libya have lost a lot of sleep during this war. This is part of the psychological war being waged. It is meant to break the spirit of Libya. This is all additional to the severing wound imposed on Libya through trickery and sedition.

In the same context, the media war against Libya has continued too. The Rixos Hotel in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where the majority of the international press is located, is a nest of lies and warped narratives where foreign reporters are twisting realities, spinning events, and misreporting to justify the NATO war against Libya. Every report and news wire being sent out of Libya by international reporters has to carefully be cross-checked and analyzed. Foreign journalists have put words in the mouth of Libyans and are willfully blind. They have ignored the civilian deaths in Libya, the clear war crimes being perpetrated against the Libyan people, and the damage to civilian infrastructure, from hotels to docks and hospitals.

One group of Libyan youth explained in a private conversation that when speaking to reporters they would interview in twos. One would ask a question followed immediately by another one. In the process the answer to the first question would be used as the answer for the second question. In the Libyan hospitals the foreign reports try not to take pictures of the wounded and dying. They just go into the hospitals to paint the image of impartiality, but virtually report about nothing and ignore almost everything newsworthy. They refuse to tell the other side of the story. Shamelessly in front of seriously injured civilians, the type of questions many foreign reporters ask doctors, nurses, and hospital staff is if they have been treating military and security personnel in the hospitals.

CNN has even released a report from Misrata by Sara Sidner showing the sodomization of a woman with a broomstick which was conducted by Libyan soldiers (which it refers to as Qaddafi troops as a means of demonization). In reality the video was a domestic affair and from prior to the conflict. It originally took place in Tripoli and the man even has an accent from Tripoli. This is the type of fabrications that the mainstream media is pushing forward to push for war and military intervention.

There are now investigations underway to show that depleted uranium has been used against Libyans. The use of depleted uranium is an absolute war crime. It is not only an attack on the present, but it also leaves a radioactive trace that attacks the unborn children of tomorrow. Future generations will be hurt by these weapons too. These generations of the future are innocent. The use of depleted uranium is the equivalent of the U.S. planting nuclear weapons in Germany or Japan during the Second World War and leaving timers for them to detonate in 2011. This is an important and newsworthy issue in Libya and all the foreign journalists have heard about it, but how many have actually covered it?

The Ionis, a ship from Benghazi that docked in Tripoli on June 26, 2011, was carrying over 100 people who wanted to leave Benghazi to be unified with their families in Tripoli. Foreign reports were there en masse from all over the world. CNN, RT, and Reuters were amongst them. Amongst the foreign reports there were many who had no clue about the situation in Libya and were working on the basis of misinformation carried forward from their respective stations and countries. In informal discussion when these reporters were challenged about the basis of their assessments they failed to answer and sounded ridiculous. One reporter from Western Europe said that the defections at the governmental level in Tripoli where snowballing, but when challenged by a colleague she could only cite the so-called defection of a Libyan athlete.

The arrival of the passenger ship was significant, because it is a symptom that the political partition of Libya is underway. When families and individuals are being shuttled to different sides of Libya, it is an indicator that some sort of dividing line will be drawn either temporarily or permanently.

The Roman Catholic Church in Libya has also been disrupted and hurt. The position of Father Giovanni Martinelli, the Bishop of Tripoli, is in contradiction to that of the U.S. and NATO. Contact has been lost with the Roman Catholic churches and communities in Benghazi and its environs. Bishop Martinelli has also lost dear friends in the war who have nothing to do whatsoever with any combat or hostility. What have foreign journalists and news agencies said about this?

Journalists have a responsibility to tell the truth and report all newsworthy issues. Some do, but their stories either get edited or never get published or aired. Others say nothing and instead concoct stories. It is now the responsibility of the public to look at the reports coming out of Libya from all sides with a grain of salt. Diversity of news is just one starter.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Canadian-based sociologist and scholar. Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), specializing in geopolitical and strategic issues.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28472.htm

[tazzmission]

what else is new? to those tyrants war is a money maker for them

[Goldman]

I have never been so embrassed for the United States.

[bigron]

.Published on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by The Guardian/UK


The US Must End Its Illegal War in Libya Now

President Obama has ripped up the US constitution for Nato's ill-considered Libyan adventure. Congress must restore sense

by Dennis Kucinich


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/06-6
 
This week, I am sponsoring legislation in the United States Congress that will end US military involvement in Libya for the following reasons:

France has confirmed it has been arming Libyan rebels, in contravention of a UN arms embargo. (Photograph: Ricardo Garcia Vilanova/AFP/Getty Images)

First, the war is illegal under the United States constitution and our War Powers Act, because only the US Congress has the authority to declare war and the president has been unable to show that the US faced an imminent threat from Libya. The president even ignored his top legal advisers at the Pentagon and the department of justice who insisted he needed congressional approval before bombing Libya.

Second, the war has reached a stalemate and is unwinnable without the deployment of Nato ground troops, effectively an invasion of Libya. The whole operation was terribly ill-considered from the beginning. While Nato supports the Benghazi-based opposition (situated in the oil-rich north-east), there is little evidence that the opposition has support of the majority of Libyans. The leading opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (which had reportedly been backed by the CIA in the 1980s), should never have launched an armed civil war against the government if they had no chance absent a massive Nato air campaign and the introduction of Nato troops. Their reckless actions, encouraged by western political, military and intelligence interests, created the humanitarian crisis that was then used to justify the Nato war campaign.

Third, the United States cannot afford it. The US cost of the mission is projected to soon reach more than $1bn, and we are already engaged in massive cutbacks of civil services for our own people.

It is not surprising that a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike think the US should not be involved in Libya.

This war is misguided. An invasion would be a disaster. Nato already is out of control, using a UN mandate allowing for protection of civilians as the flimsy pretext for an unauthorised mission of regime change through massive violence. In a just world, the Nato commander would be held responsible for any violations of international law. As a means of continuing the civil war, Nato member France and coalition ally Qatar have both admitted shipping weapons to Libya, in open violation of the United Nations arms embargo.

In the end, the biggest casualty of this game of nations will be the legitimacy of the UN, its resolutions and mandates, and international rule of law. This condition must be reversed. The ban on arms supplies to Libya must be enforced, not subverted by Nato countries. The US must cease its illegal and counterproductive support for a military resolution now.

The US Congress must act to cut off funds for the war because there is no military solution in Libya. Serious negotiations for a political solution must begin to end the violence and create an environment for peace negotiations to fulfil the legitimate, democratic aspirations of the people. A political solution will become viable when the opposition understands that regime change is the privilege of the Libyan people, not of Nato.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/06-6

[bigron]

   
Libya and War Powers


The war against Libya may violate the US constitution, but once again the empire moves ahead with the military option.


By Ted Rall

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28506.htm
.
July 07, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- "Much rumbling has emanated from the US Congress on Libya - centered around technicalities around the War Powers Act [sic]," writes Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times. "As the semantic contortions involved in the Libya tragedy have already gone way beyond Newspeak, this means in practice US drones will keep joining NATO fighter jets in bombing civilians in Tripoli."

Which is, of course, the big capital-P Point. The people of Libya, like those of Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and Yemen and so on, are suffering privation and mutilation and death at the hands of NATO, which is nothing more than an American sock puppet. To the victims, the carnage is what matters. We cannot lose sight of that - and most of the world will not. It is only the Americans, as always oblivious about the places they are wrecking and the people they are killing, who can't find Libya on a map, much less worry about it.

Albeit secondarily, the struggle over war powers in Washington matters. It goes to the core of the nature of the American nation-state, the most heavily-armed country on the planet and thus the greatest cause of fear.

War is the riskiest endeavor a nation can undertake. It can lead to catastrophe (Germany in 1945). A war can end in not-defeat (the USSR in Afghanistan during the 1980s) yet lead to collapse. It can wreck the economy (beginning with Vietnam, the US in every war). A war widely viewed as an unjustifiable act of aggression (the US in Iraq) can create new enemies and corrode a nation's moral standing internationally.

Moreover, popular support is essential to victory. Thus, for political leaders there are two principal reasons to make sure their populations support them: first, popular wars inspire sacrifice and recruits; second, if and when there is a reversal of fortune it is easier to ask for sustained effort.

Beyond practical considerations, any act as inherently monumental as sending troops and bombs to attack a foreign power must involve the majority of the citizenry, certainly all elected representatives. Otherwise it cannot claim even the window-dressing of democracy.

Setting aside questions that ought not to be set aside-whether the US-NATO campaign against Gadafi is winnable, benevolent or may have ramifications beyond the conflict zone-the outcome of the internal struggle over whether Obama has the right to unilaterally commit the armed forces of the United States has broad implications for the world. If Obama prevails, establishing a firm precedent that a president need not consult with the legislature, the US will have undergone a final, undeniable transformation.

Currently, right-wing exceptionalists view America as a nation that, though it makes mistakes, is generally a shining beacon of democracy and hope to a dark world, a true bastion of freedom. Leftist critics see such rhetoric as naïve at best, dishonest at worst; they view the US system as generally hegemonic and increasingly oppressive, yet forced to provide sufficient basic civil liberties to its own population to forestall internal revolt.

Should Congress fail to sanction Obama in some significant way - impeachment is warranted though extremely unlikely, the bloom would be off the tattered, skanky rose once and for all. A president might be elected but would act like, and thus effectively be, a dictator. The tacit consent of the governed, the American people, would mean that the world would have to see the United States as even more dangerous than it already does.

Ah, irony: the International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued a warrant for the Libyan ruler's arrest for the killing, torture and imprisonment of Libyan citizens. On the scales of bloody mayhem, however, Gadafi is a mere piker next to another man who has killed many thousands of Libyans (and Afghans and Iraqis, etc.) and controls an international gulag archipelago of secret prisons and torture camps. When will the ICC send cops after Obama? As things now stand, both Gadafi and Obama carry out their misdeeds with impunity.

Neither the American nor the Libyan tyrant has a parliament to worry about. NATO airstrikes destroyed the one in Tripoli in early June.

So let's look at the war over the non-war war in Libya.

At the center of the debate over the Libyan war in Washington is the constitutionally- defined role of the US president. Legally, the president of the United States has "not the power to command, but the power to persuade," political scientist Richard Neustadt wrote. Theodore Roosevelt, the early 20th century leader who spearheaded the transformation of the U.S. into a global empire, agreed. He dubbed the American presidency a "bully pulpit." (By "bully," he meant "terrific," a meaning that has fallen out of popular usage. He did not mean intimidating or aggressive.) The president is not a dictator—not in theory, anyway. He is highly influential, but power resides with other government institutions.

Under this structure, the US Constitution is clear: only the Congress has the right to declare war. This has only happened five times in American history. The most recent was seven decades ago, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, famously declaring the day of the raid "a day that will live in infamy," asked Congress to exercise its constitutional prerogative to authorise a formal state of war.

Yet the US has been one of the most bellicose nations on earth throughout its history. Rarely has a year passed without American military forces invading, occupying, shelling, bombing or otherwise attacking a foreign country.

For my most recent book The Anti-American Manifesto I attempted to compile a comprehensive list of US military actions. They were literally uncountable. Central American states were invaded, colonized, and partitioned so often they'd might as have well have printed their signs in English and used dollars for currency - and some did. The list of US military interventions goes on for page after page after page - and that's after shrinking the type so small that it's barely readable.

For all the admirable qualities of the American people - love of rock 'n' roll, deep-fried food, and hugely impractical cars, and ridiculous movies featuring numerous explosions - Americans are not the smartest. They are an easily confused lot.

This is not their fault. The media is filled with repetitive pro-government propaganda, schools whitewash American history, and years of effective Madison Avenue advertising has made it impossible for them to judge what is true and what is BS. Not to mention the fact that signs of independent thinking prompt the issuance of prescriptions for brain-deadening anti-depressant narcotics.

In such a situation, simple facts evaporate. Even members of the professional pundit class routinely cite the president's role as "commander-in-chief of the army and the navy" as enunciated by the constitution as the source of his power to drop napalm on Vietnamese farmers, insert commandos into the Iranian desert and, on two occasions nearly three decades apart, blow up Colonel Gaddafi's children.

In reality, the president is commander-in-chief of nothing. The wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere have no basis in US law.

The US Constitution was written in the late 18th century by men who had served as officials in the British colonial government. As it was in England at the time, the term "commander in chief" was widely understood to be completely ceremonial. Early US presidents, who had been present at the constitutional conventions that created the framework of the new republic, understood and accepted that they had no right to commit soldiers to combat. The first president to do so, Thomas Jefferson, formally requested authorization from Congress in order to launch punitive raids against the Barbary States of north Africa, including the city-state of Tripoli. As time passed, however, presidents exploited war fever, fading memories and anti-intellectualism to assert expanded executive power. Though never ratified by law, "commander in chief" came to imply something it had never meant originally: the unilateral right to declare war. They often came to Congress for a rubber-stamp resolution of approval, but this was mere window-dressing. Over time, they didn't even bother. They might informally consult with a few key leaders. Most recently, Barack Obama dispensed with Congress altogether. He began bombing Libya with the stroke of a pen.

"On the question of war power, I believe the Constitution is as clear as it is plain," Joe Biden said on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1998. "To be sure, the Commander in Chief ensures that the president has the sole power to direct US military forces in combat. But that power - except in very few limited circumstances - derives totally from Congressional authority. It is not the power to move from a state of a peace to a state of war. It is a power, once the state of war is in play, to command the forces, but not to change the state. Until that authority is granted, the President has no inherent power to send forces to war—except, as I said, in certain very limited circumstances, such as to repel sudden attacks or to protect the safety and security of Americans abroad."

Anyone with a passing familiarity with US law knows that Biden was right. (At the time he was arguing against Bill Clinton's undeclared war against Serbia.) But it didn't matter. In the United States, de facto trumps the law of the land. The US government is neither above nor beyond the law; it is outside. It is lawless. The culmination of the triumph of might-makes-right autocracy over democracy was George W. Bush's "theory of the unitary executive," which asserts that the president is not merely the highest-ranking member of the executive branch of government, but embodies it in his person. Two more branches, and we will have arrived at the Fuhrer Prinicple.

Even Democratic "liberals" accept this state of affairs. Last year the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore complained: "It matters not whom we elect. The Pentagon and the military contractors call the shots. The title 'Commander in Chief' is ceremonial, like 'Employee of the Month' at your local Burger King." True, that title is ceremonial—but here Moore is complaining that warmaking power has been stolen from the president, with whom he believes it ought to reside, by the goons of the military-industrial complex.

One wonders whether Biden, now vice president, still decries what in 1998 he called the prevalent bipartisan "monarchist" view of the power of the president to make war.

Near the end of the Vietnam War Congress passed (over Richard Nixon's veto) the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to receive approval from Congress within 60 to 90 days of the commencement of "hostilities." Presidents of both parties have disputed the Resolution's constitutionality and/or have simply ignored it. Which is a little strange. As Daghlia Lithwick wrote in Newsweek in 2008, the WPR has never stopped US presidents from doing what they love most: bombing and shooting and whatnot.

"Congress is always too deferential, too credulous and too timid to check a strong president in wartime, and only ever speaks out after the war has become unpopular," Lithwick wrote. "Congress will always offer up a tiny little authorization to use force, and stand by as that authorization swallows up several countries, many years and thousands of dead soldiers. Our war-powers problems lie not in the failure of checks and balances, but in the fact that Congress is invariably comfortable opposing wars only in hindsight."

But even the possibility of post facto opposition was more than former law professor Barack Obama was willing to countenance. He has taken a novel tack on Libya, stating that he believed the Resolution to be both constitutional and binding but not applicable to the bloodshed being unleashed upon Libya because it does not rise to the level of actual "hostilities".

Military operations against Libya, Obama's lawyers stated, is under NATO control. They also claimed there were no US ground troops. Even if these were valid arguments - most experts say they are not - they are transparently untrue. NATO is a fig-leaf for the US. Both soldiers and CIA operatives have been training and arming the Benghazi-based rebels for months.

Will Congress move beyond toothless resolutions? Will it censure Obama or cut off funding for his war against Libya? I guess not.

Americans politicians have neither the will nor the maneuvering space to save the United States from descending, once and for all, into total despotism. Where will this superpower, which spends 54 percent of discretionary federal budget on the Pentagon and debt service on old wars, strike next?

War will come again: meaner, faster and even more thoughtlessly.

Ted Rall is an American political cartoonist, columnist and author. His most recent book is The Anti-American Manifesto. His website is rall.com.

This item was first posted at al-jazeera.net

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28506.htm   
 

[bigron]

NATO Using Nuclear Weapons in Libya


by Stephen Lendman

July 7, 2011

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79349&hd=&size=1&l=e


As part of a Libya international observer team, Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya headlined his July 5 Global Research.ca article, "NATO War Crimes: Depleted Uranium Found in Libya by Scientists," saying:

Sites targeted include "civilians and civilian infrastructure." Scientists from the Surveying and Collecting Specimens and Laboratory Measuring Group confirmed "radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes) at bombed sites" from field surveys conducted. Scientific analysis was conducted at the Nuclear Energy Institution of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

It showed that "several sites contain even higher than expected doses of uranium," including holes from NATO missiles and ordnance fragments. In interviews, Nazemroaya also said cluster bombs and other weapons are used freely in civilian neighborhoods targeting non-military sites.

Washington and NATO allies are using illegal "dirty bombs."

In late March, the Stop the War Coalition said dozens of US, UK, and French launched bombs and missiles against Libya in the first 24 hours all had DU warheads. They continue to be used daily despite Pentagon and other governments' denials.

On April 14, Foreign Policy in Focus columnist Conn Hallinan told Press TV that:

"The fact that the US is denying the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions is just nonsense." When used against tanks, "enormous fireballs" are visible, a unique DU signature. As a result, "long-term consequences (for Libyans) are going to be severe." More on that and DU munitions below.

On April 19, investigative journalist/author Dave Lindorff also told Press TV that strong evidence points to DU use, saying:

"The way some of these (armored) vehicles and tanks have been hit look like it's pretty strong evidence that it is depleted uranium. It's the kind of explosive burn that you get from that particular ammunition. And certainly the US has been flying A-10s, which generally use (DU) shells in their armaments."

On June 6, historian/researcher Dr. Randy Short repeated the same charge, telling Press TV viewers that NATO targeted Tripoli residential areas with DU weapons, cluster bombs, and other illegal substances. Back from Tripoli, he said:

"I've been to one particular area....in which Seif al-Islam Gaddafi's house is located, and in that community which was residential, I saw the damage to civilian homes."

He added that high numbers of civilian deaths and injuries emboldened Libyans to resist Western imperialism.

On April 18, former Pentagon Depleted Uranium Project director Dr. Doug Rokke told Russia Today that DU struck areas can't be decontaminated, saying it has a half-lfe of 4.5 billion years. As a result, it's called "the silent killer that will never stop killing."

He also said he "was watching ABC News (on April 15) and, lo and behold, there was a DU impact. It burned and burned and burned."

During the 1991 Gulf War, Rokke was ordered to lie about its use and effects. It damaged his health, and most of his crew died from exposure. Nonetheless, "DU is so good against all types of targets that (the Pentagon) will never give it up."

America is one of the few non-signatories to the UN Human Rights Sub-Commission's DU ban. For over two decades, it's contaminated vast areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Serbia/Kosovo, Libya and other nations struck. Moreover, the Pentagon regularly uses other illegal terror weapons, including experimental ones tested in real time.

Former Lawrence Livermore Lab chemical physicist Marion Falk calls DU "the perfect weapon for killing lots of people," adding that "depleted uranium missiles (and other weapons) fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way."

On March 31, the UK Uranium Weapons Network and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament issued a joint news release headlined, "Fears grow over possible depleted uranium use in Libya," saying:

Inhaling highly toxic/radioactive DU "is thought to be linked to the sharp increases in cancer rates and birth defects reported in affected areas," as well as numerous other diseases.

Nonetheless, on March 28, Admiral William Gortney said, "We have employed A-10s and AC-130s over the weekend." A-10 gunships use DU munitions against tanks, armored vehicles, and other targets, including residential neighborhood ones.

They fire 3,900 armor-piercing high explosive rounds per minute, spreading vast DU contamination. According to Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's general secretary Kate Hudson:

"Depleted uranium weapons are weapons of indiscriminate effect," causing cancer, birth defects and other diseases. "Using them in built up areas in effect targets civilians. This runs counter to everything the coalition has claimed about protecting (them. It represents) an appalling step backwards. It is completely unacceptable - indeed illegal," because of their long-term harm to human health.

Why America's Military Uses DU Munitions

DU's density enables it easily to penetrate targets and destroy them. They're solid missiles, bombs, shells and bullets, weighing up to 5,000 pounds in a single "bunker buster" bomb.

Using solid DU projectiles or warheads, they're used in all US war theaters, including indiscriminately against civilian targets. They're de facto nuclear bombs, what major media reports won't explain and Pentagon officials deny.

First developed by the Navy in 1968, Israel tested them under US supervision during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Later they were sold to 29 or more countries but never used until the 1991 Gulf War when America broke an international prohibition. Thereafter, thousands of tons contaminated air, water and soil in target zones and well beyond.

Although no international convention or treaty bans them, they're de facto and de jure illegal under the 1907 Hague Convention, prohibiting "poison or poisoned weapons" use. Also, under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, as well as later Geneva and other conventions, specifically banning chemical, biological, and other poisoned weapons.

In all forms, DU is radioactive and chemically toxic, thus conforming to Hague's poisonous weapons definition. Using them is thus a war crime.

Moreover, their use also meets the U.S. federal code definition of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) in 2 of 3 categories:

[The US CODE, TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows:

"The term 'weapon of mass destruction' means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity."

Because America is a Hague and Geneva signatory, its own code is thus violated. Moreover, under other binding international laws, using weapons that cause post-battle environmental and human harm are illegal and prohibited.

Their greatest damage happens after use because they penetrate targets deeply, aerosolize into a fine spray, then spread permanent contamination over wide areas. Their microscopic and submicroscopic particles remain suspended or get swept into the air from tainted soil. Winds then carry them worldwide as radioactive components of atmospheric dust, settling indiscriminately far from strike zones.

As a result, countless millions have been irreparably harmed or killed, combatants and civilians. In fact, radiation poisoning causes virtually every imaginable illness from severe headaches, muscle pain, general fatigue, depression, and permanent disability to major birth defects, infections, cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer, and later deaths.

Libyans now face the same fate as Iraqis, Afghans, Serbians, Kosovars, and other victims of US aggression. It's of no consequence for US political and Pentagon planners, spreading death, destruction, and human misery globally, not liberation and better lives because of American good will it never had and doesn't now.

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=m79349&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

[bigron]

The ICC and another African prosecution



BY Curtis Doebbler


July 11, 2011

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/16048/Opinion/The-ICC-and-another-African-prosecution.aspx

On Libya, the chief prosecutor of the ICC has shown that he is either incompetent or cannot stand up independently to pressure, particularly from Washington


The recent effort by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its prosecutor to prosecute Libyan government officials raises significant questions about the impartiality, integrity, independence and competence of the ICC to contribute to international justice and the rule of law.

While the prosecution must be understood in the context a UN Security Council request to which the ICC must respond, the poor handling of the response by both the Prosecutor’s Office and by the Pre-trial Chamber of the ICC add to the concerns of many legal observers.

These latest missteps may be the ones that definitively doom the ICC to being an obstacle to international justice, instead of an instrument for the promotion of international justice.

The International Criminal Court

The ICC was created in 1998 as an attempt to end impunity for violations of international law by senior government officials. This was done by the adoption of the Rome Statute, a legally binding treaty between states. The end of this treaty was to be achieved, according to the preamble of the Rome Statute, with full respect for the Charter of the United Nations.

Especially important was, according to the preamble, "that all States shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State." And it was emphasised "that nothing in this Statute shall be taken as authorising any State Party to intervene in an armed conflict or in the internal affairs of any State."

The preamble, although itself not legally binding, must be considered when interpreting and applying the provisions of the treaty, including those authorising investigations and prosecutions. Moreover, the Rome Statute is supplemented by additional instruments that assist in its interpretation, while it is subject to the general rules of international law.

Among the additional instruments are the Regulations of the Office of the Prosecutor adopted in 2009. These regulations state that, "the Prosecutor shall ensure that the Office and its members maintain their full independence and do not seek or act on instructions from any external source." Moreover the prosecutor "shall present all relevant mitigating and aggravating factors … in an impartial manner." As discussed below, in relation to Libya, both the prosecutor and the court seemed to ignore factors that were not only mitigating, but also essential to the definition of the crimes with which they were dealing.

Although not a UN body, the ICC has been brought into a relationship with the UN both by the provisions of its Statute and by an agreement with the United Nations. The ICC Statute provides, somewhat oddly for a non-UN body, that it may be forced to take certain situations into account by the Security Council and that the Security Council may, in effect, block certain prosecutions. The prosecutions concerning Libya are based on the Security Council’s referral of the case to the prosecutor — not the prosecutor’s own decision; or, as is usually the case under international law where all states are sovereign equals, the consent of the state concerned.

The United States was influential in pushing for this referral, once again a prosecution by a rich and powerful country that blocks the prosecution of its own nationals, but seeks to prosecute people from developing countries. Under United States law, such biased action by a state authority against a group of individuals could be argued to be discrimination in violation of US law. The US, however, seems less concerned with discriminating against others under international law. In fact, the administration of the first black president in American history recently announced it would not participate in a meeting against racial discrimination at the UN in New York this September because discrimination against Palestinians by Israel will be considered.

The US action on Libya also shows that it has a disproportionate —albeit indirect —influence over the actions of the ICC prosecutor. Combined with the United States discriminatory understanding, or how international criminal law applies to others’ but not its nationals, this bodes badly for matters in which it has a role concerning the administration of international justice, such as the Libyan prosecutions.

The ICC’s handling of the Libyan prosecutions

The ICC’s efforts to prosecute Libyan government officials must be understood in the context of previous prosecutions, all of which have been against the nationals of developing countries, especially those in Africa who are among the most exploited and therefore often the poorest people in the world. All of the prosecutions have been supported by the rich developed countries, some of the most important of which themselves refuse to submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC, as the example of the US mentioned above indicates.

A basic understanding of the exploitation of Africans coupled with a commitment to law as the protection of the most vulnerable would suggest that Africans should be the least prosecuted and those who have contributed to their exploitation and vulnerability the most prosecuted; exactly the opposite has happened. This is not because the developed countries have not contributed to the exploitation and vulnerability of Africans or have acted with respect for the law.

The United States, for example, while encouraging the prosecution of African leaders has ensured that its leaders —for whom there is significant evidence of responsibility for killing millions of Iraqi and Afghani nationals —enjoy impunity for their international crimes. In what can only be termed a neo-colonialist mindset, the US has pursued both the slaughter of people in developing countries and the prosecution of their leaders, while itself remaining above the law.

The wanton aggression against the people of Libya, which was not authorised by the UN except in the minds of the aggressors, is the international crime that US judge Robert Jackson at Nuremberg called the supreme international crime embodying the evil of all other crimes. Yet no consideration has been given to this crime by the ICC prosecutor or the court. While this is understandable, given how the aggressors have tied their hands, it is not understandable that in exercise of their duty to dispense justice fairly and impartially, and to be seen as doing so, the prosecutor and the court have ignored circumstances that create at the very least an impression of bias, partiality, and lack of independence.

The prosecutor has done this both in his actions and his public statements, including his 3 March 2011 announcement of his conclusion that an investigation into the situation in Libya was warranted. The court has done this in its 43-page decision on the prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants.

The ICC prosecutors’ focus is not so much on actions undertaken by the Libyan government but on the intention behind them. While this is in some degree appropriate, it stands in stark contrast to the silence by the international community in other situations. For example, US President George W Bush referred to the Taliban in Afghanistan as a religious group, in his view a fanatical one, and then called for the killing or capture of all of them. Such a clear expression of the intention of genocide, indeed followed by actions to implement it, has rarely been seen, or is hopefully likely to be seen in the future. Nevertheless, despite the obligation of every one of the approximately 150 states that are party to the Genocide Convention to prosecute this crime, no action was taken.

In the case of Libya, the evidence is more tenuous. It is true that the various representative of the government made inappropriate statements; the most onerous of these statements were not followed by action. Indeed, in response to the popular demonstrations on 16 February, the government released prisoners and promised changes. On 17 and 18 February, however, demonstrators, who we now know were in contact with several NATO countries, overran police stations and military compounds in Benghazi and acquired heavy arms. Still the government ordered the military to stay in its barracks and for the police to handle the situation.

The evidence available from the early weeks of the civil war indicated that the NATO-led rebels were acting in concert with foreign governments. As agents of foreign governments they would be combatants in an international armed conflict to which the rules of international humanitarian law apply first and foremost and the rules of international human rights law apply in so far as there has not been an appropriate derogation by the government of Libya. In announcing his investigation on 3 March 2011, the ICC prosecutor himself stated that he had "information that some opposition groups also have weapons" and that if need be NATO-led rebels would be prosecuted. None have been, including the leaders of the NATO-led rebels who continue to order the use of force, while rejecting international efforts by African leaders to achieve a peaceful settlement to the civil war.

Oddly, in his 3 March statement, the ICC prosecutor also seems to indicate that there was not yet an armed conflict in Libya, despite the fact that he was speaking two weeks after NATO-led rebels had seized heavy arms, announced their intention to overthrow the lawful government, and had taken control of several cities by the use of force.

The evaluation of the acts of states or their agents that have initiated a war of aggression should be both international humanitarian law and the lower threshold of international human rights law in consideration of the acts of the aggressors. The aggression of NATO and the NATO-led rebels should thus be judged first and foremost by the standard of international human rights law and the force that is allowed by civilians or states acting in peacetime. Any other starting point would encourage states to elevate situations to armed conflicts in order to lessen their responsibility, and would therefore be inconsistent with the objective and purpose of the law, especially the human rights treaties in which it is often found. By this standard, the acts of aggression themselves against Libyans, including the widespread attacks on Libyan government soldiers not initially putting up resistance, may be considered murder and inhuman acts which are prohibited by international criminal law. Why weren’t these crimes considered?

Similarly, in considering the request for arrest warrants, the ICC Pre-trial Chamber fails to take into account the Libyan government’s responsibility to protect its people from violence, both perpetrated by internal groups of people as well as by foreign governments and other entities acting through Libyans. As already noted, there is significant evidence available in the public domain indicating that the NATO-led rebels took up arms first, and that any disproportionate use of force by the government was incidental rather than widespread before this time. At the very least these arguments should have been considered as they could have removed the matter ratio matriae from the court’s jurisdiction. The court does not consider them, but merely assumes the validity of the prosecutor’s allegation that widespread or systematic attacks have been directed against the civilian population. There is no discussion of the evidence readily available to the judges. This evidence favours the conclusion that not only did NATO-led rebels first use the most significant force, subsequent to their capturing a significant cache of military weapons from military bases in Benghazi, but that the government acted with moderation. Indeed, the rebels almost marched on Tripoli before the government ordered its soldiers to restore order. Faced with an armed attack that threatens the very existence of the state, the International Court of Justice has told us that a state may even resort to the use of nuclear weapons. While people may differ as to the exact application of this essential mitigating factor, the failure of both the prosecutor and the court to even consider it is very problematic.

Deja vu Iraq

The arrest warrants themselves are short and strikingly include pictures —even of Gaddafi himself —that appear to portray the accused in a demeaning light. The poor quality pictures show the accused, particularly the Libyan leader, with an unnaturally stern face. This is the case although there is literally thousands of better quality and more neutral looking pictures available. Moreover, the picture appears while the memory of US action concerning the Iraqi president is still fresh in peoples’ minds. The US released an unflattering picture of the former Iraqi president before subjecting him to a trial that was repeated determined to be patently unfair by almost every impartial observer, including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The Iraqi president’s lawyers were told by US-paid officials that the pictures were part of an effort to discredit him before his unfair trial.

This small but telling misstep by the ICC in the context of another case of Western countries acting with illegal aggression against a developing country will automatically raise suspicions that any trial will be manipulated in the same way as the Iraqi trials. In the Iraqi trials, judges were removed for failing to follow US instructions, officials paid for by the US used UN positions to obtain information from the defence counsel and then acted as paid agents of the US to interfere with the trial by threatening lawyers. These threats were not without a degree of reality as nearly half the lawyers were killed during the trial, often by persons apparently to working for the Iraqi government, while the US looked on and repeatedly refused to provide them protection. And of course it will be remembered that the Iraqi Special Tribunal itself stated that human rights law was of no concern to it. The ICC has de facto done the same by its handling of the Libya case.

Finally, just days after videos were released showing beheadings and the torture of children by the NATO-led rebels, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo met with their self-proclaimed leader, Mr Mahmoud Jibril. The two, according to the ICC website, discussed "the arrest warrants issued by ICC judges against Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Al-Senussi." No mention is made of any discussion of war crimes by NATO-led rebels, despite credible evidence of such atrocities being widespread. This action by the prosecutor —meeting with former Libyan government officials who are now trying to overthrow their own government in violation of the most basic principles of Libyan and international law, and at the cost of an estimated 35,000 Libyan lives to date —appears to be extremely reckless. It also sends a definitive message to the world that the ICC prosecutor is not neutral, but is either consciously biased in the exercise of his functions or so incompetent as to raise serious questions about his fitness for the job.

These concerns create an impression that both the prosecutor and the judges of the ICC may be involved in a miscarriage of justice that is contrary to basic standards of international human rights law that require an independent judiciary and a fair trial for all. The latter includes not only a de facto fair trial, but also one in which both the prosecuting authorities and the judicial authorities appear to be acting justly. The failure of the prosecutor and the judges of the ICC to consider the context in which the case arises, creates the appearance of injustice.

Indeed, the ICC’s engagement as an instrument supporting the illegal aggression against the people of Libya by Western countries and Qatar, Jordan and the NATO-led rebels, may be the final nail in the coffin of the ICC; one that relegates it to the graveyard of failed attempts at international justice. While it must be hoped that this is not the case, neither the prosecutor nor the court have shown the courage or ability to stand up for the rule of law in the face of exercises of power that violate the law. Such cowardliness is not compatible with the rule of international law.


The writer is a prominent international human rights lawyer and was a member of the defence team of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Source

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/16048/Opinion/The-ICC-and-another-African-prosecution.aspx
 

[Protean]

'Stupid Libya war doomed to fail as EU falling apart itself'

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

The French Parliament is due to vote on extending the military campaign in Libya. It comes after recent remarks by its defence minister suggesting that the rebels should talk to Colonel Gaddafi. This has sparked rumours that one of the most active advocates of the NATO-led invasion, might be starting to back-pedal on the campaign. John Laughland - Director of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris says France now realises it has to find a way out of Libya to avoid losing face.

[bigron]

July 13, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad07132011.html

Obama's Lethal Transgression

Libya and the War Powers Act

By VIJAY PRASHAD

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

– Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976)

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) war on Libya entered its 100th day, the United States legislature decided to assert itself. In 1973, Congress enacted the War Powers Act in response to the runaway war-making by the White House during the Johnson and Nixon years (the specific war was against Vietnam). If the President sends the military into operation without congressional authorisation or without a declaration of war, then the President must submit, within 48 hours, a report on why such action was necessary. Congress then has 60 days to declare war or to support the action by a congressional resolution. If Congress does not act, the President must remove the troops in 30 days. The calculation is simple. Obama seems in violation of the War Powers Act.

Hastily, the State Department's legal counsel, Harold Koh, went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to argue that "the situation in Libya does not constitute a war". This is so for four reasons: there are no ground troops in Libya, there are no U.S. casualties, there is a limited risk of escalation, and there is a limited use of military means. The term "hostilities", which was the main trigger for the War Powers Act, was "an ambiguous legal term of art", said Koh, and it did not apply to Libya. Such a remarkably narrow understanding of "war" and "hostilities" would provide cold comfort for Libya, which is being slowly bled by a war of attrition, amplified by the massive aerial bombardment by NATO. With reports by the French that it has armed the rebels (and so violated the terms of United Nations Resolution 1970, the one before Resolution 1973), the situation will certainly escalate. Furthermore, to decline to consider aerial bombardment as "hostilities" or "war" is certainly going to befuddle international legal experts: is it only a war when an American dies?

The U.S. House of Representatives had tried to clarify things in early June, when liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich put forward a Bill to end combat operations in Libya. Anti-war Democrats and libertarian Republicans joined with those Republicans who simply have an allergy to Obama (such as presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann) to support this resolution. The Republican leadership scrambled to undermine the Kucinich resolution, put an anaemic one of its own before the floor and yoked its members to vote for it.

Kucinich's Bill went down 265-148 (87 Republicans voted for it, along with 61 Democrats). The Republican leadership won back their caucus (but for 10 Republicans and 45 Democrats) to produce what appeared to be a criticism of the President but in fact was a "backdoor authorisation" (as a congressional staffer put it) to the entire Libyan campaign. The Senate's Foreign Relations Committee backed the President and sent its measure to the full Senate for approval.

The clearest statement of principle came from the Virginia Democrat, Senator Jim Webb: "When you have an operation that goes on for months, costs billions of dollars, where the United States is providing two-thirds of the troops, even under the NATO fig leaf, where they're dropping bombs that are killing people, where you're paying your troops offshore combat pay and there are areas of prospective escalation – something I've been trying to get a clear answer from with this administration for several weeks now, and that is the possibility of a ground presence in some form or another, once the Qaddafi regime expires – I would say that's hostilities." But even this statement was remarkably parochial. Nowhere in the record is there any consideration for the Libyan people.

Military mindset

To consider the Libyans is to find a way to stop the conflict. NATO is trapped in a military mindset. There is no political dimension to its mission short of the removal (by armed means if necessary) of Qaddafi. NATO's lack of any forward motion is precisely why Dutch Defence Minister Hans Hillen called NATO's strategy "naive". Aerial bombardment would not force Qaddafi to leave, Hillen said, and NATO should restrict its mission to the protection of civilians.

Strikingly, the International Criminal Court's (ICC) lead prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has now issued arrest warrants for Qaddafi and members of his family. Moreno-Ocampo began his investigation into Qaddafi on March 3, which was before the U.N. Resolution 1973 (March 17), and he has aggressively made statements as if of fact about alleged war crimes by the Qaddafi regime (for instance, Moreno-Ocampo stated that Qaddafi's regime was giving Viagra to its troops, a view now debunked by a detailed investigation conducted by Amnesty International's Donatella Rovera).

Moreno-Ocampo has yoked the ICC to the NATO strategy and has undermined the independence of the ICC in the process. He has not opened any investigation into the alleged war crimes of NATO, whether in Afghanistan or Libya. Most of his prosecutions have been set in Africa, and despite the properness of them, it is remarkable that he has no ongoing prosecution of any actions of the North Atlantic powers (nothing on Iraq, for instance, where there is documentary evidence of war crimes, both in the prisons and on the streets).

NATO has no elaborated exit from the violence in Libya, and nor does the U.S. by itself. Since NATO is a party to the conflict, it is unable to be a mediator between the two sides of what is patently a civil war. Nor can the Arab League, which has invalidated itself both in its initial rush to support the military intervention by the U.S. and later NATO, and then by the vacillation of its head, Amr Moussa.

An errant Moussa was then chastised by his financial backers in the Gulf and made to stand with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and offer his full support of the aerial bombardment. Times have changed. Moussa told The Guardian on June 21 that "you can't have a decisive ending" in the Libyan conflict. "Now is the time to do whatever we can to reach a political solution." But since he is to leave office and is now running for the Egyptian presidency, Moussa's own remarks are not with foundation in the League.

The BRICS-A.U. approach

A far more credible role is to be played by the African Union (A.U.) and, behind it, by the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) formation. China recently indicated that it wanted to play a greater political role in the Libyan imbroglio. This is of special significance because it signals a shift in the Chinese reticence to claim leadership in international conflict situations.

At Hainan, the BRICS summit in April indicated that all political options must be explored. It is to this end that one of the BRICS members, South Africa, has offered leadership in the African Union's Libyan Panel to push both Tripoli and Benghazi to mediation. They have called for an immediate ceasefire to assess the degradation of the civilian infrastructure and to provide humanitarian aid.

This will be monitored by a combination of U.N. and A.U. peacekeepers, with every indication that if this plan is allowed to go into place, other BRICS countries might provide material and logistical support. At that point, the A.U., with BRICS pressure, would start to find a political solution between the two parties. The BRICS-A.U. approach is currently blocked by NATO, which insists that Qaddafi must leave as a precondition to negotiations. This is tantamount to obstructing a productive process.

The BRICS-A.U. position is that there should be no such precondition, but it is possible that as an outcome of the negotiations, Qaddafi might find himself in a new role, including as an exile. But the fate of Qaddafi would need to be in the balance, not already decided upon in Brussels, Washington and Paris (as well as, but from a subordinate position, in Benghazi). President Obama has said that Qaddafi "needs to go", which is a maximalist position that does not inspire confidence in Qaddafi to agree to negotiations.

Libya is a test case for the powerlessness of war. It creates destruction, but is often too blind to its futility. Since 1973, U.S. presidents have routinely ignored the War Powers Act, in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance. Each of these cases demonstrates to us how states are destroyed by the overwhelming aerial power of the U.S. and by the failure of the U.S. and NATO to consider the long-term political and social consequences of their testosterone-filled interventions. There is no humanitarian outcome that is good, and it is perverse that these operations are conducted in the name of humanitarian relief.

The BRICS offer an alternative platform for the near term, a more polycentric worldview that seems to rely more on political negotiation than on military intervention. Of course, this is all very well on the planetary scale. It would help the credibility of the BRICS states if they put these very values into operation within their own states. That would make their claim to planetary leadership all the more robust. As it is, the BRICS states might have the better plan for Libya's future, but they will not be able to be in a stronger moral position until they withdraw their own armies of internal occupation.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. CounterPunchers in the Boston area can hear Prashad live  here on July 7. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

This article was originally published by India's Frontline.

http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad07132011.html

[bigron]

Evidence: NATO-backed Libya "Rebels" Are Clearly Terrorists

Black Star News Editorial


July 13, 2011
http://blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/7517/2011-07-13.html

We still wait for an editorial from The Times condemning the ethnic cleansing of Blacks in Misurata and calling for an investigation by the United Nations, and punishment of those responsible for the crimes...

Since the on-set of the so-called "rebellion" in Libya this newspaper has warned that Benghazi had engaged in gross human rights abuses.

These abuses included executions, beheadings, and lynchings--especially of Black Libyans, migrant workers from other African countries and suspected loyalists of Muammar al-Quathafi. The information and even celebratory video clips are widely available through Youtube or Google searches.

Recently, on June 21, The Wall Street Journal reported in a chilling story under the headline under the headline "Libya City Torn By Tribal Fued" that a "rebel" force in Misurata had renamed themselves the "Brigade for purging slaves, black skin."

The Journal reported that in one neighborhood of Misurata, where the Black population was previously 4/5 Black, the neighborhood had been ethnically cleansed of Blacks. Not a word of this genocidal campaign has been mentioned in The New York Times--not a word of condemnation from The State Department or The White House or NATO.

These are clearly acts of terrorism and war crimes.

These NATO and U.S.-backed terrorists also promised to ethnically cleanse Blacks from the town of Tuwargha, 25 miles away, if it fell under their control, as reported by in The Wall Street journal.

Is this the new dawn that Washington, London and Paris want for Libya?

No wonder more than one million citizens came out into the streets of Tripoli last week--not to urge the NATO-backed terrorists -- to hasten their advance but to show support for al-Quathafi. They are not eager for Sarkozy's vision for Libya.

This newspaper declared at the onset of the NATO bombing campaign that any authentic uprising that might have taken root in Libya had been usurped by the Western military aggression. We repeatedly warned that unlike Tunisia's and Egypt's this was no Facebook-Blackberry revolution, no matter the false impression The New York Times tried to create.

The vicious NATO campaign has been so relentless, and claimed civilian lives, that Rep. Dennis Kucinich has written to the International Criminal Court (ICC) asking for an investigation of NATO's commanders on possible war crimes. Instead prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has been fantasizing about Viagra-induced mass rapes; a proposition ridiculed by Amnesty International.

This newspaper has also excoriated The New York Times, which in its overzealous promotion of Benghazi turned a blind eye to "rebel" abuses, even when the evidence was clear, as when The Wall Street Journal reported the ethnic cleansing in Misurata. We push back hard against The Times because not only does the newspaper influence U.S. foreign policy but also shapes the reporting of countless other media outlets. The cost of providing public relations for the "rebels" by The Times has been high--especially for the Black Misurata victims.

The newspaper has abused this power with respect to the Libya war.

We still wait for an editorial from The Times condemning the ethnic cleansing of Blacks in Misurata and calling for an investigation by the United Nations, and punishment of those responsible for the crimes. We suggest that investigators start by appehending the "rebel" commander quoted in The Wall Street Journal June 21 report.

Finally, in today's newspaper, even The Times can't no longer shield terrorism by the "rebels." The Times, belatedly, reports of executions and pillage by rebels in Qawalish, a town it captured in the mountain regions of Libya, under the headline "Libyan Rebels Accused of Pillage and Beatings." Incidentally, these "rebels" have advanced due to France's illegal weapons drops recently in violation of UN Resolution 1970.

The rebels clearly don't offer a solution to Libya's woes and their abuses are now on display for the entire world to see.
That's precisely why these Nicolas Sarkozy-backed "rebels" rejected the African Union peace proposal on three occasions.

Among other things --such as a ceasefire and negotiations for a constitution-- the proposal calls for democratic elections in which every Libyan citizen is eligible. Judging by their record --executions, beheadings, ethnic cleansing of Black Libyans and promising to give oil concessions to Western countries depending on how much help each country offers in deposing al-Quathafi, as reported on the front page of The Financial Times on March 14-- it's clear that the majority of Libyans would reject these "rebels."

They know that their only path to power is by the barrel of the gun and NATO bombings; in other words, through terror.

>NATO should immediately halt the illegal bombardment of Libya. Rather than protecting Libyans, NATO has spread the war throughout the country, especially with the dropping of weapons by France to the mountain fighters, who are now committing the crimes reported in The New York Times today. France, due to the illegal weapons drops, is more exposed to liability than the other NATO members.

>NATO should compensate Libya for the deaths of civilians, and for the damage and destruction caused.

>More importantly, Washington, London and Paris should step away from their war of aggression and conquest and ensure that Libyans adopt the African Peace proposal.

Source

http://blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/7517/2011-07-13.html
 

[Jacob Law]

This is all predicated, a shame but enviably was going to happen, the treasures of the Libyians.

[TahoeBlue]

They just showed this film on TCM and it's great.:

Lion of the Desert

Lion of the Desert is a 1981 Libyan historical action film starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin leader fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II and Oliver Reed as Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, who attempted to defeat Mukhtar. It was directed by Moustapha Akkad and funded by Muammar al-Gaddafi's government.[1] Released in May 1981, the film was liked by critics and audiences but performed poorly in making money, bringing in just $1 million dollars net worldwide, a financial disaster followed by Gaddafi's infamous actions during the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Mukhtar
Omar Mukhtar
...
Beginning in 1912, he organized and, for nearly twenty years, led native resistance to Italian colonization of Libya. The Italians captured and hanged him in 1931.

Today, Mukhtar's face appears on the Libyan ten-dinar bill.
...
In 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi wore a photograph of Mukhtar hanging on his chest while on a state visit to Rome, and brought along Mukhtar's elderly son during the visit.[8]

With the Libyan uprising beginning February 17, 2011, Omar Mukhtar again became a symbol for a united, free Libya and his picture is depicted on various flags and posters of the Free Libya movement.

[bigron]

"Why Libya?   Why Qaddafi?"


By Husayn Al-Kurdi

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28579.htm

July 14, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- What are the reasons why the US government and its current President Barack Obama and his cabinet, are so vehement in their insistence that Libyan leaderMu'ammar el-Qaddafi "must go"? Why does the American regime insist on Qaddafi's removal, to the extent of overseeing repeated bombings of his residences and other places where he may be staying or visiting, following a long series of assassination and coup attempts? Why do they continually reject overtures at mediation, even vetoing proposed UN-supervised free and fair elections so that the Libyans can cast their ballots to determine their choice of leaders? Why are the NATO war forces unleashed and all manner of military and logistical assistance being proffered to the anti-Qaddafi forces, styled as "rebels" and "freedom fighters" by their sponsors in America and Europe?

The answers to these questions lie embedded in the US drive for its "Second Century" of imperialist world domination, involving plans for the complete conquest of the Arabs and Africa. Other countries where extensive violence, human rights violations of longstanding and conquest and occupation by outside forces has been the rule are ignored or plunged into deeper misery by the designs and actions of the US and its partners. Palestine, Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Turkey immediately come to mind as areas which have found native inhabitants decimated and in which people have been butchered for decades in their own homelands. Many other repressive regimes throughout the world are doing very bad things to their "own" people. Why the furious furor over the Qaddafi leadership and its alleged repression of some "rebellious" elements among the Libyan population?

What has brought out the panoply of lies, exaggerations, misinformation and dirty tricks, many of the same as delineated in the CIA's celebrated "Subversion" manual, used as a handbook by the CIA-financed, trained and supplied "Contras" who destabilized the popular Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s during the regime of Libya's original tormentor, the Ronald Reagan administration?

The "rebels" are composed of three basic political forces: Libyan emigres who have been trained and supported by the CIA in the environs of Virginia and the neighborhood of Washington, D.C. have joined with al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood Islamist reactionaries, some reportedly released from the U.S. prison base at Guantanamo to serve the "cause", and certain individuals who backed the decadent old monarchy of Idris al-Senussi in Libya to form the substance of the front which is bringing pain and turmoil to Libya. They are operating under the flag of the old monarchy, who saw fit to let the Libyan masses go hungry, live in filth and without homes, uneducated and deprived of any semblance of medical care.

The actual "crime" of which Qaddafi and the Libyan leadership has been most guilty of is providing for the health, welfare and education of the Libyan people. The reactionary clerics are boiling mad because their ill-gotten wealth in land and riches, sequestered and hoarded by them in the name of "Islam", was taken from them and used to serve people's needs instead of their insatiable corruption. They claim that Qaddafi is "not a Muslim" because of this seizure of their ill-gotten gains, while he maintains a notion of Islam which insists on sharing out the assets of the country and attending to the welfare of its people, denying the "rights" of some self-styled "holy men" to grab the wealth for themselves. The ensuing hue and cry against Qaddafi is raised by those who are against women's rights to be anything more than virtual slaves and who would be most happy if the Libyan people wallowed in ignorance and poverty, subject to their backward notions. They are friendly to the CIA exiles who facilitate the backing of Western countries who seek to "open" Libya up to their exploitative ways.

Some of the surviving riff-raff from the old King's court and the old political elites who vied for the spoils of a terminally corrupt pre- Qaddafi "kingdom" are quick to clamber onto the Libyan "Contra" wagon. The Qatari, Saudi and UAE kingdoms and principalities are still mad over the ouster of their fellow "King" in 1969 and would love to see a "King" or some equivalent restored in Libya. Even an "Al-Qaeda"-type "Emir" in the style of Bin Laden, perhaps one of the prisoners released from the American concentration camp at Guantanamo, could serve as a welcome option in their eyes. One of them allegedly claimed control over an important Libyan town and blustered that he was proceeding forthwith to institute "Shari'a Law" in that locality. A variety of useful fools can serve the purposes of restoration in Libya.The moribund Muslim Brotherhood, which has brought so much ignorance and grief to Egypt over the decades, may also have found an opening in attaining a leading role in Libya if and when the restoration takes place.

Finally, it seems that some wayward youth are hypnotized here and elsewhere into thinking that America "knows best", is invincible and would bring some exciting Hollywood-based culture into Libya. Some people who have directly benefited from the Libyan revolution are thereby turned against it by the phony allure of American consumerist capitalism. All of this forms the witches' brew which has been used to settle the score with Qaddafi for deviating in so many ways from the American Plan for Libya, for the Arabs, for Africa and the rest of the world.

These rebels have been killing Black Libyans and other Black people in the streets of various Libyan towns and villages, while the Western Media decries the presence of "African mercenaries" in the ranks of the troops loyal to Qaddafi. Wild stories are made up of mass rapes committed by Qaddafi supporters, while the actual facts reveal that rapes have accompanied the slaughter of Blacks and other citizens deemed to oppose the "rebels", who are themselves led and instigated by a bunch of certified hired mercenaries employed by the US-led alliance for the purpose of disrupting and subverting the Libyan socialist system in order to reverse the impressive gains and benefits which that system has brought to the people of Libya.

A key factor in the drive to destroy Libya in order to "rebuild" it is that Qaddafi and his colleagues appear to be the only nation state in the continent of Africa to have not signed on to America's "Africom" plan for military conquest and domination. The Libyan military is not led at the top by those who seek to please American overseers, and therefore must be
eliminated and replaced by a more compliant outfit.

Another major reason why the Libyans are being subverted, bombed and strafed by NATO is that Qaddafi has launched numerous initiatives to set up alternative banking and development institutions throughout the continent, a stumbling-block to IMF/World Bank "stabilization" programs which typically impoverish the natives while lining the pockets of global financiers and their corrupt minions.

Qaddafi has launched drives to rid the Mediterranean basin of all foreign bases and weapons of mass destruction while the US/NATO/Israel axis has systematically pursued policies of militarization and aggression in that Sea.

A unique Libyan project, the "Great Man Made River" has brought water from under the Sahara Desert and made it available to various historically parched areas which can now be cultivated and developed into a breadbasket for the region. The US-led international banking consortium is of course poised to seize this most valuable asset now that it is coming to fruition. Wars will be fought over access to water throughout the Arab land in coming years. Control of water could become even more decisive than petroleum reserves in decades to come.

Qaddafi and his comrades have long sought to unify Arabs and Africans to serve the needs and interests of their people. They have sought to resolve differences, implement projects and propound solutions to free Arabs and Africans from Western bondage and the nefarious globalization plans of the World Bankers and their associates. "Globalization" is coterminous with imperialism. Qaddafi is an anti-imperialist. This has earned the Libyans the implacable enmity of those who are increasingly owning and operating the world in their own profit-driven interests.

These are some of the principal reasons why the US and NATO are on the war-path. They managed to tear apart a major resistant Arab country in Iraq and they have "taken" virtually the entire resource-rich but tragically impoverished African continent. Libya and Qaddafi stand resolute and defiant as an obstacle to their schemes of conquest and exploitation.

(c) 2011 Husayn Al-Kurdi - All Rights Reserved.
   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28579.htm

[bigron]

Nato and Rebel Atrocities in Libya

by Stephen Lendman

July 14, 2011
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79563&hd=&size=1&l=e


Previous articles discussed:

-- NATO's illegal Libya aggression;

-- American and Western media in the lead cheerleading it; some reporters, in fact, complicit with NATO forces by supplying target coordinates;

-- planning it many months (perhaps years) before fighting began last winter;

-- waging it to conquer, colonize, loot, and balkanize Libya, masquerading as humanitarian intervention;

-- covertly funding, arming and training mercenary insurgents, including Al Qaeda linked Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) paramilitaries;

-- establishing an illegitimate Transitional National Council (TNC) government with CIA/British Intelligence (SIS/MI6) links;

-- terror bombing Libya daily since March 19, using depleted uranium weapons, cluster bombs and perhaps other illegal weapons;

-- bombing nonmilitary civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, heritage sites, a bus with civilians, a hotel, a restaurant, a food storage facility, commercial sites, a university, civilian neighborhoods, fishermen at sea, Gaddafi's personal compound to kill him and his family, as well as other nonmilitary targets;

-- collectively punishing Libyans; in government-controlled areas, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is about 10 to one;

-- blocking shipments of food, fuel and medicine; and

-- overall laying waste to large areas, what Pentagon-led wars always do, destroying countries to save them, never waging wars for humanitarian reasons or even contemplating the idea.

War Rages Unabated

Meanwhile, duplicitous congressional posturing assures pro-war support despite rhetorical opposition against it. In France, despite strong anti-war sentiment, lawmakers just reauthorized French participation, while officials claim a negotiated solution is possible.

According to Prime Minister Francois Fillon, "A political solution in Libya is more indispensable than ever and it is beginning to take shape." Defense Minister Gerard Longuet suggested insurgents negotiate with Gaddafi, drawing Washington's ire for saying it.

Some analysts believe France is looking for a face-saving way out. Parliamentarians, however, just overwhelming endorsed war, voting 482 - 27 in France's lower house and 311 - 24 in its upper one.

Like Obama and Britain's David Cameron, Sarkozy remains committed to press on despite low approval ratings ahead of next May's presidential election. The three main co-belligerents began hostilities to incite rebellion against Gaddafi or kill him. Instead, Libyans strongly support him the way populations usually respond when attacked by foreign powers, rallying behind leaders against them.

As a result, NATO so far is losing, despite last March claiming victory would be swift, Obama notably saying Washington's involvement would be "days, not weeks."

In fact, America remains very much involved, despite diminishing chances of prevailing given Libyans resolve to defend their sovereignty by resisting.

Daily it's evident, especially Fridays after prayer followed by huge pro-Gaddafi rallies, at least twice in Tripoli a million or more turning out in Green Square, raging as well against NATO.

Moreover, Libyans are well armed. Gaddafi made sure everyone has weapons to defend against Western belligerents. Seventy years ago they united and routed Italy. They'll do it again if NATO invades, even at the cost of many lives to live free of foreign occupation.

At the same time, divisions in NATO are evident. Italy called for a halt in bombing. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said waging war was a mistake, ending his country's participation and halting air strikes from Italian bases. Norway also pulled out. Perhaps other participants will follow.

Early in the campaign, Germany recalled two frigates and AWACS surveillance Mediterranean flights, but recently agreed to supply munitions.

Cracks in TNC unity are also apparent, noticeably after chairman Mustapha Abdul-Jalil backtracked after saying Gaddafi could stay in Libya if he stepped down. Other TNC members disagreed, spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga claiming that option was never considered.

Despite main co-belligerents pressing on, months of bombing produced stalemate, suggesting new ways of resolving conflict may follow. On July 10, the Algerian newspaper El Khabar quoted Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam saying, "The truth is that we are negotiating with France and not with the rebels....France said, '(w)hen we reach an agreement with you, we will force (TNC members) to cease fire.' "

On July 11, Le Monde said Sarkozy met with Gaddafi's chief of staff, Bachir Saleh, in June. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe confirmed that contacts were made, saying "(t)here is a consensus on how to end the crisis, which is that Gaddafi has to leave power. That was absolutely not a given two or three months ago."

In fact, ousting or killing him was intended all along, replacing him with new pro-Western puppet leadership like governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything short of that is defeat, including Washington's grand strategy for Libya as a base for greater North and sub-Saharan African control, using counterproductive tactics not working.

Reporting from Libya, Franklin Lamb reported regular NATO atrocities he witnessed afterwards firsthand, including:

On June 20, NATO attacked Khaled Al-Hamedi's home, killing 15 people in total, including his pregnant wife, three children, and sister. NATO lied calling it a military strike, saying civilians are never attacked. In fact, they're prime targets.

Later in June, a TOW missile hit a public bus, killing all 12 passengers, NATO saying military personnel were being transported. Foreign observers, however, confirmed no military presence. Police secure Libyan cities, neighborhood watch teams suburban areas.

On June 6, central Tripoli's Higher Committee for Children administrative complex was struck with 12 bombs and rockets. Of no military significance, it housed the National Downs Syndrome center, the Crippled Women's Foundation, the Crippled Children Center, and the National Diabetic Research Center. NATO called it a legitimate military target.

On June 16, NATO bombed a central Tripoli hotel and restaurant, killing three civilians. Sirte Central Hospital and the Libyan Lawyers Group representing war victims said attacks caused sharp increases in strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, miscarriages, and stress-related illnesses, besides bomb-related injuries.

Paramilitary Insurgent Cutthroats

Previous articles discussed rebel paramilitary atrocities, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/plaanned-regime-change
-in-libya_28.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/05/libyan-rebels-killing-
civilians-in.html

On July 12, New York Times writer CJ Chivers headlined, "Libyan Rebels Accused of Pillage and Beatings," saying:

"Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). They also "beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes" after ravaging Benghazi and other areas earlier.

On July 13, HRW headlined, "Libya: Opposition Forces Should Protect Civilians and Hospitals," saying:

Instead they're "responsible for looting, arson, and abuse of civilians in recently captured towns....in the Nufusa Mountains."

They've "damaged property, burned some homes, looted from hospitals, homes, shops, and beaten some (alleged pro-Gaddafi) supporte(rs)."

HRW representatives witnessed some of these events firsthand, interviewed others about them, and spoke to a rebel commander, asking for accountability. Nonetheless, they continue "indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited areas."

According to HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson:

"Grad rocket attacks are launched almost every day into residential areas with no discernible military target. Why would (they) think there is a purpose to spraying shrapnel into people's homes or mosques and hospitals?"

Rebel military commander Col. El-Moktar Firnana admitted abuses occurred, saying doing so violated orders, whether or not true. Since conflict began last winter, insurgents terrorized Benghazi and other controlled areas - pillaging, raping, brutalizing, and killing suspected anti-NATO residents, especially dark-skinned ones.

On July 7, HRW saw rebels loading looted items on trucks. "Five houses....seen intact the (previous) day (were) on fire." Three more and a shop were burned a few days later, and another six appeared newly burned.

As a result, Al-Awaniya and Zawiyat al-Bagul "appeared empty of residents." Houses on streets HRW visited were ransacked, stores on main streets broken into and looted. One resident said rebels stole medical equipment from a polyclinic. Visiting the facility, HRW saw vandalized rooms, broken windows and doors, as well as "evidence of missing....equipment, including an x-ray machine and possibly an electrocardiogram machine."

Al-Awaniya's hospital was damaged and looted the same way. Well-equipped, a staffer said everything was taken. In Rayaninah, 300 to 400 people stayed behind when rebels arrived. HRW saw evidence of beatings and people shot. Others had wrists tied with dusty wire, then beaten.

Rebel commander Firnana claimed people in the town worked for Gaddafi. "Houses that were robbed and broken into were ones that the army used," he said. "Those people who were beaten were working for Gaddafi's brigades," whether or not true.

HRW quoted "opposition forces say(ing) they are committed to human rights, but the looting, arson, and abuse (raise) concerns about how civilians will be treated if rebels (enter) other towns where the government has support."

Co-belligerents Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy reside far from NATO war zones, including other theaters to satisfy their imperial appetites, no matter how much death and destruction it takes to achieve it.

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=m79563&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

[bigron]

Video: The Truth Behind the U.S./NATO War on Libya

Including eyewitness footage


By ANSWER Coalition [/size

]



The ANSWER Coalition has produced a brand new video with on-the-ground footage of the U.S./NATO atrocities against Libya that the corporate media won't show. The video features former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Libya, as well as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Nation of Islam leader Akbar Muhammad, and Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.

Help break the media blockade and build the August 13 anti-war demonstration in Harlem by sharing this video with friends, family and co-workers via email and social networking websites.

Posted July 15, 2011

WATCYH VIDEO HERE

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28594.htm

[bigron]

Libya, Obama and the “Other Wars”


by Glen Ford

BAR, July 20, 2011

President Obama’s insistence that the U.S. is not at war with Libya, even as Washington and its allies methodically assault the country’s military and infrastructure, reveals that the many "Other Wars" around the globe have become, collectively, "the main arenas of conflict" with the Empire. Yet, "many whites who consider themselves anti-war activists also recognize as wars only those conflicts that kill Americans, make great drains on U.S. treasure, or create palpable distortions in the 'American Way of Life’ – for example, significant losses of their civil liberties. Imperial aggressions that kill, starve, displace and imprison millions, at home and abroad, go unrecognized as wars – an obscene "left-wing" mimicry of Obama, himself.

"Historically, white-led anti-war movements in the United States have been as selective as President Obama in what they consider to be bona fide wars."

Barack Obama has infuriated a wide spectrum of political opinion with his bland denial that the U.S. is in a state of war – or even "hostilities" – with a small African nation whose military and infrastructure are being systematically destroyed by Washington and its allies. The monumental disconnect between the president’s assertion and observed reality leads some critics and apologists, alike, to dismiss Obama’s words as mere lawyer’s craft, a semantic contortion to avoid compliance with the War Powers Act. But there is much more to the president’s formulations on peace and non-peace than cynical, tongue-in-cheek legalisms designed to overcome some temporary political problem.

Obama’s denial of America’s war on Libya is of a piece with his constant concoctions of phony ends to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars of occupation and counter-insurgency that he and his generals have no intention of actually terminating through a physical exit. Rather, Obama simply changed the nomenclature of U.S. combat units in Iraq to "trainers and assistance" personnel, and will scheme till the last possible minute to maintain a military and mercenary presence in the country far beyond the previously negotiated pullout at the end of this year. Obama has so often declared, with a straight face, that the U.S. dearly wants to quickly turn over its combat role in Afghanistan to the locals, U.S. policymakers fear the people of the region might actually believe him, and hold the U.S. to it.

Obama is always pretending to be on the road to peace, even as he expands America’s theaters of war. Since the aim of U.S. imperialism is to dominate the world, against the world’s wishes, U.S. wars must widen to the extent that peoples and nations resist, or must be pre-empted from resisting at some time in the future. There is no way to avoid the lengthening list of wars on Obama’s watch, but to deny they exist. Thus, the U.S. is not at war with, or in, Libya. Or Somalia. Or Yemen. And, certainly not Pakistan.

"Obama is always pretending to be on the road to peace, even as he expands America’s theaters of war."

This president, whose self-image is that of a man who does "big deals" and formulates grand strategies that forever alter previous paradigms – and who is, therefore, capable of infinite arrogance – has ambitions to eclipse General Carl von Clausewitz (1880-1831) and V. I. Lenin (1870-1924) on the philosophy of war. Von Clausewitz said that "war is a continuation of politics by other means." Lenin said, similarly, that "war is a prolongation of politics by other means," adding: "Every war is inextricably connected with the political system from which it arises."

Barack Obama declares, simply: War is whatever I say it is.

Which means Obama sees clearly that he will preside over many more wars in the future, an endless stream of them on the "road to peace" – a peace that can only come with total U.S. global domination. Such wars are written in the DNA of imperialism, no matter what the aggressor chooses to call them.

War also includes the preservation of the fruits of previous wars. For the United States and western Europe, that means retaining the spoils and privileges of 500 years of violent predation, which demands the constant reapplication of force against oppressed people within the "pacified" regions at home as well as abroad. Europe is eternally engaged in intrigue and terror in her former colonies, wars by other names that are extensions of the wars that made them colonies in the first place. Latin Americans are painfully familiar with U.S. wars to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, by which Washington formally assumed generalship over Europe’s centuries of wars against the peoples of the Americas and the Africans forcibly transplanted to the hemisphere through war. The United States’ relations with non-whites within her borders is rooted in wars of genocide against the natives and the enforced captivity and containment of Black people.

"Obama sees clearly that he will preside over many more wars in the future, an endless stream of them on the 'road to peace’ – a peace that can only come with total U.S. global domination."

Faulkner said "the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past." Neither are the European wars against the rest of the peoples of the planet.

Historically, white-led anti-war movements in the United States have been as selective as President Obama in what they consider to be bona fide wars. Obama justifies denying that "hostilities" exist between the U.S. and Libya, partly on the grounds that no Americans have been killed – due, of course, to U.S. "full spectrum dominance" over the North African skies. Many whites who consider themselves anti-war activists also recognize as wars only those conflicts that kill Americans, make great drains on U.S. treasure, or create palpable distortions in the "American Way of Life" – for example, significant losses of their civil liberties. Meanwhile, a whole world of wars bring death and devastation to people of color in places like Haiti (a victim of U.S. armed conquest and occupation), Congo (six million dead since the mid-Nineties, but not to be found among most U.S. anti-war groups’ lists of wars), and Black America (one out of eight prisoners on the planet are African American, so there must be a huge war going on).

The assault on Libya by the arrayed aggressors of the 500 Year War, all embodied in NATO, and Obama’s denial that the U.S. is even engaged in a war with Libya, serves to bring into focus the full spectrum of "Other Wars" waged against people of color. The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations has taken the lead in agitating that all who make a claim to the anti-war label recognize these "Other Wars" and expand their vision and scope of activities, accordingly. The United National Anti-War Committee (UNAC) and a host of other organizations have endorsed Black is Back’s "Day of Action Against the Other Wars," August 20, which will see mobilizations in Washington, DC, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Milwaukee, St. Petersburg, Florida, Oakland and San Diego, California, London, Toronto, Nassau, Bahamas, and a growing list of cities.

"The United States’ relations with non-whites within her borders is rooted in wars of genocide against the natives and the enforced captivity and containment of Black people."

This summer, former congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is crisscrossing the country with the "Eyewitness Libya" tour, with speakers elaborating on much the same theme of undeclared and unrecognized wars, domestic and foreign. McKinney is scheduled for Newark, New Jersey (July 28), New York City’s Riverside Church on June 30, Boston (August 6), and Los Angeles (August 7). And on August 13, a coalition of organizations holds a Millions March in Harlem as a "mass protest to end the attack on Libya, Zimbabwe, and Blacks in the U.S.," featuring Min. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

U.S. Empire, with Barack Obama at the helm, is attempting to impose its will on the planet by force of arms. It blurs the lines between war and not-war to mask a general offensive against…everyone, at all times. The "Other Wars" become the main arenas of conflict, as witnessed in Libya and the rapid militarization of Africa. Massed capital assaults the very states it has constructed in Europe and the U.S., all the while scapegoating non-whites as the cause of the crisis.

The new anti-war movement will directly confront imperialism and white supremacy, or vanish in the rubble of the 500 Year War.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 
http://blackagendareport.com/content/libya-obama-and-%E2%80%9Cother-wars%E2%80%9D

[Sasha]

^^^ powerful article.

[Sasha]

Gaddafi rules out talks with Libya rebels
Assertion comes as rebels say they have captured one of Gaddafi's most important commanders on their way to Zliten.
Last Modified: 22 Jul 2011 00:03
with video:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/07/2011721232433682725.html

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has ruled out talks with the rebels seeking to end his 41-year-rule.

"There will be no talks between me and them until Judgment Day," Gaddafi told a crowd of thousands of his supporters in his home city of Sirte on Thursday in a remotely delivered audio message. "They need to talk with the Libyan people ... and they will respond to them."

Gaddafi's remarks come as Libya's foreign minister reportedly met with his Russian counterpart to discuss Gaddafi's exit from the country.

The audio message, however, cast doubts on a flurry of recent international efforts to negotiate an end to a deepening conflict.

In another speech broadcast by Libyan television, Gaddafi addressed "a meeting of Misurata tribes", calling for "a march on the city (east of Tripoli) to liberate it" from rebels.

Meanwhile, the rebels have escalated their offensive against Gaddafi's forces east of the capital Tripoli, capturing one of the most prominent government commanders along the way.

After two days of fighting, they moved their position to about 4km forward from Dafniyah, a small town between Zliten and Misurata.

"We move forward [now] towards Zliten," said Ayman, an opposition field commander, referring to the coastal town 160km east of Tripoli.

"We are now close to an area called Tuesday Market in Zliten and, God willing, we will liberate our people in Zliten soon from the forces of the tyrant."

The Libyan government said that NATO air strikes targeted civilian sites in Zliten. Foreign media were shown destroyed buildings and wounded civilians in the town.

Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Misurata, described General Abdul Nabi Zayed, the captured commander, as one of the most high-value prisoners taken by the opposition to date.

Zayed allegedly co-ordinated the deployment of tanks into Misurata in March which triggered the recent fighting.

"According to the military commanders here in Misurata, Zayed was actually captured yesterday as they started their offensive towards the town of Zliten. He was slightly injured, so he was brought back to the hospital here in Misurata," she said.

"Its also a significant catch because it is happening at the time the opposition started their push towards Zliten. They have made significant territorial gains. Rebel commanders are saying they are interrogating General Zayed and they are hoping he will give them significant information."

Boobytrapped oilfields

In another claim on Thursday, opposition officials said Gaddafi forces had boobytrapped vital petroleum installations in Brega so they could be blown up if his forces lost the oil town.

Mahmoud Jibril, the opposition diplomatic chief, characterised Brega on Thursday as a "big minefield" and said some oil installations were "full of bombs, explosives".

The advance towards Brega has been slowed by vast quantities of anti-personnel mines planted by retreating Gaddafi loyalists and the difficulties in attacking an estimated 200 government troops fighting from positions near the oil facilities.

At least 72 opposition fighters have died and 623 others injured since the push was launched on July 14 for Brega, located 800km east of Tripoli and 240km southwest of Benghazi, the opposition stronghold.

On the war's western front, opposition commanders said they were awaiting orders from Benghazi to start a fresh offensive from the Nafusa Mountains, just days before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Energy shortage

With no end to the conflict in sight, the Libyan opposition is seeking new supply deals to import fuels into eastern parts of the country to help alleviate energy shortages, a source in the opposition oil ministry said on Thursday.

Even in peacetime the oil producer still needed to import some fuels because of insufficient refining capacity. Increased military demand and damage to oil infrastructure have further boosted import requirements.

"Vitol are providing some fuels but I'm not sure it's enough to serve the whole country. They are pursuing other suppliers," a source in the opposition oil ministry said.

Vitol, a trading firm, has been the opposition's major oil trading partner since the war began and has regularly shipped cargoes of oil products including diesel - badly needed to keep the country running.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from the eastern town of Jalu, said the Gaddafi forces have repeatedly crossed the eastern desert south of Benghazi to destroy oilfield infrustructure.

"In early July, they attacked a pumping station in Field 103, southwest of Jalu, and boobytrapped the engine room with landmines," she said.

"War has brought oil production in Libya to a standstill. And Gaddafi is determined to prevent the opposition in the east from starting its own oil business."