THE QUEEN'S SPEECH ON LIBYA

[bigron]

Middle East
Mar 31, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak02.html 
   
THE ROVING EYE


Queen Hillary of Libya

By Pepe Escobar

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


The current stalemate in Libya could last weeks, if not months. In that case, balkanization looms. Think of eastern Libya with Benghazi as capital, oil-rich and with a United States-installed puppet regime (a Libyan Hamid Karzai, like the Afghan president). It would be like a kind of northern Africa Saudi Arabia (the House of Saud would love it).

And think of a western Libya with Tripoli as capital, impoverished, angry and ruled by Muammar Gaddafi and sons. If that applies, we're back to the 1950s; Libya as the new Korea. Or, more ominously, back to the 1960s; Libya as the new Vietnam.

Vietnam? No wonder a paranoid Anglo-American-French consortium will pull all stops to take out Gaddafi. They don't want half a spring roll; they want the whole kebab.

The queen's speech

The new Libyan government kingmaker is actually a queen: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Any doubts that the US State Department is now frantically setting up a new government peppered with English-speaking collaborators have been dismissed after the London conference on Libya.

The "official" Libyan opposition used to tautologically call itself "Interim Transitional National Council". Now it's Interim National Council (INC). Anyone running for cover to the sound of the acronym INC is excused; it does bring appalling memories of the Washington-propped Iraqi National Congress and its fabled "weapons of mass destruction" in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And what about the INC's new military commander, Khalifa Hifter - a former Libyan army colonel who spent nearly 20 years in Vienna, Virginia, not far from the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley? Progressives will love to learn that the romantic "rebels" are now led by a CIA asset.

At the London conference, the INC launched in style its slick political manifesto - "A vision of democratic Libya" - which makes all the right noises; freedom of expression, presidential and parliamentary elections, and crucially, the promise of "a state that draws strength from our strong religious beliefs in peace, truth, justice and equality".

This is - extremely polite - code for Islam in post-Gaddafi Libya (so not to ruff Western feathers). Along with the impeccable English redaction, the whole thing screams, "slick Western PR stunt". The council swears the platform was originally drawn up in Arabic. It definitely doesn't feel like a Google Translate job.

So the INC says the gift to the West for the Tomahawks, Tornados and Rafales is going to be a secular democracy. Someone else might say a coalition of opportunists and military defectors climbed upon the wave of mass radicalization in northern Africa, profited from the absence of political leadership among the working class and middle class, and struck a military alliance with Western imperialism. Which is more plausible?

The INC now is being paraded for the whole world to see as a Western puppet - totally dependent on political and military support. Welcome to Libya as a Pentagon-style forward operating base (FOB) - to the benefit of the Pentagon itself (via Africom), Western oil majors, and all manner of shady Anglo-French-American business interests (see There's no business as war business Asia Times Online March 30 ). Welcome to a new Libya hosting a US military base and NATO exercises, and not spending oil money in sub-Saharan African development projects.

As major players - the BRIC countries and Germany – had already warned, United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 is being twisted like a pretzel. Queen Hillary now openly says that arming the "rebels" is legal. Another one of the queen's women combat squad, US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said the US had "not ruled out" arming the rebels - mimicking the exact wording of President Barack Obama. Impressed, British Foreign Secretary William Hague agreed. So did Qatar.

Meanwhile, NATO is taking over. Literally. Starting this Thursday, NATO's air strikes will be conducted out of the Combined Air Operations Center at Poggio Renatico base in Italy, 40 kilometers north of Bologna. But that's just the start.

Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, told a US senate hearing in Washington NATO was not considering ground forces in post-Gaddafi Libya - at least not yet. But as NATO had installed peacekeepers in the Balkans, added Stavridis, "the possibility of a stabilization regime exists".

There you have it - the whole package; a Western puppet regime, Western boots on the ground, a squalid Western protectorate. Goodbye to Libya's sovereignty. And this only a few hours after Obama passionately told the world this was just a humanitarian mission.

It requires major suspension of disbelief that an Obama administration that keeps unleashing drones and air strikes over civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and - now and then - Somalia is now deeply concerned with protecting Libyan civilians. "Democratic" Israel may bomb 1,500 Lebanese civilians in 2006 or kill nearly 1,500 civilians in the winter of 2008/2009 in Gaza - and no way there will be a UN resolution, or Tomahawks flying, or righteous humanitarian imperialists invoking R2P (“responsibility to protect”) en masse.

In 1999, NATO almost destroyed Belgrade to "protect civilians" in Kosovo. Kosovo subsequently became an infinitely corrupt protectorate ruled by a drug mafia. Cue to echoes of neo-cons arguing that the real reason for Washington to invade Iraq was to "protect" Iraqis from the evil dictator Saddam by bringing democracy (by shock and awe).

The stark fact is that Washington - now with Anglo-French help - is bombing yet another Muslim/Arab capital. Miraculously - if one believes the Pentagon - with zero "collateral damage".

And what about the Ivory Coast?

A true genocide is about to happen in the Ivory Coast. There are already one million internal refugees. The "international community" - which now seems to consist of the US, Britain, France, a few NATO countries and a few Arab autocracies, with Qatar as the superstar - has not emitted a peep.

Laurent Gbagbo lost a presidential election in the Ivory Coast but has refused to concede. He controls a huge militia armed to their teeth - and they're going all guns blazing to snatch elected opposition figures, intellectuals and civil society leaders. Anyone who has supported the winner of the election, Alassane Ouattara, is fair game.

Shades of Gaddafi, anyone? Better yet; shades of Rwanda in 1994, Uganda in 2008 and Congo during the 1990s. Not a few thousand dead civilians but hundreds of thousands of dead civilians (and in the case of Congo, perhaps as many as four million). Not a R2P (responsibility to protect) squeak from the "international community".

If the Anglo-French-American consortium really wanted to stop the violence in Libya the sensible solution would have been to dispatch an UN fact-finding commission to really analyze the facts on the ground. No one really knows how many civilians Gaddafi forces killed, or how many air strikes his regime conducted. No one really knows how many black Africans have been raped or murdered by the “rebels”, who assumed they were Gaddafi mercenaries.

Gaddafi himself agreed to an independent UN commission. The first measure of R2P is not to exercise the Tomahawk option; it is to mediate, call for a ceasefire and start negotiations.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is correct when he says this "humanitarian" war is fast becoming a "second Iraq" or "another Afghanistan". He also said Turkey is talking to both Gaddafi and the INC. Sensibly - and as part of NATO - Turkey is about to take over the harbor and the airport in Benghazi to speed up humanitarian aid. If there is a ceasefire the credit must go to Turkey - which is working hard to establish a humanitarian corridor, with support from Italy. Neo-Napoleonic Arab liberator French President Nicolas Sarkozy won't be amused.

Turkey is also linking up with the African Union (AU) - which has been totally marginalized by the Anglo-French-American consortium. France and Britain may be paranoid about the upcoming immigration waves from Africa, now that Libya - which was the cop on the beat for the Europeans - is not playing that role anymore. Italy - already coping with waves and waves of new arrivals at the isle of Lampedusa - at least is trying to work in the humanitarian front alongside Turkey.

There's no guarantee Turkey's mediation efforts will work. The Pentagon/Africom/NATO foreign intervention in Libya - "legitimized" by a dodgy UN cover - is shaping up as a counter-revolutionary master coup. Make no mistake as to what is the ultimate target; to squash the great 2011 Arab revolt momentum, to show who's boss, and to present neo-colonialism with a facelift. To see how it develops, one just has to focus on Queen Hillary's speech.

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

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com  

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak02.html


 

[Dig]

Pepe counters every single insane argument supporting this genocide. Great article, it needs to be distributed.

[larsonstdoc]

Middle East
Mar 31, 2011  
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak02.html  
  


The new Libyan government kingmaker is actually a queen: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Any doubts that the US State Department is now frantically setting up a new government peppered with English-speaking collaborators have been dismissed after the London conference on Libya.

The "official" Libyan opposition used to tautologically call itself "Interim Transitional National Council". Now it's Interim National Council (INC). Anyone running for cover to the sound of the acronym INC is excused; it does bring appalling memories of the Washington-propped Iraqi National Congress and its fabled "weapons of mass destruction" in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And what about the INC's new military commander, Khalifa Hifter - a former Libyan army colonel who spent nearly 20 years in Vienna, Virginia, not far from the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley? Progressives will love to learn that the romantic "rebels" are now led by a CIA asset.

At the London conference, the INC launched in style its slick political manifesto - "A vision of democratic Libya" - which makes all the right noises; freedom of expression, presidential and parliamentary elections, and crucially, the promise of "a state that draws strength from our strong religious beliefs in peace, truth, justice and equality".


http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak02.html

  Khalifa Hifter--that's not a Libyanian name is it?  HIFTER SOUNDS SO MUCH LIKE HITLER!!!

                    -- HE WAS TRAINED IN VIRGINIA, USA    Of course by the CIA and others.


 

[agentbluescreen]

Middle East
Mar 31, 2011  
Queen Hillary of Libya

By Pepe Escobar

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

It requires major suspension of disbelief that an Obama administration that keeps unleashing drones and air strikes over civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and - now and then - Somalia is now deeply concerned with protecting Libyan civilians. "Democratic" Israel may bomb 1,500 Lebanese civilians in 2006 or kill nearly 1,500 civilians in the winter of 2008/2009 in Gaza - and no way there will be a UN resolution, or Tomahawks flying, or righteous humanitarian imperialists invoking R2P (“responsibility to protect”) en masse.

In 1999, NATO almost destroyed Belgrade to "protect civilians" in Kosovo. Kosovo subsequently became an infinitely corrupt protectorate ruled by a drug mafia. Cue to echoes of neo-cons arguing that the real reason for Washington to invade Iraq was to "protect" Iraqis from the evil dictator Saddam by bringing democracy (by shock and awe).

The stark fact is that Washington - now with Anglo-French help - is bombing yet another Muslim/Arab capital. Miraculously - if one believes the Pentagon - with zero "collateral damage".

And what about the Ivory Coast?

A true genocide is about to happen in the Ivory Coast. There are already one million internal refugees. The "international community" - which now seems to consist of the US, Britain, France, a few NATO countries and a few Arab autocracies, with Qatar as the superstar - has not emitted a peep.

Laurent Gbagbo lost a presidential election in the Ivory Coast but has refused to concede. He controls a huge militia armed to their teeth - and they're going all guns blazing to snatch elected opposition figures, intellectuals and civil society leaders. Anyone who has supported the winner of the election, Alassane Ouattara, is fair game.

Shades of Gaddafi, anyone? Better yet; shades of Rwanda in 1994, Uganda in 2008 and Congo during the 1990s. Not a few thousand dead civilians but hundreds of thousands of dead civilians (and in the case of Congo, perhaps as many as four million). Not a R2P (responsibility to protect) squeak from the "international community".

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

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com  

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak02.html

And then the CIA Asset crook-leader takes the cake.

What they are doing here is ARMED ROBBERY!

What is also happening here, is a replay/repeat of the Mossadeq/Shaw insanity in Iran in 1953 on a transnational regional scale and it will result in an entire middle east chock full of belligerent, hostile and righteously offended - strongly 'we won't ever get fooled again" democratic - counter-counter revolutionary "Neo-Irans"

[agentbluescreen]

Where was the election held that annointed these ennobled "INC" armed-robbers?

[shipgeek]

Ham Radio
FREAKING Mussa Kussa defection flight: FPG362 a Gulfstream 200 tail nr HB-JGL landed
15:00 UTC Farnborough UK

Mousa Kousa defection flight FPG362 Gulfstream 200 tail nr HB-JGL departed Djerba Zarzis
International Airport Tunisia about 11:45 UTC

Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa arrives in London and tells government he has resigned, UK
Foreign Office reports.


Are some of the Khadafy's jumping ship?

[2Revolutions]

Libyan Rebel Council Forms Oil Company to Replace Qaddafi’s

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/libyan-rebel-council-sets-up-oil-company-to-replace-qaddafi-s.html


The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.

The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wow That Was Fast! Libyan Rebels Have Already Established A New Central Bank Of Libya


http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/wow-that-was-fast-libyan-rebels-have-already-established-a-new-central-bank-of-libya

The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company.  Perhaps when this conflict is over those rebels can become time management consultants.  They sure do get a lot done.  What a skilled bunch of rebels - they can fight a war during the day and draw up a new central bank and a new national oil company at night without any outside help whatsoever.

[shipgeek]

Some unusual low-fly activity by fighter jets about 11.00 AM this morning.
Had no time to go out and see if they were Rafale or Typhoons.
Had not my ham radio equipment on hand.

Not the first time they are here, not the last.
Rarely such low-flys though. Strong vibrations in the house.

The squadron was probably on their way down to Libya to step up bombardments.


 

[bigron]

Middle East
 Apr 1, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD01Ak02.html 
   
THE ROVING EYE

Tripoli, the new Troy

By Pepe Escobar

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


Odyssey Dawn slogs on - a tawdry "kinetic military action" (as per the White House) worthy of the Pentagon's resident Homer. The stalemate on the ground could go on for weeks, if not months. This is more like The Iliad remixed - remember, the Trojan War slogged on for 10 years without a decisive result. America is bewildered. A new Associated Press-GfK poll found the country is split; 48% are in favor of the "kinetic military action" in Libya, 50% are against it.

Gaddafi is no king Priam. And Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is no Paris (although, in the absence of Helen, he did seduce the London School of Economics). Khamis Gaddafi is no Achilles - perhaps a minor Ajax (gigantic, great courage but dull of intellect).

Priam was a wise prince - while Gaddafi is wily. Priam strengthened the state by good governance (Machiavelli would have approved) and alliances with his neighbors, while Gaddafi governed by playing the tribes against each other. There's not a shade of Hector - a noble character - in sight.

One may wonder which gods and goddesses - apart from Athena - are as interested in this war as the parties themselves. One of Troy's crucial allies was Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons with her band of female warriors. In the Pentagon remix Penthesilea shifted to the opposition, played by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her combat warriors United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council aide Samantha Power.

Arab liberator French President Nicolas Sarkozy is no Menelaus; his Helen - Carla Bruni, who used to cavort with Bacchic Mick Jagger - would rather mingle with the Vogue crowd than sulk in a tent in the desert. British Prime Minister David Cameron is not exactly Agamemnon. As for Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi, the Italian president is just a satyr who escaped from an Aristophanes comedy.

Waiting for the lightning bolt
 
Odyssey Dawn boasts a cast of characters of infiltrated special forces - from the United States, Britain, France, plus the inevitable, Barack Obama-sanctioned Central Intelligence Agency covert ops. They may be teaching the "rebels" a thing or two about warfare - but certainly not the Mao Zedong guerrilla tactics Priam/Gaddafi is now using against a drive-in, wild bunch guerrilla.
These special forces anyway will be key. Troy was besieged for 10 years by a regular army - but only fell after two very special special forces intervened in an intelligence recon mission: Ulysses and Diomede. Troy hosted a celebrated statue of Athena called the Palladium. In disguise; protected by Athena (the Greek version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization); and helped by Helen - the stunning beauty who provoked the war in the first place - Ulysses and Diomede sneaked into Troy and stole the Palladium.

The Palladium, a wooden statue, protected Troy. Athena had thrown it out of the Olympus because it had imbibed the vaginal blood of Electra when she was raped by Zeus. Yet even after the theft of the Palladium Troy still did not fall. The "coalition of the willing" was getting desperate - until Ulysses came up with another special ops: the Trojan Horse.

It's hard to see Gaddafi falling for an Anglo-French-American Trojan Horse (unless it's a new United Nations resolution). When the Trojans saw the horse, they hesitated. Laocoon, the priest, famously said, "What madness, citizens, is this! Have you not learned enough of Grecian fraud to be on your guard against it? For my part I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts."

Beware of Westerners bearing gifts - many a Libyan will eventually have to acknowledge, especially when these gifts come from former colonial powers Britain and France, and the CIA/Pentagon/NATO/Africom condominium.

On the other hand, there's nothing these bearers of gifts would like better than Gaddafi ending his days like Priam - who lived to see the downfall of Troy and was slain on the fatal night the Greeks took the city.

So Tripoli won't fall until its Palladium is stolen. That is; as long as the Palladium - which is Gaddafi himself, the mirror image of his own power - is in town.

Meanwhile Gaddafi is "winning" like Troy did for years - ambushing the pick-up warriors outside his hometown Sirte, outflanking them through the desert, and replicating the tactic in Ras Lanuf, with a few Grad rockets added for good measure.

There's not much left for the "coalition of the willing" other than to bend over UN resolution 1973 - even though scores of international law experts stress that under the current UN resolutions arming the rebels is illegal.

The Anglo-French-American consortium is now deep into it - progressing from protecting civilians through Tomahawks and air strikes to targeting Gaddafi's forces anywhere to finally arming civilians.

They even say everything is already spelled out - in paragraph 4 of UN resolution 1973, which authorizes "all necessary measures" to protect civilians "... notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970". Paragraph 9 deals with the arms embargo. Thus "not withstanding" gives a legal basis for arming the rebels, as long as it's assumed this happens to protect civilians. From there to another resolution allowing boots on the ground is only another small step.

It requires major suspension of belief to cast former Gaddafi interior minister Abdel Fatah Younis and CIA asset Khalifah Hifle - the new "rebel" military commander - as Ulysses and Diomede. But still Palladium is in the building. The problem with the Odyssey Dawn script is that Ulysses is nowhere to be found.

No wonder so many are praying for a lightning bolt (a sacred Tomahawk?) sent by a deus ex machina, the one and only Zeus, for the moment just overseeing the proceedings from his throne in Olympian Washington.

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

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com


http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD01Ak02.html



 

[bigron]

Middle East
Apr 2, 2011 
 http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html
 
THE ROVING EYE


Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal


By Pepe Escobar

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



You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice

Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30).
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC30Ak01.html
Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".

There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.

Round up the unusual suspects

One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."

For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.

The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.

Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".

What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.

And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.

Globocop is on a roll

Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.

The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libyia; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.

A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.

The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.

This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LK20Ak02.html

Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.

According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.

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

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com


http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

 
 

[Dig]

Whatever he is, more stories like this would be a good thing.

"Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Milosevic Can't Talk Anymore "
 
by Jeremy Scahill

Copyrighted 1997-2011

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0313-29.htm

[Protean]

Fyi for tonight---
http://twitter.com/WebsterGTarpley

#Tarpley on #JeffRense radio program - subject #alQaeda #Libya rebels- 10pm Pacific, 1am eastern--

http://www.renseradio.com/listenlive.htm

28 minutes ago via web