MASS KILLING AND HUMANITARIAN DISASTER IN NATO SIEGE OF SIRTE

29 September 2011

By Bill Van Auken.

Refugees from the Libyan coastal city of Sirte report that thousands have died as a result of relentless NATO bombardment and shelling by the Western-backed “rebels.”

The two-week-old NATO siege of Sirte has left the city without adequate food, drinkable water, medicine and other basic necessities of life, creating hellish condition for its population of 100,000.

While the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC) has repeatedly issued announcements that the so-called rebels had advanced toward the city center under NATO air cover, they have again and again been forced to retreat under heavy fire from forces loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi, as well as what have been described as citizen volunteers.

In their frustration, the anti-Gaddafi militias have pounded the coastal city with artillery and mortar rounds, tank shells and Grad rockets, wreaking horrific destruction.

Thousands of refugees have tried to flee the city, forced to pass through checkpoints set up by the NATO-backed forces, where many have been taken prisoner, accused of being Gaddafi supporters.

The Wall Street Journal reported from one of these checkpoints, describing lines of cars and trucks, packed with civilians and piled with mattresses and other belongings:

“As refugees gathered, the Misrata fighters checked their names against lists of suspected Gaddafi loyalists. Some men were arrested while others were told to wait on the side of the road with their families.

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“‘We’re going to punish even those that supported Moammar with words,’ said a bearded fighter to a man who protested his detention. ‘We are the knights that liberated Libya.’ ”

Reports from inside the city indicate a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF ~ Doctors Without Borders) reported Wednesday that it had been in touch with doctors at the main hospital in Sirte, who were facing an increasingly impossible situation.

“If the situation continues for a few more days or weeks, it will be catastrophic. Already the doctors in the hospital can’t do their work properly, and if it persists, the situation will become dramatic,” Dr. Mego Terzian, head of emergency programs for MSF-France, told the Reuters news agency.

“They said the hospital was overwhelmed with wounded,” said Terzian. “There are other kinds of emergencies ~ pediatric, gynecological and patients with chronic diseases who are not receiving treatment.

“They told us of huge difficulties, a lack of electricity, water and basic medicines to run the emergency room, including anesthetics, antibiotics, analgesics, and blood bags,” he told Reuters.

The MSF representative said that the doctors in Sirte had contacted the group asking for emergency medical supplies, but that the National Transitional Council had “forbidden” MSF volunteers from crossing through its siege lines to aid the population.

Terzian said that the group was investigating whether it could bring in supplies by sea, but that it was not optimistic. NATO warships are maintaining a blockade of Libya’s Mediterranean coast, which is an integral part of the barbaric siege of Sirte.

Another doctor interviewed by the Associated Press said that many of the wounded being brought into the city’s central Ibn Sina Hospital were civilians who appeared to have been hit by rebel shells. The doctor, Eman Mohammed, reported that the hospital had no oxygen in the operating rooms and few staff members to treat patients.

Lack of food, water, electricity and other basic necessities is also taking its toll on the general population, particularly the city’s children. Reporting from a clinic in the town of Harawa, just a few miles outside of Sirte, AFP said that large numbers of families were bringing in young children suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting.

“Most patients coming to me are children,” Valentina Rybakova, a Ukrainian doctor who has worked in Libya for eight years, told AFP.

“I saw 120 patients since morning and 70 percent of them were children. This is a big humanitarian crisis. We are trying to get help from everybody, but the main problem is that these people have no access to clean drinking water.”

She said that her clinic, too, was suffering from a shortage of medicines, as well as critical lack of nursing staff.

“The situation in the city is very critical,” Muftah Mohammed, a fish trader who was leaving Sirte, told AFP. “Children are in a particularly bad condition. There is no milk for them. We have all been surviving on just macaroni for several days.”

“There is no food, there is no medicine, and every night, for five or six hours, NATO bombs all sorts of buildings,” Sami Abderraman, 64, told the Spanish daily El Pais as he sought to leave Sirte. “Hundreds of women and children have died like animals.” Abderraman estimated that as many as 3,000 people have been killed in the siege.

Another refugee, who asked not to be named, told El Pais that

“The people who remain are going to fight to the death.”

Riab Safran, 28, spoke to the Times of London as his car was being searched at a rebel roadblock outside of Sirte. 

“It was worse than awful. “They hit all kinds of buildings ~ schools, hospitals.” 

He said that he and his family had slept on the beach to avoid the NATO bombs and rebel shells, which had destroyed his own house on Saturday.

Ali Omar, who fled the city with 27 members of his extended family, recounted the carnage being carried out by the NATO-backed rebels advancing on Sirte from Benghazi in the east.

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“The easterners are exterminating everything in front of them,” said the 42-year-old Omar. He and his family, he said, had been pinned down inside their home by heavy gunfire for seven hours on Sunday.

A number of the refugees have told reporters that those remaining in the city feared violence at the hands of the “rebels” after reports of many of those fleeing being detained and of women being abducted from cars leaving the city.

Among the most fearful are refugees who fled Tawergha, a town about 25 miles south of Misrata whose population is composed predominantly of black Libyans. Anti-Gaddafi militias charged that the residents of Tawergha had participated in the siege of Misrata by government troops and have retaliated with wholesale ethnic cleansing. 

Houses and stores in the town have been burned and daubed with racist graffiti. The new authorities in Misrata have announced plans to bulldoze the entire town so that none of Tawergha’s residents can ever return.

It is estimated that as many as 5,000 refugees from Tawergha sought safety in Sirte and now fear that they will be slaughtered by the militia forces attacking the city from Misrata to the west. 

Tawergha refugees who have managed to flee the fighting for Tripoli have found no refuge there either. Misrata militias manning checkpoints in the capital have detained them and thrown them into prison camps, accusing them of being “mercenaries.”

 

The inability of the Western-backed “rebels” to overrun either Sirte or Bani Walid, another city held by Gaddafi forces to the west, has deepened the crisis of the NTC, which has repeatedly failed to carry through announced plans to form an interim government and has seen its authority come under fire from Islamist militia elements.

This crisis has prompted calls from the NTC for NATO to intensify its bombing of Sirte and Bani Walid.

The demands led to a heated denial by NATO that it was not doing enough to support the sieges of the two cities. “NATO has not reduced its activity in Libya,” said the alliance’s spokesman, Col. Roland Lavoie, who pointed out that NATO warplanes had conducted 100 sorties on Tuesday, including 35 “strike sorties.”

Since launching the war on Libya last March, NATO has conducted 24,140 sorties, including 9,010 strike sorties, leaving much of the country in ruins and thousands killed and wounded.

Col. Lavoie added:

“The number of strikes depends on the danger against the civilian population, in conformity of our mandate. We do not aim to bring support to NTC forces on the ground; this is why there is no operational coordination with NTC forces.”

This is, of course, a propaganda lie, which hardly conceals the fact that British, French, US and Qatari special operations troops, intelligence operatives and mercenary military contractors have organized, trained and armed the “rebel” armies, whose every advance has been made possible by NATO bombardments.

 Mosque in Sirte converted to a field hospital for the wounded pro-Qaddafi resisters.

The so-called mandate claimed by NATO is the resolution pushed through the United Nations Security Council last March authorizing a no-fly zone and “all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack.”

At the time, the US and its NATO allies claimed that intervention was required to halt a supposedly imminent massacre of civilians in the eastern city of Benghazi. Since then, the NATO bombings and the civil war fomented by the Western powers have claimed far more lives than were ever threatened by the Gaddafi regime.

Now this resolution is being invoked to justify NATO and the militias it supports carrying out in Sirte precisely the kind of murderous siege against a civilian population that the US and the European imperialist powers pretended to be preventing.

The killing and destruction that continue more than six months after NATO began its bombardments and more than a month after it proclaimed the fall of the Gaddafi regime serve to underscore the predatory character of this war, which has been carried out based not on “humanitarian” concerns, but rather on imperialist interests.

SANCTIONS: CUT THE GLOBALISTS OFF FROM HUMANITY

By Tony Cartalucci

Land Destroyer

September 27, 2011

UN Sanctioning Sovereign Nations,

We the People Sanctioning the Global Elite:

Time to cut them off from humanity.

The first step in destroying an entrenched enemy is to cut them off from the rest of the world. 

The globalists of NATO, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and others, have illustrated this principle in Libya on several levels. First they cut off the nation of Libya from the outside world, putting arms and trade embargoes on the Libyan government, blockading their shores, and seizing control of their airspace. 

As Benghazi's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terror brigades swept across the country under NATO cover, raping, murdering, and brutalizing all in their path, the globalists began organizing the surrounding and cutting off of individual Libyan cities, allowing (and assisting) rebels in cutting off food, medical supplies, cooking gas, electricity, and unimaginably even water, literally to starve the populations into submission. 

While the people of Libya have shown immense resolve against this strategy, it is only because of the incompetence of NATO and the lack of fortitude, character, or any desirable human quality amongst the rebels that this process of isolating and besieging the Libyan people has failed.

The absolute mockery the UN sanctioned NATO military intervention in Libya is making out of the contrived notion of "Responsibility to Protect (R2P)" is evident as civilians escaping from the Libyan city of Sirte accuse NATO of genocide, of bombing schools, hospitals, and homes and mass murdering innocent people. 
.

Additionally, under the cover of NATO, entire Libyan cities have been exterminated, with the population being rounded up, murdered or exiled and their property stolen. One such example, Tawarga, reported on by the Telegraph in their article, "Gaddafi's ghost town after the loyalists retreat," involved a town of 10,000 people whom the rebels said would never be allowed to return to their homes.

Americans during World War II were asked to stand against fascism in Europe and imperialism in East Asia, to intervene in the transgressions of Germany and Japan against the sovereignty of neighboring nations. 

In hindsight, the British and Americans were just as guilty at the time of grooming their own empires, but hypocrisy aside, rising to the occasion to stop the building of empire over free humanity is indeed a noble cause. 

Who then will rise to the occasion today, against the US, UK, France, Qatar, NATO's members and those backing the illegitimate UN, contrived International Criminal Court and other self-serving "international institutions" that are having their way with this planet? Who? And how?

It isn't just Libya that is in the cross-hairs. Afghanistan has suffered a decade of occupation and war at the hands of a banking, corporate-financier cartel who call themselves "globalists." 

Iraq too is suffering a proxy government beholden to invading foreign powers. 

The people of Uganda are literally being massacred so Anglo-American bankers can scoop up vast tracts of land to fuel yet another Ponzi economic scam, one based not on fiat currency, but even further-fetched "carbon credits." 

When one looks at the vast amount of resources at the disposal of the "globalists" they feel overwhelmed and not unexpectedly ask what can anyone do against such brazen, reckless disregard for human life, human sovereignty, and human rights?

The answer is staring us in the face every time we pick up the corporate-newspapers or flip on the corporate-news channels and hear the word "sanctions."

We the people must slap sanctions on the globalists, and it doesn't even require a UN mandate to do it.

It simply involves identifying the corporations and institutions that are enabling the globalist agenda, systematically boycotting them, and eventually replacing them entirely on a local or regional level.

There is nothing a multinational corporation can do that the modern nation-state can't, and in many cases, nothing multinationals can do that people can't do even on a local level. And as technology advances in both terms of information and manufacturing, this equation will only tip further in "we the people's" favor.

The ghouls of globalism have demonstrated without doubt their insincerity over their proclaimed goals of establishing an "international order" based on the rule of law, where "the rule of law" is applied to everyone but themselves, who brazenly, and consistently violate even their own contrived mandates, edicts, and resolutions when it suits them. 

In Libya, the "Responsibility to Protect" turned into targeted assassinations, regime change, and nation building (read: neo-imperialism) before UNSC r.1973 came back from the printers ~ a foregone conclusion 30 years in the making, spun only as "humanitarian intervention" for public consumption. 

Thus the globalists have demonstrated that they are incapable of lording over humanity with their "international order," and without doubt demonstrated the necessity of excising them and their ill-conceived notion of "global governance" entirely from society at all costs.

The globalists have procured

this vast amount of impressive power

only through our own complicity.

We daily, monthly, yearly, and from generation to generation pay into the vast, ever expanding corporations that make up the global elite. 

We elect to shop at their stores, buy their products, use their services, exchange their currency and keep that currency in their banks. 

We elect to divert our time, energy, and attention to their corporate sponsored spectacles, be it on the race track, the football field, the basketball court or the baseball diamond. 

We are told that our nation's destiny is determined at the polls, and that the only way to effect real change is to choose from amongst several, bought off, corrupt, self-serving politicians, who needless to say, already serve the globalists, not the people. 

In reality, we vote every day, with a vote far more effective and far reaching than anything that happens at election time. 

We vote with our purchases,

our choice of how we spend our free time,

and the way we utilize the resources we have at our disposal.

It would then reason, that by not paying into the globalists' corporations, institutions, and diverting ourselves with their distractions, we could begin repealing much of this unwarranted power they have accumulated. 

Eventually, we can begin replacing their corrupt, self-serving institutions that span the globe and presume dominion over all humanity, with local institutions that serve the people. 

It is not something that will be done overnight, it will take time. 

Even the globalists, with their endless power, must incrementally tighten their grip on their enemies, even ones as small as Libya. 

Surely everyone could easily do away with Coca-Cola and Pepsi today, as well as turning off the corporate-sponsored diversions on TV and on the sports fields. If we can't perhaps we don't deserve freedom or prosperity, but the mere, fleeting illusion of it we are afforded by our globalist overlords when it suits them. 

America's Founding Fathers would most likely be appalled at how modern day Americans have pawned off self-reliance, freedom, and independence for the illusion of security, convenience, and even entertainment.

We need to stop looking for heroes to save us, 

and simply find ourselves a mirror.

We are the key to our own salvation,

as no one cares about our best interests more than we the people, 

our families, and our immediate communities.

Let us commit to putting "sanctions" on the globalists. Cut these degenerate megalomaniacs off from the world they so desire to dominate. 

Leave their stadiums empty,

their airlines destitute,

their checkpoints desolate,

their corporate troughs filled with Chinese made slave goods virtual ghost towns, their banks as trusted and relied upon for economic activity as that game of monopoly collecting dust in the closet.

Put them out of business; put them out of business forever.

They have demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that they, not some cave dwelling fundamentalist or Libyan colonel, are the greatest threat we as humanity face.

For a partial list of corporations that absolutely must be put out of business please see: "Naming Names."

To see why even seemingly benign corporations like Pepsi and Coca-Cola are accomplices in the most egregious crimes against humanity, see: "Destroy the Globalists." 

For alternatives to the vast, globalist consumer paradigm, please see: "The Globalists' Worst Nightmare."

LIBYAN FACES OF INNOCENCE, NATO ADMITS ATTACKS

Meanwhile Western media concentrates on the death of a few Western soldiers who should not be meddling in Northern Africa in the first place!

THE CHILDREN OF LIBYA SPEAK (Graphic)

 The faces of resistance.

THE SWEET FACE OF A LIBYAN CHILD, PURE INNOCENCE

 
REBELS ADMIT TO ATTACKING WOMEN AND CHILDREN

CANADA’S WARTIME LEGACY RIPE FOR PILLAGING

THIS is MY take on what our military branches should be considering, 

but I am thinking mainstream disagrees.

By Greg Felton

Dissident Voice

September 14th, 2011

 

In a free society, citizens share a common history. 

Though this history may be told from many points of view, every action has objective reality and the sum total of all events is the birthright of every citizen. 

History belongs to everyone equally and as such is ~ or should be ~ open to unfettered enquiry and defended against deliberate distortion. To borrow a medical metaphor, history constitutes the genes that make up a citizen’s “cultural DNA.”

Unfortunately, cultural DNA is vulnerable to “genetic engineering.” In the hands of an ignoble government, historical images and events can be manipulated to serve political objectives.

George Orwell said it best in 1984: 

“He who controls the present, controls the past.

He who controls the past, controls the future.”

This is how we should understand the federal government’s decision to reapply the “Royal” adjective to the Canadian navy and air force.

According to its advocates, this nomenclature reversal is designed to overturn the pernicious effects of the 1968 Trudeau government’s amalgamation of the military. Logistically and politically, the decision made sense at the time because all three branches competed with each other for money and resources.

Yet, it had the unnecessary, demoralizing effect of stripping the military of their uniforms and culture. All military personnel were forced to adopt a hideous green uniform, derisively called “Glad Bags” when I was in the Naval Reserve, and the branches were given soulless, generic titles: Royal Canadian Navy became Maritime Command, Royal Canadian Air Force became Air Command, and the Canadian Army became Mobile Command.

Part of the reason for the royal reversal undoubtedly came from lobbying by veterans like Michael Smith of Toronto, who said it was important that the military remain in touch with its history:

The Royal Canadian Navy… is the navy that fought in the Battle of the Atlantic. If there had been no victory at sea, there would have been no victory in Europe. 

The Royal Canadian Air Force is the air force that fought in the Battle of Britain. Those historical titles are now reality, and those who are currently serving can be connected to that pride, to that history, that tradition. The distinctiveness has come back, and there’s a lot of meaning in those titles.

Stephen Harper’s Defence Minion Peter MacKay said essentially the same thing when he made the official announcement in August:

“I believe that this is about continuity. It’s about respect for our past. And I believe that this is something that the majority of Canadians will embrace.”

If we look a little deeper, we realize that the Royal reversion has precious little to do with respecting the past or rediscovering a distant military pride, as MacKay, Smith and others would have us believe.

It has everything to do with bastardizing the past.

The Canadian military Smith admires so much died on the battlefield long ago.

These Canadians fought at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, hit the beaches on D-Day, liberated The Netherlands, and sailed in the WWII convoys, and did so proudly in the name of fighting aggression.

 How does the legacy of this virtuous “Royal” Canadian military of yesteryear

find any connection with the modern Canadian military,

which bombs Libyan hospitals,

blockades Palestinian relief convoys,

and mistreats Afghan detainees?

The Dutch still love Canadians for liberating them from occupation. 

Now Arabs in Palestine, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon need someone to liberate them from Canada and the rest of the NATO Imperial Assault Force. 

Smith hasn’t noticed that the “Royal” Canadian Navy and Air Force he remembers fought fascism; now they abet it.

After World War II, Canadians helped found NATO and were among the earliest supporters of the UN, the rule of law and liberal internationalism.

Now, Canada is a leader in rationalizing genocide,

subverting the UN

and serving as Israel’s most enthusiastic cat’s paw.

The images and legacy of Canada’s honourable military past dwells within each Canadian, but now these will be debased and mutated and their meaning will be sullied. There is no “continuity,” as MacKay claims. There is rupture.

Behind the propaganda curtain of “restoring” Canada’s military pride and tradition is the appropriation of military history to justify the sort of aggression honourable Canadians gave their lives to defeat.

Greg Felton is an investigative journalist specializing in the Middle East, Canadian politics, the media, and language. He holds a Master's Degree in political science from the University of British Columbia and speaks French, Russian, and Mandarin. He is author of The Host and The Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.

FLAWED MESSENGER WESLEY CLARK ADMITS TO AMERICA FOREIGN POLICY COUP

September 14, 2011

Flawed messenger and former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about the neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years. Included in the plan was an attack on Libya. 

Clark mentions the plan at two minutes, 26 seconds into the video.



Go to:  Wesley Clark's Skeleton Closet

LIBYA AND THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

 

"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?" ~ Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

By William Blum

September 01, 2011

Information Clearing House

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.

In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country. 

Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil. 

The Holy Triumvirate ~ The United States, NATO and the European Union ~ recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".

If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.

If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate's imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate's oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.

If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate's friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them. 

If the Triumvirate doesn't want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court's prosecution because it has "special global responsibilities". But this doesn't stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy. 

1 executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or fractionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. 

One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims,

"Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence."

Adding to the list of the rebels' charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them "foreign mercenaries" but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29):

"On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead."

To complete this portrait of the West's newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27):

"The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came."

If the Triumvirate's propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they're making an exception this time because ... 

~ The Libyan people are being saved from a "massacre", both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station's owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). 

Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that  

"Qaddafi was not a man to compromise ... his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to."

Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn't, for example, use any nuclear weapons.

~ The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).

~ The people of Libya are being "liberated", whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a "dictator" they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked:

Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington?

It must also be asked:

Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?

The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what's happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. 

But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels' uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:

~ They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown

~ They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of "citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases"³ and of "the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters"⁴

~ Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country's oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause

~ They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement

~ International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence

The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.

Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region.

Then (ED: Israel and) the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. 

As to Why? Take your pick of the following:

~ Gaddafi's plans to conduct Libya's trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency ~ the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US's dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.

~ A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: "We've got a big image problem down there. ... Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."⁵

~ An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There's only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It'll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice ~ an American base or a NATO base.

~ Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d'être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.

~ Gaddafi's role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations. 

~ The claim by Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign6 could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the "no fly zone" and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi's influence.

~ Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes. 

~ In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya. He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands.

~ The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it's vital that powerful "enemies" be named and maintained.

~ For yet more reasons, see the article "Why Regime Change in Libya?" by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks ~ Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan "resource nationalism")

A WORD FROM THE MAN

THE WORLD'S MIGHTIEST MILITARY POWERS

HAVE BEEN TRYING TO KILL

"Recollections of My Life", written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. ... In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy". They know the truth but continue to lie; they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.

THE STATE OF OUR BELOVED CAPITALIST SYSTEM,

EARLY 21ST CENTURY

I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can't do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months ... until one day I took a closer look at the "Nutrition Facts" ... Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let's see ... "Serving Size about 1/4 second spray" ... Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say "about". I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons ~ You're good!

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.

On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.

Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.

And on Thursday ... yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.

The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.

Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.

Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.
~ Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street", 1920

Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight?

Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy?

The Washington Post's senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above:

"I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don't radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control."

Last month Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe's economic crisis" as he arrived in hard-hit Spain.

"The economy doesn't function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind," he declared. "Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good."⁸

"I am a Marxist," said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has "moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits."

"I don't believe in anything," said Barack Obama. 

 "At least not really strongly." (No, I made that one up.)

Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States "winning the Cold War" is that countless progressive people think there's no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. 

Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. 

This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.

 "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." ~ Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author

NOTES

1. For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: "Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime." There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups.
2. Washington Post, August 31, 2011
3. McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011
4. Wikipedia, Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011
5. The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007
6. The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011
7. Reuters, January 21, 2009
8. Associated Press, August 11, 2011
9. Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010
10. "Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years", WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011

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