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INTRODUCTION
Arming Libya Rebels Not Allowed by UN Resolutions, Legal Experts Warn US
Washington questioned over its assertion that UN mandate permits supply of arms to anti-Gaddafi rebels
By Robert Booth
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27793.htm
March 30, 2011 "The Guardian" -- The US is likely to be in breach of the UN security council's arms embargo on Libya if it sends weapons to the rebels, experts in international law have warned.
After Hillary Clinton said it would be legal to send arms to support the uprising, lawyers analysing the terms of the UN's 26 February arms embargo said it would require a change in the terms for it not to breach international law.
"The embargo appears to cover everybody in the conflict which means you can't supply arms to rebels," said Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London.
Professor Nicholas Grief, director of legal studies at the University of Kent, said that to him the 17 March resolution in fact appeared to strengthen the arms embargo by calling for its "strict implementation" by member states.
"I don't see how they can say that reading them together means they can circumvent the arms embargo," he said. "The resolution makes clear it is for the security council to decide whether to strengthen, suspend or lift the arms embargo, not for member states to act unilaterally."
On Monday, the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasumussen, stressed the importance of respecting the arms embargo. "The UN mandate authorises the enforcement of an arms embargo," he said. "We are not in Libya to arm people but to protect people."
A leading expert on UN law who has advised the British government and asked not to be named said: "The attempt to take the two resolutions together to justify arming the rebels looks like an imaginative interpretation by the US. I don't think the security council had the rebels in mind when it passed the resolution. I would be interested to see what the US argument is in detail."
"The idea of the arms embargo resolution is to limit the supply of arms to both sides, as similar UN embargoes covering Iraq and Haiti have done."
1.
Obama Authorizes Secret Support for Libya Rebels
By Mark Hosenball
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27799.htm
March 30, 2011 "Reuters" -- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.
Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.
2.
Libyan Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 Years in Langley Virginia
By Chris Adams
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27795.htm
March 30, 2011 "McClatchy" -- WASHINGTON - The new leader of Libya's opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.
Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.
Late last week, Hifter was appointed to lead the rebel army, which has been in chaos for weeks. He is the third such leader in less than a month, and rebels interviewed in Libya openly voiced distrust for the most recent leader, Abdel Fatah Younes, who had been at Gadhafi's side until just a month ago.
At a news conference Thursday, the rebel's military spokesman said Younes will stay as Hifter's chief of staff, and added that the army — such as it is — would need "weeks" of training.
3.
American Media Silent on CIA Ties to Libya Rebel Commander
By Patrick Martin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27796.htm
March 30, 2011 "WSWS" - -It has been six days since Khalifa Hifter was appointed the top military commander for the Libyan rebel forces fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. His appointment was noted by reporter Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers, a US regional chain that includes the Sacramento Bee and the Kansas City Star.
Two days later, another McClatchy journalist, Chris Adams, wrote a brief biographical sketch of Hifter that left the implication, without saying so explicitly, that he was a longtime CIA asset. It headlined the fact that after defecting from a top position in Gaddafi’s army, Hifter had lived in northern Virginia for some 20 years, as well as noting that Hifter had no obvious means of financial support.
The World Socialist Web Site published a perspective March 28 taking note of both the McClatchy articles and earlier reports providing more details of Hifter’s connections to the CIA. These included a 1996 article in the Washington Post and a book published by the French weekly Le Monde diplomatique. (See A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels”)
miércoles, 30 de marzo de 2011
THE EURO-US WAR ON LIBYA: OFFICIAL LIES
The Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics
By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27797.htm
[[HAZ NOTE: GOOD ARTICLE WITH 3 WRONG CONCLUSIONS:
1. The thesis of military expansionism and the argument that Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East contradict many of previous statements in this article. “Military expansionism” is a mean to achieve an end, not an end in itself, so the main thesis doesn’t hold. As I said before, Libya is a key geo-political country to be controlled in the aim of taking control of the oil resources in Arabian countries and the controlling of the pacific uprisings. I would say that there is more than one single objective –than military expansionism- among the allies that are bombing Libya. The controlling of oil that goes to Europe is still the main objective and also the source of different hidden agendas. They all want a bigger size of the easy cake (Libya’s oil) and this aim –though now they are united- is creating ongoing contradictions in the handling of the war, contradictions that could worsen if Americans oil corp insists in taking the lion part of the oil. On the other side, there are countries like Japan and China which also have invested in Libya that are not part of this crusade, nobody knows what position they will take later on after opposing the desecration of the UN 1973 Res by the US-Nato allies. It is sure that China, Japan and other non-european investors will be excluded in Libya invasion and later on from Iran if the allies united attack this country. I don’t think they will pleasantly wait for that to happen. The Zionists from Israel are also excluded from this reparto and they have means to smuggle top of the art weapons to Gaddafi forces and delay the current war so as to create among the US-Euro allies the economic and social instability due to the cut or the raising prices of oil and gas. Finally, the taking control of the biggest share of the easy cake (the US is now sending CIA “cleaners” of the jihadists in the aims of getting the rich oil places in Libya) won’t be easy and chances are that the allies divide themselves if the US succeed in invading alone after the “cleaners” job is done.
2.
There are two separate statements in this conclusion: 1- while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. 2- the driving force of US empire-building is military and not economic. The first means that Libya is now a “geo-political-military asset of the empire”, specifically for the US empire and exactly because of the recent waves of Arab revolts. Why the US interest in Arab revolts? Simply, because of oil. The second contains a wrong assumption and contradiction (military vs. economic) when in reality they complement each other if the policy makers of the US empire decided so. The wrong assumption is that the US policy maker- apparatus is an appendix or servants of military warriors and their main objective is to design the next war. This only happens in the mind of the authors of this article. The relation of economics and politics cannot be wrapped with the euphemistic words of “driving force”. The driving force of any country resides in its economy and it is because of big corporations monopolies destroyed the US economy that we are in crisis. Current wars abroad are showing that they are draining and contributing to the economic crisis, not solving them.
3.
Interpreting the Washington-led assault on Libya as counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements, requires to falsify the thesis that many senators in Washington were not only in favor of democratizing Arab countries long before the start of the revolt wave in Tunisia and Egypt, some of them in fact led dialogues in this perspective (there are evidences that some members of the Islamic brotherhood of Egypt participate in these events in Washington). It will be more appropriate to state the hypothesis (for immediate investigation) that Washington attack on Libya was a wrongly calculated act designed by US oil corporations already in Libya and the corrupted Obama’s team in power. They wanted to take advantage of the political mood and plunge the nation into this other war-mess, well described in the last paragraphs in the conclusion of this article.]]
THE ARTICLE
March 30, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that it’s “all about oil” – the goal is the seizure of Libya’s oil wells.
On the other hand Euro-U.S, government spokespeople defend the war by claiming it’s “all about saving civilian lives in the face of genocide”, calling it “humanitarian intervention”.
Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the Left in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists,Greens and other assorted progressives, claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the same thing, the UN, to help the “Libyan revolutionaries” defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship.
These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.). What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled “allied” military response against the Libyan government – because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called ‘rebel’ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor.
1. The Six Myths about Libya: Right and Left
The principal imperial powers and their mass media mouthpieces claim they are bombing Libya for “humanitarian reasons”. Their recent past and current military interventions present a different picture: The intervention in Iraq resulted in well over a million civilian deaths, four million refugees and the systematic destruction of a complex society and its infrastructure, including its water supplies and sewage treatment, irrigation, electricity grid, factories, not to mention research centers, schools, historical archives, museums and Iraq’s extensive social welfare system.
A worse disaster followed the invasion of Afghanistan. What was trumpeted as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to liberate Afghan women and drive out the Taliban resulted in a human catastrophe for the Afghan people.
The road to imperial barbarism in Iraq began with ‘sanctions’, progressed to ‘no fly zones’, then de facto partition of the north, invasion and foreign occupation and the unleashing of sectarian warfare among the ‘liberated’ Iraqi death squads.
Equally telling, the imperial assault against Yugoslavia in the 1990s, trotted out as the great “humanitarian war” to stop genocide, led to a 40-day aerial bombardment and destruction of Belgrade and other major cities, the imposition of a gangster terrorist regime (KLA) in Kosovo, the near-total ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian residents from Kosovo and the construction of the largest US military base on the continent (Camp Bondsteel).
The bombing of Libya has already destroyed major civilian infrastructure, airports, roads, seaports and communication centers, as well as ‘military’ targets. The blockade of Libya and military attacks have driven out scores of multi-national corporations and led to the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Asian, Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and North African skilled and unskilled immigrant workers and specialists of all types, devastating the economy and creating, virtually overnight, massive unemployment, bread-lines and critical gasoline shortages.
Moreover, following the logic of previous imperial military interventions, the seemingly ‘restrained’ call to patrol the skies via “no fly zone”, has led directly to bombing civilian as well as military targets on the ground, and is pushing to overthrow the legitimate government. The current imperial warmongers leading the attack on Libya, just like their predecessors, are not engaged in anything remotely resembling a humanitarian mission: they are destroying the fundamental basis of the civilian lives they claim to be saving – or as an earlier generation of American generals would claim in Vietnam, they are ‘destroying the villages in order to save them’.
2. War for Oil or Oil for Sale?
The ‘critical’ Left’s favorite cliché is that the imperial invasion is all about “seizing control of Libya’s oil and turning it over to their multi-nationals”. This is despite the fact that US, French and British multinationals (as well as their Asian competitors) had already “taken over” millions of acres of Libyan oil fields without dropping a single bomb.
For the past decade, “Big Oil” had been pumping and exporting Libyan oil and gas and reaping huge profits. Gaddafi welcomed the biggest MNC’s to exploit the oil wealth of Libya from the early 1990s to the present day. There are more major oil companies doing business in Libya than in most oil producing regions in the world.
These include: British Petroleum, with a seven-year contract on two concessions and over $1 billion dollars in planned investments. Each BP concession exploits huge geographic areas of Libya, one the size of Kuwait and the other the size of Belgium. In addition, five Japanese major corporations, including Mitsubishi and Nippon Petroleum, Italy’s Eni Gas, British Gas and the US giant Exxon Mobil signed new exploration and exploitation contracts in October 2010. The most recent oil concession signed in January 2010 mainly benefited US oil companies, especially Occidental Petroleum. Other multi-nationals operating in Libya include Royal Dutch Shell, Total (France), Oil India, CNBC (China), Indonesia’s Pertamina and Norway’s Norsk Hydro.
Despite the economic sanctions against Libya, imposed by US President Reagan in 1986, US multinational giant, Halliburton, had secured multi-billion dollar gas and oil projects since the 1980s. During his tenure as CEO of Halliburton, former Defense Secretary Cheney led the fight against these sanctions stating, “as a nation (there is) enormous value having American businesses engaged around the world”. Officially, sanctions against Libya were only lifted under Bush in 2004. Clearly, with all the European and US imperial countries already exploiting Libya oil on a massive scale, the mantra that the “war is about oil” doesn’t hold water or oil!
3. Gaddafi is a Terrorist
In the run-up to the current military assault on Tripoli,the US Treasury Department’s (and Israel’s special agent) Stuart Levey, authored a sanctions policy freezing $30 billion dollars in Libyan assets on the pretext that Gaddafi was a murderous tyrant. However, seven years earlier, Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice had taken Libya off the list of terrorist regimes and ordered Levey and his minions to lift the Reagan-era sanctions. Every major European power quickly followed suite: Gaddafi was welcomed in European capitals, prime ministers visited Tripoli and Gaddafi reciprocated by unilaterally dismantling his nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Gaddafi became Washington’s partner in its campaign against a broad array of groups, political movements and individuals arbitrarily placed on the US’ “terror list”, arresting, torturing and killing Al Qaeda suspects, expelling Palestinian militants and openly criticizing Hezbollah, Hamas and other opponents of Israel.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission gave the Gaddafi regime a clean bill of health in 2010. In the end Gaddafi’s political ‘turnabout’, however much celebrated by the Western elite, did not save him from this massive military assault. The imposition of neo-liberal ‘reforms’, his political ‘apostasy’ and cooperation in the ‘War on Terror’ and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, only weakened the regime. Libya became vulnerable to attack and isolated from any consequential anti-imperialist allies. Gaddafi’s much ballyhooed concessions to the West set his regime up as an easy target for the militarists of Washington, London and Paris, eager for a quick ‘victory’.
4. The Myth of the Revolutionary Masses
The Left, including the mainly electoral social democrat, green and even left-socialist parties of Europe and the US swallowed the entire mass media propaganda package demonizing the Gaddafi regime while lauding the ‘rebels’. Parroting their imperial mentors, the ‘Left’ justified their support for imperial military intervention in the name of the “revolutionary Libyan people”, the “peace-loving” masses “fighting tyranny” and organizing peoples’ militias to “liberate their country”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The center of the armed uprising is Benghazi, longtime monarchist hotbed of tribal supporters and clients of the deposed King Idris and his family. Idris, until he was overthrown by the young firebrand Col. Gaddafi, had ruled Libya with an iron fist over a semi-feudal backwater and was popular with Washington, having given the US its largest air base (Wheeler) in the Mediterranean. Among the feuding leaders of the “transitional council” in Benghazi (who purport to lead but have few organized followers) one finds neo-liberal expats, who first promoted the Euro-US military invasion envisioning their ride to power on the back of Western missiles. They openly favor dismantling the Libyan state oil companies currently engaged in joint ventures with foreign MNCs. Independent observers have commented on the lack of any clear reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary organizations or democratic popular movements among the ‘rebels’.
While the US, British and French are firing missiles, loaded with depleted uranium, at the Libyan military and key civilian installations, their ‘allies’ the armed militias in Benghazi, rather than go to battle against the regime’s armed forces, are busy rounding up, arresting and often executing any suspected members of Gaddafi’s “revolutionary committees”, arbitrarily labeling these civilians as “fifth columnists”. The top leaders of these “revolutionary” masses in Benghazi include two recent defectors from what the ‘Left’ dubs Gaddafi’s “murderous regime”: Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice minister, who prosecuted dissenters up to the day before the armed uprising, Mahmoud Jebri, who was prominent in inviting multi-nationals to take over the oil fields, and Gaddafi’s former ambassador to India, Ali Aziz al-Eisawa, who jumped ship as soon as it looked like the uprising appeared to be succeeding.
These self-appointed ‘leaders’ of the rebels who now staunchly support the Euro-US military intervention, were long-time supporters of the Gaddafi’s dictatorship and promoters of MNC takeovers of oil and gas fields. The heads of the “rebels” military council is Omar Hariri and General Abdul Fattah Younis, former head of the Ministry of Interior. Both men have long histories (since 1969) of repressing democratic movements within Libya. Given their unsavory background, it is not surprising that these top level military defectors to the ‘rebel’ cause have been unable to arouse their troops, mostly conscripts, to engage the loyalist forces backing Gaddafi. They too will have to take a ride into Tripoli on the coattails of the Anglo-US-French armed forces.
The anti-Gaddafi force’s lack of any democratic credentials and mass support is evident in their reliance on foreign imperial armed forces to bring them to power and their subservience to imperial demands. Their abuse and persecution of immigrant workers from Asia, Turkey and especially sub-Sahara Africa, as well as black Libyan citizens, is well documented in the international press. Their brutal treatment of black Libyans, falsely accused of being Gaddafi’s “mercenaries”, includes torture, mutilation and horrific executions, does not auger well for the advent of a new democratic order, or even the revival of an economy, which has been dependent on immigrant labor, let alone a unified country with national institutions and a national economy.
The self-declared leadership of the “National Transitional Council” is not democratic, nationalist or even capable of uniting the country. These are not credible leaders capable of restoring the economy and creating jobs lost as a result of their armed power grab. No one seriously envisions these ‘exiles’, tribalists, monarchists and Islamists maintaining the paternalistic social welfare and employment programs created by the Gaddafi government and which gave Libyans the highest per-capita income in Africa.
5. Al Qaeda
The greatest geographical concentration of suspected terrorists with links to Al Qaeda just happens to be in the areas dominated by the “rebels”. For over a decade Gaddafi has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Qaeda, following his embrace of the Bush-Obama ‘War on Terror’ doctrine.
These jihadist Libyans, having honed their skills in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, are now among the ranks of the “rebels” fighting the much more secular Libyan government. Likewise, the tribal chiefs, fundamentalist clerics and monarchists in the East have been active in a “holy war” against Gaddafi welcoming arms and air support from the Anglo-French-US “crusaders” – just like the mullahs and tribal chiefs welcomed the arms and training from the Carter-Reagan White House to overthrow a secular regime in Afghanistan. Once again, imperial intervention is based on ‘alliances’ with the most retrograde forces. The composition of the future regime (or regimes, if Libya is divided) is a big question and the prospects of a return to political stability for Big Oil to profitably exploit Libya’s resources are dubious.
“Genocide” or Armed Civil War
Unlike all ongoing mass popular Arab uprisings, the Libyan conflict began as an armed insurrection, directed at seizing power by force. Unlike the autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi has secured a mass regional base among a substantial sector of the Libyan population. This support is based on the fact that almost two generations of Libyans have benefited from Gaddafi’s petroleum-financed welfare, educational, employment and housing programs, none of which existed under America’s favorite, King Idris.
Since violence is inherent in any armed uprising, once one picks up the gun to seize power, they lose their claim on ‘civil rights’. In armed civil conflicts, civil rights are violated on all sides. Regardless of the Western media’s lurid portrayal of Gaddafi’s “African mercenary forces” and its more muted approval of ‘revolutionary justice’ against Gaddafi supporters and government soldiers captured in the rebel strongholds, the rules of warfare should have come into play, including the protection of non-combatants-civilians (including government supporters and officials), as well as protection of Libyan prisoners of war in the areas under NATO-rebel control.
The unsubstantiated Euro-US claim of “genocide” amplified by the mass media and parroted by “left” spokespersons is contradicted by the daily reports of single and double digit deaths and injuries, resulting from urban violence on both sides, as control of cities and towns shifts between the two sides.
Truth is the first casualty of war, and especially of civil war. Both sides have resorted to monstrous fabrications of victories, casualties, monsters and victims.
Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials – and lacking broad-based mass support.
Conclusion
If not to prevent genocide, grab the oil or promote democracy (via Patriot missiles), what, then, is the driving force behind the Euro-US imperial intervention?
A clue is in the selectivity of Western military intervention: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar and Oman ruling autocrats, allied with, and backed by, Euro-US imperial states go about arresting, torturing and murdering unarmed urban protestors with total impunity.
In Egypt and Tunisia, the US is backing a conservative junta of self-appointed civil-military elites in order to block the profound democratic and nationalist transformation of society demanded by the protesters. The ‘junta’ aims to push through neo-liberal economic “reforms” through carefully-vetted pro-Western ‘elected’ officials.
While liberal critics may accuse the West of “hypocrisy” and “double standards” in bombing Gaddafi but not the Gulf butchers, in reality the imperial rulers consistently apply the same standards in each region. They defend strategic autocratic client regimes, which have allowed imperial states to build strategic air force and naval bases, run regional intelligence operations and set up logistical platforms for their ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their future planned conflict with Iran. They attack Gaddafi’s Libya precisely because Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East.
The key point is that while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. As we have written in many previous essays the driving force of US empire-building is military and not economic. This is why billions of dollars of Western economic interests and contracts had been sacrificed in the setting up of sanctions against Iraq and Iran – with the costly result that the invasion and occupation of Iraq shut down most oil exploitation for over a decade.
The Washington-led assault on Libya, with the majority of air sorties and missiles strikes being carried out by the Obama regime, is part of a more general counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements. The West is backing the suppression of these pro-democracy movements throughout the Gulf; it finances the pro-imperial, pro-Israel junta in Egypt and it is intervening in Tunisia to ensure that any new regime is “correctly aligned”. It supports a despotic regime in Algeria as well as Israel’s daily assaults on Gaza. In line with this policy, the West backs the uprising of ex-Gaddafites and right-wing monarchists, confident that the ‘liberated’ Libya will once again provide military bases for the US-European military empire-builders.
In contrast, the emerging market-driven global and regional powers have refused to support this conflict, which jeopardizes their access to oil and threatens the current large-scale oil exploration contracts signed with Gaddafi. The growing economies of Germany, China, Russia, Turkey, India and Brazil rely on exploiting new markets and natural resources all over Africa and the Middle East, while the US, Britain and France spend billions pursuing wars that de-stabilize these markets, destroy infrastructure and foment long-term wars of resistance.
The growing market powers recognize that the Libyan “rebels” cannot secure a quick victory or ensure a stable environment for long-term trade and investments. The “rebels”, once in power, will be political clients of their militarist imperial mentors. Clearly, imperial military intervention on behalf of regional separatists seriously threatens these emerging market economies:
The US supports ethno-religious rebels in China’s Tibetan province and as well as the Uyghur separatists; Washington and London have long backed the Chechen separatists in the Russian Caucuses. India is wary of the US military support for Pakistan, which claims Kashmir. Turkey is facing Kurdish separatists who receive arms and safe haven from their US-supplied Iraqi Kurdish counterparts.
The North African precedent of an imperial invasion of Libya on behalf of its separatist clients worries the emerging market-powers. It is also an ongoing threat to the mass-based popular Arab freedom movements. And the invasion sounds the death knell for the US economy and its fragile ‘recovery’: three ongoing, endless wars will break the budget much sooner than later. Most tragic of all, the West’s ‘humanitarian’ invasion has fatally undermined genuine efforts by Libya’s civilian democrats, socialists and nationalists to free their country from both a dictatorship and from imperial-backed reactionaries.
Professor Petras' latest books include The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press 2006) and Rulers and Rules (Clarity Press 2007). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Robin Eastman-Abaya is a physician and has been a human rights activist in the Philippines for the past 29 years
Notes
1. Libyonline.com
2. BBC News, 10/03/2005
3. Halliburtonwatch.com
4. Washington Post, 3/24/11
5. BBC, 9/5/2008
6. FT, March 23, 2011, p. 7
7. Alexander Cockburn: Counterpunch, March 24, 2011
By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27797.htm
[[HAZ NOTE: GOOD ARTICLE WITH 3 WRONG CONCLUSIONS:
1. The thesis of military expansionism and the argument that Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East contradict many of previous statements in this article. “Military expansionism” is a mean to achieve an end, not an end in itself, so the main thesis doesn’t hold. As I said before, Libya is a key geo-political country to be controlled in the aim of taking control of the oil resources in Arabian countries and the controlling of the pacific uprisings. I would say that there is more than one single objective –than military expansionism- among the allies that are bombing Libya. The controlling of oil that goes to Europe is still the main objective and also the source of different hidden agendas. They all want a bigger size of the easy cake (Libya’s oil) and this aim –though now they are united- is creating ongoing contradictions in the handling of the war, contradictions that could worsen if Americans oil corp insists in taking the lion part of the oil. On the other side, there are countries like Japan and China which also have invested in Libya that are not part of this crusade, nobody knows what position they will take later on after opposing the desecration of the UN 1973 Res by the US-Nato allies. It is sure that China, Japan and other non-european investors will be excluded in Libya invasion and later on from Iran if the allies united attack this country. I don’t think they will pleasantly wait for that to happen. The Zionists from Israel are also excluded from this reparto and they have means to smuggle top of the art weapons to Gaddafi forces and delay the current war so as to create among the US-Euro allies the economic and social instability due to the cut or the raising prices of oil and gas. Finally, the taking control of the biggest share of the easy cake (the US is now sending CIA “cleaners” of the jihadists in the aims of getting the rich oil places in Libya) won’t be easy and chances are that the allies divide themselves if the US succeed in invading alone after the “cleaners” job is done.
2.
There are two separate statements in this conclusion: 1- while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. 2- the driving force of US empire-building is military and not economic. The first means that Libya is now a “geo-political-military asset of the empire”, specifically for the US empire and exactly because of the recent waves of Arab revolts. Why the US interest in Arab revolts? Simply, because of oil. The second contains a wrong assumption and contradiction (military vs. economic) when in reality they complement each other if the policy makers of the US empire decided so. The wrong assumption is that the US policy maker- apparatus is an appendix or servants of military warriors and their main objective is to design the next war. This only happens in the mind of the authors of this article. The relation of economics and politics cannot be wrapped with the euphemistic words of “driving force”. The driving force of any country resides in its economy and it is because of big corporations monopolies destroyed the US economy that we are in crisis. Current wars abroad are showing that they are draining and contributing to the economic crisis, not solving them.
3.
Interpreting the Washington-led assault on Libya as counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements, requires to falsify the thesis that many senators in Washington were not only in favor of democratizing Arab countries long before the start of the revolt wave in Tunisia and Egypt, some of them in fact led dialogues in this perspective (there are evidences that some members of the Islamic brotherhood of Egypt participate in these events in Washington). It will be more appropriate to state the hypothesis (for immediate investigation) that Washington attack on Libya was a wrongly calculated act designed by US oil corporations already in Libya and the corrupted Obama’s team in power. They wanted to take advantage of the political mood and plunge the nation into this other war-mess, well described in the last paragraphs in the conclusion of this article.]]
THE ARTICLE
March 30, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and, now, North Africa, have based their arguments on clichés and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya is that it’s “all about oil” – the goal is the seizure of Libya’s oil wells.
On the other hand Euro-U.S, government spokespeople defend the war by claiming it’s “all about saving civilian lives in the face of genocide”, calling it “humanitarian intervention”.
Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the Left in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists,Greens and other assorted progressives, claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the same thing, the UN, to help the “Libyan revolutionaries” defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship.
These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.). What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the War, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces. China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Germany, the most dynamic capitalist countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East are fundamentally opposed to the self-styled “allied” military response against the Libyan government – because Gaddafi represents no threat to their security and they already have full access to the oil and a favorable investment climate. Besides, these economically dynamic countries see no prospect for a stable, progressive or democratic Libyan government emerging from the so-called ‘rebel’ leaders, who are disparate elites competing for power and Western favor.
1. The Six Myths about Libya: Right and Left
The principal imperial powers and their mass media mouthpieces claim they are bombing Libya for “humanitarian reasons”. Their recent past and current military interventions present a different picture: The intervention in Iraq resulted in well over a million civilian deaths, four million refugees and the systematic destruction of a complex society and its infrastructure, including its water supplies and sewage treatment, irrigation, electricity grid, factories, not to mention research centers, schools, historical archives, museums and Iraq’s extensive social welfare system.
A worse disaster followed the invasion of Afghanistan. What was trumpeted as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to liberate Afghan women and drive out the Taliban resulted in a human catastrophe for the Afghan people.
The road to imperial barbarism in Iraq began with ‘sanctions’, progressed to ‘no fly zones’, then de facto partition of the north, invasion and foreign occupation and the unleashing of sectarian warfare among the ‘liberated’ Iraqi death squads.
Equally telling, the imperial assault against Yugoslavia in the 1990s, trotted out as the great “humanitarian war” to stop genocide, led to a 40-day aerial bombardment and destruction of Belgrade and other major cities, the imposition of a gangster terrorist regime (KLA) in Kosovo, the near-total ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian residents from Kosovo and the construction of the largest US military base on the continent (Camp Bondsteel).
The bombing of Libya has already destroyed major civilian infrastructure, airports, roads, seaports and communication centers, as well as ‘military’ targets. The blockade of Libya and military attacks have driven out scores of multi-national corporations and led to the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Asian, Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and North African skilled and unskilled immigrant workers and specialists of all types, devastating the economy and creating, virtually overnight, massive unemployment, bread-lines and critical gasoline shortages.
Moreover, following the logic of previous imperial military interventions, the seemingly ‘restrained’ call to patrol the skies via “no fly zone”, has led directly to bombing civilian as well as military targets on the ground, and is pushing to overthrow the legitimate government. The current imperial warmongers leading the attack on Libya, just like their predecessors, are not engaged in anything remotely resembling a humanitarian mission: they are destroying the fundamental basis of the civilian lives they claim to be saving – or as an earlier generation of American generals would claim in Vietnam, they are ‘destroying the villages in order to save them’.
2. War for Oil or Oil for Sale?
The ‘critical’ Left’s favorite cliché is that the imperial invasion is all about “seizing control of Libya’s oil and turning it over to their multi-nationals”. This is despite the fact that US, French and British multinationals (as well as their Asian competitors) had already “taken over” millions of acres of Libyan oil fields without dropping a single bomb.
For the past decade, “Big Oil” had been pumping and exporting Libyan oil and gas and reaping huge profits. Gaddafi welcomed the biggest MNC’s to exploit the oil wealth of Libya from the early 1990s to the present day. There are more major oil companies doing business in Libya than in most oil producing regions in the world.
These include: British Petroleum, with a seven-year contract on two concessions and over $1 billion dollars in planned investments. Each BP concession exploits huge geographic areas of Libya, one the size of Kuwait and the other the size of Belgium. In addition, five Japanese major corporations, including Mitsubishi and Nippon Petroleum, Italy’s Eni Gas, British Gas and the US giant Exxon Mobil signed new exploration and exploitation contracts in October 2010. The most recent oil concession signed in January 2010 mainly benefited US oil companies, especially Occidental Petroleum. Other multi-nationals operating in Libya include Royal Dutch Shell, Total (France), Oil India, CNBC (China), Indonesia’s Pertamina and Norway’s Norsk Hydro.
Despite the economic sanctions against Libya, imposed by US President Reagan in 1986, US multinational giant, Halliburton, had secured multi-billion dollar gas and oil projects since the 1980s. During his tenure as CEO of Halliburton, former Defense Secretary Cheney led the fight against these sanctions stating, “as a nation (there is) enormous value having American businesses engaged around the world”. Officially, sanctions against Libya were only lifted under Bush in 2004. Clearly, with all the European and US imperial countries already exploiting Libya oil on a massive scale, the mantra that the “war is about oil” doesn’t hold water or oil!
3. Gaddafi is a Terrorist
In the run-up to the current military assault on Tripoli,the US Treasury Department’s (and Israel’s special agent) Stuart Levey, authored a sanctions policy freezing $30 billion dollars in Libyan assets on the pretext that Gaddafi was a murderous tyrant. However, seven years earlier, Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice had taken Libya off the list of terrorist regimes and ordered Levey and his minions to lift the Reagan-era sanctions. Every major European power quickly followed suite: Gaddafi was welcomed in European capitals, prime ministers visited Tripoli and Gaddafi reciprocated by unilaterally dismantling his nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Gaddafi became Washington’s partner in its campaign against a broad array of groups, political movements and individuals arbitrarily placed on the US’ “terror list”, arresting, torturing and killing Al Qaeda suspects, expelling Palestinian militants and openly criticizing Hezbollah, Hamas and other opponents of Israel.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission gave the Gaddafi regime a clean bill of health in 2010. In the end Gaddafi’s political ‘turnabout’, however much celebrated by the Western elite, did not save him from this massive military assault. The imposition of neo-liberal ‘reforms’, his political ‘apostasy’ and cooperation in the ‘War on Terror’ and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, only weakened the regime. Libya became vulnerable to attack and isolated from any consequential anti-imperialist allies. Gaddafi’s much ballyhooed concessions to the West set his regime up as an easy target for the militarists of Washington, London and Paris, eager for a quick ‘victory’.
4. The Myth of the Revolutionary Masses
The Left, including the mainly electoral social democrat, green and even left-socialist parties of Europe and the US swallowed the entire mass media propaganda package demonizing the Gaddafi regime while lauding the ‘rebels’. Parroting their imperial mentors, the ‘Left’ justified their support for imperial military intervention in the name of the “revolutionary Libyan people”, the “peace-loving” masses “fighting tyranny” and organizing peoples’ militias to “liberate their country”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The center of the armed uprising is Benghazi, longtime monarchist hotbed of tribal supporters and clients of the deposed King Idris and his family. Idris, until he was overthrown by the young firebrand Col. Gaddafi, had ruled Libya with an iron fist over a semi-feudal backwater and was popular with Washington, having given the US its largest air base (Wheeler) in the Mediterranean. Among the feuding leaders of the “transitional council” in Benghazi (who purport to lead but have few organized followers) one finds neo-liberal expats, who first promoted the Euro-US military invasion envisioning their ride to power on the back of Western missiles. They openly favor dismantling the Libyan state oil companies currently engaged in joint ventures with foreign MNCs. Independent observers have commented on the lack of any clear reformist tendencies, let alone revolutionary organizations or democratic popular movements among the ‘rebels’.
While the US, British and French are firing missiles, loaded with depleted uranium, at the Libyan military and key civilian installations, their ‘allies’ the armed militias in Benghazi, rather than go to battle against the regime’s armed forces, are busy rounding up, arresting and often executing any suspected members of Gaddafi’s “revolutionary committees”, arbitrarily labeling these civilians as “fifth columnists”. The top leaders of these “revolutionary” masses in Benghazi include two recent defectors from what the ‘Left’ dubs Gaddafi’s “murderous regime”: Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice minister, who prosecuted dissenters up to the day before the armed uprising, Mahmoud Jebri, who was prominent in inviting multi-nationals to take over the oil fields, and Gaddafi’s former ambassador to India, Ali Aziz al-Eisawa, who jumped ship as soon as it looked like the uprising appeared to be succeeding.
These self-appointed ‘leaders’ of the rebels who now staunchly support the Euro-US military intervention, were long-time supporters of the Gaddafi’s dictatorship and promoters of MNC takeovers of oil and gas fields. The heads of the “rebels” military council is Omar Hariri and General Abdul Fattah Younis, former head of the Ministry of Interior. Both men have long histories (since 1969) of repressing democratic movements within Libya. Given their unsavory background, it is not surprising that these top level military defectors to the ‘rebel’ cause have been unable to arouse their troops, mostly conscripts, to engage the loyalist forces backing Gaddafi. They too will have to take a ride into Tripoli on the coattails of the Anglo-US-French armed forces.
The anti-Gaddafi force’s lack of any democratic credentials and mass support is evident in their reliance on foreign imperial armed forces to bring them to power and their subservience to imperial demands. Their abuse and persecution of immigrant workers from Asia, Turkey and especially sub-Sahara Africa, as well as black Libyan citizens, is well documented in the international press. Their brutal treatment of black Libyans, falsely accused of being Gaddafi’s “mercenaries”, includes torture, mutilation and horrific executions, does not auger well for the advent of a new democratic order, or even the revival of an economy, which has been dependent on immigrant labor, let alone a unified country with national institutions and a national economy.
The self-declared leadership of the “National Transitional Council” is not democratic, nationalist or even capable of uniting the country. These are not credible leaders capable of restoring the economy and creating jobs lost as a result of their armed power grab. No one seriously envisions these ‘exiles’, tribalists, monarchists and Islamists maintaining the paternalistic social welfare and employment programs created by the Gaddafi government and which gave Libyans the highest per-capita income in Africa.
5. Al Qaeda
The greatest geographical concentration of suspected terrorists with links to Al Qaeda just happens to be in the areas dominated by the “rebels”. For over a decade Gaddafi has been in the forefront of the fight against Al Qaeda, following his embrace of the Bush-Obama ‘War on Terror’ doctrine.
These jihadist Libyans, having honed their skills in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, are now among the ranks of the “rebels” fighting the much more secular Libyan government. Likewise, the tribal chiefs, fundamentalist clerics and monarchists in the East have been active in a “holy war” against Gaddafi welcoming arms and air support from the Anglo-French-US “crusaders” – just like the mullahs and tribal chiefs welcomed the arms and training from the Carter-Reagan White House to overthrow a secular regime in Afghanistan. Once again, imperial intervention is based on ‘alliances’ with the most retrograde forces. The composition of the future regime (or regimes, if Libya is divided) is a big question and the prospects of a return to political stability for Big Oil to profitably exploit Libya’s resources are dubious.
“Genocide” or Armed Civil War
Unlike all ongoing mass popular Arab uprisings, the Libyan conflict began as an armed insurrection, directed at seizing power by force. Unlike the autocratic rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi has secured a mass regional base among a substantial sector of the Libyan population. This support is based on the fact that almost two generations of Libyans have benefited from Gaddafi’s petroleum-financed welfare, educational, employment and housing programs, none of which existed under America’s favorite, King Idris.
Since violence is inherent in any armed uprising, once one picks up the gun to seize power, they lose their claim on ‘civil rights’. In armed civil conflicts, civil rights are violated on all sides. Regardless of the Western media’s lurid portrayal of Gaddafi’s “African mercenary forces” and its more muted approval of ‘revolutionary justice’ against Gaddafi supporters and government soldiers captured in the rebel strongholds, the rules of warfare should have come into play, including the protection of non-combatants-civilians (including government supporters and officials), as well as protection of Libyan prisoners of war in the areas under NATO-rebel control.
The unsubstantiated Euro-US claim of “genocide” amplified by the mass media and parroted by “left” spokespersons is contradicted by the daily reports of single and double digit deaths and injuries, resulting from urban violence on both sides, as control of cities and towns shifts between the two sides.
Truth is the first casualty of war, and especially of civil war. Both sides have resorted to monstrous fabrications of victories, casualties, monsters and victims.
Demons and angels aside, this conflict began as a civil war between two sets of Libyan elites: An established paternalistic, now burgeoning neo-liberal autocracy with substantial popular backing versus a western imperialist financed and trained elite, backed by an amorphous group of regional, tribal and clerical chiefs, monarchists and neo-liberal professionals devoid of democratic and nationalist credentials – and lacking broad-based mass support.
Conclusion
If not to prevent genocide, grab the oil or promote democracy (via Patriot missiles), what, then, is the driving force behind the Euro-US imperial intervention?
A clue is in the selectivity of Western military intervention: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar and Oman ruling autocrats, allied with, and backed by, Euro-US imperial states go about arresting, torturing and murdering unarmed urban protestors with total impunity.
In Egypt and Tunisia, the US is backing a conservative junta of self-appointed civil-military elites in order to block the profound democratic and nationalist transformation of society demanded by the protesters. The ‘junta’ aims to push through neo-liberal economic “reforms” through carefully-vetted pro-Western ‘elected’ officials.
While liberal critics may accuse the West of “hypocrisy” and “double standards” in bombing Gaddafi but not the Gulf butchers, in reality the imperial rulers consistently apply the same standards in each region. They defend strategic autocratic client regimes, which have allowed imperial states to build strategic air force and naval bases, run regional intelligence operations and set up logistical platforms for their ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their future planned conflict with Iran. They attack Gaddafi’s Libya precisely because Gaddafi had refused to actively contribute to Western military operations in Africa and the Middle East.
The key point is that while Libya allows the biggest US-European multi-nationals to plunder its oil wealth, it did not become a strategic geo-political-military asset of the empire. As we have written in many previous essays the driving force of US empire-building is military and not economic. This is why billions of dollars of Western economic interests and contracts had been sacrificed in the setting up of sanctions against Iraq and Iran – with the costly result that the invasion and occupation of Iraq shut down most oil exploitation for over a decade.
The Washington-led assault on Libya, with the majority of air sorties and missiles strikes being carried out by the Obama regime, is part of a more general counter-attack in response to the most recent Arab popular pro-democracy movements. The West is backing the suppression of these pro-democracy movements throughout the Gulf; it finances the pro-imperial, pro-Israel junta in Egypt and it is intervening in Tunisia to ensure that any new regime is “correctly aligned”. It supports a despotic regime in Algeria as well as Israel’s daily assaults on Gaza. In line with this policy, the West backs the uprising of ex-Gaddafites and right-wing monarchists, confident that the ‘liberated’ Libya will once again provide military bases for the US-European military empire-builders.
In contrast, the emerging market-driven global and regional powers have refused to support this conflict, which jeopardizes their access to oil and threatens the current large-scale oil exploration contracts signed with Gaddafi. The growing economies of Germany, China, Russia, Turkey, India and Brazil rely on exploiting new markets and natural resources all over Africa and the Middle East, while the US, Britain and France spend billions pursuing wars that de-stabilize these markets, destroy infrastructure and foment long-term wars of resistance.
The growing market powers recognize that the Libyan “rebels” cannot secure a quick victory or ensure a stable environment for long-term trade and investments. The “rebels”, once in power, will be political clients of their militarist imperial mentors. Clearly, imperial military intervention on behalf of regional separatists seriously threatens these emerging market economies:
The US supports ethno-religious rebels in China’s Tibetan province and as well as the Uyghur separatists; Washington and London have long backed the Chechen separatists in the Russian Caucuses. India is wary of the US military support for Pakistan, which claims Kashmir. Turkey is facing Kurdish separatists who receive arms and safe haven from their US-supplied Iraqi Kurdish counterparts.
The North African precedent of an imperial invasion of Libya on behalf of its separatist clients worries the emerging market-powers. It is also an ongoing threat to the mass-based popular Arab freedom movements. And the invasion sounds the death knell for the US economy and its fragile ‘recovery’: three ongoing, endless wars will break the budget much sooner than later. Most tragic of all, the West’s ‘humanitarian’ invasion has fatally undermined genuine efforts by Libya’s civilian democrats, socialists and nationalists to free their country from both a dictatorship and from imperial-backed reactionaries.
Professor Petras' latest books include The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press 2006) and Rulers and Rules (Clarity Press 2007). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Robin Eastman-Abaya is a physician and has been a human rights activist in the Philippines for the past 29 years
Notes
1. Libyonline.com
2. BBC News, 10/03/2005
3. Halliburtonwatch.com
4. Washington Post, 3/24/11
5. BBC, 9/5/2008
6. FT, March 23, 2011, p. 7
7. Alexander Cockburn: Counterpunch, March 24, 2011
DEBACLE IMPERIAL y FRACASO DEL MODELO NEOLIBERAL
The Ways in Which America Still “Leads’ the World
By Richard Clark
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27785.htm
March 29, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- According to Yes Magazine, amongst 20 of the world’s wealthiest countries, America now has:
* the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
* the greatest inequality of incomes;
* the smallest amount of government spending (as a percentage of GDP) on social programs for the disadvantaged;
* the lowest number of paid holidays, annual leave days and maternity leave days;
* the lowest score on the UN’s index of material well-being of children;
* the worst score on the UN’s gender inequality index;
* the lowest social mobility (i.e. in America, more members of the lower and middle class remain stuck in that class than ever before);
* the highest public and private expenditure on health care (as a portion of GDP), and yet accompanied by:
- the highest infant mortality rate
- the greatest prevalence of mental health problems
- the highest obesity rate
- the largest percentage of people going without health care due to cost
- the greatest number of low birth weight children per capita
- the greatest consumption of anti-depressants per capita
- the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Portugal);
- the largest amount of carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
- the lowest score on the World Economic Forums Environmental Performance Index and the largest Ecological Footprint per capita (except for Belgium);
- the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
- the lowest amount of spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
- the largest amount of military spending as a portion of GDP;
- the largest amount of international arms sales;
- the largest negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain and Portugal);
- the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal and Italy) (and far down from the top in both science and reading);
- the highest high school drop out rate (except for Spain);
And now, to top it off, America is leading all other industrialized democracies by bringing back debtors’ prisons!
Millions of folks around the good ol’ USA have been screwed over by predatory lenders and fine-print credit card contracts, and now, partly because of that, many of them are swimming in debt. And now, some of these people are actually being thrown in prison for going into debt. That’s right, America in the 21st century is bringing back debtors’ prisons! People who can’t pay off their credit cards can now be thrown in jail in a third of the states in our nation — and since the start of 2010, over 5,000 arrest warrants have been issued against people who owe as little as $1,000 to massively profitable corporations like Capital One. (Source: Thom Hartmann’s emailed newsletter)
So let me get this straight. A few years after the financial crisis, where massive fraud was perpetrated by Wall Street, not one bankster is in jail, but 5,000 lower- or middle-class Americans, who were screwed over by these banksters, were sent to debtors’ prison??!
Republicans have set our country back more than 100 years — to the 1800′s — when the Robber Barons ruled and our politics were corrupted to the core.
Be proud, Americans. Be very proud.
=================
NOTA: LA POLITICA DE OBAMA
PARA SALVAR A LAS GRANDES CORPORACIONES HAY QUE APLASTAR AL PUEBLO AMERICANO E INCINERAR CON MISILES A MUCHOS PUEBLOS DEL MUNDO ENTERO, ENTRE ELLOS LIBYA.
By Richard Clark
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27785.htm
March 29, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- According to Yes Magazine, amongst 20 of the world’s wealthiest countries, America now has:
* the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
* the greatest inequality of incomes;
* the smallest amount of government spending (as a percentage of GDP) on social programs for the disadvantaged;
* the lowest number of paid holidays, annual leave days and maternity leave days;
* the lowest score on the UN’s index of material well-being of children;
* the worst score on the UN’s gender inequality index;
* the lowest social mobility (i.e. in America, more members of the lower and middle class remain stuck in that class than ever before);
* the highest public and private expenditure on health care (as a portion of GDP), and yet accompanied by:
- the highest infant mortality rate
- the greatest prevalence of mental health problems
- the highest obesity rate
- the largest percentage of people going without health care due to cost
- the greatest number of low birth weight children per capita
- the greatest consumption of anti-depressants per capita
- the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Portugal);
- the largest amount of carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
- the lowest score on the World Economic Forums Environmental Performance Index and the largest Ecological Footprint per capita (except for Belgium);
- the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
- the lowest amount of spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
- the largest amount of military spending as a portion of GDP;
- the largest amount of international arms sales;
- the largest negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain and Portugal);
- the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal and Italy) (and far down from the top in both science and reading);
- the highest high school drop out rate (except for Spain);
And now, to top it off, America is leading all other industrialized democracies by bringing back debtors’ prisons!
Millions of folks around the good ol’ USA have been screwed over by predatory lenders and fine-print credit card contracts, and now, partly because of that, many of them are swimming in debt. And now, some of these people are actually being thrown in prison for going into debt. That’s right, America in the 21st century is bringing back debtors’ prisons! People who can’t pay off their credit cards can now be thrown in jail in a third of the states in our nation — and since the start of 2010, over 5,000 arrest warrants have been issued against people who owe as little as $1,000 to massively profitable corporations like Capital One. (Source: Thom Hartmann’s emailed newsletter)
So let me get this straight. A few years after the financial crisis, where massive fraud was perpetrated by Wall Street, not one bankster is in jail, but 5,000 lower- or middle-class Americans, who were screwed over by these banksters, were sent to debtors’ prison??!
Republicans have set our country back more than 100 years — to the 1800′s — when the Robber Barons ruled and our politics were corrupted to the core.
Be proud, Americans. Be very proud.
=================
NOTA: LA POLITICA DE OBAMA
PARA SALVAR A LAS GRANDES CORPORACIONES HAY QUE APLASTAR AL PUEBLO AMERICANO E INCINERAR CON MISILES A MUCHOS PUEBLOS DEL MUNDO ENTERO, ENTRE ELLOS LIBYA.
ISRAEL THREAT TO UN IF PALESTINIAN STATE IS RECOGNIZED
Israel threatens unilateral steps if UN recognizes Palestinian state
Foreign Ministry instructs envoys in 30 countries to send 'diplomatic protest' to host nations over plan for September vote in General Assembly.
By Barak Ravid . March 29-11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-threatens-unilateral-steps-if-un-recognizes-palestinian-state-1.352423
Israel informed the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council last week, as well as several other prominent European Union countries, that if the Palestinian Authority persists in its efforts to gain recognition in September as a state within the 1967 borders, Israel would respond with a series of unilateral steps of its own.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials said the ministry's director general, Rafael Barak, sent a classified cable last week to more than 30 Israeli embassies, directing them to lodge a diplomatic protest at the highest possible level in response to the Palestinian efforts to gain international recognition for statehood at the UN General Assembly session in September.
read also the war threat on Palestinians
Israel cuts ties with PA if new unified government formed
http://www.abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&Id=233777
Israel will cut ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it brings Hamas into the formation of the new unified national government, the Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday.
Israel will cut ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it brings Hamas into the formation of the new unified national government, the Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said on its website that de facto Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held "candid and positive" talks on Saturday about unifying Palestinian factions with Hamas delegation in Ramallah for the first time in over a year.
It noted that the Ramallah's meeting between Abbas and the Hamas delegation discussed ways of ending the dispute between Hamas and Fatah factions, following Abbas' recent offer to visit the Gaza Strip for talks with Hamas leaders on achieving Palestinian unity.
Abbas' offer to visit the Gaza Strip led to a further division among Hamas leaders of which some have welcomed it, while others have announced that Abbas was unwelcome in the Gaza Strip, the newspaper added.
Abbas briefed the Hamas officials on his initiative, saying it was aimed at discussing the formation of a new government that consists of independent figures to prepare for presidential and legislative elections, and rebuild the Gaza Strip.
"We must deal with the changes in the region and confront together the challenges facing the Palestinians, first and foremost the continued Israeli aggression and threats to launch a fresh attack on the Gaza Strip," Abbas was quoted as saying.
He told Hamas officials that it was important to abide by a cease-fire in order not to give Israel an excuse to pursue its threats and to tackle the difficult internal situation facing the Palestinian cause, especially with regards to the September deadline, when the Palestinians are scheduled to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked the PA, few days ago, to choose between either peace with Hamas, and peace with Israel.
Foreign Ministry instructs envoys in 30 countries to send 'diplomatic protest' to host nations over plan for September vote in General Assembly.
By Barak Ravid . March 29-11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-threatens-unilateral-steps-if-un-recognizes-palestinian-state-1.352423
Israel informed the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council last week, as well as several other prominent European Union countries, that if the Palestinian Authority persists in its efforts to gain recognition in September as a state within the 1967 borders, Israel would respond with a series of unilateral steps of its own.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials said the ministry's director general, Rafael Barak, sent a classified cable last week to more than 30 Israeli embassies, directing them to lodge a diplomatic protest at the highest possible level in response to the Palestinian efforts to gain international recognition for statehood at the UN General Assembly session in September.
read also the war threat on Palestinians
Israel cuts ties with PA if new unified government formed
http://www.abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&Id=233777
Israel will cut ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it brings Hamas into the formation of the new unified national government, the Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday.
Israel will cut ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it brings Hamas into the formation of the new unified national government, the Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said on its website that de facto Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held "candid and positive" talks on Saturday about unifying Palestinian factions with Hamas delegation in Ramallah for the first time in over a year.
It noted that the Ramallah's meeting between Abbas and the Hamas delegation discussed ways of ending the dispute between Hamas and Fatah factions, following Abbas' recent offer to visit the Gaza Strip for talks with Hamas leaders on achieving Palestinian unity.
Abbas' offer to visit the Gaza Strip led to a further division among Hamas leaders of which some have welcomed it, while others have announced that Abbas was unwelcome in the Gaza Strip, the newspaper added.
Abbas briefed the Hamas officials on his initiative, saying it was aimed at discussing the formation of a new government that consists of independent figures to prepare for presidential and legislative elections, and rebuild the Gaza Strip.
"We must deal with the changes in the region and confront together the challenges facing the Palestinians, first and foremost the continued Israeli aggression and threats to launch a fresh attack on the Gaza Strip," Abbas was quoted as saying.
He told Hamas officials that it was important to abide by a cease-fire in order not to give Israel an excuse to pursue its threats and to tackle the difficult internal situation facing the Palestinian cause, especially with regards to the September deadline, when the Palestinians are scheduled to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked the PA, few days ago, to choose between either peace with Hamas, and peace with Israel.
A CIA COMMANDER FOR LIBYAN REBELS
A CIA Commander For Libyan Rebels
By Patrick Martin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27779.htm
The US and European intervention in Libya is aimed not at bringing “democracy” and “freedom,” but at installing in power stooges of the CIA who will rule just as brutally as Gaddafi, while allowing the imperialist powers to loot the country’s oil resources and use Libya as a base of operations.
March 28, 2011 "WSWS" -- The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers Thursday and the new military chief was interviewed by a correspondent for ABC News on Sunday night.
Hifter’s arrival in Benghazi was first reported by Al Jazeera on March 14, followed by a flattering portrait in the virulently pro-war British tabloid the Daily Mail on March 19. The Daily Mail described Hifter as one of the “two military stars of the revolution” who “had recently returned from exile in America to lend the rebel ground forces some tactical coherence.” The newspaper did not refer to his CIA connections.
McClatchy Newspapers published a profile of Hifter on Sunday. Headlined “New Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 years in Suburban Virginia,” the article notes that he was once a top commander for the Gaddafi regime, until “a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s.”
Hifter then went over to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, eventually emigrating to the United States, where he lived until two weeks ago when he returned to Libya to take command in Benghazi.
continue
By Patrick Martin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27779.htm
The US and European intervention in Libya is aimed not at bringing “democracy” and “freedom,” but at installing in power stooges of the CIA who will rule just as brutally as Gaddafi, while allowing the imperialist powers to loot the country’s oil resources and use Libya as a base of operations.
March 28, 2011 "WSWS" -- The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers Thursday and the new military chief was interviewed by a correspondent for ABC News on Sunday night.
Hifter’s arrival in Benghazi was first reported by Al Jazeera on March 14, followed by a flattering portrait in the virulently pro-war British tabloid the Daily Mail on March 19. The Daily Mail described Hifter as one of the “two military stars of the revolution” who “had recently returned from exile in America to lend the rebel ground forces some tactical coherence.” The newspaper did not refer to his CIA connections.
McClatchy Newspapers published a profile of Hifter on Sunday. Headlined “New Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 years in Suburban Virginia,” the article notes that he was once a top commander for the Gaddafi regime, until “a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s.”
Hifter then went over to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, eventually emigrating to the United States, where he lived until two weeks ago when he returned to Libya to take command in Benghazi.
continue
WHO ARE THE LIBYAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS
Who Are The Libyan Freedom Fighters
By Peter Dale Scott
March 28, 2011 "JapanFocus"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27776.htm
I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition
1) Historically:
"If Muammar Al Gaddafi behaved paranoid, it was for good reason. It wasn't long after he reached the age of 27 and led a small group of junior military officers in a bloodless coup d'état against Libyan King Idris on September 1, 1969, that threats to his power and life emerged - from monarchists, Israeli Mossad, Palestinian disaffections, Saudi security, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO), British intelligence, United States antagonism and, in 1995, the most serious of all, Al Qaeda-like Libyan Islamic fighting group, known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya. The Colonel reacted brutally, by either expelling or killing those he feared were against him."3
2) National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL)
"With the aim of overthrowing Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafy, Israel and the U.S. trained anti-Libyan rebels in a number of West and Central African countries. The Paris-based African Confidential newsletter reported on January 5th, 1989, that the US and Israel had set up a series of bases in Chad and other neighboring countries to train 2000 Libyan rebels captured by the Chad army. The group, called The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, was based in Chad."4
"US official records indicate that funding for the Chad-based secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, donated $7m to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). But a plan to assassinate Gadafi and take over the government on 8 May 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gadafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan."5
"The FNSL [National Front for the Salvation of Libya] was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other 'opposition' in Libya.... The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of 'atrocities' and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya."6
3) National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO),
"The main group leading the insurrection is the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition which includes the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). The NFSL, which is leading the violence, is a U.S.-sponsored armed militia of mostly Libyan expatriates and tribes opposed to al-Qaddafi."7
4) Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG)
"The LIFG was founded in 1995 by a group of mujahideen veterans who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Upon their return to Libya they grew angry about what they viewed as the corruption and impiety of the Libyan regime and formed the LIFG to create a state that would show what they believed to be the true character of the Libyan people.
The most significant LIFG attack was a 1996 attempt to assassinate Gadhafi; LIFG members led by Wadi al-Shateh threw a bomb underneath his motorcade. The group also stages guerilla-style attacks against government security forces from its mountain bases. Although most LIFG members are strictly dedicated to toppling Gadhafi, intelligence reportedly indicates that some have joined forces with al-Qaida to wage jihad against Libyan and Western interests worldwide. ....
As recently as February 2004, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that "one of the most immediate threats [to U.S. security] is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups that have benefited from al-Qaida links. They include ... the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group."8
"In recent days Libyan officials have distributed security documents giving the details of Sufiyan al-Koumi, said to be a driver for Osama bin Laden, and of another militant allegedly involved in an "Islamic emirate" in Derna, in now-liberated eastern Libya. Koumi, the documents show, was freed in September 2010 as part of a "reform and repent" initiative organised by Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son....
The LIFG, established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, has assassinated dozens of Libyan soldiers and policemen. In 2009, to mark Gaddafi's 40 years in power, it apologised for trying to kill him and agreed to lay down its arms. MI6 [British Intelligence] has been accused in the past of supporting it. Six LIFG leaders, still in prison, disavowed their old ways and explained why fighting Gaddafi no longer constituted "legitimate" jihad. Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another freed LIFG member, denied the official claims. "Gaddafi is trying to divide the people," he told al-Jazeera. "He claims that there is an Islamist emirate in Derna and that I am its emir. He is taking advantage of the fact that I am a former political prisoner."
Derna is famous as the home of a large number of suicide bombers in Iraq. It is also deeply hostile to Gaddafi. "Residents of eastern Libya in general, and Derna in particular, view the Gaddadfa (Gaddafi's tribe) as uneducated, uncouth interlopers from an inconsequential part of the country who have 'stolen' the right to rule in Libya," US diplomats were told in 2008, in a cable since released by WikiLeaks.
The last 110 members of the LIFG were freed on 16 February, the day after the Libyan uprising began. One of those released, Abdulwahab Mohammed Kayed, is the brother of Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaida's top propagandists. Koumi fled Libya and is said to have ended up in Afghanistan working for Bin Laden. Captured in Pakistan, he was handed over to the US and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. In 2009 he was sent back to Libya.9 US counter-terrorist experts have expressed concern that al-Qaida could take advantage of a political vacuum if Gaddafi is overthrown. But most analysts say that, although the Islamists' ideology has strong resonance in eastern Libya, there is no sign that the protests are going to be hijacked by them.10
"Fierce clashes between [Qadhafi's] security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi's government "an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty" and declaring its overthrow to be "the foremost duty after faith in God." [3] This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain....
The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG's next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-MI5 officer David Shayler. [4] While Shayler's allegations have not been independently confirmed, it is clear that Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil. At any rate, financing by bin Laden appears to have been much more important. According to one report, LIFG received up to $50,000 from the Saudi terrorist mastermind for each of its militants killed on the battlefield." [2005]11
"Americans, Britons and the French are finding themselves as comrades in arms with the rebel Islamic Fighting Group, the most radical element in the Al Qaeda network [to bring down Gaddhafi]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted the risks of the unholy alliance in a congressional hearing, saying that the Libyan opposition is probably more anti-American than Muammar Gaddhafi. A decade ago, this very same delusion of a Western-Islamist partnership in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya ended abruptly in the 9/11 attacks."12
5) Transitional National Council
"A RIVAL transitional government to the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi looks set to win US and other international support as momentum builds to oust the longtime dictator.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed yesterday that the Obama administration was reaching out to opponents of Colonel Gaddafi. She said the US was willing to offer ‘any kind of assistance' to remove him from power.
Protest leaders who have taken control in Libya's eastern cities claim to have established a transitional "national council" that amounts to rival rule. They have called on the country's army to join them as they prepare for an attack on the capital, Tripoli, where the Libyan leader retains control.
Confident the Libyan leader's 42-year rule was coming to an end, Mrs Clinton said yesterday: ‘We are just at the beginning of what will follow Gaddafi.'"13
6) Facebook
"He [Omar El- Hariri, Chief of Armed Forces for the Transitional National Council] remained under close surveillance by the security forces until Feb. 17, when the revolution started. It was not initiated by prominent figures of the older generation, he said, but began spontaneously when Tunisia and Egypt inspired the youth. ‘Children of Facebook!' he declared, in English, with a broad smile."14
7) Oil
"Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.
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."15
SEE ALSO IN THIS ARTICLE
II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
Robert Fisk, "Libya in turmoil: America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels;
Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi," Independent, March 7, 2011
By Peter Dale Scott
March 28, 2011 "JapanFocus"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27776.htm
I. Who Are the Libyan Opposition
1) Historically:
"If Muammar Al Gaddafi behaved paranoid, it was for good reason. It wasn't long after he reached the age of 27 and led a small group of junior military officers in a bloodless coup d'état against Libyan King Idris on September 1, 1969, that threats to his power and life emerged - from monarchists, Israeli Mossad, Palestinian disaffections, Saudi security, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO), British intelligence, United States antagonism and, in 1995, the most serious of all, Al Qaeda-like Libyan Islamic fighting group, known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya. The Colonel reacted brutally, by either expelling or killing those he feared were against him."3
2) National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL)
"With the aim of overthrowing Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafy, Israel and the U.S. trained anti-Libyan rebels in a number of West and Central African countries. The Paris-based African Confidential newsletter reported on January 5th, 1989, that the US and Israel had set up a series of bases in Chad and other neighboring countries to train 2000 Libyan rebels captured by the Chad army. The group, called The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, was based in Chad."4
"US official records indicate that funding for the Chad-based secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, donated $7m to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). But a plan to assassinate Gadafi and take over the government on 8 May 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gadafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan."5
"The FNSL [National Front for the Salvation of Libya] was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other 'opposition' in Libya.... The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of 'atrocities' and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya."6
3) National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO),
"The main group leading the insurrection is the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition which includes the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). The NFSL, which is leading the violence, is a U.S.-sponsored armed militia of mostly Libyan expatriates and tribes opposed to al-Qaddafi."7
4) Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG)
"The LIFG was founded in 1995 by a group of mujahideen veterans who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Upon their return to Libya they grew angry about what they viewed as the corruption and impiety of the Libyan regime and formed the LIFG to create a state that would show what they believed to be the true character of the Libyan people.
The most significant LIFG attack was a 1996 attempt to assassinate Gadhafi; LIFG members led by Wadi al-Shateh threw a bomb underneath his motorcade. The group also stages guerilla-style attacks against government security forces from its mountain bases. Although most LIFG members are strictly dedicated to toppling Gadhafi, intelligence reportedly indicates that some have joined forces with al-Qaida to wage jihad against Libyan and Western interests worldwide. ....
As recently as February 2004, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that "one of the most immediate threats [to U.S. security] is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups that have benefited from al-Qaida links. They include ... the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group."8
"In recent days Libyan officials have distributed security documents giving the details of Sufiyan al-Koumi, said to be a driver for Osama bin Laden, and of another militant allegedly involved in an "Islamic emirate" in Derna, in now-liberated eastern Libya. Koumi, the documents show, was freed in September 2010 as part of a "reform and repent" initiative organised by Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son....
The LIFG, established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, has assassinated dozens of Libyan soldiers and policemen. In 2009, to mark Gaddafi's 40 years in power, it apologised for trying to kill him and agreed to lay down its arms. MI6 [British Intelligence] has been accused in the past of supporting it. Six LIFG leaders, still in prison, disavowed their old ways and explained why fighting Gaddafi no longer constituted "legitimate" jihad. Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another freed LIFG member, denied the official claims. "Gaddafi is trying to divide the people," he told al-Jazeera. "He claims that there is an Islamist emirate in Derna and that I am its emir. He is taking advantage of the fact that I am a former political prisoner."
Derna is famous as the home of a large number of suicide bombers in Iraq. It is also deeply hostile to Gaddafi. "Residents of eastern Libya in general, and Derna in particular, view the Gaddadfa (Gaddafi's tribe) as uneducated, uncouth interlopers from an inconsequential part of the country who have 'stolen' the right to rule in Libya," US diplomats were told in 2008, in a cable since released by WikiLeaks.
The last 110 members of the LIFG were freed on 16 February, the day after the Libyan uprising began. One of those released, Abdulwahab Mohammed Kayed, is the brother of Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaida's top propagandists. Koumi fled Libya and is said to have ended up in Afghanistan working for Bin Laden. Captured in Pakistan, he was handed over to the US and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. In 2009 he was sent back to Libya.9 US counter-terrorist experts have expressed concern that al-Qaida could take advantage of a political vacuum if Gaddafi is overthrown. But most analysts say that, although the Islamists' ideology has strong resonance in eastern Libya, there is no sign that the protests are going to be hijacked by them.10
"Fierce clashes between [Qadhafi's] security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi's government "an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty" and declaring its overthrow to be "the foremost duty after faith in God." [3] This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain....
The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG's next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-MI5 officer David Shayler. [4] While Shayler's allegations have not been independently confirmed, it is clear that Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil. At any rate, financing by bin Laden appears to have been much more important. According to one report, LIFG received up to $50,000 from the Saudi terrorist mastermind for each of its militants killed on the battlefield." [2005]11
"Americans, Britons and the French are finding themselves as comrades in arms with the rebel Islamic Fighting Group, the most radical element in the Al Qaeda network [to bring down Gaddhafi]. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted the risks of the unholy alliance in a congressional hearing, saying that the Libyan opposition is probably more anti-American than Muammar Gaddhafi. A decade ago, this very same delusion of a Western-Islamist partnership in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya ended abruptly in the 9/11 attacks."12
5) Transitional National Council
"A RIVAL transitional government to the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi looks set to win US and other international support as momentum builds to oust the longtime dictator.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed yesterday that the Obama administration was reaching out to opponents of Colonel Gaddafi. She said the US was willing to offer ‘any kind of assistance' to remove him from power.
Protest leaders who have taken control in Libya's eastern cities claim to have established a transitional "national council" that amounts to rival rule. They have called on the country's army to join them as they prepare for an attack on the capital, Tripoli, where the Libyan leader retains control.
Confident the Libyan leader's 42-year rule was coming to an end, Mrs Clinton said yesterday: ‘We are just at the beginning of what will follow Gaddafi.'"13
6) Facebook
"He [Omar El- Hariri, Chief of Armed Forces for the Transitional National Council] remained under close surveillance by the security forces until Feb. 17, when the revolution started. It was not initiated by prominent figures of the older generation, he said, but began spontaneously when Tunisia and Egypt inspired the youth. ‘Children of Facebook!' he declared, in English, with a broad smile."14
7) Oil
"Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.
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."15
SEE ALSO IN THIS ARTICLE
II. Where Are the Libyan Rebel Arms Coming From?
Robert Fisk, "Libya in turmoil: America's secret plan to arm Libya's rebels;
Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi," Independent, March 7, 2011
US CONGRESSMEN: LIBYA ATTACK ILLEGAL
US Congressmen: Libya attack illegal
Wed Mar 30, 2011
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172328.html
On Tuesday, Representatives Timothy Johnson of Illinois and Justin Amash of Michigan introduced the draft legislation that aims to suspend all fundings to measures involving US President Barack Obama's decision to intervene in Libya, Xinhua reported.
"Constitutionally, it is indisputable that Congress must be consulted prior to an act of war unless there is an imminent threat against this country. The President has not done so," said Rep. Johnson.
"The President cannot constitutionally order an offensive military operation without Congress's authorization. The argument is not about 'consultation' with Congress. It's more fundamental than that. It's about whether the president by himself can order an attack on another country when that country has not attacked or is not about to attack the U.S. The Constitution plainly forbids such action,” Amash said.
The Pentagon has said that the Libyan intervention has cost US taxpayers nearly 550 million dollars so far. These costs are expected to remain at 40 million dollars per month from now on.
Obama has also declared that he is considering plans to supply arms to Libyan opposition forces in their fight against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed that the UN sanctions prohibiting the delivery of arms to Libya do not apply to the anti-government forces.
Experts say the main motive behind the Western attack on Libya is the vast oil reserves of the North African country.
SZH/PKH/MB
=========================
US INTENSIFIES AERIAL ATTACKS ON LIBYA
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172297.html
More than one hundred warplanes belonging to the US military have bombarded strategically-important Libyan cities over the past 24 hours, the Pentagon says.
At least 115 strike sorties were carried out over areas controlled by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the previous 24 hours, Reuters reported.
The US army also fired at least 22 Tomahawk cruise at the key Libyan towns, it added.
The British sources say two of its Tornado fighter-bombers have attacked military positions outside the besieged western town of Misratah.
The US-led military alliance claims the strikes were carried out to protect civilians and preserve Western moral values.
The Libyan government, on the other hand, says US-led airstrikes have hit residential areas and over one hundred civilians have been killed in Western airstrikes on the country.
Meanwhile, fierce battles continue between forces loyal to long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi and the revolutionaries.
Latest reports from the battlefield indicate that Gaddafi forces have retaken the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf.
They had earlier taken over Ben Jawad---another strategic town west of the capital Tripoli.
Fighting is also ongoing over the city of Misratah between the two sides.
Revolutionaries have made rapid progress in recent days but pro-Gaddafi forces are now pushing them back.
The anti-government forces had made quick progress westwards from their stronghold in Benghazi, seizing a number of key towns, including the oil-rich town of Brega.
This is while Russia has expressed its opposition to plans by Western countries to arm the forces fighting against the Gaddafi regime.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has insisted that foreign countries have no right to supply the anti-government forces with arms under the mandate approved by the UN Security Council.
"Right away, NATO Secretary-General (Anders) Fogh Rasmussen said the Libyan operation is being conducted to protect the population, not to arm it. We fully agree with the NATO secretary-general on this," Lavrov said in Moscow on Wednesday.
This comes after French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France and its partners were prepared to discuss arming the Libyan fighters.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has said that he does not rule out arming the anti-Gaddafi fighters.
Moreover, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated that the UN sanctions prohibiting the delivery of arms to Libya do not apply to the anti-government forces.
China, Russia, Arab League and the African union have condemned Western air strikes.
Experts say the main motive behind the Western attack on Libya is the vast oil reserves of the North African country. JR/HGH/MB
==============================
US-LED AIRSTRIKES HIT LIBYA CIVILIANS
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172105.html
Tue Mar 29, 2011
Western airstrikes have hit civilian areas in the Libyan towns of Garyan and Mizdah, leaving scores of men and women wounded in the cities, reports say.
"Civilian and military areas in Garyan and Mizdah were hit on Monday night by the colonial and crusader aggressors," Libyan television said in a written news flash.
Western coalition forces have been bombarding strategic cities across the war-hit country to push government forces back.
But Western offensive is coming under intense scrutiny by critics worried about civilian lives in the North African country.
The United States denies civilian casualties in the military operation so far.
SB/GHN/HRF
=======================
US OPERATIONS IN LIBYA COST $550mn
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172217.html
Wed Mar 30, 2011
The US military expenditures for ongoing airstrikes in Libya have topped $550 million amid warnings that a protracted conflict could emerge in the country, the Pentagon says.
According to the US Defense Department, 60 percent of the funds were spent on munitions, mostly Raytheon Tomahawk missiles and bombs, with the rest going toward deploying troops and covering the costs of combat, including additional fuel needed for US aircraft and ships, AFP reported on Tuesday.
Between March 19 and March 28, the US military also fired at least 192 of the 199 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost $1.5 million apiece.
As the US-led military operations in Libya entered its eleventh consecutive day, the Pentagon's latest figures indicate that the cost of the war may total $800 million by the end of September if the US continues operations.
Meanwhile, US Navy Commander Kathleen Kesler, a Pentagon spokeswoman stated on Tuesday that the Pentagon would spend another $40 million over the next three weeks as the 28-member NATO takes the helm of all military operations in Libya on Thursday.
"After that, if US forces stay at the levels currently planned and the operations continues, we would incur added costs of about $40 million per month," she added.
According to US military officials, more than 350 aircraft are participating in the US-led campaign of military airstrikes against Libya “to protect civilians” from attacks by forces loyal to ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Apart from the US, twelve EU countries are taking part in Operation Odyssey Dawn, which began on March 19.
Experts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments say the Western countries participating in the military operations in Libya would have to pay $30 million to $100 million per week.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that a coalition of countries conducting airstrikes against Gaddafi's forces launched 22 Tomahawk missiles and flew 115 strike sorties in the last 24 hours.
The Libyan regime says that at least 114 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and 445 others injured in the campaign of US-led military airstrikes in Libya since March 20.
A new opinion poll by the Pew Research Center published on Monday shows that just under half of Americans -- 47 percent -- thinks it was the right decision to conduct military airstrikes in Libya. Another 36 percent say it was the wrong decision and 17 percent are unsure.
HA/AGB
Wed Mar 30, 2011
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172328.html
On Tuesday, Representatives Timothy Johnson of Illinois and Justin Amash of Michigan introduced the draft legislation that aims to suspend all fundings to measures involving US President Barack Obama's decision to intervene in Libya, Xinhua reported.
"Constitutionally, it is indisputable that Congress must be consulted prior to an act of war unless there is an imminent threat against this country. The President has not done so," said Rep. Johnson.
"The President cannot constitutionally order an offensive military operation without Congress's authorization. The argument is not about 'consultation' with Congress. It's more fundamental than that. It's about whether the president by himself can order an attack on another country when that country has not attacked or is not about to attack the U.S. The Constitution plainly forbids such action,” Amash said.
The Pentagon has said that the Libyan intervention has cost US taxpayers nearly 550 million dollars so far. These costs are expected to remain at 40 million dollars per month from now on.
Obama has also declared that he is considering plans to supply arms to Libyan opposition forces in their fight against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed that the UN sanctions prohibiting the delivery of arms to Libya do not apply to the anti-government forces.
Experts say the main motive behind the Western attack on Libya is the vast oil reserves of the North African country.
SZH/PKH/MB
=========================
US INTENSIFIES AERIAL ATTACKS ON LIBYA
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172297.html
More than one hundred warplanes belonging to the US military have bombarded strategically-important Libyan cities over the past 24 hours, the Pentagon says.
At least 115 strike sorties were carried out over areas controlled by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the previous 24 hours, Reuters reported.
The US army also fired at least 22 Tomahawk cruise at the key Libyan towns, it added.
The British sources say two of its Tornado fighter-bombers have attacked military positions outside the besieged western town of Misratah.
The US-led military alliance claims the strikes were carried out to protect civilians and preserve Western moral values.
The Libyan government, on the other hand, says US-led airstrikes have hit residential areas and over one hundred civilians have been killed in Western airstrikes on the country.
Meanwhile, fierce battles continue between forces loyal to long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi and the revolutionaries.
Latest reports from the battlefield indicate that Gaddafi forces have retaken the strategic oil town of Ras Lanuf.
They had earlier taken over Ben Jawad---another strategic town west of the capital Tripoli.
Fighting is also ongoing over the city of Misratah between the two sides.
Revolutionaries have made rapid progress in recent days but pro-Gaddafi forces are now pushing them back.
The anti-government forces had made quick progress westwards from their stronghold in Benghazi, seizing a number of key towns, including the oil-rich town of Brega.
This is while Russia has expressed its opposition to plans by Western countries to arm the forces fighting against the Gaddafi regime.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has insisted that foreign countries have no right to supply the anti-government forces with arms under the mandate approved by the UN Security Council.
"Right away, NATO Secretary-General (Anders) Fogh Rasmussen said the Libyan operation is being conducted to protect the population, not to arm it. We fully agree with the NATO secretary-general on this," Lavrov said in Moscow on Wednesday.
This comes after French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France and its partners were prepared to discuss arming the Libyan fighters.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has said that he does not rule out arming the anti-Gaddafi fighters.
Moreover, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated that the UN sanctions prohibiting the delivery of arms to Libya do not apply to the anti-government forces.
China, Russia, Arab League and the African union have condemned Western air strikes.
Experts say the main motive behind the Western attack on Libya is the vast oil reserves of the North African country. JR/HGH/MB
==============================
US-LED AIRSTRIKES HIT LIBYA CIVILIANS
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172105.html
Tue Mar 29, 2011
Western airstrikes have hit civilian areas in the Libyan towns of Garyan and Mizdah, leaving scores of men and women wounded in the cities, reports say.
"Civilian and military areas in Garyan and Mizdah were hit on Monday night by the colonial and crusader aggressors," Libyan television said in a written news flash.
Western coalition forces have been bombarding strategic cities across the war-hit country to push government forces back.
But Western offensive is coming under intense scrutiny by critics worried about civilian lives in the North African country.
The United States denies civilian casualties in the military operation so far.
SB/GHN/HRF
=======================
US OPERATIONS IN LIBYA COST $550mn
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172217.html
Wed Mar 30, 2011
The US military expenditures for ongoing airstrikes in Libya have topped $550 million amid warnings that a protracted conflict could emerge in the country, the Pentagon says.
According to the US Defense Department, 60 percent of the funds were spent on munitions, mostly Raytheon Tomahawk missiles and bombs, with the rest going toward deploying troops and covering the costs of combat, including additional fuel needed for US aircraft and ships, AFP reported on Tuesday.
Between March 19 and March 28, the US military also fired at least 192 of the 199 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost $1.5 million apiece.
As the US-led military operations in Libya entered its eleventh consecutive day, the Pentagon's latest figures indicate that the cost of the war may total $800 million by the end of September if the US continues operations.
Meanwhile, US Navy Commander Kathleen Kesler, a Pentagon spokeswoman stated on Tuesday that the Pentagon would spend another $40 million over the next three weeks as the 28-member NATO takes the helm of all military operations in Libya on Thursday.
"After that, if US forces stay at the levels currently planned and the operations continues, we would incur added costs of about $40 million per month," she added.
According to US military officials, more than 350 aircraft are participating in the US-led campaign of military airstrikes against Libya “to protect civilians” from attacks by forces loyal to ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Apart from the US, twelve EU countries are taking part in Operation Odyssey Dawn, which began on March 19.
Experts at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments say the Western countries participating in the military operations in Libya would have to pay $30 million to $100 million per week.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that a coalition of countries conducting airstrikes against Gaddafi's forces launched 22 Tomahawk missiles and flew 115 strike sorties in the last 24 hours.
The Libyan regime says that at least 114 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and 445 others injured in the campaign of US-led military airstrikes in Libya since March 20.
A new opinion poll by the Pew Research Center published on Monday shows that just under half of Americans -- 47 percent -- thinks it was the right decision to conduct military airstrikes in Libya. Another 36 percent say it was the wrong decision and 17 percent are unsure.
HA/AGB
ATTACKING LIBYA & INTERNATIONAL LAW
Attacking Libya and international law
By the standard of international law, military action on Libya by the United States and allies is illegal, writes Curtis Doebbler*
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1040/re111.htm
[[extracts]]
On 19 March 2011, Western nations started the third international armed conflict against a Muslim country in the last decade. They went to great pains to claim that the use of force against Libya was legal, but an application of international law to the facts indicates that in fact the use of force is illegal.
This brief commentary evaluates the use of force against Libya, starting with UN Security Council Resolution 1973 that allegedly authorises it and the eventual attack on the people of Libya.
THE FACTS:
Unlike the non-violent demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab world, the demonstrations that began in Libya on 17 February had deteriorated into a civil war within days. Both sides had tanks, fighter jets, anti- aircraft weapons, and heavy artillery. The government's forces consisted of mainly trained military, while the armed opposition consisted of both defecting soldiers and numerous civilians who had taken up arms.
Indications of the level of force each side has at its disposal were shown by claims on Saturday, 19 March, that both a Libyan government fighter and a fighter jet flown by the opposition had been shot down near Benghazi. As the civil war increased in intensity, the international community contemplated action in support of the armed opposition. On 17 March, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973. And within 42 hours an attack on the troops of the Libyan government, aimed, according to the British Defence Minster William Hague, at killing the Libyan leader, had begun.
At around 12:00 noon local time in Washington, DC, on Saturday, 19 March, French fighters launched attacks against targets described as tanks and air defence systems. A few hours later, US battleships began firing cruise missiles at Libyan targets.
Although Arab and Muslim countries had joined the coalition against their Arab and Muslim neighbour, none of them actually participated in the airstrikes by sending aircraft. Already just after airstrikes began, Russia, China and the secretary-general of the Arab League, Egyptian Amr Moussa, condemned the loss of civilians lives that were caused by the bombing sorties.
Despite denials of the intention to target the Libyan leader, sites such as the living quarters and compounds used by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi were attacked. After the first day of bombings, more than four-dozen civilians, including women and children, were reportedly killed.
The attacks came after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973. In response to this resolution the Libyan government had officially called a ceasefire in the civil war that it was waging against armed rebels whose base is Benghazi. Libya also announced that its airspace was closed. Western leaders responded to these actions by the Libyan government by claiming that they could not be believed and arguing that the fighting was continuing. Indeed, Libyan sources confirmed that the civil war was ongoing and that both sides continued to attack each other.
UNSC RESOLUTION 1973:
Resolution 1973 was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter with 10 votes for, none against and five abstentions. Voting for it were the UN Security Council's permanent members, United States, Britain, France, and non-permanent members Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, and South Africa. Abstaining were permanent members Russia, China and non-permanent members Germany, Brazil, and India.
The resolution was adopted on Thursday, 17 March, just after 18:30 local time in New York. US Ambassador Susan Rice described it as strengthening the sanctions and travel bans imposed earlier in UNSC Resolution 1970. It was promoted by the French and United Kingdom governments, but with a strong presence of the United States in the background pulling the strings.
At the UNSC meeting was the new French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé. Although as former Prime Minister he was not new to the UN, he arrived just weeks after his predecessor had been replaced for having accepted favours from a Libyan businessmen and just days after his government became the first Western government to recognise the forces fighting against the government in Libya's raging civil war as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people.
The Libyan government did not have a representative present at the meeting after its nominated ambassador, former President of the General Assembly Ali Abdel-Salam Treki was denied admission to the United States. Nevertheless, although officially relieved of his duties more than a week ago for defecting to the opposition, former deputy permanent representative Ibrahim Dabbashi was on hand at the Security Council media stakeout Wednesday to make a statement and take questions.
Resolution 1973 contains 29 operative paragraphs divided into eight sections. The first section calls for an "immediate cease-fire" in its first paragraph and for respect for international law including "the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance."
A curious second operational paragraph "stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis" and goes on to qualify this as responding "to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people" and leading to "the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution." Such vague language leaves open both the question of which Libyan legitimate demands must be met and what political reforms are necessary. Legally these requirements also appear to be a direct interference in Libya's internal affairs in violation of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, which all UN Security Council resolutions are bound to respect according to Article 25 of the Charter. This apparently irreconcilable discrepancy will fuel speculation that the resolution is another example of politics refusing to respect international law.
...........
INTERNATIONAL LAW:
While decisions regarding the use of force against Libya seem to have been based more on emotions than on an understanding of the relevant law, this law is not irrelevant. International law will continue to reflect the general rules that states use in their relations with each other long after the end of the armed conflict in Libya. It is also, one might suggest, crucial to peace and security in a world made up of people of diverse values and interests.
Perhaps the most fundamental principle of international law is that no state shall use force against another state. This principle is expressly stated in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter. No state can violate this principle of international law.
While the UN Security Council can order the use of force in exceptional circumstances, according to Article 24(2) of the UN Charter, the Council "shall act in accordance with the Principles and Purposes of the United Nations." This means, at least, that when peaceful means of dispute resolution are still possible the options for authorizing the use of force are extremely limited. In the present case, the Security Council appears to have rushed to use force.
Narrow exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force are found in Article 51 and Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The latter provisions, especially Article 42, allow the Security Council to take action that "may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security." Both resolutions 1970 and 1973 state that they are being adopted under Chapter VII. Neither, however, meets the requirements of Article 42 that a determination has been made that "measures not involving the use of force" have failed.
In a civil war it is hard to see how such a determination can be made. It would appear that at the very least it would have to be based on on- the-ground fact-finding. Fact-finding missions by the UN Human Rights Council and the Security Council have not yet gone to Libya. While there is little doubt Western governments, such as the United States, have significant abilities to determine what is happening in Libya with distant surveillance methods, this does not provide sufficient evidence of whether the government of Libya is complying with the Security Council's resolutions. Only on-the-ground observers can determine this, as we have seen from the misinformation spread about Iraq's actions based on third party and distant surveillance sources.
Moreover, the evidence of Libya's compliance is mixed. Libya almost immediately announced it would respect the terms of UNSC Resolution 1973 after it was adopted. Nevertheless, in an unprecedented show of diplomatic intolerance, and without confirmation of the facts on the ground, Western leaders called the Libyan leader a liar.
Libya has also offered to accept international monitors, even extending invitations to them to visit the country. And in an extraordinary concession, the Libyan leader sent a message to the armed opposition when they had the upper hand and were approaching Tripoli, offering to step down and leave the country. It was only after this offer was rejected and opposition leaders said it was non-negotiable that the Libyan leader be captured and killed that the government's troops launched their offensive.
If international law allows states to use force in very limited circumstances, there are even fewer circumstances in which non-state actors are allowed to use force. One of those circumstances is when the right to self-determination is being exercised against a foreign and oppressive occupying power. This might entitle Iraqis or Afghanis to use force against occupying armies, but it would not entitle the Libyan people to use force against their own government.
Even the extrajudicial right of revolution, that many international lawyers admit exists when the limits of the law have been reached, has not been explicitly relied on by the Libyan rebels. While participation in the governance of Libya might have been a widespread problem, the country had the highest per capita income in Africa and among the best Millennium Development Goals indicators. Moreover, Libya has shown itself to respect international law in the past, implementing judgments of the International Court of Justice in the conflict with Chad and even turning over suspects for which there was questionable evidence for trial abroad in the Lockerbie affair.
Finally, the question of self-defence is relevant to the use of force against Libya. Rather than justifying the Western attack against Libya, however, it would appear to justify action taken by Libya against Western interests. In other words, as Libya has been the object of an armed attack that is likely illegal under international law, it has the right to defend itself. This right includes carrying out attacks against military facilities or personnel from any country involved in the attack. In other words, the attack against Libya by France and the United States makes the military facilities and personnel of these countries legitimate targets for attacks carried out by Libya in self-defence.
Regardless of the legality of the use of force by any party to the armed conflict international humanitarian law or the laws of war will continue to apply. According to this law, all states involved in an armed conflict must take care not to attack civilians. The Libyan authorities alleged they were respecting this restriction in the civil war, although the rebels refuted this claim. International humanitarian law requires that no military force may be directed against civilians or civilian facilities in Libya.
Similarly international human rights law continues to apply, making attacks on civilians subject to the restrictions on the use of force emanating from existing international human rights obligations. If the use of force against Libya is illegal as suggested above, then the standard for determining whether disproportionate force is being used is that applicable during peacetime. This is the case because no state involved in the use of force in Libya has announced its derogation from its international human rights obligations and because to allow states to derogate merely by starting an armed conflict in violation of international law would be contrary to the object and purpose of any of the existing human rights treaties.
The use of force in a manner that is contrary to existing international law is perhaps the greatest harm to humanity in the long-term. In the Pact of Paris in 1928 and again in the UN Charter in 1945, states agreed not to use force against each other to accomplish their foreign policy ends. The Western world has appeared to repeatedly challenge this agreement in the last 10 years, especially by its willingness to take military action against predominately Muslim states. In doing so they have sent an undeniable signal to the international community through their actions, and despite some of their words, that international law does not matter to them. If this message is not answered by the proponents of international law, then the advances we have made to ensure that the international community respects the rule of law may be undone for future generations.
* The writer is a prominent US international human rights lawyer.
THE SPANISH VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS IN:
El ataque a Libia y el derecho internacional
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=125403
By the standard of international law, military action on Libya by the United States and allies is illegal, writes Curtis Doebbler*
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1040/re111.htm
[[extracts]]
On 19 March 2011, Western nations started the third international armed conflict against a Muslim country in the last decade. They went to great pains to claim that the use of force against Libya was legal, but an application of international law to the facts indicates that in fact the use of force is illegal.
This brief commentary evaluates the use of force against Libya, starting with UN Security Council Resolution 1973 that allegedly authorises it and the eventual attack on the people of Libya.
THE FACTS:
Unlike the non-violent demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab world, the demonstrations that began in Libya on 17 February had deteriorated into a civil war within days. Both sides had tanks, fighter jets, anti- aircraft weapons, and heavy artillery. The government's forces consisted of mainly trained military, while the armed opposition consisted of both defecting soldiers and numerous civilians who had taken up arms.
Indications of the level of force each side has at its disposal were shown by claims on Saturday, 19 March, that both a Libyan government fighter and a fighter jet flown by the opposition had been shot down near Benghazi. As the civil war increased in intensity, the international community contemplated action in support of the armed opposition. On 17 March, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973. And within 42 hours an attack on the troops of the Libyan government, aimed, according to the British Defence Minster William Hague, at killing the Libyan leader, had begun.
At around 12:00 noon local time in Washington, DC, on Saturday, 19 March, French fighters launched attacks against targets described as tanks and air defence systems. A few hours later, US battleships began firing cruise missiles at Libyan targets.
Although Arab and Muslim countries had joined the coalition against their Arab and Muslim neighbour, none of them actually participated in the airstrikes by sending aircraft. Already just after airstrikes began, Russia, China and the secretary-general of the Arab League, Egyptian Amr Moussa, condemned the loss of civilians lives that were caused by the bombing sorties.
Despite denials of the intention to target the Libyan leader, sites such as the living quarters and compounds used by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi were attacked. After the first day of bombings, more than four-dozen civilians, including women and children, were reportedly killed.
The attacks came after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973. In response to this resolution the Libyan government had officially called a ceasefire in the civil war that it was waging against armed rebels whose base is Benghazi. Libya also announced that its airspace was closed. Western leaders responded to these actions by the Libyan government by claiming that they could not be believed and arguing that the fighting was continuing. Indeed, Libyan sources confirmed that the civil war was ongoing and that both sides continued to attack each other.
UNSC RESOLUTION 1973:
Resolution 1973 was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter with 10 votes for, none against and five abstentions. Voting for it were the UN Security Council's permanent members, United States, Britain, France, and non-permanent members Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, and South Africa. Abstaining were permanent members Russia, China and non-permanent members Germany, Brazil, and India.
The resolution was adopted on Thursday, 17 March, just after 18:30 local time in New York. US Ambassador Susan Rice described it as strengthening the sanctions and travel bans imposed earlier in UNSC Resolution 1970. It was promoted by the French and United Kingdom governments, but with a strong presence of the United States in the background pulling the strings.
At the UNSC meeting was the new French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé. Although as former Prime Minister he was not new to the UN, he arrived just weeks after his predecessor had been replaced for having accepted favours from a Libyan businessmen and just days after his government became the first Western government to recognise the forces fighting against the government in Libya's raging civil war as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people.
The Libyan government did not have a representative present at the meeting after its nominated ambassador, former President of the General Assembly Ali Abdel-Salam Treki was denied admission to the United States. Nevertheless, although officially relieved of his duties more than a week ago for defecting to the opposition, former deputy permanent representative Ibrahim Dabbashi was on hand at the Security Council media stakeout Wednesday to make a statement and take questions.
Resolution 1973 contains 29 operative paragraphs divided into eight sections. The first section calls for an "immediate cease-fire" in its first paragraph and for respect for international law including "the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance."
A curious second operational paragraph "stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis" and goes on to qualify this as responding "to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people" and leading to "the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution." Such vague language leaves open both the question of which Libyan legitimate demands must be met and what political reforms are necessary. Legally these requirements also appear to be a direct interference in Libya's internal affairs in violation of Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, which all UN Security Council resolutions are bound to respect according to Article 25 of the Charter. This apparently irreconcilable discrepancy will fuel speculation that the resolution is another example of politics refusing to respect international law.
...........
INTERNATIONAL LAW:
While decisions regarding the use of force against Libya seem to have been based more on emotions than on an understanding of the relevant law, this law is not irrelevant. International law will continue to reflect the general rules that states use in their relations with each other long after the end of the armed conflict in Libya. It is also, one might suggest, crucial to peace and security in a world made up of people of diverse values and interests.
Perhaps the most fundamental principle of international law is that no state shall use force against another state. This principle is expressly stated in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter. No state can violate this principle of international law.
While the UN Security Council can order the use of force in exceptional circumstances, according to Article 24(2) of the UN Charter, the Council "shall act in accordance with the Principles and Purposes of the United Nations." This means, at least, that when peaceful means of dispute resolution are still possible the options for authorizing the use of force are extremely limited. In the present case, the Security Council appears to have rushed to use force.
Narrow exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force are found in Article 51 and Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The latter provisions, especially Article 42, allow the Security Council to take action that "may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security." Both resolutions 1970 and 1973 state that they are being adopted under Chapter VII. Neither, however, meets the requirements of Article 42 that a determination has been made that "measures not involving the use of force" have failed.
In a civil war it is hard to see how such a determination can be made. It would appear that at the very least it would have to be based on on- the-ground fact-finding. Fact-finding missions by the UN Human Rights Council and the Security Council have not yet gone to Libya. While there is little doubt Western governments, such as the United States, have significant abilities to determine what is happening in Libya with distant surveillance methods, this does not provide sufficient evidence of whether the government of Libya is complying with the Security Council's resolutions. Only on-the-ground observers can determine this, as we have seen from the misinformation spread about Iraq's actions based on third party and distant surveillance sources.
Moreover, the evidence of Libya's compliance is mixed. Libya almost immediately announced it would respect the terms of UNSC Resolution 1973 after it was adopted. Nevertheless, in an unprecedented show of diplomatic intolerance, and without confirmation of the facts on the ground, Western leaders called the Libyan leader a liar.
Libya has also offered to accept international monitors, even extending invitations to them to visit the country. And in an extraordinary concession, the Libyan leader sent a message to the armed opposition when they had the upper hand and were approaching Tripoli, offering to step down and leave the country. It was only after this offer was rejected and opposition leaders said it was non-negotiable that the Libyan leader be captured and killed that the government's troops launched their offensive.
If international law allows states to use force in very limited circumstances, there are even fewer circumstances in which non-state actors are allowed to use force. One of those circumstances is when the right to self-determination is being exercised against a foreign and oppressive occupying power. This might entitle Iraqis or Afghanis to use force against occupying armies, but it would not entitle the Libyan people to use force against their own government.
Even the extrajudicial right of revolution, that many international lawyers admit exists when the limits of the law have been reached, has not been explicitly relied on by the Libyan rebels. While participation in the governance of Libya might have been a widespread problem, the country had the highest per capita income in Africa and among the best Millennium Development Goals indicators. Moreover, Libya has shown itself to respect international law in the past, implementing judgments of the International Court of Justice in the conflict with Chad and even turning over suspects for which there was questionable evidence for trial abroad in the Lockerbie affair.
Finally, the question of self-defence is relevant to the use of force against Libya. Rather than justifying the Western attack against Libya, however, it would appear to justify action taken by Libya against Western interests. In other words, as Libya has been the object of an armed attack that is likely illegal under international law, it has the right to defend itself. This right includes carrying out attacks against military facilities or personnel from any country involved in the attack. In other words, the attack against Libya by France and the United States makes the military facilities and personnel of these countries legitimate targets for attacks carried out by Libya in self-defence.
Regardless of the legality of the use of force by any party to the armed conflict international humanitarian law or the laws of war will continue to apply. According to this law, all states involved in an armed conflict must take care not to attack civilians. The Libyan authorities alleged they were respecting this restriction in the civil war, although the rebels refuted this claim. International humanitarian law requires that no military force may be directed against civilians or civilian facilities in Libya.
Similarly international human rights law continues to apply, making attacks on civilians subject to the restrictions on the use of force emanating from existing international human rights obligations. If the use of force against Libya is illegal as suggested above, then the standard for determining whether disproportionate force is being used is that applicable during peacetime. This is the case because no state involved in the use of force in Libya has announced its derogation from its international human rights obligations and because to allow states to derogate merely by starting an armed conflict in violation of international law would be contrary to the object and purpose of any of the existing human rights treaties.
The use of force in a manner that is contrary to existing international law is perhaps the greatest harm to humanity in the long-term. In the Pact of Paris in 1928 and again in the UN Charter in 1945, states agreed not to use force against each other to accomplish their foreign policy ends. The Western world has appeared to repeatedly challenge this agreement in the last 10 years, especially by its willingness to take military action against predominately Muslim states. In doing so they have sent an undeniable signal to the international community through their actions, and despite some of their words, that international law does not matter to them. If this message is not answered by the proponents of international law, then the advances we have made to ensure that the international community respects the rule of law may be undone for future generations.
* The writer is a prominent US international human rights lawyer.
THE SPANISH VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS IN:
El ataque a Libia y el derecho internacional
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=125403
OBAMA RAISES AMERICAN HYPOCRESY TO A HIGHER LEVEL
Obama Raises American Hypocrisy To A Higher Level
The Bush/ Cheney/ Obama Wars of Naked Aggression
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, March 29, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24019
[[NOTE: Is it true that we are not different from Hitler and the Nazis?. Is it true that Americans don't have to wait for evidences, that we can bomb any country based on lies, assumptions or prospects of violence. When Obama said: "I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action", he went further that Bush's neocons, he put himself in the mind of Hitler, not in the mind of real Americans. Many Americans would say that even though there is a difference between Hitler and Obama. Hitler enjoy killing Jews, Obama enjoy killing Muslims. Obama -in his short period in power- kill more Muslims than Gaddafi in his long period in power, suggest Paul Graig Roberts. Roberts is right, I would simply add that Obama in his last hypocritical speech forgot to say that Gaddafi was responsible for making US-NATO "peace-makers" to launch 140 missiles contained DU. This "non-intentional mistake" will cost to him and NATO rulers to sit in the ICC or in European International courts for war-crimes and crimes against humanity. HAZ, march 28-11]]
Here the article by Paul Craig Roberts
Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.
How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?
What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion.
Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya.
Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and deception.
Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.
Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”
The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America. Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan Instead, the money was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.
The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits of the off shoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode. Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent revolution.
Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy into a deeper depression.
Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsourced to foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is spent in behalf of the needy.
The moral authority of the West is rapidly collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe, Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net worth of $30 million.
In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know:
“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and--more profoundly--our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.
The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans is just a small thing.
The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.
How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?
Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush/ Cheney/ Obama Wars of Naked Aggression
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, March 29, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24019
[[NOTE: Is it true that we are not different from Hitler and the Nazis?. Is it true that Americans don't have to wait for evidences, that we can bomb any country based on lies, assumptions or prospects of violence. When Obama said: "I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action", he went further that Bush's neocons, he put himself in the mind of Hitler, not in the mind of real Americans. Many Americans would say that even though there is a difference between Hitler and Obama. Hitler enjoy killing Jews, Obama enjoy killing Muslims. Obama -in his short period in power- kill more Muslims than Gaddafi in his long period in power, suggest Paul Graig Roberts. Roberts is right, I would simply add that Obama in his last hypocritical speech forgot to say that Gaddafi was responsible for making US-NATO "peace-makers" to launch 140 missiles contained DU. This "non-intentional mistake" will cost to him and NATO rulers to sit in the ICC or in European International courts for war-crimes and crimes against humanity. HAZ, march 28-11]]
Here the article by Paul Craig Roberts
Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.
How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?
What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion.
Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya.
Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and deception.
Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.
Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”
The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America. Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan Instead, the money was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.
The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits of the off shoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode. Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent revolution.
Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy into a deeper depression.
Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsourced to foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is spent in behalf of the needy.
The moral authority of the West is rapidly collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe, Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net worth of $30 million.
In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know:
“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and--more profoundly--our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.
The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans is just a small thing.
The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.
How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?
Paul Craig Roberts
domingo, 27 de marzo de 2011
DEPLETED URANIUM: A STRANGE WAY TO PROTECT LIBYAN CIVILIANS
DEPLETED URANIUM: A STRANGE WAY TO PROTECT LIBYAN CIVILIANS
By David Wilson
Stop the War Coalition
24 March 2011
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2321/27/
"[Depleted uranium tipped missiles] fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way... I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people." Marion Falk, chemical physicist (retd), Lawrence Livermore Lab, California, USA
In the first 24 hours of the Libyan attack, US B-2s dropped forty-five 2,000-pound bombs. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from British and French planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads.
DU is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore. It is used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Because it is a very heavy substance, 1.7 times denser than lead, it is highly valued by the military for its ability to punch through armored vehicles and buildings. When a weapon made with a DU tip strikes a solid object like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it, then erupts in a burning cloud of vapor. The vapor settles as dust, which is not only poisonous, but also radioactive.
An impacting DU missile burns at 10,000 degrees C. When it strikes a target, 30% fragments into shrapnel. The remaining 70% vaporises into three highly-toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. This black dust remains suspended in the air and, according to wind and weather, can travel over great distances. If you think Iraq and Libya are far away, remember that radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales.
Particles less than 5 microns in diameter are easily inhaled and may remain in the lungs or other organs for years. Internalized DU can cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, skin disorders, neurocognitive disorders, chromosome damage, immune deficiency syndromes and rare kidney and bowel diseases. Pregnant women exposed to DU may give birth to infants with genetic defects. Once the dust has vaporised, don't expect the problem to go away soon. As an alpha particle emitter, DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
In the 'shock and awe' attack on Iraq, more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad alone. Seymour Hersh has claimed that the US Third Marine Aircraft Wing alone dropped more than "five hundred thousand tons of ordnance". All of it DU-tipped.
Al Jazeera reported that invading US forces fired two hundred tons of radioactive material into buildings, homes, streets and gardens of Baghdad. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor took a Geiger counter to parts of the city that had been subjected to heavy shelling by US troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal in residential areas. With its population of 26 million, the US dropped a one-ton bomb for every 52 Iraqi citizens or 40 pounds of explosives per person.
William Hague has said that we are in Libya " to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas".You don't have to look far for who and what are being 'protected'.
In that first 24 hours the 'Allies' 'expended' £100 million on DU-tipped ordnance.
The European Union's arms control report said member states issued licences in 2009 for the sale of £293.2 million worth of weapons and weapons systems to Libya. Britain issued arms firms licences for the sale of £21.7 million worth of weaponry to Libya and were also paid by Colonel Gadaffi to send the SAS to train his 32nd Brigade.
For the next 4.5 billion years, I'll bet that William Hague will not be holidaying in North Africa.
________________________________________
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The military and the politicians are very shy about the uses of depleted uranium, but we know that DU is or has been used in the following ordnance. The list is not exhaustive:
• M919 25mm ammunition used in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle141
• PGU-14 30mm ammunition used by the A-10 Thunderbolt II
• M900 105mm tank round used by the US Army and Marine Corps
• M829A1 / M829A2 120mm ammunition used by the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank
• Tomahawk cruise missiles
• GBU-28 'Bunker Buster'
• CHARM 3 APFSDS L27 ammunition in use with the British Army
• The 5000 lb BLU-122/B A/B penetrator
• The 4700 lb BLU-113 A/B penetrator
Source...
The only evidence of a move away from DU usage is the MK149 20mm ammunition, previously used by the US Navy's Phalanx Anti-Ship Missile Defense System, which has been replaced by a non-DU version with a Tungsten penetrator.
The UK Ministry of Defence and US Dept of Defence are careful how they refer to DU and prefer not to answer questions about its use. But in those 'official' documents we have been able to view it is clear that DU is commended for its excellent penetrating qualities and we must assume that what is considered of military value is going to be used especially when the political spokespeople for the military are keen to deny that DU has any harmful affects on human beings.
If it is harmless and effective why not use it? Thus the UK Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, in correspondence with Bill Wilson (no relation), a member of the Scottish Parliament in February 2011 said:
"The UK does not support resolutions that presuppose DU is harmful... The Government's policy remains that DU can be used within weapons; it is not prohibited under current or likely future international agreements. UK armed forces use DU munitions in accordance with international humanitarian law. It would be quite wrong to deny our serving personnel a legitimate capability."
Liam Fox is repeating the views of earlier UK Defence Secretaries. This is an excerpt from then Defence Secretary, Des Brown's letter to Tony Benn, dated 21 April 2008
"In conclusion, our view remains that DU can be legitimately used within weapons and that it would be quite wrong for the UK Government to deny our troops a legitimate capability that provides the best possible protection for them during armed conflicts."
My view is that we have to assume that DU remains in use in the ordnance listed above and that the list is likely to be incomplete. Since we are being told, when we're told anything, that DU is not dangerous and is an effective tool for warfare why would they not continue its use?. So long as that is the official opinion from the military and the politicians we must take it at face value and force them to confirm with evidence that we are wrong and DU is no longer used.
I would love to be proved wrong as would, even more so, the people who are under bombardment. The military and politicians give us every reason to suppose the worst.
Note:
When you check through official documents on weaponry in both the US and UK you will find few references to DU usage, they prefer to talk about 'enhancements' and 'design modifications' to 'improve penetrations' as here:
"The Air Force is improving capability to attack hardened and/or deeply buried targets during adverse environmental conditions. The performance of the current 4,700-lb BLU-113, used on the GBU-28 GPS/laser-guided bomb, is being greatly enhanced through the design modification of the BLU-122 warhead, improving its penetration, lethality, and survivability. This modification will increase the number of deeply buried targets held at risk. In addition, some existing targets held at risk will require fewer weapons, therefore reducing the number of missions necessary to defeat a target."
However, the Washington-based think-tank Global Security provides a rare history of military uses of depleted uranium.
=======================
URANIO EMPOBRECIDO: UNA EXTRAñA FORMA DE PROTEGER A CIVILES LIBIOS
David Wilson
Stop the War Coalition
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=125152
Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Sinfo Fernández
“Los misiles que llevan puntas dotadas de uranio empobrecido se ajustan a la perfección a la descripción de bomba sucia… Yo diría que es el arma perfecta para asesinar a montones de gente.” Marion Falk, experta en física química (jubilada), Laboratorio Lawrence Livermore, California, EEUU.
En las primeras veinticuatro horas del ataque contra Libia, los B-2 de EEUU arrojaron 45 bombas de 2.000 libras de peso cada una [algo menos de 1.000 kilos]. Estas enormes bombas, junto con los misiles Cruise lanzados desde aviones y barcos británicos y franceses, contenían ojivas de uranio empobrecido.
El UE es el producto de desecho del proceso de enriquecimiento de uranio. Se utiliza en las armas y reactores nucleares. Debido a que es una sustancia muy pesada, 1,7 veces más densa que el plomo, es muy valorada en el ejército por su capacidad para atravesar vehículos blindados y edificios. Cuando un arma que lleva una punta de uranio empobrecido golpea un objeto sólido, como una parte de un tanque, penetra a través de él y después explota formando una nube candente de vapor. El vapor se asienta como polvo, un polvo que no sólo es venenoso, también radioactivo.
Un misil con uranio empobrecido cuando impacta se quema a 10.000ºC. Cuando alcanza un objetivo, el 30% se fragmenta en metralla. El 70% restante se evapora en tres óxidos altamente tóxicos, incluido el óxido de uranio. Este polvo negro permanece suspendido en el aire, y dependiendo del viento y de la climatología, puede viajar sobre grandes distancias. Si Vds. piensan que Iraq y Libia están muy lejos, recuerden que la radiación de Chernobyl llegó hasta Gales.
Resulta muy fácil inhalar partículas de menos de 5 micras de diámetro, que pueden permanecer en los pulmones o en otros órganos durante años. Ese uranio empobrecido inhalado puede causar daños renales, cánceres de pulmón y huesos, trastornos en la piel, trastornos neurocognitivos, daños cromosómicos, síndromes de inmunodeficiencia y extrañas enfermedades renales e intestinales. Las mujeres embarazadas que se ven expuestas al uranio empobrecido pueden dar a luz a bebés con defectos géticos. Una vez que el polvo se vaporiza, no cabe esperar que el problema pueda desaparecer pronto. Como emisor de partículas alfa, el UE tiene una vida media de 4.500 millones de años.
En el ataque de la operación “conmoción y pavor” contra Iraq, se arrojaron, sólo sobre Bagdad, 1.500 bombas y misiles. Seymour Hersh ha afirmado que sólo la Tercera Insignia de Aviación de los Marines de EEUU arrojó más de “quinientas mil toneladas de munición”. Y todo eso llevaba puntas de uranio empobrecido.
Al Yasira informó que las fuerzas invasoras estadounidenses dispararon 200 toneladas de material radioactivo contra edificios, hogares, calles y jardines de Bagdad. Un periodista del Christian Science Monitor llevó un contador Geiger hasta zonas de la ciudad que habían sufrido una dura lluvia de artillería de las tropas estadounidenses. Encontró niveles de radiación de entre 1.000 a 1.900 veces por encima de lo normal en zonas residenciales. Con una población de 26 millones de habitantes, eso significa que EEUU arrojó una bomba de una tonelada por cada 52 ciudadanos iraquíes, es decir, unos 20 kilos de explosivo por persona.
William Hague [Secretario de Estado de Asuntos Exteriores británico] dijo que íbamos a Libia “a proteger a los civiles y a las zonas habitadas por civiles”. Vds. no tienen que mirar muy lejos para ver a quién y qué se está “protegiendo”.
En las primeras 24 horas, los “Aliados gastaron” 100 millones de libras esterlinas en munición dotada de punta de uranio empobrecido. Un informe sobre control de armamento realizado en la Unión Europea afirmaba que sus estados miembros concedieron en 2009 licencias para la venta de armas y sistemas de armamento a Libia por valor de 333.657 millones de euros. Gran Bretaña concedió licencias a las firmas de armamento para la venta de armas a Libia por valor de 24.700 millones de euros y el Coronel Gadafi pagó también para que se enviara a las SAS [siglas en inglés de Servicio Especial Aéreo] a entrenar su 32ª Brigada.
Me apuesto a que en los próximos 4.500 millones de años, William Hague no va a ir de vacaciones al Norte de África.
Fuente:
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2321/27/
By David Wilson
Stop the War Coalition
24 March 2011
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2321/27/
"[Depleted uranium tipped missiles] fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way... I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people." Marion Falk, chemical physicist (retd), Lawrence Livermore Lab, California, USA
In the first 24 hours of the Libyan attack, US B-2s dropped forty-five 2,000-pound bombs. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from British and French planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads.
DU is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore. It is used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Because it is a very heavy substance, 1.7 times denser than lead, it is highly valued by the military for its ability to punch through armored vehicles and buildings. When a weapon made with a DU tip strikes a solid object like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it, then erupts in a burning cloud of vapor. The vapor settles as dust, which is not only poisonous, but also radioactive.
An impacting DU missile burns at 10,000 degrees C. When it strikes a target, 30% fragments into shrapnel. The remaining 70% vaporises into three highly-toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. This black dust remains suspended in the air and, according to wind and weather, can travel over great distances. If you think Iraq and Libya are far away, remember that radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales.
Particles less than 5 microns in diameter are easily inhaled and may remain in the lungs or other organs for years. Internalized DU can cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, skin disorders, neurocognitive disorders, chromosome damage, immune deficiency syndromes and rare kidney and bowel diseases. Pregnant women exposed to DU may give birth to infants with genetic defects. Once the dust has vaporised, don't expect the problem to go away soon. As an alpha particle emitter, DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
In the 'shock and awe' attack on Iraq, more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad alone. Seymour Hersh has claimed that the US Third Marine Aircraft Wing alone dropped more than "five hundred thousand tons of ordnance". All of it DU-tipped.
Al Jazeera reported that invading US forces fired two hundred tons of radioactive material into buildings, homes, streets and gardens of Baghdad. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor took a Geiger counter to parts of the city that had been subjected to heavy shelling by US troops. He found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal in residential areas. With its population of 26 million, the US dropped a one-ton bomb for every 52 Iraqi citizens or 40 pounds of explosives per person.
William Hague has said that we are in Libya " to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas".You don't have to look far for who and what are being 'protected'.
In that first 24 hours the 'Allies' 'expended' £100 million on DU-tipped ordnance.
The European Union's arms control report said member states issued licences in 2009 for the sale of £293.2 million worth of weapons and weapons systems to Libya. Britain issued arms firms licences for the sale of £21.7 million worth of weaponry to Libya and were also paid by Colonel Gadaffi to send the SAS to train his 32nd Brigade.
For the next 4.5 billion years, I'll bet that William Hague will not be holidaying in North Africa.
________________________________________
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The military and the politicians are very shy about the uses of depleted uranium, but we know that DU is or has been used in the following ordnance. The list is not exhaustive:
• M919 25mm ammunition used in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle141
• PGU-14 30mm ammunition used by the A-10 Thunderbolt II
• M900 105mm tank round used by the US Army and Marine Corps
• M829A1 / M829A2 120mm ammunition used by the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank
• Tomahawk cruise missiles
• GBU-28 'Bunker Buster'
• CHARM 3 APFSDS L27 ammunition in use with the British Army
• The 5000 lb BLU-122/B A/B penetrator
• The 4700 lb BLU-113 A/B penetrator
Source...
The only evidence of a move away from DU usage is the MK149 20mm ammunition, previously used by the US Navy's Phalanx Anti-Ship Missile Defense System, which has been replaced by a non-DU version with a Tungsten penetrator.
The UK Ministry of Defence and US Dept of Defence are careful how they refer to DU and prefer not to answer questions about its use. But in those 'official' documents we have been able to view it is clear that DU is commended for its excellent penetrating qualities and we must assume that what is considered of military value is going to be used especially when the political spokespeople for the military are keen to deny that DU has any harmful affects on human beings.
If it is harmless and effective why not use it? Thus the UK Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, in correspondence with Bill Wilson (no relation), a member of the Scottish Parliament in February 2011 said:
"The UK does not support resolutions that presuppose DU is harmful... The Government's policy remains that DU can be used within weapons; it is not prohibited under current or likely future international agreements. UK armed forces use DU munitions in accordance with international humanitarian law. It would be quite wrong to deny our serving personnel a legitimate capability."
Liam Fox is repeating the views of earlier UK Defence Secretaries. This is an excerpt from then Defence Secretary, Des Brown's letter to Tony Benn, dated 21 April 2008
"In conclusion, our view remains that DU can be legitimately used within weapons and that it would be quite wrong for the UK Government to deny our troops a legitimate capability that provides the best possible protection for them during armed conflicts."
My view is that we have to assume that DU remains in use in the ordnance listed above and that the list is likely to be incomplete. Since we are being told, when we're told anything, that DU is not dangerous and is an effective tool for warfare why would they not continue its use?. So long as that is the official opinion from the military and the politicians we must take it at face value and force them to confirm with evidence that we are wrong and DU is no longer used.
I would love to be proved wrong as would, even more so, the people who are under bombardment. The military and politicians give us every reason to suppose the worst.
Note:
When you check through official documents on weaponry in both the US and UK you will find few references to DU usage, they prefer to talk about 'enhancements' and 'design modifications' to 'improve penetrations' as here:
"The Air Force is improving capability to attack hardened and/or deeply buried targets during adverse environmental conditions. The performance of the current 4,700-lb BLU-113, used on the GBU-28 GPS/laser-guided bomb, is being greatly enhanced through the design modification of the BLU-122 warhead, improving its penetration, lethality, and survivability. This modification will increase the number of deeply buried targets held at risk. In addition, some existing targets held at risk will require fewer weapons, therefore reducing the number of missions necessary to defeat a target."
However, the Washington-based think-tank Global Security provides a rare history of military uses of depleted uranium.
=======================
URANIO EMPOBRECIDO: UNA EXTRAñA FORMA DE PROTEGER A CIVILES LIBIOS
David Wilson
Stop the War Coalition
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=125152
Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Sinfo Fernández
“Los misiles que llevan puntas dotadas de uranio empobrecido se ajustan a la perfección a la descripción de bomba sucia… Yo diría que es el arma perfecta para asesinar a montones de gente.” Marion Falk, experta en física química (jubilada), Laboratorio Lawrence Livermore, California, EEUU.
En las primeras veinticuatro horas del ataque contra Libia, los B-2 de EEUU arrojaron 45 bombas de 2.000 libras de peso cada una [algo menos de 1.000 kilos]. Estas enormes bombas, junto con los misiles Cruise lanzados desde aviones y barcos británicos y franceses, contenían ojivas de uranio empobrecido.
El UE es el producto de desecho del proceso de enriquecimiento de uranio. Se utiliza en las armas y reactores nucleares. Debido a que es una sustancia muy pesada, 1,7 veces más densa que el plomo, es muy valorada en el ejército por su capacidad para atravesar vehículos blindados y edificios. Cuando un arma que lleva una punta de uranio empobrecido golpea un objeto sólido, como una parte de un tanque, penetra a través de él y después explota formando una nube candente de vapor. El vapor se asienta como polvo, un polvo que no sólo es venenoso, también radioactivo.
Un misil con uranio empobrecido cuando impacta se quema a 10.000ºC. Cuando alcanza un objetivo, el 30% se fragmenta en metralla. El 70% restante se evapora en tres óxidos altamente tóxicos, incluido el óxido de uranio. Este polvo negro permanece suspendido en el aire, y dependiendo del viento y de la climatología, puede viajar sobre grandes distancias. Si Vds. piensan que Iraq y Libia están muy lejos, recuerden que la radiación de Chernobyl llegó hasta Gales.
Resulta muy fácil inhalar partículas de menos de 5 micras de diámetro, que pueden permanecer en los pulmones o en otros órganos durante años. Ese uranio empobrecido inhalado puede causar daños renales, cánceres de pulmón y huesos, trastornos en la piel, trastornos neurocognitivos, daños cromosómicos, síndromes de inmunodeficiencia y extrañas enfermedades renales e intestinales. Las mujeres embarazadas que se ven expuestas al uranio empobrecido pueden dar a luz a bebés con defectos géticos. Una vez que el polvo se vaporiza, no cabe esperar que el problema pueda desaparecer pronto. Como emisor de partículas alfa, el UE tiene una vida media de 4.500 millones de años.
En el ataque de la operación “conmoción y pavor” contra Iraq, se arrojaron, sólo sobre Bagdad, 1.500 bombas y misiles. Seymour Hersh ha afirmado que sólo la Tercera Insignia de Aviación de los Marines de EEUU arrojó más de “quinientas mil toneladas de munición”. Y todo eso llevaba puntas de uranio empobrecido.
Al Yasira informó que las fuerzas invasoras estadounidenses dispararon 200 toneladas de material radioactivo contra edificios, hogares, calles y jardines de Bagdad. Un periodista del Christian Science Monitor llevó un contador Geiger hasta zonas de la ciudad que habían sufrido una dura lluvia de artillería de las tropas estadounidenses. Encontró niveles de radiación de entre 1.000 a 1.900 veces por encima de lo normal en zonas residenciales. Con una población de 26 millones de habitantes, eso significa que EEUU arrojó una bomba de una tonelada por cada 52 ciudadanos iraquíes, es decir, unos 20 kilos de explosivo por persona.
William Hague [Secretario de Estado de Asuntos Exteriores británico] dijo que íbamos a Libia “a proteger a los civiles y a las zonas habitadas por civiles”. Vds. no tienen que mirar muy lejos para ver a quién y qué se está “protegiendo”.
En las primeras 24 horas, los “Aliados gastaron” 100 millones de libras esterlinas en munición dotada de punta de uranio empobrecido. Un informe sobre control de armamento realizado en la Unión Europea afirmaba que sus estados miembros concedieron en 2009 licencias para la venta de armas y sistemas de armamento a Libia por valor de 333.657 millones de euros. Gran Bretaña concedió licencias a las firmas de armamento para la venta de armas a Libia por valor de 24.700 millones de euros y el Coronel Gadafi pagó también para que se enviara a las SAS [siglas en inglés de Servicio Especial Aéreo] a entrenar su 32ª Brigada.
Me apuesto a que en los próximos 4.500 millones de años, William Hague no va a ir de vacaciones al Norte de África.
Fuente:
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2321/27/
GATES SAYS LIBYA IS NOT THREAT TO US & OUR MISSION IS NOT REGIME NOR KILLING GADDAFI
Gates says U.S. sees Libya as no threat, not seeking regime change
English.news.cn 2011-03-28
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/28/c_13800619.htm
WASHINGTON, March 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Sunday that Libya did not pose "an actual or imminent threat" to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country, and regime change there "was never part of the military mission."
"No, no," Gates replied in response to a question about whether he thinks Libya "posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States," adding that "it was not a vital national interest to the United States."But he told ABC's Jake Tapper on its "This Week" program that it was an interest due to the engagement of the Arabs, the Europeans, the "general humanitarian question that was at stake" and the potential wave of refugees from Libya that "could have destabilized Tunisia and Egypt," where the two countries' long-time leaders stepped down in civilian unrest respectively in January and February.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appeared with Gates on the program, said "Why -- how could you stand by when, you know, France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans and the Arab League and your Arab partners were saying you've got to do something."
The Obama administration is facing mounting criticism at home both from the media and politicians for not asserting clear goals and consulting intensively before launching military strikes on Libya on March 19 to set up a no-fly zone over Libya as authorized by a UN Security Council resolution.
During his campaign for the presidency in December 2007, Barack Obama told the Boston Globe that "the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
As to when the military strikes in Libya will end?, Gates replied that "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that."
The Americans have been weary of the wars in Afghanistan, which has been dragging on for almost 10 years, as well as in Iraq, which lasted for almost eight years.
Obama has called for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's departure, but regime change is not one of the goals of the military operations.
"Well, first of all, I think you don't want ever to set a set of goals or a mission -- military mission where you can't be confident of accomplishing your objectives," Gates explained.
"And as we've seen in the past, regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission."
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that the U.S.-led military mission in Libya is "clear and focused" and achieving success.
He told the American public in his weekly radio and internet address that the U.S.-led coalition has taken out Libya's air defenses and prevented Gaddafi's forces from "advancing across Libya."
As part of the administration's publicity campaign, the White House announced that Obama will deliver an address at the National Defense University in Washington on Monday evening to update the American people on the situation in Libya.
In addition, Clinton, Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to hold a classified briefing on Libya next Wednesday for lawmakers.
SOURCE: Editor: Mu Xuequan. http://news.xinhuanet.com/ March 27, 2011
================
NOTE FROM HAZ
March 27, 2011
The contradictions between these servants of big corporations (Obama, Gates and Mrs Clinton) do not contradict the fact that -in real US policy-making- they are violating the UNCS Res 1973. They have not power to decide how to implement the hidden agendas of the Pentagon, the military-industrial-complex and other big corporations that profit from plundering oil abroad. They really do not have real power. They endure the sad real odyssey of no knowing where and when that are going to be dumped.
In the case of Obama the picture is clear: the jewish corporate media has set in the mind of the national electorate that his mission is to kill Gaddafi, if he wants some chances to be re-elected. The pounds of the corporate jewish media -the wolfes in CNN and other war mongers -specially in Fox news- designed a trap to Obama and hide the fact that they see Obama as mere butcher and the fact that they will be more happy, really happy if the Republicans implement the zionist Israeli objective: keep the Arab divided and submited.
In the so called "US democracy" the corporate media play his role, as well as the military has their own agenda, they both serve big coporations that finance democrats and republicans. This (the assembly of big corporationis taht meet behind the eyes of the public)is the real great dictator with unlimited power, they have set up for the electorate the trap of edither vote for their republicans and democrats who are happy and have some qualities to serve their interest. This is the way "democracy" works here, the most currupt and devaluated principle.
These real rulers of the US have not moral authority to talk about Human Rights to cover up their "humanitarian interventions abroad" after what happens in Irak, Afghanistan and Palestine, to mention just a few. They committed the same crime that they see in Gaddafi's rule: to kill armed rebels. It happens in 1996, in Waco, Texas where more than 90 people were incinerated by the democratic rule of Clinton. It is just hypocritical -to say the less- to condemn in their own "hijos de puta" (is the way an american president called dictators who serve US corporations) for crimes the golden-father commit or sponsored inside and abroad. Interesting details on US human rights inside can be found in : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208120.htm. Or in : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208219.htm
English.news.cn 2011-03-28
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/28/c_13800619.htm
WASHINGTON, March 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Sunday that Libya did not pose "an actual or imminent threat" to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country, and regime change there "was never part of the military mission."
"No, no," Gates replied in response to a question about whether he thinks Libya "posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States," adding that "it was not a vital national interest to the United States."But he told ABC's Jake Tapper on its "This Week" program that it was an interest due to the engagement of the Arabs, the Europeans, the "general humanitarian question that was at stake" and the potential wave of refugees from Libya that "could have destabilized Tunisia and Egypt," where the two countries' long-time leaders stepped down in civilian unrest respectively in January and February.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appeared with Gates on the program, said "Why -- how could you stand by when, you know, France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans and the Arab League and your Arab partners were saying you've got to do something."
The Obama administration is facing mounting criticism at home both from the media and politicians for not asserting clear goals and consulting intensively before launching military strikes on Libya on March 19 to set up a no-fly zone over Libya as authorized by a UN Security Council resolution.
During his campaign for the presidency in December 2007, Barack Obama told the Boston Globe that "the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
As to when the military strikes in Libya will end?, Gates replied that "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that."
The Americans have been weary of the wars in Afghanistan, which has been dragging on for almost 10 years, as well as in Iraq, which lasted for almost eight years.
Obama has called for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's departure, but regime change is not one of the goals of the military operations.
"Well, first of all, I think you don't want ever to set a set of goals or a mission -- military mission where you can't be confident of accomplishing your objectives," Gates explained.
"And as we've seen in the past, regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission."
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that the U.S.-led military mission in Libya is "clear and focused" and achieving success.
He told the American public in his weekly radio and internet address that the U.S.-led coalition has taken out Libya's air defenses and prevented Gaddafi's forces from "advancing across Libya."
As part of the administration's publicity campaign, the White House announced that Obama will deliver an address at the National Defense University in Washington on Monday evening to update the American people on the situation in Libya.
In addition, Clinton, Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to hold a classified briefing on Libya next Wednesday for lawmakers.
SOURCE: Editor: Mu Xuequan. http://news.xinhuanet.com/ March 27, 2011
================
NOTE FROM HAZ
March 27, 2011
The contradictions between these servants of big corporations (Obama, Gates and Mrs Clinton) do not contradict the fact that -in real US policy-making- they are violating the UNCS Res 1973. They have not power to decide how to implement the hidden agendas of the Pentagon, the military-industrial-complex and other big corporations that profit from plundering oil abroad. They really do not have real power. They endure the sad real odyssey of no knowing where and when that are going to be dumped.
In the case of Obama the picture is clear: the jewish corporate media has set in the mind of the national electorate that his mission is to kill Gaddafi, if he wants some chances to be re-elected. The pounds of the corporate jewish media -the wolfes in CNN and other war mongers -specially in Fox news- designed a trap to Obama and hide the fact that they see Obama as mere butcher and the fact that they will be more happy, really happy if the Republicans implement the zionist Israeli objective: keep the Arab divided and submited.
In the so called "US democracy" the corporate media play his role, as well as the military has their own agenda, they both serve big coporations that finance democrats and republicans. This (the assembly of big corporationis taht meet behind the eyes of the public)is the real great dictator with unlimited power, they have set up for the electorate the trap of edither vote for their republicans and democrats who are happy and have some qualities to serve their interest. This is the way "democracy" works here, the most currupt and devaluated principle.
These real rulers of the US have not moral authority to talk about Human Rights to cover up their "humanitarian interventions abroad" after what happens in Irak, Afghanistan and Palestine, to mention just a few. They committed the same crime that they see in Gaddafi's rule: to kill armed rebels. It happens in 1996, in Waco, Texas where more than 90 people were incinerated by the democratic rule of Clinton. It is just hypocritical -to say the less- to condemn in their own "hijos de puta" (is the way an american president called dictators who serve US corporations) for crimes the golden-father commit or sponsored inside and abroad. Interesting details on US human rights inside can be found in : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208120.htm. Or in : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208219.htm
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