Libya, the Lie

 Libya, NATO  Comments Off
Sep 142011
 
by Murray Dobbin. 12 September 2011

When the U.S. invaded Iraq riding a pack of lies and monstrous manipulation, the entire U.S. elite, including major news services, academics, and politicians from both “sides” of the spectrum, lined up to cheerlead and off they went to war. It was one of the most shameful chapters in the long history of shameful acts of U.S. imperial foreign policy.

But it actually didn’t take too long for dissenting voices to come out of the woodwork. The lies were exposed, the liars identified, the manipulation denounced.

Watching the sorry spectacle of media coverage of the tragic farce unfolding in Libya, one has to wonder if anyone will ever expose the lies and hubris that have run throughout this faux Arab spring.

To be sure, as more journalists, aid workers and human rights representatives arrive in the country the more some of the obvious facts trickle out. The “freedom fighters” — more like soccer hooligans with guns — have looted dozens of arms depots of the Libyan military. According to Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, “Every time a city falls, they end up being looted. . . Every facility we go to where there were surface-to-air missiles, they’re gone.”

Just what will these lovers of democracy do with these weapons? The U.S. and E.U. might just start to worry that no matter who buys them on the black market, they will eventually end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other militant groups. As NATO knows full well, some of the so-called rebels have ties to al Qaeda. Or perhaps the missiles will end up in the hands of the Taliban where they will be used to shoot down U.S. helicopters. Talk about blowback. Too bad the Americans have never quite grasped the meaning of irony.

The photos of the revolutionaries give any thoughtful observer pause. Virtually every photo of the victorious rebels show aggressive, undisciplined, young men armed to the teeth holding their guns high in the air (often firing randomly). I haven’t seen a single photo or video clip with even one woman portrayed — and hardly any men over

And while the western media repeatedly imply that the Nation Transitional Council is in control of these dangerous thugs and thieves the truth lies elsewhere. Several rebel groups have denounced the NTC and said they don’t recognize its authority. So not only does the council not represent anyone, it doesn’t even control its own “army.” The NTC is little more than a group of greedy opportunists salivating at the thought of getting its hands on the billions in state funds that NATO is now handing over to them. Only with the constant disciplinary efforts of its NATO handlers does the council manage to maintain a semblance of decorum and credibility.

No one in the media mentions that Gadhafi didn’t have billions of dollars stashed in vaults around the world for his personal use as others such as Mubarak did. To be sure, Gadhafi and his family and closest associates lived in luxury. But the tens of billions illegally seized by Western countries was money belonging to the Libyan state and its national bank. NATO has effectively destroyed the Libyan government — not just Gadhafi’s regime. Tens of thousands of foreign workers have left the country, many of whom were critical to the running of the country. Rebels have been accused of randomly executing blacks, many of them students and workers. The contributions of these foreign workers are likely gone forever.

But none of this bothers the Canadian political elite and its intellectual hired guns. One of the most shameful examples — there are countless — is Lloyd Axworthy, the “highly respected” former foreign affairs minister under Jean Chretien. He penned an op-ed for the Globe and Mail which could have been written on contract for the cabal now in power in Tripoli. A more simplistic and deliberately obfuscating piece is hard to imagine. Axworthy’s article waxes on romantically about how the NATO bombing of Libya is a huge advance for the principle of Responsibility to Protect. This principle is NATO’s ideological weapon that permits it to do whatever it likes. Axworthy was a key figure in getting it established at the United Nations in 1999-2000.

According to Axworthy, “We are seriously engaged in a resetting of the international order toward a more humane, just world.” I predict that NATO’s grotesque manipulation of the UN mandate to impose a “no fly” zone to protect “civilians” (a violation Axworthy doesn’t even mention) will in fact do more damage to the responsibility to protect principle than any similar action to date. It will tarnish the UN, too, which has allowed its mandate to be used for imperial gain. The unseemly rush by France, Britain and Italy in particular, to get their hands on Libyan oil will soon be too obvious to cover up. The revolutionaries are no doubt busy signing deals handing over that previously nationalized resource to the neo-colonialists who put them in power — robbing the real civilians of their birthright.

Who will take the “responsibility to protect” Libyans from this new gang? Who will protect the people of Libya so that they continue to enjoy a literacy rate above 90 per cent, the lowest infant mortality rate and highest life expectancy of all of Africa, free medicare and education and the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent? Do the boys firing their guns in the air even have a clue that their living standards — subsidized by nationalized oil — were among the highest in Africa? Who will they blame when medical care disappears and their kids have to pay to go to school? Western, free-market democracy will come to Libya at a very high price when designed and delivered by the neo-colonial powers.

It’s hard to know if the brain trust at NATO actually believed this whole thing would be over in a few weeks, but what they did know, and what the Canadian media refuses to tell us, is that Libya was the biggest obstacle to the continued super-exploitation of Africa and its vast resources. On a whole number of fronts, Libya was using its oil wealth to gradually close the doors to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the economic domination of Africa.

If you want to paint a picture of the back rooms of NATO before the genuine Arab spring burst forth, imagine the power brokers sitting around oak tables trying to figure out a way to stop Gadhafi from ruining their decades long — centuries, actually — bonanza. Then imagine the surprise arrival of the Arab spring. What a gift and delivered just in time.

Africa’s role as a giant pool of cheap resources was being threatened just as the U.S. and E.U. faced economic catastrophe because of their own financial deregulation policies. China is investing billions in Africa — and not just in resource extraction. It is helping African countries industrialize, the surest way to economic independence.

There’s nothing NATO can do about China. But the other side of the independence coin was Gadhafi’s determination to sever Africa’s oppressive ties with Western financial institutions. Gadhafi was not only in the process of creating the African Investment Bank (providing interest-free loans) and the African Monetary Fund (to be centred in Cameroon) eliminating the role of the IMF, it was also in the planning stages of creating a new, gold-backed African currency that would seriously weaken the U.S. by undermining the dollar. All the Libyan funds set aside for these Pan-African projects were frozen by NATO and will now be handed over — carefully, no doubt — to the neo-colonial puppets installed in Tripoli.

Gadhafi was also instrumental in killing AFRICOM, a new U.S. military command and control base intended to add military intimidation to American economic domination. Look for that initiative to be revived.

The implications of the conflict in Libya are thus just beginning to unfold. NATO will be mired in Libya for years to come to ensure its oil objectives are met and to manipulate “democratic elections” so its friends on the NTC can maintain control. While there has been a muted response so far from African countries and the African Union it will come sooner or later. They cannot fail to recognize that regime change in Libya was all about sabotaging pan-African unity.

 Posted by at 12:12 pm

Libya: V Day + 3 Weeks

 Libya, NATO  Comments Off
Sep 122011
 

Genocide, rebel infighting, failed offensives mark 3 weeks after NATO’s “victory” in Libya
by Tony Cartalucci – Land Destroyer Blog

Desperate to declare NATO’s mission in Libya a victory ahead of the September 19, 2011 deadline on their contrived UN Security Council resolution, already violated in every conceivable manner possible, NATO planes in tandem with NATO special forces obliterated Tripoli ahead of swarms of Libyan rebel troops led by notorious Al Qaeda thug Abdulhakim Hasadi (aka Balhaj.) Three weeks later, NATO’s proxy Libyan representative, long-time globalist and servant of the West Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally, touched down at Tripoli’s airport, one of the few enclaves held by rebels in the city, to give the impression that his “National Transitional Council” (NTC) actually controls the capital and therefore the country.

In reality, Gibril (also spelled Jabril) is in control of nothing, apparently not even his own rebel forces, and stunts such as landing in Tripoli are desperate ploys to portray a sense of strength and resolve to garner continued “international support” as NATO’s deadline quickly approaches. Libya’s rebellion, despite the corporate-media’s disingenuous presentation, is divided along tribal and ethnic lines, with most of Libya’s rebels being motivated, not by aspirations for liberal-democracy, but rather by ideological extremism cultivated over the last 30 years by US and British intelligence in the eastern cities of Darnah and Benghazi. As NATO enables these violent ideologues to expand their control over the country, they are systematically committing war crimes including large-scale theft and looting, exiling entire civilian populations from cities, and wholesale genocide. They are also reportedly turning their weapons on one another.

To compound Gibril’s precarious situation, the few fighters he has that are following orders are stretched thin between attempting to hold parts of Tripoli, holding other towns and cities beyond their Benghazi stronghold, and attempting to siege entire cities still standing defiantly against NATO and rebel conquest. The cities of Bani Walid and Sirte, both claimed by rebels as ripe to fall “within hours” have now entirely balked rebel advances, causing many forces to flee with reports that fighters coming back from the front lines are overwhelmed and demoralized.

Despite heavy, and quite obviously indiscriminate bombing by NATO for the better part of two weeks, resistance in these two cities is still fierce enough to keep the rebels well at bay. It is quite apparent that initial reports by Gabril’s “NTC” that only 60-150 Qaddafi fighters remained in Bani Walid, were yet another lie and that the entire city’s civilian population is putting up resistance. The number of “resisters” has gone up piecemeal as the rebel operation drags on, with the number of “Qaddafi soldiers” fighting in Bani Walid well past 1,000 now.

Bani Walid is predominately made of members of Libya’s one-million strong Warfalla tribe, and is decidedly not interested in NATO’s sponsored “Benghazi liberation.” In the wake of NATO’s bombing campaign and special forces entering Tripoli and their setting the stage for looting, torture, and genocide, and after months of reporting on the Libyan rebels’ penchant for war crimes, the London Telegraph has finally admitted in short that the rebels are in fact genocidal racists. In the Telegraph’s article “Gaddafi’s ghost town after the loyalists retreat,” it is reported that rebels have taken the city of Tawarga, where the entire civilian population was either killed, rounded up, or exiled.

The article notes “racist undercurrents” within the Libyan rebellion, a factor independent analysts have been warning about since NATO intervened in March. The report also quotes rebel leaders as saying in regards to the vast amount of property left behind by the exiled population, “the military council will decide what will happen to the buildings. But over our dead bodies will the Tawargas return.” Another rebel commender concluded, “Tawarga no longer exists.” Of course, exiling an entire civilian population from their homes and arbitrarily seizing their property is a grievous war crime, and in this particular case, a war crime done under NATO cover, with US and British diplomatic recognition of the war criminals remaining steadfast, and even many of the arms and the training used to carry out such war crimes courtesy of NATO.

With the fate of Tawarga befalling an increasingly larger number of cities and towns amidst NATO’s campaign of “liberation,” increasingly fierce resistance throughout Libya, including by the entire populations of both Sirte and Bani Walid, is not unexpected. They indeed face NATO sanctioned door-to-door genocide, exile, theft, looting, torture, and in essence everything in reality that NATO falsely accused Qaddafi of doing to justify their military intervention in the first place. Libya is turning out to be a NATO-led Hitlerian campaign of conquest, complete with collective punishment and ground troops carrying out appalling atrocities. The rebels are literally led by a US State Department and UK Home Office listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), who’s commander Abdulhakim Hasadi has openly admitted to fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan. What’s worse is that these facts are not revelations, but well-known inconvenient truths NATO, with the help of the corporate-media, has tried to bury, spin, or otherwise obfuscate until the point of no return in their Libyan intervention had been reached.

As NATO races to dress up their failed operation in Libya as a success so that they can escape an upcoming September 19 vote on continuing the UN mandate under which this crime against humanity is being committed, the lies will become more acute and the atrocities infinitely more brutal and widespread. Now more than ever do Libyan’s require a robust alternative media to cover the truth, “read between the lies” of the corporate-news networks, and ensure that this nation of 6 million is not buried by NATO in deception or the stark silence of public apathy.

 Posted by at 9:37 am
Aug 272011
 

Written by Chris Floyd   Friday, 26 August 2011 20:00 I was going to write about the NATO bombing of Sirte, where in order “protect civilians” from the now non-existent regime of Moamar Gadafy, the humanitarian lords of the West are now killing civilians at the behest of the new, non-elected regime of the murky and murderous “Transitional National Council.” But as I sat down to the keyboard, I saw that Craig Murray was already on the case. Murray, you’ll recall, was the courageous UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who dared expose the horrific tortures being practiced by the “friendly” regime there, which was acting as ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 7:54 am
Aug 272011
 

By Bill Van Auken. WSWS 27 August 2011 NATO’s assault on Libya, a criminal imperialist war from its outset more than five months ago, has descended into an exercise in out-and-out murder as special forces operatives and intelligence agents hunt down Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. From the beginning, the central objectives of this war have been to seize control of Libya’s oil reserves, the largest on the African continent, and carry out an imperialist show of force as a means of suppressing and diverting the mass popular movements that only months earlier had toppled the US- and NATO-backed regimes of Mubarak in Egypt and Ben ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 6:36 am

The rape of Libya

 Libya  Comments Off
Aug 262011
 

By Bill Van Auken – WSWS 26 August 2011 Five days after “rebels” entered Tripoli, under the cover of NATO bombing and led by foreign special forces, the abject criminality of imperialism’s takeover of Libya is becoming increasingly evident. Fighting continues to rage throughout the Libyan capital, whose two million residents have been made hostages of the armed gangs and Western special forces troops that have seized control of the city’s streets. The focus of NATO operations has become a frantic effort to hunt down and murder Muammar Gaddafi, who has ruled the country for 42 years. A $2 million bounty has been placed on ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 4:51 pm
Aug 232011
 

Tripoli: Voltaire Network concerned about the death threats hanging over Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Thierry Meyssan Voltaire Network, Monday, August 22, 2011, 13:20 GMT – Voltaire Network is concerned about the threats targeting two of its team members in Tripoli. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Research Associate, Centre for Research on Globalization, and Thierry Meyssan, president and founder of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference, are entrenched in the Hotel Rixos, around which heavy fighting is taking place. Reportedly, the order was given to shoot them down. Thierry Meyssan has been in Tripoli since June 23, 2011. He started out by heading a fact-finding mission ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 6:39 am
Jul 172011
 

by Mouamar Adul naser We have seen your democracy in Iraq, and we witnessed with great admiration your highest human rights record in Abu Ghraib and Basra. We also remember your highest business standards in the Yamama deal with the Saudis. We know very well you ethics, principles and values especially during the 2010 bombing of Gaza Mouamar Adul naser tells former British ambassador to Libya. Mr Oliver Miles a former British ambassador to Libya 1981-84, advised NATO and the rebels to cut oil supplies, as the only means to strangle Tripoli. He also found the killing of the young al Hamidi children acceptable, as ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 2:12 pm

The Sormon Massacre

 Libya  Comments Off
Jul 032011
 
The Sormon Massacre

For once, Thierry Meyssan is not offering us a clinical analysis of geo-political developments. He is reporting on facts that he witnessed firsthand: the story of his friend, Engineer Khaled K. Al-Hamedi. A story of horror and blood where NATO embodies the comeback of barbarism. Voltaire Network It was a family celebration, the Libyan way. Everyone had gathered to celebrate the third birthday of little Al-Khweldy. The grand-parents, the brothers and sisters and cousins were crowding inside the family house located in Sorman, 70 Kms West of the capital: a big garden where small houses had been built for the various members of the family, ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 8:04 pm
Jul 032011
 

(hat-tip Angirfan) A million people demonstrate in Tripoli (over 10% of the entire population) – Deafening silence from the Western MSM – apart from the odd allegation of “punishment for refusing to attend a pro-gaddafi rally” – naturally. Watch the video and ask yourself: if this had been in support of the rebels – those largely ‘al-qaeda’ inspired fundamentalists latterly fighting the US and UK military in Iraq and Afghanistan – how would the Western MSM respond? Gaddafi challenges Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama to switch on their television sets and see who has mass support in Libya. He says they are delusional and have entered ……. [Full Post]

 Posted by at 7:18 am
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