Still, the rebels have offered their own far-fetched claims, like mass rapes by loyalist troops issued tablets of Viagra. Although the rebels have not offered credible proof, that claim is nonetheless the basis of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
And there is the mantra, with racist overtones, that the Qaddafi government is using African mercenaries, which rebels repeat as fact over and over. There have been no confirmed cases of that; supposedly there are many African prisoners of war being held in Benghazi, but conveniently journalists are not allowed to see them. There are, however, African guest workers, poorly paid migrant labor, many of whom, unarmed, have been labeled mercenaries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/world/africa/24fog.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast&pagewanted=all
At a news conference in the Qatari capital, Doha, Mr. Jibril, the rebel prime minister, said it was essentially a misunderstanding, suggesting that Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, had mistaken an early notification of an unconfirmed rumor for an official report of Seif al-Islam’s capture. There was no explanation why the misunderstanding went uncorrected for two days.
The rebels’ reversal about the Qaddafi son’s capture led to some finger-pointing among the rebels. “I learned not to trust the people from Benghazi who are telling me these stories,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the western mountains who had repeated the news Monday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/world/africa/25libya.html?hp&pagewanted=all
From the makers of “Gaddafi is killing his own people”: Doha studio presents “The Libyan Revolution”
Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Metro Gael, Aug 23 2011
Surpassing previous mass media fabrications, both in scale and boldness, yesterday morning’s Al Jazeera mise-en-scène will surely go down in history as one of the most cynical hoaxes committed by corporate media since the manipulated pictures of Iraqis topplying Saddam Hussein’s statue after the US invasion in 2003. On the morning of Aug 22 2011, Al Jazeera aired a ‘live’ report from Green Square in Tripoli which claimed to show the capture of the Libyan capital by rebel forces. Scenes of jubilation and euphoria enveloped Al Jazeera’s reporter Zeina Khodr as she declared: Libya is in the hands of the opposition!
The images were immediately reproduced throughout the global media complex, with headlines trumpeting the ‘end of the Gaddafi regime’ and editorials throughout the corporate media world speculating about the post-Gaddafi future of Libya. Gaddafi’s sons were said to have been arrested, and more defections were announced. The Libyan capital was, we were told, now in the hands of the rebel forces. For many, it seemed a fait accompli. In fact, the Al Jazeera pictures from Green Square were an elaborate and criminal hoax. The report had been prefabricated in a studio in Doha, Qatar . This information had been passed onto Libyan intelligence and the Libyan people had already been warned about the Qatari psyops a couple of days previously on Rayysse state television. The Al Jazeera hoax was intended to create the impression that Tripoli had fallen so as to break the Libyan resistance by creating panic and chaos in the Libyan capital, and to provide cover for the massacres of civilians that would occur in the days following the declaration of rebel victory. In other words, the media would provide cover for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that are necessary in order to subjugate the Libyan Jamhahirya to Western corporate interests.
Shortly after the Al Jazeera pictures were released, this author contacted independent reporter Lizzie Phelan in Tripoli. She was able to confirm from what she described as reliable sources that the Al Jazeera pictures were false. By the end of the day, it emerged that all the Twitter lies emanating from the criminals in the National Transitional Council were also, unsurprisingly, false. Gaddafi’s sons had not been arrested, and the rebels were not in control of the city. In the meantime, Lizzie Phelan, Mahdi Darius Nemenroaya and Thierry Meysan have received death threats from CNN producers staying in the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli. After the arrival of thousands of NATO/Al Qaeda terrorists, a brief period of chaos ensued in the city. When many of the mainstream reporters abandoned the Rixos Hotel, Libyan authorities discovered that most of them were CIA and MI6 agents working undercover as journalists. At present, Nezemroaya, Meysan and other real journalists remain trapped in the Rixos Hotel. Nezemroaya was fired upon by a NATO/rebel sniper when he attempted to place a press sign on top of the Rixos hotel to protect the building from NATO bombardement. Phelan contacted a friend yesterday to say that she had been threatened by CNN personnel and had been blocked from using Facebook and email.
Below, you can see the warning given to the Libyan people by state media of Al Jazeera’s coming psyops. The presenter tells the viewers that Al Jazeera have produced a simulation of Tripoli’s Green Square, and that they are going to use this to produce a gigantic fiction of ‘liberated’ Libya. The picture above proves that the producers of the Al Jazeera hoax are no Dutch masters, as the glaring discrepancies between the real Green Square in Tripoli and the Al Jazeera version are patently obvious. The differences between the architecture in Green Square in Tripoli and the pictures shown in Al Jazeera are well documented in the video below. While the Al Jazeera mise-en-scène is entertaining, the leading actress Zeina Khodr is unlikey to receive awards for her rather slugish performance. She said her lines rather mechanically, as one who was not particularly enamoured of the script, or perhaps it was the far-fetched aspect of the entire screen play that bothered her. This media hoax is another poignant example of the desperation of NATO, who have ruthlessly bombed a sovereign nation for 6 months and have so far failed to effect regime change. It also proves yet again the role of the corporate media in disinformation and war-mongering.
http://metrogael.blogspot.com/2011/08/from-makers-of-gaddafi-is-killing-his.html
maybe the emiratis who had invested in "The Help" were laundering film & studio budgets for this stuff
in less speculative territory here's asiatimes's pepe escobar:
disaster capitalism in libya http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH25Ak02.html
the lack of democratic tendencies in the rebel government http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH24Ak01.html
independent journalist in tripoli reports that british and french troops are landing in tripoli by sea. this would be more evidence for the argument that libya was attacked for preferring italian and russian business (both of whom refused to participate in the invasion) to british and french
Why Are Armed Groups Storming Foreign Embassies in Tripoli?AUGUST 25, 2011 BY JOSEPH FITSANAKIS
It is perhaps understandable that fighters of the National Transitional Council, Libya’s rebel umbrella group, have stormed locations in Tripoli that are associated with the regime of deposed Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Strategic sites such as Bab al-Aziziya, Gaddafi’s compound, government ministries, or even houses belonging to Gaddafi’s large and powerful family, may be deemed legitimate targets. But why are the rebels also selectively attacking foreign embassies in the Libyan capital? According to Yonhap, South Korea’s state-run news agency, the South Korean embassy in Tripoli was “attacked by an armed gang” of about 30 people late on Tuesday. The report, which could not be immediately confirmed by the Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited anonymous sources, who said that embassy staff were “threatened at gunpoint”. At roughly the same period, another group of “armed persons” stormed the building of the Bulgarian embassy, according to the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which said that it had yet to clarify “the circumstances around the incident”. On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that armed groups had “assaulted and totally looted” the Venezuelan embassy. A few hours later, the Venezuelan Ambassador to Libya, Afif Tajeldine, clarified that the attack took place at his official residence, which is located about 9 miles from the Venezuelan embassy. He told El Universal that armed groups broke into the ambassadorial residence and “searched the house asking for me”. They then “ransacked the house completely” and “left nothing in the house”.
It is arguably hard to disagree with the Ambassador’s view that “this is a violation of international law, as this house is our territory, Venezuelan territory”. But a more pressing question is why are these attacks taking place? The question is even more important in light of the fact the rebels are going out of their way to protect selected embassies around the Libyan capital. These include the Chinese embassy, which currently serves as refuge for a host of international reporters, and the Hungarian embassy, which acts as a protecting power for the United States and all European Union countries. Bizarrely, the list of protected embassies includes that of the United Kingdom, which was effectively destroyed months ago, when it was looted by pro-Gaddafi demonstrators, following NATO’s imposition of the United Nations no-fly zone over Libya. Journalists from Britain’s Daily Telegraph visited the site of the embassy on Wednesday, where they found Kalashnikov-toting rebels zealously protecting the building. The rebel guards had even hoisted the British flag. “One of our boys has put up the flag again. We are very happy now”, one of their leaders told the paper.
So what exactly is going on? Are these attacks against embassies random or premeditated? If they are premeditated, are they perhaps being directed against embassies of countries deemed friendly to the deposed Gaddafi regime? This would certainly be the case with Venezuela, whose government is still refusing to recognize the National Transitional Council as the de facto government of Libya. The Venezuelan embassy in Tripoli is acting as a protective power for a number of Latin American nations that have no official consular presence in Libya. These include Nicaragua, where the Sandinista government has offered asylum to Gaddafi.
Or could it be that these attacks are not led by the rebels themselves, but by some of their embedded American and Western European intelligence operatives, who may be taking advantage of the chaotic situation in the Libyan capital to collect valuable documents from selected foreign embassies? It is plausible to assume at this point that Western intelligence cells, which have been operating on the ground in Libya for several months, have already gained access to Libyan government buildings. These may or may not prove profitable from an intelligence-collection standpoint, depending on the volume of documents and computer hard drives that Gaddafi’s people managed to collect before evacuating the Libyan capital.
Or could it be that the attacks on foreign embassies are not organized by the rebels, but are simply perpetrated by criminal gangs looking for quick profit? In a way, this would be even worse. It would signify that the National Transitional Council and its military wing, the National Liberation Army (in itself a largely unknown quantity), are proving incapable of maintaining order in the post-Gaddafi environment. This is worrying, in light of the fact that the deposed Libyan government was known to possess “weapons stockpiles, a stew of deadly chemicals, raw nuclear material and some 30,000 shoulder-fired rockets”. A largely overlooked CBS report considers the possibility that these weapons may “fall into terrorists’ hands in the chaos of Muammar Qaddafi’s downfall or afterward”. The US Pentagon said on Wednesday that “Libya’s stockpile of chemical weapons is secure” (this was not elaborated on), but noted that a massive arsenal of thousands of shoulder-launched missiles “remained cause for concern”.
Whatever the answer, it is apparent that the Libyan civil war still far from over. And amidst the chaos of armed conflict, regional and global powers, and even non-state actors like Hamas, are positioning themselves for possible tactical gains in the new Libya.
http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/01-801/ sources embdded in linked article
Sweet crude of mineBy Pepe Escobar
Royals dancing in palace corridors have been spotted in Riyadh. The heir to the Libyan throne, Prince al-Senussi, a nephew of King Idriss who was deposed by Muammar Gaddafi and others in a bloodless 1969 military coup, has embarked on a busy self-promotion campaign, saying he's ready to go back to Libya and even "lead the country".
Nothing in the world would be sweeter for the House of Saud - extremely distasteful of most Arab secular republics - than a friendly, brand new emirate in northern Africa.
But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the real winners of the Libyan tribal/civil war, may have other ideas. Mahmoud Jibril - the dodgy National Transitional Council's prime minister - speaking in Qatar, has explicitly thanked the winners by name: France, Britain, the United States, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Of this top five, the Western top three might welcome, in theory, a pliable emirate - but as long as it does not exhibit North Waziristan-style ultra-fundamentalist tendencies, as in Pakistan's tribal area.
It's an open game, because at this stage no one really knows the degree of influence Islamists will be able to wield in post-Gaddafi Libya. A week from now, in Paris, some answers might be on the table; that's when the "friends of Libya" (FOL) will gather with council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil and prime minister Jibril to talk business regarding what is gearing up to be a new NATO protectorate.
Meanwhile, from Benghazi to European capitals, the dancing is to the tune of a Guns 'n Roses megahit, now rebranded Sweet Crude of Mine. France and Germany are already pressing the "NATO rebels" leadership for juicy deals, Italy starts today (Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is meeting Jalil in Milan) and the Brits and the Americans are about to join the fray.
Up to now, Libya's National Oil Company was essentially awarding service contracts on old, profitable oil fields to Libya's national subsidiaries. But what BP, Total, Exxon Mobil and the Qatar oil company really want is serious involvement in new fields, and those famous production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that allow stratospheric profits. They want the full bonanza they didn't get in Iraq - where some of the juiciest contracts went to Russian, Chinese or Malaysian players.
As for those players that were already on Libyan soil, such as Spain's Repsol and Italy's ENI, they are planning to be back in business before the end of September. No one knows what will happen to Chinese investments.
What WikiLeaks had already revealed will certainly be back in the form of dogfights, such as between US companies and Italy's ENI for the cream of the contracts. Largely because of Berlusconi's very tight "bunga bunga" links with Gaddafi, ENI was already pumping almost 200,000 barrels of oil a day before the tribal/civil war.
Anyway, from the point of view of corporations linked to the war "winners", no more Gaddafi is already a surefire guarantee of ultra sweet contracts and an array of concessions.
Follow the money
On the banking front, WikiLeaks once again had already revealed that the privatization of Libya's central bank was regarded as a golden "opportunity" for US banks. The shadow "rebel" bank facilitated by HSBC in all probability will take over - obviously not independent as the previous Libya Central Bank but aligned with the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bankers' central bank.
So bye-bye to "subversive", unifying Gaddafi ideas such as dumping the US dollar and the euro so Arab and African nations would start dealing in a new single currency - the gold dinar. It's crucial to note that most African nations - and a lot of Arabs - backed up the idea. The only serious contrarians in the region were South Africa and the Arab League (influenced by the House of Saud). Obviously Washington and the European Union (EU) were furious - to the point of calling NATO to the rescue.
It's never enough to remember that in late 2002 Iraq under Saddam Hussein started accepting payment in euros instead of US dollars for its oil. Everybody knows what happened next. Don't mess with the petrodollar, or else ...
So the oil and the flow of money will be secure in the hands of the "winners". Now for the strategic design. The Pentagon's Africom - after its first successful African war - will be rewarded with its first African base, thus abandoning its headquarters in that lovely African bush, Stuttgart. And NATO will proceed in its sacred mission of turning the Mediterranean into a "NATO lake". Northern Africa is already in the bag; now for the eastern Mediterranean, to teach a lesson to those pesky Syrians.
Whose flag is this?
To qualify the TNC's cast of characters as "dodgy" is in fact an understatement. Virtually everyone is "invisible". Few may remember that the TNC's Jalil was the judge that condemned those Bulgarian nurses to death - a notorious case in France that warranted muscular intervention by neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy, who even regimented his trophy wife Carla Bruni to seduce the Big G. After the nurses were freed, Jalil was promoted by Gaddafi to justice minister, lasting from 2007 until his opportunistic defection last February.
To believe that this motley crew of disgruntled tribals, radical Islamists, fake "socialists" of the Tony Blair variety, cynical opportunists on the payroll of oil giants, military defectors and outright thugs will pray in the altar of "democracy" is a mirage. Not to mention that they invited NATO and regressive Arab monarchies to bomb their motherland - certainly not where they live, but "the other side", Tripolitania.
It remains to be seen how most people and tribes in Tripolitania will relate to the people of Cyrenaica - which they view as lowly country bumpkins - seizing power. They are already fuming at being degraded in the new Libyan flag - which is basically the Cyrenaica flag (black rectangle with a white Islam crescent) with two additional strips, red for Fezzan and green for Tripolitania
No one knows how the next stage of this "kinetic" war that is not a war (copyright: The White House) will play out. Yet there are serious reasons to believe this may turn out to be a devastating remix of the 2001 "defeated Taliban" and 2003 "Mission Accomplished" scenarios.
Bedouins and Berbers, at war, are all about strategic retreat and ambushing. That is, guerrilla. No one knows what degree of tribal support Gaddafi may still count on not only around Tripoli but around his fiefdom of Sirte or in the high desert. Yet it's a sure bet that he'll go the guerrilla way. Whether he'll end up like Saddam or play "the road goes on forever" like the Taliban is the $100 billion question (the amount of Libyan funds to be unfrozen by the "winners"). Quagmire looms.
Impper posted:
this is really bizarre. like i don't think they're literally filming the green square in a studio, but the media reports are so contradictory and ridiculous that you may as well believe whatever you want. i guess i won't say anything until they have gaddafis head on a platter
i wish i had access to Libyan State Television so i could know the truth
noavbazzer posted:Impper posted:this is really bizarre. like i don't think they're literally filming the green square in a studio, but the media reports are so contradictory and ridiculous that you may as well believe whatever you want. i guess i won't say anything until they have gaddafis head on a platter
i wish i had access to Libyan State Television so i could know the truth
So what do you guys think is really going on? CIA/NATO taking advantage of legitimate popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to astroturf out of whole cloth a rebel movement to go after an "old foe" (except I'd read we'd helped armed and train his security forces which seems contradictory, and companies like BP were pulling strings with the UK government to get at Libyan light sweet crude re: the Lockerbie 'bomber' who may have been an uninvolved scapegoat in any case)? Opportunist vultures picking sides in a tribal civil war with legitimate greivances to profit from the eventual winner? Have we had CIA/special forces boots on the ground for months before the rebellion started in order to laser designate targets for airstrikes/train the rebels? How much does oil play into this (I've heard contradictory things, that it only supplies 2% of the world's oil which mostly goes to Europe and not the US, and also that it has unusually high amounts of light sweet crude which most of the world's refineries are geared to process so that it has a disproportionately high influence in world markets) and how much of it is about neoliberal financial imperialism geared towards taking out Libya's nationalized central bank and its sizeable gold reserves with the aim of privatizing Libyan assets and forcing the country into debt? I'd also read some things along the lines that Qaddafi was proposing a pan-Arab, pan-African currency based on the gold dinar that would threaten the $USD's hegemony as world reserve currency for oil trading, much like Saddam's move to sell oil in Euros allegedly played a large role in the decision to invade in 03. Fat construction contracts to rebuild all the infrastructure we bombed? All of the above?
E: Also been reading about how US/UK/France have been trying to cut Italy/Russia/China out of the Libyan market for both pre-existing construction contracts as well as oil processing/exportation after the regime change, I'd imagine that has a good deal to do with everything
Let no one forget also, that the Italians did what the rebels do, in 1911-1912 they marched from Tobruk to Tripoli, but the entire areas south, the vast swathes of deserts and villages and bedouin nomads and groups, they were loyal to the resistance and by 1916, the Italians were confined to a few blocks, as the Libyan resistance invaded British Egypt. The Italians murdered a million Libyans, the leader of the great Libyan resistance, Omar al-Mukhtar was captured and hanged, but this did not stop Libya and her people became independent and ousted all Kings and foreign Imperialists and their holdings. Whether Brother Qadhafi marches into Tripoli victorious or is martyred, it changes nothing, the Libyan people have been through worse, and will be victorious again. They will recover; the European world, the Imperialist world, that is what will not recover.
R2P is now Right 2 PlunderBy Pepe Escobar
The white man's burden doesn't allow asking Africans what they think about the current Western/monarchical Arab onslaught on the northern shores of their continent. At least some are not beating around the bush.
Over 200 African leaders and intellectuals released a letter in Johannesburg, South Africa, stressing the "misuse of the United Nations Security Council to engage in militarized diplomacy to effect regime change in Libya", as well as the "marginalization of the African Union".
As for the Western "winners" in Libya, they are not even playing smoke and mirrors anymore. Richard Haass, president of that Gotha of the US establishment that is the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a Financial Times op-ed blatantly stating, "The 'humanitarian' intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was in fact a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change."
As for those lowly bit part local actors - Libyans from Cyrenaica - Haass already dispatched them to the dustbin of history: "Libyans will not be able to manage the situation about to emerge on their own", and with "two million barrels of oil a day" at stake, the only solution is an "international force". Translation: occupation army - as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Welcome to neo-colonialism 2.0.
Payback time
So the US establishment is now as brazen as the wealthy right-wing nut jobs of the Donald "that thing on his head" Trump variety. Trump told Fox News, "We are NATO . We back NATO in terms of money and weapons. What do we get out of it? Why won't we take the oil?"
In geopolitical Groundhog Day mode, it's indeed Afghanistan and Iraq all over again - an orgy of looting, statue-smashing, eye-catching TV reality show segments, even street banners cheerleading NATO (imagine Americans thanking the Chinese for "liberating" New York by bombing).
Not to mention prime corporate media idiocy. CNN has moved Tripoli east - to the eastern Mediterranean, somewhere near Lebanon. The BBC showed a Tripoli Green Square "rebel" celebration set in ... India, with Indian flags. Hail the total integration of NATO and Western/GCC media; GCC is the Gulf Cooperation Council, the six wealthy fundamentalist satrapies also known as the Gulf Counter-revolution Club.
Considering that the GCC virtually orders the Arab League what to do, no wonder the league has recognized the dodgy, "rebel" Transitional National Council (TNC) as the country's legitimate government, even though it only represents Cyrenaica and even though The Big G Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is already at large, with a bounty of US$1.6 million on his head. Let's assume this is payback for Gaddafi calling Saudi King Abdullah "stupid" in the run-up towards the war on Iraq.
It's also as if Libya now is only an Arab emirate-to-be, and has nothing to do with Africa anymore. The GCC financed and armed the "rebels". The African Union was almost universally against the NATO/GCC war. Ergo, as far as NATO/GCC are concerned, screw Africa; the only thing that will really matter - strategically - is an Africom/NATO military/naval base in Libya.
Now for another Green Zone
It's now common knowledge that British SAS, French intelligence, US Central Intelligence Agency assets, Qatar special forces and mercenaries of all stripes were parachuted as boots on the ground for months, planning and training the "rebels" and in close coordination with that philanthropic prodigy, NATO.
That was never the UN mandate - but who cares? NATO/GCC paid the bills, NATO conducted the bombing and NATO/GCC will "stabilize" the mess, according to a 70-page plan leaked by the British to Rupert Murdoch's Times of London.
Only fools would believe the predictable spin that the plan was drawn by the Transitional National Council (TNC) with "Western help". NATO wouldn't be so brazen - at least initially - to go for Caucasians on the ground, so the proposal of a 10,000-15,000 strong "Tripoli task force", resourced by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to take over, may be implemented sooner rather than later. The juicy question is - will they be Blackwater-trained foreign mercenaries (Jordanians, South Africans, Colombians) or Libyan tribals on a UAE payroll?
And what next: a Green Zone remix near Green Square?
This is almost as delicious as the TNC's ambassador to the UAE, Aref Ali Nayed, painfully regretting the plan's leak while Benghazi confirmed this is the real thing.
It's now also common knowledge that the juicy reconstruction of everything NATO bombed will profit - who else - the "winners"; NATO/GCC nations (see Disaster Capitalism swoops over Libya Asia Times Online, August 25). TNC leader Mustafa Abdel Jail has confirmed it once again in Benghazi.
Expect local - and global - fireworks as far as grabbing the loot is concerned. Without even considering the (still unexplored) oil and gas wealth, Libya's foreign assets are worth at least $150 billion. Libya's central bank, now about to be privatized, has no less than 143.8 tons of gold. Then there's at least a millennium supply of fresh water, which had started to be harnessed by Gaddafi via the spectacular, multibillion dollar Great Man-Made River (GMR) project.
This is yet another solid answer to the question of why France has been so frantic to topple Gaddafi; French water companies are the world's largest, and the lure of privatizing a 1,000-year supply of fresh water is turning their executives, well, bubbly.
So as a vast, potentially very profitable new market for European companies, right at the other side of the Mediterranean, Libya is the genuine article, adding a whole new meaning to the humanitarian imperialist doctrine of R2P ("responsibility to protect"); an Asia Times Online reader has christened it "Right 2 Plunder".
Italian Premier Silvio "bunga bunga" Berlusconi has been swift, meeting in Milan with TNC's Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, right in front of the new Libyan flag (which is in fact the old monarchical flag) alongside the Italian and European Union flags.
And to think that only a year ago the dashing Silvio was throwing a lavish party for his buddy - whose hand he was fond of kissing - Big G, complete with 30 Bedouin riders from the storm parading imported Libyan thoroughbreds.
In 2008, Silvio and Big G signed a treaty to bury the bitter 1911-1942 colonial era, according to which Italy would spend $5 billion over 25 years investing in infrastructure such as highways and railways; thanks to the treaty at least 180 Italian companies subsequently got fabulous Libyan contracts and Italy became Libya's top trading partner.
So inevitably, TNC's leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil had to assure Silvio that new Libya will have "special relationships" with all NATO/GCC war "winners"; and he did single out Italy.
Next week will be the turn of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE's foreign minister, to visit Benghazi to gobble up a piece of the juicy reconstruction cake; the UAE is crammed with starving developers ready to roll after real estate prices went on free fall in the Emirates.
And now for the road map
Meanwhile, what if the Big G has got the gold? The former governor of Libya's central bank maintains that in Tripoli there is, physically, no less than $10 billion worth in gold reserves.
So while British SAS soldiers in Arab civilian garb and brandishing the same Kalashnikovs as the "rebels" are scrambling for Gaddafi "dead or alive", Texas George W Bush-style, The Big G may be literally buying his tribal allegiance in gold. Not to mention that he does count on support from the Qaddafi tribe (cunning night hunters), the al-Magarha tribe (first-class snipers) and most of all Gaddafi's wife's tribe, the Warfallah (the largest in the country, with up to 2 million people).
As much as the TNC has been relentlessly spinning that post-Gaddafi Libya will be pluralist and multicultural, signs point to Quagmire City.
Arabs in the north absolutely despise Berbers in the south - and vice-versa. The people in Tripolitania absolutely despise Salafis in Cyrenaica - and vice-versa.
With so much loot at stake, it's easy to visualize a road map going something like this.
A weak TNC puppet government; shock doctrine neo-liberal troops alienating many who were used to free education, free health services and free housing; a guerrilla force against foreign occupation; Salafi-jihadis from other Arab latitudes joining the fray; desert towns developing as guerrilla bases; pipelines from the southeastern desert being bombed; a replica of Baghdad from 2004 to 2007; a surge; a non-stop civil/tribal war scenario; and Afghanistan 2.0 with a twin guerrilla front - the Gaddafi group against the rebels/NATO, and the Salafis against NATO, because the West will never allow Libya to become an Islamic state.
Gaddafi is actually gambling that the joint NATO/GCC ops will turn Libya into the new Iraq/Afghanistan. Arguably NATO itself may love the idea. It will force it to be even more entrenched in northern Africa. It will allow the use of the same old imperial divide-and-rule tactics while Western companies exercise their Right 2 Plunder options.
It will keep Americans and Europeans worried with yet another subplot of the "war on terror" even as recession eats away what's left of their savings. And it will keep the industrial-military complex and assorted weapons/security contractors with smiles on their faces. Iraq/Afghanistan all over again? Bring it on.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH27Ak03.html
This whole fiasco has exposed Arabs generally as completely opportunistic, unreliable and in the final analysis, stupid.
babyfinland posted:
This whole fiasco has exposed Arabs generally as completely opportunistic, unreliable and in the final analysis, stupid.
There is a common belief in Turkey, that the Arabs are under a curse since the revolt in 1916.
this dude's last sentance was interesting: " tactical victory but strategic defeat for nato"
altho nato/eu will be well placed to feed on whatever emerges in libya, be it failed or market state
does anyone get the impression that gaddaffi in libya works as a microcosm for uncle sam in the world?
a broad coalition united in wanting him gone, but unsure of what will happen in the resulting chaos
lil bit of history
Edited by HenryKrinkle ()
Toppled Libyan leader's wife, his daughter and two of his sons in Algiers, but NTC says it will seek their extraditions.
no pls dont
there's always money in the banana stand
getfiscal posted:
you can't indict both the husband and wife for the same crime
there's always money in the banana stand
MILD treason
--
hopefully NATO can start bombing the rebels so they don't massacre a city hahaha
More than a billion dollars in cash, gold and diamonds believed looted by late Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi during his 40-year reign may have been found socked away in South Africa -- just a fraction of the wealth the dead dictator is suspected of stealing.
gotta make sure all that gold gets into the right (white) hands. personally i still think this was largely about France's access to the uranium in the Aouzou Strip but this lends some support to the OP
PambazukaNews posted:It was Gaddafi’s Libya that offered all of Africa its first revolution in modern times – connecting the entire continent by telephone, television, radio broadcasting and several other technological applications such as telemedicine and distance teaching. And thanks to the WMAX radio bridge, a low cost connection was made available across the continent, including in rural areas.
It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country.
An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of US$400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual lease. Which banker wouldn’t finance such a project? But the problem remained – how can slaves, seeking to free themselves from their master’s exploitation ask the master’s help to achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the USA, Europe only made vague promises for 14 years. Gaddafi put an end to these futile pleas to the western ‘benefactors’ with their exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put US$300 million on the table; the African Development Bank added US$50 million more and the West African Development Bank a further US$27 million – and that’s how Africa got its first communications satellite on 26 December 2007.
China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. The first totally indigenously built satellite and manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at ten times less the cost, a real challenge.
This is how a symbolic gesture of a mere US$300 million changed the life of an entire continent. Gaddafi’s Libya cost the West, not just depriving it of US$500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent.
MaximilianForte posted:The Libyan African Investment Portfolio (LAP) was chaired by Bashir Saleh Bashir, who in a 2007 interview with African Business outlined his background: “I joined the revolution from its beginnings, helping to co-ordinate the movement’s activities in the south of Libya. After the success of the revolution I was made an ambassador to the Central African Republic and afterwards served as ambassador to Tanzania and then Algeria,” and he added, “I have a passion for Africa and I want to help my leader to achieve his vision for Africa, especially his vision for working towards a United States of Africa.” The magazine described Bashir as “a man who is steering much of Libya’s oil wealth in developing Africa’s economic renaissance” (Williams, 2007). We are told that the LAP alone had$5 billion U.S. in funds, which it invested across Africa in numerous economic sectors: banking, aviation, oil refining and distribution, real estate development, communications, and agriculture, having committed already $3 billion by 2007 (Williams, 2007). Bashir spoke at length about agriculture and communications. He explained that one of the LAP’s mandates was to focus on adding value to Africa’s exports, the absence of which had long been a serious capital drain that benefited Western nations since Africa was colonized. Speaking of Liberia, he noted: “Liberia is a major producer of rubber, but are there any factories producing rubber products in Liberia? Are there any factories for adding value to raw materials in Liberia? There are not; there is not even a small factory producing balls or rubber toys for Liberian children. All Liberia produces is raw materials for export” (Williams, 2007). He gave similar examples, citing the Ivory Coast and cocoa, and Kenya and coffee. Bashir explained: “If we could follow this philosophy of added value, Africa would require less assistance from the West” (Williams, 2007). The added fact is that Europe and the U.S. would also be losing out on the value-added process and the profits generated from keeping Africa as an exporter of unprocessed cash crops and raw materials.
MaximilianForte posted:After the success of the revolution I was made an ambassador to the Central African Republic and afterwards
and as we all know, this is a prestigious honor
