Libya : A no lie zone

[Jan Klimkowski]

NATO creating fake casus belli, targeting and murdering journalists, and failing to understand the tribal dynamics of a country in a war for oil.

Sounds distressingly familiar.

[Keith Millea]

From my post #140:

The force that is rapidly entering into this conflict is the leadership of Libya's more than 2000 tribes. In a series of meetings in Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere, the Tribal Council is speaking out forcefully and forging a political block that is demanding an end to Libyans killing Libyans.

The number of tribes in the article seemed high to me,but I had to leave for town before I could look into this number.From what I could find,there seems to be far fewer tribes in Libya.I don't know how the article came up with over 2000.....

The Main Arab Tribes of Libya:

The tribal system in Libya is still a fundamental part of Libyan society, more than anywhere else in the whole region. Most Libyan surnames carry the tribal name and therefore one can easily identify a person's tribe simply by knowing his surname. For example, Col. Gaddafi comes from the Gaddadfa Tribe. There are at least 140 known clans or tribal networks in Libya.

http://www.temehu.com/Libyan-People.htm

[Magda Hassan]

West Prepares New State Radio, Mass Arrest of 'Fifth Column' Opponents of Rebel Regime....

A 70-page plan detailing Western designs for the occupation of post-Gadhafi Libya, and apparently signed off on by the political leadership of the rebel Transitional Council in East Libya has been leaked, and paints a grim picture of the new regime NATO is planning on installing after the war.
The plan includes keeping large portions of the Gadhafian security apparatus intact, with a number of the leaders of the brutal regime's crackdown left in position on condition of loyalty to the new, pro-West regime.

Even more controversial will be the "Tripoli task force," a 15,000-man force operated by the United Arab Emirates which will, after Gadhafi is out of power, occupy the capital city of Tripoli and conduct mass arrests of Gadhafi's top supporters.

The arrests won't stop there, as of course they never do for a regime looking to stifle dissent. Indeed the plan also includes discussion of a new state radio network that will broadcast orders to the public to support the new government, and warning anti-Gadhafi factions that haven't endorsed the new regime to stand down. The assumption in the report is that these factions, termed a "fifth column," would also be arrested. The new state media will of course be necessitated all the more by the NATO attacks on the existing media.

The Transitional Council confirmed the authenticity of the report, and while the rebel ambassador to the UAE expressed "regret" that the truth had come out he said it was "important that the general public knows there is an advance plan." It is a plan that likely won't sit well with the protesters who were demanding democratic reform, nor those NATO members who acquiesced to the war on the assumption that it was doing something other than swapping brutal regimes in Libya.


Jason Ditz is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25947

[Jan Klimkowski]

West Prepares New State Radio, Mass Arrest of 'Fifth Column' Opponents of Rebel Regime....

A 70-page plan detailing Western designs for the occupation of post-Gadhafi Libya, and apparently signed off on by the political leadership of the rebel Transitional Council in East Libya has been leaked, and paints a grim picture of the new regime NATO is planning on installing after the war.

Kosovo. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya.

The so-called "Blair Doctrine" of "humanitarian intervention" is an abject failure on its own stated terms.

However, it has provided exceptional cover for criminal wars, fought for geopolitical purposes.

Blair is more actor than politician. He gave credible performances arguing from his heart for "humanitarian intervention". Until he was sussed.

Did Blair ever believe the script his sponsors wrote for him?

On balance, I suspect not.

[David Butler]

Rumours abounding on the Twittersphere that two South African Airbus planes have arrived in Tripoli with NATO blessing and Gaddafi is trying to arrange his exit...

[Peter Lemkin]

I think it is clear that in the not too distant future Gaddaffi will be gone...but how exactly is likely being negotiated. He holds a lot of secret cards [information, blackmail, huge financial assets, other]. However, the truth of Wilson & Terpil, Lockerbee and many other such - not to mention some of the 'goings on' related to the current fighting will not be coming out......SNAFU

[Magda Hassan]

by Thierry Meyssan
The United States tried to seize on Monday 1 500 000 000 dollars owned by the Libyan state, but at the last minute South Africa got in its way. The documents emanating from this episode, and unveiled by Voltaire Network, reveal that the members of the NTC and their staff are the direct employees of a US entity.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | TRIPOLI (LIBYA) | 18 AUGUST 2011
FRANÇAIS DEUTSCH


Susan E. Rice, US Permanent Representative to the UN.
©UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras
On Tuesday, 9 August 2011, Sana Khan, secretary of the Sanctions Committee established by resolution 1970 of the Security Council, transmitted to the Committee a notice from Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent Representative of the United States before the United Nations.

In this letter, of which Voltaire Network has obtained a copy [downloadable document at the bottom of this page], Washington informed the Committee of its intention to unfreeze 1 500 000 000 billion dollars belonging to the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan Foreign Bank, Libya Africa Investment Portfolio and the Libya National Oil Corporation.

Arguing that the unfreezing is legal when the funds are intended for humanitarian or civilian ends (Article 19 of Resolution 1970 [1]), Washington indicated that it will unilaterally allocate this amount as follows:

500 000 000 dollars to humanitarian organizations of its choice "to address ongoing humanitarian needs and those that can be anticipated, in line with the call of the United Nations and its foreseeable updates";

500 000 000 dollars to "companies supplying fuel and vital humanitarian goods";

500 000 000 dollars to the Temporary Financial Mechanism (TFM) for "salaries and operating expenses of Libyan civil servants, food subsidies, electricity and other humanitarian purchases." From this amount, 100 000 000 dollars will be provisioned to be subsequently allocated for the humanitarian needs of the Libyan people in areas not controlled by the National Transitional Council (NTC) once it will have established "a credible, transparent and effective" mechanism for handing over the funds.

In plain English, the United States informed the Sanctions Committee of its intention to help itself to $ 1.5 billion, of which one-third would be earmarked for their own humanitarian services (USAID ...), another third would go to their own multinationals (Exxon, Halliburton etc..), and the rest would be given to the TFM, a LIEM office, which happens to be an informal body created by Washington and endorsed by the Contact Group to administer Libya [2].

Washington said that it expected to have the tacit approval of the Sanctions Committee within five days after receipt of the letter.

Unfortunately, Libya could not object to this robbery because it was not represented at this Committee. Indeed, the former ambassador has defected, and - in violation of the Headquarters Agreement - the State Department has not issued a visa to the new ambassador of Libya.

Washington fully intended to take advantage of this forced absence to seize the booty. Moreover, France has already created a precedent by stealing $ 128 million in the similar conditions.

It was ultimately the Permanent Representative of South Africa, Ambassador Baso Sangqu, who hindered the operation.

In addition to exposing the rapacity of the United States, this incredible episode demonstrates that the self-proclaimed "Free Libya" of Misrata and Benghazi is not governed by the National Transitional Council (NTC), which is nothing but a facade, and a seriously cracked one at that. Eastern Libya is controlled by NATO and administered by the Libyan Information Exchange Mechanism (LIEM), an informal entity with no legal personality, which was established in Naples by the United States alone, although some of its employees are Italians.


The funds allegedly allotted to the NTC are actually delivered to the LIEM to pay the wages of NTC members and their staff. The difference is considerable: the National Transition Council doesn't have a policy of its own; it is content to simply reflect that of the United States. This is normal when considering that the NTC was not formed during the events of Benghazi, but several years earlier in London as a provisional government in exile.

Consequently, the military action of the United States and its NATO allies or the Gulf Cooperation Council does not seek to protect civilians, pursuant to Resolution 1973, let alone "liberate the Libyan people," but indeed to colonize the country.

Thierry Meyssan

Attached documents
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/ONU_N...USA_-3.pdf

United Nations Ref.: Note 93 COMM 153 (USA)
(PDF - 4.5 Mb)

[1] "UN Resolution 1970 imposing sanctions on Libya",Voltaire Network, 26 February 2011

[2] "Libya: Washington prepares its revenge", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 22 July 2011.

[Peter Lemkin]

Russian energy firms are likely to be barred from resuming work in Libya if NATO-backed rebels succeed in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, a Russia-Libya business group said on Monday.

"We have lost Libya completely," Aram Shegunts, director general of the Russia-Libya Business Council, told Reuters.

"Our companies won't be given the green light to work there. If anyone thinks otherwise they are wrong. Our companies will lose everything there because NATO will prevent them from doing their business in Libya."

Gazprom, Gazprom Neft and Tatneft have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas exploration in Libya, but suspended operations after an uprising broke out earlier this year against Gaddafi's rule. hock:

[Gary Severson]

HEALTH AND WELFARE

[URL="http://countrystudies.us/libya/"]
[/URL] Social Welfare

A government advertisement appearing in an international publication in 1977 asserted that the Libyan social security legislation of 1973 ranked among the most comprehensive in the world and that it protected all citizens from many hazards associated with employment. The social security program instituted in 1957 had already provided protection superior to that available in many or most developing countries, and in the 1980s the welfare available to Libyans included much more than was provided under the social security law: work injury and sickness compensation and disability, retirement, and survivors' pensions. Workers employed by foreign firms were entitled to the same social security benefits as workers employed by Libyan citizens.
Subsidized food, inexpensive housing, free medical care and education, and profit-sharing were among the benefits that eased the lives of all citizens. The government protected the employed in their jobs and subsidized the underemployed and unemployed. In addition, there were nurseries to care for the children of working mothers, orphanages for homeless children, and homes for the aged. The welfare programs had reached even the oasis towns of the desert, where they reportedly were received with considerable satisfaction. The giving of alms to the poor remained one of the pillars of the Islamic faith, but the extent of public welfare was such that there was increasingly less place for private welfare. Nonetheless, the traditional Arab sense of family responsibility remained strong, and provision for needy relatives was still a common practice.
Medical Care

The number of physicians and surgeons in practice increased fivefold between 1965 and 1974, and large increases were registered in the number of dentists, medical, and paramedical personnel. Further expansion and improvement followed over the next decade in response to large budgetary outlays, as the revolutionary regime continued to use its oil income to improve the health and welfare of all Libyans. The number of doctors and dentists increased from 783 in 1970 to 5,450 in 1985, producing in the case of doctors a ratio of 1 per 673 citizens. These doctors were attached to a comprehensive network of health care facilities that dispensed free medical care. The number of hospital beds increased from 7,500 in 1970 to almost 20,000 by 1985, an improvement from 3.5 beds to 5.3 beds per 1,000 citizens. During the same years, substantial increases were also registered in the number of clinics and health care centers.
A large proportion of medical and paramedical personnel were foreigners brought in under contract from other Arab countries and from Eastern Europe. The major efforts to "Libyanize" health care professionals, however, were beginning to show results in the mid1980s . Libyan sources claimed that approximately 33 percent of all doctors were nationals in 1985, as compared with only about 6 percent a decade earlier. In the field of nursing staff and technicians, the situation was considerably better--about 80 percent were Libyan. Schools of nursing had been in existence since the early 1960s, and the faculties of medicine in the universities at Tripoli and Benghazi included specialized institutes for nurses and technicians. The first medical school was not established until 1970, and there was no school of dentistry until 1974. By 1978 a total of nearly 500 students was enrolled in medical studies at schools in Benghazi and Tripoli, and the dental school in Benghazi had graduated its first class of 23 students. In addition, some students were pursuing graduate medical studies abroad, but in the immediate future Libya was expected to continue to rely heavily on expatriate medical personnel.
Among the major health hazards endemic in the country in the 1970s were typhoid and paratyphoid, infectious hepatitis, leishmaniasis, rabies, meningitis, schistosomiasis, and venereal diseases. Also reported as having high incidence were various childhood diseases, such as whooping cough, mumps, measles, and chicken pox. Cholera occurred intermittently and, although malaria was regarded as having been eliminated in the 1960s, malaria suppressants were often recommended for use in desert oasis areas.
By the early 1980s, it was claimed that most or all of these diseases were under control. A high rate of trachoma formerly left 10 percent or more of the population blinded or with critically impaired vision, but by the late 1970s the disease appeared to have been brought under control. The incidence of new cases of tuberculosis was reduced by nearly half between 1969 and 1976, and twenty-two new centers for tuberculosis care were constructed between 1970 and 1985. By the early 1980s, two rehabilitation centers for the handicapped had been built, one each in Benghazi and Tripoli. These offered both medical and job-training services and complemented the range of health care services available in the country.
The streets of Tripoli and Benghazi were kept scrupulously clean, and drinking water in these cities was of good quality. The government had made significant efforts to provide safe water. In summing up accomplishments since 1970, officials listed almost 1,500 wells drilled and more than 900 reservoirs in service in 1985, in addition to 9,000 kilometers of potable water networks and 44 desalination plants. Sewage disposal had also received considerable attention, twenty-eight treatment plants having been built.
@import url(http://www.google.com/cse/api/branding.css);


Custom Search

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

[Ed Jewett]

MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2011

Libya War: Gaddafi Falls ... But Why Did We Invade In The First Place?

[N.B.: Contains embedded links nor replicated...]

Now that the Libyan "rebels" have taken Tripoli, and Gaddafi's days are quickly ending, it's time to take stock about the meaning behind the war, and why we're really there.

A War For Oil and Gold?
Initially, many say that the Libyan war is really about .oil. If Libya didn't have large oil reserves, we wouldn't be there.

And the Independent ... noted in April that one of the main movers and shakers for the Iraq oil shenanigans has been mucking around in Libya as well:

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters ...
In 2009, Gaddafi proposed nationalizing Libya's oil reserve. As Reuters reported at the time:

Hundreds of thousands of Libyans gathered on Wednesday to discuss the proposal by their leader Muammar Gaddafi to disband the government and allow the country's oil wealth to flow straight to the people.

"Libyans, this is your historic opportunity to take over your oil wealth, power and full freedom. Why do you want to let the chance slip away from you?"
Nationalization of a country's resources is often a cause for invasion. For example, Guatemala's nationalization of it's fruit processing facilities led to a U.S.-sponsored coup.

(Incidentally, prior to the invasion, Libya had the highest level of well-being, the best economic policies for the quality of life, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy of any country in Africa, according to the UN's Human Development Index.)

Libya also has 143.8 tons of gold ... and some speculate that is the real reason for the invasion.

Of course, most Americans strongly opposed invasion of Libya or other Arab countries - but that is only because they didn't see the value of spilling our sons' and daughters' blood to secure oil and gold.

And the Arab states themselves were not motivated to take down Gaddafi, leading to accusations that this is Western colonialism and imperialism. (And some of the other Arab states have large oil reserves as well, and so aren't as keen to obtain Libya's stash).

We are certainly not "liberating" Libya for democracy or even to stop violence. As I noted in March:

Obama is ... aiding the Libyan "rebels", even though there are allegations that 1,000 of them are Al Qaeda radicals (and there are some indications that their leader is a CIA asset).

Libyan War Planned Right After 9/11 ... Or Before
Toppling Gaddafi was planned right after 9/11, or perhaps even before.

As American reporter Gareth Porter reported in 2008:

Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.
Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...
***
General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].
***
When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
***
The Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy" their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)...
Rumsfeld's paper was given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld's proposal called explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order to try to catch bin Laden.
Instead, the Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
***
A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".
General Clark added some details in 2007:
I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September.

***

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" meaning the Secretary of Defense's office "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."
Obama is simply carrying out the Neocons' war plans created right after 9/11 ... if not before.

Challenging The Supremacy of the Dollar and Western Banks
Ellen Brown argues in the Asia Times that there were even deeper reasons for the war than gold, oil or middle eastern regime change.

Brown argues that Libya - like Iraq under Hussein - challenged the supremacy of the dollar and the Western banks:

Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that "[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar."

According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Libya - Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar", Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency.

***

And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:

One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned ... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.
Granted, the Federal Reserve provided billions in loans to Gaddafi not too long ago.

But in this 1984 world, we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Postscript: I have no love for Gaddafi, just like I hated Saddam Hussein, who was a ruthless dictator. I am simply pointing out that the stated reasons for the Libyan war - just like the Iraq war - were false.

3 COMMENTS:

corruptionandcoverupsworth said...
"I am simply pointing out that the stated reasons for the Libyan war - just like the Iraq war - were false." - Indeed. As Sun Tzu noted many a year ago: "All war is deception."

Not too mention Major General Smedley Butlers' powerful 'War is A racket'; (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf)

As well as Aeschylus' wise old words: "In war, truth is the first casualty."

But some would argue that these days it's actually journalism which takes the first hit: (http://www.newstatesman.com/200604240013)

When will our leaders realise that; "War is the symptom, not the disease." - L.M. Heroux.

AUGUST 22, 2011 11:50 AM
MattyC2 said...
Beautiful journalism, like usual. It was me who wrote the email asking for you to remark and write on the Libya campaign. I'm glad it was read and you acted upon it. Thank you! Great work! You definitely gave some clarification!

AUGUST 22, 2011 2:18 PM
Dredd said...
The situation is well explained by one vestigial interpretation of Darwinian theories of "survival of the fittest".

That interpretation led to "social Darwinism", which on national scales equates to imperialism, i.e. survival of the shit kicker cowboys.

The oil wars are one unavoidable manifestation of that.

Rummy, who you mention as a mover and shaker in the recent decade's imperialistic manifestations of it, and the rest of those who emotionally subscribe to that interpretation, are all very well "aware" that the nation which controls the oil is the "fittest".

The problem is that it is short sighted and even suicidal, ecocidal.

That is because the oil is a finite resource.

Thus, the imperialist civilization will still be around with its need for oil when there isn't any more oil, even assuming one civilization "wins" the oil wars, be it eastern or western civilization.

They have kicked over the traces by being pig headed and stubborn, and have gone off into criminal insanity.

Neither the western nor the eastern civilizations are going down without a fight over oil and other resources, so the pig headed "foreign policy" of oil domination will lead to nuclear conflict when the full blindness of full desperation sets in.

Of course it is mysterious how supposedly sane looking folks could allow this to happen, but looks can be deceiving.

They are stone fricking insane, but since it is very, very complicated to treat such a disease, successful treatment won't happen.

That is because, at this point in history, we are incompetent or not yet sufficiently aware of the causes of this sickness.

The only viable hope in all of this, IMO, is that there will be more intelligent survivors for the next civilization that hopefully follows.

AUGUST 22, 2011 5:36 PM


http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/l...id-we.html