| THE HANDSTAND | APRIL2011 |
UPDATE:Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?
By Ellen Brown
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24306Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrotein the Economic Policy Journal:
I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.
Alex Newman wrote in the New American:
In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “designation o f the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”
Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.” Ellen Brown continues:
Another anomaly involves the official justification for taking up arms against Libya. Supposedly it’s about human rights violations, but the evidence is contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News website on February 28:As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body's Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya's human rights record.
The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a "priority" and for bettering its "constitutional" framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens -- who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.
Whatever might be said of Gaddafi, the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people live in such comfort:[Libyans] are entitled to free treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S. dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe, and they are affordable for every fa mily. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful, are not inclined to drink, and are very religious.
They maintained that the international community had been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. “Tell us,” they said, “who would not like such a regime?”
Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brough water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya. The GMMR provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya’s vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.
Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that it is “all about oil,” but that theory too is problematic. As noted in the National Journal, the country produces only about 2 percent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if L ibyan oil were to disappear from the market. And if it’s all about oil, why the rush to set up a new central bank?
Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview of U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. “I don’t know!” was the response. “I guess they don’t know what else to do!” 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
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 “six 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 Lybia – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar,” Gadaffi 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. Gadaffi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.
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.
Libya not only has oil. According to the IMF, its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS, the IMF and their rules?
All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS website states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed to have as their single or primary objective “to preserve price stability.” They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don’t interfere with this mandate. “Price stability” means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit of the state, either directly or as loans.
In a
2002 article in Asia Times titled “The BIS vs National Banks,” Henry Liu maintained: BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under financial globalization no longer serve national interests.
. . . FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.He added, “Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its o wn currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.” The “state theory of money” refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.
The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government’s own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly-owned or privately-owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government’s own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50%.
And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include “issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya” and “managing and issuing all state loans.” Libya’s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.
That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.& nbsp;
So is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both – and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible. Most countries don’t have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation’s own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.
If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and health care continue to be free.
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com and http://ellenbrown.com.
Global Research, April 1 4, 2011 webofdebt.com
LIBYA
UPDATED:Evidence of DU weapon use“There is a lot of evidence that points strongly toward it. The way some of these armed vehicles and tanks have been hit look like it's pretty strong evidence that it is depleted uranium; it's the kind of explosive burn that you get from that particular ammunition,” said author and investigative journalist David Lindorff in an interview with Press TV.
“And certainly the US has been flying A10s, which generally use depleted uranium shells in their armaments,” he added.
Lindorff said the use of depleted uranium in weapons should be stopped “because they completely toxify [the battlefields] for a billion years.”
“So you've got this microscopic uranium dust wherever the weapons were used in the environment and anyone who lives there in the future of 'liberated' Iraq or 'liberated' Libya or 'liberated' Afghanistan or wherever they use these weapons is polluted with uranium dust for generations and generations to come.”
“We're seeing the results of that in Fallujah in Iraq where the birth defect rate is astronomical.”
The use of depleted uranium by US forces during the Iraq led to high rate of birth defects and cancer diagnoses in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, according to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Libya since US-led forces launched aerial attacks on the North African country.
The war in Libya has so far killed around 10,000 people and injured over 50,000 others, reports say.
MD/AKM/MGH http://www.presstv.com/detail/175663.htmlhttp://www.presstv.com/detail/175281.html
Latest reports(17.04.2011) say NATO warplanes have bombed an area southwest of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, despite criticism that such strikes have failed to protect civilians.
Libyan military officials told state TV that NATO warplanes dropped bombs on the area of Al-Hira, 50 km southwest of Tripoli on Sunday.
The troubled region and its surrounding areas have been constantly targeted by NATO jets over the past weeks.
The developments come as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently said that NATO military intervention in oil-rich Libya has gone far beyond the mandate authorized by the United Nations.
After talks with their NATO counterparts in Berlin on Friday, Lavrov also called for an urgent shift towards a political and diplomatic settlement in Libya.
NATO has already been under fire from Libyan opposition forces for not doing enough to protect civilian lives.
The head of the opposition's armed forces Gen. Abdul Fattah Younis told reporters in Benghazi in early April that NATO's inaction has allowed government troops to advance and kill people in Misratah and other cities.
Younis also threatened to ask the United Nations Security Council to suspend the NATO mission in Libya if the military alliance does not do "its work properly."
He also slammed Western-led forces over the civilian death toll caused by NATO bombing campaigns in the country.
Many civilians have reportedly been killed since the Western-led war on Libya began last month.
NATO has admitted to killing revolutionary fighters and civilians in an airstrike in eastern Libya but has refused to apologize for the deadly bombardment.
JR/HGH/MMNFrom PressTV THE WORST NEWS YET
Wednesday, April 13, 2011.An American journalist says that the US and NATO forces are using missiles and bombs with depleted uranium (DU) in their airstrikes on Libya.
Conn Hallinan, a columnist with Foreign Policy in Focus, based in Berkeley, California, has told Press TV that “The fact that the US is denying the use of depleted uranium munitions is just nonsense.”
Hallinan noted that in the West's air assaults, the explosions of Libyan tanks produced “enormous fireballs,” which is a unique characteristic that only DU bombs can cause.
“The long-term consequences are going to be very severe,” Hallinan added.
Impacts caused by the use of DU weapons include a range of health problems ranging from different kinds of cancer, such as leukemia, to genetic mutations. It also contaminates the air, water and soil with radioactivity.
Other reports have confirmed the use of DU since the implementation of the United Nation Security Council's no-fly zone over Libya.
The Stop the War Coalition has reported that American B-52 aircraft had dropped 45 one-ton bombs on key Libyan cities in the first 24 hours of the war on Libya.
The UN has prohibited the manufacture, testing, use, sale and stockpiling of depleted uranium weapons.
LF/JM/MGH
False Pretense For War In Libya?
By Alan J. Kuperman
April 14, 2011 "Boston Globe" -- EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.
Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention. “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’ Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.
But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.
The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially — including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi.
Libyan forces did kill hundreds as they regained control of cities. Collateral damage is inevitable in counter-insurgency. And strict laws of war may have been exceeded.
But Khadafy’s acts were a far cry from Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Bosnia, and other killing fields. Libya’s air force, prior to imposition of a UN-authorized no-fly zone, targeted rebel positions, not civilian concentrations. Despite ubiquitous cellphones equipped with cameras and video, there is no graphic evidence of deliberate massacre. Images abound of victims killed or wounded in crossfire — each one a tragedy — but that is urban warfare, not genocide.
Nor did Khadafy ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’
If bloodbath was unlikely, how did this notion propel US intervention? The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels. To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.
On March 15, Reuters quoted a Libyan opposition leader in Geneva claiming that if Khadafy attacked Benghazi, there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda.’’ Four days later, US military aircraft started bombing. By the time Obama claimed that intervention had prevented a bloodbath, The New York Times already had reported that “the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda’’ against Khadafy and were “making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.’’
It is hard to know whether the White House was duped by the rebels or conspired with them to pursue regime-change on bogus humanitarian grounds. In either case, intervention quickly exceeded the UN mandate of civilian protection by bombing Libyan forces in retreat or based in bastions of Khadafy support, such as Sirte, where they threatened no civilians.
The net result is uncertain. Intervention stopped Khadafy’s forces from capturing Benghazi, saving some lives. But it intensified his crackdown in western Libya to consolidate territory quickly. It also emboldened the rebels to resume their attacks, briefly recapturing cities along the eastern and central coast, such as Ajdabiya, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, until they outran supply lines and retreated.
Each time those cities change hands, they are shelled by both sides — killing, wounding, and displacing innocents. On March 31, NATO formally warned the rebels to stop attacking civilians. It is poignant to recall that if not for intervention, the war almost surely would have ended last month.
In his speech explaining the military action in Libya, Obama embraced the noble principle of the responsibility to protect — which some quickly dubbed the Obama Doctrine — calling for intervention when possible to prevent genocide. Libya reveals how this approach, implemented reflexively, may backfire by encouraging rebels to provoke and exaggerate atrocities, to entice intervention that ultimately perpetuates civil war and humanitarian suffering.
Alan J. Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, is author of “The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention’’ and co-editor of “Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention.’’
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.Recollections of My Life: Col. Mu’ummar Qaddafi, The Leader of the Revolution. April 8, 2011
By Col. Mu'ummar Qaddafi; Translated by Professor Sam Hamod, Ph.D.
April 09, 2011 "Information Clearing House"
In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful..
For 40 years, or was it longer,I can’t remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food, I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child, then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union, did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people’s committees ran our country, but that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more, and they told Americans and other visitors, they needed “democracy,” and “freedom,” never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup, no, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we’ve had since Salah’ a’ Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination—from thieves who would steal from us—
Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called “capitalism,” but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jammohouriyah,
I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.
Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light, when others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent, I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah’a’deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself…
In the West, some have called me “mad,” “crazy,” but they know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.
c: Col. Mu’ummar Qaddafi, 4.5.11
Copyright Col. Mu’ummar Qaddafi, - professor Sam Hamod - Information Clearing House.
World leaders slam West war in Libya
Thu Apr 14, 2011 The BRICS leaders' meeting is held in Sanya, south China's Hainan province.
April 14, 2011.Leaders of the BRICS group, the world's five major emerging powers, have criticized the West for waging a war on Libya, which has caused civilian casualties in the North African state.
In their summit meeting in southern China, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa unanimously condemned the Libya bombings, AFP reported Thursday.
The group rejected the use of force in the Middle East and North Africa in a draft statement.
"We share the principle that the use of force should be avoided. We maintain that the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of each nation should be respected," the countries which represent more than 40 percent of the world's population said in the statement.
They also expressed concern that the NATO-led campaign on crisis-hit Libya is causing civilian casualties.
The leaders of BRICS nations said their joint presence on the UN Security Council in 2011 offered an opportunity to work together on Libya.
"We are of the view that all the parties should resolve their differences through peaceful means and dialogue in which the UN and regional organizations should as appropriate play their role," the statement read.
Chinese President Hu Jintao chaired the morning talks in the southern China resort city of Sanya with South Africa's Jacob Zuma, Brazil's Dilma Rouseff, Russia's Dmitry Medvedev, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Western warplanes began their air assaults on Libya last month. Thousands of civilians have been killed in the NATO-led campaign.
South Africa was one of the countries that voted in favor of the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the airstrikes.
However, after visiting Tripoli on Sunday, South African President Jacob Zuma called on NATO to stop the attacks which have claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians in the past weeks.
RZS/GHN/HRF
Russians have second thoughts
By Israel Shamir
[from Monday April 4 - on the site www.counterpunch.org and www.israelshamir.net]
Russia is different. The Americans, the Brits, the French by and large approve of their forces’ Libya bombing spree (yes, some doubt whether it’s good value for their tax money). The Russians are flatly against it, without ifs and buts. The Russian Ambassador in Tripoli Vladimir Chamov came back to hero welcome in Moscow. President Dmitri Medvedev dismissed him publicly after the Ambassador had sent him a cable. In the five-points cable leaked to media, the Ambassador called Medvedev’s response to Libya crisis “betrayal of Russian national interests”. (Meanwhile, the sides climbed down a bit: the Foreign Office said Chamov was not “fired”, just “called back” from Tripoli, and retained his ambassadorial rank and salary, while Chamov denied he used the word “betrayal”.)
The Russians do not like the Western intervention in Libya. The rebels do not appear genuine, note the Russian bloggers; they are a peculiar mixed bag of Kaddafi’s ministers fired for corruption, al-Qaeda mujahedeen, well-clod riff-raff beefed up by SAS soldiers and supported by these best friends of every Arab, American cruise missiles. The Russian media discovered that the first reports of massive civil casualties inflicted by ruthless Kaddafi apparently have been invented by editors in London and Paris. More civilians were killed by the Western intervention than it was by the government fighting rebels. The mass-readership Komsomolskaya Pravda published reports from the Russian expats in Libya that flatly disproved claims of Kaddafi’s planes bombing residential quarters: this was done by the French and British bombers.
The Russians tend to conspiratorial view of politics. They presume that the Arab risings were organised by their enemy: some “orange” Western forces, NED, CIA, Mossad, you name it, in order to create chaos, Iraq-style. They quote Israeli and American doctrines for promotion of “constructive chaos”. And then they support Kaddafi, or even feel sympathy for Mubarak. This is especially true for patriotic Russians who remember that Kaddafi stood by Russia in 2008 during Georgia conflict, and for business community who were involved in many projects in Libya from gas to railways.
President Dmitri Medvedev has a good reason to regret the haste he joined in the Western media onslaught, for he will be blamed for what already looks to Russians as Kosovo-2. Probably he was misled by his media advisers who suggested he should jump on the internationally-acceptable media bandwagon of “stop massacre in Libya”; and he jumped. The first reports of the alleged massacre were still reverberating in the air when President Medvedev warned Kaddafi off “crimes against humanity”, and later on he added that Kaddafi is a persona non grata in Russia. Medvedev supported the decision to pass Libya’s case to ICC; though by that time he could learn from the Russians present in Libya that nothing all that extraordinary took place in the country; that is nothing beyond a small-scale rising on a way to be put down. It could be compared to Los Angeles riots of 1965 (threescore dead and thousands wounded) or of 1992 (fifty dead and thousands wounded), but the LA blacks had no Tomahawks for aerial support.
Medvedev is also perceived as the man who ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to abstain. Russia and China usually vote in agreement if they intend to go against the will of the world sheriff – ever since the fateful Zimbabwe vote in 2008 when Russia activated its veto for a first time since God-knows-when and stopped the West-proposed sanctions against the African nation. Then, the BBC reported, the UK foreign secretary David Miliband said Russia used its veto despite a promise by President Dmitry Medvedev to support the resolution. This time, apparently, Medvedev prevailed and acquiesced in what looks now as another Suez campaign (if you still remember 1956, when the Brits and the French had tried to liberate Egypt from its Hitler-on-the-Nile, Gamal Abdel Nasser and keep the Canal for themselves).
A few days later, the strongman of Russia Vladimir Putin roundly criticised this step of Medvedev; he called the Western intervention, “a new crusade”, and proposed the Western leaders should “pray for their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the blood shed. People loved it. Medvedev tried to rebuff by meaningless “don’t you speak of crusades”, but even he could not find anything positive about the NATO campaign in Libya.
Now as always, the Russians’ gut reaction is against any Western intervention. They were against American interventions in Vietnam and Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, against British and French colonial wars – just like you were, my wonderful readers, the enlightened spiritual minority in the West. The Russians do not believe that the reasons for the Western intervention have anything to do with love of democracy, human rights or value of human life. For them, a rose is a rose is a rose, a Western intervention is a Western intervention, one of many they were on the receiving end of.
However, Medvedev did not let the Western intervention march on for purely sentimental reasons of “supporting Europe”. The idea is, better let NATO be occupied in the South than in the East. Libya is much less important for Russians than Georgia, Ukraine or even Afghanistan. If this beast has to eat somebody, let it better be somebody in the Maghreb, where the Russians never had strong positions anyway. A WPR writer called this turn a “Tilsit moment” for NATO: acknowledging immutability of the West’s Eastern borders in exchange for free hands in the Southern flank. That is why Poland was unhappy with the Odyssey Dawn operation: instead of being frontline of the most important confrontation, this southern switch left the Poles in a geopolitical cul-de-sac of.
Indeed we should not be captivated by the East vs. West thinking. As the US slowly declines, the European powers begin to reassess their role. Libya war is a French project. The Libya war was started by Sarkozy as an attempt to rebuild French Empire in North Africa fifty years after Evian treaty ostensibly sealed its fate. This was his old idea, and he called to establish a Mediterranean Union during his election campaign. The MU project was supported by Israelis – and now Bernard Henry Levy was the foremost proponent on the intervention. Turkey strongly opposed the MU and now the Turks oppose the intervention in their subtle way, as Eric Walberg correctly described. Italy supported the MU and expectedly supported the intervention. Germany was against the MU and it is against the intervention. From this point of view, the intervention in Libya is a beginning of a new wave of European colonization of the Maghreb.
A Russian observer noticed an uncanny resemblance of this operation to one that occurred one hundred years ago in Libya during the previous colonisation wave. Then, recently united aggressive Italy in search for its empire decided to seize Libya, an Ottoman province. Then like now, the newspapers wrote of freedom-loving Libyans suffering under the Ottoman heel and of the Italians’ moral duty to liberate them. The Turks were in a bad shape and they tried to find a face-saving way to surrender. They proposed to hand Libya over to Italians for management and colonization provided the suzerainty will remain with the Sublime Porte. The Italians refused, and their Dawn Odyssey began. The Turks fought valiantly, and among them a young officer proved his valour: that was Mustafa Kemal, later nicknamed Ataturk. A lone voice against intervention was that of young Italian socialist Benito Mussolini. Italians’ Libya campaign was the first ever air bombing, exactly one hundred years ago in 1911, and history preserved the name of the first bomber Flt Lt Giulio Gavotti who was the first man ever to perform a bomb run.
Modern Russia is not the USSR; it has few world-wide ambitions. It is worried about its own part of the world, and is not keen to get involved elsewhere. For the Russians, the Europe’s drive south is not a threat, rather a resumption of France’s regional role. That is why the Russians abstained at UNSC. So it will be the task of the enlightened forces of the West to stop the aggression – instead of relying on Russian veto.
President Kaddafi succeeded to annoy a lot of people in a lot of places. He annoyed both the French and the Russians by striking deals and then not sticking to them. Wikileaks cables refer to that many times, notably in 10PARIS151 saying: “the French are growing increasingly frustrated with the Libyans' failure to deliver on promises regarding visas, professional exchanges, French language education, and commercial deals. ""We (and the Libyans) speak a lot, but we've begun to see that actions do not follow words in Libya." He annoyed the Saudis and worse, he annoyed his own people.
We are certainly against the intervention; but the case of supporting Kaddafi is not all that clear-cut. Muammar Kaddafi was/is a dual figure: on one hand, he was an autochthonous leader who provided his countrymen with the highest level of life in Africa; with generous subsidies, free medical care and education, who supported the vision of One state in Palestine/Israel and befriended Castro and Chavez. On the other hand, for the last five years Kaddafi and his clique were busy dismantling the Libyan welfare state, privatising and cannibalising their health and education systems, hoarding wealth, dealing with transnational oil and gas companies in the advantageous way for them. “New Kaddafi” took away a lot of social achievements and he did not give his people elementary political freedoms. His support of One State in Palestine dried up in 2002, long time ago.
My friends in Tripoli do not support Kaddafi. They are certainly against western intervention, but they dislike the old colonel for his dictatorial habits. They are grown-ups, they want to be involved in the decision-making, they do not like corruption, they also want bigger role for Islam. In their eyes, Kaddafi kept his anti-imperialist rhetoric for public use, but his praxis was Western and neo-liberal. It is fine that Kaddafi teased the Saudi royals and brandished the western leaders; but at the same time he gave away Libyan wealth to the foreigners. So while certainly standing against the intervention, we should not forget that not all anti-Kaddafi forces are Western stooges or al-Qaeda fighters.
Politics do not provide a bed to recline on laurels. With great respect to Muammar Kaddafi and his past achievements, he overstayed his prime time. There are reasons to hope he will survive the storm; we heartily wish him to defeat the intervention forces. But that should be a departure point for democracy in Libya, not necessarily a democracy-European style, but a better way for Libyans to participate in forging their lives.
Another Shocking UN Cover Up About Libya
UN Weaving tangled webs of lies for imperialism in Libya
By Lisa Karpova
April 16, 2011 "Pravda" -- It still amazes that ordinary people are so much smarter than the people placed in charge of them. Anyone could have told the UN when the deliberations were being held exactly what the aims of the US/UK and France were in the demand to establish a no fly zone over Libya.
Your ordinary citizen knew it was just going to be an excuse to pound the living daylights out of the place, while the military and the freaks supporting them have orgasms at the scenes of destruction.
Your ordinary citizen knew it was to regain colonial domination over the region and to steal the country's rich plethora of resources.
No sooner had the orgy started, then those who allowed this began to say, "hey one minute here" beginning with the Arab League from whom the imperialists counted upon for the "air of legitimacy."
The Anglo-French-American consortium leading this criminal activity has fallen for its own propaganda - blindly convinced that the Arab League is on board. If the Arab League totally approved without question, this means the crime is endorsed by the very people the Arab revolts are trying hard to get rid of.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa condemned the "bombardment of civilians" and called for an emergency meeting of the group of 22 states to discuss the Libyan issue. He demanded a report of the bombardment in which the Libyan armed forces command said 64 people, mostly civilians and children, were killed. Empire spokesmen accused Libya of lying, but the civilian casualties were confirmed by Russian citizens on site.
The abstaining countries also see they have been had in the most grotesque manner. NATO called a meeting and for all practical purposes the discussions have them eating each other alive.
The empire and its minions could not get rid of Ghaddafi by staging a revolt under the utterly absurd cloak of "peaceful protests" ("We are losing the information war" - Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton lies do not work when people are searching for truth) so they had to resort to bombs, violence, brute force.
Now comes to light another utter embarrasment for them and the UN, this one they can NEVER LIVE DOWN.
It just so happens that the United Nations Human Rights Council was scheduled to take another important vote. What was that vote?
The Council was about to vote on a report that affirmed and praised Libya and Colonel Ghaddafi for THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD. The report said that the Ghaddafi government protected "not only political rights, but also economic, educational, social and cultural rights," and praised it for the nation's treatment of religious minorities, and the "human rights training" received by security forces.
It was to be approved at a vote later this month. Did something suddenly happen over night? If you believe it did, I have a bridge to sell you.
No less than 46 delegations to the controversial Human Rights Council made positive comments, with rare criticism from, who else, the United States.
They have moved to postpone the vote. Anyone wonder why? Let everyone, particularly those in positions of power, take notice. We know why. How embarrassing for the dogs of war that vote would be if it were held honestly, no pressure, no blackmail, no bribes. How embarrassing...first the best standard of living in Africa and now a commendation for human rights practices. What a terrible dictator Colonel Ghaddafi is!
