>Volgens de mainstream media nadert de Dag dat Gaddafi valt in rap tempo. Niet zo snel, schrijft De Wereld Morgen dan weer. Check ook de “loop” in het rechterscherm (Tripoli)van Al Jazeera.

Hoe het ook zij: voordat we allemaal goedbedoeld beginnen te juichen over de mogelijke val van wederom een Arabische leider/dictator, moet het duidelijk zijn wat de achtergrond van het conflict in Libië is. Hieronder plak ik daarom enkele blogs in de herhaling, met info welke je niet bij NOS, RTL en andere media zal tegenkomen. Maar het is wel zeer essentiële achtergrondinformatie.

Weet waar je om juicht straks.

Met excuses voor het steenkolen-engels.Ik weet nooit van te voren of ik Engels of Nederlands ga typen.

Voor het eerst hier geplaatst: Libya

Let me start with a well known, disturbing video.

Readers of this blog and my twitter-account know that I’m a supporter of a peoples revolution against Khadafi in Libya.(contrary to some of the sources cited below).

22/08/2011- Note: I am not a supporter anymore. This revolution is not about people, but profits. I would change my mind if it becomes clear that the vast majority of Libyans support the rebels (and the neo-imperialist agenda they represent)Then it would be the people’s choice, and that I would respect. But I have strong doubts about that being the case. See next.- J.

I even supported the No Fly Zone resolution. Which turned out to be way more than just that. Yes, there is some regret on my side here.

Because at this moment, this “UN intervention” is becoming another one of those infamous humanitarian NATO-wars. And just like the example with the KLA (UCK) in Kosovo, the “coalition” sides with organizations claiming to be revolutionaries and freedom fighters.

But exactly how “revolutionary” are the rebels? Custom made twitter-fashionable PR stuff like the so called “Hipster Libyan Rebel” can’t prevent us from drawing some painful, but necessary conclusions about who exactly the UN and NATO are aiding in this Libyan war:

1: The French secret service has been involved in preparations to topple Khadafi since October 2010. They worked with defected Libyan “Chief of Protocol” Nouri Mesmari. This operation included business deals between French corporations and Benghazi based “revolutionary leaders.” Here’s probably why:

2: The French president Sarkozy failed in closing a deal to build nuclear power plants around Tripoli, and also failed in selling a fleet of Dassault fighter jets to Khadafi (as if France, USA , UK , The Netherlands and some other European countries hadn’t sold enough arms to Khadafi).

Sarkozy lost the deal to both Russia and Italian based corporations ENI and Finmeccania. This probably explains why Italy doesn’t want to get actively involved in the Libyan war.

By the way: if you think you smell a rat by reading the name of the last mentioned corporation, you’re right.More on that later.

3: Khadafi has been using propaganda, as if Libya is facing a conflict with “Al Qaeda.” Well, the problem is: he is wrong. But that’s only because Al Qaeda, as an organization, is a complete fabrication. However, if Khadafi is pointing at extremist islamist militias, he, and I regret having to write this down, is not that far from the truth.

Some rebels belong to a militant group named Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group-LIFG).

Former MI5 officer and whistleblower David Shayler (what the hell happened to this guy btw) once claimed that LIFG received large sums of money from the British intelligence service MI6 , to assasinate Khadafi in 1996. Shayler has received a lot of criticism, not only because of this claim but also about statements he had made about 9/11 being a false flag attack.

But French intelligence experts backed his claims (formerly referred to as “a fantasy”) about MI6 and LIFG in 2002.

It still should be noted, that a rebel commander named Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi admitted to Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that his fighters actually DO have “Al Qaeda”-links.

4: We need to ask ourselves why the USA (through the CIA , see WSWS), French Intelligence, Israel, Chad and dictator-led states like Saudi Arabia, are (or have been) involved in training, funding, arming and facilitating one of the more significant opposition movements in Libya, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). We could accuse those parties of a lot of things, except for being democracy and freedom-champions, do we?

Update: Now even NATO speaks of “Flickers of Al Qaeda” while WSWS mentions the CIA-ties to some of the rebels. Al Ciada is back…

According to former war correspondent Keith Harmon Snow:

The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of ‘atrocities’ and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya.”

I suppose this “channeling” is currently happening on social media like twitter and facebook. Never before I’ve seen such huge amounts of militarist propaganda ( adapted by even leftwing peace-activists ) as on both social media websites. It’s really painful to see so many people repeating uncheckable statements like parrots, probably thinking they’re supporting ordinary people in Libya. Which the NFSL is obviously not:

“The main group leading the insurrection is the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition which includes the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). The NFSL, which is leading the violence, is a U.S.-sponsored armed militia of mostly Libyan expatriates and tribes opposed to al-Qaddafi.

5: Transitional National Council (TNC) and the rising revolutionary PR problems

The TNC sees itself a the transitional government of “liberated Libya.” They have released a statement this weekend in which they deny “false” allegations regarding abusive treatments of detainees and prisoners.

Despite the denial, several reports have surfaced in a variety of media outlets, such as LA Times, Telegraph and Al Jazeera, supporting those accusations. Also it seems clear that many so-called “mercenaries”, detained and accused by rebel groups of collaborating with Khadafi, are actually foreign construction workers. Reports have emerged about refugees in Tunesian border camps, accusing the rebels of looting, violence and racist behaviour directed at African workers.

Looks like the empire plays both sides:



An Italian bed full of neocons, rightwing politicians, Khadafi and corporations

Earlier above I mentioned the involvement of the Finmeccania corporation in business deals the Italians grabbed away from the French. Finmeccania is a major supplier to the Italian Ministry of Defense. It turns out that Khadafi ’s Libyan Investment Authority is a major shareholder in this corporation.

Finmeccania also is a known sponsor of transatlantic conferences, organized by neoconservative thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Italian Fondazione Magna Carta

Keep in mind how neocon prominent John Bolton blasted Obama for not acting swiftly enough on Libya, but warned against the ousting of Egyptian despot Mubarak.

The leader of the Dutch right-wing party PVV, Geert Wilders, was one the speakers at the most recently held conference in Rome. Indirectly funded by Khadafi.

It’s also the oil, stupid

Benghazi rebels struck an oil export deal with Qatar.

-Noteworthy fact: Qatar is one of the Arab states involved in the coalition airstrikes on Libya. Noble isn’t it?

-Noteworthy fact number 2: Qatar, together with Saudi Arabia, assisted Bahrain in crushing recently held pro-democracy protests.

-Noteworthy fact number 3: the US owns a Navy base in Bahrain.

Of course, we all still believe we’re sending NATO to Libya to help the ordinary people.

-By the way: if you don’t wage war for water, you’re a 20th century general.

About those civilian deaths

On Saturday 26th of March, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed:

GATES: “The truth of the matter is we have trouble coming up with proof of any civilian casualties that we have been responsible for. But we do have a lot of intelligence reporting about Qadhafi taking the bodies of the people he’s killed and putting them at the sites where we’ve attacked. We have been extremely careful in this military effort, and not just our pilots but the pilots of the other coalition air forces have really done an extraordinary job.”

SCHIEFFER: “He’s taking bodies and putting them in places?

GATES: “We have a number of reports of that.”

Well..it has to make us wonder why Sky News and Reuters, on the same day, reported that both military AND civilian targets were hit in Centra Libya.

Another case, rarely mentioned in the mainstream media, is the funeral of a baby, killed by a coalition missile in Tripoli. Read the story by independent war correspondent Arnold Karskens.

We should not believe any story about coalition bombs (or rebel artillery) not killing civilians. Bombs kill people. Just as Khadafi’s bombs kill. It’s what war is about and bombs are made for. And then we also have NATO’s DU bombs.

Of course I believe that Khadafi will use any kind of propaganda in his own interests. But it would be very, very naive to not expect the same kind of dirty propaganda from the “good guys.”

What? You don’t believe that? Here’s an example from the Gulf War of 1991:

Remember those “slaughtered Kuwaiti incubator babies?” You don’t? That’s because they never existed.

But it did sell the war for Kuwait against Iraq. Like the non-existent WMD sold the 2003 invasion of that same country. Or how right-wing politicians in Israel, USA and the Netherlands have been trying to sell a war on Iran,using the WMD nukes argument.

So, I’d say: expect misleading reports and horror stories coming not just from Libyan State TV. Psychological warfare (for the hearts and minds) will be waged by all parties, not just by Khadafi. It’s part of a deadly, and foolish game called war. You should also expect accusations of being pro-Khadafi, for no other reason than being a critical thinker.

All we can hope for now is that the people of Libya will not only get rid of the Khadafi-clan if the majority really wants that, but also free themselves of imperialist powers. This revolution is going to take much more than just ousting a dictator.

Revolution is, or should be, about breaking a system.

To be continued.

4 augustus 2011: I was wrong about Libya and I apologize

It looks to me like Michael Hayden’s (ex-CIA, NSA under Bush jr.) wish for a digital Blackwater has already come true.

I’ve seen a lot of those on twitter during the first weeks of the attack on Libya, all hailing NATO, neocon warhawks and the “rebels”, including the rebels that fought for groups we used to call “Al Qaeda“,during earlier occasions when it suited our imperialist agenda.

The uprising in Libya has nothing to do with the revolutions in Egypt or Tunisia. It’s a counter-revolution, threatening to catapult the nation back into the middleages .Sure, Gaddafi is a dictator, armed by some of the same countries that now attack him, but whoever thinks that Libya will be better off with a ultraconservative sharia-driven regime,while kissing the empire’s ass, is just not paying attention.

What we see in Libya is what’s been described in the Power Of Nightmares. Neocons and radical Islamists fight together for a common cause.

Regarding my past as a well-informed progressive peace-activist, I should, and could have known there was an imperialist agenda behind it. Again.

I have nothing left to say about this subject, except that I owe the Libyan people an apology for naievely supporting that so-called no-flyzone that opened the gates of hell for them.



Sorry.

Zie ook: Empire – The IMF on trial

Happy “revolution!”