Libya Turned Into Hell: Seven Years Without Gaddafi

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This October 23 marks the anniversary of the "end of the civil war" in Libya in 2011.

According Boris Dolgov, Senior Researcher at the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS, when NATO intervened in that internal military conflict, it led to the collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi rule and the collapse of the Libyan state.

"As a result Libya has collapsed as a state; and today there are various political forces, including Islamist ones, competing to become the only authority in the country," the expert says.

At the moment there are two main political forces fighting for power in the country — the House of Representatives and the Government of National Accord, but there are other forces as well. In Libya there are various clans that have armed groups in their areas of influence. Some of the groups adhere to radical Islam.

© AFP 2018 / Abdullah DOMA

Tripoli Sees Russia As Key Player in Creating Stability in Libya - Deputy PM

Russia, like other members of the international community, is making great efforts to find a solution to the Libyan crisis, but so far no one has managed to obtain any tangible result in the process.Moscow is working with Libya's most influential forces, like the armed forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar who is fighting radical Islamists and aims to rebuild the Libyan state.

Russia Making Maximum Effort to Resolve the Crisis

Russia is working together with various forces in Libya to reach a political consensus among them and make the political process a priority. The representatives and delegations of various political forces even went to Russia to take part in talks.

In the future, Russia will continue working to resolve the crisis.

"Russia hasn't officially declared it will send military advisers or other Russian military personnel to Libya, but, in my opinion, it would be possible if the Libyan side, for instance the forces such as those led by Marshal Haftar, asked for it," Dolgov explained.

Russia can help solve the Libyan crisis. It could help end the local conflict with the aid of Russian military advisors or instructors on the ground who can pass on their experience to the Libyans.

Khalifa Haftar is Libya's most powerful military force. According to the Marshal, he is fighting against radical Islamic groups. This is really important for Russia as these groups pose a threat not only to Libya, but also to the region as a whole, and even to Russia itself.

We know that Islamists from Syria and Iraq have arrived in Libya; in one of the regions, they have even created a para-state that swore allegiance to Daesh (terrorist group banned in Russia). This poses a threat to Russia as Daesh terrorists and other affiliated groups have stated that their goal is to promote jihad in Russia, namely in the Caucasus and southern Russia.

"Haftar's forces are helping to eliminate this threat, so that Moscow's willingness to cooperate with these forces becomes clear," the expert said.

What we are seeing in Libya today is a very complex process. An armed conflict can have repercussions; finding a compromise among a number of armed groups will take time. But perhaps the elections in Libya will somehow glue society together.

"The normalization won't happen tomorrow or the day after; it won't happen even in a year, but at least we've found the right path and hopefully Libyan society will follow it," Dolgov concluded.

"Libya Turned into Hell"

"We can say that from a sovereign state, Libya has been divided between various forces, many of which are controlled by foreign intelligence services," Usef Shakir, an expert on Libya, told Sputnik.

"Libya was stable and secure; the state apparatus worked well, the country was developing and growing steadily. And now chaos and fear has reigned for 8 years," he added.

"Libyan ambassadors to European countries have become personae non gratae. In fact, the ambassadors serve as agents to the forces who have appointed them. They protect the interests of their patrons and seek support for them in the host countries," Shakir said.

© AP Photo / Mohammed el-Shaiky, File

Libyan Future: West Apparently 'Has No Idea What to Do With It After Gaddafi'

"Libya's economy is almost nothing — hundreds of billions of dollars have come in from the sale of oil, but for 8 years not a single strategic development project has been implemented in the country. We see the constant waste of national wealth and bloody confrontations. Lots of people are armed and we constantly hear about victims and wounded. Libya has become hell.""Whose fault is it? It's the elite, who betrayed everyone and let NATO into the country. The government was overthrown, but in the end nothing good came out of this. Regional and world players are interested in the Libyan crisis continuing. It is linked to oil and other natural resources: the country is fragmented, there is no dialogue between south, north, west and east, and no one contributes to getting out of the crisis.

When Khashoggi was killed, all the media was talking about that. But in Libya lots of people, journalists and activists are constantly being killed. The DAESH and Al-Nusra extremists as well as the opposition from Sudan and Chad have found a home in the country.  Can you imagine what Libya has turned into? Can you imagine the current situation in the country?" the expert concluded.

READ MORE:

• Ceuta Onslaught: How Gaddafi's Grim Prophecy for Europe is Coming True
• Russia Plans to Renew Gaddafi-Era Contracts With Libya
• Libya: Before and After Gaddafi

Bombing Libya: The Origins of Europe’s Immigration Crisis

By William Blum,

The world will long remember the present immigrant crisis in Europe, which has negatively affected countless people there, and almost all countries. History will certainly record it as a major tragedy. Could it have been averted? Or kept within much more reasonable humane bounds?

After the United States and NATO began to bomb Libya in March 2011 – almost daily for more than six months! – to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi (with the completely phoney excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States and NATO were thus saving the people of that city from a massacre), the Libyan leader declared:

“Now listen you people of Nato. You’re bombing a wall, which stood in the way of African migration to Europe and in the way of al Qaeda terrorists. This wall was Libya. You’re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa.”

Remember also that Libya was a secular society, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, all destroyed by America while supporting Saudi Arabia and various factions of al Qaeda. It’s these countries that have principally overrun Europe with refugees.

Gaddafi, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do very valuable things. He, for example, founded the African Union and gave the Libyan people the highest standard of living in all of Africa; they had not only free education and health care but all kinds of other benefits that other Africans could only dream about. But Moammar Gaddafi was never a properly obedient client of Washington. Amongst other shortcomings, the man threatened to replace the US dollar with gold for payment of oil transactions and create a common African currency. He was, moreover, a strong supporter of the Palestinians and foe of Israel.

In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the prime moving force behind the United States and NATO turning Libya into a failed state, where it remains today. The attack against Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing President Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as Secretary of State.”

The American people and the American media of course swallowed the phoney story fed to them, though no evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.   Keep this in mind when reading the latest accusations against Russia.

The US/NATO heavy bombing of Libya led also to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World’s Only Super Power . His latest book is: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

I Thought NATO “Liberated” Libya in 2011?

The original source of this article is CounterPunch

Norway didn’t know much about Libya yet helped bomb it into chaos, state report finds

Norway pleads ignorance: ‘didn’t know much about Libya’ yet helped bomb it into chaos

© Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

A Norwegian state report says the officials “had very limited knowledge” of what was going on in Libya, but promptly decided to join the US-led intervention, turning the once thriving North African nation into a terrorist hotbed.

Norway rushed to help its NATO allies to pound Libya with airstrikes in 2011, without understanding what was actually happening on the ground or the dire consequences the intervention might lead to, a new state report has concluded. The commission, chaired by former Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, found that politicians in Oslo “had very limited knowledge of Libya” when they dragged the nation into the US-led bombing campaign against the Libyan government.

“In such situations, decision-makers often rely on information from media and other countries,” the report says.

Furthermore, the commission states that there are “no written sources” indicating that, before deploying warplanes against Libya, the Norwegian officials “assessed the type of conflict Norway was taking part in.”

Read more

Libya in chaos seven years after NATO’s ‘liberation’, but who cares?

The attack, dubbed ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn,’ was aimed at aiding the armed anti-government rebels in ousting longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi and eventually led to his brutal murder. After Gaddafi’s assassination, Libya quickly descended into civil war and became a hotbed for terrorism. The country is still divided between warring factions.

Norway had provided six F-16 fighter jets during the air campaign. According to the report, these jets flew 596 strike missions between March and July 2011, dropping 588 bombs on Libyan targets. This amounts to about 10 percent of all coalition strikes against Libya that year.

The report’s revelations led some politicians to re-examine the country’s involvement in the Libyan campaign.

“When you look at what happened next, with Libya becoming a hotspot of terrorism, this is not a decision to be proud of,” former Center Party leader Liv Signe Navarsete said.

Socialist Left Party leader Audun Lysbakken told local media that “Norway should not have participated in the Libya war,” given what the nation knows today.

The new information “is quite painful” for the political class, Morten Boas, researcher at the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute, told RT. “The authors of the report are expressing regret. They say that they didn’t really understand the [possible] outcome.”

In 2011, many in Norway thought that the country was getting into the fight against Gaddafi “mainly for humanitarian reasons,” Boas said. “The other key players saw beyond the humanitarian reasoning and were basically interested in regime change, getting rid of Gaddafi.I  don’t think that necessarily all Norwegian politicians really understood this.”

The U.S: The Century of Lost Wars

September 15, 2018 by Zara Ali

Introduction

Despite having the biggest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases – over 180 – in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21^st century. In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures.

The Lost Wars

The US has been engaged in multiple wars and coups since the beginning of the 21^st century.  These include Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Palestine, Venezuela and the Ukraine. Besides Washington’s secret intelligence agencies have financed five surrogate terrorist groups in Pakistan, China, Russia, Serbia and Nicaragua.  The US has invaded countries, declared victories and subsequently faced resistance and prolonged warfare which required a large US military presence to merely protect garrison outposts. The US has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties – dead, maimed and deranged soldiers. The more the Pentagon spends, the greater the losses and subsequent retreats. The more numerous the vassal regimes, the greater the corruption and incompetence flourishes. Every regime subject to US tutelage has failed to accomplish the objectives designed by its US military advisers. The more spent on recruiting mercenary armies the greater the rate of defection and the transfer of arms to US adversaries.

Success in Starting Wars and Failures in Finishing Them

The US invaded Afghanistan, captured the capital (Kabul) defeated the standing army …and then spent the next two decades engaged in losing  irregular warfare.

The initial victories laid the groundwork for future defeats. Bombings drove millions of peasants and farmers, shopkeepers and artisans into the local militia. The invaders were defeated by the forces of nationalism and religion linked to families and communities.  The indigenous insurgents overcame arms and dollars in many of the villages, towns and provinces.

Similar outcomes were repeated in Iraq and Libya. The US invaded, defeated the standing armies, occupied the capital and imposed its clients—- which set the terrain for long-term, large-scale warfare by local insurgent armies. The more frequent the western bombings, the greater the opposition forcing the retreat of the proxy army.

Somalia has been bombed frequently. Special Forces have recruited, trained, and armed the  local puppet soldiers, sustained by mercenary African armies but they have remained holed up in the capital city, Mogadishu, surrounded and attacked by poorly armed but highly motivated and disciplined Islamic insurgents.

Syria is targeted by a US financed and armed mercenary army.  In the beginning they advanced, uprooted millions, destroyed cities and homes and seized territory.  All of which impressed their US – EU warlords.  Once the Syrian army united the populace, with their Russian, Lebanese (Hezbollah) and Iranian allies, Damascus routed the mercenaries. After the better part of a decade the separatist Kurds, alongside the Islamic terrorists and other western surrogates retreated, and made a last stand along the northern borders–the remaining bastions of  Western surrogates.

The Ukraine coup of 2014 was financed and directed by the US and EU. They seized the capital (Kiev) but failed to conquer the Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.  Corruption among the US ruling kleptocrats devastated the country – over three million fled abroad to Poland, Russia and elsewhere in search of a livelihood.  The war continues, the corrupt US clients are discredited and will suffer electoral defeat unless they rig the vote.

Surrogate uprisings in Venezuela and Nicaragua were bankrolled by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They ruined economies but lost the street wars.

Conclusion

Wars are not won by arms alone.  In fact, heavy bombing and extended military occupations ensure prolonged popular resistance, ultimate retreats and defeats.  The US major and minor wars of the 21^st century have failed to incorporate targeted countries into the empire.

Imperial occupations are not military victories.  They merely change the nature of the war, the protagonists of resistance, the scope and depth of the national struggle.

The US has been successful in defeating standing armies as was the case in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Ukraine.  However, the conquest was limited in time and space.  New armed resistance movements led by former officers, religious activists and grass roots activists took charge…

The imperial wars slaughtered millions, savaged traditional family, workplace and neighborhood relations and set in motion a new constellation of anti-imperialist leaders and militia fighters. The imperial forces beheaded established leaders and decimated their followers.  They raided and pillaged ancient treasures.  The resistance followed by recruiting thousands of uprooted volunteers who served as human bombs, challenging missiles and drones. The US imperial forces lack the ties to the occupied land and people. They are ‘aliens’ serving time; they seek to survive, secure promotions and exit with a bonus and an honorable discharge.  In contrast, the resistance fighters are there for the duration.  As they advance, they target and demolish the imperial surrogates and mercenaries.  They expose the corrupt client rulers who deny the subject people the elementary conditions of existence – employment, potable water, electricity etc.

The imperial vassals are not present at weddings, sacred holidays or funerals, unlike the resistance fighters.  The presence of the latter signals a pledge of loyalty unto death.  The resistance circulates freely in cities, towns and villages with the protection of the local people; and by night they rule   enemy terrain, under cover of their own people, who share intelligence and logistics. Inspiration, solidarity and light arms are more than a match for the drones, missiles and helicopter gunships.

Even the mercenary soldiers, trained by the Special Forces, defect from and betray their imperial masters.  Temporary imperial advances serve only to allow the resistance forces to regroup and counter-attack.  They view surrender as a betrayal of their traditional way of life, submission to the boot of western occupation forces and their corrupt officials.

Afghanistan is a prime example of an imperial ‘lost war’.  After two decades of warfare and one trillion dollars in military spending, tens of thousands of casualties, the Taliban controls most of the countryside and towns; enters and takes over provincial capitals and bombs Kabul.  They will take full control the day after the US departs.

The US military defeats are products of a fatal flaw:  imperial planners cannot successfully replace indigenous people with colonial rulers and their local look-alikes. Wars are not won by high tech weapons directed by absentee officials divorced from the people: they do not share their sense of peace and justice.

Exploited people informed by a spirit of communal resistance and self-sacrifice have demonstrated greater cohesion then rotating soldiers eager to return home and  mercenary soldiers with dollar signs in their eyes.

The lessons of lost wars have not been learned by those who preach the power of the military–industrial complex, which makes, sells and profits from weapons but lack the mass of humanity with lesser arms but with great conviction who have demonstrated their capacity to defeat imperial armies.

The Stars and Stripes fly in Washington but remain folded in Embassy offices in Kabul, Tripoli, Damascus and in other lost battlegrounds.

Prof. James Petras
Source

Libya goes from the most prosperous country in Africa to a haven for terrorists in just 7 years, thanks to the USA’s NATO

RT

Libya in chaos seven years after NATO’s ‘liberation’, but who cares?

A historic building ruined during a conflict, Benghazi, Libya, February 28, 2018 © Esam Omran Al-Fetori / Reuters

Libya remains a lawless land, with rival militias fighting battles in the streets of Tripoli and over 1 million people in need of aid. But the West’s ‘liberal interventionists’ aren’t interested in the catastrophe they created.

“Hundreds escape prison amid deadly clashes in Tripoli,” a headline on the BBC News website declared this week.

Over 60 people have died in the current fighting with many more injured and hundreds of ordinary citizens displaced. The latest disturbances began after the Tarhuna’s 7th Infantry ”Kaniat‘ Brigade made advances into the capital from the south and clashed with a coalition of Tripoli militias.

It’s really hard to keep up with who’s fighting who. If you think the situation in Syria is complicated, you haven’t been paying much attention to Libya. As the BBC article acknowledged: “Libya has faced continuing chaos since NATO-backed militia forces, some of them rivals, overthrew long-serving ruler Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011.”

Read more

Up to 1800 migrants flee Libyan detention centre as chaos rages in Tripoli (VIDEO)

Libya has rival governments but even they don’t control the majority of the country. There is no ‘rule of law’, only the rule of the gun. Libya’s regression from the country with the highest Human Development Index figure in the whole of Africa just ten years ago, to a fragmented and very dangerous failed state, is hard to take in. Last year, the UN Agency IOM reported that slave markets had returned to the country.

Economic and societal collapse has had a devastating impact on the life of ordinary Libyans.

Take health care. A 2017 Service Availability and Readiness Assessment survey, conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Ministry of Health, found that 17 out of 97 hospitals are closed and only four hospitals were functional between 75-80% of their capacity. Over 20% primary health care facilities are closed and the rest are not “well ready for service delivery“.

In May 2016, the WHO also expressed ‘great concern’ over the deaths of 12 newborns in the Sabah Medical Centre neonatal intensive care unit in Sabha, southern Libya. It records: “The deaths occurred as a result of a bacterial infection and lack of specialized health staff to provide medical care.”

The education system is also in a state of collapse or near-collapse. In 2016, it was reported that the start of the school year was postponed because of a “lack of books, lack of security and many other factors.”

It was noted that the Libyan school year had not been regular since the fall of Gaddafi. This year, UNICEF said that 489 schools were affected by the conflict and that around 26,000 students had been forced to change schools due to closures.

UNICEF also says that 378,000 children in Libya are in need of humanitarian assistance, 268,000 are in need of safe water, sanitation and hygiene and 300,000 are in need of education in emergency support. Overall 1.1m people in Libya are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Given the dire situation it is no surprise that so many Libyans have left, or are leaving. In 2014, it was reported that between 600,000 and 1m had fled to Tunisia.

If we add those who went to Egypt and elsewhere, the figure is likely to be in excess of 2 million, quite staggering when you consider that the 2011 population of Libya was around 6 million.

Read more

Slave markets in ‘liberated’ Libya and the silence of the humanitarian hawks

As I argued in a previous op-ed, the Western assault on Libya was an even worse crime than the invasion of Iraq because it came later. There was really no excuse for anyone, seeing how the ‘regime change’ operation of 2003 had turned out, supporting a similar venture in North Africa.

Yet, those responsible for what happened have faced no comeback. The UK Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, is blamed for Brexit (by Remainers), but not for what he did to Libya and the claims he made to justify the military action. This is despite a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report concluding, five years later, that “the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President in 2011, faces a trial (or trials) in relation to three different investigations, including accepting money from Gaddafi to help his election campaign, but he has not yet been prosecuted for his role in the war.

Bernard-Henri Levy, the philosopher considered by some to be the intellectual godfather of the Western intervention – and who boasted “we are the first to say that Qaddafi is no longer the legal representative,” is performing a one-man anti-Brexit play, as the country he helped ‘liberate’ burns.

Stateside and in ‘liberal’ circles across the West, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lionised for not being Donald Trump, but what the duo did to Libya is far worse than anything Trump has done up to now.

Read more

Hundreds of migrants stranded in Libyan camps without food due to fighting – reports

And the British Home Secretary under whose watch control orders on members of the anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were lifted, one Theresa May, is now Prime Minister, and trying to take the moral high ground against Russia. To add insult to injury, it is a politician who opposed the NATO action in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn, who is under constant media attack and painted as beyond the pale. Just how wrong is that?

Returning to the current violence, a UN-brokered ceasefire to end the fighting in south Tripoli is reported at time of writing to be holding, but bearing in mind how previous ceasefires have collapsed, we can’t be optimistic. Part of the problem is that the country is awash with arms. The sad truth is that Libya is broken and probably will never be put back together again. A great crime has been committed, but you would never think it, judging by the lack of media coverage.

We’ve had a lot of debate this summer in Britain about Israel’s ‘right to exist’- and whether challenging this makes one ‘anti-Semitic’ but the reality is that Libya – as a modern, functioning state – has ceased to exist. And no one in elite, establishment circles seems the least bit bothered. Consider how many column inches were devoted to ‘saving’ Libya in the build up to NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention seven and a half years ago, with the lack of opinion pieces about the country today.  

Try googling the names of some of the leading media war hawks and ‘Libya’ and you see they tend to go as silent after 2011 – shifting their attention to propagandising for ‘regime change’ in Syria. The only conclusion one can draw is their sole interest in the country was seeing Muammar Gaddafi toppled. After that was achieved, who cares?

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. 

He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

Are the US and israel (apartheid state) Behind the Fresh Chaos in Libya’s Capital?

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Trump claimed last year that he would seek to establish a permanent military presence in Libya aimed at “uniting” the country under a single government, a government that would most likely have rival leader Khalifa Haftar at the helm, given his control over most of Libya’s oil fields.

by Whitney Webb

TRIPOLI, LIBYA – As the week began, Tripoli reverted to a state of chaos as armed cadres representing rival factions vie for control of the Libyan capital. Since Monday, local media has reported that five have been killed and 27 wounded in the city, prompting the country’s health ministry to declare a state of emergency.While in-fighting between rival militias has been common outside of the capital since the 2011 NATO intervention deposed the country’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi, these recent clashes are notable as the warring sides both technically operateunder Libya’s UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). Local reports have stated that in-fighting GNA groups have used heavy weapons, including artillery, and that residential areas have been targeted.

The fighting has been condemned by the GNA’s Presidential Council (PC), which issued a statement on Monday warning “these gangs and outlawed groups that have terrorized civilians and residents; there is no space for such lawlessness and chaos.”

Despite the PC’s statement, chaos and lawlessness have been the daily reality in Libya since Gaddafi’s 2011 overthrow. This, in part, is due to the fact that the GNA has long struggled to consolidate control over the country, largely due in turn to its inability to dislodge the rival government in Eastern Libya led by Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is a Libyan military defector with deep ties to the U.S. CIA and currently backed by the UAE and Egypt. Armed groups, including Daesh (ISIS), also control portions of Libyan territory not claimed by the GNA or Haftar governments.

A power vacuum inviting outside exploitation

As a result, Libya continues to lack a strong central government over seven years after Gaddafi was removed from power and brutally murdered by NATO-funded “rebels.” This vacuum has allowed for the proliferation, not only of terrorist groups throughout the country, but also an illegal arms and slave trade in what was once Africa’s wealthiest nation with the continent’s highest standard of living.

While the reason for GNA in-fighting is unknown, such chaos is likely to greatly benefit the Haftar-led government, which has long called for the GNA’s overthrow and has recently received help from some unlikely allies. Since last year, Haftar’s administrationhas been receiving considerable military aid from Israel and meeting with Israeli intelligence, along with continued backing from the UAE and Egypt, all of which are influential U.S. allies in the region.

The Trump administration also claimed last year that it would seek to establish a permanent military presence in Libya aimed at “uniting” the country under a single government, a government that would most likely have Haftar at the helm, given the GNA’s loss of control and Haftar’s control over most of Libya’s oil fields. It remains to be determined whether “foreign meddling” from any of these countries bears any responsibility for the recent chaos on the streets of Tripoli.

Top Photo | The aftermath of recent clashes which took place in Tripoli, Libya. Twitter | Nadia Ramadan

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

A Decalogue: The Ten Theses of American Empire-Building: A Dialogue

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, August 11, 2018

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

Introduction

Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.
This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in political struggle.

Thesis 1

US empire builders of all colors and persuasion practice donkey tactics; waving the carrot and wielding the whip to move the target government on the chosen path.
In the same way, Washington offers dubious concessions and threatens reprisals, in order to move them into the imperial orbit.

Washington applied the tactic successfully in several recent encounters. In 2003 the US offered Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi a peaceful accommodation in exchange for disarmament, abandonment of nationalist allies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 2011, the US with its European allies applied the whip – bombed Libya, financed and armed retrograde tribal and terrorist forces, destroyed the infrastructure, murdered Gaddafi and uprooted millions of Africans and Libyans. . . who fled to Europe. Washington recruited mercenaries for their subsequent war against Syria in order to destroy the nationalist Bashar Assad regime.

Washington succeeded in destroying an adversary but did not establish a puppet regime in the midst of perpetual conflict.

The empire’s carrot weakened its adversary, but the stick failed to recolonize Libya ..Moreover its European allies are obligated to pay the multi-billion Euro cost of absorbing millions of uprooteded immigrants and the ensuing domestic political turmoil.

Thesis 2

Empire builders’ proposal to reconfigure the economy in order to regain imperial supremacy provokes domestic and overseas enemies. President Trump launched a global trade war, replaced political accommodation with economic sanctions against Russia and a domestic protectionist agenda and sharply reduced corporate taxes. He provoked a two-front conflict. Overseas, he provoked opposition from European allies and China, while facing perpetual harassment from domestic free market globalists and Russo-phobic political elites and ideologues.

Two front conflicts are rarely successful. Most successful imperialist conquer adversaries in turn – first one and then the other.

Thesis 3

Leftists frequently reverse course: they are radicals out of office and reactionaries in government, eventually falling between both chairs. We witness the phenomenal collapse of the German Social Democratic Party, the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK), (and its new version Syriza) and the Workers Party in Brazil. Each attracted mass support, won elections, formed alliances with bankers and the business elite – and in the face of their first crises, are abandoned by the populace and the elite.

Shrewd but discredited elites frequently recognize the opportunism of the Left, and in time of distress, have no problem in temporarily putting up with Left rhetoric and reforms as long as their economic interests are not jeopardized. The elite know that the Left signal left and turn right.

Thesis 4

Elections, even ones won by progressives or leftists, frequently become springboards for imperial backed coups. Over the past decade newly elected presidents, who are not aligned with Washington, face congressional and/or judicial impeachment on spurious charges. The elections provide a veneer of legitimacy which a straight-out military-coup lacks.

Mapping Trump’s Empire: Assets and Liabilities

In Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela, ‘legislatures’ under US tutelage attempted to ouster popular President. They succeeded in the former and failed in the latter.
When electoral machinery fails, the judicial system intervenes to impose restraints on progressives, based on tortuous and convoluted interpretation of the law. Opposition leftists in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador have been hounded by ruling party elites.

Thesis 5

Even crazy leaders speak truth to power. There is no question that President Trump suffers a serious mental disorder, with midnight outbursts and nuclear threats against, any and all, ranging from philanthropic world class sports figures (LeBron James) to NATO respecting EU allies.


Yet in his lunacy, President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and ongoing fabrications of the mass media. Never before has a President so forcefully identified the lies of the leading print and TV outlets. The NY Times, Washington Post, the Financial Times, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS have been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the larger public. They have lost legitimacy and trust. Where progressives have failed, a war monger, billionaire has accomplished, speaking a truth to serve many injustices.

Thesis 6

When a bark turns into a bite, Trump proves the homely truth that fear invites aggression. Trump has implemented or threatened severe sanctions against the EU, China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and any country that fails to submit to his dictates. At first, it was bombast and bluster which secured concessions.

Concessions were interpreted as weakness and invited greater threats. Disunity of opponents encouraged imperial tacticians to divide and conquer. But by attacking all adversaries simultaneously he undermines that tactic. Threats everywhere limits choices to dangerous options at home and abroad.

Thesis 7

The master meddlers, of all times, into the politics of sovereign states are the Anglo-American empire builders. But what is most revealing is the current ploy of accusing the victims of the crimes that are committed against them.

After the overthrow of the Soviet regime, the US and its European acolytes ‘meddled’ on a world-historic scale, pillaging over two trillion dollars of Soviet wealth and reducing Russian living standards by two thirds and life expectancy to under sixty years – below the level of Bangladesh.
With Russia’s revival under President Putin, Washington financed a large army of self-styled ‘non-governmental organizations’ (NGO) to organize electoral campaigns, recruited moguls in the mass media and directed ethnic uprisings. The Russians are retail meddlers compared to the wholesale multi-billion-dollar US operators.

Moreover, the Israeli’s have perfected meddling on a grand scale – they intervene successfully in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon. They set the Middle East agenda, budget and priorities, and secure the biggest military handouts on a per-capita basis in US history!
Apparently, some meddlers meddle by invitation and are paid to do it.

Thesis 8

Corruption is endemic in the US where it has legal status and where tens of millions of dollars change hands and buy Congress people, Presidents and judges.

In the US the buyers and brokers are called ‘lobbyists’ – everywhere else they are called fraudsters. Corruption (lobbying) grease the wheels of billion dollars military spending, technological subsidies, tax evading corporations and every facet of government – out in the open, all the time and place of the US regime.

Corruption as lobbying never evokes the least criticism from the mass media.
On the other hand, where corruption takes place under the table in Iran, China and Russia, the media denounce the political elite – even where in China over 2 million officials, high and the low are arrested and jailed.

When corruption is punished in China, the US media claim it is merely a ‘political purge’ even if it directly reduces elite conspicuous consumption.

In other words, imperial corruption defends democratic value; anti-corruption is a hallmark of authoritarian dictatorships.

Thesis 9

Bread and circuses are integral parts of empire building – especially in promoting urban street mobs to overthrow independent and elected governments.

Imperial financed mobs – provided the cover for CIA backed coups in Iran (1954), Ukraine (2014), Brazil (1964), Venezuela (2003, 2014 and 2017), Argentina (1956), Nicaragua (2018), Syria (2011) and Libya (2011) among other places and other times.

Masses for empire draw paid and voluntary street fighters who speak for democracy and serve the elite. The “mass cover” is especially effective in recruiting leftists who look to the street for opinion and ignore the suites which call the shots.

Thesis 10

The empire is like a three-legged stool it promotes genocide, to secure magnicide and to rule by homicide. Invasions kills millions, capture and kill rulers and then rule by homicide – police assassinating dissenting citizens.

The cases are readily available: Iraq and Libya come to mind. The US and its allies invaded, bombed and killed over a million Iraqis, captured and assassinated its leaders and installed a police state.
A similar pattern occurred in Libya: the US and EU bombed, killed and uprooted several million people, assassinated Ghadaffy and fomented a lawless terrorist war of clans, tribes and western puppets.

“Western values” reveal the inhumanity of empires built to murder “a la carte” – stripping the victim nations of their defenders, leaders and citizens.

Conclusion

The ten theses define the nature of 21st century imperialism – its continuities and novelties.
The mass media systematically write and speak lies to power: their message is to disarm their adversaries and to arouse their patrons to continue to plunder the world.
*
Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Prof. James Petras, Global Research, 2018

North Korea Warns US of ’Nuclear Showdown’

Local Editor

24-05-2018 | 09:17

North Korea cast doubt on the planned summit between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and US President Donald Trump, warning that Pyongyang could make the US “taste an appalling tragedy”.

 

The summit’s fate is “entirely” up to the US, North Korea’s vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui said in a statement on Thursday. If the talks are cancelled, Choe suggested the two countries could engage in a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown”.

“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision … of the US,” she said.

“We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.”

The comments come after Trump earlier this week said there was a “very substantial chance” the summit could be delayed.

They also follow a week of heated rhetoric in Washington, with some US officials threatening a fate similar to Libya if the North does not relinquish its nuclear weapons program. Libya dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in a NATO-backed uprising against his rule.

“In view of the remarks of the US high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us,” Choe said, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “To borrow their words, we can also make the US taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.”

In an interview on Fox News, US vice president Mike Pence said: “This will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal”.

His words echoed earlier comments by national security advisor John Bolton that the US was studying Libya’s unilateral disarmament as a blueprint for negotiations with Pyongyang.

“As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president,” Choe said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

Revealed Britain’s link to terrorist groups in Libya

What will be the blowback for UK government after Libya revelations?

By Mark Curtis: The revelation that the British government likely had contacts with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the 17 February Martyrs Brigade during the 2011 war in Libya – groups for which the 2017 Manchester bomber and his father reportedly fought at that time – raises fundamental questions about the UK’s links to terrorism.

Indeed, a strong case can be made for a devastating conclusion: that the UK is itself a de facto part of the terrorist infrastructure that poses a threat to the British public.

Foreign minister Alistair Burt told Parliament on 3 April that: “During the Libyan conflict in 2011 the British government was in communication with a wide range of Libyans involved in the conflict against the Gaddafi regime forces. It is likely that this included former members of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and 17 February Martyrs Brigade, as part of our broad engagement during this time.” This is the first time the government has admitted to having contacts with these groups at that time.

Covert boots on the ground

The admission is highly significant. In 2011, Britain played a leading role, along with the US, France and some Arab states, in conducting bombing and a covert operation to remove Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. But the UN resolution they obtained did not allow them to put troops on the ground – although Britain did so covertly, it was admitted later.

Instead, militant fighters, such as those from the LIFG, were seen as Islamist boots on the ground to promote Britain’s war. After the Manchester bombing in May last year, which killed 22 people, it was widely reported that the terrorist, Salman Abedi, and his father, Ramadan, had both fought with the LIFG in 2011.

As Middle East Eye revealed last year, the British government operated an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens living in the UK to join the 2011 war, even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders.

These dissidents were members of the LIFG, and most were from Manchester, like the Abedis. Renowned journalist Peter Oborne subsequently revealed that they were “undoubtedly encouraged” by MI6 to travel to Libya to oust Gaddafi. Indeed, after the Libyan leader was overthrown, these fighters were allowed back into Britain “without hesitation”.

The connection to the British secret state goes back even further. Ramadan Abedi is believed to have been a prominent member of the LIFG, which he joined in 1994. This was two years before MI6 covertly supported the LIFG in an attempt to assassinate Gaddafi, an operation initially revealed by former MI5 officer, David Shayler. At the time MI6 handed over money for the coup attempt, the LIFG was an affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, and LIFG leaders had various connections to his terror network.

Millions in Qatari funding

Reports also suggest that Ramadan Abedi fought with the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of the LIFG, in the 2011 Libyan war – the other militant group mentioned by the government in its parliamentary response. Many of Gaddafi’s opponents living in the UK and connected to the LIFG joined this brigade, which was one of the key units seeking to topple Gaddafi.

The brigade was armed by Qatar, which provided $400m worth of support to Libyan rebel groups and was their major arms supplier. Britain is reported to have approved of Qatar’s arms supplies to these militant groups and worked closely alongside it as its principal partner in the war. The Times reported in June 2011 that “Britain and France are using Qatar to bankroll the Libyan rebels”.

But here the story also relates to another terrorist – Rachid Redouane, part of a group who killed eight people in the London Bridge/Borough market attack last year. Redouane also fought in the Libya war of 2011, reportedly for the Liwa al-Ummah unit, another offshoot of the LIFG. Some of Liwa’s members were trained by Qatari special forces in Libya’s western mountains – training that involved covert UK and US “liaison” officers.

This raises the possibility that Redouane might even have received combat training in a UK-approved operation. It is also possible that Salman and Ramadan Abedi benefited from such military training or from the arms supplies that were flooding into Libya at the time. No evidence has, however, so far emerged.

How much did officials know?

The government is refusing to say which groups Salman and Ramadan Abedi fought for in Libya. In response to a question on this subject from Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, security minister Ben Wallace replied on 3 April: “The Home Office does not comment on intelligence matters nor on matters which form part of ongoing investigations.” It is interesting that Wallace described this as an “intelligence” matter. Is this a tacit official admission of links between the Abedis and the security services?

There are numerous other key questions that demand answers. When Theresa May was home secretary in 2011, did she know about or authorise the despatch of Libyans living in the UK to Libya, and were Salman or Ramadan Abedi specifically part of this process? If she did not, what were security services, who reported to her and then foreign secretary William Hague, therefore up to? Did either the LIFG or the 17 February Martyrs Brigade receive either direct or indirect UK assistance to fight in Libya at this time? Why were the Abedis allowed to return back to the UK after fighting in Libya with no questions asked?

There is an equally fundamental question: will British journalists seek to uncover more of this story? After all, it is possible it could lead to revelations about the secret state’s links to terrorism that could cause the downfall of ministers.

Mark Curtis is an author and consultant. He is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and has been an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, Paris and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik, Bonn. 

Libya: The true face of ‘humanitarian intervention’

Daniel Kovalik | RT

FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises after coalition air strikes in Tripoli, Libya © Reuters

Seven years ago, on March 19, NATO began its “humanitarian bombing” of Libya. While “humanitarian bombing” is an oxymoron, many believe that a country is not truly advancing human rights if it’s not bombing another back to the Stone Age.

As an initial matter, it must be said that while the UN had authorized a NATO fly-zone over Libya to protect civilians – all civilians, by the way – there was never authorization for the full-scale invasion which was carried out and which quickly became aimed at regime change. Therefore, the NATO operation which actually took place was illegal.

What’s more, the Libyan invasion did more to undermine human rights than it did to protect them.  According to Amnesty International’s most recent report on Libya, there are now three rival governments vying for power in the country along with various militias, smugglers and other sundry armed groups. As Amnesty International explains, all participants in the armed conflict in Libya “carried out indiscriminate attacks in heavily populated areas leading to deaths of civilians and unlawful killings.  Armed groups arrested and indefinitely detained thousands of people. Torture and other ill-treatment was widespread in prisons under the control of armed groups, militias and state officials.” And, to top it all off, slaves are being sold in public markets in Libya – something not seen in the world for over a century.

And this is the aftermath of an intervention which, we were told, was supposed to improve human rights in Libya. Indeed, the intervention was spearheaded by Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice – three self-described warriors for human and women’s rights. Instead, they became three ushers of the Apocalypse. In addition, Italy and France, which also helped lead the charge for invasion, had their own reasons for intervening in Libya. For his part, French President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be singularly focused on killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who allegedly gave him €50 million for his presidential campaign – a claim which was just coming to light and to which Gaddafi was the chief witness.

While Gaddafi certainly was no saint, he was a much better leader for his country than many of those the West supports, such as the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the death squad state of Colombia or the coup government in Honduras. Indeed, Muammar Gaddafi, at the urging of his son, Saif, was attempting to democratize Libya at the time of the invasion, and the pair were willingly accepting the help of the US’s National Democratic Institute to do so!

In addition, Gaddafi had taken Libya from being the least prosperous country in Africa to the being the most prosperous by the time of the NATO operation. Thus, as one commentator explains, before the intervention, “Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.”

Moreover, one of the main reasons, we were told, that NATO needed to intervene in 2011 was to save Benghazi from imminent harm from the government forces of Gaddafi. However, Hillary Clinton’s own internal emails show that her team recognized that any humanitarian problems confronting Benghazi had passed by the time of the NATO bombing. For example, Clinton’s assistant, Huma Abedin, in an email dated February 21, 2011 – that is, just a mere four days after the initial anti-government protests broke out in Libya – explains that the Gaddafi forces no longer controlled Benghazi and that the mood in the city was indeed “celebratory” by that time. Then, on March 2, just over two weeks before the bombing began, Harriet Spanos of USAID sent an email describing “[s]ecurity reports” which “confirm that Benghazi has been calm over the past couple of days.”

Indeed, as explained to me by Khaled Kaim, Gaddafi’s last foreign minister, who I recently met in Venezuela, he personally urged US representatives at the UN Security Council to hold off the planned bombing raid for one hour so that UN observers on the ground could confirm his claim that Benghazi was not under threat. Of course, his pleas were ignored.  Kaim’s warnings that the impending invasion of Libya would only unleash more chaos and terror on the world were also disregarded.

Meanwhile, Benghazi is now the site of a grave humanitarian crisis and a hotbed for terrorists post-intervention. Again, Amnesty International writes that “[a] number of mass graves were uncovered in Benghazi between February and October [2017]. On at least four occasions, groups of bodies were found in different parts of the city with their hands bound behind their backs, and in some cases blindfolded with signs of torture and execution-style killing.”

In addition, during the early part of 2017, one armed faction laid siege to an apartment complex in the Ganfouda area of Benghazi, “cutting off all supplies to the area, including food and water, and had trapped civilians and wounded fighters [of another faction] without access to medical care and other basic services.”  And, when the same faction broke the siege by launching an armed assault on this area, it engaged in “indiscriminate” killings, with fighters from the faction posing for photos with the dead bodies.

And yet, where are the self-proclaimed defenders of human rights for Libya and Benghazi now? Where are their cries for humanitarian intervention? Of course, all of those responsible for this absolute disaster have moved on and remain silent about the tragedy they have wrought in that country.

Of course, the intervention in Libya was not truly about human rights, just as other similar Western interventions in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have not been about either human rights or even fighting terror. And indeed, these interventions have only undermined human rights and further spread terror. In the case of Libya, the predictable havoc unleashed there has spread to neighboring states such as Niger, Tunisia, Mali, Chad and Cameroon. In addition, the refugee crisis created by the chaos unleashed by the NATO intervention in Libya is undermining the stability of all of Europe. 

One can only conclude from this that the West, and especially the United States, is hell-bent on spreading instability throughout the world, despite its pretending to accomplish the very opposite.  Indeed, the US continues to bomb Libya periodically in an effort to at least contain the very forces of chaos it helped unleash there.

In chaos, Western countries and their transnational corporations see opportunity for more domination and more profits. As with Little Finger in Game of Thrones, they see chaos not as a pit, but as a ladder. In the case of countries like Libya, the West goes in and bombs it to oblivion and then brings in companies which charge that country to rebuild it. And the West is not shy about this grisly strategy for money-making.

Indeed, as the New York Times explained in an article just after the NATO operation ended with the brutal killing of Gaddafi – an article accompanied by a photo of an oil terminal in Misurata, Libya, on fire and with black smoke billowing out – “Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya…  Entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them, plus the competitive advantage of Libyan gratitude toward the United States and its NATO partners.

“A week before Colonel Qaddafi’s death on Oct. 20, a delegation from 80 French companies arrived in Tripoli to meet officials of the Transitional National Council, the interim government. Last week, the new British defense minister, Philip Hammond, urged British companies to “pack their suitcases” and head to Tripoli.”

But what is good for such corporations is not good for the rest of us. Simply put, the world cannot afford another war which wreaks havoc on entire regions of the globe, ushering in massive human misery and environmental destruction in its wake.  As King Pyrrhus might have said, another “victory” like the one in Libya may be the undoing of us.

Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

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