In the NYT Kirkpatrick and Nordland write from Tripoli:
Fighters from the western mountain city of Zintan control the airport. The fighters from Misurata guard the central bank, the port and the prime minister’s office, where their graffiti has relabeled the historic plaza “Misurata Square.” Berbers from the mountain town Yafran took charge of the city’s central square, where they spray-painted “Yafran Revolutionaries.”
Where are the fighters from Tripoli? Are there any? How long will the people of Tripoli allow these red neck marauders in their streets?
The U.S. and the Brits tried to arrange for something like an occupation force. The plans UN Special Adviser Ian Martin leaked to Inner City Press of provided for 200 unarmed UN Military Observers. Unarmed? Not really, those "unarmed observers" would be protected by several thousand of heavily armed troops from some foreign country. The National Transitional Council (NTC) nixed the plan. If it would allow foreign troops now it would immediately lose some of the tribal gangs that currently support it.
The next aim for the rebels is to take Sirte. NATO is already bombing the city where Gaddhafi was born and its 100,000 inhabitants. As hundreds if not thousands of the rebel fighters are needed to keep Tripoli occupied one wonders how many forces they have left to push against that city. This could again turn out to be a long and bloody business.
It is likely that Gaddhafi slipped away to prepare for a new phase of the war. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds. There is absolutely no unity within the various rebel groups and no unity within the National Transitional Committee. They will likely fight each other in the coming weeks and month. This gives Gaddhafi a chance to set everything up and to negotiate with various tribes to allow for his comeback.
August 30, 2011
What The Taliban Don’t Want
In the New York Review of Books Ahmed Rashid sets out his take of the Eid message the Taliban leader Mullah Omar put out: What the Taliban want.
I do not know what the Taliban want. But I am pretty sure they do not want to have their dead one-legged commander Dadullah be depicted as their alive one-eyed emir Mullah Mohammed Omar. (Thanks to Alex Strick van Linschoten for identifying Dadullah.)
Aside from that photo mix up, Ahmed Rashid claims that, contrary to recent reports, negotiations with Taliban are continuing:
An AP report on August 29 that quoted some US and Afghan officials as saying the talks have stalled is completely wrong according to my well-informed sources, who insist that they are continuing despite leaks to the press, as well as threats to the security of the participants and other problems.
That is good news.
Mullah Omar is calling for an inner-Afghan compromise provided that foreign troops leave the country and overly foreign interference, from the U.S. as well as Pakistan, stops.
The Afghan government, the White House and the State Department could probably agree to such a solution if they would only stop ignoring inner-Afghan politics. But the Pentagon will still want permanent bases in Afghanistan and may therefore, probably in cooperation with some Northern Alliance war lords who stand to lose power in a compromise, sabotage further negotiations. Rashid's report of "threats to the security of the participants" points to such interferences.
Like other international issues, for example the New START agreement, the biggest hurdle to clear in the Afghan conflict may be poltics within the Washington beltway.
Why has a well off industrialized country an electricity system which breaks down for a million people due to a simple regular sized storm?
That was a serious question. Unfortunately it didn't get any serious answer but polemic accusations of Schadenfreude towards the people hit by the storm and by the partiality breakdown of the U.S. electricity distribution system. The question was serious and I have yet to find out why it was taken differently.
Here are my thoughts towards answering my question.
The electricity systems in well off industrialized countries were build within three historic-political frames. The people that built and run it maximized profits (not necessarily monetary ones) within these frames.
The political frames consisted over time of three major historic themes and what followed from them:
In the emerging 20th century there was popular public demand for comfortable universal access to this new thing called electricity. This despite the fact that providing electricity everywhere is not an economic optimum. Some difficult to reach places are, in total, cheaper to heat and illuminated with other forms of energy. But politicians followed the populist call – see FDR's Tennessee Valley Project or Lenin's claim that "Communism is power of the committees [soviets] plus electrification."
After World War II all industrialized nations recognized that military application of nuclear energy could be an essential part of their national power. They promoted civil programs to use nuclear energy for providing electricity to further their military nuclear programs as means of national power. Civil nuclear energy programs are only cost efficient if they use very large power generation stations. This led to a an electricity system where power generation is concentrated and often quite far away from the usage point. Before nuclear energy was used electric power generation for a city usually took place within that city's boundaries. Now it is usually far away from it and requires long vulnerable supply lines.
Generation and providing of electricity was long seen as a public task which allowed for subsidizing reliable access to electric energy even to outlying places. Politically the optimal target was providing electricity everywhere on equal terms. That changed with increasing political corruption furthering the trend towards privatization of even natural monopolies. The result was Enron and generally the neglect of reliable distribution structures due to profit maximization of private entities in monopolistic positions.
These three points: electricity access seen as a public right, centralization of power generation due to nuclear energy promotion and optimization of privatized profits instead of reliability in monopoly positions led to the situation where a storm or some unfortunate system effect can suddenly take out electricity for a lot of people for a relatively long time.
There are ways to prevent future incidents like this by healing the excesses of the above mentioned policies.
Electricity access is not a human right. If you decide to live on an Appalachian mountain top or in the middle of a desert do not expect that the general public will provide you with subsidized reliable electric energy. You'll have to make it yourself.
Localize electric energy generation to where that energy is needed. This eliminates vulnerable overland lines. Unfortunately the "green energy" folks do not get that point. They want wind farms out on the seas even where the major consumption areas are inland and far away from the wind-farms. They repeat the mistakes of nuclear energy. It would be much better to further efforts to find ways for generating energy locally (solar, geothermic, bio, fossil etc.).
Do not privatize natural monopolies. To lay an electric energy line to a house usually only pays off in the frame of several decades. That payoff time frame is too long to make a second line and thereby competition profitable. Privatized networks means that everyone gets stuck with a private monopoly provider which has no incentive to adopt its prices to its real costs. This is a state where things are better (cheaper for consumers) when in non-profit public than private hands. Natural monopolies like electricity-, water-, sewage- and telecommunication networks should be kept in public ownership and maintained with more weight towards reliability than profits.
If those preventive points would have been policy the recent storm would have had, in my estimate, less negative effects.
What is your take on the issue?
August 28, 2011
Abdelhakim Belhadj And Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi
The Independent reports today what was to be expected of some of the rebels in Libya:
Yesterday, The Independent on Sunday learned that the rebel military commander behind the successful assault on Tripoli had fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban and was an Islamist terror suspect interrogated by the CIA. Abdelhakim Belhadj, the newly appointed commander of the Tripoli Military Council is a former emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – banned by Britain and the US as a terrorist organisation after the 9/11 attacks.
Maybe the Independent on Sunday learned this from watching Pepe Escobar who reported it yesterday on Russia TV (video).
Or maybe Pepe Escobar and the Independent read about this in the piece by Hossam Salama published last Thursday in the English version of Asaraq Al-Awsat:
Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat – Abdelhakim Belhadj is the commander of the Libyan rebel Tripoli Military Council; he emerged as a leader during the Libyan rebels’ operation to liberate the Libyan capital from Gaddafi control. Belhadj is also a former Emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was banned internationally as a terrorist organization following the 9/11 attacks. …
Funny how much gets reported without giving credit where its due to those who did the original work.
But away from that the the issue is interesting because what follows from it. Abdelhakim Belhadj and his fellow LIFG fighters now in charge of Tripoli have personal reasons to hate the U.S. and to like Saif al-Islam. This could further a comeback for Saif.
Abdelhakim Belhadj (aka Abdelhakim Al-Khoweildy aka Abu Abdullah Assadaq aka Abdallah al-Sadeq) fought with the Mujahedeen against the Soviets, was caught after 9/11 and tortured by the CIA.
According to Human Rights Watch which later interviewed him in a Libyan prison:
The Insurgent – How Arvind Kejriwal, the architect of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign, brought the rage of an indignant nation to the government’s door – Mehboob Jeelani, Caravan
The London Review of Books (LRB) currently offers a hurricane special which allows 7 days of free reading of the magazine and its archive after a registration here. (The registration only requires a valid email address.) I recommend to do so and to walk through the archives. A lot of good staff was and gets published in the LRB. As I am not on the U.S. east coast I'll use this opportunity to fill up my harddisk with reading material for the next hurricane here :-).
Please post your reading recommendations in the comments.
August 26, 2011
Libyans Asked For No Foreign Intervention
bigger This picture was published on March 1 in a Guardian blog and elsewhere.
The demonstrators in the picture asked for "no foreign intervention". But their movement was already being captured by foreigners.
The “rebels” are actively hitting Sirte with heavy artillery and Stalin’s organs; they are transporting tanks openly to attack Sirte. Yet any movement of tanks or artillery by the population of Sirte brings immediate death from NATO air strike.
What exactly is the reason that Sirte’s defenders are threatening civilians but the artillery of their attackers – and the bombings themselves – are not? Plainly this is a nonsense. People in foreign ministries, NATO, the BBC and other media are well aware that it is the starkest lie and propaganda, to say the assault on Sirte is protecting civilians. But does knowledge of the truth prevent them from peddling a lie? No.
It is worth reminding everyone something never mentioned, that UNSCR 1973 which established the no fly zone and mandate to protect civilians had
“the aim of facilitating dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution;”
That is in Operative Para 2 of the Resolution
Plainly the people of Sirte hold a different view to the “rebels” as to who should run the country. NATO have in effect declared being in Gadaffi’s political camp a capital offence. There is no way the massive assault on Sirte is “facilitating dialogue”. it is rather killing those who do not hold the NATO approved opinion. That is the actual truth. It is extremely plain. … “Liberal intervention” does not exist. What we have is the opposite; highly selective neo-imperial wars aimed at ensuring politically client control of key physical resources.
August 25, 2011
PublicIntelligence.net Taken Down Over Complain
The website publicintelligence.net was taken down by its hosting company after yet unknown complains by an unknown institution.
The Public Intelligence group has published many official reports of public interest that were kept secret from the public. Among those were more than 90 reports of U.S. local Intelligence Fusion Centers, documents from NATO and the UN and information about the collaboration of law enforcement and intelligence services with companies like Facebook and Microsoft.
Public Intelligence is an international, collaborative research project aimed at aggregating the collective work of independent researchers around the globe who wish to defend the public’s right to access information. We operate upon a single maxim: equal access to information is a human right. We believe that limits to the average citizen’s ability to access information have created information asymmetries which threaten to destabilize democratic rule around the world. Through the control of information, governments, religions, corporations, and a select group of individuals have been able to manipulate public perception into accepting coercive agendas which are ultimately designed to limit the sovereignty and freedom of populations worldwide.
According to Public Intelligence tweets their shut down down server is hosted in the Netherlands by Leaseweb. PI says:
There have reportedly been “complaints” about content on the site. That’s all we know at this time.
Leaseweb is not know to take down websites only due to complains. In 2007 it took a court ruling to force them to take down some bittorrent sites. One wonders what threats came with that unknown complain about Public Intelligence.
Public Intelliigence is a rare gem. Support it. Shutting down such sites one by one is a strategy.
I concur.
Please spread the word about this.
Also, to elevate the issue, it may help to contact Leaseweb and to ask why they took down Public Intelligence. Let them know that people are aware of this and care. But please be friendly, it is probably not their fault.
Censoring of the likes Public Intelligence and of the papers they publish is a threat from the security elites to all societies and their people.
Attacks On Embassies In Libya
Armed gangs in Libya have ransacked the residence of the South Korean ambassador, broke into the embassy of Bulgaria and looted the Venezuelan embassy.
[C]ould it be that these attacks are not led by the rebels themselves, but by some of their embedded American and Western European intelligence operatives, who may be taking advantage of the chaotic situation in the Libyan capital to collect valuable documents from selected foreign embassies?
Maybe, maybe not. It is weird that some embassies get protection by the rebels while others do not. One could explain this with regards to the Venezuelan embassy as Venezuela supports Gaddhafi's position, but why attacking the embassies of Bulgaria or South Korea?
It shows that the new puppet dictatorship of the Transitional National Council is either incapable of keeping foreign embassies safe or is deliberately leaving some unprotected. On who's advice?
August 23, 2011
The Upcoming Occupation Of Libya
The Independent reports that “former” UK special operation forces led the western rebels in their onslaught on Tripoli. These several handful of mercenaries, payed for with British and Qatari money, will not be enough to occupy the country. But an occupation is what the “western” countries involved want.
It is quite possible, even likely, that the fighting will continue even if the attackers somehow manage to get Gaddhafi out of the way. I pointed out quite early that Libya is a tribal country and that historically the various groups of tribes never got along very well. There is also an ethnic component with Berbers of the south disliked by the Arabs in the north and vice versa. There is a religious point with Salafi Muslim in the east and much more secular people in the west and Tripoli with each side certainly having different opinions on how to run Libya. There is a lot of money to be taken and to be made and there will always be some group which will want to have a bigger part of the loot.
My best advice is to let the Libyans fight this out on their own. It will be bloody and take a while but it will very likely be much less bloody and shorter than with outside intervention.
But my advice will not be taken.
The argument will be that the anticipated civil war will necessitate “peacekeepers” and “humanitarian intervention” with boots on the ground.
Here is the head of the U.S. Council Of Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, in the British Financial Times preparing us for such:
International assistance, probably including an international force, is likely to be needed for some time to help restore and maintain order. The size and composition of the force will depend on what is requested and welcomed by the Libyan National Transitional Council and what is required by the situation on the ground.
President Barack Obama may need to reconsider his assertion that there would not be any American boots on the ground; leadership is hard to assert without a presence.
The UK has already several hundred soldier ready to decent on Tripoli:
Hundreds of British soldiers could be sent to Libya to serve as peacekeepers if the country descends into chaos, Downing Street indicated last night. … Two hundred troops are on standby to fly to the North African state at 24 hours’ notice if needed.
The soldiers from 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers are stationed in Cyprus, about 1,000 miles from Libya.
A source said: ‘The troops have been on standby for Libya since the start of July. All their kit is packed and they are just waiting to get the call to go.’
Up to 600 Royal Marines are also deployed in the Mediterranean and would be available to support humanitarian operations.
The French will certainly also send a few battalions.
The British written rebel plan calls for some special security force in Tripoli:
The document includes proposals for a 10,000-15,000 strong “Tripoli task force”, resourced and supported by the United Arab Emirates, to take over the Libyan capital, secure key sites and arrest high-level Gaddafi supporters.
I wonder what “resourced and supported” means in this context. Will that task force be mercenaries from a foreign country or Libyan tribal gangs paid by the UAE?
The right wing German minister for defense made some noise of sending German troops. There is no way he will be allowed to without a UN resolution. But even with a resolution I doubt that the German parliament, which must decide on this, would agree.
The current UN Security Council resolution 1973 explicitly excludes “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
The countries involved might argue that any boots on the ground will not be an “occupation” but neither China nor Russia nor the public will accept that interpretation. Some legal cover from the UN will be needed for inner political reasons. It is doubtful that, after having been scammed with the “no-fly-zone” resolution 1973, China and Russia will agree to any new resolution without each demanding a very, very hefty price maybe even the size of Taiwan or Belarus.
With the occupations we witness in Iraq and Afghanistan we can be confident to estimate how a “western” occupation of Libya will likely develop. The TNC puppet government will turn out to be mediocre and not inclusive. The troops send will soon be shot at by someone every once a while and will start to shoot back. An insurgency against the occupation will develop. Salafi fighters from the various countries around Libya will come in and join the fun. More troops will be needed and send. It will take years and a lot of blood will flow until everyone is exhausted, the fighting dies down and the foreign troops go home.
Libya has only six million people. But two million live in Tripoli and it will thus be the core of the fight and the occupation. The outlying towns in the desert can not all be occupied without sending many more troops than the “west” will be willing to send. They will be left to the insurgency and will be their bases and retreats. The oil, which is mostly found in the southeastern desert and pumped through long pipelines, will be hard to recover.
Some ten years from now books will be sold describing the idea of supporting and installing a Libyan rebel government and the occupation following as an idiotic idea. Nothing will be learned from it.
Look Who’s Been Lying
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Rebel "special forces" arrested Seif al-Islam Gadhafi – a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi indicted along with his father on crimes against humanity charges, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said early Monday. … Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press that Seif Gadhafi had been detained by "rebel special forces." He declined to give more details of the arrest or the source of the information. Int'l court: Rebels have detained Gadhafi's son 08.21.11, 07:52 PM EDT
—
Rebels in Libya said late Monday they had captured Saadi Kadafi, a third of Moammar Kadafi's seven sons.
Saadi Kadafi was taken after two of his older brothers were detained earlier in the day, the head of the rebels' National Transitional Council told Al Arabiya satelite network.
Earlier on Monday, Libyan rebel leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil confirmed the overnight capture of two of Kadafi's other sons, Mohammed and Seif al-Islam, and said that they were "under the control of the revolutionaries and … in safe places." LIBYA: Third Kadafi son is captured, rebels say
—
Euphoric Libyan rebels raced into the capital Tripoli on Sunday and moved close to center with little resistance as Moammar Gadhafi's defenders melted away. Opposition leaders said Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, has been arrested. … Sidiq al-Kibir, the rebel leadership council's representative for the capital Tripoli, confirmed the arrest of Seif al-Islam to the AP but did not give any further details. Libyan rebels enter Tripoli, arrest Gadhafi's son
The appearance on camera early on Tuesday of Seif al-Islam, son and one time heir-apparent of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, appears to defy earlier claims that he had been detained by rebel forces. (Aug. 23 2011)
August 22, 2011
Libya: Mission Accomplished?
Obama, NATO and its Libyan rebels seems to believe that the fight over Libya is over.
“Tonight, the momentum against the Qaddafi regime has reached a tipping point,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant. The Qaddafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.”
Mission accomplished!
Wait.
There is something curious here:
After six months of inconclusive fighting, the assault on the capital unfolded at a breakneck pace, with insurgents capturing a military base of the vaunted Khamis Brigade, where they had expected to meet fierce resistance, then speeding toward Tripoli and through several neighborhoods of the capital effectively unopposed. … Few would have predicted that the rebels would meet so little resistance from the 32nd Brigade, a unit that NATO had considered one of the most elite in Libya and commanded by Khamis Qaddafi, one of the leader’s sons.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq to kick Saddam out his forces melted away only to come back in a years long war against the occupiers and their puppets. This looks similar to me.
Did Gaddhafi plan for this and decided to take the same route?
Whatever. The decades of free education, free healthcare and free housing for Libyans are likely coming to an end. The full force of a neoliberal onslaught will now unfold onto the Libyan people. The tribes, and the coalition, will fight each other over the loot.
This affair is not finished. Obama's "Mission accomplished" banner will be frowned upon for years to come.
Obama Supports Indemnifying Of Criminal Banks
There was a deal in preparation between the 50 U.S. state attorneys and the five big mortgage banks, including Bank of America which had acquired the then leading mortgage company Countrywide, to release the banks from all liabilities for falsification of documents, unlawful bundling of mortgages and selling those under false pretense to investors. For a payment of a few billions the banks would be freed from further criminal charges of crimes that led to several hundred billions dollars of losses for investors.
The state attorneys of New York, Delaware, Nevada and a few other states are barking against this insane deal. They are sure that they can prove fraud on a huge scale and want to, as is their job, hold the banks responsible for this.
The Obama administration takes its to be expected stand and lobbies for the criminals and against the rule of law.
Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.
In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.
The proposed deal itself is a joke:
An initial term sheet outlining a possible settlement emerged in March, with institutions including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo being asked to pay about $20 billion that would go toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners.
In exchange, the attorneys general participating in the deal would have agreed to sign broad releases preventing them from bringing further litigation on matters relating to the improper bank practices.
The main issue for the Obama administration is the imminent bankruptcy of Bank of America. With acquiring Countrywide, the then biggest mortgage company, a few years ago BofA is on the hook for an immense amount of losses:
The deal would require Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion to investors holding the securities; the unpaid principal amount of the mortgages remaining in the pools totals $174 billion.
As Countrywide did a lot of criminal stuff with regards to mortgage documentation and the issuing of mortgage securities, the investors in those mortgages will likely have a loss rate of some 50% or more. The penalty for BofA in this indemnifying deal is only 10% of that.
On the consumer side the wrongful documentation of house titles for mortgages by Countrywide and others (via MERS) leads to unjust evictions from houses and makes those houses with dubious titles difficult to sell.
The deal is only about criminal charges and would not solve these problems at all.
But the Obama administration takes the side of the criminals and against the rule of law. A bankruptcy of BofA could create quite a mess in the financial markets and some headaches for the administration. By pushing the deal and pretending that it would clean up all issues about housing it is trying to sweep the dirt under the mat and hopes that no one will notice that it is still there.
Mr. Schneiderman should watch his back. With so much at stake it will not be beyond the thinkable for some people involved, including the administration, to let him fall from a high rise or to use other methods to get him out of the way.
August 21, 2011
An Effort To Keep Iraq Occupied?
The U.S. has been pressing Iraq for some time to be allowed to prolong its occupation.
There were deadlines set for the end of July and lots of U.S. generals and politicians trotted out to call for troops to stay there.
Still Iraq did not invite the U.S. to stay.
Then, on the 16th, 42 terror attacks took place with over 80 Iraqis dead. These were by al Qaeda we are told. This despite some 50,000 U.S. troops in the country. Obviously they are no help despite their claim of proficiency.
On the 20th Sec Def Panetta claimed that Iraqi politicians hat somehow reached a consensus and would ask the U.S. to stay. The Iraqis immediately denied this.
Next thing we hear is that al-Qaeda in Iraq wants to make 100 attacks in Iraq to revenge the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Call me suspicious, but somehow this all seems to relate.
Is this al-Qaeda in Iraq the real thing? Then how come it seems to coordinated with the U.S. desire to keep Iraq occupied? Why do I get the feeling that something is very wrong here?
Turn Away From Neoliberalism Or Lose Government Legitimacy
Neoliberal deregulation, captive oversight, too low interest rates and outright criminality within the banks led the "western" world into a financial crisis. A very wrong step was taken when governments stepped in to rescue failed banks and to guarantee their bad debt. Central banks again showered the shattered financial markets with even more liquidity increasing speculation. (This, through oil and food price increases, led to the Arab spring revolutions.) While some stimulus programs where launched these were too small to restart the economic growth process while the serious underlying problems stayed unsolved.
Private bad debt was turned into government bad debt. The financial crisis of the banks was thus turned into a financial crisis of governments.
Still the wrong steps get taken. Attempts to save Greece and other European countries will be fruitless. They will default and leave the Euro zone as they can not economically survive within a strong currency.
The "western" world will now fall back into recession while an insetting austerity ideology will prevent more Keynesian programs. Unchallenged this will lead into the second world depression.
To change the direction a change of mind and ideology must take place. There are signs that this is starting though it might well turn out to be a rather slow process, too late, or even fail.
Charles Moore, a conservative commentator of the Telegraph and official Thatcher biographer, recently wrote: I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right (recommended). In Germany Frank Schirrmacher, publisher of the German "paper of record", the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine, joined in (in German). (In France „Indignez vous!“, a bestselling political essay written by the 93-year-old former resistance hero Stéphane Hessel, earlier went into a comparable direction.)
These people now see and state that traditional conservatism has been taken over by neoliberal ruthlessness. This is a betrayal of the values and morals true conservatives (die Bürgerlichen) once held high. The same can be said for major former social-democratic parties, New Labour in Britain, the Democrats in the U.S. and in Germany the SPD, all of whom have slaughtered worker rights they once fought for on the altars of the neoliberal free-trade religion.
Should the change of mind within the ruling elite away from neoliberalism back to the original post world war II values not happen, the question of government solvency will soon turn into one of government legitimacy. The riots in the UK were one of the first signs for this to happen. But the loss of legitimacy will not only be in the eyes of the street rabble. It will also be in the eyes of conservative intellectuals like Moore and Schirrmacher and the likes of Hessel. That might be the real threat to the ruling cast.
As Daniel Larison points out no one expected an attack on Libya when Obama said that Gaddhafi should go. Today many feel that there is no possibility of an attack on Syria. Maybe there isn't, but the precedence of the attack on Libya can not be ignored. A UN sanction resolution on Syria is already in preparation and may is likely the next step for a war on Syria.
Obama will be attacked from the right if he doesn't follow through on Syria with something more than just rhetoric and useless sanctions. As his record shows he usually follows the rights lead.
Meanwhile Turkey bombs Kurds in Iraq after a guerrilla attack in Turkey, Israel bombs Gaza after a guerrilla attack from Sinai, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon indicts (with dubious proof) four Hizbullah men for killing Rafik Hariri, Israel had huge social demonstrations against Netanyahoo's economic policies, Iraq just saw a series of terror attacks and Jordan barely suppresses protests against the king.
The areas around Syria is now more than ever a powder keg and there are too many people with matches around. This fall the Middle East could see some rather large and violent explosion.
August 18, 2011
Those Huge Demonstrations In Syria
We know for a while that the protests in Syria are far smaller than reported:
That same night on July 15, I received news feeds from the AFP announcing a million protestors all over Syria, of which 500,000 in Hama alone.
In Hama however, they could not have been more than 10,000.
This ‘information’ was even more absurd due to the fact that the city of Hama counts only 370,000 inhabitants. … So what sources does AgenceFrancePresse (AFP) cite?
The same which crops up systematically throughout the media and has now become a monopoly in its own right, regarding the Syrian protests: the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Behind this superficial veneer of respectability and professionalism, hides a political organisation based in London, its president none other than Rami Abdel Raman, a man who has consistently sided against the Baath regime, who is loosely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Therefore, for many months now, the Western media have diffused an edited reality, corrected by a single source which nobody has deemed it necessary, it seems, to question.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, often cited, is one that feeds the "western" image of the protests. Another source are videos uploaded to Youtube.
Today we learn of a big demonstration in Homs arranged for the sole purpose of video making:
On a recent Sunday, 200 protesters marched in front of the Safir Hotel, the city’s most famous, carrying signs calling for the fall of the government and showing solidarity with Hama, a city to the north that was stormed on July 31.
The demonstrators walked slowly, led in the chants by a man whose face was concealed with a scarf. “Hama, we are with you until death,” they cried, with a few of the protesters in back filming the crowd with their cellphones. … “We’re not worried about the security,” said one of the protesters. “We will be done anyway in half an hour.” Since it was a small protest, he said, they would disperse by the time the buses carrying members of the security forces arrived. The protesters had lookouts near security stations, and they sent signals when the buses left. The main purpose of this protest was symbolic, he explained: they wanted to upload new videos on YouTube.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and AlJazeerah will very likely point to that video and claim it shows a big demonstration of 20,000+ with 20+ killed by the marauding forces of the Syrian army.
But video from huge demonstrations do not make them true. Homs seems to be rather quiet now and the few Syrian cities where armed troublemakers are still roaming around will likely be cleared in a short while.
Some people hope for the Turks to get involved in Syria. Forget about it. Syria, Iraq and Iran have, like Turkey, partly Kurdish population. If they want to pressure Turkey to stay away from an intervention in Syria they only need to unleash some of the Kurdish rebels into east Turkey. Indeed they may have already done so. Erdogan understands that and will stay out of Syria.
August 17, 2011
As Consequence Of Libya War Money Leaves From “Western” Banking System
When the U.S. promised the Libyan rebels access to Libyan government accounts I predicted that one of the consequences of this would be a retraction of sovereign funds from the "western" financial systems:
Anyone in power somewhere around the world is now advised to not keep any money in a U.S. based banking account. As soon as some idiots come up and proclaim a revolution, the U.S. will likely size that money and give a few crumbs of it to the revolution leader. (The rest will be taken by the usual banking crooks.)
This will be one of the many blowbacks from this lunatic attack on Libya.
Venezuela plans to transfer billions of dollars in cash reserves from abroad to banks in Russia, China and Brazil and tons of gold from European banks to its central bank vaults, according to documents reviewed Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.
The planned moves would include transferring $6.3 billion in cash reserves, most of which Venezuela now keeps in banks such as the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, and Barclays Bank in London to unnamed Russian, Chinese and Brazilian banks, one document said.
Moving its money away from accounts where "western" government can confiscate it at a whim is good for Venezuela. It takes away a major graft motive for "western" induced revolutions and thereby lowers the chances of one occurring.
For a "western" banking system that lacks basic capital the move is not a positive sign. But given the example Obama set with Libya we can expect that more countries will silently follow this move.
Most interesting for presidential historians may be the minutes of a briefing given to President-Elect Kennedy on Nov. 15, 1960, during which the CIA task force expressed skepticism about whether the mission was viable with the small invasion force that the administration insisted upon, in order to maintain plausible deniability.
The claim that this briefing was given to Kennedy is false.
As the NSA scholars write in their introduction to the papers (a page Keating himself links to):
On page 149 of Volume III, Pfeiffer quotes still-secret minutes of the Task Force meeting held on November 15, 1960, to prepare a briefing for the new President-elect, John F. Kennedy: “Our original concept is now seen to be unachievable in the face of the controls Castro has instituted,” the document states. “Our second concept (1,500-3000 man force to secure a beach with airstrip) is also now seen to be unachievable, except as a joint Agency/DOD action.”
This candid assessment was not shared with the President-elect then, nor later after the inauguration. As Pfeiffer points out, “what was being denied in confidence in mid-November 1960 became the fact of the Zapata Plan and the Bay of Pigs Operation in March 1961”—run only by the CIA, and with a force of 1,200 men.
The minutes of the meeting Keating asserts were given to Kennedy were from a briefing preparation meeting of some underlings who did not include the point when they briefed Kennedy himself. They were people who wanted the invasion to occur and therefore suppressed the point.
I do not know why Keating is misrepresenting this. He certainly found the quote, just as I did, through the NSA introduction. Did he simply not read the sentence immediately following the claim? Or does he want to further a "Kennedy was the worst president" claim other writers on his site are propagandizing? I for one would expect better from an editor of a major foreign policy site.
As usual such misrepresentations give cause to ask a serious question: What other stuff are Keating and Foreign Policy lying about?
Update 1:15pm Est: Keating has now corrected his piece. Anyway – why did he get it wrong in the first place if not for Kennedy bashing?
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