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NATO Wants Copulating With Those Possessed By The Devil
From this report by a Canadian journalist it seems that Gaddhafi's support in Libya has increased since NATO started bombing it. NATO is now also dropping leaflets and is showing, again, its total incompetence and lack of understanding of the local society:
As for the messages on the leaflets, the Libyans are quite amused at the clumsy translations. On one such note, the intended slogan is meant to urge civilians to go forward and "embrace" the rebels. Instead, it translates to encourage Libyans to go out and "copulate" with the rebels.
Another NATO missive was intended to advise those living within Gadhafi’s sector to pack up and move to a rebel-occupied territory. This somehow became garbled into a request for citizens to relocate to a "possessed" (as in, by the devil) area of Libya.
So NATO wants the Libyans in Tripoli to go and copulate with those possessed by the devil.
Somehow I doubt that the people, even the secular ones, will find this idea worth considering.
Terror In Iraq Is A False Argument For Occupation Troops
There were many very bloody terror attacks today in Iraq with over 70 dead. The U.S. media are trying to insinuate that this is good reason to keep U.S. troops there after the end of the year.
Here is the Washington Post version:
Lt. Col. Hachem Neama Abbas, an Iraqi army commander in Baghdad, said the military had been bracing for a new round of violence. The attacks, he said, are proof that insurgents still pose a threat to the country’s stability. They also raise questions about the Iraqi government’s ability to maintain security as American troops prepare to leave the country by December.
What bollocks!
These attacks don't raise that question. They give the answer. The 50,000 U.S.troops currently in Iraq obviously do not prevent such mass attacks. They are no help at all for the Iraqi governments's ability to maintain security. They are useless.
The 10,000 U.S. troops the Pentagon wants to keep there after the end of the year will not be able to do that either. They are an occupation force. Totally useless for Iraq and Iraqis and only to be put there in the perceived interest of the U.S. empire. A division size force that can be used to threaten Iran and when the chance arises to steal its hydrocarbons.
The attacks also show that U.S. military action in foreign countries is always destructive to their societies. The liberal interventionists who argue for interventions on the basis of human rights should take this as another point against their flawed theories.
Buffet Is Lying On “Future Promises”
In an NYT OpEd Warren Buffet is begging to make him pay more taxes:
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
The reason for Buffets ludicrous low tax rate is the very low 15% tax rate on capital gains.
It would make sense, and save a lot of problems, if the U.S. would tax capital gains at the same rate as income form a regular job.
But Buffet isn't asking for that. Instead he has an agenda which is to cut "entitlements" while only moderately rising taxes for the very rich. With regards to new super congress committee which is supposed to find a compromise on $1.5 trillion of government revenue and spending he remarks:
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
Here Buffet is just offering the false neoliberal conventional wisdom and follows the stampede into austerity. Those "future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill" do not exist. Social security has enough accumulated money and regular income to pay out what it promised for another 30 years or so. There is no need to cut it, or to increase payroll taxes, at all.
Medicare and medicaid would be fine too if they would be allowed to negotiate over, or self produce, the drugs people need. That a good socialized health care system can be run for less money than medicare is daily proven by the veteran health care system.
Social security and access to medical care are not entitlements. The people who get them have (in average) paid for them all their life. To get them is their right.
The whole op-ed is thereby a trap. "Look a billionaire asking for higher taxes. The man must be right." In reality Buffet is not offering to give up much at all. If he would asked to increase capital gain taxes to the payroll tax level it would have made a difference. But what he offers is just a undefined tax increase for very few, who will not even feel it at all, to set out a false argument to cut from many in need.
Libya: The “West” Is Finally Acknowledging The Tribal Conflict
On March 7 I wrote:
The "western" media is reporting the crisis in Libya as something similar to what happened in Egypt and Tunisia. But this is not a modern youth movement protesting against a dictatorship, this is a developing civil war between tribal entities – not exactly a novelty in Libya.…
Five month late the so called paper of the record finally acknowledges these facts:
While the rebels have sought to maintain a clean image and to portray themselves as fighting to establish a secular democracy, several recent acts of revenge have cast their ranks in a less favorable light. They have also raised the possibility that any rebel victory over Colonel Qaddafi could disintegrate into the sort of tribal tensions that have plagued Libya for centuries.
In recent weeks, rebel fighters in Libya’s western mountains and around the coastal city of Misurata have lashed out at civilians because their tribes supported Colonel Qaddafi, looting mountain villages and emptying a civilian neighborhood.
I was accused of arguing from a feeling of "cultural superiority" when I wrote that March piece about Libyan tribes. Maybe I was, though I don't think so, but at least I was right.
My piece finished with this:
With "western" intervention the situation on the ground would quickly deteriorate. This would cost a lot more lives than any situation in which the Libyan people fight this out by and for themselves.
The New York Times finishes with a somewhat similar sense:
Members of the tribes close to Colonel Qaddafi — like his own tribe, the Qaddafa, or the larger Maghraha, and small tribes associated with them — may face the greatest danger from “tribal revenge,” George Joffe, a Libya expert at the University of Cambridge, wrote in another e-mail. “And, of course, the longer this struggle continues, the more likely and bitter that will become.”
It is time to stop any support for any side of this conflict. Let the Libyans fight it out for themselves. That would, in the end, be a much less bloody affair than onside support for this or that tribe.
Open Thread – Aug 13
Free Speech – Only When Convenient
Getting challenged from the street reactionary governments all over the world response in just the same ways:
The prime minister told parliament on Thursday that Facebook, Twitter and Research in Motion (Rim), the maker of BlackBerry devices, should take more responsibility for content posted on their networks, warning the government would look to ban people from major social networks if they were suspected of inciting violence online.
The home secretary, Theresa May, is to hold meetings with the three companies within weeks.
The police have promised to track down those suspected of inciting the violence on Twitter, but much of the planning for the disturbances took place in the relatively private world of the BlackBerry Messenger service.
Meanwhile in Washington (slightly modified):
In the wake of historic protests in Britain spurred by the use of social media, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in strong support of Internet freedom in Jack Morton Auditorium Tuesday.
Clinton commended the British people and journalists who took to Facebook and Twitter to organize protests and share stories from London.
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“What happened in Britain and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protesters seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the Internet,” Clinton said. “In each case people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic division of their lives.”
It would certainly be interesting to listen in on Clinton's next talk with Cameron.
I suspect she will explain how the U.S. will shut down social internet media when the protest wave will finally move there.
A False NYT Claim About Friendly Fire Incidents
The authors of this NYT story, U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Police, Survivors Say, make a conscious effort to claim that such incidents are uncommon.
While there have been dozens of cases of Afghan soldiers firing on members of the NATO-led military coalition, reports of NATO soldiers firing on their Afghan counterparts are rare.
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NATO and Afghan forces have shot at each other before, often as a result of heated arguments. About 50 coalition soldiers, at least 30 of them Americans, have died in what the military calls “green-on-blue” attacks since March 2009, when Afghan and coalition forces began patrolling together regularly.
But reports of NATO soldiers firing on their Afghan counterparts are uncommon.
Shorter NYT: "Those damned Afghan police kill our soldiers while our soldiers nearly never kill them."
But as a cursory web search can easily prove, that claim is utterly false. About as many Afghan security forces get killed by NATO soldiers in "blue on green" events than NATO soldiers get killed by Afghan security forces.
For the record an incomplete list:
Cont. reading: A False NYT Claim About Friendly Fire Incidents
“The Insurgents Are Losing”
Reading through the comments on various news sides not one persons seems to believe this story:
A group of “less than 10” insurgents, including the fighter who allegedly shot the Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, were tracked down at a compound in eastern Afghanistan early Monday and killed in airstrikes by F-16 fighter planes, according to Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, and other military officials.
One wonders why the military felt the need to come out with this obvious fairytale.
It hurts its own credibility with such a story.
The Taliban deny it and claim that the fighters had immediately left Wardak province after trapping the helicopter. That story actually makes a lot of sense.
But there is even more unbelievable U.S. propaganda further down in the first linked piece:
“All across Afghanistan, the insurgents are losing. They’re losing territory, they’re losing leadership, they’re losing weapons and supplies, they’re losing public support,” [General Allen] said. “More and more, the insurgents are losing resolve and the will to fight.”
We know that the numbers of districts with Taliban activity is up, the number of IEDs is at a record high, the number of assassination by the Taliban is up, the numbers of U.S. an Afghan security forces' casualties is the highest ever and the number of civilian casualties is sharply up. But all that does not count. The insurgents are losing – the General says so, so they must be.
But who does he think will actually believe him?
Cameron’s Sick Pockets Of Society
This is from David Cameron's speech today. It required only slight modifications in the third graph to be truthful and perfect:
Its all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country. For too long there has been a lack of focus and a complete lack of respect shown by these groups of thugs.
I am clear that they are in no way representative of the vast majority of young people in our country who despise them frankly as much as the rest of us do. But there are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick.
When we see [banksters and hedge fund managers as young as 25 and 30] looting and laughing, when we see the disgusting sight of [an old couple] with people pretending to help them while they are robbing them [through fraudulent mortgages], it is clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society.
For me the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing I have spoken about for years: it is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society.
People allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and that their actions do not have consequences. Well they do have consequences.
We need to have a clearer code of values and standards that we expect people to live by and stronger penalties if they cross the line. Restoring a stronger sense of responsibility across our society in every town in every street in ever estate is something I am determined to do.
Unfortunately Cameron would never make such a speech with the banksters and hedgies in mind. He totally lacks selfawareness and does not understand that the looters in the streets of London, Manchester and Birmingham are just copycats when they are taking what they do not own. The real sick pockets of his society are not the looters but are sitting in the city of London.
For years the neo-liberals have praised consumption, the selfishness of Ayn Rand and have not a shown the tiniest bit of qualm when robbing first from the people and now from whole nations.
With such amoral examples praised and held up to the highest honors by Cameron and his media friends, how can one blame the youth for following them? Preaching greed is good has consequences.
Theresa May Killed Due To British Revolt
A British revolution website reported today that Home Secretary of Britain Theresa May was found dead in her London home after protesting against David Cameron's decision to use cannons against peaceful protestors. Her lifeless body was found by a maid shortly after Defence Minister Liam Fox was seen leaving her home.
The report has yet to be confirmed. As the following exmples show, reports on the death of officials by other protests movements where at times exaggerated.
Cont. reading: Theresa May Killed Due To British Revolt
Hillhouse Bin Laden Story Confirmed
Commentator bokonon in a comment here pointed to posting by Raelynn Hillhouse: Bin Laden Turned in by Informant — Courier Was Cover Story
Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department's Rewards for Justice program.
The informant was a walk-in.
The ISI officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family. My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad, a city with such a high concentration of military that I'm told there's no equivalent in the US.
Without further confirmation I took that with some bigger grains of salt.
But here is an excerpt from comments at the blog of Patrick Lang, former Defense Intelligence Chief for the Middle East and still in good contact with the relevant agencies.
Posted by: hope4usa | 09 August 2011 at 10:39 AM
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Posted by: Patrick Lang | 09 August 2011 at 10:44 AM
It'll accept that as confirmation.
But of course one can never be sure with all those tricky agencies involved and this will therefore just end up making the various conspiracy theories more complicated.
Yang Jiechi Says Britain’s Cameron Has Lost Legitimacy
Beijing — Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi condemned British Prime Minister David Cameron’s regime for failing to protect Chinese commercial merchandise in London and said the British leader “has lost legitimacy” because of his violent response to legitimate British peoples aspirations for greater social justice.
Speaking with African Union (AU) Chairman Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo at the Foreign Ministry, Yang Jiechi said Chinese officials have spoken with their British counterparts to demand that Britain honor the WTO agreement, which requires countries to protect foreign merchandise and properties, after several days of attacks by British mobs against Chinese and African shops.
Yang Jiechi said the Cameron regime will not succeed in using the attacks on foreign facilities to deflect global attention from “the real story unfolding in Britain” and the months of peaceful protests by its people who have been calling for reforms.
“This is not about China or Zimbabwe or any other country. This is about the legitimate aspirations of the British people for dignity, universal rights and the rule of law,” Yang Jiechi said.
The violence, arrests and intimidation against the British people “must stop,” the minister said, and neither they nor the international community will accept “half measures or lofty speeches” from the Cameron regime.
Cameron “is not indispensable” and China has “absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power,” she said. “Our goal is to see that the will of the British people for a democratic transformation occurs.”
The British leader “has failed to deliver on the promises he’s made. He has sought and accepted aid from the Americans as to how to repress his own people,” Yang Jiechi said. He called on more countries in the international community to speak out “as forcefully as we have.”
Mbasogo said the AU is trying to use its collective political and economic power to get Cameron to turn away from violence. He described the situation of British refugees who have fled the unrest for France as “very grave indeed.”
The AU representative called for an end to the violence, for the British people to have their voices heard, and for them to then be allowed to make the decisions about how their country should move forward.
Cont. reading: Yang Jiechi Says Britain’s Cameron Has Lost Legitimacy
Preparing For War On Syria
Arab nations condemn Syria as crackdown mounts
Arab nations joined the international chorus of condemnation against President Bashar Assad's regime Monday, with Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia pulling out their ambassadors as a besieged Syrian city came under fresh artillery fire.
Now this is of course a joke because those bastions of human rights Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait just put down a civil uprising in Bahrain with just the same methods Assad is using in Syria.
The difference is that, while the protests in Bahrain included rioting, the people involved were not armed. There is ample evidence by now that the protest in Syria are much more violent and some of the people involved are significantly armed.
And forget the half sentence about "fresh artillery fire". There is no evidence of all that the Syrian army is using artillery. None of the available videos has shown mortars or artillery or damage that could have been caused by them. The armies adversaries so far have used automatic weapons and sniper rifles. That makes it somewhat difficult for the army to take the towns back under control. But that would certainly not be a reason to apply highly destructive artillery into build up areas and to destroy the roads the army needs to move on.
Back to the Gulf states. The U.S. must have pushed them to do take this laughable step. Within the propaganda tale the "west" can now feel "invited" to take measures further. It is a sure sign that it the U.S. is planing to escalate the issue.
There was a discussion on the German TV yesterday about intervention in Syria. While the result was correct, that any intervention would be bad for everyone involved and lead to total chaos, the information given was extremely one sided. Assad was called a purposeful murderer of his people as if he wants to kill people for just for the fun of it and as if he had started the whole thing. There was no mentioning at all of the 400+ soldiers and policemen the "peaceful protesters" have killed so far or about the weapons coming in from the Salafis in Jordan, from Tripoli and Iraq.
The typical "western" propaganda machine is now in full assault mode. The people behind it will do everything to keep the protests in Syria alive and to get them more arms. Some "event" will be found, likely as false as CNN's story about Syrian baby dying in incubators, to press Russia and China to change their mind.
That mind change is unlikely to come. There might then be another NATO coalition of the willing that may press and support the Sunni Turkey government to go all in and attack Syria. I hope the Turks understand that this would rip also their country apart.
The Rebels Advance On Brega
Only in June did the rebels not advance on Brega. I wonder why. And when will they arrive?
Trapping The Night Raids
(updated below)
In Afghanistan the U.S. military launches about a dozen kill or capture raids each night.
These are supposed to take out leading Taliban person but, as they are based on dubious intelligence, often go wrong and hit peaceful people or even people associated with the Afghan government. Additional people get killed in the protests against such raids.
There is an obvious strategy to counter such raids or at least to make them more difficult. Traps could be laid that would provoke night raids and allow to hit the raiding force as hard as possible. I have wondered for a while if/when such were happening.
Laying a trap should be easy to do. A tip-off to the Afghan secret service NDS about an imminent Taliban leader meeting, some suspect geo-locatable mobile phone calls from and to Pakistan from a secluded compound and a few cars or motorcycle aggregating at that place at night should be enough to get the military's interest. Then hide, wait for the choppers and take them out.
I suspect that this might well have been such a trap:
Insurgents shot down a NATO Chinook helicopter during an overnight operation in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 37 people on board, a coalition military official said on Saturday.
Afghan military officials put the death toll at 38, including 31 Americans and seven Afghan commandos.
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The helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Tangi valley of the Wardak Province just west of Kabul, the coalition official said. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack.
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A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said insurgents shot down the helicopter around 11 p.m. Friday as it was launching an operation on a house where the militants were gathering in the Tangi Joyee region of the district of Saidabad in the eastern part of the province. Eight militants were killed in the fight that continued after the helicopter fell, he said.
A few of such incidents, initiated all over the country, might make the U.S. military much more reluctant to launch more raids.
Update (1:00pm) :
As it turns out my hunch was right and this incident was very likely a trap:
The Taliban claimed its fighters had ambushed Western troops after being tipped off to an imminent night raid in the district. The crash site is located in Wardak's Tangi valley, where the insurgents are extremely active.
The Wardak police chief, Gen. Abdul Qayuum Baqizoi, said the American strike was aimed at a meeting of insurgent figures in the district, which is considered a perilous one.
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The Taliban statement, from spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, was unusually specific in some of its details, …
The "meeting of insurgent figures" was likely a trap as described above. The unusual detailed statement from the Taliban, and the fact that they were the first to come out with the news today, shows that the attack was actually planned in advance and the propaganda pre-prepared. The Taliban claim of having been "tipped off" is dubious. It will make U.S. military more suspicious of their Afghan co-fighters and may have been inserted just to create that effect.
But from a propaganda standpoint this will have the biggest effect:
The operators from SEAL Team Six were flown by a crew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
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One source says the team was thought to include 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew.
The sources thought this was the largest single loss of life ever for SEAL Team Six, known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
It were operators from SEAL Team Six, aka DevGru, that killed Osama Bin Laden.
To now have killed a big number of them is a huge victory for the Taliban and their associated groups.
The Absurdity Of Repression In …?
Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, aka the Angry Arab, writes:
Look at this example of the absurdity of repression in Iran: "In the 40C heat of an Iranian summer, what better way to have fun and stay cool than a water fight with friends? In the Islamic republic, however, things are a bit more complicated. For one group of boys and girls, their game turned serious when they were arrested for taking part in a water pistol fight in a park in the capital, Tehran."
The absurdity of repression. Indeed:
Wandsworth Council said organisers were inviting people through Facebook to participate in the event in late July.
Police officers with dogs will patrol the park entrances and stop suspects, who could face up to a £200 fine.
The warning comes after a similarly organised water fight in Hyde Park resulted in disorder and arrests.
Three people were arrested after some 1,500 people got involved in the water fight on 4 June, which continued for eight hours and resulted in the closure of Oxford Street to traffic.
Why do I fail to find any criticism at the Angry Arab site of the water pistol fight arrests and the absurdity of repression in the United Kingdom?
Russia: NATO Planning For War On Syria
Dmitry Rogozin is the Russian envoy to NATO. He is outspoken and sometimes seems to exaggerate but he is never far from reality. See for example his early take on Libya.
When Rogozin says that NATO is making plans for attacking Syria, I believe him.
Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said Friday that the alliance is planning a military campaign against Syria to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, local media reported.
In an interview with Russia's Izvestia daily newspaper, Rogozin said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also probably establishing a long-reaching goal of preparing an attack on Iran.
Rogozin said a statement Wednesday from the UN Security Council, which confirmed that the current situation in Syria had not yet called for NATO interference, meant that planning for a military campaign was underway.
"It could be a logical conclusion for those military and propaganda operations, which have been carried out by certain Western countries against North Africa," Rogozin said.
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The diplomat also warned that the "noose around Iran is tightening," saying Moscow is seriously concerned about "an escalation of a large-scale war in this huge region."
While I still do not believe that a U.S. attack on Iran is imminent, the propaganda against Iran is ongoing with now officials(!) making stupid claims about Iranian collaboration with Al Qaeda. If a serious diversion is needed from a collapsing economy Washington might feel it needs a bigger war. Remember that it was only World War II that finally pulled the U.S. out of the first Great Depression.
WaPo Lies About UN ‘Resolution’ On Syria
A Washington Post news piece on the revolt in Syria falsely claims that a UN Security Council resolution has been issued with regard to the situation there:
With the U.N. Security Council meeting to review a resolution condemning Syria ..
[…]
.. the Security Council issued a resolution condemning the violence ..
[…]
But activists said the resolution’s significance is blunted ..
[…]
.. “the resolution is meaningless,” human rights activist Wissam Tarif said in Beirut.
[…]
Though the U.N. resolution called for political reforms, ..
There was and is no U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria.
Yesterday a statement was issued by the current president of the UNSC. Such a Presidential Statement:
is often created when the United Nations Security Council cannot reach consensus or are prevented from passing a resolution by a permanent member's veto, or threat thereof. Such statements are similar in content, format, and tone to resolutions, but are not legally binding.
The statement includes a:
Call for an immediate end to all violence and urge all sides to act with utmost restrain, and to refrain from reprisals, including attacks against state institutions.
There are armed gangs fighting against the Syrian government. The UNSC presidential statement acknowledges this when it explicitly urges to refrain from violence against state institutions.
But reading the Washington Post one would not learn this at all. Its reporting gets the very basic facts wrong in using the term "resolution", which would be something with legal consequences, instead of a presidential statement. It also does not acknowledge that the Syrian army is up against an armed resistance. With such reporting the Washington Post is again more a lying propaganda shop than a news organization.
Update:
In the comments philippe asks why I especially pick on WaPo here. I do so because the other major "western" mainstream media, unlike what philippe asserts, do report the issue as it should be reported – by making clear that this is just a non-binding statement, not a resolution.
The Guardian: Hague calls for Syria to end crackdown after UN statement
Foreign secretary William Hague urged the "discredited" Syrian regime to end its violent repression as the United Nations security council adopted a statement condemning attacks on civilians and widespread human rights abuses.
[…]
Though the presidential statement has no teeth and was less than the full security council resolution that had been pressed for by the US, UK and France, it is an indication of growing impatience within the international community towards the Syrian crackdown.
The New York Times: Security Council Rebuke of Syria Ends Prolonged Deadlock
The council’s action, which took the form of what is known as a presidential statement, condemned “widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities.”
Western nations had sought a resolution, the strongest council action. But Russia, a permanent Security Council member with veto power, which had led the opposition to any action for months on the basis of not interfering in internal affairs, had made clear from the outset that it considered a resolution excessive.
You can also check the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph and others – they all report correctly on this issue.
The Washington Post is clearly standing out here with its false reporting.
Libya: NATO Pirates Take Ship At High Sea
According to the Petrolium Economists (currently VERY slow load) some Libyan rebels pirated an oil tanker with the help of "western" special forces:
Libyan rebel forces last night boarded a fuel tanker belonging to Muammar Gaddafi's regime, seized it and are sailing the vessel laden with gasoline to Benghazi.
The ship was boarded by Libyan nationals acting without the National Transitional Council's (NTC) knowledge, said a source familiar with the operation. A European government provided logistical support for the action, which is believed to have involved special forces boarding the ship from the air.
[…]
Nato began interdicting seaborne supplies of fuel to the regime in May, leaving the Cartagena and its cargo stranded in the Mediterranean. It was originally chartered to land the fuel in Tripoli.In recent weeks, it has been anchored off Malta and then Algeria. It recently returned to Malta to pick up more bunker fuel. It was boarded by special forces while sitting offshore Malta.
[…]
At 17:00 UK time on 3 August, the Cartagena was said to be sailing towards Benghazi. Ship-tracking services could not locate the vessel, suggesting its transponder had been shut off.
The Cartagena was at high sea and pirating it has certainly nothing to do with "protecting civilians" in Libya. My best guess is that the French did this. I am curious with what excuse NATO will come up for committing piracy on the open sea.
The U.S. is currently trying to get Russia and China to agree to some UNSC statement on Syria. They are reluctant to do so as the UNSC resolutions on Libya were thoroughly abused by the "west". This will make them even more reluctant to agree on anything similar with regards to Syria or any other country.
“Two To Three Years” To Take Out Gaddhafi
President Obama told a bipartisan group of members of Congress today that he expects the U.S. would be actively involved in any military action against Libya for "days, not weeks," after which he said the U.S. would take more of a supporting role, sources tell ABC News.
[…]
"We are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the protection of civilians in Libya," he said.
Obama: U.S. Involvement in Libya Action Would Last 'Days, Not Weeks'
That was on march 18. As usual, Obama lied. Here on both points, the timeframe of the role of the U.S. and the "well-defined goal".
If the current plans to overthrow Gaddhafi continue how long will the U.S. and the other attackers be involved in Libya? The imperial think tanks which are propagandizing and planing this affair believe it will be for a very looong time.
In what could hardly have been music to NATO’s ears, [a panel of experts assembled last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington] concluded that while “change” will come to Libya in the form of Qaddafi’s departure from power, it could take as long as two to three years for that to happen.
[…]
[Robert Danin, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations] says the prospects for a drawn-out war to oust Qaddafi, coupled with the lack of standing institutions that a new government like the TNC will be able to count on, means the international community is engaged in Libya for some time to come.
“All the problems we’re seeing now are further reminder that even when Qaddafi goes, we won’t be able to just pick up and leave,” he says. “To some extent, the international community has committed to nation-building in Libya.”
And while the approach President Obama has taken means the US is less engaged than the British and French, Danin says the US will still be on the hook once Qaddafi goes.
“No one should have the illusion that we [the US] aren’t in this,” he say. “We are.”
That international community Danin dreams of are the three states that started this war. France, Great Britain and the U.S. No other country will be willing to foot the bills for nation-building in Libya. As the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan have shown nation-building, aka installing a puppy regime and stabilizing it by force, takes a decade.
I wonder how the electorates in France, Great Britain and in the U.S. feel about this.
- Will they really allow a prolonged attack on Libya, two to three years?
- Will they allow the de facto occupation that will have to follow if Gaddhafi falls?
- Will they be willing to pay for a decade of nation-building in Libya?
But maybe the only relevant question is this one:
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Col. Lang,
I know this is off topic. RJ Hillhouse is reporting that OBL was caught/killed due to ISI informant who wanted the 25m reward. Its on FDL–scroll down. She goes on to say Saudi government was paying Pakistan to keep him under house arrest in Abbotabad. I was curious of your take on that.