Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Libya can sting Europe like 'swarm of bees': Kadhafi

TRIPOLI — Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi threatened retaliation against Europe on Friday unless NATO ceases its operations, saying loyalist forces can launch stinging attacks like "locusts and bees."

The embattled leader also urged supporters to retrieve weapons that France supplied to rebels battling his regime, in a speech broadcast by loudspeakers to crowds in Tripoli's emblematic Green Square.

"The Libyan people are capable, one day, of taking the battle to Europe and the Mediterranean" region, Kadhafi said in the message, as thousands of supporters massed in the landmark square in the centre of the capital.

"They could attack your homes, your offices, your families (who) could become legitimate military targets because you have transformed our offices, headquarters, homes and children into military targets which you say are legitimate," Kadhafi said.

"If we decide to do so, we are capable of throwing ourselves on Europe like swarms of locusts or bees.

"So we advise you to back-track before you face a catastrophe," he warned in a speech to mark 100 days of the NATO military campaign against the North African country.

The flamboyant Kadhafi was speaking from a secret location, but his voice boomed across the square, where the authorities were hoping to gather one million regime supporters.

The crowds, waving green flights and carrying portraits of Kadhafi, chanted slogans of allegiance to "God, Kadhafi and Libya," while some fired guns into the air in celebration as the night sky was lit by fireworks.

"March on the jebel (Nafusa) and seize the weapons that the French have supplied. If later you want to pardon them (the rebels), that's up to you," Kadhafi said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Friday that this week's arms drop was meant only to defend peaceful civilians from Kadhafi's forces and thus fell in line with existing UN resolutions on the conflict.

"Civilians had been attacked by Kadhafi's forces and were in an extremely vulnerable situation and that is why medicine, food and also weapons of self-defence were parachuted," Juppe said France Inter radio.

....

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gmmQsfkviOIY8RCgae3ZDeQOqdRA?docId=CNG.e740b6d0077ba8c28f6d1dd931c6f679.8b1

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Gaddafi is losing ground and as this article points out back in 2010, Gaddafi called a Jihad against Switzerland likely because the country had once arrested one of his sons for beating servants.

Is Gaddafi Inciting Terrorist Attacks Against Europe?

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/173136/20110701/gaddafi-threaten-attack-europe-terrorist.htm

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Very recent Saif al-Islam interview with RT.

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Nobody in Libya supports Ghazafi... just the half a million to a million people on the streets in Tripoli in this video from today . Why isn't the Western media covering this?

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Turkey officially recognises Libya's anti-government rebels and promises to give them at least $200m in aid, as it cuts all diplomatic ties with Colonel Gaddafi.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi and pledged $200m in aid to the rebel Transitional National Council.

It was time for leader Muammar Gaddafi to leave Libya, Davutoglu said, declaring the rebel National Council "a legitimate representative of the Libyan people."

"Public demand for reforms should be answered, Gaddafi should go and Libya shouldn't be divided," Ahmet Davutoglu said.

Turkey also officially withdrew its ambassador, Salim Levent Sahinkaya, from Tripoli, although he left the capital in March due to safety concerns.

Istanbul has long maintained ties with Colonel Gaddafi's regime and initially expressed discomfort at Nato air strikes.

The aid is in addition to a $100m fund for Libyan rebels Turkey announced in June.

...

http://www.channel4.com/news/turkey-recognises-libya-rebels

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Ghazafi forces intercepted an arms shipment by Qatar to the rebels. Looks like brand new Belgian FN FALs.

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Friday prayers taking place on Green square in Tripoli by Ghazafi supporters

[retro]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

The Assassination of Abdel Fatah Younes



A clue as to what Libya’s rebels are about
by Justin Raimondo, August 01, 2011
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Any illusions that the US and its NATO allies are backing “democracy” in Libya against the reign of Moammar Gadhafi evaporated last week as the rebel chief of staff, Abdel Fatah Younes, was murdered – not by Gadhafi’s troops, but by his own “Free Libya” forces.

A former Interior Minister and once quite close to the Libyan dictator, Younes defected to the rebel ranks early in the insurgency, when Benghazi was under assault from loyalist forces. With much military experience, and prominent in his own right, Younes’ was immediately appointed commander of the rebel army by the “National Transitional Council,” the rebels’ political arm, and hailed by the West and their Libyan proxies as a great patriot and military leader.

He was opposed, however, by Khalifa Haftar (sometimes spelled Hifter), a former Libyan military commander who defected to the Chadian forces in Libya’s war with Chad. Haftar set up his own guerrilla group, funded by the CIA and Saddam Hussein. After being kicked out of Chad, Haftar’s last known address, before returning to Libya to join the rebel forces, was less than five miles away from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Back in April, the “Free Libya” armed forces announced that Haftar had replaced Younes as top commander – but, as the Guardian reported, the NTC reversed this attempted coup – and “denied there had ever been a change.”

The factional warfare was tamped down, for the moment, by a compromise effected at the top: in the end, neither Younes nor Haftar was given the title of Commander El Supremo. Instead, an intermediary process was set up, with the “army” – such as it is – put under the Defense Minister, Omar Hariri, and then Hariri’s successor, Jalal al-Dogheily, with Younes demoted to chief of staff and Haftar given the number three position.

Yet beneath the surface, the factional and tribal tensions reached the boiling point. Younes was summoned to Benghazi by the NTC to discuss certain “military matters,” according to the Official Story, but in reality he was under arrest and being detained to answer charges he was in secret communication with Gadhafi. He was murdered on the way, supposedly by members of the “September 17 Martyrs Brigade,” a group said to have ties with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – essentially al-Qaeda-in-Libya. The Fighting Group is an officially designated terrorist organization whose assets are subject to seizure by the US State Department – however, in this case, since that very same State Department is the primary sponsor of US intervention in Libya, one supposes that executive order 13224 is inoperative. Indeed, since US aid is flowing to the rebels, we can say with certainty that the assassination of Younes was funded by the American taxpayers.

Aside from the general barbarity of this act, which gives us a glimpse of what the rebel regime will look like if and when they take power in all of Libya, look at the curious factional line up in the rebels’ internal power struggles. Although the Official Story, as promulgated by the NTC, keeps changing – initially, a “pro-Gadhafi” faction in Benghazi, an “armed gang,” was blamed for the killing, but there are too many Western reporters in town to keep a lid on the truth (or some approximation of it) for long. Now we are told that those responsible for the killing – rebel soldiers – have been arrested. However, whomever gets the Official Blame in the end isn’t what’s interesting: the real scoop is that our boy, Haftar – think Ahmed Chlabi, Libyan version – is aligned with the Islamists against the more secular elements, defectors like Younes and the Benghazi lawyers who make up the civilian leadership of the rebellion.

As in the Balkans, where US-trained and-funded “Kosovo Liberation Army” guerrillas fought alongside al-Qaeda’s legions and NATO forces, so the same alliance is fighting to “liberate” Libya. It is as if a time machine has thrust us back in the Clinton years – and indeed these are the Clinton years, redux, at least in the foreign policy realm, as this is the policy area that has been ceded to the Clintons by a disengaged and generally hapless President Obama. All of which puts in a new perspective recent boasts by top administration officials and various “experts” that we are on the verge of finally defeating al-Qaeda. Why, then, are they allying with Osama bin Laden’s Libyan legatees?

It makes no sense, but then again this entire Libyan adventure has never made any sense. We were told that the prevention of a “humanitarian disaster” was the reason for US/NATO intervention in the first place, with a top US official putting the death figure at more than 100,000 if NATO failed to lift the siege of Benghazi. Yet it was the defection of Gen. Younes, who commanded the besiegers, that really turned the tide of the war. This gave him tremendous authority – and aroused the ire of his tribal and ideological enemies. Whichever scapegoat gets blamed for the act, it is clear that both the Islamists and Washington’s-sock-puppet Haftar worked to undermine Younes, spreading rumors about his alleged secret contacts with Tripoli, getting him summoned to Benghazi for interrogation – and ultimately engineering his assassination.

That this happened shortly after the primary agitator of the NATO campaign, the government of British Prime Minister David Cameron, granted official diplomatic recognition to the NTC as the “legitimate” government of Libya, unceremoniously kicking out Gadhafi’s ambassador and staff, just underscores what critics of the Western intervention have said all along: that the policymakers behind this intervention never knew what they were getting into.

We were told, remember, that the clock was ticking, and the death of tens of thousands, at the very least, was imminent. Gadhafi, if he were allowed to take Benghazi, would have depopulated the city – which is precisely what the rebels are doing in the mountainous region of western Libya, as Der Spiegel reports:

“Several towns along the route [of the rebels’ advance] are now completely depopulated. One is Awaniya, a town of 15,000 people until the rebels captured it. The shops lining the highway in Awaniya were looted and are now littered with garbage. In some stores, even the shelves are missing. In the town itself, houses stand empty and ransacked, and some have been burned down. Other towns look similar. New houses are still burning days after the rebels took over, and trucks are removing anything that was overlooked during the initial looting: sacks of wheat as well as food and sheep.

A piece of graffiti on the wall of an empty supermarket in Awaniya berates the ‘Mashashiya traitors.’ The Mashashiya are the tribe that lived in Awaniya and two other nearby towns. Most of its members supported Gadhafi, as did the inhabitants of most of the remaining depopulated towns along the road from Zintan to the front, including Qawalish.”

The assassination of Younes and the scorched earth tactics of the Libyan “liberation” army should give us a clue as to what kind of future they envision for their nation. As to why we haven’t heard much about this aspect of the rebel army, Der Spiegel reports:

“The rebels respond aggressively to anyone who tries to investigate. A SPIEGEL team was taken into custody in Awaniya, escorted to the Zintan command post and interrogated.”

If this is how they treat foreign media, which they’ve been cultivating with some success so far, it’s not hard to imagine how they’ll deal with their own media organizations. The rebels no more represent the forces of “democracy” than do Gadhafi’s forces: this is a civil war in which both sides aim to establish a de facto dictatorship, and employ the same brutal methods. What is the American interest in the outcome?

In a rational world, the assassination of a major rebel commander by his own side would preclude US recognition of the rebel government, if not forever than for the foreseeable future. It would also provoke a major rethinking of a policy that played such a volatile wild card as the Libyan rebels. In the Bizarro World alternate universe from which US policymakers issue their pronouncements, however, this is just a minor glitch, to be brushed aside as the armies of Libyan “liberation” sweep onward to victory. As Obama administration shill Juan Cole put it:

“Younis was too close to Qaddafi, despite his defection, to remain truly popular with the rebels, and it is a little unlikely that his death will affect the terms of the uprising, despite what some observers are saying. He was not allowed to be a field officer because of the mistrust, so his absence would not affect the battlefield.

“In fact, the hardy Free Libya forces of the Western Mountain regions took a strategic town near the Tunisian border as news of his assassination was announced. And, Brega, though being cleared of mines, has fallen to Free Libya forces in the east, a major advance for the rebels. Western observers keep looking for a stalemate, but the rebels have in fact steadily advanced.”

Never mind those “isolationist” naysayers and “Mashashiya traitors” – what do they know? Onward, soldiers of “democracy” and harbingers of the “Arab Spring,” Washington-style! Onward to victory!

During the Bush era, Prof. Cole was the go-to academic for trenchant analysis of why the neoconservative strategy for defeating terrorism – invading the Arab world – was disastrously misguided. Today he stands with the Obama administration and the neocons in their enthusiasm for the US/NATO-supported Libyan rebels, who are in no way different from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress or any of the other CIA-backed exile groups, including Haftar’s outfit. Incredibly, Cole had nothing to say about the assassination of Younes other than that it wouldn’t mean beans in the long-run, as the rebels are headed for victory. If this brazen murder raised any questions in his mind as to the nature of the forces he’s aligned himself with, Cole has so far kept silent.

As for our State Department, they, too, are mum – and I, for one, can hardly blame them. What are they supposed to say – that we’re aiding and abetting a gang of savages in Libya?

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/07/31/younes/

[Federate]

Re: Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan crisis

Cables show NATO’s intervention in Libya is all about oil

By SYED RASHID HUSAIN

Published: Jul 30, 2011 23:43 Updated: Jul 30, 2011 23:43

Geo-strategic considerations, arm twisting, long-term objectives and behind-the-door haggling continue to impact the global energy chess board, as national interests, political and strategic priorities and considerations of major stake holders in the ongoing, West-led, get-Qaddafi campaign in Libya unravels, the tight global energy balance is getting under pressure — at least in the short term.

Much seems at stake. Last Tuesday, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez underlined, “above all because we cannot give a blank check to NATO so that it can bomb any nation over oil.

“We are not going to do that; Venezuela will not do that,” Ramirez said.

This is a tough position — bringing politics back into the fore on the energy front too. Venezuela has been siding with Muammar Qaddafi in the conflict, contending that the true aim of the NATO campaign is to gain control of Libya’s oil.

Ramirez’s prescription for taking the bull out of crude markets was clear: “Well, stop the bombings against Libya, stop the aggression against Iran.”

He underlined, “the industrialized countries, the most aggressive ones, the United States, incite destabilization” in oil-producing countries.

“It’s aggression against OPEC,” Ramirez said. Often regarded as a hawk in OPEC he also spoke of the pressure on producers’.

However, it is interesting to note that despite long-standing tensions between Chavez and the US government, the United States remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. And in the meantime, two days after the blitz against the western interests, on Thursday to be exact, President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela’s state oil company will boost its crude output by 30,000 barrels a day beginning Thursday in honor of his 57th birthday. The state oil company has set a goal of producing 4.15 million barrels of crude a day in 2015.

And while the battle for the ultimate ‘prize’ continues in and around Brega and Tripoli, US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks throw light on the real reasons behind NATO’s campaign against Libya.

Far from initiating a “humanitarian” intervention to protect civilians against Muammar Qaddafi’s government, Washington backed the NATO intervention for one reason only — the installation of a regime that better serves the strategic interests of the US, as well as its oil majors — often described as the new tool of imperial hegemony, the cables indicate.

The cables also refer to Libya’s “hydrocarbon producing potential” and the “high expectations” among international oil companies. According to a September 2009 cable, then acting head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), Ali Sugheir, told the US Embassy that major “sedimentary basins with oil and gas resources had been discovered in Libya,” with seismic data indicating “much more remained to be discovered across the country.”

The scramble by dozens of international oil and gas companies to cash in on the lifting of sanctions, however, soon produced the problems, in the words of a November 2007 cable, of the “Libyan resource nationalism” — policies designed to increase the Libyan government’s “control over and share of revenue from hydrocarbon resources.”

Qaddafi’s policy forced oil majors to renegotiate their contracts under the latest iteration of Libya’s Exploration and Productions Sharing Agreement (EPSA IV). Between 2007 and 2008, major companies such as ExxonMobil, Petro-Canada, Repsol (Spain), Total (France), ENI (Italy), and Occidental (US) were compelled to sign new deals-on significantly less favorable terms than they had previously enjoyed-and were collectively made to pay $5.4 billion in upfront “bonus” payments.

A June 2008 cable says that the Oasis Group — including US firms ConocoPhillips, Marathon and Hess — was reportedly “next on the block,” despite having already paid $1.8 billion in 2005. The cable questions whether Libya could be trusted to honor the new EPSA IV contracts, or would again “seek a larger cut.”

Tension was definitely brewing!

Oil giants and the US government were alarmed by threats Qaddafi made, in a January 2009 video-conference to Georgetown University students, to nationalize the oil and gas industry. A January 2010 cable recounts that “regime rhetoric in early 2009 involving the possible nationalization of the oil sector ... has brought the issue back to the fore.”

Qaddafi also attempted to force the international oil companies (IOCs) to contribute to the US-Libya Claims Compensation Agreement. Signed in August 2008, the agreement established a fund for victims of bombings involving the two countries.

A February 2009 cables report that Libya presented the oil companies with an ultimatum: Contribute to the fund or “suffer serious consequences.” The US ambassador warned that “putting pressure on US companies ‘crossed a red line’.”

The second unwelcome consequence of the lifting of sanctions was that it enabled Libya to develop closer relations with US rivals, notably in Europe, China and Russia. A June 2008 cable describes a “recent surge of interest in Libya on the part of non-Western IOCs (particularly from Japan, Russia and China), who have won the bulk of concessions in the NOC’s recent acreage bid rounds.”

Several cables point to closer Libyan relations with Russia. In April 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly flew into Libya, accompanied by 400 assistants, journalists and executives, to secure an “agreement to swap Libya’s $4.5 billion Soviet-era debt to Russia” for “a large railroad contract and several future contracts in housing construction and electricity development.” Several memorandums of understanding were signed with Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Most significantly from a US strategic perspective, Qaddafi apparently “voiced his satisfaction that Russia’s increased strength can serve as a necessary counterbalance to US power, echoing the Libyan leader’s frequent support for a more multi-polar international system.”

In this context, the US cultivated relations with certain figures in Qaddafi’s regime, and secretly discussed the benefits of Qaddafi’s removal from the scene. A July 2008 cable relates how Ibrahim El-Meyet, a “close friend” of Ghanem (and a source to “strictly protect”) told the US Embassy that he and Ghanem “concluded that there will be no real economic or political reform in Libya until Qaddafi passes from the political scene,” and this “will not occur while Qaddafi is alive.”

Interestingly when the then Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa met Gen. William Ward in May 2009, he reminded the general that he “shared his views frequently and openly with his US contacts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of State.” Kusa fled Libya to England by private jet on March 30 this year.

Behind the scenes, tensions increased with the advent of the Obama administration. The Obama administration activated preparations, stretching back to at least 2007, to seek to oust the regime and install one more closely aligned to American interests.

Indeed energy resources are proving to be a curse to its holders, this time for Libya. As is said, all is fair in love and war.

http://arabnews.com/economy/article480491.ece