Facts about Libya under Gaddafi that you probably did not know about !

[polly7]

38. Exposed: The "Humanitarian" War In Libya

If you think Clinton - well aware of PNAC, the 'seven countries in five years' plan didn't know exactly how Libya was long planned for 'regime change', you weren't paying attention.

Start here:

Exposed: The "Humanitarian" War In Libya

Check this out - 'The Humanitarian War' = http://www.laguerrehumanitaire.fr/english It's horrifying. (Videos now here - I watched them on the original site when all of it was happening and posted these here at DU) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29428.htm

Must watch videos, the western trained NTC 'Prime Minister' - 'word to ear!' was the source of the 'data (all unofficial and lies, of course) that led to the UN resolution.

A bunch of LIES submitted to the ICC ..... by the UN - who got their 'numbers and crimes' from the western trained NTC Prime Minister - 'word to ear'. Pages and pages redacted.

No Evidence? No Problem!!

How the CIA Used "Libyan Expatriates" To Engineer Consent For Regime Change

One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR), an organization linked to the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH). On Feb. 21, 2011, LLHR General Secretary Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir initiated a petition in collaboration with the organization U.N. Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy. This petition was signed by more than 70 NGOs.

Then a few days later, on Feb. 25, Dr. Bouchuiguir went to the U.N. Human Rights Council in order to expose the allegations concerning the crimes of Qaddafi’s government. In July 2011 we went to Geneva to interview Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir.

"How to circumvent international law and justice 101." - originally published by http://laguerrehumanitaire.fr

A film by Julien Teil

Official Website:
http://laguerrehumanitaire.fr
Official web:
http://thehumanitarianwar.com
Official TV:
http://laguerrehumanitaire-film.rutube.ru/


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What you don't know about the Libyan crisis: (watch the timeline closely)

...

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The horror of Libya - to fulfill the PNAC objective of overthrowing yet another country. "7 countries in 5 years!" This was NO "Humanitarian Intervention", and certainly not for all those migrants Qaddafi had allowed in over decades, Qaddafi loyalists and others who were raped, tortured, mutilated, hung, burned to death .... all known of by the NATO 'humanitarian team'.

It was a bullshit, self-serving, western funded and backed coup against yet another sovereign nation not yet indebted to the IMF and controlling its own resources, not to mention not allowing U.S. bases 'Africom' into all of Africa.

Some of these links don't work anymore, but read and discover just what a sham this was and why. The video at the end is particularly interesting.

The Untold Story in Libya

Posted by polly7 in General Discussion
Tue Oct 18th 2011, 10:06 AM

In May 2010, Libya was voted on to the UN Human Rights Council by a huge majority. The UN Watch's campaign to remove Libya from the Human Rights Council began immediately.

In March, 2011, a report, containing positive quotes from UN diplomatic delegations in many countries, was due to be presented by the UN Human Rights Council, leading to a Resolution commending Libya's progress in a wide aspect of human rights (listed in the article). March 19, 2011, the attack on Libya began.

Libya was one of only five countries without a Rothschild model central bank, Quaddafi openly discussed, in 2009, the nationalization of US, UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, Canada and Italy's oil companies, switching to the gold dinar - a single African currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and allow African nations to share the wealth. Libya has an abundance of water - Gaddafi’s Great Man-Made River Project project offers limitless amounts of water for Libyans and would allow them to be totally self-sufficient. In the near-future, water will be the next resource equated with money and power, other countries may be dependent on its reserves. A self-sufficient, dictator-ruled nation with control over some of the world’s most precious resource waves a big red warning flag.

In 2010 Gaddafi made a motion to the UN General Assembly to investigate the circumstances of the invasion of Iraq. He was also wasting the west's ....... 'libya's' oil on free education, housing, tolerance of immigrants, raising the standard of living in Africa, lowering infant mortality while raising life expectancy.

Many of these things are completely similar to what we learned of Iraq.

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Global Civilians For Peace In Libya

Posted on November 9, 2011 by globalciviliansforpeace

When analysing the standard of living in Libya it is important to put the achievements into context. During the 1950’s under the leadership of King Idris, Libya was among the poorest nations in the world with some of the lowest living standards. From the early 1980’s until 2003 Libya were placed under crippling sanctions by the US and UN which had the result of strangling Libya’s growing economy leading to an inevitable smothering of development projects and social welfare schemes. Despite this The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had achieved the highest living standard in Africa. Libya has also invested heavily in African development initiatives. The funding of infrastructure projects as well as African political and financial institutions was aimed at developing Africa independently and combating the economic exploitation of African resources and labour by outside powers. On January 4th, 2011 – just weeks before the conflict in Libya started –UN members praised Libya’s continued welfare provision and commitment to upholding human rights.

Public Health Care

Public Health Care in Libya prior to NATO’s “Humanitarian Intervention” was the best in Africa. “Health care is [was] available to all citizens free of charge by the public sector. The country boasts the highest literacy and educational enrolment rates in North Africa. The Government is [was] substantially increasing the development budget for health services…. (WHO Libya Country Brief )

According to the World Health Organization (WHO): Life expectancy at birth was 72.3 years (2009), among the highest in the developing World.

Under 5 mortality rate per 1000 live births declined from 71 in 1991 to 14 in 2009
(http://www.who.int/countryfocus/cooperation_strategy/ccsbrief_lby_en.pdf)

Education

The adult literacy rate was of the order of 89%, (2009), (94% for males and 83% for females). 99.9% of youth are literate (UNESCO 2009 figures, See UNESCO, Libya Country Report)
Gross primary school enrolment ratio was 97% for boys and 97% for girls (2009) .
(see UNESCO tables at http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/document.aspx?ReportId=121&IF_Language=eng&BR_Country=4340&BR_Region=40525

[Extract]

21 February 2011

During Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, Libya has made great strides socially and economically thanks to its vast oil income, but tribes and clans continue to be part of the demographic landscape.

Women in Libya are free to work and to dress as they like, subject to family constraints. Life expectancy is in the seventies. And per capita income – while not as high as could be expected given Libya’s oil wealth and relatively small population of 6.5m – is estimated at $12,000 (£9,000), according to the World Bank.

Illiteracy has been almost wiped out, as has homelessness – a chronic problem in the pre-Gaddafi era, where corrugated iron shacks dotted many urban centres around the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-middle-east-12528996

Proud nation

In August 1984, Muammar Al Qadhafi laid the foundation stone for the pipe production plant at Brega. The Great Man-Made River Project had begun.

Click here to see a map of the pipeline network

Libya had oil money to pay for the project, but it did not have the technical or engineering expertise for such a massive undertaking.

Foreign companies from South Korea, Turkey, Germany, Japan, the Philippines and the UK were invited to help.

Water is seen as key to the country’s future prosperity

It is hard to fault the Libyans on their commitment. They estimate that when the Great Man-Made River is completed, they will have spent almost $20bn. So far, that money has bought 5,000km of pipeline that can transport 6.5 million cubic metres of water a day from over 1,000 desert wells.

As a result, Libya is now a world leader in hydrological engineering, and it wants to export its expertise to other African and Middle-Eastern countries facing the same problems with their water.

Through its agriculture, Libya hopes to gain a foothold in Europe’s consumer market.

But the Great Man-Made River Project is much more than an extraordinary piece of engineering.

Adam Kuwairi argues that the success of the Great Man-Made River Project has increased Libya’s standing in the world: “It’s another addition to our independence; it gives us the confidence to survive.”

https://globalciviliansforpeace.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/the-standard-of-living-in-libya/

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Yes, simply put, Nato's member nations are trying to steer back Libya Central Bank into the mainstream financial structure, under the watching eyes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Funds, to provide (reconstruction) funds to Libya with hefty interests payments - and transform a country which was free of debts into a heavily indebted country - as done everywhere else in sub-Saharan African countries.

http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/graphs...
http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/arcvol...

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From a 'no fly zone to all out bombing of targets called out by rebels'. NATO's high-precision bombing preceeded 'rebel' incursions.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH27Ak03.html

"It's now common knowledge that British SAS, French intelligence, US Central Intelligence Agency assets, Qatar special forces and mercenaries of all stripes were parachuted as boots on the ground for months, planning and training the "rebels" and in close coordination with that philanthropic prodigy, NATO.

That was never the UN mandate - but who cares? NATO/GCC paid the bills, NATO conducted the bombing and NATO/GCC will "stabilize" the mess, according to a 70-page plan leaked by the British to Rupert Murdoch'sz Times of London."

"Expect local - and global - fireworks as far as grabbing the loot is concerned. Without even considering the (still unexplored) oil and gas wealth, Libya's foreign assets are worth at least $150 billion. Libya's central bank, now about to be privatized, has no less than 143.8 tons of gold. Then there's at least a millennium supply of fresh water, which had started to be harnessed by Gaddafi via the spectacular, multibillion dollar Great Man-Made River (GMR) project."

Middle East
Aug 27, 2011

THE ROVING EYE
R2P is now Right 2 Plunder
By Pepe Escobar

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"Oil-rich but with a relatively small population of 6.6. million, Gadhafi's Libya welcomed hundreds of thousands of black Africans looking for work in recent decades. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/01/l...

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NATO’s War on Libya is an Attack on African Development–Dan Glazebrook

6 09 2011

http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/tag/afr... /

To prevent this ‘threat of African development’, the Europeans and the USA have responded in the only way they know how – militarily. Four years ago, the US set up a new “command and control centre” for the military subjugation of the Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US was that no African country wanted to host them; indeed, until very recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without a US military base. And this fact is in no small part, thanks to the efforts of the Libyan government.
Before Gaddafi’s revolution deposed the British-backed King Idris in 1969, Libya had hosted one of the world’s biggest US airbases, the Wheelus Air Base; but within a year of the revolution, it had been closed down and all foreign military personnel expelled.
More recently, Gaddafi had been actively working to scupper AFRICOM. African governments that were offered money by the US to host a base were typically offered double by Gaddafi to refuse it, and in 2008 this ad-hoc opposition crystallised into a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union.

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The force used by the occupier to displace the old regime always makes sure the new regime is supine and complaint. The National Transitional Council, made up of former Gadhafi loyalists, Islamists and tribal leaders, many of whom detest each other, will be the West’s vehicle for the reconfiguration of Libya. Libya will return to being the colony it was before Gadhafi and the other young officers in 1969 ousted King Idris, who among other concessions had let Standard Oil write Libya’s petroleum laws. Gadhafi’s defiance of Western commercial interests, which saw the nationalization of foreign banks and foreign companies, along with the oil industry, as well as the closure of U.S. and British air bases, will be reversed. The despotic and collapsed or collapsing regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria once found their revolutionary legitimacy in the pan-Arabism of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. But these regimes fell victim to their own corruption, decay and brutality. None were worth defending. Their disintegration, however, heralds a return of the corporate and imperial power that spawned figures like Nasser and will spawn his radical 21st century counterparts.

Libya: Here We Go Again

Monday 5 September 2011
by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed

http://www.truthout.com/libya-here-we-go-a...

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LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others

http://somalilandpress.com/libya-rebels-ex...

"Many Africans have virtually nothing after years in Libya, many have been looted, robbed, while others saw their living quarters and apartments go in flames. Now they are praying to God to send them home.
While the international leaders are busy drafting resolutions to dismantle Muammar Gaddafi, the African Union has not yet commented on the situation in Libya.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is said to have started a formal inquiry into possible crimes against humanity in Libya that will investigate the Libyan regime."

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JohnPilger.com
8 September 2011

http://johnpilger.com/articles/hail-to-the...

..."I quote that not so much for its Orwellian quality but as a model of journalism's role in justifying "our" bloodbaths in advance.
This is Rupert's Revolution, after all. Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative "insurgents". The action in Libya, says The Times, is "a revolution... as revolutions used to be". That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar Gaddafi's ex cronies and spooks in collusion with Nato is hardly news.

The self-appointed "rebel leader", Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was Gaddafi's feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America's old friends, the Mujadeen Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda.
They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of Libya from Tripoli to "rebel" Benghazi by European bankers in order to control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little .

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Sirte a 'living hell,' says aid group

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/co...

Tuesday 04 October 2011 by Our Foreign Desk Printable Email

A Red Cross team finally entered the besieged Libyan town of Sirte yesterday and delivered urgently needed surgical supplies to treat about 200 wounded people.

Nato has repeatedly targeted Sirte in its seven-month bombing campaign that enabled armed rebels to topple the government of Muammar Gadaffi and gain control of most of the oil-rich state.

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Absolutely horrible to use rape as a propaganda weapon for war, while ignoring the reality of it for all those brutalized, raped and some, murdered by the NATO supported 'rebels' - just one example of their many atrocities.

********* http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2174087 **********

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2011/08/26/lies-war-and-empire-nato’s-“humanitarian-imperialism”-in-libya

In early March of 2011, news headlines in Western nations reported that Gaddafi would kill half a million people.

<1> On March 18, as the UN agreed to launch air strikes on Libya, it was reported that Gaddafi had begun an assault against the rebel-held town of Benghazi. The Daily Mail reported that Gaddafi had threatened to send in his African mercenaries to crush the rebellion.<2> Reports of Libyan government tanks sitting outside Benghazi poised for an invasion were propagated in the Western media.<3> In the lead-up to the United Nations imposing a no-fly zone, reports spread rapidly through the media of Libyan government jets bombing the rebels.<4> Even in February, the New York Times – the sacred temple for the ‘stenographers of power’ we call “journalists” – reported that Gaddafi was amassing “thousands of mercenaries” to defend Tripoli and crush the rebels.<5>

Italy’s Foreign Minister declared that over 1,000 people were killed in the fighting in February, citing the number as “credible.”<6> Even a top official with Human Rights Watch declared the rebels to be “peaceful protesters” who “are nice, sincere people who want a better future for Libya.”<7> The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that “thousands” of people were likely killed by Gaddafi, “and called for international intervention to protect civilians.”<8> In April, reports spread near and far at lightning speed of Gaddafi’s forces using rape as a weapon of war, with the first sentence in a Daily Mail article declaring, “Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya,” with Gaddafi handing out Viagra to his troops in a planned and organized effort to promote rape.<9>

As it turned out, these claims – as posterity notes – turned out to be largely false and contrived. Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International both investigated the claims of rape, and “have found no first-hand evidence in Libya that rapes are systematic and being used as part of war strategy,” and their investigations in Eastern Libya “have not turned up significant hard evidence supporting allegations of rapes by Qaddafi’s forces.” Yet, just as these reports came out, Hillary Clinton declared that the U.S. is “deeply concerned by reports of wide-scale rape” in Libya.<10> Even U.S. military and intelligence officials had to admit that, “there is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas”; at the same time Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, “told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti-impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to backup the claim.”<


Untrue, says US

US says Gadhafi troops issued Viagra, raping victims
Allegation suggests troops encouraged to turn to sexual violence, envoys say

By Louis Charbonneau
updated 4/28/2011 9:31:26 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

Several U.N. diplomats who attended a closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice raised the Viagra issue in the context of increasing reports of sexual violence by Gadhafi's troops.

"Rice raised that in the meeting but no one responded," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42809612/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa#.TqXeG96ImU8


US intel: No evidence of Viagra as weapon in Libya

http://www.msnbc .msn.com/id/42824884/ns/world_news-mide...

UN Ambassador Rice reportedly had said drug was being used in systematic rapes
NBC News and news services updated 4/29/2011 1:52:00 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS — There is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas, US military and intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday.

Diplomats said Thursday that US Ambassador Susan Rice told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti- impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to backup the claim.

While rape has been a weapon of choice in many other African conflicts, the US officials say they've seen no such reports out of Libya.


[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
The gap between Hillary Rodham Clinton's rhetoric warning of a Rwanda-like slaughter of civilians in Libya and the facts gathered by career intelligence staff is taking on significance as the former secretary of state prepares another bid for the White House and her national security credentials are re-examined. (Associated Press)



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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...
bvar22:

The Untold Story in Libya:

How The West Cooked Up The People's Uprising

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/08/31/now-that-... ... /

The Global Disaster Capitalists never let a good disaster go to waste.
In the case of Libya, they used their Enforcement Arm (NATO & The US Military) to CREATE a disaster where there was none.

” For all his dictatorial megalomania, Gaddafi is a committed pan-African - a fierce defender of African unity. Libya was not in debt to international bankers. It did not borrow cash from the International Monetary Fund for any "structural adjustment". It used oil money for social services - including the Great Man Made River project, and investment/aid to sub-Saharan countries. Its independent central bank was not manipulated by the Western financial system. All in all a very bad example for the developing world.”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/M...

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Libya: Oil, Banks, Water, the United Nations, and America’s Holy Crusade by Felicity Arbuthnot

Posted on April 5, 2011 by dandelionsalad

.."The country was commended: “for the progress made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, namely universal primary education (and) firm commitment (to) health care.” There was “praise” for “cooperation with international organizations in combating human trafficking and corruption ..” and for cooperation with “the International Organization for Migration.”

“Progress in enjoyment of economic and social rights, including in the areas of education, health care, poverty reduction and social welfare” with “measures taken to promote transparency”, were also cited. Malaysia: “Commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for being party to a significant number of international and regional human rights instruments.” Promotion: “of the rights of persons with disabilities” and praise for “measures taken with regard to low income families”, were cited...

.."So how does the all tie together? Libya, in March being praised by the Majority of the UN., for human rights progress across the board, to being the latest, bombarded international pariah? A nation’s destruction enshrined in a UN., Resolution?
The answer lies in part with the Geneva based UN Watch.(vii) UN Watch is : “a non-governmental organization whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations.” With Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council, with ties to the UN Department of Public Information, “UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.” (AJC.)"

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/0... /

Interesting ..... the involvement in HR Watch of persons whose core values include securing energy resources.

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leveymg (34,352 posts)

9. Evidence State Dept was involved in organizing the rebellion from early April '11

This latest tranche of withheld and redacted "personal" emails from Sidney Blumenthal to Secretary Clinton shows he was part of efforts to overthrow the Ghadaffi regime from nearly the beginning, working as a liaison between the USG, western corporations, and Blackwater-type mercenaries to train and coordinate the uprising. The NYT summarizes some of his April 2011 email to Clinton this way:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/us/politics/what-sidney-blumenthals-memos-to-hillary-clinton-said-and-how-they-were-handled.html

In 2011 and 2012, Hillary Rodham Clinton received at least 25 memos about Libya from Sidney Blumenthal, a friend and confidant who at the time was employed by the Clinton Foundation. The memos, written in the style of intelligence cables, make up about a third of the almost 900 pages of emails related to Libya that Mrs. Clinton said she kept on the personal email account she used exclusively as secretary of state. Some of Mr. Blumenthal’s memos appeared to be based on reports supplied by American contractors he was advising as they sought to do business in Libya. Mr. Blumenthal also appeared to be gathering information from anonymous Libyan and Western officials and local news media reports. What follows are descriptions of some of the memos and how they were handled by Mrs. Clinton and her aides.

Clinton Says Idea on Rebels Should Be Considered

In April 2011, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a memo about the rebel forces fighting the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The rebels, Mr. Blumenthal wrote, were considering hiring security contractors to train their forces. Mrs. Clinton forwarded the memo to her aide, Jake Sullivan, and said that the idea should be considered. (Pages 1-3)

In 2011 and 2012, Mrs. Clinton forwarded 18 memos to Mr. Sullivan, who in turn circulated them to senior State Department officials, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, and Ambassador Gene A. Cretz, who preceded him.

Doesn't sound comical or non-lethal to me. But, what it shows is that by early April, the State Dept. had already taken the lead, at least publicly, in aiding the Libyan opposition. The President didn't authorize "non-lethal" aid until April 26th, and that, we were told at the time, did not include training the rebels: http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/05/11/libyan-rebels-get-first-tranche-of-u-s-aid-10000-mres/

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boasted last month about the decision to start giving non-lethal aid to the Libyan rebel army. Yesterday, the rebels got their first delivery: 10,000 packets of pre-packaged food, what the military calls Meals Ready to Eat (MREs).

"This shipment, authorized under the President’s April 26th drawdown, consisted of more than 10,000 halal meals ready to eat, so-called MREs, that were transferred from Department of Defense stocks in support of the ’s efforts to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under the threat of attack," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing.

The meals are part of the $25 million in non-lethal aid to the Libyan rebels the White House approved on April 26. That approval came 11 days after the State Department notified Congress that it wanted to spend the funds to help the Libyan rebel army fight off the forces of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi.

"One of the reasons why I announced $25 million in non-lethal aid yesterday, why many of our partners both in NATO and in the broader Contact Group are providing assistance to the opposition, is to enable them to defend themselves and to repulse the attacks by Qaddafi forces," Clinton said April 21.

But while the State Department’s notification said the money would go to things like "vehicles, fuel trucks and fuel bladders, ambulances, medical equipment, protective vests, binoculars, and non-secure radios" — all items identified by the Libyan opposition’s Transitional National Council (TNC) as urgently needed — now the list is much more weighted to humanitarian goods.

Toner said Tuesday that the shipments were meant to be in "support of the TNC’s efforts to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under the threat of attack." More items are en route to Benghazi, including medical supplies, uniforms, boots, tents, and personal protective gear, he said.

"We continue to work with the TNC to determine what additional assistance requirements we might be able to support in the coming weeks," said Toner.

In fact, by the time the State Department acknowledged the delivery of "non-lethal" US aid to Libya, special emissary Chris Stevens had already settled in in Benghazi, where he immediately commenced coordination of US assistance to rebel groups. Plans were clearly afoot by April 1 to send Stevens to Eastern Libya, and the danger posed by by US aid to Jihadist extremist groups being doled out by arriving State Dept. personnel. The Department briefing ended on this ominous note: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2011/04/159596.htm

QUESTION: Well, who are you hoping would inform you if they are infiltrated by extremists, or if the opposition is?

MR. TONER: I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. I mean, look, these are professional diplomats who are conducting these kinds of outreaches, and so these are – they’re used to assessing political environments and political opposition groups, and their judgment is sound. Is that it?

QUESTION: Is the State Department envoys already on ground in the eastern part of (inaudible)?

MR. TONER: I’m sorry, the State Department?

QUESTION: (Inaudible).

MR. TONER: Not yet.

QUESTION: Not yet.

Three weeks later, at a April 21 press briefing, State Dept. spokesman Mark Toner alluded to the release of the $25 tranche of US aid to opposition groups in that eastern Libyan city: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2011/04/161440.htm#LIBYA

MR. TONER: Well, and just to answer your last question first, it’s actually drawdown – this is drawdown assistance from items already in government stocks. And these are based on what our special representative on the ground in Benghazi has assessed by talking to the TNC, the Transitional National Council – assessed their needs to be. And we’re trying to meet their needs in a coherent and appropriate way. We don’t want to give them things they don’t necessarily need. We want to try to focus our assistance. And this is the kind of equipment that they identify will be most helpful.

A few questions later, Toner responded to a second question about Stevens and the State Department team that had arrived in Benghazi:

QUESTION: Is it true that there’s exactly three State Department personnel on the ground in Benghazi?

MR. TONER: That’s a good question. I’m not sure how big the DART team is there. Is that what you’re talking about in addition to Chris Stevens?

QUESTION: Yeah.

MR. TONER: I’ll have to confirm that figure. Sorry, I’ll get back to you, Josh.

Note that, as the NYT reported, Blumenthal's emails to Clinton were routed to Stevens, among other Department officials assigned to Libya. This would indicate that both Clinton and Stevens were aware of private contractor plans to train opposition militias.

In addition, Blumenthal's emails to Hillary confirm what he had learned about the activities of the military and intelligence services of Egypt, Qatar, Britain and France in providing direct military assistance to the rebels, and MI6's ongoing mechanizations to replace the regime with figures backed by London.

In an April 8 email to Clinton, titled in part, "Egypt moves in", Blumenthal describes the intervention of Egyptian special forces in the civil war, and the their training and equipping of the opposition. He also explicitly warned about the danger in Libya of the rise of the very same al-Qaeda groups that would later coalesce into ISIS: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/19/us/politics/libya-related-messages-hillary-clinton-email-account.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Here, Sid references a meeting he had earlier that day with a member of the opposition:




According the UK Telegraph, Blumenthal had an active line of information into "UK game playing" in the uprising and plans to "break up" Libya, news that he passed on to Secretary Clinton. Not surprisingly, this email was also withheld: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/hillary-clinton/11616018/Britain-hid-secret-MI6-plan-to-break-up-Libya-from-US-Hillary-Clinton-told-by-confidante.html

Britain acted deceitfully in Libya and David Cameron authorised an MI6 plan to "break up" the country, a close confidante of Hillary Clinton claimed in a series of secret reports sent to the then-secretary of state

Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time friend of the Clintons, emailed Mrs Clinton on her personal account to warn her that Britain was "game playing" in Libya.

Mr Blumenthal had no formal role in the US State Department and his memos to Mrs Clinton were sourced to his own personal contacts in the Middle East and Europe.

Nevertheless, Mrs Clinton seems to have taken some of his reports seriously and forwarded them on to senior diplomats working at the highest levels of American foreign policy.

The first of Mr Blumenthal's Libya memos - which were leaked to the New York Times - was sent on April 8, 2011, as rebel forces struggled to make gains against Gaddafi's troops, and had "UK game playing" in the subject line.

On April 21, the first known report of intervention on the side of the rebels by foreign "mercenary" forces from Egypt was published: http://www.eurasiareview.com/21022011-civil-war-in-libya-gaddafi-uses-pak-and-bd-mercenaries/ Three weeks later, the Washington Post reported that Qatar was training and equipping the rebellion's militias in Eastern Libya, as well as conducting airstrikes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/qatari-military-advisers-on-the-ground-helping-libyan-rebels-get-into-shape/2011/05/11/AFZsPV1G_story.html

Why wouldn't Hillary want to withhold this and related email? Think about it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=1128037

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Colonel Muammar Gaddafi died after being stabbed with a bayonet in the anus and not in a firefight as originally claimed by Libyan authorities, according to a report on the Libyan dictator's last hours.

Two Nato missiles forced the group to leave the cars and escape on foot, seeking shelter in a drainage ditch. A bodyguard hurled grenades at approaching militiamen but one grenade "hit the concrete wall and bounced back to fall between Muammar Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis", Younis junior said.

"The shrapnel hit my father and he fell down to the ground. Muammar Gaddafi was also injured by the grenade, on the left side of his head," he said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Gaddafi was already bleeding from head wounds caused by blast shrapnel as he tried to flee Sirte, his hometown.

The charity obtained unedited mobile footage that showed militia fighters abusing Gaddafi as they took him into custody in October 2011.

"As he was being led on to the main road, a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet, causing another rapidly bleeding wound," the report said.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/gaddafi-killed-bayonet-stab-anus-libya-395224



The Grand finale - sodomized with a bayonet, beaten, tortured and murdered in the street - "We came, we saw ....... he died, lol".

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The campaign in Libya began with an innocent sounding UN Security Council Resolution calling for the protection of civilians. Both China and Russia abstained rather than voting to veto the resolution. Then they realized they had been tricked. In her book, Clinton describes how Russia “chafed as the NATO-led mission to protect civilians accelerated the fall of Qaddafi”. In reality the NATO led mission “to protect civilians” resulted in vastly more civilian deaths than had occurred before it began.

Horace Campbell and Maximilian Forte have written two solid accounts describing the reality versus myths of regime change in Libya. Clinton’s characterization of “accelerating” the fall of Qaddafi is a cynical understatement, like her self congratulatory comment that “we came, we saw, he died” after rebels killed Qaddafi on the street. Many of the refugees drowning in the Mediterannean Sea or reaching the shores of Italy today are a direct consequence of that operation. Yet who has been held to account?

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/09/the-wicked-war-on-syria/

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Britain, Libya and the Mediterranean - The Creation of a Humanitarian Emergency

by Dan Glazebrook / May 1st, 2015

Last week’s drownings in the Mediterranean were the foreseeable, and indeed deliberate, a result of the anti-human policies of strategic violence by a dying neo-colonial empire. They were the consequence, firstly, of a series of wars of aggression that have made life intolerable across vast swathes of Africa and West Asia, and, secondly, of the fateful EU decision last November to end Italy’s search-and-rescue programme, Mare Nostrum. This much has been admitted by politicians and commentators from across the entire British political establishment, from Nigel Farage and the Daily Telegraph to David Cameron and Ed Miliband. Whilst these admissions have often been tempered with caveats, denials, distortions and half-truths, the hideous reality behind them is increasingly impossible to deny.

NATO’s war of aggression against Libya in 2011 turned the country over to racist death squads, with hundreds of sub-Saharan migrant workers and black Libyans beaten and burnt to death by the ‘revolutionaries’ and tens of thousands illegally detained and tortured by the militias. Tawergha, the only black African town on the Mediterranean, and formerly home to around 30,000 people, is now a ghost town after NATO’s shock troops – militias with names like the ‘Brigades for the purging of black skins’ – ‘ethnically cleansed’ the region. Last week’s butchering of 30 Ethiopian workers by ISIS is but the latest chapter in the anti-African pogroms that have characterised the Libyan insurgency from the very start. This is the reality of NATO’s ‘Libyan revolution’ (led by AbdulHakim BelHaj, now leader of ISIS in Libya) and it is precisely this from which black Africans in Libya are now fleeing. As Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi put it, “a person has to risk his life because he needs to escape from a situation where they are chopping off the heads of those near him”.

And this head-chopping has not been restricted to Libya’s borders. NATO’s war has boosted head-choppers across the entire region, from Tunisia and Algeria to Mali, Nigeria and Cameroon. Before 2011, Boko Haram barely existed. Today, thanks to NATO opening up Libya’s arsenals to them and their friends, they are killing hundreds every week, often burning them alive in churches and mosques. As one Nigerian told a reporter last week, “We prefer to die trying (to migrate) than stay back there and die….Stay at home and get shot dead or maybe burnt to death; I just prefer to die while trying or survive.”

Yet the Libyan war itself is only the latest in a long series of acts of aggression launched by the British state and its allies, all of which continue to have disastrous consequences across the entire Middle East and North Africa region. A look at the list of where the migrants come from makes this devastatingly clear. The majority of the world’s refugees come from one of three countries: Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria. What all have in common is that they have all been subject to vicious terror campaigns by Britain, the USA and their allies: whether directly, as in Afghanistan; through allied states, as with the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 (which toppled the first stable government the country had had in decades); or through the provision of cash, weapons and diplomatic cover to sectarian death squads, as in the case of Syria. Yemen is the latest additional source of refugees, with the Saudi bombing campaign bringing new arrivals to almost 10,000 per week.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/05/britain-libya-and-the-mediterranean/

Behind Every Refugee Stands an Arms Trader

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/behind-every-refugee-stands-an-arms-trader/

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Trapped in Libya: the flotsam of the West’s wars

By Vijay Prashad
Source: al-Araby
May 14, 2015

Next week, the EU will launch work on its plan to tackle the Mediterranean migrant crisis. The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has asked the UN for help to dismantle the smuggling networks.

European ambassadors have drafted a UN resolution, under chapter VII (which allows use of force), to tackle the crisis. For them the military option is the brightest light. As Mogherini said, the EU wants the authority to “use all necessary means to seize and dispose of the [smugglers’] vessels.

“Thus far in 2015, over 60,000 people have tried to cross from Libya to Europe. Of them, close to two thousand have died – a death toll 20 times higher than in 2014,” it continues.

Since 2011, Libya has been ripped apart, its social fabric torn asunder and its state structure largely absent. Nato’s bombardment precipitously destroyed the state and handed over the country to warring militias.

The threat to the refugees is a direct outcome of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, ironically under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) banner. A new UNSC resolution is not going to be about the protection of the refugees, but to use force to destroy their lifeline. R2P has been ground under by the West’s behavior in Libya.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/trapped-in-libya-the-flotsam-of-the-wests-wars/


On Monday, a New York Times story demonstrated more specifically why Clinton's interactions with Blumenthal may have been a bad idea. Blumenthal, the Times reports via solid sources, was advising the Secretary of State both before and after former Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi's death while also advising a group of private individuals who hoped to make money by obtaining reconstruction-type contracts in a post-Qaddafi Libya.

Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government. The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan economy ...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/18/hillary_clinton_sidney_blumenthal_libya_unofficial_adviser_represented_business.html


The detritus of regime change in Libya

By Vijay Prashad
Source: al-Araby
November 1, 2015

.......In Iraq, parts of the deposed army and some Baath Party members linked up with al-Qaeda in Iraq, and then later the Islamic State of Iraq. It was these motivated and trained men that formed the backbone of the IS advance on Fallujah and Ramadi in 2014.

Much the same story is being repeated with the emergence of IS in Libya. Adversaries of Gaddafi in the 1990s took refuge in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group; one of whose strongholds was the town of Derna.

These fighters fled the country to join the Jihad International in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It had become a familiar matter to meet an al-Libi in the redoubts of the jihadis. Studies show that Libya provided per capita the highest number of jihadis to this global campaign.

The lesson of Iraq was not learned. It was repeated in Libya. Both countries still hang by a thread. Their people suffer painfully. They have been sacrificed to a theory that is arrogant and erroneous. It deserves a place only in the dustbin of history.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-detritus-of-regime-change-in-libya/


Deadliest Terror in the World: The West’s Latest Gift to Africa

by Dan Glazebrook / November 30th, 2015

Nigeria’s Boko Haram are now officially the deadliest terror group in the world. That they have reached this position is a direct consequence of Cameron and Co’s war on Libya – and one that was perhaps not entirely unintended.

In 2009, the year they took up arms, Boko Haram had nothing like the capacity to mount such operations, and their equipment remained primitive; but by 2011, that had begun to change. As Peter Weber noted in The Week, their weapons “shifted from relatively cheap AK-47s in the early days of its post-2009 embrace of violence to desert-ready combat vehicles and anti-aircraft/ anti-tank guns”. This dramatic turnaround in the group’s access to materiel was the direct result of NATO’s war on Libya. A UN report published in early 2012 warned that “large quantities of weapons and ammunition from Libyan stockpiles were smuggled into the Sahel region”, including “rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns with anti-aircraft visors, automatic rifles, ammunition, grenades, explosives (Semtex), and light anti-aircraft artillery (light caliber bi-tubes) mounted on vehicles”, and probably also more advanced weapons such as surface-to-air missiles and MANPADS (man-portable air-defence systems). NATO had effectively turned over the entire armoury of an advanced industrial state to the region’s most sectarian militias: groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram.

The earliest casualty of NATO’s war outside Libya was Mali. Taureg fighters who had worked in Gaddafi’s security forces fled Libya soon after Gaddafi’s government was overthrown, and mounted an insurgency in Northern Mali. They, in turn, were overthrown, however, by Al Qaeda’s regional affiliates – flush with Libyan weaponry – who then turned Northern Mali into another base from which to train and launch attacks. Boko Haram was a key beneficiary. As Brendan O’ Neill wrote in an excellent 2014 article worth quoting at length:

Boko Haram benefited enormously from the vacuum created in once-peaceful northern Mali following the West’s ousting of Gaddafi. In two ways: first, it honed its guerrilla skills by fighting alongside more practised Islamists in Mali, such as AQIM; and second, it accumulated some of the estimated 15,000 pieces of Libyan military hardware and weaponry that leaked across the country’s borders following the sweeping aside of Gaddafi. In April 2012, Agence France France Presse reported that ‘dozens of Boko Haram fighters’ were assisting AQIM and others in northern Mali. This had a devastating knock-on effect in Nigeria. As the Washington Post reported in early 2013, ‘The Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria has entered a more violent phase as militants return to the fight with sophisticated weaponry and tactics learned on the battlefields of nearby Mali’. A Nigerian analyst said ‘Boko Haram’s level of audacity was high [in late 2012]’, immediately following the movement of some of its militants to the Mali region.

That NATO’s Libya war would have such consequences was both thoroughly predictable, and widely predicted. As early as June 2011, African Union Chairman Jean Ping warned NATO that “Africa’s concern is that weapons that are delivered to one side or another…are already in the desert and will arm terrorists and fuel trafficking”. And both Mali and Algeria strongly opposed NATO’s destruction of Libya precisely because of the massive destabilisation it would bring to the region. They argued, wrote O’Neill, “that such a violent upheaval in a region like north Africa could have potentially catastrophic consequences. The fallout from the bombing is ‘a real source of concern’, said the rulers of Mali in October 2011. In fact, as the BBC reported, they had been arguing since ‘the start of the conflict in Libya’ – that is, since the civil conflict between Benghazi-based militants and Gaddafi began – that ‘the fall of Gaddafi would have a destabilising effect in the region’.” In an op-ed following the collapse of Northern Mali, a former Chief of Staff of UK land forces, Major-General Jonathan Shaw, wrote that Colonel Gaddafi was a “lynchpin” of the “informal Sahel security plan”, whose removal therefore led to a foreseeable collapse of security across the entire region. The rise of Boko Haram has been but one result – and not without strategic benefits for the West.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/deadliest-terror-in-the-world-the-wests-latest-gift-to-africa/


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-problem-with-hillarys-friends/393635/

“Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government,” a later Times report noted. “The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan economy.”

The memos covered everything from warnings about possible terrorist attacks and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood within Libya to the potential training of Libyan rebels and the hiring of new economic advisers by the Libyan premier. As the National Journal reports, the House Benghazi Committee is already seeking Blumenthal’s testimony.

WE CAME, WE SAW, HE DIED’ 10.20.15 6:00 PM ET

Hillary’s Libya Post-War Plan Was ‘Play It by Ear,’ Gates Says

She still defends the invasion as ‘smart power at its best.’ But war backers like Clinton had no plan for securing the country, says ex-Pentagon chief Bob Gates.

President Obama, however, didn’t see things quite that way. He was reportedly reluctant about the operation—until Clinton, Rice, and Power swayed him, over Gates’s objections. “Clinton won the bureaucratic battle to use DOD [Department of Defense] resources to achieve what’s essentially the State Department’s objective,” Steve Clemons, then an analyst with the administration-friendly New America Foundation, told Foreign Policy at the time.

And when Obama finally agreed to the operation, he stressed “Operation Odyssey Dawn” would be a limited effort to protect civilians from a possible genocide by the Libyan government. Removing Gaddafi was the last thing he wanted to do.

During revolutionary-era Libya, no one in the upper ranks of the U.S. government seriously considered whether the newly created Transitional National Council, a rival government in rebel-held areas like Benghazi, could govern the oil-rich state. Nor did Clinton or top leaders ask about unintended consequences of an air campaign, especially if it successfully ended Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, according to the senior defense official who was part of the conversation at the time. And as the country was falling apart, it seems no one in the higher reaches of Clinton’s department took note. If they did, they did not take action.

As secretary of state, it was Clinton’s job to ask questions about the state of Libya, both before the intervention and after. She was secretary when the intervention began—and when the U.S. presence in Benghazi ended with a deadly attack. And while she held talks in the early months after Gaddafi’s death, Libya became largely a public afterthought. In the email caches released so far from her personal account, former adviser Sidney Blumenthal repeatedly kept Libya before Clinton, sharing his views of the situation, at the time contradicting the diplomats working for Clinton. Blumenthal, a longtime adviser to both Clinton and President Clinton, was not an expert on the region.

And yet, the day after the attack in Benghazi, Blumenthal drafted an email to Clinton that read like a State Department cable. He said his sources were those that had “direct access to the Libyan Transitional National Council, as well as the highest European Governments, and Western Intelligence and security services.” And those sources said the attack was the result of a protest “inspired by what many devout Libyans viewed as a sacrilegious internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America.” It’s a narrative that was quickly disproven.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/20/hillary-s-libya-post-war-plan-was-play-it-by-ear-gates-says.html

Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.

Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."

Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must "get out of the way," backed by secret CIA operations.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/05/hillary-candidate-war-machine

Just as much a sham as Iraq, with the exact same results. And on ........ to Syria.


Cheese Sandwich (8,079 posts)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511413353#post13