Three Little Words: WikiLeaks, Libya, Oil

[PurityOfEssence]

This is a great article from Dissident Voice where they go through Wikileaks diplomatic communiques and show how pertinent information has been ignored by the press, including the Guardian.

In March, we drew attention to a cable released by WikiLeaks sent from the US embassy in Tripoli in November 2007. The cable communicated US concerns about the direction being taken by Libya’s leadership:

Libya needs to exploit its hydrocarbon resources to provide for its rapidly-growing, relatively young population. To do so, it requires extensive foreign investment and participation by credible IOCs (international oil companies). Reformist elements in the Libyan government and the small but growing private sector recognize this reality. But those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves. Effective U.S. engagement on this issue should take the form of demonstrating the clear downsides to the GOL (government of Libya) of pursuing this approach, particularly with respect to attracting participation by credible international oil companies in the oil/gas sector and foreign direct investment. (our emphasis)

They point out how:

Even more seriously, in late February 2008, a US State Department cable described how Gaddafi had ‘threatened to dramatically reduce Libya’s oil production and/or expel… U.S. oil and gas companies’. The Post explained how, in early 2008, US Senator Frank R. Lautenberg had enraged the Libyan leader by adding an amendment to a bill that made it easier for families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing to ‘go after Libya’s commercial assets’.

The Libyan equivalent of the deputy foreign minister told US officials that the Lautenberg amendment was ‘destroying everything the two sides have built since 2003,’ according to a State Department cable. In 2008, Libyan oil minister Shokri Ghanem warned an Exxon Mobil executive that Libya might ‘significantly curtail’ its oil production to ‘penalize the US,’ according to another cable.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/06/three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil/

There have been plenty of reasons for corporatists to want to do away with Qaddafi, and the interventionists' continually carped claim that oil can't be a motivator because of his reliability is just splintered to the four winds by this kind of stuff.

Please read.

[Wilms]

1. Your post has suffered at least one unrec.

How is that Democratic?

[Warren Stupidity]

2. how is it not democratic?

People here can, until we can't, freely rec or unrec ops. It is a voting system.

[Wilms]

3. A voting system without a tally of for and against wider coverage.

While I'm aware arguments about this tactic are legion, more the point is it's keeping a post in serious need of wide discussion suppressed. And suppression is undemocratic.

[malaise]

4. The more they unrec

the more we rec - we usually win.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. It isn't suppressing anything.

unrecs do not suppress a post. Posts fall off the latest page over time. They sink from their topic page based on replies. They get to the greatest page (as this one has done) based on a voting system. What should or should not be on the GP is put to a vote, and you find that 'suppression' and 'undemocratic'. I have never understood the logic or reason behind that statement.

We used to have a tally. People complained 'cause their feelings were hurt when their crapshit posts got unrecc'd to hell. The tally went away.

[Wilms]

7. Simply, they'll often fail to get to Greatest as a result.

And had they sunk on the latest, which happens fairly soon, or sunk in GD, which can happen really fast, especially if there's some 'juicy' story running that day, it makes it all the more difficult to find out about it.

Further, not all posts get listed on the Latest page. The Latin American forum posts don't. We had a discussion over there about the unrecs.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=53269&mesg_id=53269


Meanwhile, it looks like there is a little bit more to the situation in Libya than a lot of DUers are aware.

-on edit-

BTW. Thanks for responding to my complaint some six hours after I posted it. It went a long way toward putting this on the Greatest page.

:toast:

[Warren Stupidity]

8. whatever. I rec'd it despite your nonsense about unrecs.

[PurityOfEssence]

10. It does have a suppressing effect

Whether people who like the function admit it or not, the casual reader will scan potential threads and see how it stacks up for others. It's a nasty little version of group tyranny or peer pressure, and it DOES have an effect.

[xchrom]

6. Recommend

[Octafish]

9. Gawsh. Big Oil gets any war they want.

No wonder MIC lovers hate Assange so much.

[PurityOfEssence]

11. Big Shock, huh?

What's amazing is the vigor of the extreme Obama partisans who simply cannot believe he'd ever be in league with the corporatists and hide behind moral uprightness to mount a classic military screw-job.

This is the cult of personality writ large, and it's tiresome.

It's also galling how our leaders so very cynically play with the emotions of their fervent followers and literally throw the much-cited innocent civilians into the jaws of war with little concern. It's disgraceful.

[Distant Observer]

14. To date all the Wiki cables p[oint to anger at Libyan nationalism not concern for human rights

[Distant Observer]

12. The anti-western pan-africanism of Gaddafi made him an enormouns nuisance.

[gratuitous]

13. The Operation for an Independent Libya is not about oil

OIL has nothing to do with oil, so stop saying that. Also, it's not a war or military action, and anyone who might say that probably deserves to get blown to Kingdom Come without warning. The United States is merely supplying a little logistical support. Oh, and taking out air defense installations, so that Libyans can more readily be liberated by knee-capping their ability to fight back against their lawful aggressors. The aforementioned element of surprise, coupled with the inability to fight back or get away is how you can tell the righteousness of Operation for an Independent Libya (OIL).

[PurityOfEssence]

15. My apologies; those of us who are altruistically challenged need these gentle reminders...

Hey, do you remember what the first ACTUAL name for the 2nd Iraq war was? Operation Iraqi Liberation. Luckily, someone caught it and nipped it in the bud.

Yes, you're right: the very effectiveness of the rebels once backed by massive military might proves its just cause and thorough support, just as Qaddafi's immediate fall shows his lack of it.

The non-existent massacres of other towns retaken by the Loyalists prove the truth of the 100s of thousands who would have died in Benghazi, just as these 100s of thousands of hypothetical deaths counterbalance the real deaths by the ongoing kleptokrieg, and far outweigh any number of real deaths that will happen. Rape allegations are fair because he's a big bad meanie, just as mentioning the inherent racism of the Benghazi rebels is a hideous slur on their obvious freedom-loving sweetness.

You'll have to pardon me, it's just so very very hard to keep this all straight and to remind myself that Obama could never do anything corporatist or devious, and that criticizing his namby-pamby middle-of-the-road approach to everything is an affront to all that's good and true. War is peace, and we hate meeces to pieces.

Now, back to the killin'...oh, I mean justifiable existence enhancement. Remember: the Constitution only puts safeguards on mass murder if Americans are in danger; it's perfectly fine for some safe extermination, and so very inconsequential that it may be done by the whim of the King.

[gratuitous]

16. And now you know why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize

And why our lying eyes didn't.

[BeHereNow]

17. I've been reading about this too-

They don't even pretend any more, do they?
Sure, it's not like the truth is ever going to be revealed in the MSM,
but it IS out there, and they don't care.

BHN