How will the No Fly Zone for Libya work out?
INPUT FROM NETWORK:
I look forward to seeing the counter-point on “No-Fly” but maybe consider the following. The U.S. and other Western powers only have an interest in “political stability” for the benefit of their oil companies and other business interests operating there. If Ghaddafi restores this stability, the U.S. and many other Western powers will remain content with the status quo as they have been since the early Nineties when they took Libya off their Terrorism Watch List.
A no-fly zone could in effect be established by bombing a mere three or four targets, Ghaddafi’s residence, the military’s headquarters and the main runways used for the bombers and fighters. This would eliminate Ghaddafi’s military advantage over the rebels who are seeking a more democratic future for Libyans.
By not supporting a no-fly zone, one is in fact supporting Ghaddafi’s horrible dictatorship in general and presently supporting his military advantage over the popularly supported resistance. Its also in turn supporting their oil royalty friendly and business friendly regime for the west which in turn is propped up by maintaining horrible human rights and economic conditions for Libyan citizens.
Something to think about,
Steven Block
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Hi Sandra
A lot of people jumped on that band wagon and it is confusing. Avaaz says they consulted with a lot of their usual sources and people on the ground in Libya.
However, one only has to look at the history of No-Fly, especially in Iraq where US planes continued to bomb daily, terrorizing Iraqis for over a decade during the sanctions that caused the deaths of over 500 million children.
History has also shown us that humanitarian intervention is not about humans, it’s about control of resources and protection of corporations. The best thing for Canadians to do is pressure our parliament and divest from the arms trade.
Keep up your work on other fronts of our frayed society,
Thanks
Susan
—
Victoria Peace Coalition
http://victoriapeacecoalition.wordpress.com/
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Sandra,�
You have done so much good work, I am very disappointed on this. Investigate deeper, please. I think you’ll revise. Libyans don’t want foreign military intervention.
*TRNN EXCLUSIVE: Liberated Libya Rejects US
Intervention*<http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6342>
On the streets of liberated Benghazi people say no to McCain, Lieberman and any US intervention
We ought to resist any precipitous and irresponsible clamouring for “a no-fly zone” over Libya, that gives permission for another Iraq type war. This petition is altogether jumping too thoughtlessly toward permission for NATO involvement.
It is not a light thing to call for war on a nation in civil conflict. Petitions like this will be used to justify NATO intervening in any country it chooses (usually where some valuable resource can be found, that somehow evaded ownership by the western corporate world), because something can almost always be found that is “outrageous” under any regime. Remember how we were misled with the story about Iraqi taking babies out of incubators in Kuwait? (Story later found to be a deliberate fabrication — it was merely designed to motivate the masses into war.)
NATO is looking for legitimacy in RTP (so called right to protect), since it officially abandoned its historic purely defensive purpose. We should not fall into this trap of endorsing an outmoded military machine seeking to perpetuate itself into a world-controlling power. NATO may still have a use, but this is not it.
Z.
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You may be jumping the gun calling for war on this issue, The Russians claimed that their satellites showed no air strikes,
Others have claimed that the air strikes were by f16’s which Libya doesn’t have. Americans will use any excuse to get their greedy
Little hands on the oil. If the idea of killing people to protect them is used then why did we not stop Israel from their illegal bombing
In Gaza? This duty to protect is being used to justify war. If Libya didn’t have oil this would not even be in the news.
Humanitarian War vs. Humanity
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Humanitarian-War-vs-Human-by-David-Swanson-110223-685.html
Bill
Barrie, Ontario
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Hi Sandra,
Well thanks for your apology but really, none was needed.
We are bombarded daily with lies and deceit, and a huge internet to dis-info the info, and vice versa.
I am also upset at the rolling out of armoured vehicles – especially after I read an SP article that says its more for pyschological intimidation, and noted its usage to be helpful in situations like the Patty Hearst kidnapping case (of over 30 years ago..) … and we’re supposed to buy that?!
You and other truth tellers like you Sandra, are my salvation.
My faith is restored when I see others who are not afraid to stand by their convictions.
At the beginning of 2010, I read that 2010 was going to be the year of truth telling.
What an understatement that was !
At the beginning of this year, I read 2011 is the year the truth gets back.
I am looking at hooking up with another producer to start a doc on our battles.
Finding the right co-producer is going to be the challenge.
Thank you for all your email, and keeping the truth in the light.
All the best to you.
Gayle
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WITH THANKS TO MARJALEENA REPO:
1) Michel Chossudovsky
Insurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d’Etat in Libya?
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23548
2) The Old Gang’s All Here
Libya and the Return of Humanitarian Imperialism
http://www.counterpunch.org/bricmont03082011.html
By JEAN BRICMONT
The whole gang is back: The parties of the European Left (grouping the “moderate” European communist parties), the “Green” José Bové, now allied with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who has never seen a US-NATO war he didn’t like, various Trotkyist groups and of course Bernard-Henry Lévy and Bernard Kouchner, all calling for some sort of “humanitarian intervention” in Libya or accusing the Latin American left, whose positions are far more sensible, of acting as “useful idiots” for the “Libyan tyrant.”
Twelve years later, it is Kosovo all over again. Hundred of thousands of Iraqis dead, NATO stranded in an impossible position in Afghanistan, and they have learned nothing! The Kosovo war was made to stop a nonexistent genocide, the Afghan war to protect women (go and check their situation now), and the Iraq war to protect the Kurds. When will they understand that all wars claim to have humanitarian justifications? Even Hitler was “protecting minorities” in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
On the other hand, Robert Gates warns that any future secretary of state who advises a US president to send troops into Asia or Africa “must have his head examined”. Admiral McMullen similarly advises caution. The great paradox of our time is that the headquarters of the peace movement are to be found in the Pentagon and the State Department, while the pro-war party is a coalition of neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists of various stripes, including leftist humanitarian warriors, as well as some Greens, feminists or repentant communists.
So, now, everybody has to cut down his or her consumption because of global warming, but NATO wars are recyclable and imperialism has become part of sustainable development.
Of course the US will go or not go to war for reasons that are quite independent of the advice offered by the pro-war left. Oil is not likely to be a major factor in their decision, because any future Libyan government will have to sell oil and Libya is not big enough to significantly weigh on the price of oil. Of course, turmoil in Libya leads to speculation that itself affects prices, but that is a different matter. Zionists are probably of two minds about Libya: they hate Qaddafi, and would like to see him ousted, like Saddam, in the most humiliating manner, but they are not sure they will like his opposition (and, from the little we know about it, they won’t).
The main pro-war argument is that if things go quickly and easily, it will rehabilitate NATO and humanitarian intervention, whose image has been tarnished by Iraq and Afghanistan. A new Grenada or, at most, a new Kosovo, is exactly what is needed. Another motivation for intervention is to better control the rebels, by coming to “save” them on their march to victory. But that is unlikely to work: Karzai in Afghanistan, the Kosovar nationalists, the Shiites in Iraq and of course Israel, are perfectly happy to get American help, when needed, but after that, to pretty much pursue their own agenda. And a full-fledged military occupation of Libya after its “liberation” is unlikely to be sustainable, which of course makes intervention less attractive from a US point of view.
On the other hand, if things turn badly, it will probably be the beginning of the end of the American empire, hence the caution of people who are actually in charge of it and not merely writing articles in Le Monde or ranting against dictators in front of cameras.
It is difficult for ordinary citizens to know exactly what is going on in Libya, because Western media have thoroughly discredited themselves in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, and alternative sources are not always reliable either. That of course does not prevent the pro-war left from being absolutely convinced of the truth of the worst reports about Qaddafi, just as they were twelve years ago about Milosevic.
The negative role of the International Criminal Court is again apparent, here, as was that of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the case of Kosovo. One of the reasons why there was relatively little bloodshed in Tunisia and Egypt is that there was a possible exit for Ben Ali and Mubarak. But “international justice” wants to make sure that no such exit is possible for Qaddafi, and probably for people close to him, hence inciting them to fight to the bitter end.
If “another world is possible”, as the European Left keeps on saying, then another West should be possible and the European Left should start working on that. The recent meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance could serve as an example: the Latin American left wants peace and they want to avoid US intervention, because they know that they are in the sights of the US and that their process of social transformation requires above all peace and national sovereignty. Hence, they suggest sending an international delegation, possibly led by Jimmy Carter (hardly a stooge of Qaddafi), in order to start a negotiation process between the government and the rebels. Spain has expressed interest in the idea, which is of course rejected by Sarkozy. This proposition may sound utopian, but it might not be so if it were supported by the full weight of the United Nations. That would be the way to fulfill its mission, but it is now made impossible by US and Western influence. However, it is not impossible that now, or in some future crisis, a non-interventionist coalition of nations, including Russia, China, Latin America and maybe others, may work together to build credible alternatives to Western interventionism.
Unlike the Latin American left, the pathetic European version has lost all sense of what it means to do politics. It does not try to propose concrete solutions to problems, and is only able to take moral stances, in particular denouncing dictators and human rights violations in grandiloquent tones. The social democratic left follows the right with at best a few years delay and has no ideas of its own. The “radical” left often manages both to denounce Western governments in every possible way and to demand that those same governments intervene militarily around the globe to defend democracy. Their lack of political reflection makes them highly vulnerable to disinformation campaigns and to becoming passive cheerleaders of US-NATO wars.
That left has no coherent program and would not know what to do even if a god put them into power. Instead of “supporting” Chavez and the Venezuelan Revolution, a meaningless claim some love to repeat, they should humbly learn from them and, first of all, relearn what it means to do politics.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be.
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3) Another NATO Intervention?
Libya: Is This Kosovo All Over Again?
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone03072011.html
4) Eric Margolis, GADAFFI: HANG’EM HIGH!http://ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/gadaffi-hangem-high.aspx
March 04, 2011
War fever over Libya has gripped the United States and Canada. After a hiatus of nine years, in which he was a useful ally to western interests, Col. Muammar Gadaffi is once again the man we love to hate.
“On to Libya! Down with the Tyrant of Tripoli!” That’s the latest hue and cry from North America’s right wingers, media, and neoconservative lynch mob. Once again there’s talk of war against a small, almost defenseless nation that can’t seriously fight back.
The right thinks it sees a golden opportunity in Libya’s current civil war to get rid of the unloved Muammar Gadaffi, “liberate” Libya’s high-grade oil, and to halt the wave uprisings now flaring across the Arab world.
We heard this same song about Iraq:
an evil dictator oppressing his people, seas of oil, arsenals of dangerous weapons.
President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to attack Libya and implement no-fly zones over it. US Marine amphibious units are nearing Libya’s coast.
Leaders of the US, Britain, France, and Germany who were happy to play footsie with Gadaffi and take his money and buy his premium oil now suddenly brand him a monster. There is enough hypocrisy over former ally Libya to float the US 6th Fleet.
A US-British-French-Canadian invasion of Libya would be sugar-coated as a humanitarian mission to rescue Libyan civilians from supposedly murderous air strikes by Gadaffi’s totally inept air force.
But no mention is made of the 65 Afghan civilians recently killed by a US air strike, or the nine Afghan boys collecting wood on a hillside massacred by US helicopter gunships last week Nor about repeated US air strikes on Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen that have killed large numbers of civilians. When we do it, it’s `collateral damage.’
There are reports of US, British, French and perhaps Canadian special forces operating in eastern Libya, training, arming and even fighting alongside anti-Gadaffi irregular forces. The oldest trick in the book is to foment an uprising, then call for outside help.
The tribes of eastern Libya, and the city of Benghazi, have always been opposed to Gadaffi. British intelligence, MI6, has long been active in the region. A major British attempt to assassinate Gadaffi was mounted in Benghazi.
Libya is very fragile and appears to be coming apart at the seams. It only became a unitary state in 1951 when its three independent regions, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan were merged. Regional and tribal civil war is now breaking out, and oil-hungry foreign powers are circling Libya, as Col. Gadaffi warned. Libya may end up splintered, like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having learned nothing from America’s trillion-dollar fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington’s national security circles (America’s term for what in Britain were called “imperialists”) are eager to invade Libya. Plans to attack Iran and/or Pakistan have been postponed. Libya’s oil riches are too good to pass up.
However, some voices of reason are still heard in Washington. The able US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, stated very strong opposition to any no-fly zone and/or ground invasion of Libya, warning the US can’t risk or afford a third major war when 40% of every dollar spent by the US government is being borrowed from China or Japan.
Not so Canada, newly infected by the virus of neo-imperialism from running its little colony in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Its prime minister, who seems to regret missing the Iraq War, is now beating the war drums over Libya.
Former CIA chief Gates is quite right. A no-fly zone would soon draw the US into ground combat and into the midst of a confusing tribal conflict no one in Washington understands. This is precisely what happened in Afghanistan, where America found itself in the middle of a civil war between its Communist-dominated Tajik/Uzbek allies and the majority Pashtun.
The supposed “cakewalk” in Iraq turned into a quagmire tying down 50,000 US troops costing $1 million each per annum. The US is now getting ever deeper involved in conflicts in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier and, most lately, Djibouti. Could Libya be the straw that breaks the American camel’s back?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Attacking Iran certainly would be. But for now Tehran is breathing easy thanks to Col. Gadaffi.
One person who must be relishing this spectacle is the elusive Osama bin Laden(assuming he is alive.) Bin Laden’s primary goal was overthrowing US-backed autocratic regimes across the Muslim world. Attacking western targets was merely secondary.
Col. Gadaffi was not totally wrong when he blamed al-Qaida for Libya’s uprising. Bin Laden was not pulling the strings of Libya’s rebellion, but al-Qaida’s revolutionary philosophy and anti-western jihad certainly inspired many young people from Morocco to Bangladesh.
That’s Washington’s big problem. Invading Libya will intensify the fires burning in the Arab world and create yet another anti-western jihad. Interestingly, this is exactly Osama bin Laden’s strategy: draw the US into many small wars in the Muslim world and so bleed it dry. So far, the US has been cooperating with Osama master plan.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011
See my interview on Gadaffi with TVO’s excellent Steve Paikin, posted on my Facebook page
