11th July, 2011
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the US of hooliganism on Monday over the US government’s efforts to ease its financial problems by injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy.
Archive for July, 2011
Putin brands US as ‘hooligans’ for printing money
Posted by seumasach on July 18, 2011
Posted in Currency Wars | Tagged: dollar collapse, End of empire, financial collapse, QE3 | Leave a Comment »
Another take on Libya hubris for China
Posted by seumasach on July 18, 2011
Peter Lee
19th July, 2011
Western self-regard was on full display in a United States headline describing the Libya Contact Group confab in Istanbul over the weekend. It read: World leaders open Libya talks in Turkey. [1]
Posted in Libya | Tagged: Stop the bombing of Libya | Leave a Comment »
Opposition losing battles- winning war?
Posted by seumasach on July 16, 2011
The opposition are losing both the battles and the war but all the press must rally round and help Cameron extricate himself from this total mess. This Independent report contradicts both the headline and the editorial of the same edition. This is not the Murdoch press but hardly “independent”.
Kim Sengupta
16th July, 2011
Opposition fighters are losing battles – but winning the war
While foreign countries were hailing Libya’s rebel administration as the country’s legitimate government, rebel fighters were showing their usual failings in combat as another much-heralded offensive in the east failed to capture the oil town of Brega.
Four months into Nato’s campaign, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi controls about 22 per cent more territory than in the aftermath of the revolution in February. French and Italian ministers have said the time has come to stop bombing and begin talking. Britain insists that military pressure must continue.
In the meantime, the opposition Transitional National Council (TNC) is busy planning for the future, mindful of an impending backlash against it as human rights groups accuse the rebels of atrocities and Western officials become exasperated at its internal bickering and haphazard military strategy. The TNC has hired an American lobbying firm that has acted for Bahrain and other repressive regimes. By hiring the firm, Patton Boggs, the Libyan rebels – lauded by David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy as freedom fighters – have joined a list of clients who have trampled on civil liberties and dissent, including the Mubarak regime in Egypt.
Documents from the United States Department of Justice obtained by The Independent show that Patton Boggs has been tasked by the TNC with gaining access to billions of dollars in frozen Libyan national assets abroad. Yesterday’s decision in Istanbul legitimising the Benghazi administration will make this easier.
The rebels in Libya face their own allegations of abuses. After the uprising there were repeated instances of lynchings of black men. The excuse at the time was that the men were mercenaries hired by Colonel Gaddafi. But many were innocent migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa. Extra-judicial killings of regime officials also followed the revolution. At al-Baida, near Tobruk, for instance, 20 officials were dragged from their homes and hanged.
The cases of abuse had been listed belatedly in a report published by Human Rights Watch. But no one has been investigated or prosecuted in opposition-held areas. And members of the provisional administration admit this is extremely unlikely to happen. There has been no demand from Western countries for an inquiry.
Internally, the opposition had suffered from confusion and conflicting messages. Many in the TNC were, until recently, regime officials. Its leader – Mustafa Abdel Jalil, a former justice minister under Colonel Gaddafi – and its chief spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoga have been at loggerheads for months. When the TNC was first formed at the end of February, Mr Jalil declared himself leader and said an agreement could be reached with Colonel Gaddafi. Both assertions were disputed by Mr Ghoga.
There is also a lack of consensus within the TNC on the political shape of post-Gaddafi Libya.
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Losers Ain’t Choosers in Libya
Posted by seumasach on July 15, 2011
Lisa Karpova
14th July, 2011
After failing a campaign to bring down the Ghaddafi government by force, NATO now attempts to bring it down by political negotiation. However, they fail to comprehend, or at least pretend they don’t comprehend, that losers don’t dictate terms for the end of a war, particularly if you were the aggressor.
Posted in Disband NATO!, Libya | Leave a Comment »
The Libyan War ends. Obama makes Moscow peace broker. NATO halts strikes
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2011
There is no confirmation that NATO strikes have ended but there are no reports of any. An end to the bombing is Tripoli’s precondition for talks and we know that the French are seeking talks. It is logical that they should end strikes. Not with a bang but a whimper- the end of empire is a deafening silence.
14th July, 2011
Bar the shouting, the war in Libya virtually ended Thursday morning, July 14, when US President Barack Obama called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead role in negotiations with Muammar Qaddafi for ending the conflict – provided only that the Libyan ruler steps down in favor of a transitional administration.
The US president thus accepted the Russian-Libyan formula for ending the war over the heads of the NATO chiefs who rejected it when they met Russian leaders at the Black Sea resort of Sochi last week.
DEBKAfile’s sources note that this same proposal first came from the Libyan ruler himself four months ago: On April 4, just ten days after NATO launched its air operation on behalf of the Libyan rebels, Qaddafi sent emissaries to Athens to propose Greek Prime Minister Georges Papandreou as mediator. The heads of NATO, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, turned him down, certain at the time they were within easy reach of a quick victory to topple him.
By the time Obama had decided to call Medvedev, individual governments which had spearheaded the anti-Qaddafi campaign were quietly melting away.
From Saturday, July 9, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, NATO discontinued its air strikes against Libyan pro-government targets in Tripoli and other places. The halt though unannounced was nonetheless an admission that 15,000 flight missions and 6,000 bombardments of Qaddafi targets had failed to achieve their object: Col. Qaddafi, without deploying a single fighter jet, firing an anti-air missile or activating terrorist cells in Europe, had waited for NATO to run out of steam and was still in power.
In an overview of the war to British air force commanders Wednesday, July 13, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox remarked that while no one knows when it will end, British ground corps, naval and air forces do not have the means to continue the war.
He admitted candidly that sustaining the high tempo of air strikes by RAF Tornado and Typhoons, as well as Navy warships and Army Apache attack helicopters, did “increase the pressure on both personnel and equipment as planning assumptions are tested, and it tests the ability of defense companies to support front-line operations.”
In early June, DEBKAfile’s military sources reported that NATO was short of warplanes for enforcing the no- fly zone over Libyan air space approved by the UN Security Council, its arsenals of smart bombs and missiles were depleted and its stocks of munitions and replacement parts almost down to zero.
This has now been confirmed by the British defense secretary, who added that British and European military industries lack the capacity for supporting a war effort that goes beyond a few weeks.
Our military sources disclose that Italy, a key player in NATO’s military effort, last week secretly withdrew its Air Force Garibaldi-551 planes from the campaign – dealing the operation another grave setback.
And in the last 10 days, France has also scaled back the military assets it had invested in the fighting after despairing of the anti-Qaddafi rebels based in Benghazi ever making headway against Qaddafi’s forces. First, Paris tried to transfer its backing from Benghazi to the secessionist Berber tribes fighting Qaddafi in Western Libya. On June 30, President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered weapons to be parachuted to the tribal fighters in western Libya, contrary to UN and NATO decisions. But the Berbers preferred to use the French guns for plundering towns and villages instead of fighting government forces.
On Monday, July 11, after that experience, Defense Secretary Gerard Longuet said it was time for talks to begin between Qaddafi and the rebels. Paris, he said, had asked the two sides to begin negotiations.
This was backhanded confirmation of the claim Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam made to the French media that his father was engaged in contacts for ending the war through emissaries who met with President Sarkozy.
While Minister Longuet said the Libyan ruler cannot stay in power, he refrained from demanding his ouster by force or his expulsion from the country. This formula therefore came close to Qaddafi’s terms for ending the war.
DEBKAfile’s diplomatic sources hail the agreement Presidents Obama and Medvedev reached on terms for negotiating the war’s end with Muammar Qaddafi as a major victory for the Libyan ruler and a resounding fiasco for NATO.
It also knocks over the international war crimes tribunal’s demand to extradite Qaddafi and his sons as war criminals.
Instead of sitting in the dock of the world court, they will now take their seats at the negotiating table for a deal one of whose objects will be to rescue NATO from the humiliation of defeat at war. But its main purpose will be to agree on the shape of a regime for the transition to democracy and its makeup. Qaddafi, while consenting to step down, will not doubt insist on his sons and loyalists being co-opted with full privileges to the future administration in Tripoli. The rebels will take up the offer for lack of any other options.
Libyan diplomacy is liable to be protracted and exhausting with many ups and downs and perhaps even limited military engagements on the ground
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China urges US to protect investors
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2011
14th July, 2011
BEIJING — China on Thursday urged Washington to protect the interests of investors after ratings agency Moody’s placed the United States’ triple-A debt rating on a downgrade watch.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: dollar collapse, End of empire, QE3 | Leave a Comment »
‘British Democracy Is a Farce’
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2011
“There is more rotten in the state of Great Britain than is dreamt of in our philosophy”
14th July, 2011
As the News of the World phone hacking scandal continues to unfold, there are indications that it extends beyond the press to the police and even the government. German papers on Thursday write that the situation reveals grave problems within Britain’s democratic system.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: The Coulson Affair | 1 Comment »
Les deputes francais votent la Guerre
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2011
Thierry Meyssan
14th July, 2011
Invités à exercer leur contrôle démocratique sur la guerre de Libye, les députés français ont validé un discours consensuel de bons sentiments, sans jamais questionner la réalité des faits qui leur étaient présentés. Ignorants des procédures internationales en cours contre la France, ils ont validé des crimes de guerre. Oubliant la langue de bois humanitaire, les orateurs de la majorité présidentielle ont dévoilé leurs intentions coloniales : ils ont évoqué les opportunités économiques offertes par la guerre et se sont félicités de la conquête de la Cyrénaïque.
L’Assemblée nationale française a débattu, le 12 juillet 2011, de la poursuite de l’intervention militaire en Libye [1]. Il s’agissait là de l’application d’une nouvelle disposition constitutionnelle prévoyant un vote du parlement à l’issue de trois mois d’opérations extérieures.
Les Députés se sont félicités, à juste titre, d’être ainsi co-descisionnaires de l’engagement des forces armées. Cependant, si cette réforme voulue par Nicolas Sarkozy marque une nette avancée démocratique, on est encore loin du compte. D’abord parce que ce vote n’intervient qu’à l’issue de trois mois de guerre ; et ensuite par ce que les parlementaires n’ont pas su ou pas pu le préparer. Ils ne disposaient à l’évidence d’aucune réflexion approfondie sur les implications en droit international (des milliers de plaintes de ressortissants libyens sont en cours de dépôt devant les juridictions nationales européennes et internationales), d’aucune information sur les événements ayant précédés cette guerre (planification par Washington dès 2002, tentative de putsch organisée par Paris en 2010, protocoles secrets du Traité de Lancaster House du 2 novembre 2010…), ni d’une évaluation contradictoire des crimes imputés au gouvernement libyen et aux rebelles (chaque jour on découvre que des crimes imputés au gouvernement de Tripoli n’ont pas existé, tandis que l’on a ignoré des crimes commis par les rebelles), ni même d’une vision claire des opérations militaires en cours (rôle d’Al Qaida et de Blackwater, choix des cibles de bombardement, déploiement du COS au sol, livraisons d’armes, état réel des combats…).
Dans ces conditions, l’Assemblée ne savait pas de quoi débattre et n’a joué que le rôle d’une chambre d’enregistrement. Même la contribution du Groupe communiste et apparentés qui a voté « non » s’est trouvée réduite à un exposé de principes sans argumentation serrée. Quand aux députés non inscrits, ou aux députés dissidents des groupes parlementaires, ils n’ont pas eu droit à la parole alors même que certains d’entre eux étaient les mieux informés de l’Assemblée.
Hypocrisie collective ou incompétence ?
Sur le fond, les députés devaient se prononcer sur la continuation des opérations militaires dont ils n’ont à aucun moment questionné le but et la légitimité. Pourtant, la résolution 1973 du Conseil de sécurité donnait un mandat à la Coalition des volontaires sans rapport avec ce qu’elle a entrepris.
Il s’agissait exclusivement de protéger les civils de tous bords en instituant une zone d’exclusion aérienne. Or, cette zone n’a jamais été mise en œuvre puisque l’aéroport de Benghazi fonctionne. Surtout l’OTAN n’a jamais cherché à protéger les civils puisqu’au contraire, elle a couvert les crimes de guerre d’Al-Qaida en Cyrénaïque.
À la place, l’OTAN a détruit l’essentiel des capacités militaires de la Libye et des infrastructures non-pétrolières (ces dernières sont intactes en vue du pillage à venir). Elle a mené une politique d’assassinat ciblé contre les familles des dirigeants libyens et a lancé une traque contre la personne de Mouammar Kadhafi. En outre l’OTAN a violé l’embargo sur les armes à destination du pays et a institué un blocus maritime illégal pour affamer la Tripolitaine.
Comme l’ont répété les différents orateurs, à commencer par le Premier ministre, la résolution 1973 est la première application du principe de « responsabilité de protéger » adopté par les Nations Unies lors du sommet mondial de septembre 2005. Or, ce concept exclu toute intervention qui aurait comme objectif un « changement de régime ».
- Christian Jacob s’est réjouit de la conquête de la Cyrénaïque et de la mise en place d’un gouvernement fantoche. Il a déclaré : « Notre pays a été le premier à reconnaître le Conseil national de transition et je souhaite rendre hommage à la clairvoyance du Président de la République. Le drapeau français flotte à Benghazi et c’est pour nous une source d’immense fierté. » (sic)
Les parlementaires ont donc en réalité été invités à avaliser l’agression de l’OTAN en violation de la résolution 1973. 482 sur 516 ont allégrement trempés leurs mains dans le sang des Libyens, souvent sans comprendre qu’on leur demandait en fait de couvrir le président Sarkozy.
En effet, la France, comme les autres États de la Coalition signataires du Traité de Rome aura bientôt à répondre de ses agissements. Presque toutes les actions entreprises par l’OTAN en Libye sont des crimes en droit international. Y compris le bombardement des sites de l’armée libyenne qui ressort d’une guerre de conquête et contrevient à la résolution 1973 ainsi que l’ont observé de nombreux responsables politiques dans le monde à commencer par Vladimir Poutine et Hugo Chavez.
Seuls les députés communistes et quelques socialistes mobilisés par l’ancien président de l’Assemblée nationale, Henri Emmanuelli, se sont opposés au crime.
Aveux
Il s’ensuit que les orateurs de la majorité présidentielle ont commis des imprudences qui pourront être lourdes de conséquences devant la Cour pénale internationale en laissant transparaître le mobile véritable de leur enthousiasme.
Ainsi, Philippe Folliot (président du groupe Nouveau Centre) a invité le gouvernement à défendre dès à présent les intérêts des entreprises françaises pour obtenir des contrats de reconstruction avec les autorités qui auront été mises en place à l’issue de la guerre.
La palme de la balourderie revient à Christian Jacob (président du groupe UMP) qui s’est félicité bruyamment de voir le drapeau français flotter sur Benghazi. Une formulation sans équivoque par laquelle il admet que l’opération Harmattan est une guerre de conquête.
Posted in Libya | Tagged: Stop the bombing of Libya | Leave a Comment »
Unfolding the Syrian paradox
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2011
Alastair Crooke
15th July, 2011
Can Syria properly be understood as an example of a “pure” Arab popular revolution, an uprising of non-violent, liberal protest against tyranny that has been met only by repression? I believe this narrative to be a complete misreading, deliberately contrived to serve quite separate ambitions. The consequences of turning a blind eye to the reality of what is happening in Syria entails huge risk: the potential of sectarian conflict that would not be confined to Syria alone.
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In These New Times 