All posts tagged: Libya

Trump Has Been Continuing Obama’s Syria-Policy

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by Eric Zuesse U.S. President Donald Trump, who during the election-campaign ferociously condemned Barack Obama’s foreign policies, while asserting nothing concrete of his own, has, as the U.S. President, committed himself quite clearly to continuing Obama’s publicly stated policy on Syria, which policy was to place, as the first priority, the elimination of ISIS, and as the policy to follow that, the elimination and replacement of Syria’s government. I have previously indicated that on June 19th “Russia Announces No-Fly Zone in Syria — War Against U.S. There”, and that the early indications are that Trump has changed his Syria-policy to accommodate Russia’s demands there; but, prior to June 19th, Trump was actually following Obama’s publicly stated Syria-policy. As also will be shown here, Obama’s publicly stated policy — to destroy ISIS and then to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad — was actually less extreme than his real policy, which was to overthrow Assad and to use the jihadist forces in Syria (especially Al Qaeda in Syria) to achieve that objective. Trump, at least until 19 …

Why Americans Don’t Understand Terrorism, At All

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by Joe Giambrone “Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.” Seymour Hersh, The Redirection, 2007 We live in an invisible empire, and so the mechanics of the empire are never openly discussed with the rabble. Americans don’t comprehend how power actually works across the planet that their country seeks to control. They live from momentary headline to headline without any honest, in-depth analysis of why events like the Manchester bombing occur and keep occurring. When it comes to terrorism it is dire, urgent, and desperate that the public understand, if anything is to change. But it certainly appears that Americans never will. Perhaps Britons may, and then lead the effort to stop it. In the United States, a bigoted faction demonizes all Muslims. That faction calls for more weapons and for their own wanton terror …

The US takes Syria’s Al-Qaeda off Terror Watch-lists

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by Nauman Sadiq According to a recent report [1] by CBC Canada, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front and then Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) since July 2016, has been removed from the terror watch-lists of the US and Canada after it merged with fighters from Zenki Brigade and hardline jihadists from Ahrar al-Sham and rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in January this year. The US State Department is hesitant to label Tahrir al-Sham a terror group, despite the group’s link to al-Qaeda, as the US government has directly funded and armed the Zenki Brigade, one of the constituents of Tahrir al-Sham, with sophisticated weaponry including the US-made antitank TOW missiles. The overall military commander of Tahrir al-Sham continues to be Abu Mohammad al-Julani, whom the US has branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a $10 million bounty. But for the US to designate Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist organization now would mean acknowledging that it supplied sophisticated weapons to terrorists, and draw attention to the fact that …

Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Nice, London, New York: Passports and IDs Mysteriously Discovered in the Wake of Terror Attacks

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by Prof Michel Chossudovsky from Global Research This article reviews the “mysterious” phenomenon of IDs and Passports of terror suspects routinely discovered (often in the rubble) in the wake of a terrorist attack. In most cases the alleged suspect was known to the authorities. Is there a pattern? The ID papers of the suspect are often left behind, discovered by police in the wake of a terrorist attack. According to government and media reports, the suspects are without exception linked to an Al Qaeda affiliated entity. None of these terror suspects survived. Dead men do not talk. In the case of the tragic events in Manchester, the bankcard of the alleged suicide bomber Salman Abedi was found in his pocket in the wake of the explosion. Legitimacy of the official stories? The UK is both a “victim of terrorism” as well as a “State sponsor of terrorism”. Without exception, the governments of Western countries which are victims of terror attacks, have supported, directly or indirectly, the Al Qaeda group of terrorist organizations including the Islamic …

Manchester Bomber Was Product of West’s Libya/Syria Intervention

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by Daniel McAdams, for RPI Here’s what the media and politicians don’t want you to know about the Manchester, UK, suicide attack: Salman Abedi, the 22 year old who killed nearly two dozen concert-goers in Manchester, UK, was the product of the US and UK overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and “regime change” policy in Syria. He was a radicalized Libyan whose family fled Gaddafi’s secular Libya, and later he trained to be an armed “rebel” in Syria, fighting for the US and UK “regime change” policy toward the secular Assad government. The suicide attacker was the direct product of US and UK interventions in the greater Middle East. According to the London Telegraph, Abedi, a son of Libyan immigrants living in a radicalized Muslim neighborhood in Manchester had returned to Libya several times after the overthrow of Muamar Gaddafi, most recently just weeks ago. After the US/UK and allied “liberation” of Libya, all manner of previously outlawed and fiercely suppressed radical jihadist groups suddenly found they had free rein to operate in Libya. This is the …

‘Sorted’ by MI5: How UK government sent British-Libyans to fight Gaddafi

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by Amanda Thomas-Johnson and Simon Hooper, with contribution by Areeb Ullah, for Middle East Eye Fighters say government operated ‘open door’ policy allowing them to join rebels, as authorities investigate background of Manchester bomber The British government operated an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to join the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders, Middle East Eye can reveal. Several former rebel fighters now back in the UK told MEE that they had been able to travel to Libya with “no questions asked” as authorities continued to investigate the background of a British-Libyan suicide bomber who killed 22 people in Monday’s attack in Manchester. Salman Abedi, 22, the British-born son of exiled dissidents who returned to Libya as the revolution against Gaddafi gathered momentum, is also understood to have spent time in the North African country in 2011 and to have returned there on several subsequent occasions. British police have said they believe the bomber, who returned to Manchester just a …

The US Aggression on Syria and the Principles of a “Just War”

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by Prof. Vladislav Sotirovic The US military forces committed a classical example of the aggression on one sovereign and independent state on April 6th, 2017 by bombing the territory of Syrian Arab Republic with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Killing civilians who are proclaimed, as usual, as “collateral damage”. A formal excuse for the aggression was based, as many times before (from Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya), on traditional political false flags and mainstream media fake news used by the US propaganda machinery to sanction the Pentagon’s hegemonic policy of the Pax Americana. The Fundamental Dilemma The fundamental dilemma is why the US administrations of Obama & Trump were and are supporting different kinds of the Islamic fundamentalist jihad organizations in Syria and the Mideast regardless on the fact that they are called by the White House as “moderate terrorists”? A terrorist is simply a terrorist and there is no any difference between “moderate” or “hardcore” terrorist if the first term can exist at all from both logical and moral reasons. It is already known that …

Middle Eastern Surgeon Speaks About the “Ecology of War”

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Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back. Dr. Abu-Sitta is also a thinker. A Palestinian born in Kuwait, he studied and lived in the UK, and worked in various war zones of the Middle East, as well as in Asia, before accepting his present position at the AUB Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon. We were brought together by peculiar circumstances. Several months ago I burned my foot on red-hot sand, in Southeast Asia. It was healing slowly, but it was healing. Until I went to Afghanistan where at one of the checkpoints in Herat I had to take my shoes off, and the wound got badly infected. Passing through London, I visited a hospital there, and …

US Has Panic Attack After Libyan Puppets Lose Control of Oil Ports

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from Russia Insider Libya was the richest, most developed, most educated country in North Africa. It was a model of much-needed stability in the region, with a government that was considerably less terrible than NATO’s numerous medieval dictator-allies. Before the “revolution”, the Libyan government used oil revenues to subsidize a whole range of social benefits for its citizens. And now that Libya is a moon crater, the U.S. and its European poodles are whining about “returning oil ports to the Libyan people”. Is this a new standup routine that Washington has been practicing? EU states and the US have urged a Russia-backed Libyan warlord to hand back oil ports, amid warnings that Russia was trying to do in Libya what it did in Syria. The British, French, Italian, and US ambassadors to Libya said oil facilities “belong to the Libyan people and must remain under the exclusive control” of central authorities. This statement is of course referring to Khalifa Haftar and his successful attack against “Islamist militias” (fanatics affiliated with al-Qaeda) who seized Sidra and …

VIDEO: R2P or How the Left Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Wars of Imperial Aggression

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If the last three years have taught us anything, it is that the so-called anti-war liberal left can be made to become cheerleaders for the same war agenda that they pretended to deride during the Bush Administration. How was this accomplished? A developing doctrine of international law called “Responsibility to Protect.” Links to sources and show notes here.

The Great American Perpetual Motion War Machine

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The so-called ‘military-industrial complex’ ushered in by the passing of the 1947 National Security Act is a luxury America and the world can no longer afford. The unprecedented threat posed by the over-privileged belligerents infecting U.S. military doctrine with their unbridled hegemonic ambition is redolent of that of the British Empire in the years leading up to the Great War in 1914. With Donald Trump advocating massive upgrades of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and full-spectrum dominance likely to remain integral to American foreign and national security policy making, along with musing on how we arrived at this point, we ponder the here and now, and an unthinkable, yet, still avoidable future

Libyan Labels: a journey through the Guardian’s coverage of the Libyan disaster

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In this analysis we examine Libya’s recent history looking through the eyes of the Guardian, the flagship of liberal western outlets, and its reporting. As with most other western media, the Guardian was an enthusiastic supporter of the NATO intervention that overthrew Gaddafi and threw the country into the disaster that we are about to describe. Faithful to western interests then, the Guardian remains faithful afterwards as well. But imperial designs are laden with contradictions and sometimes drastically change course, but the Guardian dutifully follows.

I Have a Scream

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by Brian Foley, via CounterPunch I get it. You don’t like Trump. I’ve wanted to say that to Facebook Friends who’ve spent the past several months hate-posting against Trump. Most posts aren’t funny, creative, or informative. When not merely petulant, they’re raw unfiltered anger. People might as well post videos of themselves screaming. Turns out someone sort of did. A viral video shows a woman at the Inauguration sitting cross-legged on the ground, with her hands in the air in front of her, emitting a loud, guttural, primal scream at the precise moment Trump was sworn in: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! At least it was honest, right? Well, actually, it looks staged. The camera was on her, waiting. Nine seconds in, she looks up briefly, as if to make sure the camera crew was ready for “the scream.” Afterward, the Screamer looked exhausted. The ITV news crew descended, and the Screamer was incoherent: ITV: Can you explain your emotions to me? Explain your emotions to me. SCREAMER: There’s just no way, there’s like just no — …

This week the issue is not Trump. It is ourselves.

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by John Pilger On the day President Trump is inaugurated, thousands of writers in the United States will express their indignation. “In order for us to heal and move forward…”, say Writers Resist, “we wish to bypass direct political discourse, in favour of an inspired focus on the future, and how we, as writers, can be a unifying force for the protection of democracy.” And: “We urge local organizers and speakers to avoid using the names of politicians or adopting ‘anti’ language as the focus for their Writers Resist event. It’s important to ensure that nonprofit organizations, which are prohibited from political campaigning, will feel confident participating in and sponsoring these events.” Thus, real protest is to be avoided, for it is not tax exempt. Compare such drivel with the declarations of the Congress of American Writers, held at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1935, and again two years later. They were electric events, with writers discussing how they could confront ominous events in Abyssinia, China and Spain. Telegrams from Thomas Mann, C Day Lewis, …

Obama’s Nonexistent Legacy

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by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Trump did more than any democrat to deflate the neocon/neoliberal agenda that liberals themselves screamed was fascist when Bush was president.” That was a brilliant and profoundly true reader-comment posted November 14th about Hillary Clinton supporters who were demonstrating against Trump’s winning the Presidency. Hillary was even more of a war-hawk than Bush was, or than Obama was: she supported not just Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but Obama’s invasions of Libya and Syria, a coup in Honduras, and helped plan Obama’s coup in Ukraine, which led to Ukraine’s breaking apart into civil war. Plus she was even more of a champion of Wall Street than Obama was, and maybe even more so than Bush was. Yet many Democrats think that the anti-Establishment Donald Trump is, somehow, even worse. They claim that Trump is a “racist” — as though either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton hadn’t been leading a country where the top 0.1% got the vast majority of the economic benefits and the bottom 90% — including especially …

Open Letter to American Liberals

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by Thomas S. Harrington, via Common Dreams I would love to share, my liberal friend, in your sense of incredulity about the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of United States. I would love to stand with you in the sense of woundedness that, while certainly painful up front, carries with it the secondary compensation of a warm and nurturing solidarity. I would love to sit with you and fulminate in righteous anger about the unparalleled vulgarity and cruelty of Trump and his followers. As much as I’d like to do these things, I won’t.  Why? Because I know you, perhaps better than you even dare to know yourself. I know you well because I have watched you with great and detailed care over the last three decades and have learned, sadly, that you are as much if not more about image and self-regard as any of the laudable values you claim to represent. I have watched as you accommodated yourself to most of the retrograde social forces you claim to abhor.  I have …

Western Hypocrisy, and Why It Makes the World a Dangerous Place

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by Michael Jabara Carley, October 16, 2016, via Strategic Culture The West has always been a great trembling hive of hypocrisy, portraying itself as liberal, progressive, civilised and democratic. You know the descriptors; the list is very long. Take the United States, for example, it is the «shining house upon the hill»: just, altruistic, democratic, with a «mission to extend individual liberties throughout the world». “Our cause has been the cause of all mankind”, Lyndon Johnson declared during the 1964 presidential election campaign. To reinforce his argument Johnson cited President Woodrow Wilson, who had similar things to say about American virtue. Nothing has changed: listen to Barack Obama talk about the altruism of the United States. “We are the «exceptional nation»,” he often says. These western and especially US virtues are mobilised to justify policies, wars, covert activities which are not virtuous at all. Let’s start with Wilson. He is best known for the «Fourteen Points», national self-determination, “democracy”, open agreements, and so on. “Do as I say, not as I do,” Wilson might have …

Syria Propaganda – The Death Rattle of the Corporate Media

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by Simon Wood, October 3, 2016 The role of the corporate media is to protect, promote and legitimize the destructive and amoral aims of profit-seeking private power. Any journalist or columnist working within that system is actively aiding the corporate media achieve this goal. These gatekeepers, especially those regarded as liberal, are therefore culpable in the illegal wars and rapacious, planet-destroying actions of the worst corporations.” ‘The Gatekeepers’, The 99.99998271%, April 7th 2015 [Source] I listened to my colleague from Russia — and I sort of felt [we’re] in a parallel universe here” US Secretary of State John Kerry on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov [Source] As corporate media rhetoric against the current priority targets – Russia and Syria is ramped up to extreme levels, a battle is raging within the only remaining global space for freedom of thought and expression: the Internet social media. Two warring, diametrically opposed realities vie for supremacy over the perceptions of the world’s people. In one reality, the US and its NATO allies are benevolent forces fighting the good …

President Obama Threatens President Putin with Nuclear War

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by Eric Zuesse. “It’ll be at a time of our choosing,” says U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on NBC’’s “Meet the Press,” to be aired on Sunday, October 16th. Interviewer Chuck Todd had asked him, “Why would he [Obama] send a message out to Putin?” Biden pursed his lips, paused, and said, with a grim look on his face, “We sent him the message.” Of course that didn’t answer Todd’s question, which was “Why?” Biden and Todd both remained silent for another tense moment. Then, Biden picked up again: “We have the capacity to do it, and, uh,” and Todd interrupted him there with “He’ll know it?” Biden replied: “He’ll know it, and it’ll be at a time of our choosing, and under circumstances that have the greatest impact. Uh, the capacity to do, to fundamentally alter the election, is not what people think; and, uh, I tell you what: to the extent that they do [‘do’ presumably meaning: fundamentally alter the election], we will be proportionate in what we do. And, uh,” Todd again …

Stop the Avaaz petition for a “no fly zone” in Syria

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We all know what Avaaz is and its obscene history of supporting armed invasions in the name of “humanitarianism” is well-documented. In 2011 it supported the no-fly zone in Libya that allowed the US to destroy the country and murder its president. In 2013 it supported a NATO invasion of Syria that would have ended the same way. Now its cynical warmongering has become tinged with genuine insanity as it demands a no-fly zone in Syria that would inevitably lead to direct conflict between US and Russian forces. Almost incredibly there are still well-meaning progressives, liberals and anti-war campaigners who don’t know what Avaaz is and who put their names to these petitions under the confused impression that a no-fly zone is some sort of easy method of ending conflict, and not a de facto declaration of war that will be enforced with shells and bomb and many more deaths. The FAQ page of their poll contains dangerously out-of-touch lies, reassuring people that: The no-fly zone could be the fastest route to de-escalation. …which is …