All posts tagged: Libya

A Madman on the National Security Council

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by Matt Purple, from The American Conservative Would that John Bolton were only a clown. The mustachioed alleged diplomat, briefly of the Bush administration—and initially criticized as too controversial even for that team—has now been appointed national security advisor. That position will give him the president’s ear on matters of foreign policy, as well as control over which other administration principals enjoy such access. Donald Trump pledged that if elected he would be a different kind of Republican president, and he’s delivered: under the last GOP administration, Bolton occupied a slightly lower-ranking position than he does now. Bolton is indeed no circus act: he’s one of the sharpest and most dangerous national security operatives in Washington. To take just one example, last summer, Trump made it known that he was considering pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, a campaign promise he wanted fulfilled but that had been discouraged by his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Sensing an opportunity, Bolton wrote an essay for National Review explaining in breezy (i.e. Trump-digestible) terms just how to …

More ‘Fake News,’ Alas, From the New York Times

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From The American Conservative via Information Clearing House Disregarding President Trump’s insistent claim that the establishment press propagates “fake news” requires a constant effort—especially when a prestigious outlet like the New York Times allows itself to be used for blatantly fraudulent purposes. I cherish the First Amendment. Mark me down as favoring journalism that is loud, lively, and confrontational. When members of the media snooze—falling for fictitious claims about Saddam’s WMD program or Gaddafi’s genocidal intentions, for example—we all lose. So the recent decision by Times editors to publish an op-ed regarding Paul Manafort’s involvement in Ukraine is disturbing. That the Times is keen to bring down Donald Trump is no doubt the case. Yet if efforts to do so entail grotesque distortions of U.S. policy before Trump, then we are courting real trouble. Put simply, ousting Trump should not come at the cost of whitewashing the follies that contributed to Trump’s rise in the first place. The offending Times op-ed, the handiwork of Evelyn N. Farkas, appears under the title “With Manafort, It Really …

The Rising of Britain’s ‘New Politics’

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Delegates to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town of Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance. The world’s third biggest arms manufacturer, BAe Systems, supplier to Saudi Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships and fighter aircraft.

It seemed a perfidious symbol of a party in which millions of Britons now invest their political hopes. Once the preserve of Tony Blair, it is now led by Jeremy Corbyn, whose career has been very different and is rare in British establishment politics.

Actors and other Useful Idiots for Empire

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by Cindy Sheehan In 2005 while I was roasting for peace under the hot Texas sun at Camp Casey in Crawford, Tx, Rob Reiner sent his wife Michelle and a crew there to film a commercial with me. Before the end of 2005, a lot of the people/groups who supported our antiwar effort kicked us to the curb when they figured out we really were against war and not just against Bush’s wars. The Reiners were among the ones that I discovered didn’t so much care about the wars, but cared more about getting Demo-quacks elected. Soon after Camp Casey temporarily shut-down that summer, I was invited to the Reiner’s house to have a meeting. I was never the kind of person who got all twittery over so-called celebrities, but if the Reiners could help our cause, I was anxious to further our collaboration. Rob Reiner and his team had already offered to do the paperwork and pay for getting Gold Star Families for Peace (my organization at the time) non-profit (501c3) status which we …

According to Emmanuel Macron, the days of popular sovereignty are over

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by Thierry Meyssan, September 5, 2017, via VoltaireNet Delivering a keynote speech before the most senior of French diplomats, President Macron revealed his conception of the world and the way in which he intends to use the tools at his disposal. According to him, there will be no more popular sovereignty, neither in France, nor in Europe, and therefore no more national or supra-national democracies. Neither will there be any more collective interest, no more Republic, but an ill-defined catalogue of things and ideas which compose the common good. Describing their new programme of work to the ambassadors, he informed them that they should no longer defend the values of their country, but find opportunities to act in the name of the European Leviathan. Entering into the details of certain conflicts, he described a programme of economic colonisation of the Levant and Africa. Participating in the traditional Ambassadors’ Week, President Macron gave his first general speech on foreign policy since his arrival at the Elysée Palace [1]. In this article, all the quotations in inverted commas …

The Battle of Charlottesville?

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by Jon Jeter, August 14, 2017 Mothafuckas just gonna have to be mad at me, I don’t give a fuck. This right here be some bullshit. Is Trump a neo-fascist?  By any critical measure, indeed he is. But for the life of me, I cannot come up with a single definition of fascism that would NOT also include Obama.  I suppose that if we stick to Cobb’s narrow prescriptions of “Nazism” it’s true that we have never before seen a feebler response as Trump’s inaction this weekend, sort of like it’s true that Michael Jordan and John Paxson once combined to score 71 points in a single game. But for those of us who are NOT sophists and understand Nazism as Germany’s particular expression of fascism, we recognize that there is a seamless continuity between Bush, Clinton, Baby Bush, Obama and the White House’s current occupant. Was Obama’s failure to prosecute a single police officer for the murders of black and brown people that occurred on his watch some kind of testament to liberal democracy? …

The Economic Motive for America’s Current Wars

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Russia has long been the chief seller of energy — mainly gas and oil — in the world’s largest energy-market: the EU, or Europe. This means that U.S.-based energy companies, such as Exxon and Halliburton, aren’t the ones who dominate in supplying oil, gas, pipelines, and other energy-supplying needs, to the consumers and businesses in the world’s largest energy-market: Europe.

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 — …