“After you Brother!” Qadaffi stays and Obama leaves?

Dees Illustration

Franklin Lamb LLM, PhD
Activist Post

Tripoli, Libya -- The 6/27/11 International Criminal Courts (ICC) arrest warrants issued for Muammar Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, and Libya intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi, however pleasing to the “rebels” and NATO, probably won’t have much effect on negotiating a settlement between the two camps and certainly the warrants will not facilitate a voluntary regime change. Quite likely, the warrants effects will tend toward the obverse, with the Libyan government ignoring, but ridiculing the much criticized ICC and pointing out its historical pattern of targeting African leaders. At Tripoli’s Rixos Nasser Hotel, just a few hours after the arrest warrants were announced, Libya’s Justice Minister and a high ranking Foreign Affairs official did just that and then refused to take any questions from the large gathering of western journalists of whom Libya is distrustful of, given a spate of recent false main stream media reports that have been exposed as hoaxes.

Colonel Qaddafi and his supporters, in a series of what this observer refers to as “Hezbollah style free give and take dialogue sessions” are making it very plain that they will prevail in re-unifying Libya and probably before Ramadan which begins, this year, in early August. They argue that the “rebels” are increasingly fighting among themselves and are losing popular support. It’s an argument similar to the one the “rebels” are using to explain how their victory is all but assured, also by the end of Ramadan.

Bill would approve US role in Libya retroactively

US Senator John Kerry
© AFP/File Aamir Qureshi

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two top US senators on Tuesday introduced a bill that would retroactively support America's military role in Libya, amid a raging debate over whether President Barack Obama flouted the law by not getting prior congressional approval.

"I believe we will find a strong, bipartisan majority that is in favor of authorizing our current military operations in Libya and seeing this mission through to success," said Republican US Senator John McCain, one of the authors of the bill.

"That is a message that (Libyan President Moamer) Kadhafi needs to hear. It is a message that Khadafi's opponents, fighting to liberate their nation, need to hear," McCain told his fellow senators during floor debate in the Senate, as he urged a vote on the measure "as soon as possible."

A Firestorm On The Eastern Horizon

Dees Illustration

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market

The Middle East is and always has been an incredible waste of time, energy, capital, and of course, human lives. Every civilization that has attempted to tame and corral the region has met with resounding frustration and defeat. Every empire that moves to extend its borders around its existing cultures has withered under the strain of constant war and revolution. Long before petroleum became a sought after commodity and long after its free flow was established, the Middle East has been used as a fulcrum point for turning nations and worlds inside out. One might begin to wonder where the West’s mindless obsession with the place actually comes from...

From crusades for the holy land, to crusades for oil, to crusades for “WMD’s” and the “downtrodden masses”; we have been regaled for centuries by governments and elitists with elaborate rationalizations for indefinite war within the cradle of civilization. Our government in particular has seen fit to topple dictatorships, install new dictatorships, embroil our troops in the quagmire of nation building, instigate social instability and civil unrest, fund terrorist organizations, elevate madmen, and then brandish them like weapons to frighten the American public into relinquishing their civil liberties. Every decade, and every new layer of conflict, brings the U.S. closer to the breaking point, and closer to bankruptcy.

The Media Distract the Public from War

Dees Illustration

Sheldon Richman
Future of Freedom

If one is to judge by the tone of the television commentators, America must be deep in a crisis. Long stretches of cable time are devoted to the breaking news. Each detail is presented as more grave and consequential for the republic than the last. The fate of the country surely hangs in the balance.

What is it? War? Fiscal crisis? Mass unemployment? A double-dip recession?

No. A congressman was caught sending lewd photographs of himself to women over the Internet.

This is what now consumes so much of the news media’s attention. This is what outranks in news value continuing occupations of foreign countries, three overt and an undetermined number of covert wars, and a looming fiscal crisis. As America’s imperial elite seeks to hold on to and extend its global power in defiance of economic reality, the spectacle of a congressman, Anthony Weiner of New York, appparently sharing pictures of his private parts with female strangers has taken center stage.

6 in 10 Americans Now Oppose Obama's War in Libya

The president has made himself vulnerable by launching the conflict without congressional cover. Will Republicans capitalize?

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Six in 10 Americans don't think the U.S. should be involved in Libya, according to a new CBS News poll. It found that only 30 percent of Americans think we're doing the right thing by intervening militarily in that country. That includes majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. As a point of comparison, 51 percent of Americans and a majority of Republicans think we're "doing the right thing" in Afghanistan. The Libya numbers are bad news for the man in the Oval Office.

What does it mean for a president seeking reelection to have launched a wildly unpopular war without congressional approval? That his Republican challengers should run to President Obama's left on at least some aspects of national security. It might've been awkward to do so given that much of Obama's national security strategy is identical to the one that Republicans praised under George W. Bush. But this affords a surprisingly easy opportunity to win support from an electorate that is tiring of expensive foreign wars: The GOP nominee need not disavow conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan that rank and file conservatives defended for so long. He or she need only rail against the expense, execution, and questionable strategic value of fighting in Libya.

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US calls Libya rebel council 'the legitimate interlocutor'

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shakes
hands with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheik
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan
© AFP/Pool Susan Walsh

AFP

ABU DHABI (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here Thursday described the Libyan rebel council as "the legitimate interlocutor" of the Libyan people, a senior US State Department official said.

Clinton "used the word 'the' rather than 'a' in describing the TNC (Transitional National Council) as the legitimate interlocutor for the Libyan people through this interim period," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Clinton, he said, made the distinction in a speech to representatives of world powers preparing for a Libya without Colonel Moamer Kadhafi.

"This is our own signal of moving toward that transition of working with the TNC on its own roadmap through this interim period," he said.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license.

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Oil price rises sharply after Opec meeting collapses in disarray

• Proposal to increase production rejected by 6 of 12 members
• Analysts foresee Opec's power base weakening

Gas prices rising wikimedia image

Terry Macalister and Heather Stewart
Guardian

Hopes that Opec would bring relief to motorists and wider western economies from soaring energy prices were today dashed when a crunch meeting of the oil cartel broke up in disarray without the expected agreement to increase crude output.

Political turbulence in North Africa and the Middle East undermined the usual consensus at the meeting in Vienna and led to speculation that new internal rivalries could split the group, leading to even more market chaos.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and influential Opec dove, was outmanoeuvred by Iran, Venezuela, Libya and others, later describing the summit as "one of the worst meetings we have ever had".

The price of Brent crude soared a further $1.65 to $118.43 a barrel as an expected Opec agreement to raise its production quotas by about 1.5 million barrels a day failed to materialise.

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Libyan rebel group sells first oil to U.S.

Dees Illustration

Jamie Crawford
CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The rebel government in control of the eastern part of Libya has made its first sale of oil from territory it controls, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Tesoro, a U.S. oil refiner, entered into a deal May 25 with the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, Libya for 1.2 million barrels of Libyan crude oil, the State Department said in a written statement. The shipment was scheduled to arrive aboard the MT Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker, at the Single Point Mooring in Hawaii on Wednesday. The dollar value of the deal is not known.

U.S. support for additional oil sales with the TNC will continue as a means to support additional revenue streams for the Libyan people, the statement said.

The sale was made possible following an April announcement by the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department that established a new licensing policy with Libya. That action was taken to ease barriers to certain oil related transactions with the TNC, in place because of wider U.S. sanctions on Libya.

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GOING ROGUE: NATO War Crimes in Libya

Susan Lindauer, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It's a story CNN won't report. Late at night there's a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women's throats.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who's part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot.  If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of "neutral homes" are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.

The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage

Dees Illustration

Anthony Gregory
Lew Rockwell

In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

Paul: Do Nothing Senate Lets Obama Break War Powers Law (Video)

Youtube





Here’s what noted Republican Abraham Lincoln once wrote on the subject:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don’t.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.'

Related Article:   

Republicans in Congress to Crown Obama King

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US Senate blocks bill targeting oil firm subsidies

© AFP/Getty Images/File David Paul Morris

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate defeated a bill taking aim at some $2 billion in annual subsidies to some of the world's largest and most profitable oil companies amid deep voter anger at high gasoline prices.

Lawmakers voted 52-48 to end debate on the measure, falling short of the 60 required and effectively killing a proposal that the White House's Democratic allies had portrayed as a belt-tightening step in cash-strapped Washington.

Democrats planned to revive the proposal -- which would have affected oil giants BP America, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell -- as part of broader spending-cut talks ahead of a vote on raising the US debt ceiling.

No End to the Western Liberation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya (Video)

Youtube

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US carries out first drone strike in Libya: Pentagon

A US Predator unmanned drone was used for
the first drone strike in Libya
© AFP/File Massoud Hossaini

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States carried out its first drone strike in Libya on Saturday, the Pentagon said, two days after approving the use of pilotless aircraft to aid rebels fighting Moamer Kadhafi's forces.

"The first Predator strike in Libya occurred today in the early afternoon local time (our morning time EDT)," a US military press spokesman said in a statement sent to AFP.

But he said there would be no further information about the target or where the strike occurred. "Per common practice we are not providing any details," the spokesman added.

Kissinger Calls For US Ground Invasion Of Libya

Globalists want protracted war to last through 2012

Wikimedia Commons image

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

Despite the fact that the United States is embroiled in three major conflicts and can barely service its own gigantic debt, with Standard and Poor this week indicating the US will soon lose its triple-A credit rating, top globalist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently told fellow elitists at three different globalist confabs that the US needs to launch a ground invasion of Libya and keep the war running for at least another year.

According to veteran Bilderberg journalist Jim Tucker, whose sources have proven routinely accurate in leaking discussion topics shared by globalists at their regular meetings, Kissinger gave almost the exact same speech at three different conferences over the past two weeks, firstly during an April 8-10 get-together at the George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs, then at an Aspen Institute session on “Values and Diplomacy” at the National Cathedral, and finally during the Bretton Woods II conference in New Hampshire.

Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports

Sinopec Station in Hong Kong
Wikimedia Commons image

Zero Hedge

As if a dollar in freefall was not enough, surging oil is about to hit the turbo boost, decimating what is left of the US (and global) consumer. Xinhua, via Energy Daily, brings this stunner:  "Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle East unrest and Japan’s earthquake, a report said Wednesday. The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output “to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products”. Oh but don’t worry, those good Saudi folks are seeing a massive drop in demand… for their Kool aid perhaps. “Sinopec would ensure supplies met  the “basic needs” of the southern Chinese special regions of Hong Kong and Macao, but they also should expect an unspecified drop in supply, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company official as saying.” Now… does anyone remember the 1970s?

The report said Sinopec has raised output of refined oil products this year, with its first-quarter production reaching 31.55 million tonnes, an increase of 6.2 percent from the same period last year. 

Sinopec last month said its 2010 net profit rose nearly 14 percent on higher oil prices and strong domestic demand for refined oil and chemical products. 

It reported a net profit of 71.8 billion yuan ($11 billion). 

The Beijing-based company attributed the result to China's rapid economic growth, robust oil demand and "the increase in the price of crude oil, oil products and petrochemical products."

US seeking country to take in Kadhafi: report

© AFP/File Joseph Eid

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Barack Obama administration has launched an intense search for a country that could provide refuge to Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi, The New York Times reported Saturday.

But amid looming indictments against Kadhafi by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for the atrocities committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, US officials only have a narrow list of potential host countries.

Three officials for President Barack Obama's administration told the Times they were considering finding a country that has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute, which requires countries to turn over anyone being indicted for trial by the ICC.

US senators unveil resolution against Libya conflict

© AFP Odd Andersen

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US military strikes on Libya are "not in the vital interests of the United States" and further action should require congressional approval, under a symbolic senate resolution unveiled Thursday.

President Barack Obama "should obtain authorization from Congress before providing further military and financial support to operations in Libya," says the measure crafted by Republican Senators John Ensign and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

The non-binding resolution says NATO members and other nations supportive of enforcing a UN mandate to protect Libyan civilians from strongman Moamer Kadhafi's forces "should agree to provide a substantial portion of the military and financial burdens" before any more US involvement.

Putting Out the Fire in Libya with Gasoline

Susan Lindauer, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

War doesn’t work, does it? Best case scenario, NATO's war against Libya will run 18 to 24 months unless decisive action is taken right now—this day—to end the military confrontation.

Moussa Koussa, Libya's Foreign Minister who defected to Britain on March 30, warns Libya is in danger of becoming the "New Somalia."

Violence is erupting from both sides. The ugly truth is that with every missile strike, NATO kills more and more Libyan people.

NATO cares nothing for the Saudi invasion of Bahrain, which has resulted in wide-scale disappearances of democracy activists. NATO cares nothing for the uprisings in Yemen, peppered with government snipers. Only Libya has been singled out for violent retribution. Of course, this is an oil grab. Gadhaffi challenged U.S. (and probably British) oil companies to reimburse Libya for the economic damage caused by U.N. sanctions tied to the Lockerbie bombing, which Libya had nothing to do with. The U.N. Security Council forced Libya to submit to the Lockerbie Trial and pay $2.7 billion in damages to the families of Pan Am 103, only for the U.S. to bribe witnesses with $4 million payments to testify against Libya's men at Trial.

Cost of Libya war for US at $608 million: Pentagon

AFP/US Navy image

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The cost of the air war in Libya for the US military has reached $608 million, a US defense official said Monday.

The cost estimate covers the period from the start of international air strikes in Libya on March 19 to April 4, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

US officials previously had said the operation had cost $550 million through March 28.

The Pentagon has estimated the air campaign will cost the United States about $40 million a month, even after NATO allies took the lead in the UN-mandated operation designed to protect civilians against Moamer Kadhafi's forces.

For the US Air Force alone, the war costs about $4 million a day, the top civilian in the air force told reporters last week.

But Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said he expected that figure to come down with European allies carrying out bombing raids while US aircraft play a support role.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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