ME Remapping

8/6/2019 ME Remapping

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/me-remapping 1/52

April 1, 2011Rense.com

The Truth About Libya by Stephen Goodson

Colonel Muammar Gadaffi is frequently referred to in the media as a"mad dictator" and "bloody tyrant", but do these allegations accordwith the facts?

Libya consists of over 15O tribes, with the two main groups, theMeghabra living in Tripolitania in the west and the Wafallah living inCyrenaica in the east. Previous attempts to unite these tribes by theTurkish (1855-1911) and ltalian (1911-43) colonial rulers failed andthe country was split in two for administrative purposes.

Oil was discovered in Libya in 1959, but King ldris of the Senussitribe allowed most of the oil profits to be siphoned into the coffers of the oil companies. The coup d'etat on 1 September 1969 led byColonel Gadaffi had countrywide support. He subsequently married awoman from the royal Barqa tribe and adroitly unified the nation.

By retaining Libya's oil wealth for the benefit of all its people, Gadaffihad created a socialist paradise. There is no unemployment, Libyahas the highest GDP in Africa, less than 5% of the population isclassified as poor and it has fewer people living below the povertydatum line than for example in Holland. Life expectancy is 75 yearsand is the highest in Africa and I0% above the world average.

With the exception of the nomadic Bedouin and Tuareg tribes, mostLibyan families possess a house and a car. There is free health careand education and not surprisingly Libya has a literacy rate of 82%.Last year Gadaffi distributed $500 to each man, woman and child (population 6.5 million).

Libya has a tolerable human rights record and stands at 61 on theInternational Incarceration Index, comparable with countries incentral Europe (the lower the rating, the lower the standing - the USA



occupies the no.1 spot!). There is hardly any crime and only rebelsand traitors are dealt with harshly.

Anyone who has read Gadaffi's little Green Book will realize that heis a thoughtful and enlightened leader. Libya has been accused of having committed numerous acts of terrorism in the past, but many of these have been perpetrated by foreign intelligence agencies as falseflag operations - the Lockerbie bombing being a prime example.

The CIA and MI6 and their frontmen have been stoking up dissent inthe east of the country for almost 30 years. Libya producesexceptionally high quality light crude oil and its production cost of $1a barrel, compared to the current price of $115, is the lowest in theworld.

Riba (usury) is not permitted . The Central bank of Libya is a wholly-owned by the Libyan Government and is run as a state bank, issuingall government loans free of interest. This is in contrast to theexploitative fractional reserve banking system of the West. The no-flyzone and the bombing of Libya have nothing to do with the protectionof civilians. It is an act of war a blatant and crude attempt by the oilcorporations and international bankers to steal the wealth of Libya. . ..

FULL TEXT

---CAVEAT: Mr. Goodson's account needs verification. We believe thisis the same Stephen Goodson who is the leader of the Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party , and who " back in 2003 . . . unseatedmining boss Brian Gilbertson from the Bank's board" in South Africa.

[C ol. Haftar is now reported to be the leader of a contra-style groupbased in the U.S. called the Libyan National Army. This group issupported by the U.S., and has been given training facilities in theU.S.--Enver Masud, " Libya: Who's Terrorizing Whom ," TheWisdom Fund, March 26, 1996]

Paul I. Adujie, " AFRI COM : African Security or WesternInterests ?," New Liberian, August 22, 2009





[I do not believe it meets the C atholic church's criteria for a JustWar --Enver Masud, " Reply to C SID's O pen Letter O pposing theNo-fly Zone ," The Wisdom Fund, March 22, 2011]

[This is not the first imperialist attempt to lynch Qaddafi andbring Libya to its knees. In 1986, the US falsely accused Libya of thebombing of a discotheque in Berlin and Reagan attempted toassassinate Qaddafi, by bombing the Bab al-Azizia compound inTripoli where he was housed, killing Qaddafi's daughter and over onehundred Libyans. Next, Libya was falsely accused of the 1988Lockerbie bombing as an excuse for initiating sanctions, in order toeconomically cripple the revolution.

. . . Already an estimated 16,000 African freedom fighters (not

mercenaries as the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera would have usbelieve) have poured into Libya from the Congo, Guinea, Zimbabwe,Sierra Leone, Liberia, Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Southern Sudan,Kenya, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso to fight to the death for the Libyanrevolution and Brother Muammar Al Qaddafi.

. . . The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa) travelled toLibya to meet with Qaddafi face to face and express their supportand solidarity.--Gerald A. Perreira, " C oalition of C rusaders Joinwith al Qaeda to O ust Qaddafi and Roll Back Libyan Revolution ,"blackagendareport.com, March 23, 2011]

Pepe Escobar, " Libya Endgame: Divide, Rule And Get The O il," Asia Times, March 25, 2011

Curtis Doebbler, " Why the Attack on Libya is Illegal ,"counterpunch.org, March 28, 2011

[They are entitled to free treatment , and their hospitals provide thebest in the world of medical equipment.

Education in Libya is free, capable young people have theopportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying,young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S.dollars) of financial assistance.

Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to



government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe,and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost apenny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture.--"Testimony of Russia Doctors in Libya: The Destruction of aC

ountry. The Bombing of C

ivilian Targets ," Global Research,March 28, 201

Mark Hosenball, " U.S. agents were in Libya before secret O bamaorder ," Reuters, March 31, 2011

[Washington pursues world hegemony under the guises of selective "humanitarian intervention" and "bringing freedom anddemocracy to oppressed peoples." On an opportunistic basis,Washington targets countries for intervention that are not its

"international partners." Caught off guard, perhaps, by popular revoltsin Tunisia and Egypt, there are some indications that Washingtonresponded opportunistically and encouraged the uprising in Libya.Khalifa Hifter , a suspected Libyan CIA asset for the last 20 years, hasgone back to Libya to head the rebel army.-- Paul Craig Roberts ,"The New C olonialism: O ccupying the World ," counterpunch.org,

April 1, 2011]

[Hafiz Ghoga , a spokesman for the protesters' new National LibyanCouncil, insisted that calls for foreign intervention were entirelyunwelcome, adding that the protesters have taken most of the nationand "the rest of Libya will be liberated by the people."

. . . rebel leader Mahmoud Jibril . . . said: "We do not want outsideforces.--Enver Masud, " LIBYA: Is it the rebels or the Post that isstruggling to explain the rift in leadership ?," veteranstoday.com,

April 5, 2011]

"UN Praised Libya's Human Rights Record. WashingtonAttempted to Block Release of UNHR C Report ," Global Research,

April 5, 2011

[I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and whenthey were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi intofarmland from the desert. . . .



I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union; I did all I could to help people understand the conceptof real democracy, where people's committees ran our country.--"Recollections of my Life: C ol. M u'ummar Qaddafi, The Leader

of the Revolution ," opednews.com, April 8, 2011][The 2010 UN Human Development Index - which is a compositemeasure of health, education and income - ranked Libya 53rd in theworld, and first in Africa.

In its first two decades, he wrote, the revolution brought manybenefits to ordinary Libyans: widespread literacy, free medical care,education, and improvements in living conditions. Women inparticular benefited, becoming ministers, ambassadors, pilots, judges

and doctors. The government got wide support from the lower andmiddle classes.

The down side was a demagogic regime that revelled in rituals of hero worship and cynically embraced violence.--Mahmood Mamdani,"Libya after the NAT O invasion ," aljazeera.net, April 9, 2011]

[Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebelstook time out from their rebellion in M arch to create their owncentral bank - this before they even had a government. . . .

According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Libya - Punishmentfor Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar", Gaddafi made asimilarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar andthe euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a newcurrency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing aunited African continent, with its 200 million people using thissingle currency .

During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countriesand most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiativewas viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, withFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to thefinancial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed andcontinued his push for the creation of a united Africa.--Ellen Brown,



"Libya all about oil, or central banking ?," atimes.com, April 14,2011]

The Real News , April 19, 2011

[Libyan rebels will be betrayed just as quickly as Qaddafi was .

. . . The oil money that once built water ways, public housing, andfarms from Benghazi to Tripoli, will be funneled directly out of thecountry and into the corporate-financier's accounts.--Tony Cartalucci,"Libyan Rebels Fighting the Globalists' War ,"landdestroyer.blogspot.com, April 20, 2011]

[This operation was supported by the very representative of the

Libyan Investment Authority, Mohamed Layas: as revealed in adiplomatic cable published by Wikileaks, on January 20 Layasinformed the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli that the LIA had filed $ 32billion in U.S. banks. Five weeks later, on February 28, the U.S.Treasury had "frozen" the assets. According to official statements, is"the largest sum of money ever blocked in the U.S.", money thatWashington keeps "in trust for the future of Libya." It could actuallybe an injection of capital into the ever more indebted U.S. economy.

A few days later, the EU had "frozen" around 45 billion euros of Libyan funds.--Manlio Dinucci, " The plunder of the century: theassault of the 'volonteers' on Libyan SWFs ,"democrateafricain.blogspot.com, April 23, 2011]

[ . . . the future of Libya is decreasingly likely to be determinedby Libyans . Foreign intervention is turning into an old-style imperialventure. Much the same thing happened in Iraq in 2003 and in

Afghanistan in the past few years. In Iraq, the US invasion tooverthrow Saddam Hussein, a ruler detested by most Iraqis, soonturned into what many Iraqis saw as a foreign occupation.--PatrickCockburn, " What NAT O is Doing to Libya ," counterpunch.org, May23, 2011]

23, 2011]



May 23, 2011counterpunch.org

What NATO is Doing to Libya

Foreign intervention is turning into an old-style imperial venture --the future of Libya is decreasingly likely to be determined by Libyans

By Patrick Cockburn

Flames billow up from the hulks of eight Libyan navy vessels destroyed byNato air attacks as they lay in ports along the Libyan coast. Their destructionshows how Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is being squeezed militarily, but alsothe degree to which the US, France and Britain, and not the Libyan rebels,are now the main players in the struggle for power in Libya.

Probably Gaddafi will ultimately go down because he is too weak towithstand the forces arrayed against him. Failure to end his regime would betoo humiliating and politically damaging for Nato after 2,700 air strikes . But,as with the capture of Baghdad in 2003, the fall of the regime may usher ina new round of a long-running Libyan crisis that continues for years to come.

It has all developed rather differently from what the French and Britishappear to have imagined when they first intervened in March to save thecitizens of Benghazi from Gaddafi's advancing tanks. If this was their soleaim, the air strikes were successful. The roadside from Benghazi to Ajdabiyais still littered with the carcasses of burned-out armored vehicles. Butmonths after William Hague was suggesting that Gaddafi was already enroute for Venezuela he is still in Tripoli.

Three months after the start of the Libyan uprising Gaddafi's troops havefailed to capture Misrata, but the rebels do not look capable of advancing



towards Tripoli. They have broken the siege of Misrata partly because theirmilitiamen now clutch hand radios and can call in Nato air strikes. This closeair support is effective and is along the lines of the tactical air support givenby the US to the Northern Alliance soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 and the

Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq two years later.

The Libyan government and opposition forces are both weak. The fightingforces that have been clashing on the desert road between Brega andAjdabiya, south of Benghazi, often number no more than a few hundredhalf-trained fighters. G addafi's troops, with which he tries to controlthis vast country, number only 10,000 to 15,000. This is not alwaysobvious to anybody who is not an eyewitness because the foreign press onthe spot is bashful about mentioning that there are sometimes more

journalists than fighters at the front.

One dispiriting outcome of the Libyan uprising is that the future of Libya isdecreasingly likely to be determined by Libyans. Foreign intervention isturning into an old-style imperial venture. Much the same thing happened inIraq in 2003 and in Afghanistan in the past few years. In Iraq, the USinvasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a ruler detested by most Iraqis,soon turned into what many Iraqis saw as a foreign occupation. . . .

Libya: A 'Socialist Paradise' Under Colonial Attack

The Absurd US Stance on Israels Nukes: A Video Sampling of Denial



Those Libyan Freedom Fighters : The Fix is On

By Kevin Carson

May 10, 2011 " C4SS " -- In a column three months ago ( Egypt: Let theLooting Begin, Feb. 4), I suggested that was really going on in Egypt wassomewhat different from the official narrative. In quite a few of the peoplepower revolutions in recent years no matter how sincere the people onthe streets it turned out that there were attempts to orchestrate thingsby people behind the scenes, for whom people power was the very last thing on the agenda. In that column I reported that Frank Wisner a

veteran spook, described by Vijay Prashad at Counterpunch as a bagmanof empire, was Obama s man on the ground.

Wisner, a former Director at AIG and Enron with longstanding family ties tothe OSS and CIA, had previously been involved in drafting the Bushadministration s postwar blueprint for Iraq. That agenda involved so-called

privatizations of state industry that amounted to insider deals with globalcorporate interests for pennies on the dollar, strong intellectual propertyprotections largely written by Monsanto and the RIAA, and draconiancrackdowns on genuine freedom fighters in the labor movement and theIraqi Freedom Congress. Paul Bremer, with the help of his HeritageFoundation boys in the Green Zone, basically oversaw the looting of everything that wasn t nailed down.

In that light, some recent news from Libya is especially interesting. First, Alexander Cockburn ( What s Really Going On in Libya? Counterpunch, April 15) reports that a h igh priority for the NATO operation in Libya wasto see to the central banking arrangements of the revolutionarygovernment in Benghazi. On March 19 they authorized the Central Bank of Benghazi to handle monetary policy for the country. Qaddafi, it seems, hadannounced his intention to repudiate the dollar and the euro andencourage the use of the gold dinar as a common currency by all of Africa.He d gained tentative buy-in, over the previous year, from a number of

Arab and African regimes. The government-owned Libyan national bank in



Tripoli, which is independent of the global banking industry, has been athorn in the flesh of global financial elites for some time.

Things that make you go Hmmmm

Meanwhile, Russ Baker at Alternet announces ( The CIA s Man inLibya? April 26) that the latest head of rebel forces in Libya, Gen. KhalifaHifter, is a CIA asset. Hifter has lived in the Greater Washington area of

Virginia (cough cough Langley cough) for almost twenty years, enjoying anunusually comfortable lifestyle considerably disproportionate to his visiblemeans of support . Hifter has headed the military wing (Libyan National

Army) of an opposition movement in exile (NSFL) for most of that time.The CIA sponsored a training operation for the Libyan National Army at abase in Chad during the reign of Bush I, with a view to a possible futureoverthrow of Qaddafi. In 1996, Hifter headed a failed overthrow attempt,after which he returned to the United States.

So the head of the opposition movement is on the CIA payroll, and the first order of business of the insurgent regime is to create a central bank that takes orders from international finance capital. Doesn t look real good for

freedom in Libya, does it? Looks pretty damn good for the banksters,though.

If the attempt to overthrow of Qaddafi had anything to do with genuinefreedom, it s a safe bet the U.S. government would have had nothing to dowith it. Put not your faith in princes.

C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist authorand individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy , Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective , and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-OverheadManifesto , all of which are freely available online .



GLO BAL CST UPDATE! LIBYAN MERCENARIES A friend has sent me the following email relating to the mercenaries beingused in Libya.

************************************************************************Details of the plot have emerged from the dark. Attending the fateful Feb.18 meeting were Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman. They heard assessmentsfrom IDF intelligence chief Gen. Aviv Kochavi and Chairman of the Divisionof North Africa in the Foreign Ministry, Shalom Cohen, that if Ghaddafi falls,a radical Islamic regime would follow him.

Based on this unlikely assessment, the Prime Minister decided, supposedlyon behalf of the Israeli people, to bail out Libya's leader with a well trainedand equipped army of African guns for hire.

He contacted Gen. Ziv who arranged a meeting with Ghaddafi militaryrepresentatives in the Chadian capital N'djamena. Joining them were tworeps from the Israeli government, former Israeli Foreign Minister ShlomoBen-Ami, and Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser. There, a deal between Israel andLibya was cut.

There should be no shock that Ghaddafi agreed. He had two choices; beoverthrown or be saved by Israel. Naturally, he chose the latter eventhough the terms were tough. Global CST would supply tens of thousandsof mercenaries for 5 billion American bucks.

After they slaughtered the last of the rebels, Israel would be granted rightsto explore and export Libyan oil hushhushedly and Gen. Ziv would bepermitted to operate his army from Libyan soil to spread its unique talentsat saving dictators throughout Africa.

Ghaddafi almost got his money's worth...and then a UN resolution andmostly an American force attacked Libya with bombs and missiles.Suddenly, Ghaddafi could and likely would lose. However, Ziv is not merelya maverick general:



http://nuestrosricos.blogspot.com/2008/04/israel-in-colombia-death-do-we-impart.html General Ziv is on the payroll of Counterterrorism International and ismember of the Task Force on Future Terrorism (FOTFF), created in June

2005 by the Office of Homeland Security of Israel? No, of the USA.FOTFFoperates under the orders of then-Secretary Michael Chertoff and LeeHamilton.

And if Ghaddafi should lose, the thoughtful U.S. Ambassador to theSecurity Council has requested that the mercenaries intervening in Libya beexempt from prosecution under international law. And if recent history isany indication, Ghaddafi is guaranteed to get shafted.

Let's look at the last five years of Ziv's career:In 2006, Maj. Gen. Ziv, heartlessly crushed the Jews of Gush Katif:http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=625472&Date=8/16/2005

Col. Israel Ziv, a commander in Neve Dekalim, said about 500 to 600families were left in the Gaza Strip, about one-third of the total population,and that he expected more to leave throughout the day. But thousands of pullout opponents who infiltrated Gaza in recent weeks also remained.Ziv said the army planned to clear out the southern half of Gush Katif, the

main bloc of Gaza settlements, today.Amid anger among some settlersover the activities of outsiders who came to support them, Major-GeneralIsrael Ziv, operational commander of the general staff, said: The outsidershave taken the locals hostage. I think that things will now move very fast.

When told that he would be moving fast against teenagers, his infamousreply was that he would take that into consideration but he had his"limits."

After leaving 8500 Gazan Jews homeless, Ziv set his eyes on the formerSoviet nation of Georgia. He armed the country and convinced it to start awar with Russia. Needless to say, Russia crushed the Georgians and wereplenty ticked off at Israel:

http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-27235-israelnews-how-israel-has-helped-georgia-train-troops-and-supply-it-weapons





Libya disabled children school hit in NATOstrike: -

Shattered glass litters the carpet at the Libyan Down's Syndrome Society,and dust covers pictures of grinning children that adorn the hallway,thrown into darkness by a NATO strike early on Saturday.

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE73T0AG20110430?sp=true

Subject: Did you know this about Libya?

In teresti ng ind eed but coul d this be true? H ow come the n the easter ners (those f romBe ng hazi a nd other tow ns) are dam n a n ti G add af i?

Some other facts (that mainstream media will never tell you) about this "terribledictator and blood sucking monster" Gaddafi who "terrorizes" his own people andLibya:

- Credits to Libyan citizens were given with NO interest .

- Students would get paid the average salary for the profession they are studying for.

- If you'd be unable to get the employment the state would pay the full salary as if youwere employed.

- When you got married the couple got an apartment or house for free.

- You could go to college anywhere in the world. The state paid 2,500 euros plus for accommodation and a car.

- The cars were sold at factory cost.

- Libya does not owe mo ney, (n ot a cen t) to an yone. No cre d its.



- Free education and health care.

- 25% of population with a university degree.

- No beggers on the streets and no homeless (until this bombing).

- Bread costs $0.15.

No wonder the US and other capitalist countries do not like Libya. Gaddafi would notconsent to taking the IMF or World Bank credits at high interest rates. In other wordsLibya was INDEPENDENT! That is the real reason for war in Libya! He may be adictator, but that is not the US problem.



F ormer G itmo detai nee now America's ally inLibya

ANI, Apr 26, 2011, 04.52am IST

DARNAH: For over five years, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda binQumu was a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay prison, judged "a probablemember of al-Qaida". Now, Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyanrebels' fight to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

According to the New York Times, he is reportedly a leader of a ragtagband of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade in northeast Libya.

The paper further says that this former enemy and prisoner of the US isnow an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting

American policies rather than any obvious change in Qumu.

He was a tank driver in the Libyan army in the 1980s, when the CIA wasspending billions to support religious militants trying to drive Soviet troopsout of Afghanistan.

Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He was captured inPakistan after 9/11, and accused of being a member of the militant LibyanIslamic Fighting Group, and sent to Guantanamo .

Nato Kills Gaddafi's Son And 3 Grandchildren B y Al Jazeera

Gaddafi and his wife were in the Tripoli house of his 29-year-old son, Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, when it was hit by at least one missile fired by a NATOwarplane late on Saturday, according to Libyan government spokesmanMoussa Ibrahim.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27995.htm



Who's Been Brainwashed?

G add af i - A Libya n H ero

By Philip Pank in Tripoli

Muammar Gaddafi has announced plans to dismantle the Government,hand the riches from Africa's biggest oil reserves to the people and

nationalise foreign oil operations that have recently been allowed back intothe country. The announcement has left diplomats and the 40 overseas oil

companies operating in the country on edge.

Posted May 12, 201 1

G add af i O ff ers Oil and P ower to People By Philip Pank in Tripoli

February 21, 2009 " The Times " -- Forty years into the revolution heunleashed on Libya Muammar Gaddafi has announced plans to dismantle

the Government, hand the riches from Africa's biggest oil reserves to thepeople and nationalise foreign oil operations that have recently beenallowed back into the country.

The administration has failed and the state economy has failed. Enough isenough. The solution is, we Libyans take directly the oil money and decidewhat to do with the money, he says.

To end the corruption that has sapped the vast oil wealth, bundles of cash

should be delivered to the poor, three quarters of the ministries shouldcease to exist and the workers should run hospitals and schools.

The announcement has left diplomats and the 40 overseas oil companiesoperating in the country on edge.

Colonel Gaddafi, once derided as a Mad Dog , is basking in a new-found



friendship with the West but anything is possible in a land that reflects thequixotic nature of its leader.

Across the country, from the smallest desert oasis to campuses and state

companies, thousands of people are taking up his proposals at officialpublic gatherings. Never before have the annual Libya's Basic PeopleCongresses - in effect the country's top executive and legislative bodies -been invited to consider such reform.

Libyans, this is your historic opportunity to take your oil wealth, powerand full freedom, Colonel Gaddafi said on the eve of the five-day round of meetings.

Many feel that they have not had their equal share even if outward signs of poverty in the deeply religious society are scarce. Satellite dishes adorn thelow concrete apartment blocks; bread is cheap; petrol is 17 cents a litre,and imported cars carry families along the fertile coastal strip. Disaffectionrarely spills into violence.

But the call to reform has been eagerly embraced by many. At the AfricanUniversity for Higher Studies, Abdul Hamid Amer told a meeting: We must abolish the Cabinet. The ministries of health, education and transport

should be abolished. The people should be left to run the ministries ontheir own.

An outline of the plans is that $33 billion (£23 billion) from oil revenues,less $21 billion paid to foreign contractors to build roads, houses, hospitalsand schools, leaves $12 billion for the people. That, plus $6 billion left overfrom last year's budget and $8 billion from taxes and tourism, leaves fivemillion Libyans in line for a bonanza. Flow charts set out eight alternativeplans for redistributing the wealth, for consideration at congress.

Not everyone has bought into the plan, Proposal for Distribution of theWealth. Dr Bashir Zimbl said the draft was a wrong title because thewealth has been distributed in the past and they are now playing with it .

A young father confided: We are not against giving the people the moneybut not in this way. We think they should have higher wages and fight



corruption.

Once the public deliberations end tomorrow they will be handed up to the600-strong General People's Congress for consideration on March 2.

In theory, Colonel Gaddafi bows to their judgment and the people will thenlearn what is to become of their money. The Western oil companies that have been operating in Libya since 2003 - when Colonel Gaddafiabandoned his weapons of mass destruction and Libya took responsibilityfor bombing Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie - may also have a keenergrasp of their future. Another motion is to nationalise foreign-run oilprojects.

Among those to have arrived since international sanctions were lifted arethe British groups BG, BP and Shell. Obviously we do not know how it willgo, said one petrochemicals group. At the moment we are not investingin plants and kit. We are investing in surveys, so there is nothing to lose.

Diplomats, too, are waiting to see which way the whimsical leader will blowas he strikes his last policies before the 40th anniversary of his revolutionin September.

It has been a rollercoaster ride for Libyans and countries that need torelate to Libya, one Western diplomat said.

Today, at the international level, Libya is pretty much centre stage at theUN and AU and is negotiating a stronger relationship with the EU. I seemore for Libya to gain by keeping in that direction so I expect it will, but the international normalisation is moving faster than domestic reform.

Yet even seasoned observers have learnt not to second guess Colonel

Gaddafi.



Libya delays G add af i oil pla n

Politicians shelve plan aimed at distributing oil revenuesdirectly to people.

By Al Jazeera

March 03, 2009 " Al Jazeera " -- L ibya's executive and legislative bodieshave voted to delay an oil distribution scheme of Muammar Gaddafi, thestate news agency Jana has reported.

The Libyan leader, who has advocated handing out oil revenues directly tothe people to beat endemic corruption in the government, would have

distributed about $32bn this year alone.The results of the vote were announced at a meeting of the General PublicCongress (GPC) at Gaddafi's home town, Sirte, on Tuesday.

Only 64 of the 468 Basic People Congresses (LBPCs), or municipalities,voted for Gaddafi's plan to hand out the money now, while 251 endorsedthe plan in principle "but asked for [it] to be delayed until appropriatemeasures were put in place".

Of the country's five million people, about one million of the poorest couldreceive up to 30,000 dinars ($22,990) a year each if the initial plan wasendorsed, according to government estimates debated at LBPC meetings.

Libyans would forfeit their right to medical services and other traditionalpublic services in return for a share of oil revenues.

Dissident view

The vote to postpone Gaddafi's plan will block further discussions on thedistribution of oil money for several months at least.

Various factions in the LBPC will now have time to reach a consensus that commentators say will curb the leader's eagerness to plug the wealth gapbetween the poor majority of the country and the rich, who many Libyans



say monopolise power and money.

LBPCs are Libya's most senior executive and legislative bodies, which voteon laws and government policy. In practice, however, Gaddafi formulates

the key policies.

Libyan dissidents wrote in comments posted on the internet that, even if the voters approved the scheme, Gaddafi's plan would not work becausegovernment corruption would always prevent a fair distribution of thecountry's oil wealth.

"None of this will ever happen," one Libyan in Sirte told Al Jazeera. "This isa lie."

Sources for video:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5776215.ece

http://alexandravaliente.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/in-2009-gaddafi-proposed-na...

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/03/200933183343913989.ht ml

http://www.energy-pedia.com/article.aspx?articleid=134161

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/03/03/libya-oil-idUKL359112620090303

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-the-aggression-in-Libya/186296531416909

Please join me on F acebook to fight media propagandaand stop the aggression in Libya.



www.tehrantimes.com

Eyewitnesses speak out: Has U.S. staged the

L ibyan coup?: By Christoph R. Horstel

Some international media have already informed the publicabout a serious and well-founded suspicion, that the L ibyanuprising could well be fully staged. Apart from a strategic hunt after access to foreign oil and gas, which the U.S. is conductingfor most of the last 70 years, a few facts need consideration:Two eyewitnesses in Italy are on their way to help expose a

U.S.-orchestrated NATO

-supported coup d etat inL

ibya.This author s phone rang Friday evening and he was late to answer. Oncalling back a number from Italy is on the display. Soon a friendly voiceanswers in German: And in split-seconds it is clear, that the last threeweeks search for an eyewitness, who had written a sensational reader sletter to the respected German daily FAZ (Tehran Times reported) might becrowned with success. And there he is!

The gentleman retells a more complete version of the few lines in FAZ: Heoften stays in the little Tuscan town Grosseto , next to an air force base. Since he nurtures a longstanding interest in air planes, he often spendstime close to the landing strip of the base, watching the sleek fighterplanes howling out for steep starts and rushing in to land upon return . But late January or early February, six or eight Danish F-16 plus 150 men

ground personnel showed up for the first time in a dozen or so years of the witness memory. And that was not for show. The Danish squadron hadan awe-inspiring exercise program, starting their engines early in themorning and coming back in late. As anybody would have done, thewitness asked his friend, a guardian at the base, what on earth the Danishwere up to in Northern Italy . But the answer turned out somewhat



frustrating, since it did not seem to make any sense at that time. The old

buddy on the base had said : They are training for Libya!

Libya? Why Libya? That country was friendly with the West since 2003,

enjoyed a special relationship with Italy and appeared not involved in anyforeign policy adventure. However, in early March, roughly two weeks priorto the UN Security Council decision 1973, empowering Nato to enforce ano-fly zone over Libya and protect the civil population from the allegedmass killer Qaddafi, the Danish squadron vanished from Grosseto base, thewitness recounts. And, so he says, he sat in utter surprise in front of theevening news on one of these evenings, watching a TV report on sixDanish F-16 based in the Southern Italian air force base Sigonella, takingpart in the NATO air war against Libya. I got very angry , the manremembers, since to me it is clear, NATO is just after Qaddafi s oil. All otherstories are just the usual cover-up. And I do not believe in coincidence. Norcan I assume, those F-16s were flown back home to Denmark only toreturn to Italy two weeks later. And what with the 150 men groundpersonnel? I think they were all just shifted to Sigonella in time for theattacks.

This information is in line with the timetable of Libyan uprising events,which show a design all too familiar to analysts all over the world, fromSouth and Central America to Asia.The Danish military attaché in Berlin, Col. Claus Wessel-Tolvig, is twoweeks overdue in answering this author s questionnaire.

*The author is a government and business consultant in Germany, multiplebook author and expert since 25 years on issues of Central Asia, the MiddleEast and security-related question.



F inancial H eist of the C en tury: C onf iscati ng Libya's Soverei gn W ealth F

und s (SWF

)

By M anlio Dinucci

April 28, 2011 "Il Manifesto" April 22, 2011 -- The objective of thewar against Libya is not just its oil reserves (now estimated at 60 billionbarrels), which are the greatest in Africa and whose extraction costs areamong the lowest in the world, nor the natural gas reserves of which areestimated at about 1,500 billion cubic meters. In the crosshairs of "willing"of the operation Unified Protector there are sovereign wealth funds,capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad.

The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) manages sovereign wealth fundsestimated at about $70 billion U.S., rising to more than $150 billion if youinclude foreign investments of the Central Bank and other bodies. But it might be more. Even if they are lower than those of Saudi Arabia orKuwait, Libyan sovereign wealth funds have been characterized by theirrapid growth. When LIA was established in 2006, it had $40 billion at itsdisposal. In just five years, LIA has invested over one hundred companiesin North Africa, Asia, Europe, the U.S. and South America: holding,banking, real estate, industries, oil companies and others.

In Italy, the main Libyan investments are those in UniCredit Bank (of whichLIA and the Libyan Central Bank hold 7.5 percent), Finmeccanica (2percent) and ENI (1 percent), these and other investments (including 7.5percent of the Juventus Football Club) have a significance not as mucheconomically (they amount to some $5.4 billion) as politically.

Libya, after Washington removed it from the blacklist of rogue states, hassought to carve out a space at the international level focusing on"diplomacy of sovereign wealth funds." Once the U.S. and the EU lifted theembargo in 2004 and the big oil companies returned to the country, Tripoliwas able to maintain a trade surplus of about $30 billion per year whichwas used largely to make foreign investments. The management of



sovereign funds has however created a new mechanism of power andcorruption in the hands of ministers and senior officials, which probably inpart escaped the control of the Gadhafi himself: This is confirmed by thefact that, in 2009, he proposed that the 30 billion in oil revenues go"directly to the Libyan people ." This aggravated the fractureswithin the Libyan government.

U.S. and European ruling circles focused on these funds, so that beforecarrying out a military attack on Libya to get their hands on its energywealth, they took over the Libyan sovereign wealth funds . Facilitating thisoperation is the representative of the Libyan Investment Authority,Mohamed Layas himself: as revealed in a cable published by WikiLeaks . OnJanuary 20 Layas informed the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli that LIA haddeposited $32 billion in U.S. banks . Five weeks later, on February 28, theU.S. Treasury froze these accounts. According to official statements, thisis "the largest sum ever blocked in the United States," which Washingtonheld "in trust for the future of Libya." It will in fact serve as an injection of capital into the U.S. economy, which is more and more in debt. A few dayslater, the EU "froze" around 45 billion Euros of Libyan funds.

The assault on the Libyan sovereign wealth funds will have a particularlystrong impact in Africa. There, the Libyan Arab African Investment Company had invested in over 25 countries, 22 of them in sub-Saharan

Africa, and was planning to increase the investments over the next fiveyears, especially in mining, manufacturing, tourism andtelecommunications. The Libyan investments have been crucial in theimplementation of the first telecommunications satellite Rascom (Regional

African Satellite Communications Organization), which entered into orbit in August 2010, allowing African countries to begin to becomeindependent from the U.S. and European satellite networks, with

an annual savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. Even more important were the Libyan investment in the implementation of three financial institutions launched by the African Union: the AfricanInvestment Bank, based in Tripoli , the African Monetary Fund, based in

Yaoundé (Cameroon), the African Central Bank, with Based in Abuja(Nigeria) . The development of these bodies would enable



African countries to escape the control of the World Bankand International Monetary Fund, tools of neo-colonialdomination, and would mark the end of the CFA franc, the

currency that 14 former French colonies are forced to use .Freezing Libyan funds deals a strong blow to the entire project. Theweapons used by "the willing" are not only those in the military actioncalled Unified Protector.

Il Manifesto, April 22, 2011

Translated from Italian by John Catalinotto

Global Research





According to the IMF, Libya s Central Bank is 100% state owned. The IMFestimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults . It issignificant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowedthe US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi wasopenly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival thedollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to

join an alliance that would make this new currency , the gold dinar ,their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil andother resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, andmultinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten theirdominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving awayfrom the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy.Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed byQaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.

In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that

seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the WorldBank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather a U. S. bank. Ditto, itsclosest sibling, the IMF. In fact, if one looks at the World Bank and IMFexecutive boards and the votes each member of the board has, one seesthat the United States controls about 16 percent of the votes in the WorldBank - (Compared with Japan at about 7%, the second largest member,China at 4.5%, Germany with 4.00%, and the United Kingdom and Francewith about 3.8% each), nearly 17% of the IMF votes (Compared with

Japan and Germany at about 6% and UK and France at nearly 5%), andthe US holds veto power over all major decisions. Furthermore, the UnitedStates President appoints the World Bank President.

So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a rogue countrythreatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to



its knees? What happens to an empire when it can no longer effectivelybe overtly imperialistic?

One definition of Empire (per my book The Secret History of the American Empire) states that an empire is a nation that dominates othernations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. Theempire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect thecurrency and the entire economic system that depends on it throughextreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did theSpanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the USor, more to the point, the corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined topunish any individual who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example.

Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire isanother step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want tohonor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are thefoundations of our country?

History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or areoverthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum. The past sends a compelling message. We must change. We cannot afford to watchhistory repeat itself.

Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another.Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots

movements in the Middle East fostered by the young who must live withthe future and are fueled through social networks inspire us to demandthat our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that dependon us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning aworld that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.



We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greedinto the light of compassion and cooperation.

John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he w orked for the international consultingfirm of Chas T. Main w here he w as a self-described " economic hit man. " Heis the author of the ne w book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.http:// www .informationclearinghouse.info/article8171.htm www .johnperkins.org



Libya in F ace of H uma n itaria n I mperialism. Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan : have the advocates of intervention in Libya not learnt the lesson ? Jean Bricmont, who wrote a book about humanitarianimperialism, tells us why the right to interfere is incompatible with worldpeace, and that it goes against humanitarian principles. Unless, of course,those principles are just an excuse.

By G regoire Lalieu

April 22, 2011 " Information Clearing House " -- An interview withJean Bricmont.

Can you remind us of what humanitarian imperialism consists of ?

Jean Bricmont : It is an ideology which aims to justify militaryinterference against sovereign countries in the name of democracy andHuman Rights. The motive is always the same : a population is the victimof a dictator, so we must act. Then all the usual references are trottedout : the Second World War, the war with Spain, and so on. The aim beingto sell the argument that an armed intervention is necessary. This is what happened in Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan.

And now comes L ibya s turn.

There is a difference here because a United Nations Security Councilresolution makes it possible. But this resolution was passed against theprinciples of the Charter of the United Nations themselves. Indeed, I seeno external threat in the Libyan conflict. Although the notion of the

responsibility to protect populations had been evoked, many short cutswere taken. Besides, there is no proof that Gaddafi massacres his people

just for the sole purpose of slaughtering them. It is a bit more complicatedthan that : it is an armed insurrection, and I know not of any government that would not repress an insurrection of this kind. Of course, there arecollateral damage and civilian casualties. But if the United States knows away to avoid such damage, then it should go and tell the Israelis about it,and apply it themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also no doubt that coalition bombings arecausing cause civilian casualties.



From a strictly legal point of view, I think the U.N.S.C. resolution isquestionable. It is, in fact, the result of years of lobbying for therecognition of the right to interfere, which proves here to be legitimized.

And yet, many - even among the parties of the left - deemed it necessary to intervene in L ibya in order to stop the massacre. Doyou think it is an error of judgment ?

Yes, I do, and for several reasons. First of all, this campaign ushers in thereign of the arbitrary. Indeed, the Libyan conflict is not exceptional. Thereare many other conflicts anywhere in the world whether it may be in Gaza,in Bahrain, or in the Congo, which happened some years ago. As for thelatter, it occurred within a context of foreign aggression on the part of Rwanda and Burundi. The enforcement of the international law would havesaved millions of lives but it was not done. Why not ?

Besides, if we apply the underlying principles of interference behind theaggression against Libya, it means that anyone can intervene anywherethey want to. Imagine that the Russians intervene in Bahrain or theChinese in Yemen : the world would be a general and ongoing war.Therefore one major feature of the right to interfere is the infringement of standard international law. And if we had to change international law tonew laws justifying the right to interfere, it would result in a war of allagainst all. This is an argument to which the advocates of the right tointerfere never give an answer.

And lastly, such interventions strengthen what I call the barricade effect :all the countries in the sights of the United States will start to feelthreatened and will seek to increase their armaments. We all rememberwhat happened with Saddam. Moreover, Gaddafi had said to the ArabLeague : We have just lost a member state of the league and none of youhave done anything. But it can happen to you too, because even though

you are all U.S. allies, so was Saddam in the past. Now the same thing isrepeating itself with Gaddafi and the threat which hangs over many statesis likely to relaunch the arms race. Russia, which is not an unarmedcountry, has already announced that it would reinforce its troops. But it can go even further : if Libya had the nuclear weapon, it would have neverbeen attacked. Actually, this is why North Korea is untouchable. Therefore,the left which supports the intervention in Libya should definitely realize



that humanitarian interference is inevitably going to relaunch the arms raceand lead to long-term wars.

And yet, wouldn t the armed intervention against G addafi be a

lesser evil ? One has to consider the consequences. Now that the Western forces areinvolved, they will obviously have to go all the way, overthrow Gaddafi andbring the rebels to power. Then what is going to happen ? Libya seems tobe divided. Is the West going to occupy the country and embark on anendless war similar to the ones in Iraq or in Afghanistan ?

Be that as it may, let us suppose that all goes well : the members of thecoalition remove Gaddafi in a few days, the rebels take power, and theLibyan people is united. Everyone is happy and then what ? I do not thinkthe West will go : Well, we did it because we are nice people and fond of Human Rights. Now you can do whatever you please. What is going tohappen if the new Libyan government is too Muslim-like or does not properly limit migration flows ? Do you think the West will let them do ? It is obvious that after the intervention, the new Libyan government will becaught up in the interests of the West.

If military intervention is not the solution, then what is ?

It would have been better if we had honestly attempted all peacefulsolutions. It might not have worked but here, there is a blatant intention toreject these solutions. And by the way, this is an abiding feature of humanitarian wars. Concerning Kosovo, there were very detailedpropositions on the part of Serbia in order to come to a peaceful solutionbut they were rejected. The West has even imposed conditions that madeany negotiations impossible, such as the occupation of Serbia by N.A.T.O.forces. In Afghanistan, the Taliban proposed to try Bin Laden by an

international court if they are provided with evidence of his involvement inthe W.T.C. attacks. The U.S. refused it and bombed the country. In Iraq,Saddam had accepted the return of the United Nations inspectors as wellas many extremely restrictive conditions. But it was never enough. InLibya, Gaddafi accepted a cease-fire and proposed to have internationalobservers sent out there. The observers were not sent and it was said that Gaddafi did not respect the cease fire. The West also rejected Chavez s



offer to mediate in Libya, even though it was backed up by many Latinocountries and the Organization of African Unity as well.

In that connection, I am angry when I hear left-wingers in Europe

denounce the horrible Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas which supportsdictator Gaddafi. They got it all wrong ! The leaders in power in Latin America have important responsibilities. They are not just small leftistschattering in their corner. And the major issue for these leaders is theinterference of the U.S. : the less it can do whatever it pleases, wherever it pleases, the better it will be for all those countries which try to freethemselves from tutelage by state power, and also for the whole world.

Does the systematic rejection of peaceful solutions mean that humanitarian interference is an excuse ?

Yes it does, but if it works well with the intellectuals, I am more doubtfulabout the reaction of the peoples of Europe. Will they support their leadersduring the aggression against Gaddafi ? People consider the wars forsecurity to be the most legitimate ones : for instance, if there is a threat against our populations or our way of life, etc. But in the context of anoverall climate of islamophobia (that I disapprove, but it does exist) hereand in France, you try explaining that we are fighting in Cyrenaica forrebels whom we see screaming Allah U Akbar . This is contradictor !

At the political level, most parties support the intervention, even the partiesof the left. The most moderate ones only supported the implementation of a no-fly zone, but if Gaddafi sends his tanks to Benghazi, what are we todo ? During the Second World War, the Germans lost quite quickly controlof air space but they held out for several years yet. Insofar as the objectiveis to overthrow Gaddafi, the moderates should have suspected that it would go even further than the establishment of a no-fly zone.

Unable to take genuine and alternative stands, the left finds itself trappedby the logic of humanitarian interference and is compelled to support Sarkozy. If the war goes well and quickly, the position of the FrenchPresident will undoubtedly be secure for the 2012 presidential elections,thanks to the left which would have contributed to it. The left, unable toassume a coherent attitude against wars, is compelled to tag along behindthe interventionist policy.



And what if the war does not go well ?

It is regrettable, but the only French party that set against the interventionin Libya as regards French interests is the National Front. It particularly

alluded to human migration flows and took occasion to distinguish itself from Sarkozy s U.M.P (Union for a Popular Movement) or the S.P. (Socialist Party) by claiming that it had never collaborated with Gaddafi. If the war inLibya does not go according to plan, it will benefit the National Front forthe French presidential elections in 2012.

If humanitarian interference is just an excuse, then what is theobjective of this war ?

The uprisings in the Arab world surprised the Westerners, which were not well informed enough about what was happening in North Africa and theMiddle-East. I do not dispute that there are good experts on the issue, but they are seldom listened to at some level of the government, and by theway, they are complaining about it. So now, the new governments in Egypt and Tunisia might not align themselves with the interests of the West anylonger, and consequently become hostile to Israel.

To take control of the area and protect Tel Aviv, the West is likely willing toget rid of governments that are already hostile to Israel and the West. The

three main ones are Iran, Syria and Libya . The latter, since it is the weakerone, is attacked first.

Can it work ?

The West longed to rule the world but we can see since 2003 with the Iraqfiasco that it cannot. In the past, the United States took the liberty tooverthrow rulers that it had brought to power, such as Ngô Dinh Diêm inSouth Vietnam in the 1960s. But nowadays, Washington cannot do that

any longer. In Kosovo, the United States and Europe have to compromisewith a Mafia-like regime. In Afghanistan, people say that Karzai is corrupt,but they have no other option. In Iraq, they also have to accept agovernment they are far from being fully pleased with.

The problem will certainly arise in Libya too. An Iraqi once told me : Inthis part of the world, there are no liberals in the Western sense of the



word, apart from a few rather isolated intellectuals. Since the West cannot rely on rulers who share its ideas and who fully defend its interests, it triesto impose dictators through force. But it obviously creates a discrepancywith people s desires.

Besides, this approach proves to be a failure and people should not befooled by what is occurring.

The West, which thought it could be in control of the Arab world withpuppets such as Ben Ali and Mubarak, would suddenly think : We had it all wrong, now we are going to support democracy in Tunisia, Egypt andLibya.

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the BrusselsTribunal.

Translated from the French by Sheila Carby for Investig Action



µR ebel spo nsore d¶ cen tral ba nk!By Syed Rashid Husain | InpaperMagzine

(6 hours ago) Today

LIBYAN rebels have set up a central bank of their own much beforebeing in control of the country. This has led to eyebrows being raised allaround.

Author and commentator Ellen Brown in her recent write-up observed: It may be more about banking and less about oil. Writing in the Economic Policy Journal, Robert Wenzel says, I have neverbefore heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag-tagbunch of rebels running around and that there are some prettysophisticated influences.

CNBC senior editor John Carney says Is this the first time a revolutionarygroup has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting theentrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate howextraordinarily powerful the central bankers have become in our era.

If the Qadhafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watchwhether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalised oilindustry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and healthcarecontinue to be free.

Commenting on the Libyan financial structure, Eric Encina observed in theMarket Oracle, One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians andmedia pundits is : the Central Bank of Libya is 100 per cent state owned. .. . currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan

Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain itsown economic destiny.

However one major problem for global banking cartels is that in order todo business with Libya, they had to go through the Libyan Central Bankand its national currency, a place where they had absolutely zero dominion



or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya(CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozybut this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libyainto its hive of compliant nations.

Libya is a rich and sovereign country. It definitely has oil. But, as per theIMF, its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. And it is here that Ellen Brown asks: With that sort of asset base, who needs theBIS, the IMF and their rules?

But what is this Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and why theworld movers and shakers would want Libya to be within its folds? Anarticle on the BIS website states that central banks in the Central BankGovernance Network are supposed to have as their single or primaryobjective to preserve price stability. They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don t interferewith this mandate. Price stability means maintaining a stable moneysupply, even if at the cost of burdening the people with heavy foreigndebts.

In a 2002 article in Asia Times, The BIS vs National Banks, Henry Liumaintained: BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengtheningthe international private banking system, even at the peril of nationaleconomies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF hasdone to national monetary regimes. National economies under financialglobalisation no longer serve national interests.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) denominated in foreign currencies, mostlydollars, has moved many national economies into unbalanced development towards export.

He added, Applying the state theory of money , any government can fund

with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain fullemployment without inflation. The state theory of money refers to moneycreated by governments rather than private banks.

The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government s owncentral bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing money from



foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the moneythey lend on their books, whether publicly owned or privately owned.

Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the

government s own central bank has the advantage that the loan iseffectively interest-free. Elimina t ing in terest h as bee n shown t o reduce t h e c os t of pub lic pr oj e c t s by an av er ag e of 50 per c e n t.

And that appears to be how the Libyan system has been working, Brownemphasises. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya and

managing and issuing all state loans.

Libya s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currencyand lend it for state purposes.

That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free educationand free medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans for marriage . It would also explain where the countryfound $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Some Libyanstoday are worried that NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close tothis pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster, Brown argued.

And then there is another angle to the western intervention in Libyan too.Many now believe that Saddam s decision to accept euros instead of dollars, some six months before the US invasion of Baghdad turned out tobe the last nail in his coffin. The move challenged global dominance of dollar as the international reserve currency and financing the global oiltrade and was not acceptable to the West.

Qadhafi too made a similar move and now seems to be paying a similarprice. He initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called

on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead,THE GOLD

DINAR.

Qadhafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200million people using the gold dinar single currency. Over the past year, theidea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries.T h e only oppon e n t s w ere t h e Re pu b lic of Sou t h Africa an d t h e

Ara b Le agu e.



The initiative was viewed negatively by the US and the European Union;with French president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financialsecurity of mankind; but according to analysts, Qadhafi was not swayed ordaunted by the opposition and continued his push for the creation of a

united Africa.The Libyan issue is definitely not that straight!



Libya: Another Neocon War

By DavidSwanson

April 22, 2011 " Information Clearing House " -- The US department of justice (DOJ) has submitted a written defence of the US role in this newwar in Libya to the US Congress . The DOJ claims the war serves the USnational interest in regional stability and in maintaining the credibility of theUnited Nations . Who knew?

The regional stability line would be a stretch for the UK but is downright nuts for the US. Who, outside of US strategic command types working onweapons in space, thinks Libya and America are in the same region? (Infact, the US is in Northcom and Libya in Africom, in the lingo of thePentagon s structure of global domination. Europe is in Eucom.) And what has done more good this year for the region that Libya is actually in thaninstability (think Tunisia, Egypt)?

The bit about the credibility of the United Nations is really cute comingfrom a government that invaded Iraq in 2003 despite UN opposition andfor the express purpose (among others) of proving the UN irrelevant. Thisalso comes from the same government that just this month refused toallow the UN special rapporteur to visit a US prisoner named BradleyManning to verify that he is not being tortured. How does that maintain UNcredibility? And how exactly does authorising the CIA to violate the UNarms embargo in Libya maintain UN credibility? How does violating the UNban on a foreign occupation force of any form in Libya maintain UNcredibility?

So, one of the main justifications offered to the first branch of the USgovernment is that the war in Libya is justified by a UN resolution, thecredibility of which must be maintained even while violating it. But the DOJmemo also stresses that such a justification is not needed. A US president,according to this memo, albeit in violation of the US Constitution, simplyhas the power to launch wars. Any explanations offered to Congress are,

just like the wars, acts of pure benevolence.



The DOJ memo also argues that this war doesn t really measure up to thename war , given how quick, easy and cheap it s going to be. In fact,President Obama has already announced the handover of the war to Nato .I think we re supposed to imagine Nato as separate from the US, just as

Congress does when it conducts no investigations of any atrocities in Afghanistan that the US attributes to Nato. Do the other Nato nations knowthat this is the purpose Nato serves in US politics?

But how quick and easy will this war really be? One expert predicts it willlast 20 years, with the US eventually pulling out and allowing the EuropeanUnion to inherit the illness of empire it had earlier shared with us.Certainly, the promise of a quick and easy war in Iraq in 2003 was basedon the same baseless idea as this one, namely that killing a president willhand a country over to outside control (excuse me, I mean, flourishingdemocracy). The blossoming democracy in Iraq has just banned publicdemonstrations. The fact is that Gaddafi has a great deal of support, andmaking him a martyr would not change that.

Popular progressive US radio host Ed Schultz argues , with vicious hatredin every word he spits out on the subject, that bombing Libya is justified bythe need for vengeance against that Satan on earth, that beast arisensuddenly from the grave of Adolf Hitler, that monster beyond alldescription: Muammar Gaddafi . But you can t really fight a war against oneperson. The last time we did that to Gaddafi, we killed his little daughter,while he survived.

Even if you had the legal or moral right to assassinate foreign leaders, andeven if you independently and rationally worked up your passion to kill aparticular dictator by sheer coincidence in the same moment in which yourgovernment wanted to bomb him, you couldn t do it without killinginnocent people and shredding the fabric of international law (with orwithout UN complicity). Hatred of a single individual is great propaganda until people begin to question what killing him will involve and what willcome next.

Popular US commentator Juan Cole supports the very same war that EdSchultz does, but supports it as a gentle act of humanitarian generosity.The Libya war has become less popular more quickly in the US than anyprevious US war , but it has its supporters. And to them, it doesn t matter



that half their fellow war supporters have a different or even opposingmotive. For years, Americans cheered the slaughter of the hated Iraqipeople while other Americans praised the Iraq war as a great act of philanthropy for the benefit of the Iraqi people (whether they wanted it or

not).But let s examine Cole s claims about Libya, because they are quite popularand central to the idea of a good war . One claim is that the Natocountries are motivated by humanitarian concern. Another is that this warmight have humanitarian results. These have to be separated because theformer is laughably absurd and the latter worthy of being examined. Of course, many people in Nato countries are motivated by humanitarianconcern; that s why wars are sold as acts of philanthropy. Generosity sells.But the US government, which has become a wing of the Pentagon, doesnot typically intervene in other nations in order to benefit humanity. Infact, it s not capable of intervening anywhere, because it is alreadyintervened everywhere.

The United States was in the business of supplying weapons to Gaddafi upuntil the moment it got into the business of supplying weapons to hisopponents. In 2009, Britain, France and other European states sold Libyaover $470m-worth of weapons . Our wars tend to be fought against ourown weapons, and yet we go on arming everyone. The United States canno more intervene in Yemen or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia than in Libya. Weare arming those dictatorships. In fact, to win the support of Saudi Arabiafor its intervention in Libya, the US gave its approval for Saudi Arabia tosend troops into Bahrain to attack civilians, a policy that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly defended .

The humanitarian intervention in Libya, meanwhile, whatever civilians it may have begun by protecting, immediately killed other civilians with itsbombs and immediately shifted from its defensive justification to attackingretreating troops and participating in a civil war . The United States hasvery likely used depleted uranium weapons in Libya, leading American

journalist Dave Lindorff to remark :

It would be a tragic irony if rebels in Libya, after calling for assistance fromthe US and other Nato countries, succeeded in overthrowing the country slong-time tyrant Gaddafi, only to have their country contaminated by



uranium dust the fate already suffered by the peoples of Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Irony is one word for it. Another is hypocrisy. Clearly, the military power of

the west is not driven by humanitarian concerns. But that still leaves thequestion of whether, in this particular case, such power could accidentallyhave humanitarian results. The claim that a massive massacre of civilianswas about to occur, on careful review, turns out to have been massivelyinflated . This doesn t mean that Gaddafi is a nice guy, that his militarywasn t already killing civilians, or that it isn t still killing civilians. Anotherirony, in fact, is that Gaddafi is reportedly using horrible weapons,including landmines and cluster bombs, that much of the world hasrenounced but that the United States has refused to.

But warfare tends to breed more warfare; and cycles of violence usually,not just occasionally, spiral out of control. That the United States isengaging in or supporting the killing of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq,

Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere, while ignoring the killing of civilians invarious other countries, is not a reason to tolerate it in Libya. But escalating a war and doing nothing are, contrary to Pentagon propaganda,not the only two choices. The United States and Europe could havestopped arming and supporting Gaddafi and in what would have been apowerful message to Libya stopped arming and supporting dictatorsaround the region. We could have provided purely humanitarian aid. Wecould have pulled out the CIA and the special forces and sent in nonviolent activist trainers of the sort that accomplished so much this year in thenations to Libya s east and west. Risking the deaths of innocents whileemploying nonviolent tools is commonly viewed as horrific, but isn t responding with violence that will likely cause more deaths in the end evenmore so?

Washington imported a leader for the people s rebellion in Libya who hasspent the past 20 years living with no known source of income a couple of miles from the CIA s headquarters in Virginia. Another man lives evencloser to CIA headquarters: former US Vice President Dick Cheney . Heexpressed great concern in a speech in 1999 that foreign governmentswere controlling oil. Oil remains fundamentally a government business,he said. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the



Middle East , with two thirds of the world s oil and the lowest cost, is stillwhere the prize ultimately lies.

Former supreme allied commander Europe of Nato, from 1997 to 2000,

Wesley Clark claims that in 2001, a general in the Pentagon showed him apiece of paper and said:

I just got this memo today or yesterday from the office of the secretary of defence upstairs. It s a, it s a five-year plan. We re going to take downseven countries in five years. We re going to start with Iraq, then Syria,Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we re going to come back and get Iran in five years.

That agenda fit perfectly with the plans of Washington insiders, such asthose who famously spelled out their intentions in the reports of thethinktank called the Project for the New American Century. The fierce Iraqiand Afghan resistance didn t fit at all. Neither did the nonviolent revolutionsin Tunisia and Egypt. But taking over Libya still makes perfect sense in theneoconservative worldview. And it makes sense in explaining war games used by Britain and France to simulate the invasion of a similar country.

The Libyan government controls more of its oil than any other nation onearth, and it is the type of oil that Europe finds easiest to refine. Libya also

controls its own finances, leading American author Ellen Brown to point out an interesting fact about those seven countries named by Clark :

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers central bank in Switzerland . T h e mos t r e n e ga de of t h e lo t coul d beLi b ya an d I raq, t h e t wo t ha t hav e ac t ually bee n a tt ack ed . Kenneth

Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that [s]ix months before theUS moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein , the oil nation had madethe move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became athreat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, andits dominion as the petrodollar.



According to a Russian article titled Bombing of Libya Punishment forGaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar , Gaddafi made a similarly boldmove: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, andcalled on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold

dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the ideawas approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. Theonly opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of theLeague of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the US andthe European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya athreat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayedand continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.

[ ] If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watchwhether the new central bank [created by the rebels in March] joins theBIS, whether the nationalised oil industry gets sold off to investors, andwhether education and healthcare continue to be free.

It will also be interesting to see whether Africom, the Pentagon s AfricaCommand, now based in Europe, establishes its headquarters on thecontinent for which it is named. We don t know what other motivations areat work: concerns over immigration to Europe? Desires to test weapons?War profiteering? Political calculations? Irrational lust for power?Overcompensation for having failed to turn against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak until after he d been unseated? But what about this one:actual fear of another Rwanda? That last one seems, frankly, the least likely. But what is certain is that such humanitarian concern alone did not launch this war, and that the continued use of war in this way will not benefit humanity.

The United Nations, far from being made credible, is being made theservant of wealthy nations making war on poor ones. And within the UnitedStates, where the United Nations is alternatively held up as a justificationor mocked as irrelevant, the power to make war and to make law has beendecisively placed in the hands of a series of single individuals who will carrythe title president precisely the outcome American revolutionaries brokewith Britain in order to avoid.



I n The Push For Regime Change No One Listens As

Libya O ff ers ³V eri f iable´ C ease f ire, E lectio ns By H asa n Suroor

April 20, 2011 " The Hindu " -- LO ND O N: Libya's Foreign Minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi on Wednesday offered a properly verifiable ceasefiresupervised by foreign observers to pave the way for talks which couldcover any issue including, he implied, the future of Colonel MuammarQadhafi.

He proposed a six-month transition period to be followed by electionsunder U.N. supervision as proposed by the African Union.

The British government dismissed the offer saying. We need actions, not words from Qadhafi's regime.

Mr. Obeidi's remarks in a BBC interview came as France and Italy, taking acue from Britain, announced they, too, would send teams of militaryofficers to Libya to help rebels fighting government forces a move Mr.Obeidi said would encourage anti-Qadhafi groups to become moredefiant and hinder any peace initiative.

Critics warned that by sending military personnel to Libya, the Westernalliance could be in breach of the U.N. mandate which specificallyprohibited boots on the ground .

British Foreign Secretary William Hague claimed the military teams wouldnot be involved in any combat operations and provide only logistics andintelligence training to rebel forces.

Mr. Obeidi called foreign military presence a step backwards and saidultimately it would have to be a Libyan solution .



The British Foreign Office said there had been several offers of ceasefiresbefore from this regime at the same time as his forces continueflagrantly to shell cities like Misrata and attack the Libyan people .



Former IAEA Head Suggests Iraq War Crime

Probe of Bush Administration

Nobel-winning Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei accuses U.S. leaders of grotesque distortion in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion and chidesWashington for reluctant approach to talks with Iran.

By The Associated Press

April 22, 2011 " AP " -- The former chief United Nations nuclear inspector

Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administrationofficials should face international criminal investigation for the shame of aneedless war in Iraq.

Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, theNobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of grotesque distortion in therun-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bushand his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite

contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors insidethe country.

The Iraq war taught him that deliberate deception was not limited to smallcountries ruled by ruthless dictators, ElBaradei writes in The Age of Deception, being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.

The 68-year-old legal scholar, head of the International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 and recently a rallying figure in Egypt'srevolution, concludes his 321-page account of two decades of tedious,wrenching nuclear diplomacy with a plea for more of it, particularly in theefforts to rein in North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.

"All parties must come to the negotiating table," writes ElBaradei, who won



the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the IAEA in 2005. He repeatedly chidesWashington for reluctant or hardline approaches to negotiations withTehran and Pyongyang.

He is harshest in addressing the Bush administration's 2002-2003 drive forwar with Iraq, when ElBaradei and Hans Blix led teams of UN inspectorslooking for signs Saddam Hussein's government had revived nuclear,chemical or biological weapons programs.

He tells of an October 2002 meeting he and Blix had with Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others,at which the Americans sought to convert the UN mission into a cover forwhat would be, in essence, a United States-directed inspection process.

The UN officials resisted, and their teams went on to conduct some 700inspections of scores of potential weapons sites in Iraq, finding no evidenceto support the U.S. claims of weapons of mass destruction.

In his own memoir, published last November, Bush still insisted it was right to invade to remove a homicidal dictator pursuing WMD. But the ex-president also wrote of a sickening feeling when no arms turned up afterthe invasion, and blamed an intelligence failure for the baseless claim, areference to a 2002 U.S. intelligence assessment contending WMD werebeing built.

But that assessment itself offered no concrete evidence, and Bush and hisaides have never explained why the U.S. position was not changed as on-

the-ground UN findings came in before the invasion.

ElBaradei cites examples, including the conclusion by his inspectors insideIraq that certain aluminum tubes were designed for artillery rockets, not for uranium enrichment equipment to build nuclear bombs, as Washingtonasserted.



The IAEA chief reported this conclusion to the UN Security Council on Jan.27, 2003, anhxet on the next day Bush - in a remarkable response -delivered a State of the Union address in which he repeated the unfoundedclaim about aluminum tubes, ElBaradei notes.

Similar contradictions of expert findings occurred with the claim, based ona forgery, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, and an Iraqi exile'sfabrication that mobile labs were producing biological weapons.

I was aghast at what I was witnessing, ElBaradei writes of the official U.S.attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls aggression wherethere was no imminent threat, a war in which he accepts estimates that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.

In such a case, he suggests, the World Court should be asked to rule onwhether the war was illegal. And, if so, should not the InternationalCriminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a 'war crime' anddetermine who is accountable?

Formidable political and legal barriers would seem to rule out such aninvestigation. But ElBaradei, citing the war-crimes prosecution of Serbia'sSlobodan Milosevic, sees double standards that should end.

Do we, as a community of nations, have the wisdom and courage to takethe corrective measures needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will neverhappen again? he asks.

Documents

ME Remapping