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Post by dodger on Aug 8, 2013 8:25:11 GMT
Excellent account of NATO's intervention in Libya, 7 Aug 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (Paperback)
www.amazon.co.uk/Spring-Libyan-Winter-Vijay-Prashad/dp/1849351120/ref=cm_aya_orig_subj
Vijay Prashad, Professor and Director of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, has produced a fine account of NATO's assault on Libya in 2011. His book includes a brief history of the Gaddafi regime and a survey of the Middle East's countries. He points out that Gaddafi's `major error was to give up his nuclear weapons agenda'.
Cameron, Sarkozy, the CIA, the UN's Ban Ki-Moon and Qatar's media company Al-Jazeera all talked loosely of `genocide' in Libya, just on the basis of press reports from a Saudi source. Britain's tame media promoted lies of mass Viagra-fuelled rape.
Cameron's demand that Gaddafi `has to go' closed the door on peace, just like his current demand that President Assad must go from Syria. Cameron was the first to call for a no-fly zone over Libya: setting up such a zone is an act of war. Again, he is trying to do the same now to Syria.
The NATO powers launched their illegal `humanitarian intervention' - the usual lying pretext of protecting civilians - but in fact intervened on the side of the rebels. SAS troops joined the rebels, as did Special Forces from the USA, France and Qatar. Between March and August 2011, NATO forces flew 20,000 bombing sorties in a `shock and awe' assault like NATO's illegal attack on Yugoslavia. Ban Ki-Moon covered up NATO's war crimes of bombing civilians, homes, power grids, factories, and radio and TV stations.
Libya's new government, the `National Transitional Council', is anti-Libya, pro-NATO and pro-capitalism. It promised, "The interests and rights of foreign nationals and companies will be protected." It swiftly created a Central Bank and the Libyan Oil Company.
The day Tripoli fell, the New York Times gloated, "The scramble for access to Libya's oil wealth begins." Libya has Africa's largest oil reserves - 46.4 billion barrels - and huge gas reserves too. 70,000 people are now being held in Libya's jails, ignored by our `humanitarian' government and media.
The NATO powers, allied to Islamist extremists, have hijacked the Arab spring. NATO founded its `Istanbul Cooperation Initiative', to control the Middle East and North Africa, in 2004. In May 2012, the G7 and the IMF founded the Deauville Partnership. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan are all now under Western neo-colonial rule.
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Post by dodger on Oct 2, 2013 17:11:05 GMT
Stunning study of the British state's collusion with radical Islam, 28 Sep 2010
This William Podmore review is from: Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam (Paperback)
In this stunning book, historian Mark Curtis details the British state's collusion with Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
Britain is allied with the two major sponsors of Islamist terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia funded Al Qa'ida and Pakistan funded the 7/7 bombers. As the interim report of the 9/11 Commission said, "Pakistan, not Iraq, was a patron of terrorism."
Britain was the second largest investor in Pakistan, which received Britain's third largest aid programme in Asia. By 2001, 900 British citizens were visiting Kashmir for military training every year.
London is a base for many jihadist groups including Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Osama bin Laden's front, the Advice and Reformation Committee. After 9/11, the Terrorism Act made it an offence to send someone abroad for terrorist training, yet Abu Hamza wasn't touched for years.
In 2004, MI5 heard the London bombers `talking about jihadi activity in Pakistan and support for the Taliban', but as they weren't talking about terrorist attacks in Britain, MI5 left them alone. Britain, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, tries to get its own terrorists to attack only targets abroad.
In April 2005, three months before the London bombings, the Joint Intelligence Committee said that the war in Iraq `has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism'. The bombings stemmed from the terrorist bases set up by the Pakistani state, backed by the British state. British governments accuse Iran of what Saudi Arabia and Pakistan do - backing and training terrorists.
The war in Afghanistan in the 1980s was Britain's biggest covert operation since 1945. Britain's support for, and arms supplies to, the mujehadin started months before the Soviet intervention. Thatcher praised the mujehadin as `genuine freedom fighters'. The SAS trained the mujehadin and SAS units were involved in operations. The CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's ISI jointly raided into Soviet Central Asia.
Saudi Arabia has spent $50 billion on promoting Wahhabism, its extremist version of Islam, building 1,500 mosques and 2,200 madrassas across the world. The Saudi state is the world's leading source of funds for Al Qa'ida and other jihadists; it has been the major sponsor of terrorism for the last 30 years, and it provided 45 per cent of the foreign fighters in Iraq.
Britain, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran all illegally sent arms to Bosnia, in breach of the UN embargo. Britain helped 4,000 Islamist militants to travel to Bosnia. British-born jihadists fought in Bosnia and Kosovo: 3,000 passed through Al Qa'ida training camps in the 1990s.
In 1998, Britain, the USA and the EU all denounced the Kosovo Liberation Army's terrorism, its heroin-trafficking and connections with Al Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden; by March 1999, the KLA was NATO's ground force there. Also in 1998, Britain started arming and training KLA fighters, violating UN Resolution 1160, which banned arming and training any forces in Yugoslavia.
A NATO report of August 2009 on the Afghan war said, "the overall situation is deteriorating"; NATO forces face a `resilient and growing insurgency' and admitted that NATO forces are causing `unnecessary collateral damage'.
While claiming to support Islamic moderates, the British state has backed Islamic extremists - the Saudi Arabian and Pakistani states, the Muslim Brotherhood, the KLA, the mujehadin. The British state backs these Islamists against democrats, nationalists, secularists and supporters of women's rights, as its proxy fighters against secular nationalism and socialism.
Added 21/9/12.
In this very useful new edition of Curtis' hugely informative book, he shows that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are the major state sponsors of Islamist terrorism. Al-Qaeda was largely created by Saudi Arabia. The 7/7 bombers were largely created by Pakistan - which is now more of a threat than Al-Qaeda.
These two states are allies of both the USA and Britain. This is largely why the USA and Britain bombed Kabul and Baghdad, not Islamabad and Riyadh.
Curtis points out that in March and April 2011, NATO flew 2,800 sorties and destroyed a third of Gaddafi's military assets. Qatar provided $400 million support to the Libyan rebels. There were an estimated 1,000 jihadists fighting in Libya - how many are there now in Syria?
Curtis concludes, "Britain's foreign policy-making system is far removed from promoting the national interest. Rather, Whitehall's secret affairs with radical Islam have increased the terrorist threat to Britain and the world; a distinctly immoral aspect of foreign policy has made Britain, the Middle East and much of the rest of the world more insecure."
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Post by dodger on Oct 19, 2013 14:28:49 GMT
Excellent survey of the so-called Arab spring, 29 Oct 2012
This Will Podmore review is from: After the Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked The Middle East Revolts (Hardcover)
In this splendid book, John Bradley, an experienced foreign correspondent, shows how the media have lied to us about recent events in the Middle East. He exposes the myth of the `Arab Spring', which, like every Eastern European `colour' revolution, was not for freedom or democracy but for reaction.
He reminds us that Tunisia "was ruled by the most secular Arab regime and was the most socially liberal and progressive Muslim country in the Middle East. As such, before its revolution it had been the last bulwark against the Saudi-funded Wahhabi form of Islam that, since the oil boom of the 1970s, had spread everywhere else in the Islamic world."
Bradley points out that Tunisia was a "Muslim country where abortion was legal, where schools taught sex education, and where the veil was banned in government institutions (and severely discouraged elsewhere)." Polygamy had been outlawed for decades. The fertility rate was 2.08, down from 7.2 in the 1960s.
Schools and health care were free. More was spent on education than on the army. Its education was excellent, ranked 17th in the world, and seventh in maths and science. A third of Tunisia's young people went to university, where 60 per cent of students were women.
The army had no role in politics. The government opposed regionalism, tribalism and Islamism. "In Tunisia, there was a reason that the Islamists were not the vanguard: for decades the regime had imprisoned or exiled them."
In 2009, only 4 per cent of Tunisians were poor; after the counter-revolution, 25 per cent were poor, and 40 per cent were jobless. The Islamists won the October 2011 election. Islamist storm-troopers smashed up cinemas, TV stations, bars, synagogues and university buildings, and attacked unveiled women, artists and secularists. This was the fascist murder of Tunisia's secularism.
In Egypt a military coup ousted Mubarak. Saudi Arabia gave $4 billion in soft loans to Egypt's new military regime. The generals promised civilian rule, but reneged and have jailed even more people than Mubarak did. Bradley comments, "In 2011 the pro-democracy activists had from the outset foolishly declared their own revolution `leaderless'; they had learned nothing from history about how revolutionary movements lacking a vanguard are crushed by more entrenched and better-organized forces in the aftermath of massive social and political upheaval."
In February 2011 Saudi forces shot down Bahrain's unarmed protestors. President Obama backed the Saudi invasion. Saudi Arabia backed an Islamist revolt in the Yemen. It funds Pakistan's madrassas; in return Pakistani troops are stationed in Saudi Arabia to support the regime.
Saudi Arabia also funds madrassas in Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand and Afghanistan. It is the paymaster of Islamist terrorism around the world. Its fronts include the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the International Islamic Relief Organisation and the Muslim World League.
The USA thinks that its interests, and Israel's, are best served by a pact with Saudi Arabia. So President Obama backs all the Saudi counter-revolutions, supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and backed the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Libya.
Bradley notes, "Syria, the only ostensibly secular Arab country apart from Tunisia, was ruled by a minority Shia cult, and there, too, the Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood was ready to pounce." In this, the only remaining secular Arab country, the USA and Britain back the Islamist, Al-Qaeda-linked, Saudi-backed rebels trying to overthrow the government by force.
Bradley concludes, "Socially and economically, the Arab Spring has put back countries like Tunisia, Yemen, and Syria by decades."
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Post by dodger on Oct 28, 2013 2:47:04 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_0711/libya_statement.htmlBritain’s War against Libya: Statement from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Britain (ML)
Britain’s brutally aggressive adventure in Libya is to be utterly condemned.
Claiming falsely to protect civilians, British military jets are raining munitions from the sky on to Tripoli and other Libyan cities in a “shock and awe” assault, acting on behalf of one side in a civil war abroad, attempting to assassinate the head of state of a sovereign country and to teach a lesson to Libyans who dare to support their independence in the face of imperialist intentions.
The British action is both shameful and cowardly. British troops are not to be risked yet the Libyan people die in intensive bombing raids. In spite of a deliberately vague UN resolution, the action is illegal under international law. It is terrorism, inflicted by our government against a sovereign state which is no threat to us or its neighbours.
Britain acts as cheerleader to EU aggression, promoting the interests of the USA, which grabs its chance to seize control in awkward Middle East states which refuse to do its bidding. It is no coincidence that Libya has the highest standard of health, education and infrastructure in North Africa, that Gaddafi’s government is resistant to religious extremism, and that Libya has high-quality oil.
At a time when government tells us there is no money for civilised life at home, there is unlimited funding for the bombings – likely to top £1 billion by the end of the year. War is waged on us at home, and on the Libyan people in their country.
Where is the outcry? Why have workers not protested against this outrage? The voice of the trade unions is absent. Not surprisingly Labour MPs remain largely silent, except to complain that they aren’t being fully consulted on each escalation in the war which they support, and to assert that the civil not military budget must be used to fund it.
In targeting Gaddafi as head of state, and killing his son and three young grandchildren, the British government is perpetrating state terrorism.
We support the right of the Libyan people to determine themselves the affairs and government of their country, free from imperialist meddling. Whatever the future holds for Libya, it is not our business, nor that of the USA or the EU.
We denounce this war being waged in our name.
June 2011
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Post by dodger on Dec 11, 2013 18:17:52 GMT
Excellent accounts of NATO's war on Libya, 11 Dec 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: The Illegal War on Libya (Paperback)
Ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has produced a splendid study of the illegal NATO assault on Libya. In 2011 she took a delegation to Libya to monitor NATO's so-called humanitarian intervention. This collection includes personal accounts by witnesses to the NATO attack on the civilian population. Many of the contributors examine the huge NATO propaganda campaign to persuade us that the war was just.
All Libyans got free health care, education, electricity, water, training, rehabilitation, housing assistance, disability and old-age benefits, and interest-free state loans. They also got generous subsidies to study abroad, buy a new car, practically free petrol, and help when they married. Literacy rose from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. Libya's hospitals were some of the region's best.
Colonel Gaddafi proposed to create a gold-backed dinar, a new all-African currency to challenge the euro and the dollar, and a new development bank to free Africa from IMF domination.
The USA, Britain and France sent in `special forces' to start the `rising'. The NATO attack on Libya was not the result of a revolt but intended to cause a revolt. The intent was always to destroy an independent-minded government, destroy its exemplary achievements, and steal Libya's oil and gold reserves. The US government's Biden Plan aimed to attack and divide Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan and Somalia.
NATO set up, not a no-fly zone, but a NATO-fly zone. Seven months of NATO bombing, from March to October 2011, 26,500 sorties, by British, US, French, Norwegian, Danish and Canadian planes, destroyed everything the people of Libya had built in the previous 40 years - the highest standard of living in Africa, the water supply, the electricity grid, its national health service, and tens of thousands of modern apartment buildings. The bombing also killed at least 2,000 civilians.
The NATO powers abused international law, and created the legal fiction of a `Responsibility to Protect'. They used compliant, US-funded `human rights' NGOs to back their assault.
The NATO powers had used Al-Qaeda, the CIA-run network of Arab and Afghan mercenaries, against Serbia. They used it against Libya and now they are using it against Syria. They ran the terrorist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, relabelling it `the rebels', and then the `Tripoli Military Council'.
The NATO powers still want to achieve the same destruction in Syria. They are still using the same tactics of arming militias, including Al-Qaeda fanatics, sending in CIA sabotage teams, and creating social chaos.
Popular opposition to another illegal war has, for now, stopped an overt NATO aggression against Syria. But the Cameron, Obama and Hollande governments are still waging covert war against Syria, still backing the Al-Qaeda terrorists.
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