THE ROVING EYE
There's no business like war business
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
Lies, hypocrisy and hidden agendas. This is what United States President Barack Obama did not dwell on when explaining his Libya doctrine to America and the world. The mind boggles with so many black holes engulfing this splendid little war that is not a war (a "time-limited, scope-limited military action", as per the White House) - compounded with the inability of progressive thinking to condemn, at the same time, the ruthlessness of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the Anglo-French-American
"humanitarian" bombing.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 has worked like a Trojan horse, allowing the Anglo-French-American consortium - and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - to become the UN's air force in its support of an armed uprising. Apart from having nothing to do with protecting civilians, this arrangement is absolutely illegal in terms of international law. The inbuilt endgame, as even malnourished African kids know by now, but has never been acknowledged, is regime change.
Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's commander for Libya, may insist all he wants that the mission is purely designed to protect civilians. Yet those "innocent civilians" operating tanks and firing Kalashnikovs as part of a rag-tag wild bunch are in fact soldiers in a civil war - and the focus should be on whether NATO from now on will remain their air force, following the steps of the Anglo-French-American consortium. Incidentally, the "coalition of the wiling" fighting Libya consists of only 12 NATO members (out of 28) plus Qatar. This has absolutely nothing to do with an "international community".
The full verdict on the UN-mandated no-fly zone will have to wait for the emergence of a "rebel" government and the end of the civil war (if it ends soon). Then it will be possible to analyze how Tomahawking and bombing was ever justified; why civilians in Cyrenaica were "protected" while those in Tripoli were Tomahawked; what sort of "rebel" motley crew was "saved"; whether this whole thing was legal in the first place; how the resolution was a cover for regime change; how the love affair between the Libyan "revolutionaries" and the West may end in bloody divorce (remember Afghanistan); and which Western players stand to immensely profit from the wealth of a new, unified (or balkanized) Libya.
For the moment at least, it's quite easy to identify the profiteers.
The Pentagon
Pentagon supremo Robert Gates said this weekend, with a straight face, there are only three repressive regimes in the whole Middle East: Iran, Syria and Libya. The Pentagon is taking out the weak link - Libya. The others were always key features of the neo-conservative take-out/evil list. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, etc are model democracies.
As for this "now you see it, now you don't" war, the Pentagon is managing to fight it not once, but twice. It started with Africom - established under the George W Bush administration, beefed up under Obama, and rejected by scores of African governments, scholars and human rights organizations. Now the war is transitioning to NATO, which is essentially Pentagon rule over its European minions.
This is Africom's first African war, conducted up to now by General Carter Ham out of his headquarters in un-African Stuttgart. Africom, as Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University puts it, is a scam; "fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give Africom credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention."
Africom's Tomahawks also hit - metaphorically - the African Union (AU), which, unlike the Arab League, cannot be easily bought by the West. The Arab Gulf petro-monarchies all cheered the bombing - but not Egypt and Tunisia. Only five African countries are not subordinated to Africom; Libya is one of them, along with Sudan, Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
NATO
NATO's master plan is to rule the Mediterranean as a NATO lake. Under these "optics" (Pentagon speak) the Mediterranean is infinitely more important nowadays as a theater of war than AfPak.
There are only three out of 20 nations on or in the Mediterranean that are not full members of NATO or allied with its "partnership" programs: Libya, Lebanon and Syria. Make no mistake; Syria is next. Lebanon is already under a NATO blockade since 2006. Now a blockade also applies to Libya. The US - via NATO - is just about to square the circle.
Saudi Arabia
What a deal. King Abdullah gets rid of his eternal foe Gaddafi. The House of Saud - in trademark abject fashion - bends over backwards for the West's benefit. The attention of world public opinion is diverted from the Saudis invading Bahrain to smash a legitimate, peaceful, pro-democracy protest movement.
The House of Saud sold the fiction that "the Arab League" as a whole voted for a no-fly zone. That is a lie; out of 22 members, only 11 were present at the vote; six are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. The House of Saud just needed to twist the arms of three more. Syria and Algeria were against it. Translation; only nine out of 22 Arab countries voted for the no-fly zone.
Now Saudi Arabia can even order GCC head Abdulrahman al-Attiyah to say, with a straight face, "the Libyan system has lost its legitimacy." As for the "legitimate" House of Saud and the al-Khalifas in Bahrain, someone should induct them into the Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
Qatar
The hosts of the 2022 soccer World Cup sure know how to clinch a deal. Their Mirages are helping to bomb Libya while Doha gets ready to market eastern Libya oil. Qatar promptly became the first Arab nation to recognize the Libyan "rebels" as the only legitimate government of the country only one day after securing the oil marketing deal.
The 'rebels'
All the worthy democratic aspirations of the Libyan youth movement notwithstanding, the most organized opposition group happens to be the National Front for the Salvation of Libya - financed for years by the House of Saud, the CIA and French intelligence. The rebel "Interim Transitional National Council" is little else than the good ol' National Front, plus a few military defectors. This is the elite of the "innocent civilians" the "coalition" is "protecting".
Right on cue, the "Interim Transitional National Council" has got a new finance minister, US-educated economist Ali Tarhouni. He disclosed that a bunch of Western countries gave them credit backed by Libya's sovereign fund, and the British allowed them to access $1.1 billion of Gaddafi's funds. This means the Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - will only pay for the bombs. As war scams go this one is priceless; the West uses Libya's own cash to finance a bunch of opportunists Libyan rebels to fight the Libyan government. And on top of it the Americans, the Brits and the French feel the love for all that bombing. Neo-cons must be kicking themselves; why couldn't former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz come up with something like this for Iraq 2003?
The French
Oh la la, this could be material for a Proustian novel. The top spring collection in Paris catwalks is the President Nicolas Sarkozy fashion show - a no-fly zone model with Mirage/Rafale air strike accessories. This fashion show was masterminded by Nouri Mesmari, Gaddafi's chief of protocol, who defected to France in October 2010. The Italian secret service leaked to selected media outlets how he did it. The role of the DGSE, the French secret service, has been more or less explained on paid website Maghreb Confidential.
Essentially, the Benghazi revolt coq au vin had been simmering since November 2010. The cooks were Mesmari, air force colonel Abdullah Gehani, and the French secret service. Mesmari was called "Libyan WikiLeak", because he spilled over virtually every one of Gaddafi's military secrets. Sarkozy loved it - furious because Gaddafi had cancelled juicy contracts to buy Rafales (to replace his Mirages now being bombed) and French-built nuclear power plants.
That explains why Sarkozy has been so gung ho into posing as the new Arab liberator, was the first leader of a European power to recognize the "rebels" (to the disgust of many at the European Union), and was the first to bomb Gaddafi's forces.
This busts open the role of shameless self-promoting philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, who's now frantically milking in the world's media that he phoned Sarkozy from Benghazi and awakened his humanitarian streak. Either Levy is a patsy, or a convenient "intellectual" cherry added to the already-prepared bombing cake.
Terminator Sarkozy is unstoppable. He has just warned every single Arab ruler that they face Libya-style bombing if they crack down on protesters. He even said that the Ivory Coast was "next". Bahrain and Yemen, of course, are exempt. As for the US, it is once again supporting a military coup (it didn't work with Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman in Egypt; maybe it will work in Libya).
Al-Qaeda
The oh so convenient bogeyman resurfaces. The Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - are (again) fighting alongside al-Qaeda, represented by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQM).
Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi - who has fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan - extensively confirmed to Italian media that he had personally recruited "around 25" jihadis from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against the US in Iraq; now "they are on the front lines in Adjabiya".
This after Chad's president Idriss Deby stressed that AQM had raided military arsenals in Cyrenaica and may be now holding quite a few surface-to-air missiles. In early March, AQM publicly supported the "rebels". The ghost of Osama bin Laden must be pulling a Cheshire cat; once again he gets the Pentagon to work for him.
The water privatizers
Few in the West may know that Libya - along with Egypt - sits over the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer; that is, an ocean of extremely valuable fresh water. So yes, this "now you see it, now you don't" war is a crucial water war. Control of the aquifer is priceless - as in "rescuing" valuable natural resources from the "savages".
This Water Pipelineistan - buried underground deep in the desert along 4,000 km - is the Great Man-Made River Project (GMMRP), which Gaddafi built for $25 billion without borrowing a single cent from the IMF or the World Bank (what a bad example for the developing world). The GMMRP supplies Tripoli, Benghazi and the whole Libyan coastline. The amount of water is estimated by scientists to be the equivalent to 200 years of water flowing down the Nile.
Compare this to the so-called three sisters - Veolia (formerly Vivendi), Suez Ondeo (formerly Generale des Eaux) and Saur - the French companies that control over 40% of the global water market. All eyes must imperatively focus on whether these pipelines are bombed. An extremely possible scenario is that if they are, juicy "reconstruction" contracts will benefit France. That will be the final step to privatize all this - for the moment free - water. From shock doctrine to water doctrine.
Well, that's only a short list of profiteers - no one knows who'll get the oil - and the natural gas - in the end. Meanwhile, the (bombing) show must go on. There's no business like war business.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Tripoli, the new Troy
Tripoli, the new Troy
Posted on March 31, 2011 by The Global Realm
Tripoli, the new Troy
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
April 1, 2011
Odyssey Dawn slogs on – a tawdry “kinetic military action” (as per the White House) worthy of the Pentagon’s resident Homer. The stalemate on the ground could go on for weeks, if not months. This is more like The Iliad remixed – remember, the Trojan War slogged on for 10 years without a decisive result. America is bewildered. A new Associated Press-GfK poll found the country is split; 48% are in favor of the “kinetic military action” in Libya, 50% are against it.
Gaddafi is no king Priam. And Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is no Paris (although, in the absence of Helen, he did seduce the London School of Economics). Khamis Gaddafi is no Achilles – perhaps a minor Ajax (gigantic, great courage but dull of intellect).
Priam was a wise prince – while Gaddafi is wily. Priam strengthened the state by good governance (Machiavelli would have approved) and alliances with his neighbors, while Gaddafi governed by playing the tribes against each other. There’s not a shade of Hector – a noble character – in sight.
One may wonder which gods and goddesses – apart from Athena – are as interested in this war as the parties themselves. One of Troy’s crucial allies was Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons with her band of female warriors. In the Pentagon remix Penthesilea shifted to the opposition, played by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her combat warriors United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council aide Samantha Power.
Arab liberator French President Nicolas Sarkozy is no Menelaus; his Helen – Carla Bruni, who used to cavort with Bacchic Mick Jagger – would rather mingle with the Vogue crowd than sulk in a tent in the desert. British Prime Minister David Cameron is not exactly Agamemnon. As for Silvio “Bunga Bunga” Berlusconi, the Italian president is just a satyr who escaped from an Aristophanes comedy.
Waiting for the lightning bolt
Odyssey Dawn boasts a cast of characters of infiltrated special forces – from the United States, Britain, France, plus the inevitable, Barack Obama-sanctioned Central Intelligence Agency covert ops. They may be teaching the “rebels” a thing or two about warfare – but certainly not the Mao Zedong guerrilla tactics Priam/Gaddafi is now using against a drive-in, wild bunch guerrilla.
These special forces anyway will be key. Troy was besieged for 10 years by a regular army – but only fell after two very special special forces intervened in an intelligence recon mission: Ulysses and Diomede. Troy hosted a celebrated statue of Athena called the Palladium. In disguise; protected by Athena (the Greek version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization); and helped by Helen – the stunning beauty who provoked the war in the first place – Ulysses and Diomede sneaked into Troy and stole the Palladium.
The Palladium, a wooden statue, protected Troy. Athena had thrown it out of the Olympus because it had imbibed the vaginal blood of Electra when she was raped by Zeus. Yet even after the theft of the Palladium Troy still did not fall. The “coalition of the willing” was getting desperate – until Ulysses came up with another special ops: the Trojan Horse.
It’s hard to see Gaddafi falling for an Anglo-French-American Trojan Horse (unless it’s a new United Nations resolution). When the Trojans saw the horse, they hesitated. Laocoon, the priest, famously said, “What madness, citizens, is this! Have you not learned enough of Grecian fraud to be on your guard against it? For my part I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts.”
Beware of Westerners bearing gifts – many a Libyan will eventually have to acknowledge, especially when these gifts come from former colonial powers Britain and France, and the CIA/Pentagon/NATO/Africom condominium.
On the other hand, there’s nothing these bearers of gifts would like better than Gaddafi ending his days like Priam – who lived to see the downfall of Troy and was slain on the fatal night the Greeks took the city.
So Tripoli won’t fall until its Palladium is stolen. That is; as long as the Palladium – which is Gaddafi himself, the mirror image of his own power – is in town.
Meanwhile Gaddafi is “winning” like Troy did for years – ambushing the pick-up warriors outside his hometown Sirte, outflanking them through the desert, and replicating the tactic in Ras Lanuf, with a few Grad rockets added for good measure.
There’s not much left for the “coalition of the willing” other than to bend over UN resolution 1973 – even though scores of international law experts stress that under the current UN resolutions arming the rebels is illegal.
The Anglo-French-American consortium is now deep into it – progressing from protecting civilians through Tomahawks and air strikes to targeting Gaddafi’s forces anywhere to finally arming civilians.
They even say everything is already spelled out – in paragraph 4 of UN resolution 1973, which authorizes “all necessary measures” to protect civilians “… notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970″. Paragraph 9 deals with the arms embargo. Thus “not withstanding” gives a legal basis for arming the rebels, as long as it’s assumed this happens to protect civilians. From there to another resolution allowing boots on the ground is only another small step.
It requires major suspension of belief to cast former Gaddafi interior minister Abdel Fatah Younis and CIA asset Khalifah Hifle – the new “rebel” military commander – as Ulysses and Diomede. But still Palladium is in the building. The problem with the Odyssey Dawn script is that Ulysses is nowhere to be found.
No wonder so many are praying for a lightning bolt (a sacred Tomahawk?) sent by a deus ex machina, the one and only Zeus, for the moment just overseeing the proceedings from his throne in Olympian Washington.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD01Ak02.html
Posted on March 31, 2011 by The Global Realm
Tripoli, the new Troy
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
April 1, 2011
Odyssey Dawn slogs on – a tawdry “kinetic military action” (as per the White House) worthy of the Pentagon’s resident Homer. The stalemate on the ground could go on for weeks, if not months. This is more like The Iliad remixed – remember, the Trojan War slogged on for 10 years without a decisive result. America is bewildered. A new Associated Press-GfK poll found the country is split; 48% are in favor of the “kinetic military action” in Libya, 50% are against it.
Gaddafi is no king Priam. And Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is no Paris (although, in the absence of Helen, he did seduce the London School of Economics). Khamis Gaddafi is no Achilles – perhaps a minor Ajax (gigantic, great courage but dull of intellect).
Priam was a wise prince – while Gaddafi is wily. Priam strengthened the state by good governance (Machiavelli would have approved) and alliances with his neighbors, while Gaddafi governed by playing the tribes against each other. There’s not a shade of Hector – a noble character – in sight.
One may wonder which gods and goddesses – apart from Athena – are as interested in this war as the parties themselves. One of Troy’s crucial allies was Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons with her band of female warriors. In the Pentagon remix Penthesilea shifted to the opposition, played by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her combat warriors United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council aide Samantha Power.
Arab liberator French President Nicolas Sarkozy is no Menelaus; his Helen – Carla Bruni, who used to cavort with Bacchic Mick Jagger – would rather mingle with the Vogue crowd than sulk in a tent in the desert. British Prime Minister David Cameron is not exactly Agamemnon. As for Silvio “Bunga Bunga” Berlusconi, the Italian president is just a satyr who escaped from an Aristophanes comedy.
Waiting for the lightning bolt
Odyssey Dawn boasts a cast of characters of infiltrated special forces – from the United States, Britain, France, plus the inevitable, Barack Obama-sanctioned Central Intelligence Agency covert ops. They may be teaching the “rebels” a thing or two about warfare – but certainly not the Mao Zedong guerrilla tactics Priam/Gaddafi is now using against a drive-in, wild bunch guerrilla.
These special forces anyway will be key. Troy was besieged for 10 years by a regular army – but only fell after two very special special forces intervened in an intelligence recon mission: Ulysses and Diomede. Troy hosted a celebrated statue of Athena called the Palladium. In disguise; protected by Athena (the Greek version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization); and helped by Helen – the stunning beauty who provoked the war in the first place – Ulysses and Diomede sneaked into Troy and stole the Palladium.
The Palladium, a wooden statue, protected Troy. Athena had thrown it out of the Olympus because it had imbibed the vaginal blood of Electra when she was raped by Zeus. Yet even after the theft of the Palladium Troy still did not fall. The “coalition of the willing” was getting desperate – until Ulysses came up with another special ops: the Trojan Horse.
It’s hard to see Gaddafi falling for an Anglo-French-American Trojan Horse (unless it’s a new United Nations resolution). When the Trojans saw the horse, they hesitated. Laocoon, the priest, famously said, “What madness, citizens, is this! Have you not learned enough of Grecian fraud to be on your guard against it? For my part I fear the Greeks even when they offer gifts.”
Beware of Westerners bearing gifts – many a Libyan will eventually have to acknowledge, especially when these gifts come from former colonial powers Britain and France, and the CIA/Pentagon/NATO/Africom condominium.
On the other hand, there’s nothing these bearers of gifts would like better than Gaddafi ending his days like Priam – who lived to see the downfall of Troy and was slain on the fatal night the Greeks took the city.
So Tripoli won’t fall until its Palladium is stolen. That is; as long as the Palladium – which is Gaddafi himself, the mirror image of his own power – is in town.
Meanwhile Gaddafi is “winning” like Troy did for years – ambushing the pick-up warriors outside his hometown Sirte, outflanking them through the desert, and replicating the tactic in Ras Lanuf, with a few Grad rockets added for good measure.
There’s not much left for the “coalition of the willing” other than to bend over UN resolution 1973 – even though scores of international law experts stress that under the current UN resolutions arming the rebels is illegal.
The Anglo-French-American consortium is now deep into it – progressing from protecting civilians through Tomahawks and air strikes to targeting Gaddafi’s forces anywhere to finally arming civilians.
They even say everything is already spelled out – in paragraph 4 of UN resolution 1973, which authorizes “all necessary measures” to protect civilians “… notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970″. Paragraph 9 deals with the arms embargo. Thus “not withstanding” gives a legal basis for arming the rebels, as long as it’s assumed this happens to protect civilians. From there to another resolution allowing boots on the ground is only another small step.
It requires major suspension of belief to cast former Gaddafi interior minister Abdel Fatah Younis and CIA asset Khalifah Hifle – the new “rebel” military commander – as Ulysses and Diomede. But still Palladium is in the building. The problem with the Odyssey Dawn script is that Ulysses is nowhere to be found.
No wonder so many are praying for a lightning bolt (a sacred Tomahawk?) sent by a deus ex machina, the one and only Zeus, for the moment just overseeing the proceedings from his throne in Olympian Washington.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD01Ak02.html
Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal
THE ROVING EYE
Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes"
vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.
The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."
As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.
Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.
Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.
Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.
Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.
Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".
There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.
But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.
Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."
For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.
The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.
Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".
What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.
And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.
Globocop is on a roll
Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.
The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libya; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.
A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.
The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.
This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).
Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.
According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes"
vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.
The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."
As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.
Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.
Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.
Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.
Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.
Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".
There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.
But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.
Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."
For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.
The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.
Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".
What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.
And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.
Globocop is on a roll
Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.
The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libya; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.
A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.
The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.
This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).
Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.
According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Monday, April 4, 2011
America's 20 Year Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24049
America's 20 Year Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 30, 2011
A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1997.
On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under "Operation El Dorado Canyon", in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi's residence was bombed killing his younger daughter.
Barely acknowledged by the Western media, a planned attack on Libya using nuclear weapons, had been contemplated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The Department of Defense had developed a new generation of bunker buster tactical nuclear weapons for use in the Middle East and Central Asia:
"Military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories [had] urged the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons... which could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations." (Federation of American Scientists, 2001, emphasis added)
The B61-11 earth-penetrating weapon with a nuclear warhead had not been tested. It was part of the B61 series, coupled with a so-called "low yield" nuclear warhead. According to US military sources: "If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout [of the B61-11] could drift over nearby countries such as Japan." (B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon, Globalsecurity.org). The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for post-Cold War battlefield operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The Pentagon's Plan to Nuke Libya
The B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated by the Pentagon to be used in 1997 against the "Qadhafi regime":
"Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April [1997] by suggesting that the earth-penetrating [nuclear] weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah. This thinly-veiled threat came just eleven days after the United States signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any other signatory, including Libya." (David Muller, Penetrator N-Bombs, International Action Center, 1997)
Tarbunah has a population of more than 200,000 people, men, women and children. It is about 60 km East of Tripoli. Had this "humanitarian bomb" (with a "yield" or explosive capacity of two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb) been launched on this "suspected" WMD facility, it would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, not to mention the nuclear fallout...
The man behind this diabolical project to nuke Libya was Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Palmer Smith Junior. "Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target". (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September/ October 1997, p. 27, emphasis added)
Harold Palmer Smith had been appointed by President Bill Clinton to oversee nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs with a focus on "the reduction and maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons". From the outset, his actual mandate, was not "reduce" but to "increase" the nuclear arsenal by promoting the development of a new generation of "harmless" mini-nukes for use in the Middle East war theater.
Harold Palmer Smith Junior
"Testing" the B611-11 Nuclear Bomb on an Actual Country
The Department of Defense's objective under Harold Smith's advice was to fasttrack the "testing" of the B61-11 nuclear bomb on an actual country:
Five months after [Assistant Defense Secretary] Harold Smith called for an acceleration of the B61-11 production schedule, he went public with an assertion that the Air Force would use the B61-11 [nuclear weapon] against Libya's alleged underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah if the President decided that the plant had to be destroyed. "We could not take [Tarhunah] out of commission using strictly conventional weapons," Smith told the Associated Press. The B61-11 "would be the nuclear weapon of choice," he told Jane's Defence Weekly.
Smith gave the statement during a breakfast interview with reporters after Defense Secretary William Perry had earlier told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on chemical or biological weapons that the U.S. retained the option of using nuclear weapons against countries armed with chemical and biological weapons. (http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/B61-11.htm, emphasis added)
While the Pentagon later denied its intention to bomb Libya's Tarhunah plant, it nonetheless confirmed that "Washington would not rule out using nuclear weapons [against Libya]". (Ibid., emphasis added.)
Nukes and Mini-Nukes: Iraq and Afghanistan
The US military contends that "mini-nukes" are "humanitarian bombs" which minimize "collateral damage". According to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon, they are "harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground",
The B61-11 is a bon fide thermonuclear bomb, a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the real sense of the word.
Military documents distinguish between the Nuclear Earth Penetrator (NEP) and the "mini-nuke", which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.
This distinction between mini-nukes and the NEP is in many regards misleading. In practice there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several "available yields", ranging from "low yields" of less than one kiloton, to mid-range, and up to the 1000 kiloton bomb.
In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several "available yields".
What is contemplated for theater use is the "low yield" 10 kt bomb, two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb.
The Libya 1997 "Nuclear Option" had set the Stage...
Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations have excluded using thermonuclear bunker buster bombs in the Middle East war theater. These weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War "conventional conflicts with third world nations". They were approved for use in the conventional war theater by the US Senate in 2002, following the adoption of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review.
In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 in Afghanistan. The stated targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.
Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the "conventional" bunker buster bombs "'are going to be able to do the job'... he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons." (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001, emphasis added.)
The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. In this regard, the B61-11 was described as "a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets", which included Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers:
"If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime." (Defense News, December 8, 2003, emphasis added)
"All options are on the table"... Sheer madness. Nukes to implement "regime change"... What Rumsfeld had proposed, as part of a "humanitarian mandate", was the use of a nuclear bomb to "take out" the president of a foreign country.
(author's note: There is no documentary evidence that the B61-11 was used against Iraq).
Is a Nuclear Attack on Libya Still on the Pentagon's Drawing Board?
"The Coalition of the Willing" under US-NATO mandate is currently involved in "a humanitarian war" on Libya to "protect the lives of innocent civilians".
Is the use of a nuclear bomb excluded under the Alliance's R2P Responsibility to Protect Doctrine?
The Bush administration's 2001 nuclear doctrine contained specific "guidelines" regarding "preemptive" nuclear strikes against several countries in the broader Middle East Central Asian region, which explictly included Libya.
As revealed by William Arkin in early 2002, "The Bush administration, in a secret policy review... [had] ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons [The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review approved by the Senate in late 2002] against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the "axis of evil"--Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--but also China, Libya and Syria. (See William Arkin, "Thinking the Unthinkable", Los Angeles Times, 9 March 2002)
In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as "surprising military developments" of an unspecified nature. These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons that reduce collateral damage, are contained in a still-classified document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was delivered to Congress on Jan. 8. (ibid)
The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO) --endorsed by the Obama Administration-- allows for the preemptive use of "mini nukes" in conventional war theaters directed against "rogue states". While the "guidelines" do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US /NATO nuclear arsenal, Pentagon "scenarios" in the Middle East and North Africa are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb.
The fact that Libya had been singled out by the Pentagon for a possible 1997 mini-nuke "trial run" was a significant element in the formulation of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).
It is worth noting that tactical B61 nuclear weapons have also been deployed by America's NATO partners: five European "non-nuclear states", including Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy, which are directly participating in the Libya bombing campaign, have B61 mini-nukes stockpiled and deployed under national command in their respective military bases. (Michel Chossudovsky, Europe's Five "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States", February 10, 2010)
These European-based mini-nukes are earmarked for targets in the Middle East. While Libya is not mentioned, according to "NATO strike plans", the European-based thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs could be launched "against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran" (quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 2005).
In the context of the ongoing war against Libya, "all options are on the table", including the preemptive nuclear option, as part of a "humanitarian mandate" to protect the lives of innocent civilians.
In 2007, a Secret 2003 STRATCOM Plan was revealed, which confirmed Washington's resolve to wage preemptive nuclear attacks against Iran, Syria and Libya. While the concepts and assumptions of this document were derived from the 2001 NPR, the Plan formulated by Strategic Command headquarters (USSTRATCOM) focused concretely on issues of implementation.
The use of nuclear weapons including the B61-11 against Libya in the course of the current military campaign, as initially envisaged by the Department of Defense in 1997 and subsequently embodied as the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) cannot, therefore, be ruled out.
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
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America's 20 Year Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 30, 2011
A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1997.
On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under "Operation El Dorado Canyon", in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi's residence was bombed killing his younger daughter.
Barely acknowledged by the Western media, a planned attack on Libya using nuclear weapons, had been contemplated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The Department of Defense had developed a new generation of bunker buster tactical nuclear weapons for use in the Middle East and Central Asia:
"Military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories [had] urged the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons... which could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations." (Federation of American Scientists, 2001, emphasis added)
The B61-11 earth-penetrating weapon with a nuclear warhead had not been tested. It was part of the B61 series, coupled with a so-called "low yield" nuclear warhead. According to US military sources: "If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout [of the B61-11] could drift over nearby countries such as Japan." (B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon, Globalsecurity.org). The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for post-Cold War battlefield operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The Pentagon's Plan to Nuke Libya
The B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated by the Pentagon to be used in 1997 against the "Qadhafi regime":
"Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April [1997] by suggesting that the earth-penetrating [nuclear] weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah. This thinly-veiled threat came just eleven days after the United States signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any other signatory, including Libya." (David Muller, Penetrator N-Bombs, International Action Center, 1997)
Tarbunah has a population of more than 200,000 people, men, women and children. It is about 60 km East of Tripoli. Had this "humanitarian bomb" (with a "yield" or explosive capacity of two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb) been launched on this "suspected" WMD facility, it would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, not to mention the nuclear fallout...
The man behind this diabolical project to nuke Libya was Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Palmer Smith Junior. "Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target". (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September/ October 1997, p. 27, emphasis added)
Harold Palmer Smith had been appointed by President Bill Clinton to oversee nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs with a focus on "the reduction and maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons". From the outset, his actual mandate, was not "reduce" but to "increase" the nuclear arsenal by promoting the development of a new generation of "harmless" mini-nukes for use in the Middle East war theater.
Harold Palmer Smith Junior
"Testing" the B611-11 Nuclear Bomb on an Actual Country
The Department of Defense's objective under Harold Smith's advice was to fasttrack the "testing" of the B61-11 nuclear bomb on an actual country:
Five months after [Assistant Defense Secretary] Harold Smith called for an acceleration of the B61-11 production schedule, he went public with an assertion that the Air Force would use the B61-11 [nuclear weapon] against Libya's alleged underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah if the President decided that the plant had to be destroyed. "We could not take [Tarhunah] out of commission using strictly conventional weapons," Smith told the Associated Press. The B61-11 "would be the nuclear weapon of choice," he told Jane's Defence Weekly.
Smith gave the statement during a breakfast interview with reporters after Defense Secretary William Perry had earlier told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on chemical or biological weapons that the U.S. retained the option of using nuclear weapons against countries armed with chemical and biological weapons. (http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/B61-11.htm, emphasis added)
While the Pentagon later denied its intention to bomb Libya's Tarhunah plant, it nonetheless confirmed that "Washington would not rule out using nuclear weapons [against Libya]". (Ibid., emphasis added.)
Nukes and Mini-Nukes: Iraq and Afghanistan
The US military contends that "mini-nukes" are "humanitarian bombs" which minimize "collateral damage". According to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon, they are "harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground",
The B61-11 is a bon fide thermonuclear bomb, a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the real sense of the word.
Military documents distinguish between the Nuclear Earth Penetrator (NEP) and the "mini-nuke", which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.
This distinction between mini-nukes and the NEP is in many regards misleading. In practice there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several "available yields", ranging from "low yields" of less than one kiloton, to mid-range, and up to the 1000 kiloton bomb.
In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several "available yields".
What is contemplated for theater use is the "low yield" 10 kt bomb, two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb.
The Libya 1997 "Nuclear Option" had set the Stage...
Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations have excluded using thermonuclear bunker buster bombs in the Middle East war theater. These weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War "conventional conflicts with third world nations". They were approved for use in the conventional war theater by the US Senate in 2002, following the adoption of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review.
In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 in Afghanistan. The stated targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.
Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the "conventional" bunker buster bombs "'are going to be able to do the job'... he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons." (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001, emphasis added.)
The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. In this regard, the B61-11 was described as "a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets", which included Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers:
"If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime." (Defense News, December 8, 2003, emphasis added)
"All options are on the table"... Sheer madness. Nukes to implement "regime change"... What Rumsfeld had proposed, as part of a "humanitarian mandate", was the use of a nuclear bomb to "take out" the president of a foreign country.
(author's note: There is no documentary evidence that the B61-11 was used against Iraq).
Is a Nuclear Attack on Libya Still on the Pentagon's Drawing Board?
"The Coalition of the Willing" under US-NATO mandate is currently involved in "a humanitarian war" on Libya to "protect the lives of innocent civilians".
Is the use of a nuclear bomb excluded under the Alliance's R2P Responsibility to Protect Doctrine?
The Bush administration's 2001 nuclear doctrine contained specific "guidelines" regarding "preemptive" nuclear strikes against several countries in the broader Middle East Central Asian region, which explictly included Libya.
As revealed by William Arkin in early 2002, "The Bush administration, in a secret policy review... [had] ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons [The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review approved by the Senate in late 2002] against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the "axis of evil"--Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--but also China, Libya and Syria. (See William Arkin, "Thinking the Unthinkable", Los Angeles Times, 9 March 2002)
In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as "surprising military developments" of an unspecified nature. These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons that reduce collateral damage, are contained in a still-classified document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was delivered to Congress on Jan. 8. (ibid)
The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO) --endorsed by the Obama Administration-- allows for the preemptive use of "mini nukes" in conventional war theaters directed against "rogue states". While the "guidelines" do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US /NATO nuclear arsenal, Pentagon "scenarios" in the Middle East and North Africa are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb.
The fact that Libya had been singled out by the Pentagon for a possible 1997 mini-nuke "trial run" was a significant element in the formulation of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).
It is worth noting that tactical B61 nuclear weapons have also been deployed by America's NATO partners: five European "non-nuclear states", including Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy, which are directly participating in the Libya bombing campaign, have B61 mini-nukes stockpiled and deployed under national command in their respective military bases. (Michel Chossudovsky, Europe's Five "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States", February 10, 2010)
These European-based mini-nukes are earmarked for targets in the Middle East. While Libya is not mentioned, according to "NATO strike plans", the European-based thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs could be launched "against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran" (quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 2005).
In the context of the ongoing war against Libya, "all options are on the table", including the preemptive nuclear option, as part of a "humanitarian mandate" to protect the lives of innocent civilians.
In 2007, a Secret 2003 STRATCOM Plan was revealed, which confirmed Washington's resolve to wage preemptive nuclear attacks against Iran, Syria and Libya. While the concepts and assumptions of this document were derived from the 2001 NPR, the Plan formulated by Strategic Command headquarters (USSTRATCOM) focused concretely on issues of implementation.
The use of nuclear weapons including the B61-11 against Libya in the course of the current military campaign, as initially envisaged by the Department of Defense in 1997 and subsequently embodied as the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) cannot, therefore, be ruled out.
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
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Sunday, April 3, 2011
Revealing Fed’s Secrets Fails to Produce Harm That Banks Cited
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-02/revealing-fed-s-secrets-fails-to-produce-harm-that-banks-cited.html
Revealing Fed’s Secrets Fails to Produce Harm That Banks Cited
By Bob Ivry, BLOOMBERG, Apr 2, 2011
The Federal Reserve warned that releasing details of its lending could lead to a rapid loss of public confidence in borrowers and possible bank failures.
The harm “is not simply a theoretical possibility,” the Fed said as it argued against disclosure in a lawsuit brought by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Its brief said a stigma attached to borrowing from the lender of last resort might mean possible depositor runs, drops in a borrowers’ stock prices and “in extreme cases, closure of the institution.”
Since the unprecedented release of records related to the Fed’s discount window March 31 under a court order, the KBW index of 24 banks has risen 1 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which borrowed at least $5.9 billion in 2007 and 2008, gained 0.5 percent Friday. Morgan Stanley (MS), which borrowed as much as $6.9 billion in October 2008, fell 0.2 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
“If people saw the data the day after the loans were made they might come to the conclusion that the bank must be in trouble, but two years later it means a significant gain in public information,” said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored a financial regulatory reform law that bears his name.
FOIA Lawsuit
The 29,000 pages of documents, which the Fed released in pdf format on a CD-ROM, revealed that foreign banks accounted for at least 70 percent of the Fed’s lending at its October, 2008 peak of $110.7 billion. Arab Banking Corp., a lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the window in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.
The central bank distributed the records after the Supreme Court last month rejected an industry group’s attempt to block the disclosures. Bloomberg and News Corp. (NWS)’s Fox News Network LLC had sued the central bank for various records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Bloomberg’s request, submitted in May 2008, sought records from the discount window and other emergency programs from April and May 2008. Fox requested documents as recent as March, 2010.
While the Fed didn’t join the bank group’s appeal to the high court, the Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, adopted the central bank’s argument when it petitioned the high court last October.
‘Threatens to Harm’
“Disclosure of this information threatens to harm the borrowing banks by allowing the public to observe their borrowing patterns during the recent financial crisis and draw inferences -- whether justified or not -- about their current financial conditions,” the Clearing House said in its petition. The group’s members include Bank of America NA, Citibank NA, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA and Wells Fargo Bank NA.
US Bancorp (USB) Treasurer Kenneth D. Nelson said in an interview that central bank officials encouraged the Minneapolis-based institution to use the discount window “as another funding option at the end of the day to close out our Fed position.” US Bancorp is a member of the Clearing House Association.
“At least 10 years ago they encouraged us and said there is no stigma to using the window at the end of the trading day, and during the crisis they stepped up that encouragement to help them stabilize market rates,” Nelson said. US Bancorp, the fifth-largest U.S. bank by deposits, rose in New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.
The Dodd-Frank law, enacted last year, required the Fed to release previously undisclosed data on nine emergency facilities. Since then, the KBW index has risen 10 percent. The law also directs the Fed to release the names of discount window borrowers, starting July 22, 2010, after two years.
Reducing Stigma
That time lag makes stigma less of an issue, said Alan S. Blinder, former Fed vice chairman and now a Princeton University economics professor.
“Banks that borrow from the discount window may be weak sisters,” but delayed disclosure gives them time to take steps like raising capital or shedding bad loans, Blinder said.
More important than a shift in bank shares is whether disclosure will make banks more reluctant to borrow from the discount window in the future, said J.D. Foster, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and former chief economist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
“The real issue is, going forward, a bank that got itself into temporary trouble and won’t go to the Fed for a loan,” Foster said. “You don’t want to be in that situation.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net.
Revealing Fed’s Secrets Fails to Produce Harm That Banks Cited
By Bob Ivry, BLOOMBERG, Apr 2, 2011
The Federal Reserve warned that releasing details of its lending could lead to a rapid loss of public confidence in borrowers and possible bank failures.
The harm “is not simply a theoretical possibility,” the Fed said as it argued against disclosure in a lawsuit brought by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Its brief said a stigma attached to borrowing from the lender of last resort might mean possible depositor runs, drops in a borrowers’ stock prices and “in extreme cases, closure of the institution.”
Since the unprecedented release of records related to the Fed’s discount window March 31 under a court order, the KBW index of 24 banks has risen 1 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which borrowed at least $5.9 billion in 2007 and 2008, gained 0.5 percent Friday. Morgan Stanley (MS), which borrowed as much as $6.9 billion in October 2008, fell 0.2 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
“If people saw the data the day after the loans were made they might come to the conclusion that the bank must be in trouble, but two years later it means a significant gain in public information,” said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored a financial regulatory reform law that bears his name.
FOIA Lawsuit
The 29,000 pages of documents, which the Fed released in pdf format on a CD-ROM, revealed that foreign banks accounted for at least 70 percent of the Fed’s lending at its October, 2008 peak of $110.7 billion. Arab Banking Corp., a lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the window in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.
The central bank distributed the records after the Supreme Court last month rejected an industry group’s attempt to block the disclosures. Bloomberg and News Corp. (NWS)’s Fox News Network LLC had sued the central bank for various records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Bloomberg’s request, submitted in May 2008, sought records from the discount window and other emergency programs from April and May 2008. Fox requested documents as recent as March, 2010.
While the Fed didn’t join the bank group’s appeal to the high court, the Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, adopted the central bank’s argument when it petitioned the high court last October.
‘Threatens to Harm’
“Disclosure of this information threatens to harm the borrowing banks by allowing the public to observe their borrowing patterns during the recent financial crisis and draw inferences -- whether justified or not -- about their current financial conditions,” the Clearing House said in its petition. The group’s members include Bank of America NA, Citibank NA, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA and Wells Fargo Bank NA.
US Bancorp (USB) Treasurer Kenneth D. Nelson said in an interview that central bank officials encouraged the Minneapolis-based institution to use the discount window “as another funding option at the end of the day to close out our Fed position.” US Bancorp is a member of the Clearing House Association.
“At least 10 years ago they encouraged us and said there is no stigma to using the window at the end of the trading day, and during the crisis they stepped up that encouragement to help them stabilize market rates,” Nelson said. US Bancorp, the fifth-largest U.S. bank by deposits, rose in New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.
The Dodd-Frank law, enacted last year, required the Fed to release previously undisclosed data on nine emergency facilities. Since then, the KBW index has risen 10 percent. The law also directs the Fed to release the names of discount window borrowers, starting July 22, 2010, after two years.
Reducing Stigma
That time lag makes stigma less of an issue, said Alan S. Blinder, former Fed vice chairman and now a Princeton University economics professor.
“Banks that borrow from the discount window may be weak sisters,” but delayed disclosure gives them time to take steps like raising capital or shedding bad loans, Blinder said.
More important than a shift in bank shares is whether disclosure will make banks more reluctant to borrow from the discount window in the future, said J.D. Foster, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and former chief economist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
“The real issue is, going forward, a bank that got itself into temporary trouble and won’t go to the Fed for a loan,” Foster said. “You don’t want to be in that situation.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
European Parliament issues warnings on HAARP
http://news.exopoliticsinstitute.org/index.php/archives/1126
European Parliament issues warnings on HAARP
March 22, 2011
“HAARP is a project of which the public is almost completely unaware, and this needs to be remedied.”
Toronto, Canada – [ZNN] The daily lives of people seem blissfully unaffected by events about which they know little or nothing. Daily news reports unfold with no mention as to why and how the powerful operate behind the scenes. We pay our mortgages, book our vacations and school our children, as a corporate and government elite engage in projects beyond our wildest imaginations.
Conditioned to accept that ‘all is well’ or, that we are powerless to affect change in a world dis-integrating before our eyes – we conduct our lives until one day it affects us directly – unfortunately by then it’s far too late.
Ask the people of northern Japan how they feel about the last three sentences and the answers they now seek in the aftermath of unimaginable loss and yet another future generation desecrated and ravaged by nuclear radiation.
A European Parliament document may provide a few answers for the inquiring mind. This parliamentary document is not some conspiratorial rant but an official governmental perspective describing authentic concern that a terribly grave technology, which the document calls a weapon, has been unleashed over many years without any public knowledge.
The technology is called HAARP and the European Parliament has put NATO, the US Air Force and Navy on notice, demanding an explanation about their involvement.
One of the most damning statements in the document reveals an American refusal to account for itself regarding HAARP research:
“[The European Parliament]… regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the high Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) programme currently being funded in Alaska.”
Caveat – For those among you who feel all is ‘right and true’ with the world and everything you need to know about is in newspapers, or, that those in power have our best interests at heart – you’ve probably read enough by now. There is almost certainly a soap opera or celebrity awards program on TV that you are missing. Or, perhaps you simply do not want to be confused by the facts… You are excused.
However, for those among you who have an inquiring mind or the patience and concern to read about such furtive things as the demise of civilization and geo-political ethics, the document below is very instructive if not despotically frightening.
The document outlines why the strange frequency of bizarre global weather and geo-tectonic disasters appear to be on the rise and why NATO, the US Air Force and US Navy have been held accountable for their knowledge and shrouded use of HAARP technology.
High Frequency Active Auroral Research (HAARP) has been deliberated upon by world governments – but none of them – including the Canadian government have commented on what it is, what it does or how it affects life on the planet.
HAARP may well be the most silent and deadly weapon of all time – primarily because it is invisible to the naked eye and thus, its existence can be denied by government and readily dismissed by media. Those in the forefront of probing and exposing this kind of government behaviour have issued warnings about HAARP for many years. Few pay any heed. The question remains – will anyone listen now?
The European Parliament document
“The European Parliament:
- having regard to the hearing on HAARP and Non-lethal Weapons held by the Foreign Affairs Subcommitee on Security and Disarmament in Brussels on 5 February 1998,”
and “T. whereas, despite the existing conventions, military research is ongoing on environmental manipulation as a weapon, as demonstrated for example by the Alaska-based HAARP system,”
and “Legal aspects of military activities -
26. Calls on the European Union to seek to have the new ‘non-lethal’ weapons technology and the development of new arms strategies also covered and regulated by international conventions;
27. Considers HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body before any further research and testing; regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the high Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) programme currently being funded in Alaska;
28. Requests the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) Panel to agree to examine the scientific and technical evidence provided in all existing research findings on HAARP to assess the exact nature and degree of risk that HAARP poses both to the local and global environment and to public health generally;
29. Calls on the Commission, in collaboration with the governments of Sweden, Finland, Norway and the Russian Federation, to examine the environmental and public health implications of the HAARP programme for Arctic Europe and to report back to Parliament with its findings;” and “HAARP – a weapons system which disrupts the climate
On 5 February 1998 Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Disarmament held a hearing the subject of which included HAARP. NATO and the US had been invited to send representatives, but chose not to do so. The Committee regrets the failure of the USA to send a representative to answer questions, or to use the opportunity to comment on the material submitted.(21)
HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is run jointly by the US Air Force and Navy, in conjunction with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Similar experiments are also being conducted in Norway, probably in the Antarctic, as well as in the former Soviet Union.(22) HAARP is a research project using a ground based apparatus, an array of antennae each powered by its own transmitter, to heat up portions of ionosphere with powerful radio beams.(23) The energy generated heats up parts of the ionosphere; this results in holes in the ionosphere and produces artificial ‘lenses’.
HAARP can be used for many purposes. Enormous quantities of energy can be controlled by manipulating the electrical characteristics of the atmosphere. If used as a military weapon this can have a devastating impact on an enemy. HAARP can deliver millions of times more energy to a given area than any other conventional transmitter. The energy can also be aimed at a moving target which should constitute a potential anti-missile system.
The project would also allow better communications with submarines and manipulation of global weather patterns, but it is also possible to do the reverse, to disrupt communications. By manipulating the ionosphere one could block global communications while transmitting one’s own. Another application is earth-penetrating, tomography, x-raying the earth several kilometres deep, to detect oil and gas fields, or underground military facilities. Over-the-horizon radar is another application, looking round the curvature of the earth for in-coming objects.
From the 1950s the USA conducted explosions of nuclear material in the Van Allen Belts(24) to investigate the effect of the electro-magnetic pulse generated by nuclear weapon explosions at these heights on radio communications and the operation of radar. This created new magnetic radiation belts which covered nearly the whole earth. The electrons travelled along magnetic lines of force and created an artificial Aurora Borealis above the North Pole. These military tests are liable to disrupt the Van Allen belt for a long period. The earth’s magnetic field could be disrupted over large areas, which would obstruct radio communications. According to US scientists it could take hundreds of years for the Van Allen belt to return to normal. HAARP could result in changes in weather patterns. It could also influence whole ecosystems, especially in the sensitive Antarctic regions.
Another damaging consequence of HAARP is the occurrence of holes in the ionosphere caused by the powerful radio beams. The ionosphere protects us from incoming cosmic radiation. The hope is that the holes will fill again, but our experience of change in the ozone layer points in the other direction. This means substantial holes in the ionosphere that protects us.
With its far-reaching impact on the environment HAARP is a matter of global concern and we have to ask whether its advantages really outweigh the risks. The environmental impact and the ethical aspect must be closely examined before any further research and testing takes place. HAARP is a project of which the public is almost completely unaware, and this needs to be remedied.
HAARP has links with 50 years of intensive space research for military purposes, including the Star Wars project, to control the upper atmosphere and communications. This kind of research has to be regarded as a serious threat to the environment, with an incalculable impact on human life. Even now nobody knows what impact HAARP may have. We have to beat down the wall of secrecy around military research, and set up the right to openness and democratic scrutiny of military research projects, and parliamentary control.
A series of international treaties and conventions (the Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques, the Antarctic Treaty, the Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) casts considerable doubt on HAARP on legal as well as humanitarian and political grounds. The Antarctic Treaty lays down that the Antarctic may be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.(25) This would mean that HAARP is a breach of international law. All the implications of the new weapons systems should be examined by independent international bodies. Further international agreements should be sought to protect the environment from unnecessary destruction in war.”
[This document was written 13 years ago.]
Although there seems to be no official or current governmental and scientific confirmation of the effects of HAARP technologies in your local newspaper or on the 11:00 o’clock news – the people of Japan might want an update.
Sources -
Entire Text of European Document -http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A4-1999-0005+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
Other References:
Government Briefings -
UK: http://www.policestateplanning.com/uk_parliament.htm
European: http://www.policestateplanning.com/briefings.htm#european_parliament
Other: http://www.policestateplanning.com/briefings.htm
CBC’s Wendy Mesly TV coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkLTzesBxGE
(905) 278-1238 | zland@sympatico.ca | Toronto, Canada
ZlandCommunications
A news service that takes you to the edge… and beyond.
This entry was posted on March 22, 2011 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Breaking News, Editorials, Press Release. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
European Parliament issues warnings on HAARP
March 22, 2011
“HAARP is a project of which the public is almost completely unaware, and this needs to be remedied.”
Toronto, Canada – [ZNN] The daily lives of people seem blissfully unaffected by events about which they know little or nothing. Daily news reports unfold with no mention as to why and how the powerful operate behind the scenes. We pay our mortgages, book our vacations and school our children, as a corporate and government elite engage in projects beyond our wildest imaginations.
Conditioned to accept that ‘all is well’ or, that we are powerless to affect change in a world dis-integrating before our eyes – we conduct our lives until one day it affects us directly – unfortunately by then it’s far too late.
Ask the people of northern Japan how they feel about the last three sentences and the answers they now seek in the aftermath of unimaginable loss and yet another future generation desecrated and ravaged by nuclear radiation.
A European Parliament document may provide a few answers for the inquiring mind. This parliamentary document is not some conspiratorial rant but an official governmental perspective describing authentic concern that a terribly grave technology, which the document calls a weapon, has been unleashed over many years without any public knowledge.
The technology is called HAARP and the European Parliament has put NATO, the US Air Force and Navy on notice, demanding an explanation about their involvement.
One of the most damning statements in the document reveals an American refusal to account for itself regarding HAARP research:
“[The European Parliament]… regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the high Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) programme currently being funded in Alaska.”
Caveat – For those among you who feel all is ‘right and true’ with the world and everything you need to know about is in newspapers, or, that those in power have our best interests at heart – you’ve probably read enough by now. There is almost certainly a soap opera or celebrity awards program on TV that you are missing. Or, perhaps you simply do not want to be confused by the facts… You are excused.
However, for those among you who have an inquiring mind or the patience and concern to read about such furtive things as the demise of civilization and geo-political ethics, the document below is very instructive if not despotically frightening.
The document outlines why the strange frequency of bizarre global weather and geo-tectonic disasters appear to be on the rise and why NATO, the US Air Force and US Navy have been held accountable for their knowledge and shrouded use of HAARP technology.
High Frequency Active Auroral Research (HAARP) has been deliberated upon by world governments – but none of them – including the Canadian government have commented on what it is, what it does or how it affects life on the planet.
HAARP may well be the most silent and deadly weapon of all time – primarily because it is invisible to the naked eye and thus, its existence can be denied by government and readily dismissed by media. Those in the forefront of probing and exposing this kind of government behaviour have issued warnings about HAARP for many years. Few pay any heed. The question remains – will anyone listen now?
The European Parliament document
“The European Parliament:
- having regard to the hearing on HAARP and Non-lethal Weapons held by the Foreign Affairs Subcommitee on Security and Disarmament in Brussels on 5 February 1998,”
and “T. whereas, despite the existing conventions, military research is ongoing on environmental manipulation as a weapon, as demonstrated for example by the Alaska-based HAARP system,”
and “Legal aspects of military activities -
26. Calls on the European Union to seek to have the new ‘non-lethal’ weapons technology and the development of new arms strategies also covered and regulated by international conventions;
27. Considers HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body before any further research and testing; regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the high Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) programme currently being funded in Alaska;
28. Requests the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) Panel to agree to examine the scientific and technical evidence provided in all existing research findings on HAARP to assess the exact nature and degree of risk that HAARP poses both to the local and global environment and to public health generally;
29. Calls on the Commission, in collaboration with the governments of Sweden, Finland, Norway and the Russian Federation, to examine the environmental and public health implications of the HAARP programme for Arctic Europe and to report back to Parliament with its findings;” and “HAARP – a weapons system which disrupts the climate
On 5 February 1998 Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Disarmament held a hearing the subject of which included HAARP. NATO and the US had been invited to send representatives, but chose not to do so. The Committee regrets the failure of the USA to send a representative to answer questions, or to use the opportunity to comment on the material submitted.(21)
HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is run jointly by the US Air Force and Navy, in conjunction with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Similar experiments are also being conducted in Norway, probably in the Antarctic, as well as in the former Soviet Union.(22) HAARP is a research project using a ground based apparatus, an array of antennae each powered by its own transmitter, to heat up portions of ionosphere with powerful radio beams.(23) The energy generated heats up parts of the ionosphere; this results in holes in the ionosphere and produces artificial ‘lenses’.
HAARP can be used for many purposes. Enormous quantities of energy can be controlled by manipulating the electrical characteristics of the atmosphere. If used as a military weapon this can have a devastating impact on an enemy. HAARP can deliver millions of times more energy to a given area than any other conventional transmitter. The energy can also be aimed at a moving target which should constitute a potential anti-missile system.
The project would also allow better communications with submarines and manipulation of global weather patterns, but it is also possible to do the reverse, to disrupt communications. By manipulating the ionosphere one could block global communications while transmitting one’s own. Another application is earth-penetrating, tomography, x-raying the earth several kilometres deep, to detect oil and gas fields, or underground military facilities. Over-the-horizon radar is another application, looking round the curvature of the earth for in-coming objects.
From the 1950s the USA conducted explosions of nuclear material in the Van Allen Belts(24) to investigate the effect of the electro-magnetic pulse generated by nuclear weapon explosions at these heights on radio communications and the operation of radar. This created new magnetic radiation belts which covered nearly the whole earth. The electrons travelled along magnetic lines of force and created an artificial Aurora Borealis above the North Pole. These military tests are liable to disrupt the Van Allen belt for a long period. The earth’s magnetic field could be disrupted over large areas, which would obstruct radio communications. According to US scientists it could take hundreds of years for the Van Allen belt to return to normal. HAARP could result in changes in weather patterns. It could also influence whole ecosystems, especially in the sensitive Antarctic regions.
Another damaging consequence of HAARP is the occurrence of holes in the ionosphere caused by the powerful radio beams. The ionosphere protects us from incoming cosmic radiation. The hope is that the holes will fill again, but our experience of change in the ozone layer points in the other direction. This means substantial holes in the ionosphere that protects us.
With its far-reaching impact on the environment HAARP is a matter of global concern and we have to ask whether its advantages really outweigh the risks. The environmental impact and the ethical aspect must be closely examined before any further research and testing takes place. HAARP is a project of which the public is almost completely unaware, and this needs to be remedied.
HAARP has links with 50 years of intensive space research for military purposes, including the Star Wars project, to control the upper atmosphere and communications. This kind of research has to be regarded as a serious threat to the environment, with an incalculable impact on human life. Even now nobody knows what impact HAARP may have. We have to beat down the wall of secrecy around military research, and set up the right to openness and democratic scrutiny of military research projects, and parliamentary control.
A series of international treaties and conventions (the Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques, the Antarctic Treaty, the Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) casts considerable doubt on HAARP on legal as well as humanitarian and political grounds. The Antarctic Treaty lays down that the Antarctic may be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.(25) This would mean that HAARP is a breach of international law. All the implications of the new weapons systems should be examined by independent international bodies. Further international agreements should be sought to protect the environment from unnecessary destruction in war.”
[This document was written 13 years ago.]
Although there seems to be no official or current governmental and scientific confirmation of the effects of HAARP technologies in your local newspaper or on the 11:00 o’clock news – the people of Japan might want an update.
Sources -
Entire Text of European Document -http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A4-1999-0005+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
Other References:
Government Briefings -
UK: http://www.policestateplanning.com/uk_parliament.htm
European: http://www.policestateplanning.com/briefings.htm#european_parliament
Other: http://www.policestateplanning.com/briefings.htm
CBC’s Wendy Mesly TV coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkLTzesBxGE
(905) 278-1238 | zland@sympatico.ca | Toronto, Canada
ZlandCommunications
A news service that takes you to the edge… and beyond.
This entry was posted on March 22, 2011 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Breaking News, Editorials, Press Release. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Soros moves to control American food and grain production
http://conservativeactionalerts.com/blog_post/show/2309
Soros moves to control American food and grain production
Written by CAA National on March 31, 2011, 02:50 PM
KENNETH SCHORTGEN JR.
Financier and progressive activist George Soros is formulating a move to control food and grain production by purchasing grain elevators in late March in several parts of the United States through his Soros Managment Fund's backed Gavilon Grain. With purchases made in March, Gavilon Grain will become the third largest grain company behind Cargill, and Archer-Daniels Midland.
With strong ties to the Obama administration, Soros now has both the economic, and political clout to begin consolidation of purchasing and shipping domestic agriculture around the world.
U.S. grain firm Gavilon Grain said on Thursday it will buy Union Elevator and Warehouse's 16 grain elevators in the Pacific Northwest , the company's second big purchase of U.S. grain facilities in the last six months.
The purchase of 16 elevators at 12 locations in eastern Washington will expand Gavilon's grain capacity by 8.4 mbu.
"The addition of Union Elevator's grain facilities and origination capabilities position us well to support the growing Pacific Northwest export wheat market and serve the Columbian Basin feed grain market," Greg Konsor, VP and GM of Gavilon Grain, said in a statement. The PNW is the No. 1 wheat export terminal in the United States. - Reuters
When food brokers consolidate into just a few large companies controlling the majority of a market, then prices can be set not by supply and demand, but by corporate decisions and manipulation of supply. If the price for food is too low in the United States, then grain can be shipped to other markets for sale, causing then an artifical supply problem in the country that produced the grain itself.
With George Soros's making this move in backing Gavilon Grain's purchases to control food and grain distribution in the United States, and becoming the third largest grain company in the country, it will lead to the same results that we see in the energy markets as oil is controlled by a small group of corporations, and the price can be dictated by an artificial control over its supply.
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Soros moves to control American food and grain production
Written by CAA National on March 31, 2011, 02:50 PM
KENNETH SCHORTGEN JR.
Financier and progressive activist George Soros is formulating a move to control food and grain production by purchasing grain elevators in late March in several parts of the United States through his Soros Managment Fund's backed Gavilon Grain. With purchases made in March, Gavilon Grain will become the third largest grain company behind Cargill, and Archer-Daniels Midland.
With strong ties to the Obama administration, Soros now has both the economic, and political clout to begin consolidation of purchasing and shipping domestic agriculture around the world.
U.S. grain firm Gavilon Grain said on Thursday it will buy Union Elevator and Warehouse's 16 grain elevators in the Pacific Northwest , the company's second big purchase of U.S. grain facilities in the last six months.
The purchase of 16 elevators at 12 locations in eastern Washington will expand Gavilon's grain capacity by 8.4 mbu.
"The addition of Union Elevator's grain facilities and origination capabilities position us well to support the growing Pacific Northwest export wheat market and serve the Columbian Basin feed grain market," Greg Konsor, VP and GM of Gavilon Grain, said in a statement. The PNW is the No. 1 wheat export terminal in the United States. - Reuters
When food brokers consolidate into just a few large companies controlling the majority of a market, then prices can be set not by supply and demand, but by corporate decisions and manipulation of supply. If the price for food is too low in the United States, then grain can be shipped to other markets for sale, causing then an artifical supply problem in the country that produced the grain itself.
With George Soros's making this move in backing Gavilon Grain's purchases to control food and grain distribution in the United States, and becoming the third largest grain company in the country, it will lead to the same results that we see in the energy markets as oil is controlled by a small group of corporations, and the price can be dictated by an artificial control over its supply.
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