Posted on 03/23/2014 1:33:52 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Hahahahahaha. And Putin can back his words up, not being an affirmative action token but a former KGB officer.
Probably one of those festivals that show movies about gay cowboys eating pudding.
Obama is both. Fool and traitor>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We get both, our tax dollars at work,LOL.
I will be so glad to see him GONE.
Europe losing confidence in Obama’s policy of hope and change, fairy dust and peace prizes? When the rubber hits the road, they want the gas and the nukes.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Obama pulled a lot of tricks on NATO in Libya. They have not forgotten. Laughably,fairy dust Obama did not want blood on his hands in public.But with this act, Obama incited Russian expansionism in the same sub rosa style Obama himself used in Libya.One cannot help but cheer Vlad the Shirtless in this aspect, he is art imitating garbage.
Secondly, in Libya Obama destroyed the most advanced irrigational project in the world, that was turning desert into greenery. Another fact that whacked out the public of various NATO countries.
Obama is highly unliked in Europe.
In short, with Libya, Obama pulled a grift on NATO and they will never forget, and if Obama thinks they will help Obama with Ukraine,watch them ignore the shite out of him.
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Maximilian C. Forte’s new book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (released November 20) is a searing indictment of NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya, and of the North American and European left that supported it. He argues that NATO powers, with the help of the Western left who “played a supporting role by making substantial room for the dominant U.S. narrative and its military policies,” marshalled support for their intervention by creating a fiction that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was about to carry out a massacre against a popular, pro-democracy uprising, and that the world could not stand idly by and watch a genocide unfold.
Forte takes this view apart, showing that a massacre was never in the cards, much less genocide. Gaddafi didn’t threaten to hunt down civilians, only those who had taken up armed insurrection—and he offered rebels amnesty if they laid down their arms. What’s more, Gaddafi didn’t have the military firepower to lay siege to Benghazi (site of the initial uprising) and hunt down civilians from house to house. Nor did his forces carry out massacres in the towns they recaptured…something that cannot be said for the rebels.
Citing mainstream media reports that CIA and British SAS operatives were already on the ground “either before or at the very same time as (British prime minister David) Cameron and (then French president Nicolas) Sarkozy began to call for military intervention in Libya”, Forte raises “the possibility that Western powers were at least waiting for the first opportunity to intervene in Libya to commit regime change under the cover of a local uprising.” And he adds, they were doing so “without any hesitation to ponder what if any real threats to civilians might have been.” Gaddafi, a fierce opponent of fundamentalist Wahhabist/Salafist Islam “faced several armed uprisings and coup attempts before— and in the West there was no public clamor for his head when he crushed them.” (The same, too, can be said of the numerous uprisings and assassination attempts carried out by the Syrian Muslim Brothers against the Assads, all of which were crushed without raising much of an outcry in the West, until now.)
Rejecting a single factor explanation that NATO intervened to secure access to Libyan oil, Forte presents a multi-factorial account, which invokes elements of the hunt for profits, economic competition with China and Russia, and establishing US hegemony in Africa. Among the gains of the intervention, writes Forte, were:
1) increased access for U.S. corporations to massive Libyan expenditures on infrastructure development (and now reconstruction), from which U.S. corporations had frequently been locked out when Gaddafi was in power; 2) warding off any increased acquisition of Libyan oil contracts by Chinese and Russian firms; 3) ensuring that a friendly regime was in place that was not influenced by ideas of “resource nationalism;” 4) increasing the presence of AFRICOM in African affairs, in an attempt to substitute for the African Union and to entirely displace the Libyan-led Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD); 5) expanding the U.S. hold on key geostrategic locations and resources; 6) promoting U.S. claims to be serious about freedom, democracy, and human rights, and of being on the side of the people of Africa, as a benign benefactor; 7) politically stabilizing the North African region in a way that locked out opponents of the U.S.; and, 8) drafting other nations to undertake the work of defending and advancing U.S. political and economic interests, under the guise of humanitarianism and protecting civilians.
Forte challenges the view that Gaddafi was in bed with the West as a “strange view of romance.” It might be more aptly said, he counters, that the United States was in bed with Libya on the fight against Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists, since “Libya led by Gaddafi (had) fought against Al Qaeda years before it became public enemy number one in the U.S.” Indeed, years “before Bin Laden became a household name in the West, Libya issued an arrest warrant for his capture.” Gaddafi was happy to enlist Washington’s help in crushing a persistent threat to his secular rule.
Moreover, the bed in which Libya and the United States found themselves was hardly a comfortable one. Gaddafi complained bitterly to US officials that the benefits he was promised for ending Libya’s WMD program and capitulating on the Lockerbie prosecution were not forthcoming. And the US State Department and US corporations, for their part, complained bitterly of Gaddafi’s “resource nationalism” and attempts to “Libyanize” the economy. One of the lessons the NATO intervention has taught is that countries that want to maintain some measure of independence from Washington are well advised not to surrender the threat of self-defense.
Forte, to use his own words, gives the devil his due, noting that:
Gaddafi was a remarkable and unique exception among the whole range of modern Arab leaders, for being doggedly altruistic, for funding development programs in dozens of needy nations, for supporting national liberation struggles that had nothing to do with Islam or the Arab world, for pursuing an ideology that was original and not simply the product of received tradition or mimesis of exogenous sources, and for making Libya a presence on the world stage in a way that was completely out of proportion with its population size.
He points out as well that “Libya had reaped international isolation for the sake of supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the African National Congress (ANC)”, which, once each of these organizations had made their own separate peace, left Libya behind continuing to fight.
Forte invokes Sirte in the title of his book to expose the lie that NATO’s intervention was motivated by humanitarianism and saving lives. “Sirte, once promoted by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as a possible capital of a future United States of Africa, and one of the strongest bases of support for the revolution he led, was found to be in near total ruin by visiting journalists who came after the end of the bombing campaign by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “ This,” observes Forte, “is what ‘protecting civilians’ actually looks like, and it looks like crimes against humanity.” “The only lives the U.S. was interested in saving,” he argues “were those of the insurgents, saving them so they could defeat Gaddafi.” And yet “the slaughter in Sirte…barely raised an eyebrow among the kinds of Western audiences and opinion leaders who just a few months before clamored for ‘humanitarian intervention.’”
Among those who clamored for humanitarian intervention were members of the “North American and European left—reconditioned, accommodating, and fearful—(who) played a supporting role by making substantial room for the dominant U.S. narrative and its military policies.” Forte doesn’t name names, except for a reference to Noam Chomsky, whom he criticizes for “poor judgment and flawed analyses” for supporting “the no-fly zone intervention and the rebellion as ‘wonderful’ and ‘liberation’”.
Forte also aims a stinging rebuke at those who treated anti-imperialism as a bad word. “Throughout this debacle, anti-imperialism has been scourged as if it were a threat greater than the West’s global military domination, as if anti-imperialism had given us any of the horrors of war witnessed thus far this century. Anti-imperialism was treated in public debate in North America as the province of political lepers.” This calls to mind opprobrious leftist figures who discovered a fondness for the obloquy “mechanical anti-imperialists” which they hurdled with great gusto at anti-imperialist opponents of the NATO intervention.
“NATO’s intervention did not stop armed conflict in Libya,” observes Forte—it continues to the present. “Massacres were not prevented, they were enabled, and many occurred after NATO intervened and because NATO intervened.” It is for these reasons he urges readers to stand idly by the next time that empire comes calling in the name of human rights.
Slouching Towards Sirte is a penetrating critique, not only of the NATO intervention in Libya, but of the concept of humanitarian intervention and imperialism in our time. It is the definitive treatment of NATO’s war on Libya. It is difficult to imagine it will be surpassed.
Maximilian C. Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa, Baraka Books, Montreal, ISBN 978-1-926824-52-9. Available November 20, 2012. http://www.barakabooks.com/
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There were Americans involved in the Great Man-Made River project......... me for one. (minimal however)
Wasn’t this the project of the surviving Gaddafi son?
Wasn’t this the project of the surviving Gaddafi son?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I believe it was, but his dad supported it completely. NATO bombs apparently destroyed the facilities making the huge pipe sections ( I wonder why?/s) necessary to continue the project.The project is now abandoned.
Europe shaken? Well, what do you know ...they wanted Obama, they’ve got Obama, along with all his incompetence and weakness.
They can suck on it now. We (the former America)spilled blood and treasure for them for 50 years ...all we got was a bunch of backstabbing uppity bad talk for our efforts. They can ROT for all I care.
Very well put.
AMEN!!!
Drill baby drill. This shows the vulnerability of a nation that cannnot provide it’s own energy. Perhaps the Libs would like to learn Russian. Nyet?
Time to uninstall this virus. Our hard drive is about to fail.
Now that it’s been confirmed that Flight 370 crashed, the media will have to start talking about Ukraine. But, then again, they can talk for years on WHY it crashed.
Who is his rump riding buddy these days?
Nah, he’s the spittin image of his actual dad Frank M Davis. I’m not sure if ol Frank was Kenyan but it could explain why Odumbo doesn’t lift a finger to help his fake Kenyan cussins-—cause he’s actually from a different tribe?
Yes, for the longest time, I’ve believed that Franklin Marshall Davis was his biological father, but I was thunderstruck at obama’s resemblance to some Indonesians and Filipinos, while watching a documentary on those peoples on TV.
NATO bombs the Great Man-Made River
July 27, 2011 — 69 Comments
The Great Man-Made River
It is a war crime to attack essential civilian infrastructure. 95% of Libya is desert and 70% of Libyans depend on water which is piped in from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System under the southern desert. The water pipe infrastructure is probably the most essential civilian infrastructure in Libya. Key to its continued function, particularly in time of war, is the Brega pipe factory which enables leaks and breaks in the system to be repaired.
NATO has admitted that its jets attacked the pipe factory on 22 July, claiming in justification that it was used as a military storage facility and rockets were launched from there.
The Great Man-Made River
Libyans like to call the Great Man-Made River “The eighth wonder of the world”.
According to a March 2006 report by the BBC the industrialisation of Libya following the Great Al-Fatah Revolution in 1969, put strain on water supplies and coastal aquifers became contaminated with sea water, to such an extent that the water in Benghazi was undrinkable. Finding a supply of fresh, clean water became a government priority and fortunately oil exploration in the 1950s had revealed vast aquifers beneath Libya’s southern desert.
In August 1984, Muammar Al Qadhafi laid the foundation stone for the pipe production plant at Brega. The Great Man-Made River Project had begun. Adam Kuwairi, a senior figure in the Great Man-Made River Authority (GMRA), vividly remembers the impact the fresh water had on him and his family:
“The water changed lives. For the first time in our history, there was water in the tap for washing, shaving and showering. The quality of life is better now, and it’s impacting on the whole country.”
On 3 April Libya warned that NATO-led air strikes could cause a “human and environmental disaster” if air strikes damaged the Great Man-Made River project.
Engineer and project manager Abdelmajid Gahoud told foreign journalists in Tripoli:
“If part of the infrastructure is damaged, the whole thing is affected and the massive escape of water could cause a catastrophe,” leaving 4.5 million thirsty Libyans deprived of drinking water.
The Brega Pipe-Making Plant
The Pre-Stressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe Factory at Brega is one of only two such facilities in Libya – the other being at Sarir to the east. This makes it a very important component of the Great Man-Made River - with two production lines making up to 80 pipes a day.
According to the BBC:
The engineer in charge of the Brega pipe factory is Ali Ibrahim. He is proud that Libyans are now running the factory:
“At first, we had to rely on foreign-owned companies to do the work. But now it’s government policy to involve Libyans in the project. Libyans are gaining experience and know-how, and now more than 70% of the manufacturing is done by Libyans. With time, we hope we can decrease the foreign percentage from 30% to 10%.”
As a result, Libya is now a world leader in hydrological engineering and it wants to export its expertise to other African and Middle-Eastern countries facing similar problems with their water.
According to the official web site of the Great Man-Made River Authority:
Approximately 500,000 pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipes have been manufactured to date. Approximately 500,000 pipes transported to date. Pipe transportation is continuous process and the work goes on day and night, distance traveled by the transporters is equivalent to the sun and back. Over 3,700 km of haul roads was constructed alongside the pipe line trench to enable the heavy truck – trailers to deliver pipe to the installation site.
NATO Attack
On 22 July NATO warplanes attacked the pipe making plant at Brega killing six of the facility’s security guards:
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/07/27/great-man-made-river-nato-bombs/
I hope his plane doesn’t have trouble landing in a shaken airport.
Europe needs to grow up and start taking care of its own security, and not depend on the US, no matter WHO is President.
continued.......known as Sashko Bilyi, the man took active part in the First Chechen War in 1994-1995, when he headed a group of Ukrainian nationalists fighting against Russian troops.
Muzychko was sought for forming and supervising an armed gang organized for the purpose of attacking Russian citizens in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian radical nationalist leader went on with the rampage against regional authorities, lashing out at a local prosecutor and threatening local authorities with an AK-47....video follows...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8JC-ZjqFb4
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