Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

Cutting through the government propaganda and media lies

Libya is a small country of just over 6 million people but it possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is especially coveted because of its particularly high quality.

The Air Force of the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459 bombing attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States sent special operation ground forces and commando units to direct the military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led army in the field.

The troops may be disaffected Libyans but the operation is under the control and direction of NATO commanders and western commando units who serve as “advisors.” Their new weapons and billions in funds come from the U.S. and other NATO powers that froze and seized Libya’s assets in Western banks. Their only military successes outside of Benghazi, in the far east of the country, have been exclusively based on the coordinated air and ground operations of the imperialist NATO military forces.

In military terms, Libya’s resistance to NATO is of David and Goliath proportions. U.S. military spending alone is more than ten times greater than Libya’s entire annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which was $74.2 billion in 2010, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book.

In recent weeks, the NATO military operations used surveillance-collecting drones, satellites, mounting aerial attacks and covert commando units to decapitate Libya’s military and political leadership and its command and control capabilities. Global economic sanctions meant that the country was suddenly deprived of income and secure access to goods and services needed to sustain a civilian economy over a long period.

“The cumulative effect [of NATO’s coordinated air and ground operation] not only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly diminished Colonel Gaddafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations,“ reports the New York Times in a celebratory article on August 22.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

'We Shall Never Forget 9/11 -- The Kids' Book of Freedom'

On the brink of the 10th anniversary of September 11th a new children's 'graphic coloring novel' has emerged, allegedly "designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children about the facts surrounding 9/11. This book also describes basic freedoms in America."

In the publisher official page it declares that "a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to Bridges for Peace. A Jerusalem-based, Bible-believing Christian organization supporting Israel and building relationships between Christians and Jews worldwide through education and practical deeds expressing God's love and mercy. They presently feed 26,000 people a month of all backgrounds, have brought into the land of Israel more than 36,000 Jews and renovated more than 825 apartments of the needy and elderly in the Jerusalem area. Many are Holocaust survivors."

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Bob Carter

This is text of the speech (edited for online publication) delivered by professor Bob Carter at the “Convoy of No Confidence” protest in Canberra on August 22, 2011.

Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen.

First, my warm congratulations to every person here for coming to this gathering today. Most of you have paid your own expenses, and simply by being here you are therefore displaying great public generosity on behalf of all your fellow citizens. For, though some remain unaware of it, every single Australian man, woman and child will be hurt should a carbon dioxide tax come into being – and that hurt will be greater for the less well off, and will be imposed for no environmental benefit whatever.

Second, the organizers of this event have made it crystal clear it is a gathering at which ANY Australian, of any shape, size, colour or political inclination, can express his or her opposition to a carbon dioxide tax.

However, a meeting on the lawn of parliament house has inescapable political implications. My perspective is that of an experienced scientist - one who has spent a professional lifetime studying ancient environmental and climatic change. I therefore have nothing to say, and neither should I have anything to say, about the politics of the carbon dioxide tax. Rather, my role today is to share with you a summary of the science that should be, but actually isn’t, illuminating policy making on climate change.

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Stephen Lendman

Continuing NATO atrocities on Libyan civilians gave naked aggression a new name.

Call it what it is: Lawless, Willful, Malevolent Genocidal Gang Rape, the new supreme international crime against peace ongoing at this time.

In times of war, its legal name is Genocide - what NATO planners implemented since last March.

See for yourself. Independently produced images reveal what NATO, venal politicians, their PR manipulators, and media liars suppress or misreport.

A committed team of independent journalists, researchers and cameramen produced the Global Research.ca video accessed through this link. It's a snapshot of what Libyans endure daily under NATO terror bombings and rebel gang killings to destroy them, their futures and truth.

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William T. Hathaway

From the Book Radical Peace: People Refusing War by William T. Hathaway. Published by Trine Day 2010.

A Granny for Peace told of finding young allies in the struggle against military recruiting. Due to the Patriot Act, she wishes to remain nameless.

It's never easy being a parent or a child. The generations always have friction between them, a conflict between the elders' need to give guidance and youths' need to find their own way. I grew up in the 1950s, when the USA was very conservative and bound by traditions. My parents' generation had grown up in the Depression amid poverty and then struggled through World War Two with its threat of death and destruction. By the time they were ready to start families, they were fixated on stability and security. They measured their progress by their possessions: buying their first car, first television, first house. Their morality centered on controlling sexuality and protecting private property. Their religion was a death cult of stern patriarchs, obedient virgins, innocent babies, and threats of eternal torture. Their deepest philosophy was, "There is no free lunch." The peak of their scientific achievement was the hydrogen bomb. Fear was their strongest emotion.

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Medea Benjamin

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was given a multi-million contract to write a book about his political career. According to Cheney’s media hype, the book, called In My Time, will have “heads exploding all over Washington.” The Darth Vader of the Bush administration offers no apologies and feels no remorse. But peace activists around the country are stealthily gearing up to visit bookstores, grab a stack of books, and deposit them where they belong—the Crime Section.

Here are ten of Cheney’s many offenses to inspire you to move Cheney’s book, and to insert these bookmarks explaining why the author of In My Time should be “doin’ time.”

1. Cheney lied; Iraqis and U.S. soldiers died. As Vice President, Cheney lied about (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s (nonexistent) ties to the 9/11 attack as a way to justify a war with a country that never attacked us. Thanks to Cheney and company, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 American soldiers perished in a war that should never have been fought.

2. Committing War Crimes in Iraq. During the course of the Iraq war, the Bush/Cheney administration violated the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.

3. War profiteering. U.S. taxpayers shelled out about three trillion dollars for the Bush/Cheney wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—a major factor in our nation’s present economic meltdown. But Cheney and his cronies at Halliburton made out like bandits, getting billions in contracts for everything from feeding troops in Iraq to constructing the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan to building the infamous Guantanamo prison. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000, leaving for the VP position with a $20 million retirement package, plus millions in stock options and deferred salary. Before the Iraq War began, Halliburton was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors; with Cheney’s help, by 2003 it was number one—increasing the value of Cheney’s stocks by over 3,000%.

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Stephen Lendman

Wherever it goes, NATO slaughters, ravages, lays waste, incinerates, contaminates, devastates, conquers, colonizes, plunders, exploits, impoverishes and immiserates.

Libya is its latest victim. It's now a hellish inferno thanks to NATO and its rebel gangs, unleashed to commit mass murder with impunity. NATO calls it humanitarian intervention responsibility to protect. This is Orwellian doublespeak for war.

For Libyans, it's a war without mercy to destroy their independent state. For America, Britain and France, it's for another imperial trophy.

For Libyans, it turned their world upside down through the barrel of a gun. They call it naked aggression, mass slaughter, and turning Africa's most developed state into a dystopian nightmare. It's why people of conscience say never forgive or forget.

Watch the Libya Truth video and compare the country before and after NATO, accessed through this link.

With independent Tripoli-based voices silenced, it's hard getting accurate daily information. Nonetheless, some mainstream sources report rebel forces are committing reprisals, revenge killings, and perhaps indiscriminate murder across the city, repeating the same pattern they followed in other parts of the country.

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Bill Van Auken

More than a week after the NATO-led “rebels” invaded the Libyan capital of Tripoli, the city’s 2 million residents are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis, deprived of water, electricity, adequate food supplies and desperately needed medical care.

While the downfall of the 42-year-old regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi has been universally proclaimed, the whereabouts of Gaddafi himself are still not known. The principal leaders of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC)—recognized by the major powers as the “legitimate” government of Libya—have yet to set foot in Tripoli.

Sporadic fighting continues to be reported in the capital, while NATO and the insurgent forces it has sponsored are preparing for a siege of Sirte, the coastal city of 100,000 that is Gaddafi’s home town and a center of his tribe, the Gaddafas.

NATO warplanes have conducted dozens of air strikes against Sirte, which straddles the highway leading from Tripoli in the west to Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, to the east.

The pretense that this air war is being carried out under the United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians has become increasingly ludicrous as US, British and French warplanes are used to pound civilian population centers to prepare the way for invading “rebel” armies.

The head of the self-appointed NTC, Mustafa Abel Jalil, told a meeting of NATO envoys in Qatar Monday that the bombings should continue because “Gaddafi is still capable of doing something awful in the last moments.” He added that the ousted Libyan leader’s “defiance of the coalition forces still poses a danger, not only for Libya but for the world.”

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Eric S. Margolis

The mighty US Navy won’t say so publicly, but it’s increasingly worried by China’s development of new anti-ship missiles. The chief worry is China’s new DF-21D whose primary target is America’s huge aircraft carriers.

According to Chinese sources, the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) has recently become operational in limited numbers. Originally developed for submarines, the DF-21D is said to have a range of 2,700km and at least some capability to strike moving targets.

China’s military is hard at work on satellites, long-range backscatter radar, submarines, and drones that can identify moving naval targets up to 3,000 km distance. These overlapping sensors will provide accurate, real-time targeting data for the DF-21D and other shorter-ranged sea, air and land-based anti-ship missiles.

The US Navy insists its carriers are not threatened by any of China’s new missiles and retain their freedom of action off China. But the DF-21D can cover the entire South China Sea, including Taiwan.

This could be extremely bad news for the US Navy, which deploys 11 aircraft carrier groups that enable the US to project power around the globe.

Batteries of DF-21D’s based safely inland may keep the US Navy far off China’s coasts, isolate Taiwan, and threaten US bases in Japan, Okinawa and Guam. In fact, the mere existence of the DF-21D’s and their deployment in sizeable numbers may be enough to keep US carriers at least 2,000 km from China’s coasts, thus beyond the useful range of the carrier’s strike aircraft.

As a writer on naval affairs, I’ve long been convinced that big attack aircraft carriers are going the way of the battleship. At around 100,000 tons, they are huge targets, high in the water, easily detected at long range by radar and infrared sensors. Each US attack carrier carries close to one million gallons of aviation fuel plus hundreds of tons of munitions.

The US Navy made carrier operations into a high science during World War II. The USN was famed for its brilliant damage-control techniques that prevented the loss of many US warships during WWII.

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Stephen Lendman

Libyan rebel loots Tripoli - View it yourself! These images don't lie, but NATO's are fake ones, produced in Doha, Qatar and perhaps elsewhere on Hollywood sound stages.

For months, NATO marauders and rebel killers gang raped Libya - murdering, destroying, ravaging on the pretense of protecting.

On August 22, Obama, a duplicitous unindicted war criminal, described the above images as "basic and joyful longing for human freedom."

On August 25, Secretary of State Clinton, another unindicted war criminal, said "(t)he events in Libya this week have heartened the world."

Let them and their conspiratorial allies go to Tripoli, Brega, Misrata and other ravaged Libyan cities and see for themselves. Let them view streets filled with mangled corpses, blood, agony on the face of the living, destruction everywhere in sight, and human misery beyond what scales can measure. Let them see firsthand the fruits of their victory. Let them taste, smell, and witness Tripoli's growing humanitarian disaster.

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Patrick Martin

A series of reports from journalists on the ground in Tripoli have provided evidence of mass killings by the NATO-backed forces in the Libyan civil war. These reports, which appear in publications largely supportive of the US-NATO intervention to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, further expose the fraudulent claim that the imperialist war against Libya is driven by humanitarian motives and the desire to protect civilian lives.

The Washington Post carried a prominent report Saturday, headlined, “Revenge Killings Mount in Libya, Extrajudicial Attacks by Rebels Cast Shadow Over New Freedom.” The headline refers to the contradiction between the claims by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the new NATO-backed regime in Libya, as well as the Obama administration that what is taking place is a new birth of freedom in Libya and the reality of politically directed and in some cases racially motivated slaughter.

Post reporter Simon Denyer asserts that Gaddafi’s troops “executed scores or even hundreds of political prisoners this week, even as victorious rebel fighters appear to have carried out their own abuses.” He cites the testimony of Diana Eltahawy, Libya researcher for Amnesty International, who “described a record of abuse, torture and the extrajudicial killing of captured pro-Gaddafi fighters that has followed the rebels from east to west as they have taken over the country.”

The reporter himself saw five Gaddafi soldiers wounded and dying in a field hospital now patrolled by the “rebels,” without receiving food, water or medical attention, and 15 bodies, mainly of black Africans presumed to be Gaddafi supporters, left to rot in the sun outside the Bab al-Aziziyah compound where much of Gaddafi’s family lived. According to Denyer, “not all of them looked like ordinary battlefield deaths. Two dead men lay face down on the grass, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic cuffs.”

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

As we have seen too often, Jewish-Zionists are acting as a spearhead of the genocidal war against Muslims, they continue to stir up hatred, fear-mongering and catastrophic wars against Islam and Muslims.

So it's not surprising to watch them shedding off all integrity as they pose as "intellectuals", "historians", experts and think-tanks" while persisting in their efforts to poison the world with lies, fabrications and deceit in the name of "security", foreign policy, or "research".

One of those "prominent" personalities is Joe Lieberman, a close friend of the extremist supremacist group Chabad, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs who declared recently that U.S. Should Cut Social Security to Pay for Fighting ‘The Islamist Extremists’:

"We’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come"

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Bill Van Auken

The Nuremberg trials after the Second World War established aggressive war as the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

NATO’s assault on Libya, a criminal imperialist war from its outset more than five months ago, has descended into an exercise in out-and-out murder as special forces operatives and intelligence agents hunt down Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

From the beginning, the central objectives of this war have been to seize control of Libya’s oil reserves, the largest on the African continent, and carry out an imperialist show of force as a means of suppressing and diverting the mass popular movements that only months earlier had toppled the US- and NATO-backed regimes of Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia.

“Operation United Protector,” as NATO dubbed its military onslaught, would have been more accurately described as “Operation Imperialist Gang Rape.” The US, Britain, France and Italy, each pursuing its own interests in Libya and the broader region, managed to unite for the common purpose of “regime-change.”

To achieve this aim, NATO warplanes carried out over 20,000 sorties, destroying schools, hospitals and homes and slaughtering untold numbers of Libyan soldiers, many of them young conscripts.

Flouting the terms of the United Nations resolution authorizing “all means necessary” to protect civilians, NATO powers, including the US, France and Britain, sent in special forces troops, military contractor mercenaries and intelligence agents to arm, organize and lead the so-called “rebels,” whose primary function was to draw out Libyan government forces so they could be annihilated from the air.

The pretense that this was a war to protect civilians has been exposed as a moral obscenity, with the death toll in Tripoli alone climbing into the thousands and NATO bombs and missiles continuing to fall in heavily populated areas.

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Stephen Lendman

After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes.

Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.

NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.

As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.

When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.

NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.

Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.

Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.

None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.

It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.

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Stephen Lendman

In his new article headlined, "9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?" Paul Craig Roberts said:

"Today Americans are unsafe, not because of terrorists and domestic extremists, but because they have lost their civil liberties and no protection from unaccountable government power."

So have millions under occupation and/or attack by US/NATO forces, terrorizing them in the name of "democracy" to "set them free."

America is a global terror state. For decades, it's menaced humanity's survival by imperial wars for wealth and power, not liberation or democratic values. All US administrations reviled them, notably Obama's, including at home. Under him, "unaccountable government power" terrorizes globally.

It's a truism that where large energy reserves exist, America has imperial plans to control them. Libya is now ground zero. US-led NATO assassins invaded to menace, intimidate, kill, plunder, and cause out-of-control chaos, notably in Tripoli, the struggle's current epicenter.

On August 16, Michel Chossudovsky's article headlined, "The Pentagon's 'Salvador Option:' The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria," saying:

Reports suggest the use of "thousands of Islamist 'freedom fighters,' reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA's jihad (holy war)" against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan.

Chossudovsky wrote about possible plans

"to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. [The Turkish army would] "house, train, and send them to Syria. Thousands of similar elements are in Libya.

On August 20, independent journalist Thierry Meyssan said NATO debarked large numbers of jihadi forces with heavy weapons on Tripoli's coast. Special forces led them. Violence and mass killing followed. It still rages, slaughtering hundreds, perhaps thousands, and wounding many more.

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Medea Benjamin

The ceremonies for the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC were kicked off on August 24 at an event billed as Honoring Global Leaders for Peace. But some of those honored are a far cry from King’s beloved community of the poor and oppressed. The tribute to peacemakers, organized by the MLK National Memorial Foundation, was mostly a night applauding warmakers, corporate profiteers and co-opted musicians.

The night started out with great promise when MC Andrea Mitchell mentioned Dr. King’s brilliant anti-war speech Beyond Vietnam as a key to understanding the real Dr. King. And sure, there were a few wonderful moments—a song by Stevie Wonder, a speech about nonviolence by the South African Ambassador and a quick appearance by Jesse Jackson in which he managed to spit out a call to “study war no more.”

But most of the evening’s speakers and guests of honor had little to do with peacemaking. One of the dignitaries thanked at the start of the program was Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, representing a country that uses $3 billion a year in precious U.S. tax dollars to commit war crimes against Palestinians.

Then came a parade of representatives of corporations that want to cleanse their image by being associated with Dr. King. The first was General Motors VP Eric Peterson. His company took billions from government coffers to keep it afloat, then showed its “generosity” by donating $10 million of our tax dollars to the memorial. Mr. Peterson gave a speech paying tribute to the company’s first black board member, Rev. Leon Sullivan. Peterson claimed that the Sullivan Principles, principles that established a social responsibility code for companies working in South Africa, helped abolish apartheid. The truth is that the Sullivan Principles ended up being a cover for U.S. corporations—like General Motors–to continue doing business in racist South Africa instead of respecting the international divestment campaign.

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Tammy Obeidallah

If the word “retaliation” is used to describe military operations or draconian economic embargoes carried out by the Jewish State, it must be understood that this is a euphemism for genocide.

The latest round of atrocities unleashed upon Palestinians proves yet again that the Israeli government is a homicidal opportunist. Instantly, the problem of mass demonstrations deploring increased cost of living and other economic issues plaguing the Jewish State was solved by rallying Israelis behind the one issue they all seem to have in common: the singular desire to annihilate Palestinians.

If that assessment seems harsh, or unfair to Israeli peace activists, it certainly rings true of broader Israeli society. Joseph Dana, a Tel Aviv-based writer and journalist spoke with Aljazeera regarding the protests, which according to him, were mute regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. “The sad reality is that if Israelis discuss Palestinian rights and specifically the rights of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, they very quickly lose public support,” he stated.

Of course the Israeli spin machine claims the bombardment of Gaza was in response to the Eilat operation, although there is no evidence that Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) perpetrated the attack. Dana also wrote in a recent article, “Israel maintains that the PRC is responsible for the attacks but has yet to release any verifiable proof connecting the Gaza based group to the attack which has so far claimed eight lives.”

It is rather sinister that 81 members of our Congress just spent a week in the Jewish State, meeting with Israeli officials at taxpayers’ expense; days later, Gaza is attacked. It is quite probable that the strikes were carefully coordinated while conveniently, world focus is on Libya and Syria.

However, even if armed groups from within Gaza were responsible for the Eilat attacks, retaliation of this sort for a blockade that has led to the deaths of untold thousands is certainly understandable. The siege of Gaza, subsequent incursions and almost daily shootings of civilians for straying too close to the “buffer zone” are acts of war in themselves, thus warrant reaction.

Israel’s 63-year campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people is neatly packaged as “retaliation” or “self-defense” against “mortars fired by Palestinian militants” or the hackneyed “homemade rockets.” Mysteriously, the media never reports on these mortars or rockets until Israeli forces “retaliate” for them; then it serves as an excuse for continued genocide.

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Stephen Lendman

Libyan patriotic forces defend capital from counterrevolutionary
rebels. (Pan-African News Wire File Photos)

Trapped for days in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arranged for the release of over 30 foreign journalists yesterday. They're now at the Corinthia Hotel, awaiting a boat for transport to Malta, then home via Europe that can't arrive until fighting subsides. Given the chaos and violence, it could be a while.

Among them are heroic independent journalists, unable to report vital truths on the ground. For now, only their safe passage home matters, but what they witnessed firsthand will be sorely missed.

As a result, it'll be much harder to know what's ongoing. Rest assured, this writer and others will report what's known as fully and accurately as possible to keep the freedom flame for all Libyans alive. They deserve no less in light of what NATO has in mind, including carving up the Libya corpse for profit.

In fact, scrambling for its oil began began last April when Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said energy giant ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni had talks with Transitional National Council (TNC) officials "to restart cooperation in the energy sector and get going again the collaboration with Italy in the oil sector."

In June, the Washington Post said ConocoPhillips, other US oil giants, and related companies also held talks with TNC officials. Engineering firm Quantum Reservoir Impact CEO Nansen Saleri said:

"Now you can figure out who's going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi. Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves. Five years from now, Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

Or so he hopes. Though accounting for only 2% of world production, Libya is Africa's most oil rich state. Moreover, its high quality is especially valued, and reports suggest vast reserves yet to be explored.

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Geoff Brumfiel

Experiment probes connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere.

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: 'cosmic rays' from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth's atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

The findings, published today in Nature [1], are preliminary, but they are stoking a long-running argument over the role of radiation from distant stars in altering the climate.

For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet's atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.

The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.

Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.

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Franklin Lamb

This observer’s tentative appraisal of Tuesday’s events along the north Tripoli port area as of late afternoon 8/23/11 is that the “65,000 well trained and well-armed troops” hyped Sunday by the Gaddafi government don’t in fact exist and that the pockets of government troops here in Tripoli and across Libya that do, will continue to resist what it views as NATO aggression designed to usurp the country’s oil and add Libya to Africom.

NATO is widely viewed in Tripoli as having violated the three main terms of UNSCR 1973, to wit, NATO did engage in regime change, it did take sides in a civil war, it did arm one side, and it did refuse to allow a negotiated diplomatic settlement which many here and internationally believe could have been achieved by early April, thus saving hundreds Libyan lives. NATO’s more than 160 days of bombing are seen as egregious violations of UNSCR 1973, Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter and numerous provisions of international law, all part of its campaign to secure Libyan oil and this rich countries geopolitical cooperation for the US, UK, France, Italy and their NATO allies.

I am told that some Gaddafi loyalists are headed to the colonel’s home town of Serte to prepare to defend it. Some of my reasons for these tentative conclusions include the no show government troops, the intensifying NATO bombings of Tripoli, which is the only reason the rebels have not negotiated an end to this conflict last April, and my tentative conclusion that there is no reason for massive numbers of government troops, if they existed, not to challenge the increasing numbers of NATO rebels who appear to be sitting ducks as they tool around Tripoli’s troops. According to journalists who arrived at this hotel yesterday from the west, south and east, there appear to be no government forces moving toward Tripoli to join in an Alamo type last stand battle.

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Matthew Nasuti

Al-Qaeda does not have to make up stories about the West abusing Muslim women. Al-Qaeda merely has to report the truth.

The unofficial message from the West to victims of oppression is:

“We will liberate you as long as your women agree to service our officials and contractors.”

That is a sad reality of both NATO and United Nations peacekeeping missions.

The U.S. State Department’s “Trafficking in Persons Report 2010" highlights the continuing growth of brothels in Kabul following the U.S. invasion in 2001. Many of the victims are poor Afghan women. A press release issued on January 13, 2011, by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul blamed the scandal on lax enforcement against traffickers by the Afghan Government, with no recommendation that the “johns” or clients be prosecuted (because many of them appear to be NATO and U.N. officials and their contractors). The most that the U.S. Embassy would meekly say is that:

“Some international security contractors may be involved in the sex trafficking of these women.”

(It is interesting how ineffective U.S. intelligence agencies seem to be at determining brothel ownership in Kabul, despite the importance of the issue due to the use of these facilities by NATO officials)

This issue is not new. The British newspaper “The Sun” ran a story on April 7, 2008 entitled: “NATO Men Romp in Afghan Brothels.”

Sun Defense Editor Tom Newton Dunn detailed how NATO troops were observed drinking contraband alcohol and heading off to rooms with prostitutes. It quoted a NATO official as stating that one out of every five NATO civilians in Afghanistan frequent these brothels. The report quoted Afghan Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai as stating that if this conduct continues: “They will undermine their reason for being here.”

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Charles E. Carlson

["Judeo-Christians' Role - Mr. Sharon's Final Solution" and Judeo-Christians' Role - Hate-Bus Tours American Churches were originally published in June, 2004]

The Judeo-Christians - why would they distort what their own Bible teaches, and what their own professed faith demands of them. Jesus demands peace and love of all men, even ones' enemies. There is not one phrase in the Christian New Testament that supports anything Israel does to the Palestinians, including the claims of being a "chosen people". Judeo-Christianity is not Christian at all. It is a hodgepodge of bits from unrelated stories patched together to create an illusion. The illusion is of an "end times" apocalypse, and a "chosen people" who enjoy the right to kill and imprison other people who are not "chosen."

A powerful new lobby tells the world its purpose is to direct Congress to act on behalf of the State of Israel. Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI) is strictly an Israeli controlled organization that calls for a militant, no compromise solution to its Arab problem. What makes UCI unique among radical Israeli political groups is that it finds its support among prominent USA professing Christians. Some stumping Americans raise the UCI agenda in colleges and churches. In fact, the UCI "Christians" go far beyond the Israelis in their call for Arab blood. This paper examines who these Judeo-Christians are, their motives, and the impact on peace in the world.

Israeli political lobbies in the US Congress are hardly new. Upward to 100 pro-Israel PACs swarm over the American Washington, approaching every new candidate for Congress before his fur is dry. Most big campaigns have, in the past been orchestrated by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As detailed in Andrew Hurley's book, Holocaust II Saving Israel from Suicide, former Congressmen have, for three decades, privately and occasionally publicly, called AIPAC the most powerful lobby in Washington. Few dare talk about it in public.

What makes UCI different from AIPAC is that its lobbyists are mostly celebrity Christians. Nevertheless, strictly Israelis and American non-Christians control the organization. This might be likened to a flock of turkeys laboring for the elimination of fox skin coats.

UCI does not stop with bending Congress; it openly and without reservation seeks to re-define Christianity to conform to Judaic requirements, seeking Christian support for Israel's policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians, while openly declaring that its aims are to control the rest of the Middle East. The foxes, it seems, pay the Christian turkeys highly to perch on the low limbs.

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Stephen Lendman

The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.

The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."

His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."

International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.

Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.

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Chris Marsden

The riots that swept London and other cities earlier this month threw a harsh light on the real state of social relations in Britain. They revealed the extent to which the UK is a nation torn apart by intractable class divisions, in which millions of workers and young people have no escape from a life of grinding, unremitting poverty while they are forced to watch others live a life of unparalleled luxury.

Thousands of youth rioted because they have no avenue through which to articulate their grievances or realise their aspirations for a better life—least of all through the Labour Party and the trade unions, which are as much the corrupt playthings of the financial elite as the governing Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Theirs is a degrading situation that has continued year after year without change, or even the apparent possibility of change, because the entire social and political order is stacked in the interests of the super-rich.

The universal response of the state, the political establishment and the media to the riots has confirmed that nothing else can be expected from the ruling elite and its hangers-on. Brutal police repression, mass arrests and the doling out of punitive prison terms for minor offences have been accompanied by a blanket denial that legitimate social grievances played any part in the riots. They were, according to the official narrative, solely the product of a criminal “underclass.”

For this reason, the riots were not merely an exposure of what exists but a portent of the future. They demonstrate above all that for the working class and the younger generation, nothing can be achieved outside of the revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. They also served another essential political function—revealing the plethora of fake-left groupings that portray themselves as “socialist,” “communist” and even “Trotskyist” to be the champions of capitalist “law and order.”

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Adnan Al-Daini

People could accept hardship and cuts if they perceived that the load was being shared fairly and justly, with those most able shouldering a heavier load. David Cameron (Britain’s Prime Minister), a month after taking office (June 2010), made his “we are all in this together” speech in which he said:

“I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair. I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country. I have said before that as we deal with the debt crisis we must take the whole country with us - and I mean it. George Osborne has said that our plans to cut the deficit must be based on the belief that we are all in this together - and he means it…But this government will not cut this deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help, that divides the country or that undermines the spirit and ethos of our public services. Freedom, fairness, responsibility: those are the values that drive this government, and they are the values that will drive our efforts to deal with our debts and turn this economy around.” 

Who could possibly disagree with that?  The problem is that the actions of this government do not quite mesh with the rhetoric. Many of the working poor and vulnerable are suffering extreme hardship, while the lives of the super-rich, on the other hand, are hardly affected; in fact if anything their wealth has been increasing. 

The use of food banks by desperate families is on the rise in this country, according to a charity that runs them nationwide. Mr. Chris Mould, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, explained on Radio 4 Today programme (August20, 2011) that there are 13 million people in Britain already living below the poverty line and increases in energy prices, cuts in working hours and wage rises not keeping up with inflation have pushed families to the edge, with a dramatic increase in those having to rely on food banks, with food donated by the public, to survive. How can this be acceptable in a rich country like Britain?

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Bill Van Auken

A column by Philip Zelikow entitled “Gaddafi’s fall will renew the Arab spring,” published on the Financial Times web site Monday, provides a glimpse into the far-reaching aims being pursued by Washington and the other major imperialist powers in their supposedly “humanitarian” intervention in Libya.

Zelikow is a former State Department counselor under Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration and a former advisor on the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush during the period of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. He is a trusted and experienced operative within the US political establishment, so much so that he was tapped to serve as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. In that position he was the individual most responsible for organizing a cover-up of the US government’s role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Close to the Project for a New American Century and one of the authors of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, Zelikow has intimate experience in both the theory and practice of US imperialism’s drive to impose its hegemony over the Middle East.

Zelikow begins his column by debunking the arguments of those on the Republican right who opposed the Libyan war as an example of “liberal interventionism.” He dismisses this concern, saying it is merely a misunderstanding “fed by some rhetoric, especially from the government.” The war, he writes, was launched because of Libya’s particular “history and a geography that well justified hard-headed calculations by the US, Britain, France and many other countries that they should seize this opportunity to help the rebels get rid of this particular demented regime.”

In other words, the major imperialist powers saw a set of circumstances in the Libyan events that allowed them to “seize the opportunity” to execute a military campaign for regime-change for the purpose of establishing firm control over the oil-rich North African nation.

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Stephen Lendman

Mark Twain once called reports of his death greatly exaggerated. The same hold for Libyans, not ready to submit to NATO colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation. Not at least without a fight.

The stakes are high - stay free or die socially, economically, politically, emotionally, and/or perhaps physically.

Washington-led NATO is a rogue killing machine plunderer. It comes, sees, slaughters, ravages, and pillages all its surveys.

In March, it arrived in Libya on cruise missiles, bombs, shells, other munitions, fifth column infiltrators, media liars, and other rogue elements, not white horses, not as liberators nor humanitarian interveners.

It came for another imperial trophy at the expense of free Libyans. They know it and won't submit without a fight, a long-term struggle perhaps that may ebb and flow, but won't end until NATO's scourge ends.

It's the same spirit driving Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and millions of others throughout North Africa/Middle East/Central Asia/and elsewhere. Live free or die.

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Dmitriy Sedov

Libyans inspects the site of massive explosion that occurred
during the night in Benghazi. (AP/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

The West Scores Another Triumph Over the Arab World

The fall of M. Gadhafi's regime will come as a huge success of the globalization forces seeking to establish a new world order. The proportions of the campaign the West launched in Libya and the level of sophistication of the technologies employed were impressive regardless of the accompanying political assessments – altogether they combined into a fundamental political initiative with far-reaching historical goals.

In Libya, the West managed to undermine and eventually demolish a completely viable regime which must be credited with keeping the country stable and the population's living standards – fairly high. Even though, customarily for the region, Gadhafi was an eccentric and self-righteous autocrat, a relatively short time ago he used to be a figure to which the majority of Libyans showed no signs of allergy. Under such circumstances, it had to take serious manipulative skills to convince the people that things in their country were skewed and to lead them to rebel against the legitimate government.

The shift in the public atmosphere is hardly attributable to the impact of any particular subversive programs or to the sway of a handful of Western satellite TV channels over Libya's public opinion. Rather, it could be induced within a wider approach based on what specialists these days refer to as informational warfare. Currently, whole populations in a number of countries enduring regime changes are the targets of informational warfare altering traditional models of human existence and conduct. The alliance of the West's ideological agencies and media built around a certain type of information policies is the force behind the ongoing informational aggression. Its key objective is to saturate all information flows with the notion of an a priori superiority of the Western democracy standard and to instill among the nations whose political lives are not aligned with it a humiliating sense of inferiority. Under appropriate external influence, the sense of inferiority automatically nourishes public discontent. Given the background of pervasive informational aggression, ideological campaigns and provocations aimed at destabilizing and in the long run dislodging otherwise stable regimes tend to become extremely efficient.

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Adnan Al-Daini

[Photo: "Allied air strikes will go on in Libya until Muammar al-Gaddafi stops attacking civilians, pulls back his forces and allows in humanitarian aid," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. PM David Cameron listening.]

NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today (August 22, 2011)

“NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace.”

Dare I hope that the statement is sincerely meant?  Or am I being naïve? 

At the start of the Arab spring in Tunisia followed by Egypt, the West was hesitant in its support of the revolutionary young.   Remarks such as "Mubarak is not a dictator" by Joe Biden, or the French offer to the Tunisian President of sending French advisers and equipment to help him deal with demonstrators, underscored their support for despots; not much concern for human rights there. As far as they were concerned, the model of controlling the Arab world and its resources through dictators that they could bribe and control had served them well. It is much easier to control a despot who rules by instilling fear in the people than having to deal with the messy business of democratically elected leaders and institutions.

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Robert M. Cutler

Negotiations this month have opened the way to conclusion of a Gas Sales Price Agreement for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline, despite a number of obstacles still remaining.

On August 18, a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan meeting at the level of technical experts from the two countries' competent ministries reached agreement on a number of implementation and construction issues, also including their economic provisions, according to reports by the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

Agreement has also been reached bilaterally between Turkmenistan and India over the price of the former's natural gas to the latter. India had proposed a price of US$460 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) to Ashgabat, which had counter-offered $505-$525/tcm. New Delhi did not want to pay a price making TAPI gas more expensive than the liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it already imports, mainly from Qatar. Natural gas represents only 6% of India's total energy consumption, and the country is keen to increase that proportion.

The four countries signed in Ashgabat last December 11 an intergovernmental agreement that was complemented by a framework document approved by the respective energy ministers. According to Turkmenistani sources, it confirmed that the 1,735-kilometer pipeline would be built in Afghanistan alongside the road from Herat to Kandahar (and at least partly underground to deter terrorist attacks), then routed by way of Quetta and Multan in Pakistan to reach the Indian border town of Fazilka.

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Amal Hanano

[This is the twelfth and last installment of Amal Hanano's diary of her trip back to Aleppo. You can read previous posts here.]

There is always a certain acclimation period needed when moving from east to west or west to east, a few days to re-situate yourself. It disguises itself as jet lag, but it is more of a re-calibration of your inner compass. This time, my resetting lasted for weeks not days. The phone kept ringing, from family and friends in the U.S. making sure I was okay and asking endless details. I had to say, ma fi shi, so many times it irritated me. Even non-Arabs were shocked when they found out I had gone back, and my response was like a broken record, “Where I was, in Aleppo, there was nothing happening.” “Oh,” was their relieved but slightly disappointed reply. Tell me about it.

My few short weeks in Syria had felt like months, yet I returned to an America unchanged. Everything around me felt tired: tired tastes, tired radio, tired news about corrupt media moguls and dead pop stars, tired politics and an exhausted economy, a tired, mad world occupied with vampires and wizards. I was tired, living in black and white, any color existed only in this journal, and it was quickly fading. I lived through my words, extending my trip line by line, fighting, as always, against letting go.

I was disconnected from the Syrian-American community around me, the ones who could not go back this summer, the ones from Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Daraa. The ones who flew to D.C. for protests, drafted petitions, and posted videos on Facebook every five minutes. There was a split between us, they labeled me as the girl from Aleppo, the land of greedy merchants and silent masses. I expected the sentiment, but felt resentful and defensive at their hypocrisy. In their eyes, I was much closer to the silent Aleppo elite than I would like to admit. But in mine, they were acting like victims while living in their posh suburban bubbles. They demand Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustafa’s resignation now, but conveniently forget that they were honored to rub shoulders with him a few short years ago. And so, I came back to be treated as an outsider once more. In Aleppo I was a mundasseh, an infiltrator, and in America, I was apathetic.

I wondered if this confusion I felt about home and belonging, was not exclusively my own, as I had always believed. Have we all lost the sense of what home is, or what it should be? Are we searching for an elusive, utopian place that didn’t exist? Anthony Shadid wrote in my favorite article about the Arab Spring: “Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism.” He believes a driving factor of the regional uprisings is what he calls a search for “a new sense of self.” Why are we searching for a new sense of self? When did we lose our selves? How did we let our selves slip away? It is sad, but the reality is for decades, all Syrians, there or here, by the sheer force of our brutal history, were robbed of our true selves.

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Stephen Lendman

NATO is a killing machine, a destructive US-led evil force everyone needs to understand, condemn, and struggle to abolish.

NATO intends to get the bloodbath it wants through intensified terror bombing and low-level strafing of civilians and nonmilitary sites. No matter that it grossly violates international and constitutional law, what Washington-led member states long ago trashed.

Through August 22, air operations included 19,877 sorties and 7,505 strike ones, with no elaboration of their intensity or deadliness. What is known is that powerful, high-explosive munitions are used, able to cause deadly force casualties and destruction.

In recent days, strikes intensified. Without them, rebels would disintegrate and collapse. Most of them are little more than ragtag mercenary hooligans, imperial tools, used for what won't benefit them.

It's largely true of all wars, especially America's waged for conquest, dominance, plunder and exploitation, never for democracy or humanitarian reasons Washington doesn't give a damn about and never did.

NATO is no different. Established in April 1949, a previous article said it calls itself a "political and military alliance for peace and security."

In fact, it was more for offense than defense. Cold War hysteria was contrived to incite fear and assure an arms race for corporate enrichment. Napoleon once said, "Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest."

Until the Soviet Union dissolved, communism was the alleged enemy. Today it's terrorism, as bogus now as then. Both, however, were used for hugely profitable imperial wars from Korea to Libya to numerous proxy ones, as well as trillions of dollars for military readiness - in fact, scandalous amounts in America without enemies for justification since WW II.

Strategically intervening under US control, NATO, in fact, threatens world peace and human survival.

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Bill Van Auken

Major European oil companies saw their stock prices rise precipitously on expectations that they would reap bonanzas from renegotiated deals with a NATO-installed regime in Libya.

The so-called “revolution” has in fact been a coup sponsored by the major imperialist powers working with the big energy conglomerates and executed by US, British and French military and intelligence. Using the upheavals in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia as cover, and a “humanitarian” mission as pretext, these powers launched a colonial-style war with the aim of toppling the Gaddafi regime and installing a more pliant client regime in Tripoli.

Fierce fighting raged into the night in Tripoli Monday, even as leaders of the major Western powers proclaimed the end of the 42-year-old regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and maneuvered for position in the scramble for Libya’s oil wealth.

After their surprisingly rapid advance into the Libyan capital, the armed groups backed by NATO have encountered stiff resistance from forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime. The crowds that initially greeted the so-called “rebels” melted away and streets remained largely deserted as the two sides exchanged automatic weapons fire as well as mortar and anti-aircraft rounds.

Heavy fighting continued around Gaddafi’s fortified Bab al-Aziziya presidential compound, while smoke billowed over sections of the city. A spokesman for the NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Benghazi predicted that the fortified compound would not fall easily and fighting there would be “fierce.” The huge Tripoli compound has been subjected to heavy bombardment by NATO warplanes.

While the NTC has claimed to control between 80 and 90 percent of the Libyan capital, reporters in the city have described the situation as “fluid,” and few checkpoints have been set up to secure the streets.

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Stephen Lendman

Note: A follow-up article will continue the narrative below. Currently, events in Tripoli are fluid.

Progressive Radio News Hour contributor Mahdi Nazemroaya's overnight email said:

"NATO landed insurgents in (Tripoli) harbor. They are attacking my hotel. I almost got shot. They're still lying a lot (about claims of controlling the capital), but we are in real danger."

He's saying that armed guerrilla gangs, mercenaries, indistinguishable from (also armed) Tripoli residents, are waging street warfare.

Russia Today reported about 1,300 deaths. No one knows for sure. However, events are fast-moving and chaotic.

On Russia Today, Nazemroaya also said heavy looting occurred, including insurgents breaking into hotel rooms and ransacking them. In addition, he said NATO WANTS A BLOODBATH. In fact, they're getting one, exacerbated by intense terror bombing, deliberately targeting civilians.

"Myself, the Press TV journalist (Lizzie Phelan), three French nationals, the Cuban and Telesur journalists are in danger."

"One of my French colleagues was told: 'You are going to suffer the consequences of your actions for opposing the NATO war."

Sunday, on Russia Today, Nazemroaya said he was told that CNN said he personally would pay for opposing the war.

REPEAT: CNN THREATENED MADHI NAZEMROAYA FOR REPORTING TRUTHFULLY ABOUT EVENTS ON THE GROUND, NOT THE PRO-NATO PROPAGANDA CNN (THE NEW YORK TIMES, AND OTHER MAJOR MEDIA) REPORT DAILY.

What's ongoing in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, as well as throughout North Africa/the Middle East/Central Asia is part of A COUP D'ETAT AGAINST FREEDOM - PLANNED, ORCHESTRATED AND DIRECTED FROM WASHINGTON.

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Julia Churley

We all knew it was coming. We knew we'd be hit hard tonight. As soon as the news from Israel broke....the first attack on the bus....I KNEW Gaza was in for it. Whether or not anyone from here had actually even carried out the attack, we were going to feel Israel's wrath. We're an easy scapegoat. Seal up the borders, keep the media quiet, and have some fun...

Rafah, in the south, was hit first, before sundown and 7 were killed, including a child and the leader of the Popular Resistance Committee. Then we got reports of tanks on the border, and by the time iftar (the breaking of the fast at sundown during Ramadan) came around, we were all braced for more. F16s and drones were overhead all evening, but that was it. Nothing more. I spent most of the night staring at my screen between conversations with friends....tweeting and Facebooking trying to make sure someone....anyone....was paying attention when all hell broke loose. I was fighting off rumors about an UNRWA evacuation and then trying to confirm whether or not the US embassy in Tel Aviv had told Americans to leave Gaza....the former not being true and the latter being true.

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Stephen Lendman

Repeatedly, Israel preemptively bombs, shells, and inflicts other forms of lawless violence on Gazans, bogusly claiming self-defense.

When they respond, Israel calls it terrorism, claiming justification for greater attacks in "self-defense," what international law prohibits.

In fact, UN Charter Article 2(4) says:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Only two exceptions apply. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may authorize force to restore peace. Individual states must abide by Chapter VII, Article 51 stating:

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."

In addition, individual states may use defensive force against armed attacks until the Security Council acts. No other exceptions apply, including armed reprisals. Calling them unlawful, the General Assembly said all states must refrain from using them. The right of self-defense is limited solely to deterring armed attacks, preventing future ones after initial assaults, or reversing the consequences of enemy aggression, such as ending an illegal occupation.

Even then, however, force must conform to the principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality. Necessity permits only attacking military targets. Distinction pertains to distinguishing between civilian and military ones. Proportionality prohibits disproportionate force likely to damage nonmilitary sites and/or harm civilian lives. Moreover, a fourth consideration requires preventing unnecessary suffering, especially affecting noncombatant civilians. If these objective aren't possible, attacks are prohibited.

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Vera Macht

As we speak, Gaza is being bombed. As we speak, innocent people are dying. Fifteen people have been killed so far, and no end in sight.

Tomorrow the foreigners will be evacuated, Israel threatens with a "massive military attack", a "ground invasion" is not ruled out. Fifteen killed people, including two children. I can give their names, Malek, two years old, and Mahmoud, thirteen years. I can tell how Mahmoud's teacher has described him as an intelligent, bright student, or I can show photos of the two.

As if that would create an outcry , as if the Western media would care enough for the lives of Palestinian children. No, [it's] "Israel was attacked" and "Israel must defend itself."

Neither the circumstances, let alone the actual perpetrators of the attack on Israel have been identified so far, every Palestinian military faction has denied any involvement in it. But Gaza is blamed, as Gaza is always to be blamed for, Gaza must be punished, Gazan blood must flow so that the murder on Israelis will be avenged.

How much blood must still flow, you Israeli generals? How many Mahmouds and Maleks will have to die, how many women and children will have to be injured and killed? The signs suggest that it will still be many. And the signs suggest that the world is going to accept it. That it will accept that innocent people are being killed who had nothing but nothing to do with the attack on Israel.

But of course Palestinians must be "punished", simply because they are Palestinians.

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Stephen Lendman

[Israeli medics evacuate a person wounded in one of several attacks in the Arava desert, to the Soroka hospitan in Beersheba, southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011. Assailants armed with heavy weapons, guns and explosives crossed into southern Israel from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula on Thursday, killing six Israelis and wounding at least a dozen more in an audacious string of attacks. AP Photo/Ilan Assayag]

Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have long, odious histories of committing them. More on that below.

At issue now is whether the August 18 bus and other attacks inside Israel were committed by external elements or Israel, and if so, why?

Also at issue always is cui bono? In fact, Hamas and various Palestinian resistance groups have nothing to gain. Clearly Israel benefits greatly at least two ways:

(1) The upcoming September UN General Assembly vote on Palestinian self-determination Israel very much wants to derail.
(2) Weeks of nationwide internal social justice protests Netanyahu also wants to diffuse and end.

Both are compelling reasons for employing tried and true tactics - change the subject by diverting public attention.

In this case, scaring people enough to put safety above pocket book issues, as well as getting UN member states perhaps to rethink the wisdom of supporting Palestinian sovereignty at this time, with Israel allegedly under attack.

Whether it works will be known when the UN General Assembly meets in September. What's clear is that last March, Israel informed all Security Council members and prominent EU countries that if Palestinian self-determination efforts within 1967 borders persisted, unilateral Israeli steps would follow, implying harsh ones.

In addition, diffusing social justice protests temporarily worked based on an August 18 Reuters report, saying campaigners

"called off planned weekend demonstrations against the high cost of living after a series of terror attacks in the south left seven people dead."

Of concern is how to reignite protest energy after it wanes, even for a short time. Resumption often lacks initial levels of passion, mass support, and commitment to stay the course, especially when people have other daily priorities, besides worrying whether their country is under attack.

Add it up and it suggests classic false flag reasons, perhaps with planned follow-up attacks for reinforcement. They're likely if Israel also has another objective in mind - using the attacks as pretext for Cast Lead II.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

No one is against the principle of Jews living peacefully in Palestine. However, Jews or any other people have no right to lord it over the truly native people of the land or worse, enslave, torment, oppress, and murder them as Israel has been doing ever since its misbegotten birth sixty-three years ago.

Israeli leaders have nearly lost their composure, reacting to a rare resistance attack originating from the Sinai Peninsula near the southernmost town of Um al Rushrash, renamed by the Zionists as Elat.

Appearing existentially anxious and morbidly hypochondriac, Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu was behaving in a conspicuously convulsive manner.

He vowed to murder Palestinians, saying "we must kill those trying to hurt Jews." Netanyahu, an inherently dishonest and racist politician, thought that the only way Israel could prove her military might was by ganging up on nearly helpless and virtually undefended Gazans who are languishing under a lingering blockade that has made the coastal enclave very much a modern-day version of the Warsaw Ghetto.

But like the rest of the Zionist establishment, Netanyahu is living in a state of denial. He easily forgets or ignores the fact that Israel itself is a gigantic crime against humanity if only because that state happens to be the effect of the grandest land theft in history.

In fact, Israel not only occupies the ancestral homeland of another people, the Palestinians, but is also trying rather incessantly to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinians and obliterate the Arab-Islamic identity of their patrimonial homeland from time immemorial.

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Stephen Lendman

They appear daily like weeds on all topics. As a result, Times reports aren't fit to read, let alone print. August 18 was no exception, publishing lies about Libyan insurgent victories.

On August 18, headlining, "Libyan Rebels Gain Control of Oil Refinery as Qaddafi Forces Flee," Kareem Fahim's article was pure Pentagon propaganda, duplicitously lying to readers. Yet he said

"(r)ebel fighters claimed complete control of a sprawling (Zawiyah) oil refinery, seizing one of (Gaddafi's) most important assets after just three days of fighting and delivering the latest in a string of small victories that have suddenly put the rebels at Tripoli's door."

Reporting from Tripoli, independent Middle East/Central Asian analyst, Mahdi Nazemroaya refuted him, telling Progressive Radio News Hour listeners that:

• Gaddafi forces are winning;
• rebels are in disarray;
• the so-called National Transitional Council (NTC) is falling apart;
• Misrata was liberated from rebels;
• Tripoli is peaceful and calm, despite daily NATO bombing, willfully targeting civilians and nonmilitary sites;
• scattered fighting continues along routes to Tunisia and elsewhere;
• arteries between the two countries remain open;
• Intense Western propaganda wants to intimidate Gaddafi supporters to give up hope of prevailing;
• it's had the opposite effect, in fact, galvanizing Libyans overwhelmingly behind Gaddafi, making him by far the most popular African/Middle East leader; and
• his forces control Gheryan, Sorman, Sabratha, and Zawiyah, its oil refinery and others; reports saying otherwise are lies; rebels are south of the city, not in it.

In an August 18 morning email, he added:

"Nothing has changed thus far. There is fighting in the area, but (rebels) do not have control. Bombings over Tripoli are very bad though."

As part of NATO's intimidation campaign, they continue daily, inflicting pain and suffering on Libyans unrelated to military necessity. As a result, they're war crimes, what Times and other major media sources won't explain.

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Bryan Dyne

The Obama administration has approved Shell Oil’s plan to begin drilling for oil in the Beaufort Sea, off the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska. This will be the first offshore drilling operation authorized in the region since the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe in April 2010. It only the latest example of the Obama administration’s prostration before major oil interests.

Approval for drilling came from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). The agency adopted the plan given to it by Shell Oil without even a cursory examination. Instead, it adopted an uncritical attitude towards the company, entrusting it not to violate safety regulations and risking a similar disaster to that which occurred last year.

The BOEMRE is also ignoring the ecological impact of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. When the oil tanker struck the Bligh Reef, it spilled somewhere between 42,000 and 120,000 cubic meters of crude into the Prince William Sound. This resulted in the deaths of as many as 250,000 seabirds and hundreds of sea otters, harbor seals and bald eagles, as well as four humans poisoned during the cleanup. The immediate economic impact was the loss of 26,000 jobs and $2.4 billion.

In addition, the clean up efforts were not sufficient to completely eliminate oil. An NOAA report issued in 2007 revealed that, despite cleanup efforts, 26,000 gallons of oil still remain in the soil of the contaminated shoreline, impeding the repopulation of wildlife in the area. The amount of oil left in the ocean is unknown. Moreover, residents of the area who used to rely on fishing for subsistence are still wary of consuming local catches for fear of leftover oil.

The more recent explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon, which killed eleven workers, has left a much deeper scar. From April to June of 2010, the oil rig leaked 780,000 cubic meters of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, contaminating almost 800 kilometers of coastline in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Hundreds of thousands of fish, birds and other animals were affected, with thousands turning up dead. One estimate, given by Earth Economics, values the damage done at approximately $1 trillion to the Mississippi River delta alone.

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Stephen Lendman

For years, America and Israel followed similar paths toward full-blown tyranny, threatening all their citizens. Believing either is democratic and egalitarian is ludicrous and nonsensical, especially now under right-wing neoliberal governments, cracking down hard against challenges to their authority.

In Israel, moreover, Arabs have no rights. In fact, they're treated more like fifth-column threats than citizens with equal rights as Jews. They never had them or do now.

Three articles, among others, discussed Israeli governance under Netanyahu and Israel's most extremist ever Knesset, accessed through the following links, here, here and here.

Since becoming prime minister on March 31, 2009 for the second time (earlier serving from June 1996 - July 1999), Netanyahu's hardline coalition government enacted measures repressive enough to make some right-of-center politicians blush. At the same time, left-of-center ones worry where Israel is heading, a direction they very much oppose.

Already, Netanyahu's gone a long way toward wrecking Israeli society, similar to what Obama's done to America, handing it more than ever to wealth and power interests, especially bankers, war profiteers and militarists.

Moreover, Congress and Israel's Knesset enacted numerous hardline measures. This article discusses a new one MKs will now consider called, "Basic Act: Israel - the State of the Jewish Nation," not one for all its people.

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Stephen Lendman

Israeli Palestinian "suspect" publicly assaulted by police

What do you call a country that persecutes occupied people and one-fifth of its own population for not being Jewish? An illegal occupier for over 44 years, suffocating over 1.6 million Gazans under siege! A nation practicing torture, persecution, and racism as official policies! A modern day Sparta, glorifying wars and violence!

A country spurning rule of law principles! An unparalleled regional state terrorist! A nuclear armed global threat! A society of extreme social inequality! A nation with no legitimacy for all of the above reasons, besides having stolen another people's nation violently!

It's called Eretz Yisrael - Israel, a nation where thousands of fed up Jews vote with their feet and leave regularly. Like America, Israel isn't fit to live in. One day perhaps that will be its epitaph.

Many Jews and analysts believe Zionism is destroying Judaism. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel explained how it fosters

"imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy," adding that it turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses."

Author Alan Hart calls Zionism "the real enemy of the Jews," an ideology contemptuous of moral and ethical principles. Others call it corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful, espousing violence, not peaceful coexistence.

Nations living by the sword in the end die by it. Israel and America aren't exceptions. They've, in fact, partnered on a self-destructive mission, perhaps taking planet earth with them before they're through.

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Ellen Brown

A message from Ben Bernanke to the cattle of the globe...

What just happened in the stock market? Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell by at least 400 points for four straight days, a stock market first.

The worst drop was on Monday, 8-8-11, when the Dow plunged 624 points. Monday was the first day of trading after US Treasury bonds were downgraded from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor’s.

But the roller coaster actually began on Tuesday, 8-2-11, the day after the last-minute deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling -- a deal that was supposed to avoid the downgrade that happened anyway five days later. The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions after that, another first.

The volatility was unprecedented, leaving analysts at a loss to explain it. High frequency program trading no doubt added to the wild swings, but why the daily reversals? Why didn’t the market head down and just keep going, as it did in September 2008?

The plunge on 8-8-11 was the worst since 2008 and the sixth largest stock market crash ever. According to Der Spiegel, one of the most widely read periodicals in Europe:

Many economists have been pointing out that last week's panic resembled the fear that swept financial markets after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Then as now, banks stopped lending each other money. Then as now, banks' cash deposits at the central bank doubled within days.

On Tuesday, August 9, however, the market gained more points from its low than it lost on Monday. Why? A tug of war seemed to be going on between two titanic forces, one bent on crashing the market, the other on propping it up.

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William Bowles

At 9.22 the Brixton shopping centre appeared almost calm by comparison to Railton Road. Rubbish was strewn across the main A23 Brixton Road; burglar alarms rang vainly from looted shops; and knots of youths, black and white, drifted along in the almost complete absence of police.” – ‘Eyewitness: Looters moved in as the flames spread’

No, not Brixton in August 2011 but Brixton on 13 April 1981 as reported by the The Times. “Absence of police” eh? Now we’ve all heard this somewhere else quite recently, so what’s changed that made it such an issue this time round?

Ah, I see, it’s the ‘law and order’ posse calling for tougher policing, even importing a NYC cop to bash some heads.

What a depressing state of affairs. The media, like some slavering pack of wolves, eager for blood has descended on our dispossessed and demonized them some more. It’s like something out of the worst of the Victorian period, where to be poor was literally regarded as a crime and treated as such.

It is not for communists to condemn the riots. They are a sign of capitalism’s crisis and decay. [...] So long as capitalism continues on its downward spiral of crisis with the rich getting richer and the poorest more and more excluded there will be more and more explosions like these. The race is on for the revival of a really liberating movement of the working class to present an alternative to capitalist barbarism. –’Driving People into Rebellion‘, Stephen Harper, Dissident Voice

Two thousand people arrested and all just to make a point. Courts working around the clock to make an example of anybody who dares challenge the status quo, no matter how chaotic and self-destructive such cries of rage are. History is littered with such spontaneous rebellions, all of which are symptoms of a much deeper malaise but clearly it’s a malaise that the political class do not want to confront, dare not confront, else they would be forced to deal with the conditions that they themselves have created.

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John Pilger

Bankers loot the Treasury, MPs fiddle their expenses . . . and then the establishment turns on deprived young people in England’s inner cities and calls them criminals. The August disturbances weren’t riots: they were the revolt of the working class.

On a warm spring day, strolling in south London, I heard demanding voices behind me. A police van disgorged a posse of six or more who waved me aside. They surrounded a young black man who, like me, was ambling along. They rifled through his pockets, looked in his shoes, inspected his teeth. Their thuggery affirmed, they let him go with the barked warning there would be a next time.

For the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and patronage and poverty that is modern Britain - mostly the black, the marginalised and resentful, the envious and hopeless - there is never surprise. Their relationship with authority is integral to their obsolescence as young adults. Half of all black British youth between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed, the result of deliberate policies since Margaret Thatcher oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in British history. Forget plasma TVs; this was pano­ramic looting.

Such is the truth of David Cameron's "sick society", notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral "pocket": the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and the super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions. This is fast becoming unmentionable as we succumb to propaganda once described by the American black leader Malcolm X thus: "If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing."

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Stephen Lendman

Voting for any Republican or Democrat - for president, Congress, state or local office - is wasting it, defiling your own welfare. Unless duopoly power ends, Americans won't be free, safe or equitably treated.

Consider the unpalatable 2012 options, a choice between:

• a so far unopposed lawless/crime boss/militarist/pro-war/anti-populist president; and
• a rogue's gallery of Republican aspirants, looking more like a police lineup than legitimate candidates for any office, let alone the nation's highest.

The one exception, Ron Paul, is ignored by America's media and for the following reasons:

(1) He advocates abolishing the Federal Reserve, owned and run by Wall Street. In fact, several times in Congress, he introduced the Federal Reserve Abolition Act. With no co-sponsors, no further action followed.

Yet, restoring sound money and a healthy economy requires Fed abolition, returning money creation power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates (Article I, Section 8).

(2) He also wants squandering America's resources on imperial wars ended, using the nation's wealth instead for productive economic growth.

(3) In addition, he opposes police state laws like the USA Patriot Act, though not for all the right reasons. Key for him is loss of personal privacy.

(4) While advocating free trade, he's against NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other one-sided FTAs, serving special interests, not everyone equitably.

(5) He calls the war on drugs "costly and ineffective, while creating terrible violent crime." True enough, but it's much worse, largely responsible for creating the world's largest gulag, mostly filled with nonviolent inmates, deserving reprimands and perhaps fines at most, not prison time.

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Gilad Atzmon

The Fairy tale: Settling in "The Promised Land". Aliyah.
The reality: Click on image to find out. Warning: it might
upset you to do so. More reality here, here, here and here.

"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them." ~ Baruch Spinoza

Daniel Cohen (fictitious name) is deeply admired by many. He is a humanist, an anti Zionist and he is also a man of great integrity. A week ago, Daniel decided to challenge my views, and launched a courageous debate. Being a gracious man he might have hoped to open my eyes to some ‘categorical mistakes’ he believed I was making. For my part, I was very open to his criticism and engaged in the dialogue.

Daniel was not happy with the way the exchange has evolved. Though he circulated his comments and my interventions to his close Jewish friends, he made it clear that he wanted to stop the exchange at a certain stage. Daniel was very angry with me. He also made it clear that he did not want me to publish the exchange of views. As I always do in such cases, I suggested that together, we should edit the debate, but he refused. Respecting Daniel’s request for anonymity, I have now re-edited the text myself, concealing Daniel’s real name, removing all sections and biographical references that could reveal Daniel’s identity. Occasionally, I have re-phrased Daniel’s comments for purpose of continuity and clarity, but I have faithfully retained his meaning.[*]

Unlike Daniel, I believe that issues to do with Jewish history and Jewish ideology must be discussed openly and without fear.

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Medea Benjamin & Charles Davis

Since coming to Washington, Barack Obama has won a Nobel Prize for Peace, but he hasn't been much of a peacemaker. Instead, he has doubled down on his predecessor's wars while launching blatantly illegal ones of his own. But, as his supporters would be quick to point out, at least he's standing by his pledge to bring the troops home from Iraq. - Right?

That's certainly what America's latest war president has been saying. Speaking to supporters this month, he was unequivocal.

“If somebody asks about the war [in Iraq] . . . you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year.”

Obama's statement was a welcome reaffirmation of what he promised on the campaign trail:

"If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do,” he thundered in the fall of 2007. “I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

But don’t count on cashing that check. The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year – re-branded, naturally, as a mission of “training” and “support.” The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.

As with any relationship, saying goodbye is always the hardest part for an empire. The U.S. political establishment has long desired a foothold in the Middle East from which it could exert influence over the trade of the region's natural resources. Remember, Iraq has lots of oil, as those who launched the invasion of the country in 2003 were all too aware. They aren't too keen on giving that up.

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Bill Van Auken

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Profes-
sor of History at the University of Michigan. (IC)

More people have already died in the US-NATO war against Libya than were ever killed by Gaddafi’s repression, and the threat of a far greater massacre is looming. Whatever Cole says now, he has blood on his hands.

Last week, Professor Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle Eastern history, posted a comment on his Informed Comment blog slandering the World Socialist Web Site with the lie that we support efforts by the Gaddafi regime to reconquer the east of Libya and would welcome a massacre of Libyan civilians.

On August 10, the World Socialist Web Site issued “An open letter to Professor Juan Cole: A reply to a slander,” answering Cole’s lies and demanding that he post a “full and public retraction” on Informed Comment.

On August 11, we received the following emailed reply from Cole:

“Hi. I hope you will stop supporting the murderous Qaddafi regime and attacking people who want the people of Benghazi to be safe from him.
cheers,
Juan”

This is the kind of response one would expect from someone who is drunk. In Cole’s case, however, this would be an unduly charitable interpretation.

The reality is that he is incapable of articulating any coherent defense of his position. Cole’s one-sentence reply merely reiterates his original slander without adding a word of substantiation.

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