Stephen Lendman

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (Sword of Islam) Gaddafi embodies the
hopes of a new future for Libya and the Middle East.

October 20 events didn't liberate Libya. It's the beginning, not end, of protracted struggle perhaps for years.

Muammar Gaddafi was bigger than life. His spirit inspires Libyans and others wanting freedom - not terror bombing, occupation, colonization, pillaging, exploitation, and misery.

NATO's war on Libya is one of history's great crimes. Democratic values and truth never had a chance. Responsibility to protect duplicity terrorized and massacred civilians like crazed assassins.

Terror bombing continues daily. So do unspeakable rebel rat atrocities and ravaging Libya's landscape.

NATO is a rogue killing machine. Coalition partners are complicit in mass murder. Obama, Clinton and those around them are war criminals multiple times over.

Gratuitous slaughter, mass destruction, barbarism, lawlessness, and pillaging define their agenda. Libya was raped for profit and regional dominance. No one anywhere should tolerate imperial lawlessness on a scale beyond measure.

Jamahiriya freedom fighters won't quit until their mother of all struggles is won. With or without Gaddafi, they'll go on or die trying. Libya belongs to them, not NATO. Exorcising NATO's killing machine is job one.

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David Rieff

Libyans may be celebrating the killing of Muammar al-Qaddafi, but you'd better believe that Western governments are breathing a sigh of relief themselves.

Whether the NATO countries -- who had only a few years ago welcomed Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi back into the international fold in exchange for his renouncing his chemical and nuclear weapons programs and allowing U.S. and British experts to come and help dismantle them -- played any role in what certainly appeared in first reports from the scene to have been the summary execution of the Libyan dictator will probably never be known. What the video evidence does prove is that the Libyan revolutionary forces did not find him already dead or killed by a NATO airstrike; nor does the initial claim that he was killed in "crossfire" between insurgent forces and diehard regime loyalists stand up to even the most minimal scrutiny.

NATO does acknowledge that its planes bombarded the convoy in which Qaddafi was fleeing the city of Sirte shortly before it was intercepted on the ground by the insurgents, but it has denied it even knew he was there. If that is true, and the French, British, and Americans did not try to make their own luck, then they certainly were very lucky indeed.

Qaddafi was, quite simply, a man who knew too much. Taken alive, he would have almost certainly have been handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had indicted him -- along with his son, Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law and military intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi (whereabouts unknown) -- for crimes against humanity in late June. Imagine the stir he would have made in The Hague. There, along with any number of fantasies and false accusations, he would almost certainly have revealed the extent of his intimate relations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the details of his government's collaboration with Western intelligence services in counterterrorism, with the European Union in limiting migration from Libyan shores, and in the granting of major contracts to big Western oil and construction firms.

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Stephen Lendman

Global Depression grips world economies. Destructive polices fueled today's crisis. Conditions are fast coming to a head.

Throwing good money after bad delays decision day at the price of far greater trouble on arrival. D-Day will shake world economies. It may, in fact, be months away, perhaps in 2012.

No one knows for sure, but things that can't go on forever won't, and when they end, watch out. Ordinary people will be hurt most, much more than already.

Perhaps Greece is the canary in the coal mine. The country's bankrupt. Only its obituary isn't written. Its citizens are being impoverished. Anger rages in Athens. Revolutionary sentiment may explode any time, sending shock waves across Europe.

Trends analyst Gerald Celente says when people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it.

Greek citizens are close to losing it. Others in troubled countries aren't far behind, including in America where growing thousands rage against a system destroying their livelihoods and futures.

Fixing it demands direct action. Focusing on core issues is key, and knowing bottom-up change only is possible, never the other way. Entrenched corporate and political interests don't yield.

Sustained pressure is crucial. Today's struggle is the mother of them all. Change won't come easily or quickly. Minimally it will take years to remake what's too corrupted and broken to fix.

Ripping it down and starting over is essential. American and Eurozone workers are on their own to do it. They're in for the fight of their lives. Odds are greatly stacked against them, but the stakes are too important to back down.

Money power in private hands must change. People must get back what's rightfully theirs. America's Constitution mandates it. Enforcing it is crucial. Doing so makes everything else possible. Without it, expect failure.

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Stephen Lendman

No one is safe under occupation. Middle-of-the-night arrests and detention threaten everyone. Children especially are affected. Many never recover from their ordeal. Pay less attention to what Israel says and focus on what it does daily. Palestinians call it brutalizing state terror.

In mid-October, Netanyahu's cabinet agreed to free 1,027 Palestinian political prisoners in two waves (including 27 women and nearly 300 children) in return for Hamas releasing Gilad Shalit after over five years in captivity.

Wave one is completed, freeing 477 Palestinians. In two months, phase two will release another 550. According to terms, 203 will be deported, 40 exiled overseas, and 163 expelled to Gaza.

Currently, Israel still holds over 5,000 detainees. As a result of torture, medical neglect, or assassinations, over 200 died martyrs in captivity. Another 302 are called "veteran detainees," serving 17 years or longer.

Another 136 serving 20 years or more are called "Deans of Detainees." "Generals of Patience" is a term applied to prisoners incarcerated over 25 years. As of October, they number 41.

On October 18, Ma'an News reported Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouq saying Israel agreed to lift Gaza's siege in return for releasing Shalit.

He "told Palestine TV that Israel had used Shalit as a pretext to blockade Gaza but there (were) 'unofficial agreements' to end it during talks with a German mediator."

According to Abu Marzouq, "This was confirmed in the last negotiations."

For years it's been known that security wasn't why Israel imposed it, despite disingenuous public statements. Israel blockaded Gaza in mid-2006, then hardened its siege a year later.

Despite assurances of ending it now, Israel may renege by reinterpreting terms. Many times it says one thing and does another. Its promises are hollow and disingenuous.

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