Stephen Lendman

As part of a Libya international observer team, Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya headlined his July 5 Global Research.ca article, "NATO War Crimes: Depleted Uranium Found in Libya by Scientists," saying:

Sites targeted include "civilians and civilian infrastructure." Scientists from the Surveying and Collecting Specimens and Laboratory Measuring Group confirmed "radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes) at bombed sites" from field surveys conducted. Scientific analysis was conducted at the Nuclear Energy Institution of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

It showed that "several sites contain even higher than expected doses of uranium," including holes from NATO missiles and ordnance fragments. In interviews, Nazemroaya also said cluster bombs and other weapons are used freely in civilian neighborhoods targeting non-military sites.

Washington and NATO allies are using illegal "dirty bombs."

In late March, the Stop the War Coalition said dozens of US, UK, and French launched bombs and missiles against Libya in the first 24 hours all had DU warheads. They continue to be used daily despite Pentagon and other governments' denials.

On April 14, Foreign Policy in Focus columnist Conn Hallinan told Press TV that:

"The fact that the US is denying the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions is just nonsense." When used against tanks, "enormous fireballs" are visible, a unique DU signature. As a result, "long-term consequences (for Libyans) are going to be severe."

More on that and DU munitions below.

On April 19, investigative journalist/author Dave Lindorff also told Press TV that strong evidence points to DU use, saying:

"The way some of these (armored) vehicles and tanks have been hit look like it's pretty strong evidence that it is depleted uranium. It's the kind of explosive burn that you get from that particular ammunition. And certainly the US has been flying A-10s, which generally use (DU) shells in their armaments."

On June 6, historian/researcher Dr. Randy Short repeated the same charge, telling Press TV viewers that NATO targeted Tripoli residential areas with DU weapons, cluster bombs, and other illegal substances. Back from Tripoli, he said:

"I've been to one particular area....in which Seif al-Islam Gaddafi's house is located, and in that community which was residential, I saw the damage to civilian homes."

He added that high numbers of civilian deaths and injuries emboldened Libyans to resist Western imperialism.

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Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org

Mohamed Siala receiving the Voltaire Network team of investigators.
© Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya / Réseau Voltaire

One of the motives for the war against Libya is to stop the development of the black continent, to enable the setting up of an AfriCom military base in Cyrenaica and to begin the colonial exploitation of Africa for the benefit of the United States. In order to understand this hidden agenda, Voltaire Network interviewed Mohamed Siala, Co-operation Minister and Manager of Libya’s sovereign wealth fund.

Voltaire Network: Your country is gas and oil rich. The Libyan Investment Authority manages an accumulated capital estimated at 70 billion dollars. What use are you making of this bonanza?

Mohamed Siala: We possess a significant amount of resources, but they are non renewable. We have therefore set up the Libyan Investment Authority to protect the wealth of future generations, following Norway’s example. A portion of these funds are dedicated to the development of Africa. This means that 6 billion dollars have been invested in African development shares, i.e. agriculture, tourism, commerce, mines, etc…

The remaining funds have been invested in various sectors, countries, currencies all over the world, including the USA and Germany. This, unfortunately, is what enabled them to freeze our assets.

Voltaire Network: Technically, how was the freeze carried out?

Mohamed Siala: The assets freeze is governed by the banking regulations of the country where they are invested. The rule is that they block our bank accounts, but we sometimes can get them unblocked if we take the litigation to the UN Claims Committee and provided we can prove they were destined for specific uses. For example, I have just pleaded for the unfreezing of funds earmarked to pay scholarships to 1200 students that we sent to Malysia. We are trying to do the same for everything that relates to social allowances or the hospitalization expenses of our citizens abroad.

We are sometimes allowed to use funds to buy food or medicine. This is, in principle, our right but many are refusing to unfreeze the necessary funds or are dragging their feet. For example, the Italian State rejects any use of our assets. In Germany, while the State authorizes their use for humanitarian purposes, it is sometimes the banks that refuse to unfreeze the necessary funds. The interpretations of the resolution are entirely different depending on each State. What we demand is a clear rule: what is permitted is authorised and what is not is forbidden. Right now, the interpretation is political and might prevails over right.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article on Syria quoted Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, explaining Washington's longstanding plan to "creat(e) an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan."

He explained it also includes redrawing the Eurasian map, balkanizing or reconfiguring countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, perhaps Baltic states, the entire Persian Gulf, Syria, Lebanon, and, of course, Libya to assure Western control of its valued resources, besides already having created three Iraqs. The strategy involves "divid(ing) and conquer(ing to serve) Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region."

Currently it's playing out violently in Libya, addressed in numerous previous articles as Western intervention heads closer to invasion, knowing air strikes alone can't topple Gaddafi unless a "lucky" one kills him. It's a key administration goal despite official denials, while defending the right to bomb his compound having no other purpose than assassination.

Notably on April 26, Los Angeles Times writer David Cloud headlined, "NATO widens air war in Libya, targeting key sites in Tripoli," saying:

Predator drones are being used "to strike directly at the pillars of the regime, including (Gaddafi), in the heart of Tripoli," according to a senior NATO officer, explaining:

a shift, absolutely. We're picking up attacks on these command-and-control facilities. If (Gaddafi) happens to be in one of those buildings, all the better," stopping short of saying he, in fact, is the target.

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Stephen Lendman

American intervention assures "constructive chaos," the agenda Washington pursues globally, focusing mainly on controlling Eurasia's enormous wealth and resources. Either one or multiple countries at a time, it includes turning Russia and China into vassal states, a goal neither Beijing or Moscow will tolerate.

Despite genuine popular Middle East/North Africa uprisings, Washington's dirty hands orchestrated regime change plans in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria as part of its "New Middle East" project.

On November 18, 2006, Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's Global Research article headlined, "Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a 'New Middle East,' " saying:

In June 2006 in Tel Aviv, "US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (first) coin(ed) the term" in place of the former "Greater Middle East" project, a shift in rhetoric only for Washington's longstanding imperial aims.

The new terminology "coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean." During Israel's summer 2006 Lebanon war, "Prime Minister Olmert and (Rice) informed the international media that a project for a 'New Middle East' was being launched in Lebanon," a plan in the works for years to "creat(e) an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan."

In other words, "constructive chaos" would be used to redraw the region according to US-Israeli "geo-strategic needs and objectives." The strategy is currently playing out violently in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, and may erupt anywhere in the region to solidify Washington's aim for unchallengeable dominance from Morocco to Oman to Syria.

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Stephen Lendman

In his book, "Winning Modern Wars," General Wesley Clark said Pentagon sources told him two months after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Months earlier, they were finalized against Afghanistan.

Clark added:

"And what about the real sources of terrorists - US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn't it repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia?"

"It seemed that we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy - encouraging what could look like a 'clash of civilizations' - not a good strategy for winning the war on terror."

Since insurgency in Libya began, reports of a ground invasion circulated despite no UN authorization and official denials.

On April 1, they gained credence after release of an EUFOR Libya (European Union Force) decision from Brussels, saying:

"The Council has adopted today the decision, underpinning the mandates of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973, establishing an operation, called 'EUFOR Libya' in order to stand ready to support humanitarian assistance in the region, if requested by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)."

In fact, "humanitarian assistance" is code language for aggression, invasion, colonization, and balkanization for profit and imperial control of the entire Mediterranean Basin. Libya, Syria, and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon are the last links to complete it, suggesting after Libya's conquest, Syria and perhaps Lebanon may be next.

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Stephen Lendman

An F-16 jet fighter flies over the NATO airbase in Aviano,
Italy, Sunday, March 20, 2011. (Photo: Luca Bruno)

Masquerading as "humanitarian intervention," Washington launched full-force barbarism on six million Libyans, all endangered by America's latest intervention. More on how below.

Beginning March 19, it was visible. However, months of planning preceded it, including US and UK special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground enlisting, inciting, funding, arming and supporting violent insurrection to oust Gaddafi and replace him with a Washington-controlled puppet like in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The script is familiar, playing out now in Libya - full-scale "imperial barbarism," a term James Petras used in a September 2010 article titled, "Imperialism and Imperial Barbarism," saying:

"The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war," including:

● use of mass destruction weapons, unleashed on Libya as explained below;
● targeting the entire country and society; and
● dismantling "the entire civil and military apparatus of the state," replacing it with "colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps" - puppets, figures As'ad AbuKhalil calls "useful idiots."

Moreover, as Petras explains:

"The entire modern professional class is targeted (and) replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is" disrupted by "shock and awe" bombings and ground attacks, affecting essential civilian infrastructure on the pretext of destroying military and "dual use" targets.

As a result, mass casualties follow, many post-conflict from disease, homelessness, starvation, depravation, and environmental contamination. All wars are ugly, especially modern ones Washington wages, unleashing full force human and overall destruction, mostly affecting noncombatant men, women and children - imperialism's hidden victims.

Already, unknown hundreds of Libyans have been killed, wounded, or disabled, besides countless numbers affected overall. Expect much worse ahead, including violent, US-backed proxy insurgence, perhaps later joined by Pentagon troops if current air and ground attacks don't accomplish "Operation Odyssey Dawn's" objectives.

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Stephen Lendman

On March 19, ironically on the eighth anniversary of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," a White House Office of the Press Secretary quoted Obama saying:

"Today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to (attack) Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians," he, in fact, doesn't give a damn about. "That action has now begun," he added, claiming military action was a last resort.

In fact, it was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including target selections, strategy, enlisting political and public support, troop deployments, and post-conflict plans.

Weeks, maybe months in advance, Special Forces, CIA agents, and UK SAS operatives were in Libya, enlisting, inciting, funding, and arming so-called anti-Gaddafi opposition forces, ahead of Western aggression for imperial control. More on it below.

A March 19 Department of Defense (DOD) Armed Forces Press Service release announced America's led "Operation Odyssey Dawn," saying:

"Coalition (of the willing) forces launched "Operation Odyssey Dawn" today to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to protect the Libyan people from the country's ruler....Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people."

False! In fact, Washington-led naked aggression was launched to replace one despot with another, perhaps assassinate Gaddafi, his sons and top officials, colonize Libya, control its oil, gas and other resources, exploit its people, private state industries under Western (mainly US) control, establish new Pentagon bases, use them for greater regional dominance, perhaps balkanize the country like Yugoslavia and Iraq, and prevent any democratic spark from emerging.

According to DODspeak, Libya is being attacked, its people killed, civilian targets destroyed, and a humanitarian disaster created to save it. In other words, "destroying the village to save it" on a nationwide scale like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s, and Korea in the 1950s since WW II alone. Besides numerous proxy wars in Central America, Africa and elsewhere. Wherever America shows up, blood spills followed by horrific human suffering, what Libyans can now expect.

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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research

Is Tripoli being set up for a civil war to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention in oil-rich Libya? Are the talks about sanctions a prelude to an Iraq-like intervention?

Something is Rotten in the so-called “Jamahiriya” of Libya

There is no question that Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi (Al-Qaddafi) is a dictator. He has been the dictator and so-called “qaid” of Libya for about 42 years. Yet, it appears that tensions are being ratcheted up and the flames of revolt are being fanned inside Libya. This includes earlier statements by the British Foreign Secretary William Hague that Colonel Qaddafi had fled Libya to Venezuela. [1] This statement served to electrify the revolt against Qaddafi and his regime in Libya.

Although all three have dictatorship in common, Qaddafi’s Libya is quite different from Ben Ali’s Tunisia or Mubarak’s Egypt. The Libyan leadership is not outright subservient to the United States and the European Union. Unlike the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, the relationship that exists between Qaddafi and both the U.S. and E.U. is a modus vivendi. Simply put, Qaddafi is an independent Arab dictator and not a “managed dictator” like Ben Ali and Mubarak.

In Tunisia and Egypt the status quo prevails, the military machine and neo-liberalism remain intact; this works for the interests of the United States and the European Union. In Libya, however, upsetting the established order is a U.S. and E.U. objective.

The U.S. and the E.U. now seek to capitalize on the revolt against Qaddafi and his dictatorship with the hopes of building a far stronger position in Libya than ever before. Weapons are also being brought into Libya from its southern borders to promote revolt. The destabilization of Libya would also have significant implications for North Africa, West Africa, and global energy reserves.

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Stephen Lendman

"Outrageous misreporting persists, blowing the violence out of proportion to justify foreign intervention. It's coming - Washington-led naked aggression justified as "humanitarian intervention." ~ Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

"In fact, it's imperial lawlessness against another target before advancing to the next one." ~ Stephen Lendman

When imperial America wants war, peace advocates are shut out by official rhetoric and hawkish media reports supporting militarism, not diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Those for it aren't heard. Hugo Chavez's government is one. On February 28, Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Nicolas Maduro, warned against belligerence saying:

"We would be against any military intervention against the Arabic people of Libya, and I'm sure that all peoples of the world would support a struggle against any interventionism that some powerful countries would commit against it....Arabic people who are in a process of rebellion, seeking a better destiny, (can) find their way to peace. (Venezuelans understand) very difficult times, (but have) gone about finding our ways to independence, democracy, and freedom, which in our case" is Bolarivarianism.

"Just as we were against the invasion of Iraq and the massacre of the Palestinian people of Gaza, we would be against any military (attack or) invasion of Libya."

Chavez added:

[We] "want peace for this country and for the peoples of the world. Those who immediately condemn Libya don't talk about (Israel's) bombing (of Gaza, America assault on) Fallujah, and the thousands and thousands of deaths including children, women, and whole families. They are quiet about the bombing and massacres in Iraq, in Afghanistan, so they don't have the right to condemn anyone," [especially from unverified reports.]

Amidst hawkish official rhetoric and supportive media reports, Chavez and Maduro are shut out, unheard voices in the wilderness outside Venezuela and parts of Latin America.

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Stephen Lendman

On October 21, 2008, for the first time in school history, the University of Ottawa (U of O) Faculty of Science, without cause, deregistered undergraduate Marc Kelly, an exemplary student, expelling him for the semester and preventing him from completing the final three courses he needed to graduate. The official email sent him read:

"The Faculty of Science has been asked to deregister you. (This) message is to notify you that you are no longer registered...."

The official reason was the Department of Physics' displeasure over the nature and methods of his valid, legitimate research, twice secretly rejecting it, then informing him through pro forma letters saying,

"It is common sense that (your research) has to use physics tools and physics knowledge."

Kelly was never contacted or questioned. When he tried approaching Physics Chair Bela Joos for an explanation, he refused to see him, suggesting this action wasn't over academic performance, but for publicly supporting tenured Professor Denis Rancourt, unfairly fired as explained below and in detail in an early April article titled, "Targeting Academic and Speech Freedoms: The Case of Canadian Professor Denis Rancourt."

In March 2009, it was for his political activism - specifically, courageously supporting oppressed Palestinians, criticizing the university's refusal to academically boycott Israel, and gallantly backing what U of O officials and President Allan Rock opposed - a former Canadian politician, UN ambassador, and staunch Israeli supporter.

Affected also was Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, student and former Fulcrum Publishing Society (FPS) Ombudsman (U of O's English-language student newspaper) until his March 2010 Board of Directors dismissal for supporting Rancourt, criticizing offensive FPS reports about him, refusing to stay quiet and go along, and confronting Business Manager Frank Appleyard's violation of FPS rules by simultaneously working for President Allan Rock and the FPS. His case was discussed in an April article titled, "Targeting Activist University of Ottawa Students."

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