Q: Who is set to financially benefit from the sacrifices of the 99% (okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that many, but you know what I mean) of Libyans who risked their lives in the revolution? A: The 1% of American and European CEOs, especially the fossil fuel industry:
The guns in Libya have barely quieted, and NATO’s military assistance to the rebellion that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi will not end officially until Monday. But a new invasion force is already plotting its own landing on the shores of Tripoli. Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya…
Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves, which eventually should mean a steady supply of cash.
Remember the “no blood for oil” anti-Iraq War slogan from nine years ago? Seems like the U.S., U.K., France, and their allies paid heed. No Western blood was spilled – only Libyan! – for The West (under cover of NATO bombing) to gain access to this impoverished country’s fossil fuel reserves.
Whatever one thinks of The West’s role in this revolution, it should not have a free pass to engage in more oil imperialism. Soon enough, the “99%” of Libyans may well be marching in the streets, demanding an eviction of the American and European oil-garchies. #OCCUPYLIBYA, coming soon?
It seems to me the plan was to first send in the Wall Street banksters, then the US army, and take cover behind the Arab league and the other Nato gangsters to finish off Gadafi and make it look like all this being done in support of a national liberation movement to the gullible masses at home and abroad:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/how-goldmans-cost-gaddafi-a-13bn-fortune-2291506.html
It’s always the same story
The highly decorated US Navy General Butler blew the whistle in the 1930s, with the publication of his anti-war classic “War is a Racket” (1935), and lecture tours in the futile hope to prevent Americans from being sucked into another world war by FDR. WW II was the same old deal and got the US out of the Depression. Excerpts from Butler’s book and lectures:
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”
“Until 1898 we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became “internationally minded.” We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.”
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/7/27/a_victory_in_the_war_against_profiteering
another classic:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=Q0amI9GmIe8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=wall+street+and+hitler&hl=en&ei=12CtTpKpHsTl0QHJ6LXBDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Samantha Power is the policy wonk on the Obama team who uses what happened in Bosnia in the early 90s to jerk the US into acting “to prevent genocide.”
This was the trigger for US intervention in Libya in March after Gadaffi threatened Benghazi.
This is what the West did to Sirte
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27092
Over 50,000 people were killed since the drones went in.
US foreign policy is a sick joke .
And BTW it is illegal under US law to take part in the killing of a foreign head of state.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/27/handwringing-doublethink-killing-of-gaddafi
There is no point in Philip Hammond blaming the Libyans for the death of Gaddafi (Report, 24 October). The Gaddafi convoy was hit by a US drone. But for the drone, the Gaddafi convoy would have left Sirte unscathed. The convoy was leaving the scene and was not engaged in hostilities, so the attack was contrary to the Geneva convention. It is little surprise that the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has called for a UN inquiry. It is illegal under US law for the US to be involved in the killing of a foreign head of state. Obama should be held responsible.
Terri Jackson
Bangor, County Down
a few amendments to your fine article, Matthew Taylor:
Libya WAS NOT an “impoverished country.” Libya was a “resource cursed” country, defined as (from the West’s pov), too abundant a resource, badly managed.
More technically described (and 100% applicable to why Libyan workers, who were actually pretty comfortable, had subsidized education & health care, were young, intelligent, and educated, had to be reduced to serfs in the Western system) Libya had “Dutch disease:”
Follow the money-oil-currency exchange loop, which inexorably and to the overall huge benefit of United States and Wall Street, passes through a dollar-conversion factory somewhere in the bowels of Wall Street banks, and you will discover that the NATO intervention in Libya and the disgraceful sodomizing and snuffing of Qaddafi was more closely connected to the banksters that OWS is protesting than to a faux “freedom” and “democracy” movement.
Another amendment to your article: Libyans did not really start a major “revolution” for their “freedom;” check out this gutsy journalist and her reports on what really went on and is going on in Libya:
Well well well — I was going to link to youtubes of Lizzy Phelan, which I watched two or three days ago, but guess what, “Harry Fear” claims a “copyright violation.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vyrwhz2ugU
me suspects Harry is aFEARed of too much truthiness.
i suppose this explains why we aren’t seeing a similar adventure into syria…
Oh, this website is full of veiled anti-Blairites and anti-Britishism! The poison you spread by maskerading, with facts and logic, a true peaceful endeavour over multiple years. Disgusting!
Just read The Times (London) issue of October 25, 2011, which printed the letters by “Charles” (June 7, 2007. He is UKs prince to the throne) and “Tony” (June 20, 2007. Then UK PM Blair). Read he glory of the First Blairian Libyan Revolution they brought about years ago.
Even The Times in London says, emphasis added:
See? Thanks Tony.