Accounts here differ. According to some fighters quoted after the event, he begged his captors not to shoot. Others say he asked of one: "What did I do to you?" But it is what happened next that is the source of controversy.

What is certain from several of the clips of video footage – most telling that shot by Ali Algadi – is that Gaddafi was dazed but still alive, although possibly already fatally wounded. The question is what happens between this and later images of a lifeless Gaddafi lying on the ground having his shirt stripped off and propped in the back of a pickup truck and the next sequence which shows him dead.

Here the accounts differ wildly. According to one fighter, caught on camera, he was shot in the stomach with a 9mm pistol. According to doctors not present at his capture and ambulance staff, Gaddafi was shot in the head. Some NTC officials have said anonymously he was "killed after capture", while others have said he was killed after capture in a crossfire.

If there are suspicions that Gaddafi was summarily killed, already raised by Amnesty and UN human rights officials, they have been deepened by the death, too, of his son Mo'atissim in even more dubious circumstances. He was filmed alive but wounded smoking a cigarette and drinking from a bottle of water, before the announcement that he also had died.

On Saturday, in the cold storage unit where Gaddafi's body was being stored as the family demanded its release for burial, those filing in to film his corpse were less bothered about how he had died than the legacy of his 42-year rule. "There's something in our hearts we want to get out," Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, told Reuters as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."

And in confirming that Gaddafi is no more, the Libyan people want to bring the final curtain down on his tyranny.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/23/gaddafi-last-words-begged-mercy

--------------------

Not all the Libyans, mind you, wanted to get rid of Gaddafi. It's mostly those who were encouraged by the west to revolt for no other reason than to reach the nirvanas of  "freedom alla Americana" — which in short means destruction and hatred of each other until your economy is in tatters and you are now slave of the US, while still fighting each others for god.

A "surgical strike" would have done no better, because the plan was to destroy the place and steal the oil... cheap.

 

Trump of Madness

Finian Cunningham

Presidential contender Hillary Clinton has warned that if her Republican rival Donald Trump makes it to the White House, it’s time to kiss goodnight to the world.

Paradoxically, it is Hillary “the voice of reason” Clinton who is the proven warmonger and who would more likely be a bigger threat to world security. Less Commander-in-Chief, and more Commander-in-Grief.

That the Western mainstream media can invert that fact shows how twisted and unreliable their “information” is.

Democrat Clinton came out rhetorical guns blazing this week, excoriating the billionaire property tycoon for espousing “dangerously incoherent” ideas on foreign policy; and that his “bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies” would spark a nuclear war.

“This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear [weapons] codes — because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin,” Clinton said to rapturous applause at a rally in California. 

Trump is Right and Clinton is Wrong: Americans Tired of Being World Police
Let’s be clear. This columnist is no fan of Donald J Trump. The real estate magnate's views on international politics are as dodgy as a business degree from his so-called Trump University.
But one thing that can be said in Trump’s favor with regard to Clinton is this: he is not responsible for inciting a catalog of wars and millions of deaths in the way that Hillary Clinton actually has.

Clinton’s track record as US First Lady, when her husband Bill was in the White House in the 1990s, followed by her years as a Senator, and then as US Secretary of State has accumulated enough evidence that would arguably allow her to be convicted as one of the biggest war criminals in recent times.

She's publicly admitted to exhorting her husband to launch an illegal NATO war in the Balkans when US warplanes bombed Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, in 1999. That led to the unlawful secession of Kosovo, which today is a “breeding ground” of jihadist terrorism and Mafia corruption, according to a recent report in the New York Times. It was the Clintons more than any other international figures who created the failed state of Kosovo and the current instability in the Balkans – on the doorstep of Europe and Russia.
As a congressional Senator, Hillary Clinton backed both the illegal US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which not only caused more than a million deaths and destroyed those societies, but in addition those wars exploded the phenomenon of jihadist terrorism across the globe.

In her failed bid for the US presidency back in 2008 against Barack Obama, Clinton warned that she would order the “obliteration” of Iran in order to defend Israel if she were to become Commander-in-Chief. She was obviously alluding to her willingness to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran, yet this is the same person who says that Donald Trump should not be let anywhere near the nuclear keys to America’s arsenal.

Clinton’s Efforts to Oust Gaddafi Led to Rise of Daesh - Bernie Sanders

During her four years as Secretary of State under Obama, Clinton was the stand-out gung-ho senior member of the White House administration. It was she who pushed for the disastrous war for regime change in Libya and boasted after the murder of the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi by US-backed jihadists in 2011. Clinton’s policy turned a once-prosperous North African nation into a charnel house, which continues to destabilize the entire region and Europe from terrorism and refugees, who are dying by the thousands as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
It was Clinton who colluded with the Central Intelligence Agency, and with  Arab and Turkish despotic rogue states to ship weapons and terror brigades from Libya into Syria in order to instigate another war for regime change. That war has caused as many as 400,000 deaths and up to 10 million displaced people, compounding the mayhem of instability in the region and for Europe that was unleashed with Libya.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is also responsible for the lamentable downturn in relations between the US and Russia, after she began falsely accusing Moscow of trying to resurrect the Soviet Union and threatening its neighbors. Clinton’s reckless provocation of a new Cold War led to the Ukraine crisis, the US-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 and the ongoing bloody aggression against the ethnic Russian population in the east of that country. That in turn has created the worst tensions between Russia and the US and Europe in decades, to the point where many commentators fear that a nuclear war could break out.

If Clinton were to get elected to the White House in the November presidential contest, the prognosis for world relations is even grimmer. In her latest foreign policy “showcase speech” this week, in which she lambasted Trump, Clinton snidely referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “tyrant”. She also said that if Trump should win the presidency, then the “Kremlin would celebrate” – inferring that Russia harbors irrational enmity towards the US.

Political Dynasty? Putin Points Out Hypocrisy of Bush, Clinton White House

Trump may have many faults and vulgarities. His demagogic views seem off the wall and at times repugnant. Whether he would be a danger to world peace is moot.
But one thing is sure about Clinton. She is a warmonger of the highest order whose criminal interventions have led to millions of deaths and a world haunted by terrorism and the specter of nuclear war.

Trump maybe a huckster, but at least he does not have blood on his hands.

Clinton is provably far more dangerous than Trump. Laughably, she poses as a “foreign policy” mandarin and a reliable pair of hands for national security, against Trump’s “incoherent rantings”. The only thing reliable about Clinton is that she will serve Wall Street banks, the Pentagon and CIA as a rubber-stamp Commander-in-Chief to facilitate whatever overseas agenda furnishes maximum profits for these secretive power entities.

Snowden Slams US for Ignoring Hillary Clinton's Email Controversy

Her so-called Clinton Foundation, set up with her husband, has received millions of dollars in grants from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf dictators. Any wonder that her foreign policies and penchant for murderous operations concurs with the regional machinations of these same despots.
The ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s violation of classified government information from using her private, insecure email account is but one illustration of just how dangerous this person is. She considers herself above the law, and given her propensity to sell her policies to the highest bidder that makes for a highly corrupt and unscrupulous leader of the world’s biggest nuclear power.

Clinton or Trump for president? It’s an abject choice either way, which shows just how degenerate American democracy has become. A recent poll indicates that most American voters do not support either candidate.

Democrat contender Bernie Sanders is still in the race of course. Admittedly, if Sanders or Trump were to get elected, the prospect for America becoming a law-abiding peaceful nation is not much brighter, such is the endemic criminality of US foreign policy.

However, if Hillary Clinton makes it to the White House, the outlook for the world is a whole lot worse. If she can start so many wars as a diplomat, one shudders to think of what she will be capable of as Commander-in-Grief?

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik [nor that of Gus].

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160604/1040774456/us-elections-clinton-trump.html#ixzz4Aps5ECfb

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8436

But the funny one is this one: Trump and Gaddafi... why don't they call it a...

and this IMPORTANT one: then they will attack Europe...

 

 

Donald Trump wanted Moammar Gaddafi’s money



By Adam Taylor June 8 at 12:53 PM

Donald Trump's relationship with the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is under scrutiny this week.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee recently acknowledged that he made a deal with Gaddafi in 2011 to allow the Libyan leader to set up a tent on Trump's estate while visiting New York. The deal eventually fell through, though it still netted him "a lot of money," the business mogul told CBS in an interview that aired this weekend.

A report from BuzzFeed paints a somewhat different picture, however. Reporters Daniel Wagner and Aram Roston said Trump spent years trying to develop a business relationship with the Libyan regime, requesting a face-to-face meeting with Gaddafi and even taking Libya's U.S. ambassador golfing.

Gaddafi, who died in 2011, controlled Libya for four decades, quashing all opposition with a fervent brutality. Buoyed by oil wealth, he had been a major backer of terrorism, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 189 Americans. He had been a prototypically cruel and bizarre dictator before Libyans rose up against him in 2011, prompting a civil war that eventually led to his death.

Yet, as distasteful as the idea of a wealthy American businessman and future presidential hopeful desperately seeking a business relationship with Gaddafi is, it was not exactly unique at the time. Trump was just one of many Americans hoping to make money from Libya before the 2011 uprising.

And perhaps the most notable thing about Trump's attempts to do business with Libya wasn't that they were made. It's that they failed.

Gaddafi had been at odds with the West for decades, filling his speeches with anti-imperialist rhetoric and using his financial clout to harm Western interests. But by the late 1990s, the Libyan leader had begun to reverse his antagonistic political relationship with the United States and other Western countries. Sanctions had worn his country down, and Libya was isolated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and facing new threats from Islamist groups.

As part of this new warming tactic, Gaddafi renounced his support for terrorist groups and publicly gave up his quest for nuclear weapons. He hired Western public relations firms to publicize his good deeds and lobby for him in Washington, London and Brussels.

Meanwhile, he began to pursue a domestic policy of economic liberalization, moving away from nationalized industries and toward privatizations with international investment.

These moves began to placate his former foes. Sanctions against the country were gradually lifted. The United States removed Libya from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2006 and restored full diplomatic relations with the country. Even the coldness in personal ties seemed to shift. In 2008, President George W. Bush became the first U.S. president to directly speak to Gaddafi, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya shortly afterward. When the Libyan leader came to New York City the following year to attend the U.N. General Assembly, he spoke fondly of America's new president, Barack Obama. "We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president," Gaddafi said in a 95-minute speech that left many weary.

The message was clear: Libya was open for business. The Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow and James Grimaldi would later describe the situation as a "Libyan gold rush," with international firms rushing to take advantage of the country's vast oil wealth. They pointed to the work of hedge funds and investment firms within the country, as well as large banks such as HSBC and Goldman Sachs — the latter of which was afterward accused of advising Libya's sovereign wealth fund to invest $1 billion in ultimately worthless ventures, a charge it denies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/08/donald-trump-wanted-moammar-gaddafis-money/?hpid=hp_special-topic-chain_wv-gadaffi-3pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

 

This article tells of the legends of Gaddafi in a rather inacurate way. 

Straight away, the origin of the PanAm Lockerbie terrorism act was never proven though the attacks by the US on Gaddafi were more than legendary. He lost a lot of his own family when the US bombed his palace. In fact in regard to terrorism, one would have had to possibly look somewhere else (like Sunni Wahabbis) for Lockerbie or the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing — the number of conspiracy theories abound.

Like Saddam, Gaddafi had to deal with rebelious people and though people called him ruthless, the US has performed similar ruthless acts in other countries, barely hidden from view, under what is called "national interest", including bombs in Nicaragua harbours, etc. We could add the present unrest in Brazil to this list. 

Gaddafi became a friend of the West when he made a deal with Blair (Gaddafi warned Blair about extremist Sunni terrorists in Europe) to give up his weapons of mass destruction. The reality is that Gaddafi did not have any, so he fudge something. The reality is Gaddafi had taken his country on an independent course, with NO debts to the rest of the world and actually was about to start a Pan-African central Bank to be used as a fund to help fight the influence of American vulture funds and free Africa from reliance on US "benevolent" charity.

Libya was a country making strides, with developments, education and employment. Gaddafi employed a lot of black Africans in this effort to modernise the country. The legend has it he lived in a tent, that was never in the same place, in order to avoid American bombings. Despite overtures to the West since 2006, he did not trust the Yanks, who of course started to sow the seeds of discords in Libya by supporting, you've guessed it, Sunni Wahabbi extremist to revolt "for freedom" against Gaddafi. This eventually developed into a civil war of the "Arab spring" which was basically part of the "let-Saudi-Arabia-take-over-the-Arab-world" trick.

Of course the West, especially the French seeing some cheap oil coming their way, played a second fiddle role to the Yanks in bombing the place to smithereens. The country of course was in ruins. Still is more or less, with factions still fighting each other, despite the West supporting a puppet government. 

The resultant of this "revolution" was that

a) the Pan-African Bank is dead in the water.

b) Libya was now "dependent" of US interests and is in massive debts.

c) Al Qaeda, a Saudi op around the world, is now supported by the US to remove unwanted "independence" from some countries, such as Yemen and Syria. 

d) unemployment for black people in Libya led to a mass exodus of "refugees" into Europe. This exodus weakens Europe — a situation which is favourable to the US desire to have a "weak" uncompetitive Europe.

e) the same applies to Syria, except the Yanks did not plan on the Russians to be so "swift".

f) in order to deal with the Russian "problem" who have been trying to stop Ukraine falling into the US hegemony, the US forced Europe to place sanction on Russia.

g) the Anaconda "war games" are in full swing for another week, to show as according to the Daily Mail "who's boss" to the Russians to stop their "aggression". 31,000 troops are wargaming alongside the Russian border (24 countries... Is Australia involved?).

h) when ask about Russian "aggression", most people stare and have no clue. Most decent people would know that Crimea is populated by 98 per cent Russians and that MH17 downing had nothing to do with the Russians though the US is working hard to create more trouble.

i) The French parliament has voted to lift sanctions against Russia. The US Empire is pissed off (a news hard to find in the English speaking hegemony press).

j) and plenty more crap showing the duplicitous hypocrisy of the US Empire. I'd hate to see La mad'm Clinton place her mitts, full of her hatred of Russia, on the presidential handle ... It's going to be ugly and Obama is preparing the pathway.

 

K) I nearly forgot to mention this: The US sanction against Russia don't extend to Russian made rocket engines RD-180... Why? :

 

The Pentagon has used budget, schedule and national security concerns to justify the use of Russian rocket engines as its most viable option, despite Sen. John McCain’s personal vendetta to limit dependency on Russian tech in space.Trends
McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), has long since been proposing to get rid of reliance on Russian rocket engines, after the US retired its shuttle program in 2011.
Currently Russia’s NPO Energomash has a contract to supply United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with RD-180 engines for the Atlas V launchers.

ULA has maintained that Russian engines are cheaper than the US alternatives, and the view is now apparently shared by the Pentagon. According to the Wall Street Journal, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work insists that the US does not have the budget to come up with a similarly reliable American made alternative.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, Work wrote that developing an alternative to Russian engines would cost an extra $1.5 billion to $5 billion over roughly six years.

Such an expense, he said in the letter “would crowd out other important national-security investments” and could produce “the unintended consequence of delaying our ability to enable development of new domestic launch capabilities.”

According to other documents offered by Work to Nelson, RD-180s are vital in order to keep Pentagon satellite launches on track, otherwise sending them into orbit could be delayed by more than two years. The Pentagon official also argues that getting rid of Russian hardware could prevent the ULA’s Atlas V rockets from competing for launches by NASA or for commercial launches.

 

Basically, this RD-180 is a much better rocket engine than the US ever came up with — despite the RD-180 having been designed a long time ago in terms of rocket engine development...

 

Both Clinton and Trump are part of the neocons, now called "liberal-2-something" or rather in which all goes in love and war, including deceit:

 

 

 

NORMAN SOLOMON [a Bernie Delegate]: We definitely need to defeat Donald Trump. No self-respecting or human-respecting progressive would ever vote for Donald Trump. At the same time, you’re not going to be able to effectively defeat the bogus, racist, xenophobic type of pseudo-populism coming from Donald Trump with a sort of Wall Street, throw-in-a-little-bit-of-populist-rhetoric campaigning that we’ve been getting from Hillary Clinton.

Of course, while we defeat Donald Trump, we also need to keep on keeping on, to speak truth to and about power. And right now, corporate power has a stranglehold over domestic policy, over international policy. It’s fueling the warfare state and perpetual war. Since when do advocates for nonviolence and peace go silent when Hillary Clinton is an advocate for perpetual war? There are people in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria, who are suffering grievously because of policies not only in the past that she’s advanced, but ones that she’s prescribing for the future. Since when do we go silent when Hillary Clinton affectionately praises and describes Henry Kissinger as her friend? Now, let’s be clear: Hillary Clinton is a pro-war candidate. If Bernie Sanders is not exactly an antiwar candidate, he’s not a pro-war candidate. He has, for instance, symbolically said he would never want Henry Kissinger—who, you know, frankly, is a warmonger and a war criminal. I just think history bears that out. Bernie Sanders went out of his way in a debate, two debates, to say, "Look, I would never consider him my friend. He is a disgraceful historic figure in terms of being a secretary of state."

So, I think we need to get a clear grip on what our values are. And progressives are absolutely capable of holding in their minds and their hearts two fundamental precepts and goals. One, yes, we must defeat Donald Trump. The other is that we have eternal vigilance to challenge the kind of corporate power, Wall Street-friendly and militarism policies that are advocated by and now represented fully by Hillary Clinton.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/6/8/dolores_huerta_vs_norman_solomon_a

 

A House Select Committee on Benghazi revealed that a cadre of Gaddafi loyalists saved US citizens from a Benghazi facility during the attack on September 11, 2012.

The 800 page report, which cost $7 million and took two years to complete, showed that neither the American government nor a militia group contracted to provide security for the embassy could take credit for saving American lives. It was, instead, a group of individuals representing the government that the Obama administration was trying to overthrow at the time. 

"We decided that the situation we had was untenable to stay at the compound. We didn’t have enough shooters and there were too many wounded, and we were definitely going to lose our State Department wounded if we had stayed there much longer," an American special operator testified, describing how the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by mortar shell fire. 

The US operatives felt that they were "next to helpless."

The trapped Americans knew they needed to evacuate, but didn’t have the weaponry or vehicles necessary to escape. That’s when the loyalists arrived. 

"The forces that arrived at the Annex shortly after the mortar attacks were able to transport all State Department and CIA personnel safely to the airport. The forces, known as Libyan Military Intelligence, arrived with 50 heavily-armed security vehicles," the report reads. 

The Libya Military Intelligence (LMI) forces that arrived were not part of the "February 17 Martyrs Brigade, recommended by the Libyan Government and contractually obligated to provide security to the Mission Compound," and the report details how "the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia, which provided interior armed security at the Benghazi Mission compound, informed the Diplomatic Security Agents two days before the Ambassador was scheduled to arrive it would no longer provide off-compound security."

It goes on to highlight that the "…Libya Military Intelligence, whom the CIA did not even know existed until the night of the attacks, were comprised of former military officers under the Gaddafi regime who had gone into hiding in fear of being assassinated, and wanted to keep their presence in Benghazi as quiet as possible so as to not attract attention from the militias in control of Benghazi." 

 

read more: http://sputniknews.com/africa/20160629/1042193121/gaddafi-loyalists-saved-americans-in-benghazi.html

 

See the two dorks at top...

 

Does Hillary Clinton possess the integrity and honesty to be president of the United States? Or are those quaint and irrelevant considerations in electing a head of state in 21st-century America?

These are the questions put on the table by the report from FBI Director James Comey on what his agents unearthed in their criminal investigation of the Clinton email scandal.

Clinton dodged an FBI recommendation that she be indicted for gross negligence in handling U.S. security secrets, a recommendation that would have aborted her campaign. But Director Comey dynamited the defense she has been offering the country.

Comey all but declared that Clinton lied when she said she had State Department approval for the email server in her home.

He all but declared that she lied when she said she had only one server, and that no classified or secret material was transmitted. He also implied that she lied when she said she had used only one device and had turned over all of her work-related emails to State. The FBI found “several thousand” more.

Clinton said her emails were stored in a secure area. This, too, was false. Hostile actors and hostile regimes, said Comey, had access to email systems of those with whom she communicated.

Comey said he found no criminal “intent” in what Clinton did.

Yet, he charged her with having been “extremely careless” with U.S. national security secrets, a phrase that seems synonymous with the gross negligence needed to indict and convict.

While recommending against prosecution, Comey added, “This is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequence. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.”

Translation: Were Clinton still the secretary of state and were such recklessness with secrets to be discovered, she could have been forced to resign and stripped of her security clearance forever.

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/is-hillary-morally-fit-to-be-president/

 

Gus: When was the last time that integrity and honesty were necessary to become president of the United States? Washington? Bush? Nixon? Donald Duck? Some raconteurs and commentators live in fairyland...

 

 

...

KHALIFA HAFTAR: Tripoli, I address you and all brave fighters. The time to launch the assault has arrived. Go forward, as you always do, and with the grace of God. See you in Tripoli in peace, and all those who desire it.

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

And that was Libyan general Khalifa Haftar commanding the Libyan National Army based in eastern Libya to march on Tripoli. As far as we know, the leader of the UN-backed government of national accord, Fayez Al-Sarraj, is still in control of Tripoli thus far, and he met with the UN secretary general this week, as did General Haftar, who was in discussion about coming up with a peaceful resolution, but that seemed to have not happened. If you can listen to the comments by the UN Secretary General Guterres on his departure.

ANTONIO GUTERRES: With a deep concern and a heavy heart. I still hope it will be possible to avoid a bloody confrontation in and around Tripoli. And the United Nations remain available to facilitate any political solution able to unify the Libyan institutions. And whatever happens, the UN will remain committed, and I will remain committed, to support the Libyan people.

SHARMINI PERIES: On to talk about all of this with me is Vijay Prashad. Vijay is the author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, and the executive director of the TriContinental Institute for Social Research. He’s also the editor-in-chief of LeftWord Books. Vijay, good to have you with us.

All right, Vijay, General Haftar of the Libyan National Army, based in the east, and he has ordered his forces actually not to open fire on civilians, saying that whoever raises the white banner is safe. Now, his forces have taken over Guyan, which is a city very close to Tripoli. And yet they have, as far as we know, have not taken Tripoli at this point. So what is the situation that is unfolding in Libya? Who is this general, and what is he trying to pursue?

VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it’s a very troubling moment for Libya. Libya has been in a very difficult situation since the war conducted by NATO in 2011 which essentially sent that country into great disrepair. It hasn’t really recovered from that war. Politically there’s been great fracturing. One of the architects of the fracturing is General Khalifa Haftar, who, you know, was a senior general in the army of Moamar Gaddafi, defected from Libya in 1987, came to the United States, as it turned out, from 1987 to 2011. General Khalifa Haftar lived about 10 minutes from the CIA headquarters, which is in Langley, Virginia. In 2011, just before NATO began its bombing of Libya, Khalifa Haftar arrived in Benghazi where he claimed to be the internationally-backed military person to go and fight against Gaddafi’s government. Of course, other people had other ideas. And since 2011, Mr. Haftar has had a base in Benghazi which is to the East of the country and has played quite a disruptive force in the attempt to create a government of national unity, which was set up by the United Nations in 2015 when various other political actors created the government of national accord.

It’s very hard to explain the kind of fracturing of Libyan politics since 2011. But suffice it to say Mr. Haftar built up his military power. He was backed by the Egyptians, by the United Arab Emirates, soon by the French government. He had backing Israel, from the Russians, from Saudi Arabia. From a series of important international and regional partners. He received air support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. And began to consolidate his position in the East of the country around the major city of Benghazi, but also around the oil terminals which are on the Mediterranean coastline. Recently there’s been a push to come again towards some sort of natural unity. The government of Mr. Al-Sarraj, who represents the government of national accord. I mean, they were trying to negotiate with Khalifa Hafter. The UN Secretary General was in Libya. There was a great amount of hope when Mr. Guterres from the UN arrived in Libya. But Guterres left feeling that there was really no hope, because Khalifa Hafter was determined to have a military solution, to march on Tripoli, to take out the government uprising of Fayez al-Sarraj, and to basically take Mr. Sarraj’s government out of the equation and have both military and political power.

That’s what he’s essentially tried. It has been a very swift military move. His troops are moving along the Mediterranean coastline of Libya. But they also swung south and came up–this is Battalion 166–came up towards Tripoli. And they’ve taken Tripoli International Airport. In Tripoli, which is Libya’s capital, there are two airports. There’s the Mitiga Airport, which is inside the town, which is the one used by the people. It’s not the–you know, it’s not Tripoli International Airport, which has long been a place of great militia battles, terrible fights in Tripoli International Airport. Mr. Khalifa Hafter has taken Tripoli International Airport. He’s moving northward through the city of Tripoli. His troops tried to make a rush towards the Tunisian border to close the border road. But they were not successful. And where we are now on Friday afternoon, Sharmini, is that we are at a situation where it’s nightfall in Libya, and there is going to be great bloodshed tomorrow.

SHARMINI PERIES: I’ve been speaking with Vijay Prashad, and we are going to continue this conversation in segment two, which will roll right after this.

 

See more:

https://therealnews.com/stories/external-powers-fuel-bloodshed-in-libya

 

Read from top.

With two of the largest oil producers, Iran and Russia, under U.S. sanctions, all profiteering eyes of the west turn to oil rich Libya, says Vijay Prashad, the author of the book, Arab Spring Libyan Winter

SHARMINI PERIES: Welcome back to my conversation with Vijay Prashad. He’s the author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter. And Vijay, good to have you back.

Vijay, this surge that we are now experiencing in Libya appeared to be sudden. But when you see the military convoy that is headed to Tripoli, and when you look at how equipped General Haftar’s troops are, it is very clear this has been in the planning for a while. So who’s financing his militia, and what is this all about?

VIJAY PRASHAD: You know, it’s very difficult to take any of this seriously. And the reason I say that is, you know, for the last six years at least these very countries have backed Mr Haftar. They provided him with exactly the kind of military equipment that you’re seeing on the videos. They provided him with funds. And many of these countries have basically staked the future of their influence through Mr. Haftar, and not through the UN-backed government of national accord.

And let’s just back up and wonder why that is. I mean, you know, you’ve got to see that for Europe, and this is where France is got to take responsibility for some of what’s happening, and maybe the Italians, in Europe, you know, there’s been a real debate about the refugees that have been coming across the Mediterranean from Libya. And last summer there was a European plan that essentially would militarize the coastline even more. And the national accord government of Mr. Saraaj rejected that plan. There’s a feeling that if you have a strongman like Khalifa Haftar in charge in Libya that he’s going to shut down, for instance, the trail of refugees going across the Mediterranean, and so on. So there is an appetite in places like France to go ahead with somebody like Haftar in power rather than a much weaker government of Mr. Al-Saraaj. So that’s something to consider.

In the early days when Haftar tried to, you know, make a move on the oilfields, and also on the oil terminals which are on the Mediterranean Sea, he traveled to Moscow. He had very close discussions with [the Russians], and [we know that] because Mr. Khalifa Haftar has been going after some of the Al Qaeda-type groups, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group remnants and so on, in Benghazi and around Benghazi. He has received air support from the UAE and from the Saudis. So there is a long relationship with a commonality of interests between Mr. Haftar, who is essentially the strongman, a major military force in Libya, at least for part of the Libyan military. This kind of militia military. And he has a kind of commonality of interest in many of these powers. It’s very hard, you know, to take them seriously. I think this is a kind of a fax machine sort of statement rendered by these governments. They have to notionally support the UN government. They’re saying that we condemn it. But I don’t think anybody takes them seriously. After the government falls in Tripoli there’s going to be talk from some of these countries that, well, now we should somehow seek stability through Mr. Haftar.

SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, in Part 1 you mentioned that General Haftar is very close to Washington. The proximity was interesting. And there are many reports that he is also supported by UAE, that there is actually this caravan of military convoy, of trucks, and equipment, and so forth actually came from the United Arab Emirates. You mentioned that they were being supported by Egypt as well. Now, we also cannot bypass the fact that General Haftar has spent quite a bit of time in Russia. There are many photos of him in Russia, wearing Russian fur hats and so forth. But Russia has issued a statement saying that they support a peaceful UN resolution to what’s happening in Libya today. So who is backing the general, and what are his politics?

VIJAY PRASHAD: It’s interesting. I mean, this is part of the kind of, you know, bizarre turn of events in the world. You know, at one point in 2010-2011, you saw that people in the West fulminating against Gaddafi, you know, talking about democracy in Libya, we saw a range of people–some of them, of course, where there are still allegations that their election campaigns were funded by Mr. Gaddafi, such as Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and so on. They were on a high horse about dictatorship in Libya, authoritarianism, need to overthrow it, and so on.

By the way, this is France, which had just been caught flat-footed in Tunisia, where it had backed, essentially, the dictatorial government that was overthrown in the first bout of the Arab Spring. In fact, France backed that government right till it fell, and very quickly pivoted to, in a sense, reestablish its reputation as a country of great Enlightenment values, and pro-democracy, and so on, and using Libya as the best case for it to rebrand itself as a champion of human rights and so on.

And so France at the time was talking a great deal, and so was the United States, Hillary Clinton in the lead, about the need to bring democracy to Libya. Well, it turns out, of course, that they brought a hash of things into Libya. Brought chaos in Libya. And now they are willing, after all this, to return Libya to the very cliche that they said they wanted to overthrow. In other words, the strongman authoritarian government. And I find that here the question should not just remain within Libya, but we need to reopen questions about these regime change wars such as against Libya, which brought great loss of life and terrible suffering for the Libyan people from 2011 onwards. You know, didn’t improve their lot. And here we are, you know, several years later, eight years later, saying, well, you know, Libya needs a strongman. I find this not only very disturbing, but it’s an indictment of Western powers.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right. So let’s talk about what’s there in Libya, in terms of the interest of France, Russia, U.S. It is an oil-rich country. Now, why are they so interested in Libya?

VIJAY PRASHAD: You know, it’s an interesting thing, and this is something I think people need to recognize, that Europe has really suffered greatly from the policies, the political policies, of the last decade. You know, there was, of course, the sanctions regime against Iran which cut Europe off from Iranian energy supplies. Then after the fracas in Ukraine in the Crimea there was a sanctions regime against Russia, and the Russian pipeline, the Russian-German pipeline will stop. So Russian energy entering Europe also was blocked. And the third major source of energy that’s close to Europe was Libya, and then there was this ridiculous war in 2011 against Libya.

So right now the three closest and most efficiently deliverable energy sources, Russia, Iran, and Libya, have been basically offline. The Trump administration is threatening Europe, saying you cannot buy Iranian oil. Trump has already put new sanctions on Iran. The attempt to open the German-Russian pipeline keeps coming against blocks put by the United States and by other European countries.

And so there is an appetite to somehow bring Libyan oil back into the market at full strength. Libya has been selling oil, but it’s not been at full strength. Not even near its full strength. So I think there is an appetite inside Europe to somehow at any cost stop the refugee flow northwards and to start the oil flowing northwards. You know, it’s an interesting thing about Europe. It’s quite happy to have the oil migrate northwards. It doesn’t want the people.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, we’ll leave it there, Vijay. Very good to have you on, and looking forward to your report next week. I think we might be talking about Libya again.

VIJAY PRASHAD: Yes, for sure. Thanks a lot.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

 

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by ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN

 

An investigation by the United Nations has concluded that money provided by the European Union to state entities in Libya has facilitated crimes against humanity ranging from forced labor and sexual slavery to torture.

Through its financial support of the Libyan Coast Guard and the Libyan Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), the European Union has aided and abetted crimes against humanity, according to a recent UN report.

On March 27, 2023, the United Nations released the findings of a three-year investigation, confirming that “arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance” has become a “widespread practice” in the once-prosperous nation of Libya, which was plunged into civil war by NATO’s regime change war over a decade ago.

While crimes against humanity were found to be widespread throughout the country, the report homed in on the plight of migrants and blamed the European Union for enabling the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity to enact abuses against Africans seeking asylum in Europe.

The report stated in its introductory section: “The Mission found that crimes against humanity were committed against migrants in places of detention under the actual or nominal control of Libya’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, the Libyan Coast Guard and the Stability Support Apparatus. These entities received technical, logistical and monetary support from the European Union and its member States for, inter alia, the interception and return of migrants.”

In other words, rather than directly intercepting migrants traveling by boat to Europe, the European Union has outsourced the dirty work to the Libyan Coast Guard. Once the coast guard detains the migrants, they are sent back to Libya and transferred to both official and “secret prisons” where they are often exploited for financial gain through forced labor, ransom, or sexual slavery. 

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that migrants were enslaved in detention centers of the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration,” the report stated, adding that DCIM and Coast Guard personnel and officials are implicated “at all levels” while high-ranking officials “colluded” with traffickers and smugglers both in the context of detention and interception. 

“The Mission also found reasonable grounds to believe that guards demanded and received payment for the release of migrants. Trafficking, enslavement, forced labor, imprisonment, extortion and smuggling generated significant revenue for individuals, groups and State institutions,” the report claims.

In 2017, international media reported the revival of the slave trade in Africa due to continuing fallout of the NATO-backed regime change operation to depose Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. The United Nations has now confirmed that the practice not only persists, but that it has been enabled by the EU.

“The support given by the EU to the Libyan Coast Guard… led to violations of certain human rights,” UN investigator Chaloka Beyani told reporters. “It’s also clear that the DCIM has responsibility for multitudes of crimes against humanity in the detention centers that they run. So the support given to them by the EU has facilitated this. Although we are not saying that the EU and its member states committed these crimes, the point is that the support given has aided and abetted the commission of the crimes.”

According to a 2021 report by the Brookings Institution, the EU has funneled $455 million to the Libyan Coast Guard and other government agencies since 2015.

Meanwhile, an investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project and The New Yorker found that money from the EU “pays for everything from the buses that transport captured migrants at sea from port to the prisons to the body bags used for the migrants who perish at sea or while detained.

According to their joint investigation, Libya’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration “received 30 specially modified Toyota Land Cruisers to intercept migrants in Libya’s southern desert,” while money from the EU also helped DCIM purchase “10 buses to ship captive migrants to prisons after they are caught.”

 

The violent overthrow of Gaddafi’s government by NATO and the bands of Salafist insurgents it sponsored in 2011 plunged Libya into a state of civil war, with swathes of the country overtaken by Al Qaeda and ISIS-aligned bandits. As NATO and its jihadist proxies bore down on him, Gaddafi warned that his ouster would result in the destabilization of entire regions of the continent and a new migration crisis for Europe, with the Mediterranean transformed into a “sea of chaos.”

Gaddafi’s son, similarly warned at the time, “Libya may become the Somalia of North Africa, of the Mediterranean. You will see the pirates in Sicily, in Crete, in Lampedusa. You will see millions of illegal immigrants. The terror will be next door.”

The UN investigator, Professor Beyani, blamed Libya’s current crisis on a “contestation for power,” alluding to the power vacuum the West created in Libya with its regime change war while avoiding any direct reference to it. Human Rights Watch has also veered away from discussion of NATO’s 2011 intervention in its coverage of the UN report, which it described as “brutal and damning.” Perhaps that was because its director at the time, Ken Roth, was a prolific supporter of the assault.

The transformation of Libya into an anarchic hellscape has dramatically reduced the risk that would-be migrants to Europe would be detected by EU authorities. The UN report estimates that more than 670,000 migrants were present in Libya during parts of its investigation.

The lack of a strong, stable central government in Tripoli has allowed for an entire industry to develop with exploitation of migrants as its business model. “Detention, trafficking migrants, is big business in Libya. It’s an entrepreneurial project,” Beyani told France 24 following the report’s release.

While the International Criminal Court has indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin over allegations cooked up by US State Department-sponsored researchers, the new UN report on Libya has been treated by US and European media largely as a footnote, despite the West’s role as the key architect of the country’s ongoing nightmare.

 

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https://thegrayzone.com/2023/04/17/enslavement-african-migrants-libya-eu-funding/

 

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nVBTTTsCA

 

The Gaddafi Speech that Rattled World Powers—the Ugly Part of the United Nations

 

 

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