Phi Beta Iota: The following is being circulated world-wide (less US “mainstream” media), and represents both an African view, and the view of those associated with Cynthia McKinney and her related concerns of 21st Century imperialism and genocide against black Africans at the hands of the Libyan forces seeking to topple Qathafi.
Statement by masses in Ghana and also advice on how to organize a demonstration in your own community.
The “US/NATO Hands Off Libya! Hands Off Africa!” coalition consists of revolutionary and progressive African organizations in Ghana who oppose the US/NATO illegal invasion of Libya/Africa and support Muammar Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya to win the war against US/NATO imperialist forces and NTC/Al Qaeda reactionaries. The coalition is organizing a march from Kwame Nkrumah Circle to the US Embassy to demonstrate against the illegal US/NATO invasion and for victory to Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya on 21st September 2011.
We are calling on all Africans in Africa and the diaspora to demonstrate at US embassies on the same day.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called in her senior staff and asked them to think seriously about “how [to] capitalise on these opportunities”.
The primary opportunity came from a public united in anger, grief and fear which the Bush administration sought to leverage to maximum political effect. “I think September 11 was one of those great earthquakes that clarify and sharpen,” Rice told the New Yorker six months afterwards. “Events are in much sharper relief.”
Ten years later the US response to the terror attacks have clarified three things:
the limits to what its enormous military power can achieve,
its relative geopolitical decline and
the intensity of its polarised political culture.
It proved itself
incapable of winning the wars it chose to fight and
incapable of paying for them and
incapable of coming to any consensus as to why.
The combination of domestic repression at home and military aggression abroad kept no one safe, and endangered the lives of many. The execution of Osama bin Laden provoked such joy in part because almost every other American response to 9/11 is regarded as a partial or total failure.
Video: The attacks of September 11, 2001 forced Americans to reevaluate their views on the nation's security. A decade later, is the country stronger and better prepared to prevent a terror attack? (Aug. 31)
This is the American era of endless war.
To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployment.
Phi Beta Iota: This is not new. War has been the norm since President General David Eiserhower warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex. The article is worth reading in full to understand how very smart people can become very stupid–we are in a state of endless war because none of our leaders have the integrity to apply their undeniable intelligence to waging peace, which is vastly cheaper than war–the problem is that peace enriches poor people rather than concentrating wealth.
“I just want to kill those guys,” Mr. Vickers likes to say in meetings at the Pentagon, with a grin.
. . . . . . .
As covert American wars — in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — continue in the second decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, so will the questions of legality, morality and risk that go along with them.
. . . . . . .
In Mr. Vickers’s assessment, there are perhaps four important Qaeda leaders left in Pakistan, and 10 to 20 leaders over all in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Even if the United States kills them all in drone strikes, Mr. Vickers said, “You still have Al Qaeda, the idea.”
Phi Beta Iota: The insanity of it all is hard to fathom. Vickers is a male counterpart to Fran Townsend. The US Government, “in our name,” is spending over a trillion a year (that it borrows) for elective wars and global assassinations that are pissing off millions of people, while the “Undersecretary of Intelligence” spends all his time trying to kill the dirty dozen. All we can do at this point is recommend a close reading of Paul Fernhout: Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA).
Don DeBar is an independent journalist who has recently travelled to Libya before the NATO invasion. BSNews emailed him some questions regarding the conflict.
1/ We know that the intervention in Libya was not humanitarian – some suggest oil others, including Ellen Brown, have suggested it was more to do with money and central banking. Do you have a theory on the real reasons for the invasion?
Don DeBar, Morning News Headlines Editor-in-Exile
There is first and foremost the geopolitical consideration – that the US and EU are determined to take direct control of Africa's resources. Libya was – and, thus far, remains – the single largest impediment to this effort, with Gadhaffi personally being the single human being who is the largest obstacle.
Begin with the fact that one of Gadhaffi's first acts after deposing the western puppet King Idris was to evict the US from its only military base on the continent. This act, taken four decades ago, left the US in the position of having to base its AFRICOM force, established in October, 2008, in Stuttgart, Germany, laying bare the nature of this “alliance.”
More immediately, in terms of geopolitical irritations, Libya has heavily invested in African infrastructure, such as telecom system construction, an African satellite, and other communications projects. The revenue which now stays in Africa – hundreds of millions of dollars a month – comes directly out of the pockets of US, EU and other global telecom companies, a trend that is in exactly the opposite direction sought by US/EU power elites.
Even more to the point is that Gadhaffi has been pushing for – and funding the enabling of – an independent and united African economic entity that could rival the EU and other global economic powers. Among the tasks underway at the time of the invasion was the creation of an African sovereign bank and an African currency printed in Africa under African control. This would wrest control over African resources from the French and others whose power to print African currency translates into economic and, ultimately, political control.
One more extremely important point: Libya since 1969 has offered an economic and political model to Africans and others suffering colonial control that stands in stark contrast to the models of such as Nigeria and South Africa. The country's natural wealth has been directly applied to the economic needs of the population, with the result that every Libyan owns their home – without mortgage encumbrance or rent or property tax burdens; a first-rate health care system was built and operated that is free and available to all; a first-rate education system was built and operated through the post-graduate level that is free and available to all; the oil revenues are distributed to the people in the form of a monthly stipend in the thousands of dollars; and public infrastructure – such as roads, water systems, electricity, etc., were constructed and operated efficiently and made available to all.
So the threat is a.) a plan to democratize control of Africa's wealth and b.) a successful example of doing this in Libya, demonstrating that it is possible and offering a “how-to” model to the people of the continent. A serious threat to colonial ambition that is perhaps unmatched in the world at present.
Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, delivered a withering attack on the invasion of Iraq, decried the term “war on terror”, and held out the prospect of talks with al-Qaida.
MI5's former director general Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller during her 2011 BBC Reith lecture. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA
Recording her first BBC Reith lecture on the theme, Securing Freedom, she made clear she believed the UK and US governments had not sufficiently understood the resentment that had been building up among Arab people, which was only compounded by the war against Iraq.
Before an audience which included Theresa May, the home secretary, she also said the 9/11 attacks were “a crime, not an act of war”. “So I never felt it helpful to refer to a war on terror”.
On today, the anniversary of the overthrow of King Idris in Libya, the neo-colonial powers met in France to continue their drive at the new carve-up of Africa. This set of circumstances makes many of us very sad.
I had a dream last night. I was caught in the midst of intense fighting–street fighting: house to house. I guess I was channeling what the typical Libyan is feeling and has been feeling for the past 6 months. In my chats with DIGNITY Delegation members, one thing is clear: we are traumatized by what is happening to the lovely people of Libya. But imagine, if we feel that way, how must they feel? Terrorized and worse.
When the DIGNITY Delegation of journalists was there, we could already see the impact of the bombing on patients in the hospital, children trying to understand what was happening, women trying to soothe their families, men trying to carry on with their normal activities, shopkeepers trying to eke out a living despite fighting and bombing all around them, Black Libyans who felt threatened by their fellow countrymen and the outsiders who have streamed into the country, siding with NATO and openly boasted of killing dark-skinned Libyans (who number between 50% and 58% of the population, according to one of the Libyans who joined us on the tour, now returned to his country, not the 30% written in the special interest press) and non-Libyan Africans. Continue reading “Cynthia McKinney: Libya Eyewitness Tour Final Report”
