"The Rules of the Game"

The West's Takeover Machine, Before Libya
(old post I forgot - likely incomplete)
September 23, 2011

This is a big subject touching on two areas of interest of mine. A bit expansive, and with too many knowledge gaps, to write a complete essay - rather I'll just drop some related bits of food for thought on the Western regime change industry of the past decade.

It was really a simple and run-of-the mill demand that the"peaceful protesters,"and increasingly the world community, made on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. It and its unique socio-economic system should commit suicide, step down and disband in favor of no one and nothing in particular. But the regime didn't want to die and - allegedly - turned its guns on the people to say no with the blood of hundreds of peaceful protesters. And he didn'tstep down in favor of ... whatever was there waiting to fill the void.

I saw an interview somewhere with Nouri al-Mesmari saying that in so doing, Gaddafi "changed the rules of the game." an early plotter saying that by refusing to bow to "protester" demands and step down, But fo the life of me, I can't re-locate the video interview where I was sure I saw him saying that. But the quote sticks anyway as the kind of thing someone would say. raising the question "just what is this game and who wrote - or agreed to - its rules?"
Nouri al-Mesmari, from Paris
Al Jazeera February 17 ??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObAbe2CvjjA

Everyone knows the answer - the people of oppressed countries came up with it themselves, in the game they initiated and most have enjoyed playing, called "the Arab Spring" - In Januray and February it became clear, as if by a sign from God, that it was simply and cosmically time for nations in the Tunisia-Egypt-Libya region to shuck off their brutal corrupt old regimes - it was a masterful bit of fantasy-creation, perhaps planned out to surround and drag in Libya - and Gaddafi was screwing with it by insisting that national survival trumps the West's regime change game.

Planning people's revolutions? the idea is a fairly new one - with social media and liberal ideals, western-oriented, idealistic youths craft a new future, somehow cripple and drag down the old, replaced with a Western-backed anti-whatever reform candidate who becomes the new president and starts towards NATO membership.

The Game Rules are Written
This is an area I've studied in the past, and have some interesting if none-too-deep research together, pressed into sometimes embarrasingly-written articles
http://guerillas-without-guns.blogspot.com/
Utopian means for imperial gain in the former USSR - weaponized non-violence, turning a target nation's people against them with sanctions, propaganda, misguided idealism, funding and flattery, clandestine workshops, etc. Just like a CIA operation to support anti-whatever guerillas, but with no guns.
Helvey, weaponizing nonviolence
Weaponizing Nonviolence: Col. Helvey
Some Notes on Timing and Consent
Jonathan Mowat, in a brilliant 2005 piece for the Center for Research on Globalization, noted a 1967 report from the UK’s Tavistock Institute (the psychological warfare arm of the British military) that focused on the then-new phenomenon of “swarming adolescents” found at rock concerts. Author Dr. Fred Emery reported the underlying energy of it was associated with “rebellious hysteria,” and predicted that with more study the phenomenon could be controlled effectively as a sort of weapon. By the end of the 1990s, he predicted, these hormonal mobs could be used at will to bring down a national government. Mowat noted “the tactic of swarming” at work in the "revolutions" of 2004-05 as a “a new philosophy of war, which is supposed to replicate the strategy of Genghis Khan as enhanced by modern technologies […] intended to aid both military and non-military assaults against targeted states through what are, in effect, ‘high tech’ hordes.”

Right on target, these and other ideas fed into Yugolsavia's Bulldozer revolution, 1999, and soon after in a growing list of former Soviet republics. The site focused largely on the strangely consistent youth movement aspectof these -the well-branded group Otpor!(Resist!) was crucial in Serbia, helping bring down Milosevic.

The Game in the Former USSR
Kmara, trained by Otpor and using its ideas, helped in Georgia's Rose revolution 2002, and the larger Pora was central in Ukraine's Orange one 2004. Belarus (Zubr, denim revolution), Azerbailajn, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan...

The Game in the Arab World
This all being former soviet sphere, these patterns would change on export. I'm far hazier on the next phase in 2005, where besides several central Asian former SSRs, protest movements in the Arab world made themselves felt, esp. Cedar revolution in Lebanon. I never followed up on that either.

excursions into the Arab world crowned at the time by Lebanon's early 2005 Cedar revolution, sparked by the still unsolved bombing murder of former PM Rafik Hariri in February 2005 - blamed widely on Syrians who were then partially occupying the country - the Cedar revolution forced a Syrian withdrawal and resignation of the sitting government by the end of April - accusations that this revolution too was manipulated by Americans and Israelis (not to mention possible Australian assassins setting it off) have never been cleared away

Might is Right: Abdelnour's Philosophy
As for the Arab proxies the West worked with in such adventures, one of them, a Ziad K. Abdelnour, gave an admirably candid interview with journalist Trish Schuh in late 2005

Schuh: What is the future of Syria, of President Bashar Al Assad's situation?

Nour: Both the Syrian and Lebanese regimes will be changed- whether they like it or not- whether it's going to be a military coup or something else... and we are working on it. We know already exactly who's going to be the replacements. We're working on it with the Bush administration. This is a Nazi regime of 30 years, killing ministers, presidents and stuff like that. They must be removed. These guys who came to power, who rule by power, can only be removed by power. This is Machiavelli's power game. That's how it is. This is how geopolitics -- the war games, power games -- work.  

[...]

Q: I didn't see forensic proof in the Mehlis report that would legally convict Assad of Hariri's death in a court of law.

A: I don't give a damn. I don't give a damn, frankly. This Bashar Al Assad-Emil Lahoud regime is going to go whether it's true or not. When we went to Iraq whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, the key is -- we won. And Saddam is out! Whatever we want, will happen. Iran? We will not let Iran become a nuclear power. We'll find a way, we'll find an excuse- to get rid of Iran. And I don't care what the excuse is. There is no room for rogue states in the world. Whether we lie about it, or invent something, or we don't... I don't care. The end justifies the means. What's right? Might is right, might is right. That's it. Might is right.

Q: You sound just like Saddam. Those were his rules too.

A: So Saddam wanted to prove to the whole world he was strong? Well, we're stronger- he's out! He's finished. And Iran's going to be finished and every single Arab regime that's like this will be finished. Because there is no room for us capitalists and multinationalists in the world to operate with regimes like this. Its all about money. And power. And wealth... and democracy has to be spread around the world. Those who want to espouse globalization are going to make a lot of money, be happy, their families will be happy. And those who aren't going to play this game are going to be crushed, whether they like it or not! This is how we rule. And this is how it's going to be as long as you have people who think like me.

Q: When will this regime change take place?

A: Within 6 months, in both Lebanon and Syria.

[...]

Q: But if it's just trading Syrian control for American or Israeli control?

A: I have -- we have -- absolutely no problem with heavy US involvement in Lebanon. On an economic level, military level, political level, security level... whatever it is. Israel is the 51st state of the United States. Let Lebanon be the 52nd state. And if the Arabs don't like it, tough luck.

2009-2011: Deeper Into the Arab World
The idea has been bouncing around, but used less openly it seems for a couple of years. It was tried again in Iran in 2009 -

2010 presidential directive - France-UK alliance and war games scheduledfor almost exactly the day they started their joint bombing of Libya - then this year uprisings on similar lines in Tunisia and then Egypt just appeared, sweeping aside the Ben-Ali and Mubarak regimes. Arab Spring - imitators in Bahrain (failed, no support, an ally was targeted), Saudi Arabia (same), Morocco (no support), Yemen (some support) and Syria (we'll see).planning that seemed serious enough they might in themselves be clues the whole row of three dominoes was set off by a careful plan on someone's part.

2011: The Rules of the Game Change in Libya
The payoff to the West is less obvious here, and so is the impression of Western engineering. Arab hands, domestic and foreign, seemed to (I also haven't looked into that). But boy did it ever put Libya into the frame just in time for Feb 17, fice year anniversary of a government-suppressed protest, and 15 years after a crushed uprising. And that is clearly a thing CIA types would desire, and there are signs of pre-planning

These start, as this article does, with al-Mesmari in Paris - Dabbashi in New York - signs of conspiract between them and others running back to late 2010, and sealed with their contemporaneous defections on February 21, both strangely speaking of a"genocide" that wasn't happening, and citing every wild rumor as proof. 

No more weaponized non-violence here - Libya would never crack that way, if anyone would after seeing it happen so manytimes, and finding ways to grow immune - this ime, protests were only paper thin, giving way by day three to military-level ... Whenever the Libyan rebellion is referred to in context of the goody-two-shoes Arab Spring, I'm reminded of the old commercials for the soap Irish Spring - after a hard, sweaty night slaughtering Gaddafi loyalists and beheading black men, a quick wash with Arab Spring® will leave you seeming as clean as a whistle.

Anti-Black Racism Among Libyan Rebels

April 4 2011
last update Jan. 23, 2012


"the brigade for purging slaves, black skin"
- slogan seen painted in rebel country

Note, Jan. 23 2012: I didn't bother updating this post after the conquest of Tripoli, despite the abundant examples of still un-checked rebel racism and brutality that emerged. By then it was more commonly known and discussed, if always in curiously limp terms given the usual world response to such things as ethnic cleansing. I've decided now to simply bump the post with a punchy new intro, the same un-finished collection of long quotes that is the main "article,"and add two snapshots of racism since the rebel victory brought freedom (to lynch with impunity) to Libya.

Feb. 19, The Face of the Future

Bad signs emerged from the very beginning. On February 19, two days after the "Day of Rage"
In Az Zintan, apparently, they killed a black-skinned soldier of Internal Security. In his puffy blue camouflage uniform, he was presumably a Libyan citizen. They didn't just kill him but snapped his finger in half, tore open his cheek, and sliced off his nose. By the look on his face he died in exquisite pain and horror. Then they cold dragged his stiff body before their cameras, showed the world what they do to black Libyans, and staright-up called him, with no evidence, a mercenary from neighboring Chad. They implicitly promised, and rthen delivered, more of the same, continuig now for the better part of a year, most of that lynching done with NATO air support helping them overcome the of government's defenses

They showed this man no mercy, for whatever reasons. That was a bad sign. Because he could be thought of as a low-life mercenary, a hired killer and a nigger one at that, the world didn't much care, about this or dozens of similar cases nationwide. They were only mad about the alleged hiring of nigger killers from dark Africa. That was a worse sign yet. The Rebel mob's self-appointed blank checking account to cleanse Libya ethnically had been verified. The first checks were cashed, no questions asked, and that Spring and beyond they went on quite a spending spree.

Original Post as of late August:
Michael McGehee wrote in Victims of a Civil War, Z Magazine, April 5:

Libya, located in northern Africa, has a majority Arab population. It also has a racism problem. In a country of over 6 million people where a third of which are black Africans—the most oppressed group in the country—it would be completely appropriate to ask: Why aren’t they a part of the rebellion? Why is this an "Arab revolt"? It is very astonishing to see the most oppressed group not only uninvolved with a revolution but fleeing it in terror. Another interesting question is: If the rebels need foreign assistance to win, and to protect themselves from a massacre, then why have they not appealed to the black community to join their struggle in solidarity?

No, instead they were sent running "back to Africa." As Mr. McGehee notes, the non-black pride seems to be a central part of their rejection of the Gaddafi system - "there is a video of the protesters floating around the internet showing them chanting, "We are Arabs!" (at around 2:20)

The Afro-centric antithesis of this is explained by a long-time pro-Gaddafi activist Gerald Perreira: Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective. Black Agenda Report. March 2. A fascinating article that explains, in part:

The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi's vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi's vision of Libya as part of a united Africa and want to ally themselves instead with the EU and look toward Europe and the Arab World for Libya's future.

One of Muammar Qaddafi's most controversial and difficult moves in the eyes of many Libyans was his championing of Africa and his determined drive to unite Africa with one currency, one army and a shared vision regarding the true independence and liberation of the entire continent. He has contributed large amounts of his time and energy and large sums of money to this project and like Kwame Nkrumah, he has paid a high price.

Many of the Libyan people did not approve of this move. They wanted their leader to look towards Europe. Of course, Libya has extensive investments and commercial ties with Europe but the Libyans know that Qaddafi’s heart is in Africa.

A merging, and perhaps mutual dilution of Africa's native Black peoples and the late-arriving, Muslim Crusader Arabs. It should be noted Gulf states like Saudi Arabia have long frowned on Gaddafi's agendas, and have promoted in Libya certain notions about Gaddafi. One is that he is secretly Jewish, and as Jews often do is such cosmologies, was trying to smoosh the good Arabs together with black people and blur the races.

"Funny cartoons" collected by John Rosenthal at Pajamas Media, reveals much of this line of fear emerging in the graphic work of "pro-democracy protesters." One is a photo of a wall painting of "the leader":

[T]he Arabic writing is “a reference to Qaddafi’s self-declared title ‘The King of Kings of Africa.’” In fact, the title was bestowed upon Gaddafi by a meeting of traditional African rulers, which was hosted by the Libyan government in 2008. The meeting happens to have been held in Benghazi. As the AP caption notes further, the writing on the mural replaces the title “King of Kings of Africa” with that of “Monkey of Monkeys of Africa” — a phrase that manages at once to insult Gaddafi and all the African notables that attended.

(The fame of the mural, incidentally, is partly due to a recent New Yorker report, which claims that the artist was shot dead in late March immediately after completing his work. As the above photo demonstrates, however, the mural in fact already existed much earlier. The photo is dated February 23.)

Others are more explicit in their primate references. This artist might have a future at the Cartoon Network, but not at the museum of tolerance.

Maxmilian Forte: Race, Humanitarianism, and the Media. Monthly Review, April 20.

As billions flowed out in aid [to sub-Saharan Africa], and visa-less migrants flowed in, Libyans feared they were being turned into a minority in their own land. Church attendance soared in this Muslim state. . . . Black-bashing has become a popular afternoon sport for Libya's unemployed youths. The rumour that a Nigerian had raped a Libyan girl in Zawiya was enough to spark a spree of ethnic cleansing. . . . In their rampage on migrant workers, the Libyan mob spared Arabs, including the 750,000 Egyptians. (The Economist, "Pogrom," 14 October 2000)

This time, it was "African mercenaries." The evidence for this seems to be largely Twitter tweets, echoed by al Jazeera and western media. the Monthly Review, April 20

The Independent's Michael Mumisa observed that "foreign media outlets have had to rely mostly on unverified reports posted on social network websites and on phone calls from Libyans terrified of Gaddafi's 'savage African mercenaries who are going door-to-door raping our women and attacking our children'," and he speaks of "a Twitter user based in Saudi Arabia," who "wrote how Gaddafi is 'ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters!'"

It was of course repeatedly widely, varied and elaborated wildly. The effect on human lives was real, and useful, in clearing the cities in rebellion of one known source of pro-regime sentiment (to believe Mr. Pirerra's analysis, anyway). Thus "the people" of these cities, those remaining both there and alive, who dared step outside, had risen up against Gaddafi.

Gaddafi's “African Mercenaries” – Or Are They Libyans From Fezzan ...

“Come see the black working class,” yells Asante Jonny, a Ghanaian migrant worker who has been stuck at the Egypt-Libya border for four days. [...]
“Life in Benghazi now is very dangerous for blacks,” says Jonny, who fled after Qadhafi’s forces were routed by defectors from a local security brigade and pro-democracy protesters, who took full control of the city. “Walking around town can get you killed. I had to run for my life after my friend from Cameroon was killed because his dreadlocks were seen as suspicious.”

Africans hunted down in "liberated" Libya. Afrol News, February 28.

As one city after the other gets "liberated", mostly following the defection of Libyan army and police units, civilians and Libyan troops agree to stop mentioning the recent fights between Libyan nationals. The "mercenaries" were and are the enemy.

Sidsel Wold, an experienced journalist from Norway's 'NRK' broadcaster currently in Al-Bayda, experienced the rhetoric first-handedly. She was told that the large battle about this east Libyan city had been fought around an army barrack, which everybody referred to as being defended by "mercenaries".

[Allowed] to film the captured "mercenaries", most turned out to have an Arab appearance. The few persons of sub-Saharan African appearance were all in civilian clothes. It became clear that several of these African "mercenaries" had been captured after the fighting.

Ms Wold also witnessed and filmed the interrogation of a captured Chadian citizen by a defected army officer. The Chadian, with civilian clothes, insisted he was a normal "civilian; a worker." Asked why he and four other Africans had been observed fleeing, he said he had been "scared by the shooting."

The defected Libyan army officer clearly stated he did "not believe" him. The attempt by a group of five sub-Saharan Africans to escape the city was "suspicious" in itself. The group was kept in detention - however in seemingly humane conditions - suspected of being "mercenaries".
[...]
Reports from other "liberated" Libyan cities are similar. In Benghazi last week, citizens attacked and destroyed a building housing 36 citizens from Chad, Niger and Sudan. The Africans were accused of being "mercenaries" and subsequently arrested, local residents told Western journalists.

Maxmilian Forte: Race, Humanitarianism, and the Media. Monthly Review, April 20.

It is not a simple matter of the Libyan opposition showing signs of xenophobia -- if that were true, it would resent the involvement of North Americans and Europeans. Instead, this is a racially selective xenophobia, with a preferential option for Western (i.e., U.S. and European) intervention, and against the presence of "Africans" (code for Sub-Saharan, black Africans). It reminds me of an old racial saying I learned in the Caribbean, truncated here: "If you're white, you're alright . . . and if you're black, go back."

World And Press Watch As Africans Are Lynched In Libya. Sahara Reporters, March 1.

The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching, the whole world is watching as innocent Africans are being lynched in Libya. The time to act is right now since nobody acted yesterday or day before. It started as a rumor, then it was reported on social network and now we know it is real. The world must act and act quickly.

There are men, women and children dying in the hands of Libyan mobs simply because they look Africans and must therefore be mercenaries because they cannot place their hands on Gadhafi.

"In Libya, African Migrants Say They Face Hostility."National Public Radio, February 25. Quoting a Turkish oil field worker:

"We left behind our friends from Chad. We left behind their bodies. We had 70 or 80 people from Chad working for our company. They cut them dead with pruning shears and axes, attacking them, saying you're providing troops for Gadhafi. The Sudanese, the Chadians were massacred. We saw it ourselves."

Of those captured who were killed and mutilated by "pro-democracy demonstrators," and proudly shown on Youtube and Facebook, a clear majority were "mercenaries," meaning dark Africans.

Luis Sinco: "Journalists Visit Prisoners Held by Rebels in Libya." Los Angeles Times, March 23. 2011)

"I am a worker, not a fighter. They took me from my house and [raped] my wife," he said, gesturing with his hands. Before he could say much more, a pair of guards told him to shut up and hustled him through the steel doors of a cell block, which quickly slammed behind them. Several reporters protested and the man was eventually brought back out. He spoke in broken, heavily accented English and it was hard to hear and understand him amid the scrum of scribes pushing closer. He said his name was Alfusainey Kambi, and again professed innocence before being confronted by an opposition official, who produced two Gambian passports. One was old and tattered and the other new. And for some reason, the official said the documents were proof positive that Kambi was a Kadafi operative. 

[...] 

All I know is that the Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits prisoners of war from being paraded and questioned before cameras of any kind. But that's exactly what happened today. The whole incident just gave me a really bad vibe, and thank God it finally ended . . . . [O]ur interpreter, a Libyan national, asked [LA Times reported David] Zucchino: "So what do you think? Should we just go ahead and kill them?"

Again, considering the near-total lack of evidence of African mercenaries, aside from a few extracted "confessions," the myth of them took on a life of its own and fueled this ethnic cleansing. Who, besides anonymous Twitter accounts was responsible for spreading these horrible lies? Consider this, shared by Maxmilian Forte:

"They [the mercenaries] are from Africa, and speak French and other languages." He said their presence had prompted some army troops to switch sides to the opposition. "They are Libyans and they cannot see foreigners killing Libyans so they moved beside the people." [...] "People say [the mercenaries] are black Africans and they don't speak Arabic. They are doing terrible things, going to houses and killing women and children."

The answer is:

Ali Abd-al-Aziz al-Isawi who previously served as Secretary of the General People's Committee of Libya (GPCO) for Economy, Trade, and Investment -- now responsible for "foreign affairs" and "international liaison" as the third-ranked member of the TNC [rebel Transitional National Council]. ... At the time of the [2000] race riots, the then Minister ... al-Isawi -- stated about the African presence: "it is a burden"; and then he added this: "They are a burden on health care, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal."

Some other articles worth checking out:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/race-and-arab-nationalism-libya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/ford030311.html
http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/migrants-in-libya/
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/lynch-law-and-summary-executions-rebel-held-libya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/forte200411.html
http://somalilandpress.com/libya-rebels-execute -black-immigrants-while-forces-kidnap-others-20586

Update, June 29
The Wall Street Journal, of all sources, just ran a story dealing with racism among Libyan rebels, especially in the besieged Misrata, against the nearby, mostly-black and government-loyal, town of Tawergha.

Many Misratans are convinced that Tawerghans were responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed during their city's siege, including allegedly raping women in front of their relatives and helping Gadhafi forces identify and kidnap rebel sympathizers and their families.

Yeah, and don't forget the snipers that shot at least two little Misrata children in their little chest, says an X-ray image. Mighta been those same folks. A neighborhood of Misrata once dominated by Tawerghans was flushed out early on, some likely making cameos as "captured African mercenaries."Either way, they aren't taking it anymore.

Ibrahim al-Halbous, a rebel commander leading the fight near Tawergha, says all remaining residents should leave once if his fighters capture the town. "They should pack up," Mr. Halbous said. "Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata."

Some of the hatred of Tawergha has racist overtones that were mostly latent before the current conflict.

On the road between Misrata and Tawergha, rebel slogans like "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin" have supplanted pro-Gadhafi scrawl.

Original article (preview only without subscription)
Purported full-text re-post, cited here.

And remember, these monsters are the "good guys," the ones the government there is bombed to smithereens for resisting, the ones NATO is trying to hand all of Libya over to. Please, those who are powerless to put a stop to this enormous and amoral machine, just pray for Libya. An atheist like me can't do it.

Update August 5: A noteworthy addition - Fox News of all outfits spoke with a doctor, apparently black, who left Benghazi, his home of 21 years, after having dealt with the rebels.

“They wanted to kill blacks there,” he says. “I’d be killed if I stayed.”
“They catch [detain] me with a gun in front of my wife and kids. They arrested me, tied me up and covered my eyes and took me to their camp for questioning about Muammar Qaddafi.”

It was only after local hospital officials confirmed his identity that he was freed. He left the city, his home for the past 21 years, and headed for the Egyptian border with his wife, two small boys and just two bags. From Egypt, the family was taken to Tunisia and then to Tripoli and finally to this remote refugee center.

Update Aug 27: See also all posts tagged Racism. Of special note:
Video: How the Rebels Gave Africa the Boot
Refugees and Human Trafficking
Misrata Rape Parties: Really?
---
Further good examples:
The Fall and Purge of Tawergha
Video Study: Rat Detectives Sniff Out Crime - if it ain't mercenary, it's infidel
The Tripoli Massacres: Ghargour Black Trash - black Rebel medics killed by Afro-mercs (??)
The Aruba School Captives - Among the first Afro-Mercs: nothing but Libyans who were darker than average

Snapshots, added Jan. 23
Snapshot 1: Late August, Abu Salim, Tripoli
As rebel forces from the racist Misrata brigades or the racist Zintan brigades swept through the holdout parts of town, none was a larger target or more rife with brutality than the largely-Black, mostly loyalist, working-class neighborhood of Abu Salim.

No mercy in Tripoli fighting
By Marc Bastian (AFP) – Aug 26, 2011

On Thursday as the two groups clashed heavily in the capital, rebel fighters showed two corpses lying in a hall of a building. “These residents refused to take weapons given by the men of Gaddafi to fight us. They were executed with a bullet in the head,” said a rebel, whose claim was backed by several locals from Abu Slim. A few hours later, the rebels captured several prisoners, a man was pinned to the ground and a shot rang out. The body did not move.

A separate incident occurred as a group of rebels began lynching another prisoner, he was saved from a worse fate when a rebel noticed a journalist shouting “Stop, Stop! Journalists!”.

A rebel in his fifties who gave his name as Abdelnasser justified the fury of fellow rebels. “Most people here are pro-Gaddafi and shoot at us. We cannot trust them, even young people.” he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jSpsLoDHEaqekqcHUHKBzA5YGaZQ
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/rebel-forces?before=1314787790

Snapshot 2, late January, 2012
Nearly a year on, and the ethic cleansing, or incessant toying at the fringes of it, continues. In Depth Africa reports:

Somali asylum seekers who fled Libya by boat and were brought to Malta last weekend tell Patrick Cooke that Africans still risk beatings and even death in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Zakaria and a fellow Somali were exhausted after carrying out back-breaking manual labour for a Libyan man who had picked them up in ‘Krimea’, an area of Tripoli where the city’s underclass of sub-Saharan Africans congregate in the hope of finding work.

At the moment all Libyans have guns… there is no security and no stability
“When we finished, he told us ‘you are a friend of Gaddafi so I will not pay you, you killed our brothers’. Then he beat us with sticks and threatened us with a gun,” Zakaria tells The Sunday Times.

“Africans are being beaten and killed in Libya and no one there cares,” he adds to nods from his companions inside Lyster Detention Centre, where the 68 Somali asylum seekers rescued at sea last weekend are being housed.

A crowd gathers to share or listen to stories of life in post-revolution Libya for dark-skinned Africans, which are articulated into English by Zakaria and another asylum seeker, Abdul Karim.

‘Murtazaka’ – meaning ‘mercenary’ in Arabic – is a word they all know too well.

“Even now they all call us murtazaka. We cannot say anything because we have nothing and all Libyan men have guns. They say we are the brothers of Gaddafi,” says Abdul Karim.

http://indepthafrica.com/news/east-africa/libyas-like-somalia/#.TxyoEkYyLko

Of Bettors and Debtors

Dr. Ali Tarhouni and "the True Voice of the Masses"
December 24, 2011
last edits, new title, Jan. 17, 2012

Dr.Ali Tarhouni was an exile during all but a few months of Gaddafi's "Arab Socialist" Jamahiriya system, studying free market economics in the United States, and teaching it at the University of Washington, Seattle. In February, he returned to Libya to join the new NTC (NATO Terrorist Collaborator) government as its oil and finance minister. Once the country was brutalized into submission, he would try and turn back the "growing ... resource nationalism" that had alarmed Western oil companies and the State Department from 2007 onward, helping make war more likely.

I had cheered his failure to be re-appointed to the post for the 2012 NTC team. But I was missing much about that. Now he's taken a bold new turn, it would seem, tossing off the shackles of indebtedness to would-be foreign controllers with material interests.

Vanessa Gera, Associated Press, November 25:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/25/ali-tarhouni-libya-new-leaders_n_1112889.html

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-25/news/30441806_1_mustafa-abdul-jalil-oil-and-finance-minister-libyan-people

etc..

Tarhouni ... was one of the most visible and internationally respected faces of the Libyan revolutionary leadership that presided over the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

But he said he refused an offer to join Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib's transitional Cabinet, because he believes that those now in power are not representative. He accused them of being "supported from the outside by money, arms and PR."

"The voices that we see now are the voices of the elite," he said.

The U.S.-educated [elite] Tarhouni, who managed the then-rebel government's financial system, is one of the first senior Libyan politicians to openly question the new government's legitimacy.

He said the countries who backed the rebellion have interests in Libya, "some which we know and some which we don't know." While he didn't elaborate, Tarhouni did not object when a journalist suggested that he was speaking about Qatar.

No one asked if he also meant France, the U.S., or the U.K. Would he have said yes? Or is he just picking on Qatar on behalf of the other partners, jealous as they are that the Gulf Arabs have greater sway with fellow Muslims than their own more familiar pale face of Imperialism?

"Some are thinking of imposing their will on the Libyan people and that's a mistake," Tarhouni said. "For me the question of sovereignty is the most important. This revolution was for re-establishing dignity and sovereignty."

No comment. Gera continues:

Earlier this week, the chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, also indicated that Qatar was meddling in Libyan affairs.

He said Libyans remain grateful to "our brothers" in Qatar for supporting the revolt against Gadhafi, but said Qatar was doing some things in Libya "that we as the NTC don't know about." He said his leadership protested to Qatar's leaders, but was told that the Gulf state had a right to be involved because it "betted on the success" of the revolution.

If true, that sounds quite annoying.Who wants to be told they're like a racehorse someone's going to ride home now because of the money someone made betting on them? Especially when they couldn't even reach the finish line, and only won by default because the bettors had snipers in the stands killing all the other horses?

But again, the Qataris are far from the only ones doing that here. It was the intent of "The West" at large from February forward. Dr. Tarhouni, the American puppet (??), may be using the chasm of discontent his party unleashed in order to blame foreign meddling on junior partner Qatar and cut them out of the nation-building. I want the Qataris ripped off and punished now, just not by and for the benefit of the bigger bullies yet with a longer history of neo-Imperialism.

Anyways, whatever his motive, Tarhouni's new ideas are ambitious. A later article from the Washington Post gives hints where he's headed now, after a brief return to Seattle to see his family.

[O]n Tuesday he described [the NTC] as a good government, and said he would continue working to form a new, broad, democratic political party.

“There’s really no manual for building a state from scratch,” he said. “What makes it really tough is — we’re hoping, we’re dreaming, and I believe strongly we will succeed in building a democratic society — but there’s really no history of democracy in Libya. ... I thought I could serve it better by building this political movement.”

He'll be doing this in Libya, sounds like. For a hint of its flavor, maybe even going for the green vote (and thus acknowledging it exists):

Among the most memorable moments of his return to Libya from exile were standing in the capital, Tripoli, and declaring it to be free, as well as holding the hand of a crying, injured 14-year-old supporter of Gadhafi, he said.

“I told him, ‘You’re not my enemy,’” Tarhouni said. “He died three hours later.”

He was less saddened by the death of Gadhafi.

“I stood over his corpse the same day he was killed,” he said. “I thought of the comrades and friends who died in prison and never saw this day. ... I couldn’t believe this ugly corpse did this damage to Libya.”

No, it was the NTC and the bombs and other support from NATO countries and, yes, Qatar, that made an ugly corpse of their leader, killed that boy who loved him, and starved and wrecked the country, leaving all the questions about starting "from scratch."

Returning to the Gera piece for more foreshadowing:

Libya's new Cabinet, a gathering of mostly older men who are relatively unknown, faces daunting challenges. They must prepare the country for democratic elections in seven months while establishing control over a nation shattered by four decades of Gadhafi's rule and eight months of civil war.

Tarhouni said that more than 90 percent of Libyans are not represented by this new leadership.

"It is about time that we hear the true voices of the masses," he said.

What if that voice is loud and green? It was until July anyway, and nothing's changed since then but greater brute force, physical defeat, and a greater hate, kept deeper inside, for the Libyan Contras sent to stupidly and brutally subvert the country to outside powers.

I don't trust him in the long run but this type of statement should be rewarded and encouraged, especially as/if it gets more sincere and more meaningful.

Update Jan. 17:
Confirmation that Tarhouni is only helping sideline Qatar, not fighting foreign control: Italy Last Among Libya Friends for Potential Oil Concessions. Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg. January 09, 2012, 6:00 PM EST

France and the U.S. haven’t come across as “someone who is basically grabbing” and are “playing it right,” former Libyan Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni, who quit shortly after the capture and death of Qaddafi, said in an interview yesterday in Washington. Italy “will take time to figure it out.”

At stake is Italy’s position as the top energy investor in Libya, where its closest rivals are Total SA of France, which was the first country to recognize the Libyan opposition, and Russia’s Gazprom OAO. The U.S. and the U.K. joined France in leading efforts to win United Nations approval for air strikes against Qaddafi’s forces.

“We are indebted to the French, and I cannot find the right words to say it,” Tarhouni said, listing Libya’s “friends” in the following order: France, the U.S., Britain and Italy. “If everything else is the same, of course we will remember our friends.”

"Indebted" is just the right word. Time to start paying back. As for who's down the list even than Italy; Qatar, apparently, Russia and China (abstain and complain!), most of Africa (mercenaries!), and at the very end of the global list of friends of this revolution, battered to a pulp, is Libya.

Video Study: Soldiers Who Wouldn't Kill their Parents

December 21, 2011

القذافي يقتل جنوده اذا رفضوا قتل اهلهم [Gaddafi soldiers killed if they refuse to kill their parents]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFpvZmX-lAQ
Uploaded by gettherat on Jul 14, 2011
Desc: "Gaddafi kill his own soldiers when they refuse to kill their own people when they approached Benghazi in March"

The video is gory enough, in the still image chosen, that I didn't embed it. All the victims are in Libyan army fatigues. Most of them are light-skinned Arabs. One man shown in that was clearly executed, if not bound. Probably injured before, he was shot in the back of the head right there, blowing his brains and head-blood quite visibly out his half-openedskull and across his upper right arm and the ground.

Others lay more-or-less piled along a narrow walkway with a low outer wall and a bullet-scarred inner wall. This greatly reminds me of a scene posted by propagandist Quatchi Canada, called "Misurata, Libya: Fighters Take On Gaddafi's Forces in A School, April 17, 2011." "In the video one person says that half of the killed Gaddafi's men were African mercenaries," QC adds in typical fashion. It shows what feels like a staged battle at a school they were sure was empty. There are dead loyalists shown, all looking like they were shot in only this one similar location. The walls behind them are riddled with bullet holes and splaters of blood, suggesting all these captives,perhaps injured before, were lined up and executed against.

Looting the pockets of one of these
heroes for Libyan family values 

I don't think this is the same scene, but similar. Here among those who allegedly refused to off mom and pop, we see the effects of heavy explosions, broken concrete and metal suggesting NATO bomb damage in advance of the cleanup crew's work finishing off the slaughter.

The image at left is of a young man rifling through the jacket pockets of one of the dead. Just before this, he's seen stomping on the man's body (0:22),  and after this he digs through the man's pants pockets. Take that, you coward who wouldn't kill your parents!

There's the brainless man mentioned above, and then like in the Misrata video some others piled up in a walkway. A young-faced guy atright seems to have died somewhat peacefully. Next to him, laid across the top of the low wall, a wooden plank with a possible nail sticking out of it. There's possible blood on its edge. Gulp...

Nearby to the left of this spot are two apparent black-skinned victims who seem to have died more violently. One has what looks most like his head at a strange angle, perhaps not attached. It could well be an angle issue, but his shoulders seem too near the wall, marked there with a spout of blood. It very much looks like a throat-slitting or even a full beaheading, with the head left behind. The video may have zoomed in on that before the cut we see at this point, leaving the image above the best glimpse we can get.

The other victim is face-down, the seat of his pants are strangely torn up revealing bloodied flesh beneath, the whole area soaked with blood. Recall the plank above and consider the style of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan [Wikipedia]:

[T]he video, taken at some time in 2005, shows Issa beating another man, an Afghan grain merchant called Mohammed Shah Poor, with a wooden plank with protruding nails, firing an automatic weapon into the sand around him and forcing a cattle prod into his anus before turning it on. Prior to the abuse, the video allegedly shows a man in a UAE police uniform tying the victim's arms and legs; at a later point, Issa urges the cameraman to move in closer with the words, "Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show." The victim also appeared to have been run over by a Mercedes SUV, have lighter fluid poured on his genitals and set alight, and had salt poured on his wounds.

He was "spanked" on the buttocks with this nail, and had the salt poured there. The United Arab Emirates, which this psychopath helped run as the family business, had been a major financial and moral backer of the Libyan Islamist, racist as hell, "freedom fighters," who've also been caught in Sirte apparently burning their captives, perhaps with tire "necklaces," after running over them with their trucks.

But this is depressing, and maybe we should fall back on the explanation of "gettherat." To endure such tortures by the villainous Gaddafi loyalists, these onetime loyalists must have really loved their parents. Their sacrifice and the final elimination of the mad dictator by the global conglomerate of those who resisted his orders proves that Libya has a bright future ahead, swelling with humanity and noble aspirations.

Foreign Adventurers

November 16, 2011

There are a few posts I've bee asked to start but don't feel versed enough to write on, norready to research. This is one of them. Considering the incredible commentary input of late, I realize a post- orseveral - of reader-generated content could work here.

Find below, when they appear, some fascinating comments with useful links on foreign fighters and adventurers on the rebel side of the fight. These are often Libya natives, or with Libyan ancestry, but who have lived abroad for long enough they count as foreigners, converging on their homeland in support of a foreign-sponsored civil war. Others, from the Arab world, Europe, and elsewhere, have nothing to do with Libya except wanting to go be a part of history there. Some may have been channeled in by al Qaeda or similar extremist networks. Still others are professional fighters and advisers from placeslike Qatar and France and the U.S., arguably mercenaries, who are helping one side fight in a sense that if any other country's nationals were assisting the Gaddafi regime in the same way, they'd be slapped with all sorts of sanctions for breaking arms embargoes, etc..

Once enough good material is gathered below, I'll probably put the best of it in the body of this post.

The Sirte Massacres: 10 Victims, Burnt, Run Over, Burnt Again

November 1, 2011
last edits Nov. 2

<< The Sirte Massacres

The corpses we'll be considering here have already been blogged on in a separate post that will now have to be split up. The eight bound and executed bodies (out of ten) filmed by Danish Channel 2 Nyhederne and photographed by Tracey Shelton for Global Post on October 12 will be covered here.

They were killed there by Gaddafi loyalists, it was said, some days before the rebels found them, apparenly on taking the area on the 11th. But by rebel-claims-based graphics, the area in question was under rebel control at least two days by then, and possibly for more than a week. Therefore, the NTC ("former rebel") forces, as usual, seem to have been in charge when these cruel and illegal executions occurred. Plus all but one of the seven bodies with skin we can see are of black men.

But for the moment, we can leave even the authorship in doubt. I have the bodies at a location identified in satellite imagery (thanks to a reader), at what I thought was Mutassim Gaddafi's compound. It could still be so, I'm not sure. But they seem to be the same bodies referred to in this al Arabiyah report as the 11 bodies (ten by Channel2's count) reported as found in the "Dollar neighborhood," or Hay al-Dollar. That I thought was the built up neighborhood a kilometer east of the rural-looking spot in question, but close enough.

Al Arabiyah, Tuesday October 15, based on site reports of the 14th. (Their Youtube posting of it)

Libya’s National Transitional Council said on Friday [Oct. 11] that it had discovered 11 unidentified bodies, some burnt and some that had been run over by vehicles.

The corpses, believed to have been killed by forces loyal to former leader Muammar Qaddafi, were found face down and piled up, in an area in Sirte known as “Dollar Neighborhood”. NTC fighters said they found more bodies in a similar state in other parts of Sirte...

For reference, here again are the seven bodies of the main pile against the wall, as filmed by Channel 2 on the 12th. There were an additional three bodies we hear, but only saw one, behind that wall. None of these seem to have been run over or burnt, making the connection less than clear. Make special note of the black man at the southeast corner of the pile (right).

What al Arabiyah showed with the report above, in lesser resolution and very short edits, was the same scene, but a bit different. For starters, it's two days later and the victims - whoever they were - are still laying out unburied, rotting in the sun.

Looking again, and taking a better screen grab, indeed the scene has been altered. The bodies seem blacker all-in-all, and it's partly from the addition of a black fluid running into the dirt.

That's quite strange. Decomposition-related? We can't tell from this, but we'll come back to it.

On Running Over of Victims
The claim that some of the bodies were run over is unusual. There are many ways this could happen in a war zone, but the imagination at least brings to mind some practices of the rebel forces's sponsors in the Persian Gulf. It's Qatar and al Jazeera that proved so eager to support Libya's revolutionaries in every way imaginable, Bahrain who ruthlessly crushed their own rebels (with Qatar's silent complicity), and Saudi Arabia who sent in mercenaries to help.

But it's the United Arab Emirates who had produced Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, famous for the 2009 revelation of his sickening abuse of a commoner accused of stealing grain. Compounded torture using government soldiers was capped with a nearly fatal running-over of the victim by the Sheikh - back and forth repeatedly - with his Mercedes SUV.

Issa's fiercely Islamist, "screw Western Human Rights" example might be at work here, a sort of rebel tribute carried out on more captured "African mercenaries." Or that might just be an odd thought.

Is this running-over claim only based on the presence of tires, as reported by Channel2's Tantholdt, "around" the victims? I haven't seen recognizable tires, but some fibrous material that could be the remains of well-burnt ones. They burned the murder weapon too? Or were the victims simply burned with tires, as I wondered for part one, "necklaced?" Or were they run over and then necklaced? Were they already dead when set alight, or ruptured but conscious? The mind shudders at the horrific possibilities...

Maybe they were dead before even being run over. Only a few rebel fighters likely know for sure what really happened here. Nyhederne had another, less knowledgeable (??) fighter showing the burnt area. Asked "This is [the work of] Gaddafi?" (I used Google translate on the subtitles), the fighter responds "Yes. look him straight [??]. The proof is that they have burned them." No one else does that, by implication.

But the nasty men had lost the area, clearly, by the 12th. With the NTC forces in control, the Gaddafi thugs wouldn't be able to burn any more people around here, ever again.

A Second Burn Session!
Putting things together, al Arabiya's view shows the same bodies two days later,with black fluid apparently added. This is confirmed by another video I found, from Reuters, October 14. I didn't find it on Youtube or Reuters' own site, only at Scanpix. It seems the al Arabiyah footage is based on short clips of it. Here is more footage and better resolution. More clearly we can see the re-moistened clothing, as the bodies under their exclusive NTC control were apparently doused with oil and then, in one case anyway, slightly burnt.

The description there says, in part:

Libyan interim government forces said on Friday (October 14) [sic - the 11th] they had found up to eleven bodies, some of which had been burnt and ran over. The bodies were piled together, face down, in area known as the 'Dollar Neighbourhood' in Sirte.

NTC Abdel Ati AlBarouni told Reuters:

This is a mass grave. That crime was committed by the men of Gaddafi. When we entered Sirte we found these bodies lying in this area, the Dollar Neighbourhood. There are burnt bodies that were crushed by vehicles. They are not recognizable. There are seven or eight bodies that have been piled on top of each other.

There's the 10/11 distinction - the reports of 11 were counting eight bodies, not seven, on the main heap. Either they can't count up to seven accurately, or one body was removed before any news video was shot. The emptied burn area behind the wall, Reuters says, also evidenced "marks left by vehicle tires."

The Reuters video also helps set up the area as reader Petri Krohn already showed - the three burnt-to-the-bone corpses were found just a few feet north of that same wall. But by this time, both groups of bodies have seen some flames.

Here again is the guy from the right in the image at top, as seen on the two different days. On the 14th he's moister, from the oil dousing, and starting to really bloat. An even closer view shows severe cracking of the skin now around the wrist binding, many flies, and some maggots visible. Two days making such a difference supports my hunch they were there only about two days, or less, prior to the 12th.

The fire they set to him seems to have been centered around his face and shoulder, and not to have burned very long. A burnt face is blacker yet, and here shiny with more oil. It also seems pushed more into the dirt somehow, as if to half-hide the half-burnt evidence. Sloppy, stupid work.

Again, this clear dousing and toasting of "Gaddafi's victims" occurred under NTC control. Even if we consider the killings ambiguous, this is undeniable - it happened after the 12th. And then their goons just showed it all over again, blaming even that on Gaddafi's people (they're the only ones who do it, right?). How stupid do they think we are?

They found other bodies in a similar state around Sirte? Wonderful. Similar to which burnt bodies? The ones behind the wall that looked like the skeletons of the Khamis Brigade shed massacre, or the Benghazi Chadian roast victims? Or more like these corpses found half-burnt and piled face-down in Tripoli right after the rebels rolled in? Were the others run over for kicks as well?