Departures From Protocol at the UN

Sketching out the New Libya: Departures From Protocol at the UN
July 28/29, 2011
extensive edits Sept. 12

From What Fount Springeth This? 
The unfolding of the new libya, and its old colors of monarchy, has been painted as the natural triumph of the peoples' will against a tyrant's rule. This had just occurred in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia (and nowhere else yet), leaving everyone just knowing it was just time for change in that narrow region and, hey, who doesn't hate Gaddafi, right? Everyone who was capable joined with the masses, we believed, driven by the noblest of abstract virtues - freedom, equality, justice - perhaps unseen in such purity since the French Revolution. The old, the corrupt, and the cruel was to be swept away by crashing waves of light, it seemed back around March 1.

By now we can see this wasn't quite right (well, most of us can). In fact the reality on the ground seems artificially murky, brutal, deceptive, and highly troubling. And the first and major steps towards enforcing any new Libya - the help of powerful outsiders - looks more like a well-planned soft coup than a mass uprising.

The uprising originated, to some extent anyway, with Libyans - but only a select few visionary ones operating within Libya, in Paris, and especially in New York. These pioneers worked largely through the United Nations, but in an unusual personal, not national capacity. I'm no expert on international law, but I suspect what happened here was illegal.

This fascinating but ignored line of thought is the cornerstone of an impressive recent article I read and will cite throughout this one: The Role of the UN Security Council in Unleashing an Illegal War against Libya, by Ronda Hauben, published on July 20 by the Center for Research on Gloablization.

The article starts with the the official explanation why the UN's Security Council chose to take up the issue of Libya: a member state of the Security Council, Lebanon, had brought the issue before them in late February. This was followed by a second from the Arab League, and the white people countries well-known for loathing Gaddafi simply followed up on that. No euro-Imperialism there, most presume.

But the Arab League has its own conflicts of interest and reasons to dislike the Libyan regime, at least in the alleged 2003 Gaddafi plot to kill Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah (a decent starter source, NYT, on that strange chapter). There are also supposed rivalries over religious influence, wiath Gaddafi accused of wanting to supplant the medieval monarchy and make Libya the new center of Islam (can't find a handy link for that).

And Qatar, a firm non-european support for the rebellion against Gaddafi in every conceivable way, through the Arab League and on their own, has some kind of previous beef with the Colonel that's apparently quite serious. According to recently published reports, based on files found in Tripoli, British authorities had agreed to offer special protection to Seif al-Islam Gaddafi from a possible 2002 plot to kill him. According to Muzaffar Iqbal, writing for Pakistan's The News (International), the plot might be disinformation, but was linked to "Qatar’s interior minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani," who "was also accused of sheltering “terrorists” at his farm by none other Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, who considered his ministerial post a “direct and serious threat to US forces present in Qatar.""

The Arab League - Arabs! - approved
"no fly" at the UN. Photo: Reuters, 
via the Sofia Echo

And as the UK Guardian noted, Lebanon also has its beef with the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, in the form of a long-dead Shia cleric allegedly killed and buried - or alive? - inside Libya. By the sound of it, this was well-played on by rumor-spinning rebel schemers and helped prod things along.

Along with a hasty, poorly-attended, and still far from unanimous vote, the Arab League - Arabs! - approved a "no fly zone," and thus provided a fig leaf for this open door to imperialist  bombardment of Muslims which they later - limply - protested for a couple of days.

The "hate Gaddafi" club - which the regime had clearly allowed grow too large - put themselves in charge of writing Libya's future. The "screw Gaddafi" and "oh well, what can you expect?" clubs - also too large - apparently just let them do it, with nothing more severe than abstention.

The Libyan Invite I: Dabbashi  
But even with the troubling grudges considered, this telling obscures an earlier and shadier genesis yet, Hauben argues, also from within the Arab world.

It was not a Security Council member nation which started this process. Nor was it the Arab League. Rather it was a party that one could argue had no legitimate basis to speak at the United Nations, especially not to the Security Council.

This party, was, by that time, the former Chargé d’Affaires to the United Nations for the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya [Libya], Ibrahim Dabbashi. Dabbashi had taken the unusual actions of first announcing to the press that he had defected from representing the government of Libya at the UN, and then requesting an emergency meeting of the Security Council about the situation in Libya.

His request to the Security Council began a process which, in less than a week, resulted in passing the stringent sanctions against Libya and the referral of its officials to the ICC that are included in SC Resolution 1970. SC Resolution 1970 then set the stage for SC Resolution 1973 passed three weeks later which authorized military action against Libya.

Mr. Dabbashi seems to be the second in charge of the mission to the UN, normally. The mission was actually headed by Abdel Rahman Shalgham, the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Libya's formal title). Why Shalgham's Chargé d’Affaires was able to have such leverage isn't clear to me; elsewhere Dabbashi is also described as the "Deputy Ambassador," so perhaps he was in charge at the moment, February 21 to be precise, for some legitimate reason.

Either way, the underling defected on day six of greatly misunderstood "protests", rejecting the post he filled ... or, rather, not doing that. As Hauben put it "while an appropriate course for a defecting government official from a country would be to resign his official position as a Deputy Ambassador for Libya at the United Nations, this is not what happened."

Dabbashi tells it juuuust how
it is. Photo: Al Arabiya

In fact, he went on to represent "the people" of Libya. This always clearly meant the anti-Gaddafi insurgents, and eventually their strange political leadership, the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC or some variant - they change it every couple months). But before they had quite gelled, Mr. Dabbashi in New York had declared himself their ambassador - and not the deputy. By dint of entrepreneurial spirit and swift action, he was now the boss now and his old boss ... that remained to be seen. Boss again, or an enemy supporting the "genocide?"


Ibrahim Dabbashi's actions were clearly geared towards creating a new nation in the space of the old, and that seems a bit like diplomatic warfare to me. And whether he knew or suspected it then, he was making himself the permanent representative to the UN for racist lynch mobs, looters and retribution thugs, arsonists, rapists, cop-killers, serial fakers of claims and evidence, neo-colonialist free-market sell-outs, genuine if misguided freedom-seekers, and, to some extent, al Qaeda and assorted Islamo-nihilist mercenaries.

Dabbashi's Roadmap
Either way, I went a bit beyond Hauben to see more of just what this turncoat did with his invented new position; it would take the form of words on the record. I rely on an article from Al Jazeera English, Feb 22. By this, it's not the cautious statement of a loyal servant of his government forced by events. The turns of phrase and even more the suggested actions reveal a rather advanced conception of what this crisis offered and how it should be exploited. Calling on the widely reported but unverified rumors of a bloodbath, he said in part:

The tyrant Muammar Gaddafi has asserted clearly, through his sons, the level of ignorance he and his children have, and how much he despises Libya and the Libyan people [...]
This is in fact a declaration of war against the Libyan people. The regime of Gaddafi has already started the genocide against the Libyan people.

The officers and soldiers of the Libyan army wherever they are and whatever their rank is ... [should] organise themselves and move towards Tripoli and cut the snake's head.

Here Dabbashi clarifies he is declaring war, but only after the other side started it. With quick and comprehensive thinking, he laid out much of how it should be done: he demanded an inquiry by the International Criminal Court for crimes against Humanity by Gaddafi and his sons (investigation done, warrants eventually issued, used as bargaining chips to bring the NTC to power). He warned of Gaddafi fleeing justice into exile (setting up the travel ban), and warned of money smuggling (setting the world towards freezing as much of the Libyan economy as possible).

He also prophetically recommended a no-fly zone and air embargo over Libya, as al Jazeera explained, "to prevent mercenaries and weapons from being shipped [sic] in." (It was only just then that rumors of aerial bombardment were starting to appear as well, greatly strengthening this case).  He warned of sabotage at oil installations "by the coward tyrant," (reminding us all what this was really about). And of course he encouraged employees of Libyan embassies all over the world to join him, and "stand with their people." He urged this specifically for the mission in Geneva, which should pressure the UN Human Rights Council to action. [again, the al Jazeera article]

By and large, these diplomatic defections did happen, swiftly and en masse, a real coup of an achievement. Other areas of the government and military only dribbled defectors, usually loud-mouthed ones, but the ambassadors just poured out, helping convince the world it must really be over for the Jamahiriya. And again, this moved fast starting on day six of the violent protests in Libya that allegedly surprised everyone.

Mr. Dabbashi's bold course of action, as personal as it was, could conceivably have lined up with the overall will of Libya's people.  Clearly a formidable segment rejects Gaddafi just as virulently (if less strategically) as he does. But with time to understand, we can see the impression of a total nationwide mutiny that drove Dabbashi was a fiction, and one he himself co-wrote.

Al-Mesmari and The Date that Lives in Infamy/A Cabal Enabled? 
The address above was given on February 22, since the UN headquarters was closed on the the 21st when Dabbashi first announced his resignation elsewhere (President's Day is for the whole world now). Besides commemorating our own great leaders, the date of his unequivocal defection is noteworthy. As Hauben explains, another Libyan official, Nouri al-Mesmari, also announced his resignation as the Jamahiriya's protocal chief on the 21st.

Al-Mesmari resigned from Paris, having informally resigned upon flying there, unannounced, in October. He had reportedly spent the time between linking French intelligence with Libyans planning some nebulous uprising set for February, and rebuffing all inducement to return to the targeted nation. (See here for explanation.)

Al-Mesmari's previous job as chief of protocol (from Which Dabbashi would so boldly stray) had put him into intimate contact with all diplomatic posts, like Dabbashi's. He told al Jazeera on February 27 (video) that he was "a pure diplomat," in charge of "relationship with the embassies." Strangely, six days after resigning, he told them "I am in charge of the diplomacy in Libya" (emph. mine).

And for what it's worth, it's also been speculated by seasoned observers that al-Mesmari was in turn put up to defect by now-defected Libyan foreign sinister Moussa Koussa (reported on Africa Intelligence, passed on via Meyssan at least).  Hauben also makes note of both men, Mesmari and Dabbashi, making specific use of the term "genocide" to describe what Gaddafi was doing. This term has no basis in reality, with the "cide" based on confused rumors, and the "geno" part being just silly. But that precise word, accurate or not, does have a certain resonance - especially in Geneva.

The apparent signal for these twin defectors in Paris and New York was the decisive turn of the previous day in Benghazi, their emergent rebel capitol. Heavily armed "protesters" finally overwhelmed the Katiba army barracks, after days of trying, with the heroic help of a suicide bomber. To save this last toehold of security in the city, Interior Minister Abdel Fateh Younes was sent by Tripoli to restore order. But upon arrival he made a deal - the surviving soldiers would be allowed to leave, and he, Younes the great, would join their cause, along with the force he brought. He was "with the people" publicly by the evening of the 20th.

It was first thing in the morning that these two made their announcements - only once it was clear Benghazi had fallen and Younes had jumped. If people are jumping, it might seem like the ship is sinking. And they knew, by some instinct (?), it was time to add to that impression and quickly, before it could be shown the Jamahiriya still sailed on, just a few rats lighter.


As I've noted here before, it's generally illegal to recognize a group not in charge of a nation. And even considering that, there was no group here - Dabbashi at first represented no legally extant body. If he was chosen by anyone in particular, (besides that defunct old regime that once chose him), it would be by a still-unproven conspiratorial cabal, who all agreed to things like "say genocide," and "be sure to mention his sons!"

If not Conspiratorial, at Least Illegal
These are just little clues, and not proof, but in concert with the stealing and re-appropriation of government posts, alarm bells should have been going off.

It would appear to be a serious breach of UN protocol for a defecting official who had formerly been the representative of a nation that is a member of the UN, to be able to request a Security Council meeting and to have the Security Council grant the meeting and allow the defecting official to participate in the meeting. Similarly, to allow the defecting diplomat to make unverified allegations at the meeting against the government of a UN member nation would only compound the serious violation of the UN Charter represented by this abuse of UN processes.

I never really thought about it before reading this article, but that does seem quite illegal. I just thought it sounded extremely wrong. Why did I not think of, or hear of the actual impropriety of it? I can understand the Americans, French, Qataris, etc. biting their tongues and egging this on, but where are the clear protests from Russia, China, Venezuela? (Out there, perhaps, but ignored). This is really a strange and shady situation. As Reuters said:

The [security] council met at the request of Libyan Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi, who along with most other staff at Libya’s U.N. mission announced on Monday they were no longer working for leader Muammar Gaddafi and represented the country’s people. They called for Gaddafi’s overthrow.”

The Libyan Invite II: Shalgham Jumps Ship, Washington Sinks It
As we've seen, deputy ambassador Dabbasi took the first bold steps, while his superior, ambassador Shalgham at first acted differently. Before mindlessly repeating the tales of massacres and "genocide," he called home and asked. Hauben cites this video and explains:

Shalgham also attended the February 22 Security Council meeting, along with Dabbashi. In informal comments after the meeting, Shalgham indicated that he had been in contact with a relative in Tripoli and was told that the alleged atrocities that the media was claiming had happened in Tripoli were not true. 

Similarly, speaking to the press, he indicated that he had been in contact with government officials in Tripoli who said that they, too, disputed the claims of atrocities taking place in Tripoli and planned to invite journalists from Al Arabiya and CNN to see for themselves that the allegations were inaccurate.

These offers would have been useful towards establishing the truth as it's now emerging, but they were rebuffed forcefully by the West. Shalgham's pointed reference to Tripoli's view was not in the spirit of the cabal, and as that video link shows, made him a persona non-grata with the journalists there, expecting an absolute defection to the "light side."

But he was somehow brought around, perhaps by his number two, or any other comination of forces in this massive geo-political lynch mob against his home government. Within a couple of days, he too was resigning and denouncing his personal friend, Muammar Gaddafi, and his regime in stringent terms. A more specific example of the diplomatic disconnect over who represents Libya arises from his subsequent lobbying, as Hauben explains:

One good example of this departure from protocol obligations is demonstrated by two documents. The first is Security Council Resolution 1970 (S/RES/1970(2011). The document states in its opening statement (21):

“Taking note of the letter to the President of the Security Council from the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya dated 26 February 2011.” (S/Res/1970(2011),p.1)

The problem of acknowledging this letter this way in the body of Resolution 1970 is that on February 25, the former Libyan Ambassador to the UN, Abdel Rahman Shalgham had informed the Security Council that he had defected.

By February 26 he no longer represented the Libyan government. Consequently there was no basis for the Security Council to refer to a letter from him, as a letter from the Permanent Representative of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

The Security Council should have found a way to hear from a member of the government of Libya, rather than substituting a defector Ambassador and his delegation for the official delegation of Libya.

Once enough rats had jumped, the ship was sunk. However many nations immediately recognized them or didn't, the UNSC had recognized the rebels from a mile away as of February 22. The Gaddafi regime was diplomatically neutered, just a thing that the bombing of could commence.  As Hauben noted, the actual Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, headquartered in Tripoli, in charge of most of Libya, and supported by an uncertain but sizeable chunk of Libya's people, was not allowed to speak for itself. 

No legitimate Libyan government official was invited to take part in Security Council proceedings. When the Libyan government tried to appoint legitimate government officials to replace the defector delegation, the US government would not approve the visa requests for the replacement delegates, in violation of the Host Country obligations of the US. In this way, the US prevented the Libyan government from being able to present its case before the Security Council.

And so Mr. Shalgham, the slightly delayed rebel ambassador of NATO's Libyans, was number one again and Dabbashi again his deputy. The ambassador of the brand-new nation, sketched out in New York and soon inked-in with ever more blood in Libya, put his words on the record on the 25th. He easily swayed the council to embraced the new Libya, literally. One last time, Hauben:

In his presentation to the Security Council meeting on Friday, February 25, Shalgham made a virulent denunciation of the Libyan government, complete with analogies to Hitler. Shalgham ignored the conflicting accounts of what was happening in Benghazi and instead painted a picture of peacefully demonstrating civilians unjustly subjected to a massacre. 

Shalgham presented no proof for his allegations nor was he asked to present any. Instead, he was consoled by the Secretary General and members of the Security Council, with several Security Council members, embracing and comforting him. 

Photo: Monika Graff, Getty Images

At right is actually a separate hug on March 16, upon securing the pivotal no-fly zone at the UNSC, sanctioning NATO bombardment of his country. Shalgham, right, and the US ambasssador, Susan Rice, left. Might have that backwards, I don't follow the news too close.

Something snapped between February 22 and 25, and the real Abdel Rahman Shalgham was apparently killed in the process, another early casualty of the Libyan Civil War, snuffed out like so many under murky circumstances.

Libya's Free Market Future

May 11 2011
last edits August 5

The Future Path and the Basic Problem
Gheriani tried to assure me that the new state the rebels envision would be led not by confused mobs or religious extremists but by “Western-educated intellectuals,” like him.
- Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, April 4

This message from rebel Transitional National Council spokesman Mustafa Gheriani is re-assuring in a way, ominous in another. The mobs of "pro-democracy demonstrators" the world is so excited to protect are a troubling lot, with the urge to burn soldiers and lynch blacks entirely too close to the surface of their hearts, oozing hatefully with the slightest scratch of a Twitter rumor. Known al Qaeda operatives took the lead in Dernah and apparently set up an Islamic emirate (quickly recalled and denied). Some rebels looted, raped, tortured and killed for fun. All of this was part of the overall takeover, but not part of the long-term future, it's hoped by more level heads.

That future path will surely run to the West, and will be informed by base material and geopolitical motives - obviously oil, but also its amazing water system, the central bank and so on. The whole Libyan state is public-sector, government run, with proceeds that took Libya from among the poorest countries in the world to the richest (per capita) in Africa and with the highest living standards by far. There's a certain level at which it's obvious that this is the crux of the decades of demonization, sanctions, the epic framing of Libya for Iran's destruction of Pan Am 103, and so on. Too much shared with the people, not enough with Wall Street.

A vendetta against Gaddafi's unusual economic system could also help explain NATO-types' approach to this "humanitarian crisis." It's costing more lives in "stalemate" than Gaddafi's repression likely would have, but it does have the opposite outcome for who runs Libya. Coincidence?

Obvious air support for the rebels (or is it the rebels are obviously NATO's ground troops?) is masked always as a simple measure to protect innocent civilians. An obvious assassination atempt that kills four innocent civilians, three of them under two years of age, was a simple part of the aforesaid mission, targeting command and control, and communications, intelligence, morale, whatever. It's all obvious, just too much so to bother explaining. Doublespeak is what it's become.

The French Connection and February 17 Movement
All this when much evidence suggests the spontaneous revolt was planned in advance with outside (mostly French) help. Nouri al-Mesmari was Libya's protocol minister - Gaddafi's C-3PO - until he resigned in protest at the shooting of protesters on the Day of Rage. He was in Paris at the time, having gone there for some reason four months earlier, in between meeting with French secret service and leaders of the planned rebellion.

Alex Lantier at the World Socialist Website describes al-Mesmari as "a prominent pro-free-market reformer in the Libyan ruling elite." In a video interview shortly after resigning, he revealed he is the son of a monarchist minister, who's long been trying to get back nationalized family wealth.

Another leftist at the Monthly Review, Vijay Prashad, describes the top leaders of February 17, three of whom allegedly met with al-Mesmari: "These men (Fathi Boukhris, Farj Charrani, Mustafa Gheriani and All Ounes Mansouri) are all entrepreneurs."  [5] As the quote above shows, their spokesman Gheriani, the one not on the Paris trip, at least-considers himself western-educated.

Rebel Leadership and Privatization Fixation
Those entrepreneurs were arrested, aside from Gheriani, in the days before the war started. From there, he and others then became important in the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi. Vijay Prashad wrote of two of the more important and prominent among these:

The Benghazi council chose as its leader the colorless former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Jalil's brain is Mahmoud Jibril, a former head of the National Economic Development Board (NEDB). A U.S. embassy cable from May 11, 2009 (09TRIPOLI386) describes Jibril as keen on a close relationship with the U.S. and eager "to create a strategic partnership between private companies and the government." Jibril's NEBD had collaborated with Ernst & Young and the Oxford Group to make the Libyan state more "efficient." Jibril told the ambassador that "American companies and universities are welcome to join him" in the creation of new sectors outside hydrocarbons and that "we should take him up on his offer." His Ph.D. in strategic planning from the University of Pittsburg is useful in this context.

More comes to us via the Willyloman wordpress page, May 10: Al Qaeda Linked “Rebels” in Libya Need More Money… So They Come to Congress. It says in part:

The money poured in already by outside sources looking to cash-in on the wholesale privatization of Libya like the 20 million ponied up by Great Britain, is running out. Or so claims Ali Tarhouni, Washington’s man on the inside of the Interim Transitional National Council (TNC). Tarhouni is an American professor of economics at the University of Washington but he’s taken a bit of a leave to serve as the TNC’s minister of finance, oil and economics.

Now he has returned to Washington * from Benghazi to pass the hat so to speak in D.C. looking for access to the 35 billion or so of the Libyan people’s money that Hillary Clinton [sic] froze. You see, he want’s to use the people’s money to return Libya back to the good old days of the corrupt monarchy, the system that was entrenched in Libya before the revolution in 1969 led by one Moammar Gadhafi.

*(To clear up some confusion - the Washington of that University is the state in the northwest. "You dub," as it's called around here, is in Seattle.)

This American theft ("freezing") of Libyan riches is a shameful and cruel episode. By fiat of piracy Obama withheld this money - over $5,000 for each Libyan man, woman, and child - until they join the rebels (whom we're willing to pay) or come under their rule. It was deceptively called Gaddafi's personal fortune, siphoned from the Libyan people. An equal or larger amount was also frozen by various nations outside the United States, turning the people of Libya into something like Human shields in a socio-economic sense.

To explain his trip back to the US, finance minister Tarhouni told MSNBC:

“We’re faced with the same sanctions as Gadhafi,” he said, referring to U.S. sanctions that have frozen more than $34 billion of Libyan government assets, in addition to U.N. and European sanctions. “I don’t have access to any foreign exchange to cover any purchases, open lines of credits to merchants, so that’s a very challenging aspect to what I do.”

An older article I missed had mentioned Dr. Tarhouni in his American acedemic connection - Dr. K. R. Bolton, Foreign Policy Journal, Feb 26

“Most participants argued for privatization and a strong private sector economy.” That is a statement culled from a report of a panel discussion entitled “Post-Qaddafi Libya: The Prospect and The Promise,” organized by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1994. Dr Ali Tarhouni stated at the conference, “with privatization, entrepreneurs will reach out and get involved in regional cooperation by searching for markets.” Is that what the long-planned, well-funded “spontaneous revolts” now toppling regimes like a house of cards is actually about?”

The handy thing is how many talking heads and think-tank experts there are to back these guys up. "Of course privatization is the answer! Gaddafi was against it and he was evil! Had mercenaries on Viagra rape kids! Just look at the state Libya was in before under Gaddafi's Green Book sytem!" Indeed, take a look - ask for specifics. Environmentally speaking, do we need more bio-diversity, or more monoculture? Why is it different when it comes to economic systems?

And let's be honest a moment - in an age of such Western economic failure, is the Euro-Atlantic community really more likely to be dispesnsers of good advice - good enough for a regime change war?  Or to be looking for some stored up financial blood to suck, via a regime change war and the plunder-by-privatization of Libya?

Libya’s Money

May 22, 2011

The following is a re-post from Hermes Msafiri's Mercury Mail blog, as Libya Turmoil 142. High-lighting and bolding mine, see notes below.

Libya’s money
In Tripoli the “journalists” of ABC asked me how long Gaddafi could last financially?
I answered them much longer than the US.
They couldn’t believe me and continued: ”no seriously, how many months can he last?”
My answer, 10/20 years, brought a very big surprised expression on their faces: “NO, impossible”.

Our society of money changers and bean counters is not able anymore to think about a solid society, not based on debt or credit.

Libya has known an embargo for decades and a real ostracism for 42 years.
Gaddafi was never understood nor accepted. He was declared crazy and loony from the very beginning because he didn’t accept the orders from his “betters”. His feeling of oppression by the Western powers that be and afterwards his betrayal by the Soviets convinced him to look for an alternative solution, based on their native tribal structure.
He didn’t spend money because he couldn’t, the embargo obliged him to save money.
This frugal lifestyle wasn’t really bad for the country, they learned to live with it.
Only the Western educated and latter “revolutionaries” wanted more pieces of the cake.
I have seen governors of provinces, with budgets of billions, walking around in old army fatigues and plastic sandals, driving in old Toyota Corolla’s, with absolutely no desire for more luxury.

Gaddafi himself is of the same ilk, money doesn’t drive him, the fate of his country is his only driving force.
If that is enough to consider him a lunatic than he will proudly declare himself a lunatic.

As far as the money of the country is concerned, the calculation is rapidly made.
The total revenue during 42 years went far over a trillion dollars.
During the embargo time Libya spent only the interest of its investments, they didn’t touch their capital.
They had some amounts in foreign, US, European and Arab countries and banks.
That money was continuously siphoned off by those banks, they didn’t receive any interest on their money, the paid expenses every year on that money, pure highway robbery.

Gaddafi is a very astute investor and made several very good investments worldwide, which saved Libya a lot of money and kept their capital intact.
Today Libya is still sitting on a cash hoard of far over one trillion, the second largest after China, but safer. China has too much worthless US paper.
Because of his cash position, Libya was thinking to make Africans benefit of their commodities by introducing their own gold backed currency and their own Reserve Fund.

This would have shown the decrepit situation of the world credit system and the real abysmal situation of the Western banks.
Because the emperor had no clothes anymore Gaddafi had to disappear.

Russia and China are still hesitating what to do and whom to join. The sirene songs of Wall Street are very seductive but extremely empty. The main US corporations are already voting with their feet to Asia, just in case.

I hope Gaddafi survives the criminal onslaught and will have the chance to see his enemies crumble. The stakes are extremely high.

A fascinating viewpoint all around. I find the bolded parts most interesting, considered together. The sanctions weren't just punishment for blowing up airplanes, I suspect. Especially considering anyone in the know must know they were innocent for at least the Pan Am 103. It was more of a tool for the Western control matrix - squeeze the people with sanctions under some excuse, weaponize the population by causing enough suffering they blame the regime and hopefully figure out how to change it, or to be more receptive to outside change. Witness Eastern Libya today after two generations of this treatment. It is interesting that Msafiri finds those educated in the west were the most receptive to effects of Western sanctions. And consider the makeup and expertise of the steely-visioned rebel TNC, with quite a number of them hosting American PhDs in strategic planning, privatization, information warfare, and hostile takeovers.

Frozen Funds / Defrost Piracy

May 7 2011
last update May 22

Money is important. It helps you buy things. That's why people steal it, to buy neat things for themselves and their own selfish purposes. Sometimes they also steal, in part, to hurt someone they don't like, but that's another type of the same selfishness.

Below is the story so far of a recent very large theft of money and the plans to spend it, both aimed at illegaly destroying the government of a sovereign state and plunge it into chaos.

By February 26, it had become clear the Libyan protests had mobilized into a viable civil war, with over half the cities in rebel hands. U.S. president Obama that day announced the freezing of certain Libyan funds under its control - a record-setting quarantine of about $30 billion. The idea that you can just do that is still strange to me, but he did it. As one expert put it:

"Treasury hits a button and everything is frozen," according to Erich Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari Legal, a firm that specializes in trade sanctions. [source]

A February 28 follow up announces the freeze has happened and might expand. At this time, the impression given was that all of Libya - even the military - had mutineed, and only Gaddafi's family, "African mercenaries," and the personal funds that linked the two, stood in the way of an amazing adventure in free market reform - er - in people power freedom things.

But Obama knew it might be a rockier road than that, and this partial cutting of funds was just the beginning of an escalating push against the grain for that fleeting "utopian" image. And as the government stayed together and tried to push back, it proved one heck of a start. As Peter Dale Scott recently noted:

If the idea to attack Libya originated with France, Obama moved swiftly to support French plans to frustrate Gaddafi’s African initiative with his unilateral declaration of a national emergency in order to freeze all of the Bank of Libya’s $30 billion of funds to which America had access. (This was misleadingly reported in the U.S. press as a freeze of the funds of “Colonel Qaddafi, his children and family, and senior members of the Libyan government.” But in fact the second section of Obama’s decree explicitly targeted “All property and interests… of the Government of Libya, its agencies, instrumentalities, and controlled entities, and the Central Bank of Libya.”)

While the U.S. has actively used financial weapons in recent years, the $30-billion seizure, “the largest amount ever to be frozen by a U.S. sanctions order,” had one precedent, the arguably illegal and certainly conspiratorial seizure of Iranian assets in 1979 on behalf of the threatened Chase Manhattan Bank.

The European Union initially froze only the more narrowly defined evil Gaddafi clan funds. But on March 8, it was revealed, they agreed to follow Obama's lead, and expanded an existing freeze to cover, as Washington's did, all state funds. They just took the government's money, to ensure they couldn't pay employees or debts or purchase new supplies or feed people should a crisis break out, or anything.

Other nations followed suit (Australia on March 9, and so on), and the amounts blocked off grew steadily. Even the Swiss finally came on board, on May 5 announcing they had found 360 million Swiss francs ($418.4 million) of assets that, as al Jazeera put it, "were potentially illegal and belonged to either Muammar Gaddafi or his circle." But as they reported, deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim said that the money was far less ("closer to $29 million"), and was the peoples' money, not the leader's.

"The money in bank accounts abroad is part of the investment portfolio of the government abroad," he told reporters. "If there is a single penny of the leader's money ... you are free to take it and to give it to anyone."

By the end of March, people on Capitol Hill had started wondering if all this handy frozen wealth could be thawed out and used to pay ourselves back for the expensive air war we'd just begun against the regime. But as CNN reported, duh, the answer was no.

The idea is that if Gadhafi falls, the next government will take control of the assets. "We will safeguard the more than $33 billion that was frozen from the Gadhafi regime so that it's available to rebuild Libya," Obama said on Monday. "After all, the money doesn't belong to Gadhafi or to us - it belongs to the Libyan people. And we'll make sure they receive it."

Once his conditions are met - a legally recognized replacement regime of his approval. And perhaps conditional to other things, like a nice finder's fee, commercial concessions, military basing ...

And then, maybe we don't even have to wait for that. Without funds now, the good guys might never even get to take over. So on May 5, two things happened. The Libyan people spoke up, insisting Gaddafi stay in power, and the rebels and NATO should go away. And European and allied leaders meeting in Italy to plan their exact opposite version on behalf of the same people. Among the points broached in the Libya script conference was a promise to give some of that money, soon, to the Libyan people (those who behaved well by taking up arms against the government, anyway).

The United States is trying to free up part of $30 billion it has frozen in Libyan assets so it can better support opponents of Moammar Gadhafi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a conference Thursday on Libya.
[...]
Clinton said the Obama administration, working with Congress, wants “to tap some portion of those assets owned by Gadhafi and the Libyan government in the United States, so we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people.” [source]

They used to be able to take care of theselves, when the government had money and hadn't lost control of much of the country. And it's only getting worse.
Kadhafi regime hits out over rebel war chest
By W.G. Dunlop (AFP) – May 6

TRIPOLI — Moamer Kadhafi's regime reacted angrily Friday to a decision by world powers to provide funding to Libya's rebels, asserting that plans to tap assets frozen abroad were "piracy."
[...]
The fund, agreed at a meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya on Thursday, is intended to provide an emergency lifeline to the rebels, whose provisional administration has no source of financing to replace receipts from oil exports, which have come to a virtual halt.
It will initially receive international donations. Blocked assets -- estimated to be worth $60 billion (40 billion euros) in Europe and the United States -- are to be used at a later date.

The dates and manner and exact amounts, of course, are to be decided for "the Libyan people" by their great white guiding hands. For reference, at a unity and peacetime population of just over 6 million, this stolen amount of $60 billion is nearly $10,000 for each man, woman, and child on both sides of the civil war. And it's been locked away just to starve the government, and those who still rely on it, to force them all to surrender to the rebel hordes - the "people of Libya" who suffer the misfortune of being "outnumbered" - in Libya.

The funds made available are far less than the figure of up to $3 billion dollars that had been sought by the rebels, but their leader, Mahmud Jibril, said "it's a good start." Jibril said three billion dollars represent "a six-month budget."


French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the new fund could be up and running "within weeks." However, he said it would take longer to tap Libyan government assets frozen abroad under UN sanctions to secure a longer-term credit line sought by the rebels, as unblocking the assets "poses legal problems."

Yes, problems with laws - designed to prevent piracy just like this. Funny how we can talk abut it openly though, since everybody hates Gaddafi and wants to do whatever it takes to rinse away the foul taste. Enter the "complicated" thinking of lawyers, currently poring over how to avoid breaking the narrowest "word" of the law. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

To get frozen assets to the Libyan opposition is fraught with complexities. “It is a lot more complicated than saying we are going to unfreeze these assets and hand them over,” says Harriet Territt, a London-based lawyer at Jones Day.

The U.K., for instance, is keen to help address humanitarian needs, but needs to clear a number of complex obstacles, said a person familiar with the situation. “We’re considering a number of options to do this and we will see what is legally possible,” a spokesman for the U.K.’s Foreign Office said. [source]

Just keep humming and ignore the Gaddafi thugs when they almost seem to make sense:

Kadhafi's government was infuriated by the prospect of seeing funds it regards as its own being used to finance the rebels. "Libya still, according to the international law, is one sovereign state and any use of the frozen assets, it's like piracy on the high seas," Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said. [source]

Update May 22: Please see Libya's Free Market Future for some later moves by rebel interlocutors to thaw out and access these funds.