Text Fwd: STOP THE U.S. WAR AGAINST LIBYA and BAHRAIN

See also Global Research
International Action Center
STOP THE U.S. WAR AGAINST LIBYA
March 19, 2011

On March 17, 2011, Washington showed its true intentions by pushing through a U.N. Security Council resolution that amounts to a declaration of war on the government and people of Libya.

A U.S. attack is the worst possible thing that could happen to the people of Libya. It also puts the unfolding Arab revolutions, which have inspired people across North Africa and Western Asia, in the gravest danger.

The resolution goes beyond a no-fly zone. It includes language saying U.N. member states could "take all necessary measures" ... "by halting attacks by air, land and sea forces under the control of the Gadhafi regime."(CNN.com, Mar 17)

The new resolution not only calls for attacks on Libyan aircraft and air defenses, but authorizes the strafing and bombing of ground forces as well. The U.S. and French governments immediately announced that they were ready to go. Britain and Italy are aiding. In essence the former colonial powers have begun an armed attack on the Libyan government and its people, backing one side of a civil war.

No matter how one feels about Libya today and the role of the Gadhafi government; regardless of how one evaluates the Libyan opposition, a U.S.-led war or intervention in Libya is a disaster for the Libyan people, and for peace and progress around the world.

The U.S. and its allies are repeating over and over the lie that they are trying to "prevent attacks on civilians" and are acting from humanitarian motives. But nobody should be fooled. Consider these “humanitarians” and how they react to Bahrain.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, which is an absolute monarchy. Its people have been valiantly trying to change their government for weeks. They had some initial success. The king responded with deadly repression and later with hints at reform.

On March 14, however, the day after Secretary of Defense Gates visited Bahrain, supposedly to urge "restraint", the Bahraini government commenced a brutal crackdown, backed up by Saudi Arabian troops. Helicopters, tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition were used, killing and injuring many people. Nearly all of Bahrain's security forces are foreign mercenaries.

Unlike the Libyan rebels, the Bahraini people have absolutely no arms. But there has been no talk of a no-fly zone over Bahrain, let alone attacks on the murderous Bahraini and Saudi armies.

This is because the real motivation for the U.S. and its allies in both Bahrain and Libya, and indeed the whole region, is to control the OIL! It is Washington’s main strategic interest and a primary financial interest for U.S. big business.

This is true even though the U.S. is not directly dependent on imported oil from Libya. Oil is a worldwide commodity, and any country which imports oil must deal with a world market, no matter from which individual country or countries they import the oil.

Of even more importance to the U.S. and Europeans is who controls the flow of oil. A military presence or a reliable puppet in Libya would give Washington --and to a lesser extent the European imperialists -- control of the oil spigot to Europe and also establish a military presence in North Africa from which to influence or prevent the development of the revolutions, especially in Egypt and Tunisia.

Not only a demonization campaign against the Libyan leader, but every form of fraud and propaganda is being used to push for this intervention, including a supposed "vote" by the Arab League supporting the latest U.N. resolution. Left unsaid is the fact that only 11 of the 22 members of the League even attended the meeting, which was held behind closed doors. Two of these 11 attending members, Syria and Algeria, made clear that they were completely opposed to military intervention in Libya.

Meanwhile the corporate media has ignored a resolution by the African Union, representing 53 countries, which adamantly rejected a no-fly zone or other intervention.

The U. S. blocked any UN action, even a toothless resolution, during the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2008 and also during the Israeli bombing and attempted invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

It is important that peace-loving and progressive people around the world develop a consistent approach opposing ALL U.S. intervention. This is the only way to avoid becoming just an echo of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon.

U.S., French, British, Italian hands off Libya!



International Action Center
c/o Solidarity Center
55 W 17th St Suite 5C
New York, NY 10011
212-633-6646
iacenter@iacenter.org
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Text Fwd: The Return of Pan-Arabism Amidst Upheaval: An end to Balkanization?

Global Reserach
The Return of Pan-Arabism Amidst Upheaval: An end to Balkanization?
:The Changing Winds in Iraq and the Growing Threat to Lebanon
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
March 14, 2011

Protests and revolts have swept across the whole of Arabdom, from the Atlantic coastline of Morocco to the shores of the petro-sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. In this regard, U.S. and E.U. double-standards are being applied to these events. There is a selective focus and condemnation by the White House and the European Union at play in regards to which Arab protests and protest leaders they support.

Regardless of the direction of these revolts and protests and the reaction of outside players, a new dynamic is taking shape. Democracy has not yet emerged, what is beginning to emerge is a new wave of pan-Arabism. This re-invigorated pan-Arabism will prove a challenge to the ongoing efforts to further fragment and weaken the Arab World.

The Categories of Protest and Revolt in The Arab World

In regards to the mass protests and popular revolts, today the states of the Arab World can be categorized into five groupings or categories. These categories are the following:

Group 1 - Arab countries that are in a state of civil war;
Group 2 - Arab countries that have populations that have revolted;
Group 3 - Arab countries where the people are currently protesting and are on the verge of revolt;
Group 4 - Arab countries where the groundwork for revolts are taking shape;
Group 5 - Arab countries where there are no revolts.
Each category will be discussed and summarized. It must be cautioned that these groupings are not static either and likely to evolve.

The Typologies of Benefit
Taking into account U.S., E.U., and Israeli foreign policy these protests and revolts can also categorized within two different typologies. The latter can be used to explain the reactions of the U.S., the E.U., and Tel Aviv and their respective mainstream media coverage of these events.

The typologies are:
(A) Arab countries where the protests and possible outcomes would be beneficial to the interests of Washington, Israel, and the European Union;
(B) Arab countries where the protests and revolts go against the interests of Washington, Israel, and the European Union.

It should, however, also be cautioned that the outcomes of these protests and revolts are unpredictable. The behaviour of Washington and Brussels suggest that they want to cash in on projected outcomes to reinforce their geo-political influence. Both the U.S. and the E.U. seek to"manage democratization" in the Arab World to thier benefit.

The “agency of the Arab people,” namely the grassroots, which the U.S. and its allies underestimate, has a significant role to play in these events. It is this process of an unfolding mass movement that makes these revolts unpredictable. Coupled with pan-Arabism, a potent force is arising.

The Arab people ultimately constitute a major challenge to Washington and its cohorts.
Unlike in Eastern Europe during the colour revolutions, the Arab regimes are supported by Washington. The Arab people are aware of U.S. and E.U. double-standards. Arabs know full well that the U.S. and its E.U. allies are not the vanguards of democracy and liberty.

In regards to Israel, Tel Aviv sees instability and chaos in the Arab World as serving its interests. Israel is not cutting itself off from the events in Arabdom. The Israeli strategy, in seamless alignment with both the U.S. and the older British strategies in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region, has always been to weaken and divide the Arab states. Israel has supported balkanization in the MENA region wherever it can. The Yinon Plan is very much alive today in what can henceforth be called the “Yinon Approach.” The strategy is named after Oded Yinon, a Israeli foreign policy analyst who outlined the “Zionist strategy” for breaking up and balkanizing the Arab World. [1]

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must (1) become an imperial regional power, and (2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israeli satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

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Text Fwd: How Gaddafi's Words Get Lost In Translation

Information Clearing House
How Gaddafi's Words Get Lost In Translation
By Oliver Miles Former British ambassador to Libya

February 25, 2011 "BBC" -- -Col Muammar Gaddafi's speeches this week will have struck many viewers as crazy and perhaps pathetic, with their overblown rhetoric, theatrical delivery and furious calls to arms against the "drug-takers" who oppose him.

But the speech on Tuesday - broadcast live on television from what looked like a ruined garden shed - brought huge crowds out into the streets celebrating into the early hours with music and fireworks.

Oratory is out of fashion with us - no longer do our statesmen hold the House of Commons in thrall for eight hours at a go. But Mr Gaddafi is also a bad joke throughout the Arab world outside Libya. How can that be?

The Arabic language is rich and powerful. Even to a Christian, some parts of the Koran are poetic, almost magical (the magic is totally lost in translation).

It is also the single most important bond uniting the Arabs, who are otherwise so diverse.

But it has a problem. The educated form of the language, based on the Koran, is literally nobody's mother tongue. All Arabs speak a local dialect. If they are educated, especially if their education is traditional, they aspire to speak correctly, but scarcely ever quite make it.

Hence the common remark to a foreigner who has learned his Arabic from a grammar book is: "You speak Arabic better than I do."

In this respect, Mr Gaddafi scarcely even tries. For the most part he speaks Libyan dialect, and Arabic dialects are not fully understood by Arabs from other regions.

There was a dramatic incident at an Arab summit when the King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia cursed Mr Gaddafi in language I have never heard used in polite society. Perhaps, fortunately, the Libyan leader didn't understand, so he asked the then President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak what King Abdullah had said.

The microphones were switched off as Mubarak started to reply.

Mr Gaddafi is also hard to understand, unless you are Libyan born and bred. He spoke at the London School of Oriental and African Studies by direct satellite link a few years ago, on his pet subject Palestine.

His solution is a single state composed of Israel and Palestine and called Isratine, which, of course, infuriates Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Bedouin background

The voice transmission was poor, and a bad interpreter was speaking at the same time as Mr Gaddafi, so the result was 90% unintelligible. At the end, the chairman of the session apologised to the audience for the gobbledygook, turned to me, and invited me to summarise what the Libyan leader had said. Luckily I had read up his theories, so I just made it up. Of such incidents is international understanding born.

Mr Gaddafi's personal style is recognizably that of his Bedouin background. Bedouin have plenty of time and talk a lot when there is anyone to talk to.

He regularly goes on for three or four hours at a stretch.

Add to that, for 40 years or so there has been no-one around to tell Mr Gaddafi to shut up. He speaks without notes and says the first thing that comes into his head.

I remember talking to one of his cousins a few years ago, and saying that the Libyan leader's speeches, always fiery and nearly always anti-Western and anti-capitalist, undermined the efforts he was making to attract investment to Libya. His ministers had to work hard to repair the damage he caused to his own policies.

His cousin smiled and asked me to repeat my comment more slowly so that his secretary could write it down.

One of Mr Gaddafi's most striking characteristics is that he loves to surprise. In a speech in Addis Ababa he attacked the Ethiopians for what he perceived as racism, accusing them of stuffing the bureaucracy of the African Union with anything but Arabs.

"If you don't change your policy," he said, "I will take Libya out of Africa and put it back into Europe".

I thought his speech on Tuesday, if not actually pathetic, was desperate. But what I think is not the point. The speech was addressed to his supporters and potential supporters, and it seems to have scored.

By the way, the ruined garden shed was his family home struck by American missiles in an attempt to kill him in 1986. Since then, it has been a compulsory item on the tourist circuit for VIP visitors.

Text Fwd: Mullen finds Middle East leaders anxious about upheaval in the region

Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates armed forces, talked about the uprisings sweeping the Middle East at a massive international arms expo in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. Kevin Baron/Stars and Stripes
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Defense News
Stars and Stripes
Mullen finds Middle East leaders anxious about upheaval in the region
By Kevin Baron
Stars and Stripes
Published: February 22, 2011

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Adm. Mike Mullen said Persian Gulf leaders have told him they are anxious about uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East and are hoping for peaceful resolution across the region.

“We all agree that this is a time of enormous change, and it needs to be resolved peacefully, without violence, without loss of life, and leaders have to step forward in that regard,” Mullen said, after meeting with Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces.

Keeping up with the region’s rapid developments, Mullen condemned the Libyan military’s violent response against its citizens.

“That kind of loss of life, that kind of military firing on its own people, killing its own people, is absolutely unacceptable,” said Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mullen and Zayed met for more than an hour in a corner of a crowded food court in an exhibition hall at the Middle East’s largest arms expo.

The glitzy five-day International Defense Exposition and Conference is hosting more than 1,000 companies, 110 from the U.S., showcasing everything from drones to armored vehicles and the latest rifles.

As Arabic television remains rapt with wall-to-wall coverage of collapsing regimes, Mullen’s tour of Persian Gulf states has quickly become an exercise in delicate diplomacy. The top U.S. military officer is meeting with autocratic rulers, royal families and military chiefs the Pentagon has supported for decades. The reason: To listen to their perspectives and offer reassurances to longtime friends, he said.

Mullen’s first stop was to see Saudi military leaders in Riyadh, where state television one day earlier had stopped airing Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language cable news network widely credited with keeping the revolutionary movement alive through live, unflinching broadcasts from the streets of Cairo, Tripoli and Manama.

Mullen then visited Qatar, the home of Al-Jazeera, where he met with Maj. Gen. Hama al-Attiyah, the chief of staff; and his heir apparent, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, among others.

But a short flight later Mullen was walking the convention floor at IDEX, where U.S. weapons manufacturers will log billions of dollars in orders this week from friendly militaries across the region.

Mullen also appeared unaware that across the peninsula an Iranian naval frigate and a supply ship had passed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday – the first Iranian ships to do so in roughly 30 years.

“That’s something that the government of Egypt controls, the Suez Canal,” he said, flatly. “Actually, this is news to me.” baronk@stripes.osd.mil
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See also
New York Times
Protests in Bahrain Become Test of Wills
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and NADIM AUDI
Published: February 22, 2011

Reuters
INTERVIEW-Mideast unrest shows need for alternative fuels-Mabus
Wed Feb 23, 2011 3:39am GMT

U.S. Reviews Arms Sales Amid Turmoil(Wall Street Journal)
By Adam Entous
The Obama administration has launched a review of military assistance and prospective weapons sales to countries caught up in a wave of popular revolts, underlining growing uncertainty about how the turmoil sweeping the Middle East will alter fundamentals of U.S. policy in the region.

Text Fwd: [Rick Rozoff] Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War 아라비아 해: 서구의 21세기 전쟁의 중심

* Image source: Global Research, Oct. 25, 2010

* See also the Global Research for the same article & maps

* Texts sent by Rick Rozoff on Oct. 25, 2010

Stop NATO blog
Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War
Rick Rozoff
October 25, 2010

A quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will soon be in the Arabian Sea.

The Nimitz class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the region on October 17 to join the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which in turn had arrived there on June 18 as part of a regular rotation.

The Charles de Gaulle, flagship of the French navy, the country's only aircraft carrier and the sole non-American nuclear carrier, will soon join its two U.S. counterparts. The U.S. possesses half the world's twenty-two aircraft carriers, all eleven supercarriers (those displacing over 70,000 tons) and eleven of twelve nuclear carriers.

Regarding the unscheduled deployment of a second American aircraft carrier to the region, a CBS News report stated:

"Air strikes in Afghanistan are up 50 per cent and now Defense Secretary Gates has ordered a second aircraft carrier, the USS Lincoln, into the fight.

"Two carriers operating off the coast of Pakistan means about 120 aircraft available for missions over Afghanistan. And that's not counting U.S. Air Force missions flown out of Bagram and Kandahar." [1]

The countries bordering the Arabian Sea are Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Pakistan, India and the island nation of Maldives.

USS Lincoln and USS Truman are currently assigned to the Fifth Fleet's area of responsibility, which encompasses the Northern Indian Ocean and its branches and offshoots: The Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the eastern coast of Africa south to Kenya, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

The nations on the Red Sea and Persian Gulf are, in addition to those mentioned above, Egypt, Eritrea, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan and Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, respectively.

READ MORE

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*See also:

CounterCurrents.org
U.S.-Saudi Military Deal And Global Military Expenditure
October 24, 2010
By Chandra Muzaffar

Text Fwd: Taiwan: Raytheon Gets $1.1 Billion Advanced Patriot Missile Order

Text Fwd fro Rick Rozoff (StopNATO) on Dec. 24, 2009

Defense News
December 23, 2009
Raytheon Gets $1.1B Patriot Missile Systems Order From Taiwan
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL

-Configuration 3 is Raytheon's most advanced Patriot system and allows the use of Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles Raytheon's Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles and allows missile launchers to be placed miles in front of the radar of the system, rather than right next to the radar as in earlier Patriot systems.
-"We've been in Taiwan for 40 years. We are embedded (there) and are honored that they continue to trust Raytheon with the defense of their country."

Raytheon received a $1.1 billion order from Taiwan for new Patriot missile systems, Raytheon said Dec. 23.

The order for the four new Patriot fire units, made as a Foreign Military Sale, is a $966 million contract for ground-system hardware and a $134 million contract for spares. It will include new advances in technology, improved man-machine interface and reduced life-cycle costs, Raytheon said.

Raytheon already won smaller contracts for Taiwan in January 2009 and in 2008 for upgrades to the Patriot systems the country already had. Those contracts were to upgrade the systems to Configuration 3, the same upgrade the company is completing for the U.S. Army.

Configuration 3 is Raytheon's most advanced Patriot system and allows the use of Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles Raytheon's Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles and allows missile launchers to be placed miles in front of the radar of the system, rather than right next to the radar as in earlier Patriot systems.

The four new systems under the latest contract will be built as Configuration 3 systems, said Dan Smith, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems president.

"We've been in Taiwan for 40 years," Smith said. "We are embedded (there) and are honored that they continue to trust Raytheon with the defense of their country."

Twelve countries, including the U.S., are Patriot system customers. Raytheon is in discussions with customer countries that haven't yet upgraded to the Configuration-3 status, like Saudi Arabia, and is looking at adding new customers, like Turkey, which currently has a competition going for an air and missile defense system.

"With the countries that have not yet upgraded to the Config 3 baseline, we are in discussions with those countries, along with the U.S. Army, in terms of getting their plans in order to upgrade to the baseline for all nations," Smith said.

Raytheon, based in Tewksbury, Mass., is the prime contractor for Patriot air and missile defense systems and system integrator for PAC-3 missiles.
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