Medieval darkness brought to Libya with Western involvement, Fighting rages across Libya, Lebanon Bombing is Impetus for Sunni-Shi'ia War, Syria In the Grip of War and Sanctions
Enrique Ferro
‘Bloodshed, torture, medieval darkness brought to Libya with Western involvement’
Published: 20 October, 2012, 07:09
TAGS:
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NATO,
Protest,
Politics,
Terrorism,
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Libya,
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Anti-Gaddafi fighters take part in a demonstration in Benghazi June 7, 2012 to demand the application of Islamic law, or Sharia law, in Libya. (Reuters/Esam Al-Fetori)
(41.8Mb) embed videoA year on since the death of Colonel Gaddafi, RT speaks with political analyst Ibrahim Alloush who thinks that it is the involvement of NATO and its allies that handed the country over to ‘a group of fanatic criminals.’
It's as the former regime strognhold of Bani Walid is bombarded by the army in attempts to restore order in the volatile city.
RT:The tensions around Bani Walid just underline the challenges for transforming Libya into a peaceful country but despite this, was the western backed Arab Spring a success, is the country better of without Gaddafi?
Ibrahim Alloush: Well I think the
picture speaks for itself. For the last three weeks Bani Walid has been
lying under siege and recently it was bombarded, many civilians were
killed and wounded, the city was not allowed to receive medical
supplies, food or fuel for that matter. Let me remind you that several
hundred people from Bani Walid have been abducted after the new regime
came into power. This picture is not only restricted to Bani Walid
in-fact there are several places in Libya where the so called
revolutionaries, the NATO mercenaries that invaded Libya with support of
NATO airplanes have kidnapped and are still keeping in jail without
trial or any form of supervision, tens of thousands of supporters of
Colonel Gaddafi. Also amnesty International recently demanded that the
siege of Bani Walid be lifted. This siege represents a form of
collective punishment that is not very different from the way the Libyan
people were treated by NATO airplanes or by the so-called
revolutionaries.
RT:As you pointed out,
Bani Walid is indicative of how unstable the country is, and following
the death of the US ambassador last month, NATO has offered its help to
improve security in the country. Do you think that Western countries
should now be more involved in bringing stability to this very troubled
country now?
IA: I think that the
involvement of Western countries was the source of trouble for Libya as a
whole. We have seen that the state has become dismantled, as happened
in Iraq and Somalia, wherever NATO, or US troops have walked in. There
was a total implosion of the central state, and this is why you have
cases like Bani Walid. If you look at it from the point of view of the
rule of law, in fact, there is no rule of law in Libya, and this is the
best environment for the control of states that used to be considered
rogue states, as they refuse to abide by the dictates of the imperialist
countries.
RT:Rogue, failed states are a
target for extremists, for the likes of Al-Qaeda. Just how dangerous
now is the situation in Libya, where the authorities basically lose
control to extremists?
IA: I think the
question is who brought Al-Qaeda to Libya, and now to Syria. It’s the
same Western involvement, with the support of petrodollars from Qatar
and Saudi Arabia. That is handing the country over to a group of fanatic
criminals, who are bent on bloodshed, torture, slitting throats,
bringing the country back to medieval darkness. We have seen very
clearly what these people are aiming to do. They want to punish Bani
Walid for its stance against the invasion of Libya by NATO. This is a
form of collective punishment against the whole population for standing
up for their independence and the sovereignty of their country.
RT:Today
Turkey has called on the US, Britain, and its allies to intervene in
Syria to prevent the looming humanitarian disaster there. Would the
situation in Syria be different from that in Libya, if there was foreign
military action?
IA: I think they are already intervening in Syria. All the weapons and all the volunteers, the fundamentalists who are coming into Syria through Turkey, and sometimes Iraq and Lebanon, they are not coming in on their own. They are being financed and armed by Western countries, as well as GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries. What we’re seeing here now, is a form of destabilization. The same is happening in Beirut, this recent bombing is an attempt to destabilize the country, and an attempt to put Syria under siege by imploding Lebanon internally, along sectarian lines.
https://rt.com/news/libya-conflict-nato-foreign-836/
Besieged Gaddafi Stronghold Bani Walid Under AttackBy Stephen Lendman (about the author) Permalink (Page 1 of 5 pages)OpEdNews Op Eds 10/20/2012 at 01:28:37 |
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Besieged Gaddafi Stronghold Bani Walid Under Attack
Fighting rages across Libya.
by Stephen Lendman
Washington's war on Libya rages. Fighting didn't stop after NATO said its seven-month 2011 "mission" ended. Ravaging a nonbelligerent country wasn't good enough.
Occupation harshness inflicts more pain. Jamahiriya Green Resistance is strong. Its struggle continues. It won't stop until Libya regains freedom. Loyalists want no part of NATO control, puppet leaders, imperial plundering, and ordinary Libyans used and abused.
Frequent freedom fights erupt. Tribes are involved. Local militias have their own agenda. Insurgents battle each other and Green Resistance for control. Government forces serve Washington and key NATO partners.
Since early October, Bani Walid's been besieged. Thousands of militiamen are involved. Food, medical supplies, fuel and other essentials are in short supply. Armed men block vehicles with medical and other essential supplies from entering.
Residential neighborhoods are attacked. Nearby villages were looted and burned. Libya's so-called General National Congress (GNC) approved the assault.
Puppet rulers want residents to hand over individuals allegedly responsible for killing Omran Shaaban. He's an insurgent involved in Gaddafi's capture and death.
Last fall, NATO ravaged Bani Walid. For weeks, terror bombing, indiscriminate shelling, and ground attacks left it looking like a ghost town. It was one of Libya's last cities to fall. It's home to over 80,000 residents.
They paid a huge price. Casualties were high. Many died or were wounded. Thousands were displaced. Hundreds were arrested and imprisoned. Their crime was wanting to live free.
Bani Walid residents again are under attack. So far they're holding out valiantly. Last fall, NATO and insurgent forces used chemical and other illegal weapons. Reports suggest they're used now.
Injuries are unrelated to conventional weapons. Israel does the same thing to Gazans. So do US forces in Pentagon war theaters.
Mathaba reported that hospitalized residents have severe burns, "hallucinations, muscle spasms, foaming at the mouth, coughing, eye irritations, dizziness, breathing difficulties, and loss of consciousness."
NATO and enlisted proxy forces fight all their wars dirty. Civilians suffer most. Media scoundrels suppress what they should headline.
Mathaba quoted Dr. Taha Muhammad saying:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Besieged-Gaddafi-Stronghol-by-Stephen-Lendman-121020-201.html
Resistance Brief from Libya on 20 October 2012
Sukant Chandan
Sons of Malcolm
Here is evidence to the injury and death to the civilians of Bani Walid by nato's death squads and the junta in Libya.
This is the information I have received from numerous Libyan contacts both inside and outside the country.
There have been big explosions at the Mitiga International Airport next to Tripoli, rumoured to be connected to the resistance against the seige of Bani Walid, a town near Tripoli of over 80,000 people which has become the hub of the new Libyan Revolution, or what I prefer to call the Thawra Asli, ie., the Real Libyan Revolution.
In solidarity with the Bani Walid resistance the Wershafana tribe took control of a military base near Tripoli and closed the highway there.
There are reports of clashes taking place at the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, again a response to the siege of Bani Walid.
In Bani Walid itself, the resistance has captured 14 armed vehicles from nato's death squads (grossly misnamed the 'rebels' by some).
And thus far, the death squads from Misrata have been defeated by the resistance in Bani Walid.
While the nato junta in Libya are reeling and shocked by the defiance and strength of the resistance, they and their nato masters have been putting out quite pathetic psychological white-ops reports of the supposed capture of Moussa Ibrahim, former Jamahirya press spokesperson, and Khamis Gaddafi, who has been reported captured and killed innumerable times.
This all points clearly to the fact that the nato Libyan junta and reeling and scrambling to get a hold on the situation.
http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.be/2012/10/libya-brief-report-on-resistance-20.html
Lebanon Bombing is Impetus for West's Planned Sunni-Shi'ia War
by Tony Cartalucci
October 20, 2012 - It was, starting at least in 2007, the goal of the US, Saudis, and Israelis to trigger a region wide sectarian war with which to overrun the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. This was documented in detail in Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection" which was covered in depth in, "Syrian War: The Prequel.
A recent bombing in Beirut, Lebanon left high ranking security chief Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan dead. Al-Hassan is described as "anti-Syrian." Before Al-Hassan's death was announced, and literally as bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage caused by the bombing, politicians from Saad Hariri's faction began immediately blaming Syria for the attacks. Hariri himself also laid the blame on Syria, offering no other details or supporting evidence.
Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran have all condemned the bombing and cite it as a provocation to start a greater sectarian war, from which none will benefit. Each in turn suspect Israel and the West, as greater sectarian tension is expected to result, playing into long documented attempts by US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to trigger a sectarian war they hope will be the downfall of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.
Suspicious op-eds in pro-Western "Lebanon Now" insist that Syria is responsible, and again without evidence, concludes that blaming Israel is inappropriate, and that the Wall Street-London militant beachhead is by far a lesser threat to Lebanon than what it calls "the most deadly virus" of President Bashar al-Assad's Syria.
The blast has given impetus to Hariri's mobs to flood into the streets, who will no doubt portray themselves to be as "spontaneous" and "independent" as US-engineered mobs were throughout the equally premeditated "Arab Spring."
Hariri in 2007 was, according to US journalist Seymour Hersh, building an armed militant front in northern Lebanon, across the boarder from Homs, Syria. Many of these militants admittedly had direct ties to Al Qaeda, and with US, Israeli, and Saudi support, they were continuously armed, funded, and prepared for the sectarian bloodbath now unfolding. Homs to this day remains as one of the strongholds for terrorist militants operating in Syria.
While the Western media claims it is a shocking revelation that Al Qaeda is "amongst" the fighters attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, it is well documented that it was Al Qaeda from the very beginning who began armed operations against Syria, using Lebanon and Turkey as a base of operations, with explicit support from the West. The operations were carried out under the tenuous cover of "pro-democracy" protests and with a constant torrent of disinformation provided by the Western media.
While the current story in Lebanon develops, it will be useful to understand the role Hariri has so far played. The republished article below, originally posted in May, 2012, is by no means an exhaustive expose of Hariri and his role in executing the foreign agenda driven by Wall Street, London, Tel Aviv, Doha, and Riyadh, which starts well before 2007.
Originally posted May 21, 2012 -The United Nations has been inexplicably silent over revelations that the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states, are arming militants in Syria in direct violation of a UN brokered ceasefire. Additionally, the US has openly threatened to arm Kurd militants in Syria to "rise up" against the government. While in reality this constitutes a greater threat to neighboring Turkey, and perhaps an attempt to motivate Ankara to take a more aggressive stance against Syria, the threat of purposefully inciting more violence in a conflict that has allegedly claimed "10,000" lives, seems not only grossly irresponsible, but a violation of international peace.
Image: A bomb detonates in Syria, May 19, 2012, killing and maiming scores. This is the latest manifestation of overt US and Gulf State military support for terrorists attempting to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. The West has planned and prepared years in advance for implementing bloody regime change in Syria and Iran.
The West's meddling in Syria does not end there. Recently, clashes have broken out in Lebanon, revealing a large base of operations supporting the destabilization in neighboring Syria, located along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The significance of this discovery, and extremist groups in Lebanon being directly involved, highlights the veracity of a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh titled, "The Redirection," which exposed a joint US-Israeli-Saudi operation to create a violent extremist front and direct it at Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and at the Iranian government.
In the article, the fact that these extremist forces had direct ties to Al Qaeda was noted, including the fact that many of these militants either participated in fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or were affiliated with groups that did:
"In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict."" -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007The report also made mention of extensive US funding behind Hariri's faction, led then by Fouad Siniora, augmenting the creation of this militant force:
"The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda." -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007It becomes clear then that Lebanon's recent unrest is a result of a greater gambit targeting not just Syria, but the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iranian sphere of power, following the US-engineered "Arab Spring" installing proxy leaders across the Arab World to specifically support this last leg of geopolitical reordering. Such support has manifested itself as political support from US-proxy president Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia, and similar support from US-installed Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, who's nation has also committed not only arms and cash to Syrian terrorists, but fighters as well.
Image: Saad Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, is admittedly a co-conspirator in US-Israeli-Saudi designs to destabilize with militant extremists and violently overthrow the Syrian government. While Hariri feigns anti-Israeli sentiment and makes public calls for Lebanese to refrain from sectarian violence, he is the primary facilitator of both extremists crossing over into Syria, and their creating of chaos in the streets of Lebanon. A 2010 Fortune 500-funded International Crisis Group report describes in detail Hariri's deep ties, and indeed dependence, on the West.
Now, it is reported that "anti-Assad clerics" have been shot by Lebanese soldiers - and just as was seen during the assassination of Rafic Hariri, demagogues are attempting to draw Sunni Muslims into a conflict with Shi'ias. A strategy of tension is being used to divide the Lebanese people into a deadly conflict mirroring the sectarian, not "democracy," driven unrest ravaging Syria. With Saad Hariri, the US, and Saudi Arabia overtly working to undermine Syrian stability, it appears that all of the characters described by Hersh in 2007 are now openly implementing their plans.
The purposefully nebulous coverage by the Western media over violence in Lebanon so far, and a disingenuous depiction of it being "spill over" from Syria is meant to portray a general sense of chaos consuming the region. In reality, it is a premeditated destabilization dependent on fostering violence between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims, just as was purposefully done in Iraq to balk an effective Sunni-Shi'ia alliance that achieved initial success fighting a foreign occupation led by the US starting in 2003.
While exposing the premeditated nature of the destabilization consuming Lebanon and Syria is essential, as well as calling for international condemnation of the US for openly attempting to escalate violence in the middle of a mediated ceasefire, calling on people across the Islamic World to refrain from falling into this sectarian trap, and being used as tools of their own division and subjugation by the West is equally important.
Saad Hariri portends that his alliance with the US, Israel, and the Saudis is simply an attempt to protect "Sunnis" from a "Shi'ia threat." In reality, as empires have done all throughout history, Hariri's invitation to the West to meddle in his own nation's affairs will open the door to the destruction and dismemberment of not only his enemies, but inevitably his own movement as well. A faction too weak to fight its rivals is certainly too weak to fight an invited foreign imperial power that decides to overstay its welcome. A strategy of tension is at play in the Islamic World, the trap set, hatred for Israel and rival ideologies the bait. Time will answer the question, "have the people of the world learned enough collectively to avoid it?"
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.be/2012/10/lebanon-bombing-is-impetus-for-wests.html
Don't worry, Frank, this time it won't happen!
--
“They have succeeded in dominating us more
through ignorance, than through force”.
Simon Bolivar
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" - Steve Biko