Thursday, February 26, 2015

BREAKING NEWS!!!

I'm not sure which is more important, so judge for yourself.

1) Claims abound that the identity of Jihidi John is known!

2) Two llamas, mother and child, were chased in Arizona for hours today before being lassoed and "rescued".

If it helps you to decide, the Llamas were far more interesting to hose on Twitter, reports say.

Just keeping the public informed.

Also, net neutrality affirmed by the FCC and surely to be appealed by large internet providers. 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Netenyahoo v. Judaism, Mossad, et al.



THE ABSURD TIMES




Netenyahoo v. Judaism, Mossad, et al.





by

Credence Sheik Fritz


Oh, forgot, you might want to see this absurdity again, so here he is addressing the United Nations General Assembly.  I wonder if he is stupid enough to bring it along to the joint session:





            I'm not sure who did the artwork, but Voltaire is quite right and that is an accurate translation. 



            The Speaker of the House, the Schweinplatz, invited Nitwityahoo to come and address the congress of the United States.  Obama will not meet with him, however, citing a long and accurate tradition of never meeting the head of a government who is up for re-election less than two weeks before that election.  His statement is very much like his veto of the pipeline because it has not been reviewed as of yet.  Actually, it has been reviewed, but not correctly and accurately so it has to be done over until they get it right.



            This is the guy who conducted the last Gaza war, or Blitzkrieg.  Just in case anyone is wondering, only 5% of what governments pledged to rebuilding Gaza has not been sent and millions due to the Gazans have been appropriated by Israel. 



            How do we work Brian Williams into this?  We don't.  He had a great sense of humor, but got caught up in wayward self-aggrandizement.  I am not a bit more bothered by his dismissal than the general garbage fed us daily as news on the networks.   Frankly, I see nothing of substance in the whole thing.



            However, back to the topic.  I understand that in Judaism, killing is forbidden (unless it's your son and God tells you to do it -- don't worry, He'll say "just kidding" at the last minute).  Well, there was a great deal of killing in Gaza and Israelis are killing Palestinians on the West Bank regularly.  Nitwityahoo is the Killer in Chief, so he is not Jewish, I take it.  In fact, one might say that anyone who calls Israel a "Jewish State" could be considered anti-Semitic.  I have had confirmation of this from several Jews who live in Israel, so I guess this is true.



            The only other stated concern is the FEAR that Iran is building an atomic bomb!  That would be a Shia Bomb!  However, Mossad, their super-spy agency says that it does not have the capacity to build one now nor does it seem to want to build one.  Certainly the last President repeatedly stated that they do not and considered it a "weapon of the past and useless today, also evil".  Forgetting the evil part of it, it does seem unlikely that a bomb will be built.  So says Mossad.  That's the outfit that hacked Iran's computers awhile ago and that is pretty well-respected as spy-agencies go.  Not very nice guys, but pretty accurate, so to speak.



            So now we have Nitwityahoo speaking to a joint session of the Schweinesbund.  A few sane members of either the Senate or House will boycott the session.  Even saner ones just will not show up.  Why bother?



            Anyway, here is a pretty good interview documenting the above (all except Amraham and Isaac):



TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015

As Netanyahu Tries to Stop U.S.-Iran Deal, Leaked Cables Show Israeli Spies Reject His Nuke Claims

In what has been described as the biggest intelligence leak since Edward Snowden, Al Jazeera has begun publishing a series of spy cables from the world’s top intelligence agencies. In one cable, the Israeli spy agency Mossad contradicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within one year. In a report to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Mossad concluded Iran was "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons." The explosive disclosure comes just as the United States and Iran have reported progress toward reaching a nuclear deal, an outcome Netanyahu will try to undermine when he addresses the U.S. Congress next week. We go to Doha to speak with Clayton Swisher, the head of Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, which broke the Iran story and several others in a series of articles called, "The Spy Cables."
Image Credit: Reuters

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Just days before his controversial speech to the U.S. Congress, an explosive report has raised new questions about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to thwart a nuclear deal with Iran. According to Al Jazeera, Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, contradicted Netanyahu’s own dire warnings about Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb within one year. In a leaked cable to South African counterparts in October 2012, the Mossad concluded Iran was, quote, "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons." The assessment was sent just weeks after Netanyahu went before the U.N. General Assembly with a far different message. Netanyahu held up a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse to illustrate what he called Iran’s alleged progress on a nuclear weapon.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: This is a bomb. This is a fuse. In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages. By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. A red line should be drawn right here, before—before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September of 2012. The Mossad assessment contradicting Netanyahu was sent just weeks after, but it was likely written earlier. It said Iran, quote, "does not appear to be ready" to enrich uranium to the higher levels needed for a nuclear weapon. A bomb would require 90 percent enrichment, but the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, found Iran had only enriched to 20 percent. That number was later reduced under an interim nuclear deal the following year.
That 2013 agreement laid the basis for the ongoing talks in Geneva this week between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. The U.S. and Iran are seeking a framework agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program and impose international monitoring in return for an easing of U.S.-led sanctions before a March 31st deadline. The talks appear to be gaining momentum, with the involvement of high-ranking officials from both sides and leaked details of a plan to limit Iranian nuclear production for at least 10 years. They are set to resume next week.
AARON MATÉ: The advancing talks and the leaked cable come just as Netanyahu prepares for a controversial U.S. visit, where he’ll try to undermine the nuclear deal. On March 3rd, Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on Iran at the invitation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner. The trip has caused a major rift with the White House, to the point where Obama has refused to host Netanyahu for a meeting. Administration officials are also reportedly withholding details of the talks from Israeli counterparts. Speaking last week, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Israel has spread false information about the proposed nuclear deal.
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: There’s no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There’s no question about that.
AMY GOODMAN: With the White House accusing Israel of spreading falsehoods, the new revelations about Israel’s own intelligence assessments mark the second time in one week tying Prime Minister Netanyahu to dishonest claims about Iran.
The leaked cable appears to have come from inside South Africa’s intelligence service, revealing its exchanges with counterparts around the world, including the U.S., Israel, Russia, Britain, France and several Arab and African nations. Other revelations so far include CIA attempts to establish contact with Hamas despite a U.S. ban and a threat by President Obama to force the Palestinian Authority to abandon its bid for U.N. recognition. More disclosures are expected in the coming days.
For more, we go directly to Doha, Qatar, to be joined by Clayton Swisher, director of investigative journalism at Al Jazeera, which broke the Iran story and several others in a series of articles called "The Spy Cables." He co-wrote the piece, "Leaked Cables Show Netanyahu’s Iran Bomb Claim Contradicted by Mossad," that appears in The Guardian newspaper.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s good to have you with us, Clayton Swisher. Explain what has happened. What did South Africa get a hold of? Is there a South African Ed Snowden?
CLAYTON SWISHER: Well, I think, after the Edward Snowden experience, someone would have to have their head checked to publicly fess up to being the source of such a leak, given all the travails that followed Edward Snowden after he essentially outed himself. This was a digital leak made to Al Jazeera. And one of the reasons people bring information to Al Jazeera in the past, as they did with the Palestine Papers and other projects, is because that they know we’ll take every step we can to protect and shield their identity. So, the way that we got these files, this digital leak, is not up for discussion.
But it is, I will gladly describe for you, an unprecedented window into how espionage is conducted, not just in South Africa, but the broader continent. What we have obtained is perhaps best thought of as, you know, if you look at a discarded bag of rubbish, you won’t know what’s inside it until you open it up. Similarly, in this—it’s not rubbish, it’s actually very useful information, but it’s an absolute assortment of things that are seemingly unrelated but nonetheless highly newsworthy. There is a high concentration of humdrum, routine intelligence cables within the South African security services that we came into possession of, and, in addition to that, correspondences from a variety of Western and foreign intelligence services asking the South Africans to take certain actions or trying to influence the South African intelligence services on a certain course of action. So, they’re, you know, an absolute fascinating window into how things are done, but they’re a fragment in a mosaic, and we’re missing—very much so—the rest of the painting. But what we can do is reveal what—you know, what operational cables that we can put into context. And that’s why we said in our editors’ note we’re not publishing everything, purely because it either wouldn’t be in the public interest or it wouldn’t add up to a bigger story in and of itself.
AARON MATÉ: So talk about what has emerged here on the issue of Iran. Just as talks are picking up between the U.S. and Tehran, and just as Netanyahu is coming to the U.S. trying to undermine their deal, an internal cable reveals that the Mossad contradicts Netanyahu on his own claims about Iran’s capabilities.
CLAYTON SWISHER: Well, there was much discussion that came after Netanyahu’s 2012 U.N. speech that he was at loggerheads with his Mossad chief, Meir Dagan. That was discussed, and in fact Meir Dagan even publicly said that a war with Iran would be a bad idea. But what is just—I think what’s breathtaking for the journalists who work on this is to see Mossad’s classified documents—a top-secret assessment no less—that is now available for the entire world to peruse and read at its own leisure. I mean, clearly, Netanyahu came and spoke before the entire world, presenting information that was in direct contradiction to the country’s premier intelligence service. It begs a strong question: Where did he get his information from? Was he taking talking points from the Washington Institute and AEI, or was he listening to his own intelligence services, who the government of Israel pays to look after this sort of material? So, it makes it a question similar to what Americans experienced in the run-up to the Iraq War: Is this based on intelligence, or is this based on political fiction? And, you know, I’m a journalist, true. I’ve lived here in Qatar for going on eight years. I’m also a citizen of this planet, and I think everyone who’s a citizen of this planet who lived through the Iraq War and who think of an impending Iran war, we should do everything to scrutinize the politics behind people who wish to start a new war, particularly with Iran, which would not only be a disaster for the United States at home, but also for the region and the entire world. So, as Netanyahu is going to come to the United States, I think there’s every reason to have beyond a healthy skepticism of what he intends to say at his, you know, home audience, if you will, the U.S. Congress. In fact, I would say that, you know, knowing what we know now with this top-secret Mossad cable, we should demand strict evidence of anything that he says before the American public, because it may in fact inform our elected officials to make a decision on whether or not to use military action to defy President Obama’s diplomatic efforts, etc.
AMY GOODMAN: Clayton Swisher, in addition to the former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who left office in December 2010, disagreeing with Netanyahu wanting to prepare a military attack on Iran, there are other leaders in Israel’s security establishment who, you write, were riled by Netanyahu’s rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear threat, accusing him of "messianic" political leadership pushing for military action. Can you explain?
CLAYTON SWISHER: Sure. I mean, it’s long—it’s long been the Israeli security military tradition where there’s a class of people—they refer to them as "bit hunis [phon.]," which are people that are in the security sector but are also seen as having a rational worldview, if you will, that want to establish some form of peace with their neighbors. Oftentimes—there’s an excellent film called The Gatekeepers, which I would recommend anyone watch, that interviews the last several directors of Shin Bet, their domestic intelligence service. And you find—actually, when the documentary interviewer sits with these Shin Bet directors, you find a much more pragmatic outlook and a much more realistic assessment of—you know, for example, on the Palestinian issue, that the Israeli government can’t continue killing Palestinians if it wants to have a permanent place in the neighborhood.
Yet the security people are often trumped by the politicians, the loudmouths, who are perpetually campaigning. If you think it’s bad in the U.S., it’s a perpetual campaign in Israel. And as a result, you don’t really get mature discussions, mature conversations in the public from their leaders. And it’s a very—it’s a very real risk. And it’s, I would hazard to guess, why Israel has not been able to make peace, because time and again they have proven to not have leaders who have been thinking in the long term, but politicians who are seeing which way the winds are blowing and how they can get through the next election.
So, unfortunately, in some instances, the only ones that have the real assessment on Israel’s security happen to be people who live in classified worlds. And I think it’s extraordinary the amount of security officials that spoke out and sniped against Netanyahu, because they realize the stakes are very high. They’ve seen the Iraq War experience, where bad intelligence got mixed into politics, and people sat on it and didn’t speak up. And lo and behold, now Israel has ISIS on its borders, and they’re further than ever from ever being welcome in the neighborhood. And, you know, it’s—looking back at the two-state solution is pie in the sky. So, you know, I think, frankly, as a journalist, I’m skeptical of everyone. But in this case, it’s remarkable to see Mossad at such variance with the prime minister. If only the United States had had that kind of disclosure ahead of the Iraq War between what the CIA was saying and what the Bush administration was saying, a war may have been averted.
AARON MATÉ: Let’s hear from more of Benjamin Netanyahu speaking last month. This was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Netanyahu used the occasion to accuse Iran of planning another genocide against the Jewish people.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust, while planning another genocide against our people. Let me be clear: The Jewish people will defend itself, by itself, against any threat. That’s what the Jewish state is all about.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Benjamin Netanyahu speaking last month. The irony, Clayton, of course, is that it’s Netanyahu who has threatened attack on Iran for many years over its alleged nuclear activities—a violation of the U.N. Charter, in which you can’t make threats to other nations. But let’s talk about some of the other revelations here. Talk about the claims that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas opposed the U.N.'s endorsement of a report that accused Israel of war crimes, and also President Obama's attempt to pressure Abbas on seeking statehood recognition at the U.N.
CLAYTON SWISHER: Well, I’ll take it in that order then. So, in the case of the—there is a leaked cable describing an effort by Meir Dagan, the leader of Mossad, calling the South African spy boss on the eve of the U.N. Human Rights Council vote on whether or not to recommend Israel face investigation for alleged war crimes in Gaza in 2009, asked the spy boss of South Africa: "South Africa should not vote, and you know why? Mahmoud Abbas does not want South Africa to vote, because it will harm his political party and bolster that of his opposition in Hamas. And, of course, Mahmoud Abbas cannot say this publicly, so the Mossad is asking you, South Africa, not to cast your vote." And I think that, if anything—and we’ve seen a lot of evidence over the years. I was involved in the Palestine Papers in 2011. We had a whole mountain of evidence showing that President Abbas had advance knowledge that there was going to be an Israeli attack on Gaza, that he opted not to warn his people, that he was under incredible American pressure not to advance any sort of war crimes investigation, that it would be seen as prejudicing negotiations—which were moribund anyway—and he went for it. And so, you know, people were saying he bungled it. I think the evidence now is far the opposite. He directly obstructed it, and it was an abject—I’m sorry, it was, you know, an abdication of his responsibilities as a leader and shielded the occupier, that he’s supposed to be liberating his people from, against any possible war crimes.
And so, you know, this—to me, there’s too many data points. There’s too much evidence that’s now out there showing that he shielded Israel. And some will say, "Well, he just recently joined the ICC." Well, you’ll note that after the recent 50-day conflict of last summer, he waited until well after the conflict ended before signing theICC. And what has Israel done in the meantime? They’ve gone in and launched their own investigations. And under the ICC rules, if one of the parties is seasoned in investigation, the ICC cannot do it. And the Israelis are going to say—mark my words—for many years, that they’re investigating, and it is credible, and we’ve got it all covered. And, you know, meanwhile, evidence is lost, memories fade, people die. You know, this was beyond bungling. You know, this was a craven abdication of his responsibilities. And I think that the cables make this clear now in a very oblique way, from South Africa of all places.
With respect to the cable that suggests there was a CIA operative in East Jerusalem who asked a South African operative to help with inroads with Hamas, the South Africans then write between themselves, Pretoria and East Jerusalem, "Well, how can we then run this CIA guy to see what kind of information they’re after?" It’s a very, again, oblique window into what the CIA’s interests are. You remember, in 2009, President Obama wanted to have a new relationship with the Muslim world. He spoke in Cairo. Autocrats were adopted by the Bush administration. Obama came in and thought, "Well, maybe there is room for political Islam." This was when they were still open to the idea, let’s say. So, it makes sense—it makes sense to me, at least. We’re reporting that this interest was expressed, but of course we don’t know whether theCIA took it forward. Hamas has said today on Al Jazeera they deny official contact, but they won’t say whether there was unofficial. And who knows how that’s defined? So, I think it’s intriguing.
AMY GOODMAN: You also note that a South African State Security Agency report from November 2012 records a Palestinian intelligence officer handing over a memo detailing a phone call made by President Obama to Mahmoud Abbas, where President Obama threatened Abbas if he goes ahead with the U.N. bid. Now, Abbas ultimately does. But explain the significance of this, and then also the cables revealing the same former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, personally lobbying South African intelligence officials in 2009 against South Africa endorsing the findings of a U.N. inquiry led by the South African judge, Richard Goldstone, which alleged war crimes carried out by Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza in 2008 and 2009.
CLAYTON SWISHER: OK. Well, with respect to President Obama trying to, you know, convince Mahmoud Abbas not to go ahead with statehood, it’s important to note that the United States has always been hammering Palestinians to abandon armed resistance and embrace peaceful, nonviolent struggle. And you can understand the frustration of Arabs, Muslims and especially Palestinians, when they look at the American rhetoric, and they say, "OK, well, what’s wrong with, in embracing that nonviolent struggle, we take legal measures—pen to paper, we submit it before a court—or we petition a very legal body, like the United Nations, and we ask for things like diplomatic recognition?" It’s absolutely indefensible, and it’s just painfully hypocritical, when you see U.S. officials, like President Obama, as revealed in "The Spy Cables," or Samantha Power on the floor of the United Nations, obstructing these very blatant efforts by the Palestinians to exercise some kind of resistance through legal, peaceful means. You tell them violence is out. You tell them legal means is out. What do they have left? They have—I mean, it’s just—it’s absolutely absurd.
And we’ve seen, in recent events, they’ve gotten statehood. Did the sky fall? No. We see, in recent events, they joined the ICC. Did the sky fall? No. So, every time that they threaten all of—you know, that the end is nigh and this will—you know, this will damage things beyond recognition, the peace process is already damaged beyond recognition. And it’s only a handful of Western analysts and Pollyannaish journalists who continue to believe that there is a two-state solution and that this—you know, what’s been created on the ground can somehow be reversed. Rather than looking beyond, you know, President Obama and his administration has very much made this situation, in fact because they haven’t allowed Palestinians to express themselves, you know, through these various mechanisms.
AMY GOODMAN: Clayton Swisher, we want to thank you for being with us, director of investigative journalism at Al Jazeera. He’s overseeing the network’s coverage of "The Spy Cables." And we’ll continue to report on what’s revealed. He’s speaking to us from Doha, Qatar.
This is Democracy Now! 
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program ncorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
     
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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Gaddafi and Isis





THE ABSURD TIMES



 


            We pointed out years ago what a positive force Gaddafi was.  Ever since we bombed the country and helped the Religious Fanatics kill him (we wanted to save the live of the innocent in Benghazi), the country has gone to hell and become a cesspool of idiocy -- about the same as Washington D.C. but without the beheadings.  During the last Republican Inquisition of Hillary the tongue Clinton, they delved into Benghazi.  A worthwhile effort if only it were directed at why Obama joined a group of military aggressors there to "defend" it from Gaddafi. 

            During the pre-slaughter hysteria we published a history of Gaddafi, but it was banned by such organizations as Facebook (idiots abound).  You can find the history at this site so there is no reason to repeat it.  All we need to do now is bring things up to date as there is once again interest in Libya as a result of ISIS or Daesh, as well as Sisi (Egypt, ISIS spelled backwards) using it to grasp at respectability.  Daesh has vowed to "cut off the tongues" of anyone who call it that,  and we can envision thousands of cut off tongues still flapping away until ravenous crows pick them up and fly away with them --  that is, unless the crows are caught and beheaded first. 

            The interviews present the case very well and there is no point summarizing them here.  [All that is left to say is, once again, 'I TOLD YOU SO!!!"]  Here they are:

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Egypt Makes Libya the New Front in Anti-ISIS War, 4 Years After NATO Left Chaos Behind

Four years after the U.S.-led bombing campaign toppled Muammar Gaddafi’s government, Libya is in a state of crisis. On Monday, Egypt bombed Islamic State targets in Libya after the group released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. Egypt claims it hit ISIS targets "precisely," but at least seven civilians, including three children, were reportedly killed in the coastal city of Derna. The attacks come as Libya faces what the United Nations calls "the worst political crisis and escalation of violence" since the U.S.-backed overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011. Two different governments claim power, each with their own parliaments and armies. A number of militant groups, including the Islamic State affiliate, are scattered in between. Will foreign governments intervene in Libya again? We are joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is just back from a reporting trip in Libya, and Vijay Prashad, a professor of international studies at Trinity College and author of several books, including "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Egypt has opened a new front in the war against ISIS. On Monday, Egyptian warplanes bombed northeastern Libya after Cairo vowed to avenge the killing of 21 Coptic Christians. Egypt claims it hit ISIS targets, quote, "precisely," but at least seven civilians, including three children, were reportedly killed in the coastal city of Derna. The bombings come after the Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of the 21 kidnapped Egyptians. The victims are led onto a beach dressed in orange jumpsuits like Guantánamo Bay prisoners. They are then beheaded one by one. The lead executioner points his knife at the camera and delivers a message to what he calls the "crusaders."
LEAD EXECUTIONER: O people, recently, you’ve seen us on the hills of as-Sham and on Dabiq’s plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time, filled with spite against Islam and Muslims. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message: O crusaders, safety for you will be only wishes, especially when you’re fighting us all together.
AARON MATÉ: The victims were all migrant workers kidnapped late last year. There are now reports more Egyptians have been kidnapped inside Libya in recent days. The video is the first showing an Islamic State beheading outside of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq. ISIS is one of several militant groups that have emerged inside Libya since the U.S.-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Today marks four years since the official start of the Libyan revolution, which ended in Gaddafi’s ouster and death.
AMY GOODMAN: Now the country faces what the United Nations calls "the worst political crisis and escalation of violence" since that time. Two different governments run Libya, each with their own parliaments and armies. The internationally recognized government operates from the eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda, after a rival group called Libya Dawn seized the capital Tripoli in August. A number of militant groups, including the Islamic State affiliate, are scattered in between.
Egypt’s bombing marks the first time ISIS has been targeted with strikes outside Iraq and Syria. And although it emerged in the upheaval following the 2011 intervention, there is talk now of a new foreign operation beyond the Egyptian strikes. On Monday, Italy said it would weigh attacks on the Islamic State in Libya if U.N.-backed talks fail to reconcile Libya’s rival factions. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano called for direct NATO intervention, saying, quote, "ISIS is at the door. There is no time to waste."
The current war authorization measure before the U.S. Congress also increases the prospect of direct U.S. intervention. President Obama has asked lawmakers to grant him expansive authority to target the Islamic State anywhere in the world, beyond the current campaign in Syria and Iraq. With Washington’s ally, Egypt, starting a new front, that opens the question of whether Libya is next on the U.S. target list.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. From Cairo, we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now!'s correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute. He has just returned from a reporting trip in Libya. And joining us is Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, columnist for the Indian magazine Frontline. He's the author of several books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. He’s joining us from Connecticut Public Television, the PBS station in Hartford.
Professor Vijay Prashad, let’s begin with you. The significance of the Egyptian strike on Libya, ISIS’s beheading of the Christian—of the Coptic Christians from Egypt?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Amy, this is not the first Egyptian airstrike in Libya. It’s reported, although Egypt denies it, that in August of last year Egyptian fighter planes, alongside fighter planes from the UAE, struck targets near Tripoli, the capital of Libya, at that time going after the escalation by Libyan Dawn to capture the city and the parliament. Libyan Dawn is dominated—it’s a coalition, but dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is of course the group that President Sisi has seen as his main enemy inside Egypt. So, when Egypt began its second round of airstrikes on Monday, the parliament in Tripoli, again, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, immediately condemned the airstrike as a violation of Libyan sovereignty. The problem with the Libyan air—the Egyptian airstrikes has been that in a very short time it has immediately opened up the polarization inside Libya, precisely the opposite political direction which Libya requires at this time, according to the United Nations.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Vijay, can you talk about how we’ve come to this point where, four years after the Libyan revolution began, now the Islamic State is claiming territory there and carrying out brutal attacks such as this one?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it’s a great, you know, consternation and shame, I think, to the so-called international community that this NATO intervention of 2011 came on the heels of geopolitical wrangling between the Gulf Arab states and the Europeans. This intervention came in. It destroyed much of Libyan infrastructure at a crucial point, when Mr. Gaddafi was taken prisoner. If he had been allowed to surrender, for instance, there might have been a process opened up to bring different factions to a political table. Instead, of course, he was brutally killed, and the possibility of reconciliation at that point was squandered.
Secondly, there was no attempt by any party to bring the various revolutionaries, thethuwwar, into any kind of umbrella organization. They were allowed to have a fissiparous existence, returning to their various cities, creating—rather, you know, deepening their separation, deepening the kind of antipathy between—amongst them. And in this strange position, the NATO-backed government took power in Tripoli, where many opportunities by this government were also squandered. You know, there were oil worker strikes. There was the question of the armed militias. At no point did the government in Tripoli seem engaged by these pressing issues. Instead, one of the first acts of this government was to create a central bank. It was very interested in making deals for oil. But at really no point did they attempt a genuine political process of reconciliation inside the country. That has torn apart Libya. It alienated the east.
And for the first time in Libya, a sophisticated al-Qaeda-type group was allowed to flourish, and that was Ansar al-Sharia, which grew out in Benghazi. You know, the previous Islamist group, the Libyan international—Islamist Fighting Group, had by 2011 put itself at the service of the government, but that gesture was, as well, rebuffed.
So, I mean, I think a combination of Gulf Arab animosity between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the, you know, maybe really disregard by the West, and internal problems, where the government in Tripoli, that rode into power on the backs of NATO, really alienated the population from any possibility of a future.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Sharif Abdel Kouddous into this conversation in Egypt’s capital, Cairo. Sharif, can you talk about the response right now in Egypt to Egypt’s bombing of Libya, where you just were, and who the people were who were killed in Egypt, the Coptic Christians, killed by ISIS there?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right, well, the airing of the video really struck a chord amongst many Egyptians, especially the Coptic Christian community. The nature of the message—there was no political demands made. It was an entirely sectarian message that was delivered.
But, you know, the strikes are significant. Vijay is right that there have been covert strikes before, especially in coordination with the United Arab Emirates, on Libya by Egypt. But they’re significant insofar as they’re the first publicly acknowledged foreign military intervention by Egypt, arguably, since the Gulf War, more than—or nearly a quarter of a century ago. They claim—the Libyan army claims that they hit 95 percent of their targets and they killed over 50 militants. But, you know, that’s rarely the case, that kind of accuracy, in aerial bombing. And already Human Rights Watch has said six civilians were killed, including a mother and two children. But politically, certainly domestically, the strikes were a success. Before the airing of this video, the families of the hostages held protests against the government, accusing the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of not doing enough to release the hostages. But since the airstrikes, Sisi has received widespread support. He’s seen as having acted swiftly and decisively. The state and private media, which is really a vocal chorus for Sisi, is whipping up a lot of nationalist sentiment. The army has been deployed to the streets to, quote-unquote, "protect" citizens. And really, the war on terror is Sisi’s source of legitimacy. It’s hisraison d’être. So, this is all playing into that vein.
In terms of the 21 Coptic Christian men, the majority of them all came from one small village in central Egypt called Al-Our. And they were, like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians do, migrant workers who left Egypt to search for better wages in Libya. They can earn up to seven times the paltry sums they can earn here in Egypt in Libya’s oil-rich economy. They ended up in Sirte, which is a coastal city in central Libya that was the birthplace of Gaddafi but has since become a stronghold for militants, especially groups like Ansar al-Sharia, which was accused of killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in 2012, but has since been infiltrated by even more extreme militants. And survivors who evaded capture by the militants really describe a harrowing ordeal, where these militants were coming house by house, calling out these migrant workers by name, leaving the Muslims and taking the Coptic Christian men. And so, it really was—I think sent shockwaves through much of Egypt to see this video aired.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of Egyptian society in terms of religions? Why Coptic Christians, do you think, were targeted? And the place of Coptic Christians in greater Egyptian society?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, this is not the first time Coptic Christians have been targeted in Libya. A doctor and his wife and daughter were killed in December. There have been other incidents, as well. We can only look to the—what the statement by the Islamic State group was, and it was calling for revenge for the Coptic Christian crusade, and this very overtly sectarian nature of the attacks. Egypt has a Coptic Christian minority, which is about 10 percent of the population. And they suffer from discrimination in various types of laws, of how they can build churches and other ways of discrimination, as well, in terms of marriage laws and so forth. So, you know, this really struck a chord within the community, but I think, overall, there is now in Egyptian society this hyped-up sentiment for war, and there’s a lot of support, it seems, for these airstrikes.
AARON MATÉ: And, Sharif, you were just in Libya, this bombing coming just as the U.N. is trying to broker some kind of deal between the two rival factions that claim two different governments, with two different armies, in parliament. What can you tell us about the internal conflict inside Libya and how these Egyptian strikes might affect them?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, you know, there’s a power struggle that’s engulfing the country, as Vijay outlined. And Libya is really—to go there, it’s really—it’s hardly a country anymore. It’s really a torn stretch of land, and Libyans have to negotiate a minefield of regional, political and tribal conflicts just in order to survive. You have these two rival coalitions, which are opposed to each other, each with their own array of militias, each with their own prime minister and government, and each claiming legitimacy. You have in the east, in Bayda and Tobruk, the internationally recognized government that is allied with Khalifa Haftar, a former general who has waged a battle against Islamist militias in Benghazi, and they were forced out of the capital in a weeks-long battle over the summer. And in the west, in Tripoli, where the Oil Ministry is, where the National Oil Corporation is, you have the self-declared government, which, very broadly speaking, is backed by an array of militias which are Islamist-aligned, but also has a tactical alliance with very extreme militias over whom they have no control.
And so, this conflict has been raging, has caused massive displacement, has created a void in which groups like the Islamic State group can flourish, really. And there was one driver that we had at one point, and he gave a telling quote, saying, "In the east, they assume I’m Fajr," which is the Libya Dawn; "In the west, they assume I’m Karama," which is Haftar’s; "And in Derna, they wanted to behead me," referring to the Islamic State group. And so, this is the kind of political situation that Libyans find themselves in. And the politicians seem to be operating in a different realm from ordinary Libyans, a realm that has everything to do with power and very little to do with governing.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head ofNATO. Speaking to Britain’s Channel 4 Monday, he said foreign boots will be needed on the ground in Libya.
ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN: The brief answer is we will need boots on the ground. It’s clear that you can’t—you can’t do the job through air campaigns alone. You need boots on the ground. The only question is, which boots? And in that respect, I do believe that countries in the region should play a major role in deploying such forces. But they can’t do that, and they won’t do that, unless the West supports.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head of NATO. Which boots on the ground, Professor Vijay Prashad? What about what he’s saying—not only should there be, but which ones?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, it’s interesting because Mr. Rasmussen has categorically over the last four years said that NATO should not get involved in Syria, because it’s too complicated and the issue is fraught with all kinds of consequences. In Libya, on the other hand, you know, there’s an attitude towards it, which is that it’s a playground. You know, you can encourage intervention. You can let people come in.
I mean, I think it’s a very dangerous attitude for the simple reason that unless the political question is somewhat settled, talking about sending boots on the ground, whether Egyptian or Algerian, is, I think, a mistake. What I’m trying to say is that there is an Arab cold war that’s broken out in northern Africa, where, you know, on the one side you have Saudi Arabia with Egypt, perhaps, with the UAE, on the other side you have Qatar, and you have Turkey. You have these countries that are helping fuel internal disagreements. And until there’s an understanding that these external actors need to stop providing succor to internal contradictions, and until the U.N. is able to bring these internal parties to sit down and construct some kind of political dialogue which is real, to talk about sending in boots on the ground is only going to exacerbate matters.
If Egypt enters with its considerable military into Libya, this is going to create a great deal of, you know, problems with Qatar. And God knows what they would do. Meanwhile, of course, the Islamic State is looking forward to greater Egyptian intervention, because—and one of the reasons that they are going after the Copts is not only because their preferred, you know, enemy, the Shia, are nonexistent in Libya, but also they’ve been seeking a way to create greater fractures in Egypt itself, to insinuate themselves in Egypt.
So the idea of having boots on the ground, without putting great pressure on the major Arab countries in the region to sort of cool it on their own internal fights that are greatly affecting Libyan politics, until that happens, I fear that it’s naïve to talk about airstrikes, and it is incredibly naïve and duplicitous to talk about boots on the ground.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Vijay, on the issue of naïveté, looking back, Libya was hailed as a model for humanitarian intervention after Gaddafi was overthrown and killed. Now, though, I imagine, as the country unravels and descends into this resting ground for Islamist militant groups like ISIS, defenders of the NATO intervention will point back to Benghazi. At the time, there appeared to be, at least in my opinion, back then, a credible threat that Gaddafi was going to carry out a massacre in Benghazi, and the argument was that something had to be done. Now, putting aside what NATO’s actual motives were, the threat of a massacre did seem credible, but I’m wondering, looking back now, what we know in hindsight, do you think that that particular pretext of preventing atrocities in Benghazi stands up to scrutiny?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, it depends what you’re going to look at. If you’re going to look at the evidence that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International produced after the worst part of the NATO bombing ended, it’s not clear that the casualty rates that had been claimed by—particularly by the Saudi media, which was Al Arabiya, it’s not clear that those casualty rates were accurate. In fact, they were greatly exaggerated, so that the claim by Al Arabiya that there were already massacres in Misurata, that there was a massacre in Ras Lanuf, etc., turns out in the end not to have been true.
Now, it’s not to say that the Gaddafi government wasn’t prepared to conduct, you know, very brutal violence in the east and in cities in the center, but you have to recognize—and this is what I think the international media at the time wasn’t willing to inhale—you have to recognize that in the east Gaddafi’s military largely defected to the rebellion, so that the battalion and the air command in Benghazi was on the side of the rebellion. There had already been aerial strikes by rebel aircraft against Gaddafi boats that were in the Mediterranean.
So what I’m saying is that there was a very complicated situation at the time. You know, mainly Saudi media, and then pushed by various international media, including CNN, began to drum up this idea that there was a massacre. I remember, in the U.N. Security Council, ambassadors talking about getting their information from the international media. That struck me as really very, very disturbing, particularly given the fact that credible human rights organizations, after the fact, showed that the numbers had been greatly exaggerated by news media, particularly by Al Arabiya.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, before we end this segment, could you comment, on the ground, just having been in Libya, about the humanitarian crisis there?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Libya—ordinary Libyans are really suffering. There is massive displacement. The U.N. estimates about 400,000 have been displaced. Many of them are living in schools. Many have left the country altogether. Many civil society activists, journalists, writers have left under threats. Those Libyans who do want to leave, because they can find no more life in Libya, find that the world has rejected them. Many complain that they can’t get visas because they’re Libyan.
And most of the displaced that we saw were from Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, which is the birthplace of the revolution and is now really the epicenter of the disaster. People describe completely bombed-out neighborhoods. They said it looks like Aleppo. There is neighborhood youth who are armed, manning checkpoints all over the city. And, you know, just the simple truth of where you’re from can determine your fate.
So—and just overall dysfunction has really become a way of life in Libya. Libyans are forced to bear the burden of the conflict as it tears away the last vestiges of normalcy. Traveling across the country is arduous. Delays at airports can literally take days. If you want to take a—go by car, then you’re going to risk checkpoints and kidnapping and different militias, which you have to negotiate. In the east, particularly, there’s very bad electricity shortages. There’s fuel shortages. We were in Bayda, which is the seat of the internationally recognized government. They are experiencing a huge influx of refugees there, of displaced. This has caused rents to go up, food prices to go up. There’s food shortages.
The crisis is most acutely felt in the hospital, where, for example, we went to the kidney treatment center, which is receiving now three times more patients. And so, for dialysis, they have to ration treatment. And a technician told us how this is reducing the lifespan of patients. He told it to us in English, because he was saying it as a patient was getting dialysis. He spoke of how his own niece, his newborn niece, died because they couldn’t find a very simple tube for a blood transfusion that she needed, and she died before they could even name her.
And in Tripoli, you know, you see masked gunmen at checkpoints at night for the first time. They’ve never been masked before. The streets are deserted. You speak to government officials—the defense minister, Khalifa al-Ghwel, was telling us how safe Tripoli was. The very next day, armed militants stormed the biggest hotel in Tripoli, the Corinthia Hotel, and killed nine people, including a number of foreigners. So, this is really—it’s really quite a disaster for ordinary Libyans. And there needs to be some kind of political solution on the ground, because, you know, jihadists thrive on more war, and this whole talk of more conflict, I don’t think will solve much in the long term.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we want to ask you to stay with us in our next segment to briefly update us on the Al Jazeera journalists who are now going on trial, who must remain in Egypt, but they are out on bail. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now!'s correspondent in Cairo and a fellow at The Nation Institute, recently returned from a reporting trip inside Libya. And thank you so much to Professor Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, columnist for the Indian magazine Frontline, author of a number of books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. This is Democracy Now! 


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