Monday, October 24, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Kaddafi's murder
Kaddafi's death is no more than lynching of a defenseless man by a bunch of armed thugs. And broadcasting the footage showing him wounded and then dean is nothing more than a snuff movie. The West is so fascinated with pornography of all sorts, it completely lost the sense of what constitutes an obscenity both in words and in action. Far cry from a new "democratic" Lybia. Arab Spring had turned into Arab Fall and its raining with blood. Shame on all those mainstream broadcasters who chose to show this atrocity, once again this brings journalism to the new low. I thought it was only the CNN so ghullishly excited about showing the smuggled footage of Saddam's hanging. This time, every news outlet is into it. One word to describe this: sick.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Price of the Libya Intervention: Surface to Air Missiles for All by Conn Hallinan, October 15, 2011
Antiwar Forum
"In 1979, when Soviet troops swept into Afghanistan, an angry Jimmy Carter organized an unofficial alliance to give the Soviets ‘their Vietnam’ (which Afghanistan became)."
– New York Times, 11/9/11
The writer of the above paragraph is Marvin Kalb, a former network correspondent, Harvard professor emeritus, co-author "Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama."
It is false history.
As Paul Jay of the Real News (and before him, the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur) discovered, the Carter administration made the decision to intervene in an Afghan civil war fully six months before the Soviet invasion. In a July 1979 "finding" the White House authorized U.S. military and intelligence agencies to supply the anti-communist mujahideen fighters with money and supplies.
The "finding" was the beginning of "Operation Cyclone," a clandestine plan aimed at luring the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. From a relatively modest $23 million down payment, Cyclone turned into a multi-billion behemoth—the most expensive intelligence operation in U.S. history—and one that eventually forced the Soviets to withdraw.
Cynics might shrug and respond that isn’t truth always the first casualty of war? Except in this case the casualties are still coming in as the U.S. marks its 10th year occupying Afghanistan. And when one totes up the collateral damage from that July 1979 memo, which led to the eventual victory of the Taliban, it chills the soul.
When the mujahideen went home, they took the war with them, to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Central Asia, North Africa, and a host of other places. They also permanently altered the skyline silhouette of New York City. In the annals of disastrous "blowbacks"—unintended consequences flowing from a policy or event—U.S. support for overthrowing the Afghan government and supporting the mujahideen has little competition.
Ancient history?
On Mar. 18, President Obama told the U.S. Congress that U.S. involvement in the war in Libya would be a matter of "days not weeks." It turns out, lots of days, 227 and counting.
"It’s really quite interesting how resilient and fierce they’ve been," U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Jodice II told the New York Times. "We’re all surprised by the tenacity of the pro-Gadhafi forces."
Besides the rather creepy use of the word "interesting" to describe people you are trying to blow up with 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles, the key word in the general’s statement is "surprised." Aside from destruction, about the only truth of war is surprise. As Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian Army chief of staff, and one of the great military minds of the 19th century, once noted, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
It appears that when the President made those comments, he had been listening to generals, always a very bad idea. President Johnson listened to generals in Vietnam, and they told him some variation of what our current generals obviously told Obama: Piece of cake. We’ll bomb the bejesus out of these Arabs, and in a few days they’ll turn tail and run for the sand dunes.
Except they didn’t.
In the long run the combination of bombing, ground support by British Special Forces, and the unpopularity of the regime will eventually defeat the pro-Gadhafi forces, but because this has turned into a war of some 34-plus weeks, there is going to be some very serious blowback.
For starters, take the 20,000 mobile ground to air missiles, most of which have gone missing. There are two basic kinds that someone—we haven’t the foggiest idea who—has gotten their hands on.
The SA-24 "Grinch," or Igla-S, is a very dangerous character. It has a range of some three miles, a powerful warhead, and a guidance system that lets it find targets at night. It is similar to the U.S. Stinger that so distressed the Soviets in Afghanistan. Introduced in 1983, it can hit a plane at 11,000 feet. It can also down drones and cruise missiles, and helicopters are toast.
The other ground-to-air is the older Russian SA-7 "Grail," or Strela-2, originally deployed in the 1968, but upgraded in 1972. It has an infrared detection system—it homes in on an aircraft’s engine heat—and the upgraded model has a filter for screening out decoy flares. The SA-7 is similar, but considerably superior, to the U.S. Redeye. The SA-7 has a range of a little over two miles and can reach up to 16,000 feet.
"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya," according to Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights emergencies director, who says that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles." According to Bouckaert, "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."
One prediction: Niger has recently been using helicopters to attack the Tuareg-led Movement of Nigerians for Justice in the Sahara. Tuaregs are demanding compensation for rich deposits of uranium that French companies are currently mining, and the Niger government has responded with military force. The Gadhafi government supported the Tuaregs in their fight with Niger, and supplied them with weapons. Want to make a bet that the Tuaregs end up with some of those missiles and that the Niger military is about to lose some helicopters?
And the fall of Gadhafi may not end the fighting. Libya is a complex place with strong crosscurrents of tribe and ethnicity. For instance, it is unlikely that the Berbers in the south will accept continued domination by the Arab north.
As for false history: journalism, as the old saw goes, is history’s first draft. According to the mainstream media, the U.S. and NATO got into the Libyan civil war to protect civilians, and indeed, one of the reasons the war has gone on so long is that NATO is reluctant to attack targets in Gadhafi strongholds, like Sirte, because such attacks might result in civilian casualties.
Which makes it hard to explain the Agence France Presse story entitled "NATO, NTC [National Transitional Council] deadlier than Gadhafi diehards: Sirte escapees."
Sirte, Libya (AFP) Oct. 6, 2011-Fine words from NATO and Libyan new regime fighters about protecting civilians means little to the furious residents of Sirte, whose homes are destroyed and relatives killed in the battle to capture Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown.
"Why is NATO bombing us?" asks Faraj Mussam, whose blue minivan was carrying his family of eight jammed in beside mattresses and suitcases as they fled the city this week.
According to the AFP story, the greatest danger civilians face in Sirte is from NATO bombs and shelling by NTC forces outside the city. A Red Cross official told AFP that there are still tens of thousands of residents in Sirte—it was a city of 100,000 before the February revolution—and they are under constant danger from artillery and bombs.
When asked if NATO was fulfilling its mission to protect civilians, one aid worker, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, replied: "It wouldn’t seem so."
"There’s a lot of indiscriminate fire," he said, adding that many of the Sirte residents and doctors he had spoken to had complained of the deadly results of NATO air strikes.
According to AFP, NTC soldiers say that firing artillery and rockets into Sirte doesn’t endanger civilians because they are all gone. It is a contention aid workers heatedly dispute.
The UN resolution that authorized the NATO intervention was supposedly aimed at protecting Libyan civilians. It quickly morphed from saving lives to regime change, and somehow the "protect civilians" only seems to apply to those who are on one side of the civil war. Sooner or later that narrative is going to come out, and the next time "protecting civilians" comes up in the UN, it is unlikely to get serious consideration.
More than 30 years ago the U.S. intervened in the Afghan civil war in order to goad our Cold War enemy into a fatal mistake (and then lied about it). We are still paying for that policy.
Eight months ago the U.S. and its allies engineered an intervention in Libya’s civil war behind the cover of protecting civilians, a rationale that is increasingly being challenged by events in that country.
What the "blowback" from the Libyan War is still unclear, it might be a bad idea to invest a lot of your money in commercial air travel, particularly anywhere in Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia. Gadhafi’s days may be numbered, but those SA-24s and SA-7s are going to be around for a long time.
Reprinted from Foreign Policy in Focus
"In 1979, when Soviet troops swept into Afghanistan, an angry Jimmy Carter organized an unofficial alliance to give the Soviets ‘their Vietnam’ (which Afghanistan became)."
– New York Times, 11/9/11
The writer of the above paragraph is Marvin Kalb, a former network correspondent, Harvard professor emeritus, co-author "Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama."
It is false history.
As Paul Jay of the Real News (and before him, the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur) discovered, the Carter administration made the decision to intervene in an Afghan civil war fully six months before the Soviet invasion. In a July 1979 "finding" the White House authorized U.S. military and intelligence agencies to supply the anti-communist mujahideen fighters with money and supplies.
The "finding" was the beginning of "Operation Cyclone," a clandestine plan aimed at luring the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. From a relatively modest $23 million down payment, Cyclone turned into a multi-billion behemoth—the most expensive intelligence operation in U.S. history—and one that eventually forced the Soviets to withdraw.
Cynics might shrug and respond that isn’t truth always the first casualty of war? Except in this case the casualties are still coming in as the U.S. marks its 10th year occupying Afghanistan. And when one totes up the collateral damage from that July 1979 memo, which led to the eventual victory of the Taliban, it chills the soul.
When the mujahideen went home, they took the war with them, to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Central Asia, North Africa, and a host of other places. They also permanently altered the skyline silhouette of New York City. In the annals of disastrous "blowbacks"—unintended consequences flowing from a policy or event—U.S. support for overthrowing the Afghan government and supporting the mujahideen has little competition.
Ancient history?
On Mar. 18, President Obama told the U.S. Congress that U.S. involvement in the war in Libya would be a matter of "days not weeks." It turns out, lots of days, 227 and counting.
"It’s really quite interesting how resilient and fierce they’ve been," U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Jodice II told the New York Times. "We’re all surprised by the tenacity of the pro-Gadhafi forces."
Besides the rather creepy use of the word "interesting" to describe people you are trying to blow up with 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles, the key word in the general’s statement is "surprised." Aside from destruction, about the only truth of war is surprise. As Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian Army chief of staff, and one of the great military minds of the 19th century, once noted, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
It appears that when the President made those comments, he had been listening to generals, always a very bad idea. President Johnson listened to generals in Vietnam, and they told him some variation of what our current generals obviously told Obama: Piece of cake. We’ll bomb the bejesus out of these Arabs, and in a few days they’ll turn tail and run for the sand dunes.
Except they didn’t.
In the long run the combination of bombing, ground support by British Special Forces, and the unpopularity of the regime will eventually defeat the pro-Gadhafi forces, but because this has turned into a war of some 34-plus weeks, there is going to be some very serious blowback.
For starters, take the 20,000 mobile ground to air missiles, most of which have gone missing. There are two basic kinds that someone—we haven’t the foggiest idea who—has gotten their hands on.
The SA-24 "Grinch," or Igla-S, is a very dangerous character. It has a range of some three miles, a powerful warhead, and a guidance system that lets it find targets at night. It is similar to the U.S. Stinger that so distressed the Soviets in Afghanistan. Introduced in 1983, it can hit a plane at 11,000 feet. It can also down drones and cruise missiles, and helicopters are toast.
The other ground-to-air is the older Russian SA-7 "Grail," or Strela-2, originally deployed in the 1968, but upgraded in 1972. It has an infrared detection system—it homes in on an aircraft’s engine heat—and the upgraded model has a filter for screening out decoy flares. The SA-7 is similar, but considerably superior, to the U.S. Redeye. The SA-7 has a range of a little over two miles and can reach up to 16,000 feet.
"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya," according to Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights emergencies director, who says that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles." According to Bouckaert, "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."
One prediction: Niger has recently been using helicopters to attack the Tuareg-led Movement of Nigerians for Justice in the Sahara. Tuaregs are demanding compensation for rich deposits of uranium that French companies are currently mining, and the Niger government has responded with military force. The Gadhafi government supported the Tuaregs in their fight with Niger, and supplied them with weapons. Want to make a bet that the Tuaregs end up with some of those missiles and that the Niger military is about to lose some helicopters?
And the fall of Gadhafi may not end the fighting. Libya is a complex place with strong crosscurrents of tribe and ethnicity. For instance, it is unlikely that the Berbers in the south will accept continued domination by the Arab north.
As for false history: journalism, as the old saw goes, is history’s first draft. According to the mainstream media, the U.S. and NATO got into the Libyan civil war to protect civilians, and indeed, one of the reasons the war has gone on so long is that NATO is reluctant to attack targets in Gadhafi strongholds, like Sirte, because such attacks might result in civilian casualties.
Which makes it hard to explain the Agence France Presse story entitled "NATO, NTC [National Transitional Council] deadlier than Gadhafi diehards: Sirte escapees."
Sirte, Libya (AFP) Oct. 6, 2011-Fine words from NATO and Libyan new regime fighters about protecting civilians means little to the furious residents of Sirte, whose homes are destroyed and relatives killed in the battle to capture Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown.
"Why is NATO bombing us?" asks Faraj Mussam, whose blue minivan was carrying his family of eight jammed in beside mattresses and suitcases as they fled the city this week.
According to the AFP story, the greatest danger civilians face in Sirte is from NATO bombs and shelling by NTC forces outside the city. A Red Cross official told AFP that there are still tens of thousands of residents in Sirte—it was a city of 100,000 before the February revolution—and they are under constant danger from artillery and bombs.
When asked if NATO was fulfilling its mission to protect civilians, one aid worker, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, replied: "It wouldn’t seem so."
"There’s a lot of indiscriminate fire," he said, adding that many of the Sirte residents and doctors he had spoken to had complained of the deadly results of NATO air strikes.
According to AFP, NTC soldiers say that firing artillery and rockets into Sirte doesn’t endanger civilians because they are all gone. It is a contention aid workers heatedly dispute.
The UN resolution that authorized the NATO intervention was supposedly aimed at protecting Libyan civilians. It quickly morphed from saving lives to regime change, and somehow the "protect civilians" only seems to apply to those who are on one side of the civil war. Sooner or later that narrative is going to come out, and the next time "protecting civilians" comes up in the UN, it is unlikely to get serious consideration.
More than 30 years ago the U.S. intervened in the Afghan civil war in order to goad our Cold War enemy into a fatal mistake (and then lied about it). We are still paying for that policy.
Eight months ago the U.S. and its allies engineered an intervention in Libya’s civil war behind the cover of protecting civilians, a rationale that is increasingly being challenged by events in that country.
What the "blowback" from the Libyan War is still unclear, it might be a bad idea to invest a lot of your money in commercial air travel, particularly anywhere in Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia. Gadhafi’s days may be numbered, but those SA-24s and SA-7s are going to be around for a long time.
Reprinted from Foreign Policy in Focus
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sirte hospital crammed with the dazed and the dead
RORY MULHOLLAND SIRTE, LIBYA - Oct 09 2011 19:24
Triumphant fighters bearing Kalashnikovs marched up and down shouting "Allahu akbar" on Sunday as dazed and frightened patients in Sirte's main hospital lay crammed into a ground floor corridor.
"It was a holocaust, not a hospital," said Dr Nabil Lamine as he fought his way through the crowd.
Fighters for Libya's new regime broke through to the hospital on the southern edge of ousted Libyan dictator's Muammar Gaddafi's hometown after days of shelling the surrounding area in their bid to capture the symbolic town.
Lamine headed upstairs to check on the only two patients left on the upper floors.
"We have to bring them all down because of the days of shelling" that preceded the capture of the Ibn Sina Hospital by National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters, he said.
He picked his way through shattered glass and turned right into the intensive care unit where two semi-naked men lay amid the stench of excrement in a room strewn with rubbish and broken medical equipment.
One needed brain surgery and the other had to have a leg amputated, said Lamine as artillery fire rocked the building from the fighting nearby as NTC forces tried to push Gaddafi loyalists back towards the city centre.
"We can't help them. We don't have the proper doctors. They may die," said Lamine as he rushed back downstairs, leaving the men alone in the unit where a torn poster of Gaddafi lay on the filthy floor.
One of the two tried feebly to sit up before falling back again onto stinking bed sheets.
On the ground floor most of the patients in the corridor were frightened-looking young men, some with horrific burns to their faces.
"Say 'Libya Hurra' [Free Libya]," one young fighter ordered a patient, who meekly obeyed.
'Gaddafi men'
Three gun-toting fighters gathered around another young man, shouting at him and accusing him of being a Gaddafi loyalist. An older combatant tired to calm them down.
"Some are civilians but most of these are Gaddafi men," said Hesham Ali Harba, an NTC fighter who said he was a doctor.
One young man in a bed next to him insisted he was a civilian and that his broken ankle was from a car accident.
"We took 50 prisoners. They were mostly mercenaries. They were lying in beds pretending to be wounded," NTC field commander Osama Swehli Muttawa told Agence France-Presse.
"Some were wounded. We found Kalashnikov and other weapons under their beds."
He pulled a hand grenade from a pocket and said, "I found this under one of their beds."
At one end of the corridor is a courtyard that houses freezers where corpses are stored.
NTC fighters milled around amid the stench of death, pulling open the metal drawers to see if the bodies inside were those of fallen comrades in arms.
Bodies found
Muttawa confirmed they had found the bodies of missing NTC fighters.
"We found a lot of dead bodies of people we were looking for," he said.
In the weeks before the hospital fell there were repeated reports that Gaddafi forces were using it as a command centre but there was no sign of such a centre on Sunday.
The archives room in the basement was instead full of Filipina, Indian and Bangladeshi nurses who had been working at the hospital and living in apartment blocks in the compound.
"Nobody went to work after October 2 because of the shelling. They were firing from five in the morning until it got dark," said Maria Cristina Cruz from Manila, who has worked in Libya for 19 years.
"But some patients came to our building and asked us to come because they needed dialysis."
The nurses were told by NTC fighters to wait in the basement with their suitcases until they could be taken to a field hospital 50km west of the city.
The NTC fighters said that they would also take the Ibn Sina patients there.
Of the handful of female patients, one woman had given birth by Caesarean section the day before. Her baby lay next to her in an incubator on Sunday -- alive. -- AFP
Triumphant fighters bearing Kalashnikovs marched up and down shouting "Allahu akbar" on Sunday as dazed and frightened patients in Sirte's main hospital lay crammed into a ground floor corridor.
"It was a holocaust, not a hospital," said Dr Nabil Lamine as he fought his way through the crowd.
Fighters for Libya's new regime broke through to the hospital on the southern edge of ousted Libyan dictator's Muammar Gaddafi's hometown after days of shelling the surrounding area in their bid to capture the symbolic town.
Lamine headed upstairs to check on the only two patients left on the upper floors.
"We have to bring them all down because of the days of shelling" that preceded the capture of the Ibn Sina Hospital by National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters, he said.
He picked his way through shattered glass and turned right into the intensive care unit where two semi-naked men lay amid the stench of excrement in a room strewn with rubbish and broken medical equipment.
One needed brain surgery and the other had to have a leg amputated, said Lamine as artillery fire rocked the building from the fighting nearby as NTC forces tried to push Gaddafi loyalists back towards the city centre.
"We can't help them. We don't have the proper doctors. They may die," said Lamine as he rushed back downstairs, leaving the men alone in the unit where a torn poster of Gaddafi lay on the filthy floor.
One of the two tried feebly to sit up before falling back again onto stinking bed sheets.
On the ground floor most of the patients in the corridor were frightened-looking young men, some with horrific burns to their faces.
"Say 'Libya Hurra' [Free Libya]," one young fighter ordered a patient, who meekly obeyed.
'Gaddafi men'
Three gun-toting fighters gathered around another young man, shouting at him and accusing him of being a Gaddafi loyalist. An older combatant tired to calm them down.
"Some are civilians but most of these are Gaddafi men," said Hesham Ali Harba, an NTC fighter who said he was a doctor.
One young man in a bed next to him insisted he was a civilian and that his broken ankle was from a car accident.
"We took 50 prisoners. They were mostly mercenaries. They were lying in beds pretending to be wounded," NTC field commander Osama Swehli Muttawa told Agence France-Presse.
"Some were wounded. We found Kalashnikov and other weapons under their beds."
He pulled a hand grenade from a pocket and said, "I found this under one of their beds."
At one end of the corridor is a courtyard that houses freezers where corpses are stored.
NTC fighters milled around amid the stench of death, pulling open the metal drawers to see if the bodies inside were those of fallen comrades in arms.
Bodies found
Muttawa confirmed they had found the bodies of missing NTC fighters.
"We found a lot of dead bodies of people we were looking for," he said.
In the weeks before the hospital fell there were repeated reports that Gaddafi forces were using it as a command centre but there was no sign of such a centre on Sunday.
The archives room in the basement was instead full of Filipina, Indian and Bangladeshi nurses who had been working at the hospital and living in apartment blocks in the compound.
"Nobody went to work after October 2 because of the shelling. They were firing from five in the morning until it got dark," said Maria Cristina Cruz from Manila, who has worked in Libya for 19 years.
"But some patients came to our building and asked us to come because they needed dialysis."
The nurses were told by NTC fighters to wait in the basement with their suitcases until they could be taken to a field hospital 50km west of the city.
The NTC fighters said that they would also take the Ibn Sina patients there.
Of the handful of female patients, one woman had given birth by Caesarean section the day before. Her baby lay next to her in an incubator on Sunday -- alive. -- AFP
Libya fighters find scenes of despair in Surt hospital
By Ruth Sherlock, Los Angeles Times
Sun Oct 9 2011 7:22 PM
Reporting from Surt, Libya-- An emaciated patient lay unconscious in the abandoned intensive care unit. The heart monitor beside the bed beeped loudly, ringing out across an empty ward damaged by a bomb blast. Outside the battle continued to rage.
Libya's transitional government seeking to finally seize control of Moammar Kadafi's hometown captured — at least temporarily — the central hospital in the loyalist city on Sunday. Inside the Ibn Sina Hospital, they found scenes of destruction and human despair.
Injured loyalist soldiers and civilian patients, some barely breathing, lined the corridors. Blood smeared the filthy floors, and bottles of urine lay under the beds.
"The hospital was full of wounded soldiers, and there were not enough doctors. They barely had time to administer standard first aid," said Muftah Omar, 48, a Surt resident.
Omar, a civilian, had brought his daughter Selma to the hospital after she was injured in a rocket attack that struck their home. The battle escalating outside, they had remained trapped in their war-scarred residence for 10 days, his daughter untreated.
"There was a long queue for the operation, there is no anesthesiologist. Selma has internal injuries that are infected," Omar said.
Bulgarian, Polish and Philippine nurses hiding in the hospital basement described the horror of the last two weeks as forces loyal to the toppled longtime leader sought to hold out from transitional government fighters. It was unclear whether the damage at the hospital resulted from attacks by anti-Kadafi fighters, loyalist forces or bombings by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose mission is to protect civilians under fire.
"The bombing was so intense, it smashed the top floor. One week ago it got too bad and no one reported for duty. Kidney dialysis patients were so desperate for treatment that they came to our building behind the hospital to beg the nurses back to work," said Maria Christina Cruz, 53, from the Philippines.
Injured women hid, terrified, in a small ward in the center of the hospital. A prematurely born baby with a lung infection lay in an incubator.
The hospital had served as a weapons storage area for loyalist soldiers, according to several patients. "Some soldiers roamed with weapons, and kept their arms here. We saw hand grenades in the intensive care unit," Omar said.
The multi-story building has also been used by loyalist forces to fire on the transitional government fighters.
"We begged and negotiated with them not to attack from here," Omar said. "Together with the doctors we overpowered them and raised the white surrender flag over the building."
In storming the hospital, fighters said they captured 50 of Kadafi's soldiers, many of them from the loyalist town of Tawarga that is now deserted. "They lay in the hospital beds pretending to be injured," said Osama Swehli, a coordinator in the transitional government's operations room.
Commanders sought to control pent-up rage and hatred toward the captives. "You dog!" shouted one fighter, throwing a punch at a detainee as he was brought away.
"Libya is free. Say it!" one fighter ordered young male patients. Wide-eyed with fear, they muttered the words.
Fighting continued to rage around the hospital. Walls shuddered from continuous blasts, and, as the sun began to set, loyalist forces began to gain the upper hand. "Leave now! Kadafi's men are coming!" interim government fighters shouted, jumping into their vehicles and speeding away.
Tracer fire crisscrossed the horizon and flashes of explosions lighted up the sky close to the hospital, with the patients trapped inside, their fate still hanging in the balance.
Sherlock is a special correspondent.
Sun Oct 9 2011 7:22 PM
Reporting from Surt, Libya-- An emaciated patient lay unconscious in the abandoned intensive care unit. The heart monitor beside the bed beeped loudly, ringing out across an empty ward damaged by a bomb blast. Outside the battle continued to rage.
Libya's transitional government seeking to finally seize control of Moammar Kadafi's hometown captured — at least temporarily — the central hospital in the loyalist city on Sunday. Inside the Ibn Sina Hospital, they found scenes of destruction and human despair.
Injured loyalist soldiers and civilian patients, some barely breathing, lined the corridors. Blood smeared the filthy floors, and bottles of urine lay under the beds.
"The hospital was full of wounded soldiers, and there were not enough doctors. They barely had time to administer standard first aid," said Muftah Omar, 48, a Surt resident.
Omar, a civilian, had brought his daughter Selma to the hospital after she was injured in a rocket attack that struck their home. The battle escalating outside, they had remained trapped in their war-scarred residence for 10 days, his daughter untreated.
"There was a long queue for the operation, there is no anesthesiologist. Selma has internal injuries that are infected," Omar said.
Bulgarian, Polish and Philippine nurses hiding in the hospital basement described the horror of the last two weeks as forces loyal to the toppled longtime leader sought to hold out from transitional government fighters. It was unclear whether the damage at the hospital resulted from attacks by anti-Kadafi fighters, loyalist forces or bombings by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose mission is to protect civilians under fire.
"The bombing was so intense, it smashed the top floor. One week ago it got too bad and no one reported for duty. Kidney dialysis patients were so desperate for treatment that they came to our building behind the hospital to beg the nurses back to work," said Maria Christina Cruz, 53, from the Philippines.
Injured women hid, terrified, in a small ward in the center of the hospital. A prematurely born baby with a lung infection lay in an incubator.
The hospital had served as a weapons storage area for loyalist soldiers, according to several patients. "Some soldiers roamed with weapons, and kept their arms here. We saw hand grenades in the intensive care unit," Omar said.
The multi-story building has also been used by loyalist forces to fire on the transitional government fighters.
"We begged and negotiated with them not to attack from here," Omar said. "Together with the doctors we overpowered them and raised the white surrender flag over the building."
In storming the hospital, fighters said they captured 50 of Kadafi's soldiers, many of them from the loyalist town of Tawarga that is now deserted. "They lay in the hospital beds pretending to be injured," said Osama Swehli, a coordinator in the transitional government's operations room.
Commanders sought to control pent-up rage and hatred toward the captives. "You dog!" shouted one fighter, throwing a punch at a detainee as he was brought away.
"Libya is free. Say it!" one fighter ordered young male patients. Wide-eyed with fear, they muttered the words.
Fighting continued to rage around the hospital. Walls shuddered from continuous blasts, and, as the sun began to set, loyalist forces began to gain the upper hand. "Leave now! Kadafi's men are coming!" interim government fighters shouted, jumping into their vehicles and speeding away.
Tracer fire crisscrossed the horizon and flashes of explosions lighted up the sky close to the hospital, with the patients trapped inside, their fate still hanging in the balance.
Sherlock is a special correspondent.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
NATO PR David Cameron at UN Promoting More ‘Humanitarian Interventions’
By 21st Century Wire
By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
September 23, 2011
If you are a seasoned boxing fan, it’s easy to tell when a boxer is fighting out of his weight division. He looks bloated and puffy, mostly from over-hydration and a taper in training. But most of all, the fighter is obviously punching well above his genuine weight.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, who was described by the US President Barrack Obama as “a lightweight” in that infamous Wikileaks cable last year- is such a boxer – bloated, puffy and clearly out of his league. Now that’s a US lightweight calling a Brit a lightweight, which would really make that Brit afeatherweight.
David is not bothered. With his flabby Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition mandate falling apart at home, Cameron is trying to seize the day overseas, fresh off Britain’s little VJ Day field trip to Libya.
Cameron’s big media slot was yesterday at the UN in New York City, where he spouted to world leaders about how we need to, ‘be prepared to intervene again when civilians are massacred by repressive regimes’.
David’s message regarding Libya is that we should really be “quicker” to take military action to stop the slaughter of innocents.
No mention here of the thousands of Libyans who have been killed by NATO bombings and many thousands who were openly slaughtered or ethnically cleansed by NATO’s local partners, the al-Qaida aka “Rebel” fighters, whom they have hired to help dislodge Libyan leader Gaffafi from power.
But Cameron would not trade this experience for the world. He has gotten some actual ‘statesman’ mileage out of Libya (at least in terms of invitations to Berlusconi’s parties etc) so far, and remember last week when he was hailed by tiny staged crowds Tripoli, reassuring them that their country ‘chose the path to freedom’.
And here we are in New York, where Cameron lays it on thick:
“This revolution truly belongs to the Libyan people. The United Nations played a vital role authorising international action. But let’s be clear, the United Nations is no more effective than the nation states that come together to enforce its will.
“On this occasion a coalition of nations across the Western and Arab world had the will to act. In so doing, they stopped Benghazi from joining Srebrenica and Rwanda in history’s painful roll call of massacres the world failed to prevent.”
The truth, of course, is something else altogether.
The rape of Libya was quite possibly the most bold smash-and-grab crime in modern history.
It was even more bold than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, following the whole “WMD thing”. The US-NATO looting of the sovereign state of Libya was worse because they didn’t even bother to come up with a big lie- like a suitcase nuke, or a WMD. They simply openly joined in under a UN banner, and supported one side militarily in an internal civil war, under the lightweight banner of “humanitarian intervention” via “kinetic actions”.
Western corporations were already beginning to carve up Libya’s assets as far back as March 2011, in the early days of the civil war. Now we have David Cameron running around Manhattan trying to promote this template for a criminal enterprise. Of course, this little war will spill over into other parts of Africa such as Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Niger and Mali, where the UN can send in the blue helmets.
But the facts cannot hide that while David Cameron is at the UN doing the job of Washington and NATO’s little PR girl (like Tony Blair did loyally in 2003), no amount of lies can hide forever what Libya really is- a complete disaster in the making. There is panic at the UN, because the UN knows that it is in grave danger of losing its nerve after being used by the US-NATO-Israeli Axis for this particular criminal campaign.
If there is any justice in the world, one would hope that Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and rest of the little European looters in Libya will be dragged into court for crimes against humanity, not least because that’s what they truly deserve.
That ‘special relationship’
Wikileaks jibes aside, Cameron now enjoys a good relationship with Mr Obama. Yes, it’s a return to that “special relationship” enjoyed by the US and Britain for so many years, made famous by those photo shoots at the Crawford Dude Ranch where George W. Bush and Tony Blair sported big belt buckles and pristine Stetsons.
Indeed, Barrack and David can now have cordial discussions about each other’s wives, and perhaps play a round of golf at St Andrews.
But the timing of Cameron’s little jolly in NYC says volumes about the new ‘special relationship’.
The real reason David Cameron is doing this UN junket this week is mainly because he will also be weighing in on Palestine, reminding us, on one hand, that their national aspirations are part of the fabled “Arab Spring”, and on the other hand, that Palestine should forget about statehood.
David will give Abbas a little nudge from England too. ‘No, that’s not the plan right now, Mr Abbas’. No, the proper aspiration is to put that idea of statehood aside for the moment, and opt instead for more, extended, somewhat protracted “peaceful negotiations” with Israel. Yes, it is a much better thing indeed.
He has made clear Britain’s disfavour with Mahmoud Abbas’s desire to make a declaration of statehood at the UN this week. We now know, because Uncle Barrack has told us, that Palestinian Statehood will not happen this year.
Cameron says that it’s a much better thing for Palestine to pursue diplomacy, “sit down and talk to each other, make compromises, build trust and agree”.
Yes, David. It would’ve been interesting to have tried to use that technique in Libya.
By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
September 23, 2011
If you are a seasoned boxing fan, it’s easy to tell when a boxer is fighting out of his weight division. He looks bloated and puffy, mostly from over-hydration and a taper in training. But most of all, the fighter is obviously punching well above his genuine weight.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, who was described by the US President Barrack Obama as “a lightweight” in that infamous Wikileaks cable last year- is such a boxer – bloated, puffy and clearly out of his league. Now that’s a US lightweight calling a Brit a lightweight, which would really make that Brit afeatherweight.
David is not bothered. With his flabby Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition mandate falling apart at home, Cameron is trying to seize the day overseas, fresh off Britain’s little VJ Day field trip to Libya.
Cameron’s big media slot was yesterday at the UN in New York City, where he spouted to world leaders about how we need to, ‘be prepared to intervene again when civilians are massacred by repressive regimes’.
David’s message regarding Libya is that we should really be “quicker” to take military action to stop the slaughter of innocents.
No mention here of the thousands of Libyans who have been killed by NATO bombings and many thousands who were openly slaughtered or ethnically cleansed by NATO’s local partners, the al-Qaida aka “Rebel” fighters, whom they have hired to help dislodge Libyan leader Gaffafi from power.
But Cameron would not trade this experience for the world. He has gotten some actual ‘statesman’ mileage out of Libya (at least in terms of invitations to Berlusconi’s parties etc) so far, and remember last week when he was hailed by tiny staged crowds Tripoli, reassuring them that their country ‘chose the path to freedom’.
And here we are in New York, where Cameron lays it on thick:
“This revolution truly belongs to the Libyan people. The United Nations played a vital role authorising international action. But let’s be clear, the United Nations is no more effective than the nation states that come together to enforce its will.
“On this occasion a coalition of nations across the Western and Arab world had the will to act. In so doing, they stopped Benghazi from joining Srebrenica and Rwanda in history’s painful roll call of massacres the world failed to prevent.”
The truth, of course, is something else altogether.
The rape of Libya was quite possibly the most bold smash-and-grab crime in modern history.
It was even more bold than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, following the whole “WMD thing”. The US-NATO looting of the sovereign state of Libya was worse because they didn’t even bother to come up with a big lie- like a suitcase nuke, or a WMD. They simply openly joined in under a UN banner, and supported one side militarily in an internal civil war, under the lightweight banner of “humanitarian intervention” via “kinetic actions”.
Western corporations were already beginning to carve up Libya’s assets as far back as March 2011, in the early days of the civil war. Now we have David Cameron running around Manhattan trying to promote this template for a criminal enterprise. Of course, this little war will spill over into other parts of Africa such as Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Niger and Mali, where the UN can send in the blue helmets.
But the facts cannot hide that while David Cameron is at the UN doing the job of Washington and NATO’s little PR girl (like Tony Blair did loyally in 2003), no amount of lies can hide forever what Libya really is- a complete disaster in the making. There is panic at the UN, because the UN knows that it is in grave danger of losing its nerve after being used by the US-NATO-Israeli Axis for this particular criminal campaign.
If there is any justice in the world, one would hope that Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and rest of the little European looters in Libya will be dragged into court for crimes against humanity, not least because that’s what they truly deserve.
That ‘special relationship’
Wikileaks jibes aside, Cameron now enjoys a good relationship with Mr Obama. Yes, it’s a return to that “special relationship” enjoyed by the US and Britain for so many years, made famous by those photo shoots at the Crawford Dude Ranch where George W. Bush and Tony Blair sported big belt buckles and pristine Stetsons.
Indeed, Barrack and David can now have cordial discussions about each other’s wives, and perhaps play a round of golf at St Andrews.
But the timing of Cameron’s little jolly in NYC says volumes about the new ‘special relationship’.
The real reason David Cameron is doing this UN junket this week is mainly because he will also be weighing in on Palestine, reminding us, on one hand, that their national aspirations are part of the fabled “Arab Spring”, and on the other hand, that Palestine should forget about statehood.
David will give Abbas a little nudge from England too. ‘No, that’s not the plan right now, Mr Abbas’. No, the proper aspiration is to put that idea of statehood aside for the moment, and opt instead for more, extended, somewhat protracted “peaceful negotiations” with Israel. Yes, it is a much better thing indeed.
He has made clear Britain’s disfavour with Mahmoud Abbas’s desire to make a declaration of statehood at the UN this week. We now know, because Uncle Barrack has told us, that Palestinian Statehood will not happen this year.
Cameron says that it’s a much better thing for Palestine to pursue diplomacy, “sit down and talk to each other, make compromises, build trust and agree”.
Yes, David. It would’ve been interesting to have tried to use that technique in Libya.
After Sirte
Even if the NTC forces take over Sirte, the civil war in Lybia will not be over, and in fact the situation will only deteriorate. Soon, the NTC factions will fight among themselves (they already do), and the low-intensity civil war will go in Lybia for decades. The regime will be unstable, dictatorial, and without the NATO/West support will collapse into a new Somalia.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Liam Fox, British defense minister
While Liam Fox, British defense minister gives his assurances to the NTC in Tripoli, The Telegraph raises questions about his questionable relations.
More crimes
It looks like the NTC troops are using the tactics allegedly used by US army in Iraq. . Another blatant violation of humanitarian law. Even Australians (!) are talking about it. BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, RT, where are you?
New Guernica
It has not been released how many tons of bombs the NATO bombers have dropped in the vicinity of Sirte during this conflict, but it probably exceeds the 40 tons dropped by the Condor Legion on Guernica. Back then, the League of Nations was entirely ineffective in defending civilian areas from being bombed during the Spanish Civil War and it remains to be seen if the United Nations will prove any better in this conflict. At any rate it is an international scandal which vert few paid attention to. NATO spokesman Roland Lavoie’s rutinely states: "We are aware of these allegations, it is not the first time such allegations have been made. Most often, they are revealed to be unfounded or inconclusive.” This of course should remain on his conscience (if he has any, which doubtful. Remember Jamie Shea, that jolly English NATO spokesman during the Kosovo war who exhibited pathological inability to tell the truth). They are plenty of evidence to demonstrate that NATO planes do hit civilian targets. NATO's mandate is to protect civilians, not to bomb them, and all evidence point that NATO bombs do kill civilians. NATO planners should recall that there are Nuremberg principles which state the following:
Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
Principle II
"The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
So, one may wonder when the ICC will act on the overwhleming evidence of the civilian casualties in Sirte and issue arrest warrants for those responsible for this mayhem.
Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
Principle II
"The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
So, one may wonder when the ICC will act on the overwhleming evidence of the civilian casualties in Sirte and issue arrest warrants for those responsible for this mayhem.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
NATO supports war crimes
Now even Yahoo! went on describing war crimes being committed by the so-called rebels
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
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