Stefan Molyneux peeks behind the curtain.
What he finds is not pretty, but it should not surprise us either.
My support for the no-fly zone remains, but now I am wondering just how far the coalition will go. Will they know when to stop? I wanted the fight evening up a little, but any day now the situation will develop beyond that "levelling of the battle-field" into Gadaffi and his dwindling supporters versus quite a few well-stocked armed forces from around the region. That doesn't seem fair either.
There is a get-together tomorrow in London. NATO, and other interested parties will discuss offering Gadaffi a way out.
Let's hope the mad bastard has a moment of clarity and accepts the offer.
CR.
I would still question the motives for this incursion. A no-fly zone should not include bombing targets on the ground.
ReplyDeleteRevenge Gaddafi? RT digs for real reasons behind Libya bombing
You have to question why Libya, why now and why not the other states that have dictatorships where the people are revolting?
I am not convinced that this is a fight for democracy by the UK, USA AND FRANCE. There is something distinctly dodgy going on, I can smell it from Spain
No UN mandate to attack Gaddafi forces: Russia
Sue,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links.
I have no real idea because TPTB has not shared its "vision" with me, but I am absolutely certain it has fuck-all to do with democracy.
Oil? Minerals? Gadaffi has "something" on them? I don't know.
I do know that it will all come out though.
The Russians, so far pretty much the only drillers to consistently find oil & gas in Libya, may just have ulterior motives. Tatneft, a subsidiary of Russian giant Gazprom, have hit 7 for 7. BP, Shell, Oxy, Chevron, Conoco, Respsol, and many others, have found nothing. Not a drop. (I know this because I have had meetings with all of them over the last ten years in Tripoli).
Is it surprising the Russians are against the NFZ?
BTW, there IS something smelly about all of this. Your nose is working just fine.
CR.
No wonder you can smell it Sue, it stinks! I don't know what the motives are but they sure ain't the welfare of the Libyan people.
ReplyDeleteHere's another view:
http://the-tap.blogspot.com/2011/03/gaddafi-refused-to-join-sarkozys.html
(sorry, don't know how to link!)
linking?
ReplyDeletehere
Stefan Molyneux gives his little game away by referring to "Thatchers Malvinas war".
ReplyDeleteThe reason that the West is involved in Libya right here and right now is that the 'Libyan people' chose this moment to rebel against Gaddafi (CIA plot yeah yeah yeah).
A brief bit of research reveals that Triploi and Benghazi were two entirely different civilisations for 2,000 years only cobbled together as a single entity by that clown Mussolini ("Protector Of Italian Moslems") in the 1930's and my belief is that separatism on the part or Benghanzi lies behind this revolt. That would work since the oil is evenly split between the west and east of "Libya".
Imagine Germany and France enslaved (though never fully pacified) by Soviet Russia then liberated by outside forces as a single entity with France in charge. It ain't gonna work in the long run but we might as well be in there on the side of the good guys, er, winners.
I understand that you have friends there CR whom I hope you have been able to contact but you have to stand back a bit and look at what the kids in Westminster are playing at.
ReplyDeleteThey have not got a clue about anything. Most spoilt children don't no matter what their age. They have simply gotten into the sweet shop and are high on the sugar they have found within.
Ark Royal, Largs Bay and three Type45 destroyers are now up for sale. Invincible is on her way to the scrap yard. The two ships Cumberland and London sailing off Libya are going to join them. The Harrier fleet is scrapped and the Tornado fleet is going to join them.
The armed forces military workforce is being slashed, the military civil service isn't.
This is a colossal reduction in the mechanism that is supposed to be defending the 'country' from outside attack. The remaining military is bogged down in three or more 'mini' wars (mini as in small not insignificant) to such an extent that these islands are all but defenceless.
This reduction has a purpose and it isn't saving money because the Treasury is funding the Libyan fight where the RAF and the Kermits cannot differentiate between a plane in the air or a tank on the ground. The treasury makes not takes money so there will be no shortage of funds.
Turns out that not only are the Tornado's clapped out many of the Tomahawks now no longer with us were destined for the scrapheap as they had come to the end of their useful lives.
The Tornado's can use up their remaining flying hours much quicker and the Tomahawks were going to be replaced anyway so why not get conflict going to be rid of them both 'in combat'?
Dave's little Arm's sales tour of the Middle East after the Egyptian regime change has a lot to do with what is going on.
I really have no idea why Libya was the target of choice other than Dave was convinced by the dwarf that Libya was the place to bomb but whatever the real reasons they nothing to do with being 'humanitarian'.
As a footnote here is how our cousins across the pond record the sale of Largs Bay which is only 5 years old!
Britain commissioned 4 of the 176m long, 16,200t Bay Class LSD amphibious ships to renew a very run-down capability. The new “Alternative Landing Ship Logistic” ships were built from the same base Enforcer template that produced the successful Dutch Rotterdam and Johann de Witt, and Spanish Galicia class programs. Britain ordered 4 of these ALSL/LSD-A ships into its Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and active use began with RFA Largs Bay’s commissioning in 2006. By 2011, however, Britain’s fiscal situation was so dire that a strategic review marked RFA Largs Bay for decommissioning in April 2011, after just a fraction of its 30+ year service life.
That was bad timing for Britain, but good timing for others:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/
And then there's this...
ReplyDeletehttp://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/03/not-even-airshow.html
The RAF risks running short of pilots for operations over Libya as cuts to the defence budget threaten to undermine front-line operations, says Thomas Harding of The Daily Telegraph.
Since the conflict began, a squadron of 18 RAF Eurofighter pilots has enforced the Libya no-fly zone from an air base in southern Italy. However, a shortage of qualified fighter pilots means the RAF may not have enough to replace all of them when the squadron has to rotate in a few weeks.
The situation is so serious that the RAF has halted the teaching of trainee Eurofighter pilots so instructors can be drafted on to operations. But it gets worse. The handful of pilots used for air shows will also be withdrawn from displays this summer.
That has to be the ultimate pits ... the RAF can no longer even run an airshow.
Banned,
ReplyDeleteI also wondered at that remark. It stood out for me as well.
Most of the oil & gas are in the fields south of Benghazi. There are good sized reservoirs in the Ghadames Basin in the west, near the Algerian border but analysts say the majority is in the eastern sector.
Who knows though? There are still many undiscovered reservoirs and at best, we can only guess until the seismic work has been done.
CR.
William,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info on the state of our tattered armed forces. I didn't realise the picture was so bleak.
I managed to get through to my good friend Walid in Tripoli two weeks ago but have not been able to talk to him since the bombing started.
I will keep trying, but both GSM networks, Al Madar and Libyana are up and down. More down than up. Gadaffi's eldest son (to his first wife) runs the telecoms and will be constantly reaching for the "off" switch.
Yes, I am deeply worried about Walid and his family. I know his dad very well too, and he had been a pain in the arse for Gadaffi when there was a mini-revolt 25 years ago. Walid's dad took the family to live in Alexandria, they returned to Tripoli 10 years ago during an "amnesty", but his dad remains a target for a very grumpy old man.
What a mess.
CR.
The Libyan rebels are basically a rabble; to date they seem enthusiastic but quite spectacularly useless most of the time; firing in the air wildly and wasting ammo for journalists tends to reinforce this notion. Any competent land army is going to go through these berks like a dose of salts, which is possibly why the Libyan armour is being systematically destroyed.
ReplyDeleteHaving said this, the Gadaffi regime also seems quite incredibly dysfunctional; any competent third world dictator like, say, Saddam Hussein in his heyday would have been onto the nascent rebellion way before it had a chance to get off the ground, and would have had most of the competent leaders disappeared, killed and buried long since. However Gadaffi not only didn't have adequate resources to put down a rebellion, but doesn't seem even to have known that trouble was brewing.
All this argues convincingly for the current insurrection being a concerted effort by a third player to effect a regime change. The rebels have been systematically egged on and possibly helped to organise, and a regime change has similarly been fiddled through in Egypt (possibly with a back-room deal there for their outgoing Great Leader).
I do not think that this insurrection is the main show at all. Egypt got a new leadership suspiciously easily, and Gadaffi the mad dictator's mad dictator looks like he's going to be toppled, but I definitely see an ulterior motive behind all of these.
Could it be that someone is out to try to reduce the amount of internal unrest in the Muslim countries of the middle east?
Most of the countries in the region have an undemocratic leadership system based around one small religio-ethnic group hogging the power and wealth, whilst one or more bigger groups get marginalised. An example of this would have been Iraq, where the Sunni group lorded it over the majority Shia; Saudi has a similar system as do many others. Manifest unfairness breeds revolt, and since the West tends to side with existing powers as long as they keep the peace, the West tends to be greatly resented.
This all may be a plot to trade temporary revolution for long-term fairer governance which will reduce the number of hot-headed young idiots ending up hating the world and getting set up to fight the West.
Interesting that for someone obsessed with free thinking, Molyneux blows a hole in his credibility and betrays his leftist roots and naivety by referencing the plight of so called "Palestinians." There has never been an autonomous palestinian state or palestinian people, only settlements of other neighbouring islamic countries. Palestine is routinely held up as a cause celebre for useful idiots as it allows jew hating murderers to play victim, in the process gaining a veneer of culturally-relative respectability for shari'a.
ReplyDeleteMolyneux's flagrant idiocy in his previous "End of statism" video about egypt is carried forward here, too - I don't see how any sane man can expect an islamic society to produce a libertopia of individual rights. Right now, the muslim brotherhood are coasting to power with relative ease in egypt, and the libyan rebels universally have al-quada affiliation.
The fact that Camerwrong wants to institute a No-Fly-Zone in aid of the rebels, whilst cutting back RAF funding and staff, shows just how twofaced or barkingly insane this country has gone (And he's the best of the choice of two).
Gaddafi himself was defanged - He shut down his nuclear programme and toed the line the west drew in the sand after Lockerbie. For all intents and purposes, he's been Colonel Cooperative and a "Strong partner in the war on terror" according to US intelligence. Getting rid of this eccentric statesman is not in anyones national interest, especially not the libyans, (unless, of course, they're pro-shari'a rebels).
The message this entire debacle sends is "If you're a third world dictator, ignore the west and buy nukes."
Dan,
ReplyDeleteA good synopsis. It accurately reflects events on the ground.
Gadaffi has routinely ignored (most) of the rumblings from Benghazi, for years. On occasion, certain people "disappeared", and some were murdered. Those missing turned up at Al Salim gaol, near Tripoli.
He was caught on the hop. All Libyans I spoke to in late January this year said that "Revolution would never happen here. We had ours back in 1969". I imagine the colonel thought along the same lines.
Like you, I now suspect something else is going on. But, Libya was different to Tunisia and Egypt. There, neither army wanted to engage with the rebels.
In Libya, Gadaffi is hurling fistfuls of cash at the "pro" government supporters. He is buying loyalty, and if it can be bought, it can be sold and the situation reversed.
CR.
NWS,
ReplyDeleteCan you qualify this statement:
"...and the libyan rebels universally have al-quada affiliation."
To my knowledge, having been to Libya several times a year since 2001, there was never a scrap of evidence to show terrorist activity.
Do you have evidence to support that claim?
I agree that Cameron is a tit. First he de-claws us and then takes us to war. That's the trouble with politicians-they never listen to the generals.
Molyneux is a philosopher. Sometimes you need to cut him some slack. 98% of what he says sounds good to me.
CR.
""The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers"
ReplyDeleteSame old game
Same old players
Every time there is a "conflict" in the World the "elite controlled" press whip up the mindless fervour of the sheep to support the "rebels" or the hard-pressed "regime".
The "sheep" of this World should wake-up to the fact that the are always being manipulated.
Did have a more thoughtful reply but blogger just chewed through it.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, google links:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/admiral-us-studying-libyan-rebels-after-going-war-their-behalf
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/libyan-rebel-commander-says-his-fighters-have-al-qaeda-links/
Thanks NWS.
ReplyDeleteIt was news to me.
Mind you, knowing now how the news is manipulated/fabricated, these reports could be absolute fiction.
This portion of his statement was significant:
"Stavridis responded. "The intelligence that I am receiving at this point makes me feel that the leadership I am seeing are responsible men and women who are struggling against Colonel Gadhafi. We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al Qaeda, Hezbollah, we've seen different things, but at this point I don't have detail sufficient to say that there is a significant al Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks. We'll continue to look at that very closely. It's part of doing due diligence as we move forward on any kind of relationship."
I could go along with that. 25 men out of the millions involved may be connected to AQ. That sounds reasonable.
I suppose we will not know for sure until some time after the last bullet is fired.
CR.
just to even up the assessment of Molyneux - he isnt pro argentina or pro palestine. he certainly aint a leftist.
ReplyDeleteif all you know of molyneux is from the videos Ranty posts you may be unaware molyneux is an anarchist. yes you may say he's a useful idiot unintentionally bolstering big-state interventionism under calls for freedom and equally you may believe he intentionally disguises his true motives under a veneer of anarchy but you would be dead wrong on both accounts.
in both cases an anarchist should perhaps decry both sides however some feel that the imperialists are worse than the states they aggress against. in order to establish the falklands and israel not only were the extant inhabitants aggressed against but the peoples of the imperial powers were aggressed against in order to pay for these actions that had nothing to do with them.
that is the tricky tightrope i imagine Ranty has to contend with now. should we help individuals oppressed by coercive states whilst that help itself will be funded by coercive extortion by our own state?
simply referring to popular lefty issues like the malvinas and palestine does not make one a lefty. if you think the falklands are a wonderful idea then youre never going to be free.