Enduring freedom forever By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE The West in vain tries to find a form of agony worthy of its past - E M Cioran Enduring Freedom is how the United States government defined its official, military response to 9/11. It should have been Operation Infinite Justice; but then some apparatchik found out that also happened to be a definition of God. Ten years after 9/11, facts on the ground spell out a world shocked and awed to endure war rather than justice, while freedom, shrinking by the minute, is just another word for everything left to lose. Osama bin Laden used to define 9/11 as Yaum Niu York ("the day of New York"). Little did the now decomposed corpse at the bottom of the Arabian Sea know he would unleash an early 21st century conformed as a wasteland littered with militarized newspeak [1]. Ground Zero spawned the George Bush-designated global war on terror (GWOT), a nonsensical war against a tactic. A more realistic Pentagon called it The Long War. United States national security morphed into Homeland Security. The threatened hyperpower rushed to manufacture a fearful civil liberty shredder, the Patriot Act, approved by Bush on October 2001, and enshrined as permanent in March 2006. For Washington, 9/11 was never about blowback. It happened because of a dysfunctional system displaying failure of imagination. After the fact, world public opinion never ceased to be massaged by an army of message force multipliers, from defense specialists to security experts. And an array of Code Oranges, elevated security concerns and specifics-free warnings kept the US masses on its toes. Faster than the speed of rumor, Humint, Sigint, Imint (human, signals and imagery intelligence), backed up by Techint and CI (technical and counter intelligence) merged into a swarm of psyops (usually relying on bad humint). But for all its technical wizardry, the US government botched the elusive goal of Total Information Awareness (TIA) - a megalomaniac, Dr Strangelove-style project by the Pentagon's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). After the end of the USSR, a flimsy al-Qaeda had been elevated to the status of global bogeyman. That was in reference to al-Qa'eda al-Askariyya ("the military base"), an obscure outfit whose existence was officially acknowledged on February 23, 1998 as part of a World Islamic Front to fight Jews and Christians, founded at a meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. Bin Laden always characterized al-Qaeda as a training-and-fighting, loose network - as much as he exhorted the cavalry of Islam to do battle. Bin Laden was essentially a fundamentalist Wahhabi who felt a duty to fight jahiliyya ("ignorance") - understood as much in Egyptian fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb's sense (as infidel Arab regimes), as in the ignorance predominant before the arrival of Islam in the 7th century. Instead of being bombed to the stone age, Pakistan under then-president Pervez Musharraf (or "Busharraf") joined GWOT. In a planetary screenplay, jihadis - or Islamo-fascists - were universally depicted as the bad guys, while the mujahideen had been the good guys when still promoted as freedom fighters during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were duly bombed out of power. Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri escaped from Tora Bora to a black void. And then the dark side became the new normal. Burn, trillions, burn Bush's Iraq adventure - sold to the world by Curveball, aka phony Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan - was the first war in history entirely paid by credit card. By 2008, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes calculated the Afghanistan/Iraq wars were costing up to $5 trillion - and counting. Direct US government spending alone was roughly $2 trillion, and counting - $17,000 for every US household. Back in 2002, real power in Washington revolved around the Office of Special Plans - that Soviet-sounding unit bent to prove there was a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Everybody else would be off-message - also as in critics of the war after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. For the neo-cons - who knew absolutely nothing about Iraq - what counted was the positive domino theory; invading Iraq would set up a wave of democracy all across the Arab world. Arabs would finally become model Americans. The Bush-Dick Cheney junta may have enshrined pre-emptive war (justified by international law only when there's an imminent danger). That was the Bush doctrine, announced in January 2002. But after Shock and Awe, the Iraq muqawama ("resistance") had other ideas. Sunni Iraqis rallied around "resistance" instead of "national liberation", as the Americans preferred the innocuous insurgency, whose connotations avoid the reality of revolt, revolution and civil war. Soon martyrdom operations - what the West calls suicide bombing, and what used to be known in Arabic as amaliyya intihariyya ("suicidal mission") - were the law of the land. Every newscast was dripping with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - later developed into VBIEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs; radiological dispersal devices (aka dirty bombs); and explosively formed penetrators. There was no safe haven for anybody (a tautology, since a haven must be safe). The hyperpower was now ruled by a ticking bomb principle - according to which the US could not afford to play by the rules anymore. Yet there was always a scarcity of actionable information. Thus the constant tweaking of the rules of engagement; the US Marines, for instance, followed shout, show, shove, shoot - where "shoot" almost always trumped the other three. Tweaking the rules inevitably led to an alternative set of procedures ; controversial interrogation techniques, enhanced interrogation techniques, harsh interrogation techniques and even dark art deployed against alleged enemy combatants (the pre-9/11 distinction between enemy and unlawful combatant had totally vanished). It was imperative to send scores of enemy combatants or high value terrorist suspects to the Baghdad Correctional Facility - aka Torture Central Abu Ghraib, where biscuits (Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, trained in Fort Bragg's SERE - Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape - school) would conduct interrogation. Biscuits were introduced into the famous detention facility Guantanamo by Major General Geoffrey "we gotta Gitmo-ize" Miller and then - successfully - transported to Abu Ghraib. Gitmo-ize meant the gory spectacle of forced nudity, hooding, men shackled in painful stress positions, dog attacks, walling and waterboarding - a remix of the Vietnam-era pump and dump (pump them for information and then dump their bodies). Excesses of course were not caused by George "you have to treat these detainees like dogs" Miller's policies, but by a few bad apples. And damn those quaint Geneva conventions. The world was also introduced to extraordinary rendition - aka state kidnapping and deportation - via a flotilla of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ghost planes. The practice of outsourcing torture was in fact contract killing handed over to the security agencies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and rough ally Uzbekistan, much adept at boiling of body parts and electroshocks on genitals. Blackwater - later renamed Xe - became the Holy Grail of the mercenary-evangelical complex, making a killing in Iraq, as well as hordes of defense contractors and private security contractors - aka mercenaries. Apologists of the August 2002 torture memo wildly cheered American troops who subscribed to the torture crowd, while smirking over torture lite. For Dick "Angler" Cheney, waterboarding was a "no-brainer", a "dunk in the water". But then Iraq became a quagmire. The Bush-Cheney junta chose to dodge a Babel of war assessments and a benchmark hell in Iraq by ordering a surge, while building Fortress Baghdad - aka the US Embassy, the largest in the world. And then the war in Afghanistan, like a bat out of hell, came out of a prolonged coma with a vengeance, and morphed into an American/European war against Pashtuns, first-class warriors who have defeated every empire in sight. The recipe for a Western "victory" was yet another surge. Our way or the highway The Pentagon's Long War couldn't do it; people in Northern Africa did it. The Arab Spring defeated 9/11, and defeated al-Qaeda. It even defeated Osama bin Laden before the Abbottabad raid (essentially a targeted assassination performed by a commando after the invasion of the aerial space of a sovereign nation). But just as the Arab Spring also seemed to have defeated the fallacy of that Holy Triad - Islamophobia, the clash of civilizations and the end of history ... ... Everything turned kinetic, via Operation Odyssey Dawn. Washington, London and Paris decided to ditch international law as it was in effect since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. R2P - "responsibility to protect" civilians - had its ballistic baptism, the perfect humanitarian cover for the defense of Atlanticist economic and strategic interests. With the added benefit of Nobel Peace Prize winner and multiple war developer Barack Obama presiding over the metamorphosis of NATO into a global Robocop - with or without a UN green light. The West's got a brand new bag; a global militia. Iraq - bypassing the United Nations - was about regime change. Libya - with UN blessing - was also about regime change, even though Obama swore it wasn't. Ten years after 9/11, The Long War metamorphosed into fourth-generation warfare - theoretically "new" asymmetric warfare cum counter-insurgency. Welcome to the CIA as a paramilitary militia. Welcome to Dronistan - General Atomics MQ-1 Predators targeting militants and indulging in the odd collateral damage - as in terminating Pashtun weddings. And welcome to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), developed by former Iraq surge hero and current CIA director General David Petraeus as "an almost industrial-scale counter-terrorism killing machine", as defined by Petraeus minion John Nagl. The JSOC is what in Latin America in the 1970s was known as a death squad, but now under the Pentagon direct aegis; masters of kill/capture, based on a flimsy legal or blatantly extra-legal premise, going after a target assassination list that even includes American citizens. Will the circle be unbroken? Of course not; Obama's American Way of War - now boasting virtually zero casualties, as in Libya - has the same objectives as Bush's. The Pentagon will leave Afghanistan and Iraq over its dead collective body. The Pentagon will set up an Africom base in Libya. Amid a deluge of known unknowns, unknown unknowns, these are the real birth pangs of a new Middle East. What really matters is the Pentagon's obsession in controlling the whole arc of instability. Remember fiery Washington neo-con rhetoric between the early 2002 axis of evil speech and the March 2003 invasion of Iraq; real men go to Tehran. The Playstation King of Jordan and the arch-counter-revolutionary King of Saudi Arabia will keep harping about the existential threat of the Shi'ite crescent. Furious and/or dejected hearts and minds all across the arc of instability will remain alienated. All manner of blowback will prevail. For instance, one just has to time how long will it take for Libya to be raped by NATO powers. Blowback? Bring them on, the CIA/Pentagon would brag. It will be a cakewalk. So what rough beast, its hour come out at last, will be slouching towards ... Kabul? Baghdad? Tripoli? Riyadh? ... to be born? There's no endgame in sight; that's the real meaning of Mission Accomplished. Ten years after 9/11, the road to war is a mission that goes on forever. Note 1. Hats off to the late, great Fred Halliday of the Barcelona Institute for International Studies, compiler of Shock and Awed: a dictionary of the war on terror (University of California Press, 2010). Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Another Century of War - by Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11, new millennium Bush and Obama policies eroded democracy, institutionalized state repression, accelerated economic decline, launched multiple imperial wars, and headed America for tyranny and ruin.

Neither will live down that legacy. Nor will complicit Republicans and Democrats, destroying nation for unbridled self-interest. As a result, in the century's second decade, America's no longer fit to live in. Imagine its far worse state years from now, resembling the worst of banana republic harshness, deprivation, and despair.

A frightening prospect, it goes largely unacknowledged until finally recognized too late to:

-- derail America's addiction to war;

-- prevent completing the grandest of grand theft looting of public and working household assets;

-- deter the destruction of eroding democratic values;

-- stop the transformation of America into a full-blown fascist police state; as well as

-- wreck the country in the process, leaving behind a rotting sinkhole of dystopian harshness, inequality, and depravation.

Yet it's clear. Corporate omnipotence and wars are immoral, illegal, harmful to popular interests, and only happen when corrupt officials betray the public trust, selling their souls for power and personal gain.

Imagine the difference if militarism and imperial wars ended, replaced by a commitment to peace and dedication to devote public resources to productive economic growth, benefitting everyone in the process.

In his seminal book, "A Century of War," Gabriel Kolko called the 20th century:

"the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed." In WW II, 70% of them were civilians, "mainly (from) the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America." There was nothing good about "the good war" nor any others.

In Kolko's "Another Century of War?" he stressed how America contributes to much of the world's disorder through interventions, and as being the world's largest arms producer and exporter, profiting by proliferating death and destruction.

Post-WW II, Washington became a global menace, today calling "terrorism" the main threat - a bogus fiction to justify militarism and perpetual wars, heading the nation for moral, political and economic bankruptcy. According to Kolko:

"The way America's leaders are running the nation's foreign policy is not creating peace or security at home or stability abroad. The reverse is the case: its interventions have been counterproductive."

As a result, he believes the Korean War began America's decline, followed by successive policy failures, notably Vietnam, exacerbated further post-9/11.

As a result, its century of domination is ending, but who can predict how, when, or potential disasters it may cause before it does, including perhaps to planet earth, already dying from avoidable toxins.

With leaders like Bush and Obama, and likely worse ones to follow, Chalmers Johnson, before his 2010 death, said the "extinction that befell....the Soviet Union (was) unavoidable."

The same fate awaits America, he believed, stopping short of suggesting a mushroom-shaped cloud end to consume much more than one nation. It's because US policy's on a nuclear hair trigger, a reinvented MAD.

It threatens the unimaginable, bolstered by annual $1.5 trillion "defense" budgets, including all related categories, more than the rest of the world combined at a time America has no enemies except ones it invents.

As a result, he saw America heading for bankruptcy, authoritarian rule and loss of personal freedom, believing those elements approached fruition.

Begun under earlier presidents, Bush and Obama accelerated America's current state, noticeably by:
an abdication of rule of law principles, erosion of democratic values, and loss of personal freedoms, including due process and judicial fairness;

a nation with no enemies permanently at war;

secret, unaccountable global prison gulag, at home and abroad;

orture as official policy;

persecuting and scapegoating, Blacks, Latino immigrants, Muslims, and other minorities for political advantage;

he most secretive, intrusive, repressive government in our history under lawless, duplicitous leaders;

omeland social decay;

wrecking the economy to enrich bankers, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites;

an unprecedented wealth disparity combined with out-of-control corporate power;

a corrupt two-party duopoly, serving wealth and power at the expense of growing need;

weakened checks, balances and separation of powers;

a dysfunctional Congress, beholden to powerful corporate interests, notably Wall Street, war profiteers and Big Oil;

a secret, unaccountable intelligence establishment with near-limitless funding;

a corporate-controlled media, manipulating the public mind with managed news and infotainment;

a destructive military/industrial/intelligence service/media/think tank/academia complex Dwight Eisenhower couldn't have imagined when he warned about its lesser incarnation in his farewell address; and

endemic corruption, stemming from incestuous ties between government and business, flaunting the notion of government of, for or by the people.


Could past generations conceive an America sunk so low? Can thoughtful analysts imagine a way out? Does anyone think failure can avoid full-blown tyranny?

Do they doubt future conditions too frightful to imagine, the same fate that doomed past empires, betraying their roots for corrupted destructive power, heading them for tyranny and ruin.

Trends analyst Gerald Celente and others remember when the business of America was business. Now it's war, more war, multiple wars, permanent wars, pillaging one nation after another for wealth, power, and dominance, while homeland needs go begging.

A previous article said America never was the "land of the free and home of the brave." In fact, it's become a "Let 'em eat cake" society.

Whether or not Marie Antoinette actually said it, France's 1789-99 revolution was very real, delivering guillotine justice, not promised "Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite," a status now destroying what's left of American freedom, heading for the trash bin of history if not already there.

At issue is America's militarized colossus, waging global wars, looting the nation, bankrupting it, wrecking the remnants of a free society. Plagued by the same dynamic that doomed past empires, the misguided notion that militarism sustains growth is pursued.

In fact, it erodes it by sacrificing industrial America, shifting production and other high-paying service operations abroad to focus on war making and banker occupation (financial warfare).

As a result, essential homeland needs go begging, including healthcare, education, job creation, the nation's crumbling infrastructure, and a free society, sacrificed for unbridled greed and power.

With bipartisan support, it suggests Dante's ninth gate of Hell, bearing the inscription: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

It's up to mass awareness to stop it - by any means necessary. Dante's alternative is too grim to accept and needn't be with committed public resistance. What better time than now to ignite it.

A Final Comment

Previous articles explained international and US laws pertaining to waging war, what America's leaders long ago forgot and ignore.

Under the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, only Congress may declare war, not the president. That, in fact, last happened on December 8, 1941 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. As a result, all subsequent US wars have been illegal, including Obama's against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and numerous proxy ones.

Moreover, the UN Charter explains under what conditions violence and coercion (by one state against another) are justified.

Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use. And Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

In other words, justifiable self-defense is permissible. However, Charter Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral threat or use of force not:
specifically allowed under Article 51;

uthorized by the Security Council; or

permitted by the US Constitution only amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states can change.


In addition, three General Assembly resolutions also prohibit non-consensual belligerent intervention, including:
the 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty;

the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; and

the 1974 Definition of Aggression.


Nonetheless, Washington spurns international and US laws repeatedly, especially waging preemptive aggressive wars, what the Nuremberg Tribunal's Justice Robert Jackson called "the supreme international crime against peace," sentencing convicted Nazi war criminals to death for committing it.

The War Powers Resolution (WPR) resolution holds for legal wars. Applying it to Libya was a red herring as America has no authority to attack another country illegally, and may only do so in self-defense until the Security Council acts.

Unless America ends its addiction to permanent war, its eroded free society will be lost. If that's not incentive enough to prevent, what is!

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.



http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-century-of-war.html

Wikileaks on Israeli Mafia operating freely in America

Israeli Mafia operates freely in America

VZCZCXYZ0018 RR RUEHWEB
DE RUEHTV #1098/01 1351414
ZNR UUUUU ZZH (CCY AD66A605 MSI9229-632)
R 151414Z MAY 09 ZDS
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1845
INFO RUEHJM/AMCONSUL JERUSALEM 2041
RUCNFB/FBI WASHDC//INTD/CTD/CT WATCH//
RHMFIUU/US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION WASHDC
RUEAHLC/HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER WASHDC 0068
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 7509
UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001098 C O R R E C T E D C O P Y (CORRECTED ADDEE) DEPT FOR CA/VO/L/C; CA/VO/L/A; CA/FPP SARAH SEXTON; INR/TIPOFF; DS OFAC ROME FOR DHS/ICE CA/FPP: PLEASE PASS TO DOJ LISA HOLTYN AND BRUCE OHR
SIPDIS  
E.O. 12958:N/A TAGS: CVIS SNAR CMGT KFRD KCOR KCRM KTIP PINR IS
SUBJECT: ISRAEL: A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANIZED CRIME?  
Summary
---------  
¶1. (SBU) Organized crime (OC) has longstanding roots in Israel, but
in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the reach and
impact of OC networks. 
In seeking a competitive advantage in such lucrative trades as narcotics and prostitution, Israeli crime groups have demonstrated their ability and willingness to engage in violent attacks on each other with little regard for innocent bystanders.
The Israeli National Police (INP) and the courts have engaged in a
vigorous campaign against organized crime leaders, including the
creation of a new specialized anti-OC unit, but they remain unable
to cope with the full scope of the problem.  Organized crime in
Israel now has global reach, with direct impact inside the United
States.  
Post is currently utilizing all available tools to deny Israeli OC figures access to the United States in order to prevent them from furthering their criminal activities on U.S. soil. 
End Summary.

Crime War Hits the Streets of Israel
-------------------------------------
¶2. (SBU) In November 2008, Israeli crime boss Yaakov Alperon was assassinated in broad daylight in a gruesome attack on the streets of Tel Aviv, only about a mile away from the Embassy. According to several media accounts, a motor scooter pulled up alongside Alperon's car and the rider attached a sophisticated explosive device with a remote detonator to the car door. The bomb killed Alperon and his driver, and injured two innocent pedestrians. The hit was the latest in a series of violent attacks and reprisals, and indicated a widening crime war in Israel.  
¶3. In July 2008, a 31-year-old Israeli woman was killed by a stray bullet on the beach in Bat Yam in front of her husband and two children during a failed assassination attempt on noted crime figure Rami Amira. In a feud between the Abutbul and Shirazi clans, crime boss Shalom "Charlie" Abutbul was shot by two gunmen in September 2008, an attack that also wounded three bystanders. In December 2008, Charlie Abutbul's son-in-law, Nati Ohayon, was gunned down in his car in Netanya. Before the fatal bombing of his car, Alperon himself had survived at least three previous attempts on his life before his assassination, and was engaged in an ongoing feud with the rival Abergil clan (although there are numerous suspects in Alperon's murder). The day after Alperon's death, two members of the Abergil syndicate were sentenced for conspiring to kill Alperon's brother, Nissim, in May 2008.  
¶4. (SBU) In response to rising concerns for public safety, former Prime Minister Olmert convened an emergency meeting of top law enforcement officials, cabinet members, and prosecutors in December 2008. He promised to add 1,000 officers to the INP and to allocate approximately NIS 340 million (USD 81 million) to improve the INP's technical capabilities. In general, the rise in OC-related violence has led some public figures to call for emergency state powers to attack criminal organizations, and OC became a minor but important issue in the February 2009 Knesset elections. Former Labor Party MK Ephraim Sneh publicly decried criminal extortion in his campaign ads, only to have his car torched in apparent retaliation outside his home in Herzliya.  
Background
------------  
¶5. (SBU) Organized criminal activity is not a new phenomenon in Israel, and major crime families are well known to the Israeli public (the Alperons even featured in a recent reality television program). Five or six crime families have traditionally dominated OC in Israel, although the names and makeup of these syndicates have fluctuated in recent years. The Abergil, Abutbul, Alperon, and Rosenstein organizations are among the most well known, but recent arrests and assassinations have created a power vacuum at the top. New names such as Mulner, Shirazi, Cohen and Domrani have moved quickly to fill the gap. Other up-and-coming groups include the Harari, Ohana, and Kdoshim families. There are also a number of rival families active in the underworld of Israel's Arab sector.  
¶6. (SBU) Traditional OC activities in Israel include illegal neighborhood casinos, prostitution rings, extortion, and loan sharking, with each family controlling a different geographic region. The Alperon family, for instance, dominates the Sharon region, while the Abutbul operation is based in the coastal city of Netanya. The focus is largely on easy money guaranteed by the limited use of violence. Criminal involvement in the recycling business, for example, has been well covered in the press. OC families collect bottles illegally from municipal recycling bins and restaurants, return them at the collection centers claiming twice the actual numbers, and pocket the change for millions in profits.  
Not Your Grandfather's Mob
---------------------------
¶7. (SBU) Despite their notoriety, OC figures have generally been viewed as a nuisance to be handled by local police. Law enforcement resources were directed to more existential security threats from terrorists and enemy states. In recent years, however, the rules of the game have changed. According to Yaakov Lappin of the Jerusalem Post, the old school of Israel OC is giving way to a new, more violent, breed of crime. Lappin told conoffs that the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale.  
¶8. (SBU) As the reach of Israeli OC has grown, so have the stakes. Crime families are working further from home and exporting violence abroad. Older gambling schemes have grown to include sprawling casino franchises in Eastern Europe. The Abutbul family began its gambling business in Romania over a decade ago, and now owns the Europe-wide Casino Royale network. In 2002, Israeli OC turf wars spilled into Europe when Yaakov Abergil and Felix Abutbul were killed two months apart. Abutbul was gunned down in front of his casino in Prague in a show of force by the Abergils as they attempted to capture a portion of the European gambling market.  
¶9. (SBU) Israeli OC now plays a significant role in the global drug trade, providing both a local consumer market and an important transit point to Europe and the United States. In 2004, Zeev Rosenstein was arrested in Israel for possession of 700,000 ecstasy tablets in his New York apartment, destined for distribution in the U.S. market. He was ultimately extradited to the United States in 2006, where he is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence. Two other crime figures, Meir Abergil and Israel Ozifa, are also facing U.S. extradition charges on charges that include smuggling 100,000 ecstasy tablets into the United States.  
¶10. (SBU) The prostitution business has also grown beyond the neighborhood brothel. In March 2009, the INP arrested twelve suspects in what is believed to be the largest Israeli-led human trafficking network unearthed to date. Ring leader Rami Saban and his associates were charged with smuggling thousands of women from the former Soviet Union and forcing them to work as prostitutes in Israel, Cyprus, Belgium, and Great Britain. Some women were flown to Egypt and smuggled across the Sinai border by Bedouins.  
Law Enforcement Steps up the Pressure
-------------------------------------  
¶11. (SBU) After years of perceived inaction, in 2008 the INP created a new unit called Lahav 433. The elite unit operates under the direct command of the police commissioner, and is charged specifically with infiltrating and eliminating Israel's major crime syndicates. Lahav 433 also cooperates closely with district investigative units to combat smaller criminal organizations, many of which are aligned with the larger crime families.
¶12. (SBU) Following Alperon's assassination, the INP initiated a series of raids that led to the arrests of a number of leading crime figures. Among their targets were Aviv and Adam Abutbul, sons of crime-family head Charlie Abutbul, both charged with possession of illegal weapons. (A third brother, Francois, is already facing murder charges for a nightclub killing in 2004.) Police also arrested gangland figure Amir Mulner for weapons possession and conspiracy to commit a crime. Mulner is known to be an explosives expert by army training, and is a suspect in Yaakov Alperon's murder. He is also believed to be managing affairs for Rosenstein while the latter serves his sentence in the United States.
¶13. (SBU) Yaakov Alperon's brother Nissim was arrested with 18 others in December 2008, in what was reported to be a "mafia meeting" in a Tel Aviv-area caf. According to the Jerusalem Post, the group may have been planning a revenge attack for his brother's recent assassination. Alperon's son Dror, recently dismissed from his army service for disorderly behavior, also faces several counts of assault and was convicted on extortion charges. Also in December, police in Netanya launched several raids on illegal gambling houses and the homes of suspected money launderers with ties to the crime families. In Ashdod, brothers Roni and David Harari were arrested on charges of extortion. Regional police stuck a blow against the Jerusalem Gang, and convicted its leader Itzik Bar Muha. S
kepticism Hovers Over GOI Efforts
----------------------------------  
¶14. (SBU) Journalist Yuval Goren of Ha'aretz told conoffs that "thousands of foot soldiers" remain active on the streets despite these aggressive anti-OC operations. He noted that approximately 2,000 people attended Alperon's very public funeral. Goren expressed skepticism that recent arrests will bear fruit in the long term without a sustained commitment to enforcement. He noted that many of the crime leaders remain active while in prison and their operations are not hampered significantly even when they are convicted and jailed.
¶15. (SBU) In December 2008, former Prime Minister Olmert himself admitted that efforts to combat OC have long been diluted among different agencies, and that INP technology lags far behind that allocated to security services for counterterrorism. Given the recent change in government and the current economic crisis, there is public skepticism as to whether GOI promises to remedy the situation will be fulfilled. In 2003, following a failed assassination attempt on Rosenstein, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made similar promises to commit manpower and resources to combating the problem.
¶16. (SBU) It is not entirely clear to what extent OC elements have penetrated the Israeli establishment and corrupted public officials. The INP insists that such instances are rare, despite the occasional revelation of crooked police officers in the press. Nevertheless, there have been several dramatic revelations in recent years that indicate a growing problem. In 2004, former government minister Gonen Segev was arrested for trying to smuggle thousands of ecstasy pills into Israel, a case that produced considerable circumstantial evidence of his involvement in OC. The election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003 as a member of Likud raised concerns about OC influence in the party's Central Committee. Gavrieli is the daughter of a suspected crime boss, and she attempted to use her parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father's business. (Gavrieli is no longer a member of the Knesset.) Just last month, Israeli politicos and OC figures came together for the funeral of Likud party activist Shlomi Oz, who served time in prison in the 1990s for extortion on behalf of the Alperon family. Among those in attendance was Omri Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was himself convicted in 2006 on illegal fundraising charges unrelated to OC.  
Courts Testing New Powers
--------------------------  
¶17. (SBU) In 2003, the GOI passed anti-OC legislation that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment for heading a criminal organization and three years for working in such an organization. The law defines such a body as a group of people working in an "organized, methodical and ongoing pattern to commit offenses that are defined by the laws of Israel as crimes." The law also allows for property forfeiture, both in the wake of conviction and in cases where it is proven to belong to a criminal organization.  
¶18. (SBU) Until recently, said Lappin, judges and lawyers have been slow to make use of this authority, and are hampered by a lack of resources, insufficient understanding of the tools at their disposal, and reticence to mete out tough sentences. A witness protection program for those who testify against OC is just now getting off the ground, and is not backed by any specific legislation. Nevertheless, on March 16th, a Tel Aviv district court took the important step of sentencing 14 convicted criminals belonging to two mob organizations in Ramle and Jaffa to up to 27 years in prison.  
¶19. (SBU) Increased efforts by Israeli authorities to combat OC have engendered retaliatory threats of violence. Recent press reports indicate that as many as 10 Israeli judges are currently receiving 24-hour protection by the police against the threat of violence from members of crime organizations. Israeli OC appears to be intent on intimidating judges personally, as a way of influencing the legal process. Judges in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa have been assigned police protection, underscoring the depth of the problem.
Israeli Crime Reaches American Shores
--------------------------------------  
¶20. (SBU) Israel's multi-ethnic population provides a deep well of opportunity for Israeli OC to expand into new territory. Most Israeli crime families trace their roots to North Africa or Eastern Europe, and many of their Israeli operatives hold foreign passports allowing them to move freely in European countries, most of which participate in the visa waiver program with the United States. Approximately one million Russians moved to Israel following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Russian citizens no longer require visas to enter Israel. Many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of OC groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country. Little is known about the full extent of Russian criminal activity in Israel, but sources in the police estimate that Russian OC has laundered as much as USD 10 billion through Israeli holdings. While most Israeli OC families are native-born and the stereotype that Russian immigrants tend to be mobsters is greatly overblown, indigenous OC groups routinely employ "muscle" from the former Soviet Union.
¶21. (SBU) The profit motive serves as a great unifier among Israel's diverse demographic groups. According to Goren, some Amsterdam-based Hasidic groups allegedly are implicated in international drug smuggling through links to Israeli OC. Arab and Jewish Israeli criminals routinely cooperate and form alliances to expand control of lucrative drug, car theft and extortion rackets. Even hostile and closed borders pose few obstacles to OC groups. According to the INP, 43% of intercepted heroin in 2008 was smuggled from Lebanon, 37% from Jordan, and 12% from Egypt.
Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States
  ---------------------------------------------
¶22. (SBU) Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC has also gained a foothold in America. Over the last decade, media reports have detailed a number of high-profile cases involving Israeli OC, ranging from large-scale drug deals to murder. The ongoing Central District of California grand jury investigation against the Abergil family, where a RICO conspiracy case was initiated in December 2007, best demonstrates the full extent of such criminal activity. Investigators have linked Yitzhak Abergil and his entire network to crimes of "embezzlement, extortion, kidnapping, and money laundering." Yitzhak Abergil is currently under arrest in Israel and facing extradition for related charges linking him to the murder of Israeli drug dealer Samy Attias on U.S. soil.
¶23. (SBU) As part of an ongoing effort to track Israeli OC through media reports and police sources, Post so far has identified 16 families and 78 related individuals who are at the center of Israeli organized criminal activity. The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.
¶24. (SBU) In March 2009, Post received information from law enforcement authorities that convicted criminal and member of the Abergil organization, Mordechai Yair Hasin, along with his pregnant wife and child, was intending to flee Israel for Los Angeles on valid tourist visas. Hasin's visa was revoked based on his conviction, as were his family's visas after they were determined to be intending immigrants.
¶25. (SBU) As in the Hasin case, Post is using every available tool to limit OC travel to the United States, but such efforts are not always successful. In June 2008, Post issued Adam Abitbul a valid tourist visa. Abitbul had no prior criminal convictions, and carried no visa ineligibilities. Several months later, Post received information from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that he had traveled to the United States to carry out a hit. Abitbul returned to Israel prematurely for his father's funeral, at which time Post revoked his visa. (Post can only revoke the visas of Israeli citizens while in country.) In a similar case, in October 2008 Post issued Moshe Bar Muha a tourist visa; he claimed to be traveling for medical treatment. Post subsequently received information from the LAPD that Bar Muha is in fact the brother of Itzik Bar Muha of the Jerusalem Gang (see above) and a convicted criminal.
¶26. (SBU) As recently as March 2009, Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Rokah requested visas to attend a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas. According to local media reports, all three had involvement with OC. Post asked the applicants to provide police reports for any criminal records in Israel, but without such evidence there is no immediate ineligibility for links to OC. Luckily, all three have so far failed to return for continued adjudication of their applications. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely.
Comment: Israeli OC Slipping Through the Consular Cracks --------------------------------------------- ---------
¶27. (SBU) Given the growing reach and lethal methods of Israeli OC, blocking the travel of known OC figures to the United States is a matter of great concern to Post. Through collaboration with Israeli and U.S. law enforcement authorities, Post has developed an extensive database and placed lookouts for OC figures and their foot soldiers. Nevertheless, the above visa cases demonstrate the challenges that have arisen since the termination of the Visas Shark in September 2008. Unlike OC groups from the former Soviet Union, Italy, China, and Central America, application of INA 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) against Israeli OC is not specifically authorized per Foreign Affairs Manual 40.31 N5.3. As such, Israelis who are known to work for or belong to OC families are not automatically ineligible for travel to the United States.  
CUNNINGHAM

Libya and the world we live in - The Anti-Empire Report

by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Libya and the world we live in

"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?"
– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.
In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.


Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".

If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.

If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate's imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate's oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.

If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate's friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.

If the Triumvirate doesn't want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court's prosecution because it has "special global responsibilities". But this doesn't stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.

If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related,¹ executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, "Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence."²
 
Adding to the list of the rebels' charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them "foreign mercenaries" but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29): "On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead." To complete this portrait of the West's newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): "The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came."

If the Triumvirate's propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they're making an exception this time because ...

• The Libyan people are being saved from a "massacre", both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station's owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that "Qaddafi was not a man to compromise ... his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to." Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn't, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
• The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
•  
• The people of Libya are being "liberated", whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a "dictator" they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?

The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what's happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels' uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:

1. They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
2. They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of "citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases"³ and of "the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters"⁴
3. Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country's oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
4. They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
5. International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence

The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.

Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:

• Gaddafi's plans to conduct Libya's trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US's dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
• A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: "We've got a big image problem down there. ... Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don't trust the US."⁵
• An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There's only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It'll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
• Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d'être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
• Gaddafi's role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
• The claim by Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign⁶ could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the "no fly zone" and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi's influence.
• Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
• In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya.⁷ He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya's oil wealth into foreign hands.
• The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it's vital that powerful "enemies" be named and maintained.
• For yet more reasons, see the article "Why Regime Change in Libya?" by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan "resource nationalism")

A word from the man the world's mightiest military powers have been trying to kill

"Recollections of My Life", written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us ... I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. ... In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy". They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.

The state of our beloved capitalist system, early 21st century

I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can't do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months ... until one day I took a closer look at the "Nutrition Facts" ... Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let's see ... "Serving Size about 1/4 second spray" ... Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say "about". I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You're good!

---

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.
On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.
Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.
And on Thursday ... yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.
The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.
Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.

Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.
– Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street", 1920

Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post's senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: "I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don't radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control."

---

Last month "Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe's economic crisis" as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. "The economy doesn't function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind," he declared. "Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good."⁸
"I am a Marxist," said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has "moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits."⁹
"I don't believe in anything," said Barack Obama. "At least not really strongly." (No, I made that one up.)

---

Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States "winning the Cold War" is that countless progressive people think there's no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.¹⁰

---

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author

Notes

1. For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: "Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime." There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups. ^↩
2. Washington Post, August 31, 2011
3. McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011 ^↩
4. Wikipedia, Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011 ^↩
5. The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007 ^↩
6. The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011 ^↩
7. Reuters, January 21, 2009 ^↩
8. Associated Press, August 11, 2011 ^↩
9. Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010^↩
10. "Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years", WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011^↩

–
William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Sweet crude of mine By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE
Sweet crude of mine
By Pepe Escobar

Royals dancing in palace corridors have been spotted in Riyadh. The heir to the Libyan throne, Prince al-Senussi, a nephew of King Idriss who was deposed by Muammar Gaddafi and others in a bloodless 1969 military coup, has embarked on a busy self-promotion campaign, saying he's ready to go back to Libya and even "lead the country".

Nothing in the world would be sweeter for the House of Saud - extremely distasteful of most Arab secular republics - than a friendly, brand new emirate in northern Africa.

But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the real winners of the Libyan tribal/civil war, may have other ideas. Mahmoud Jibril - the dodgy National Transitional Council's prime minister - speaking in Qatar, has explicitly thanked the winners by name: France, Britain, the United States, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Of this top five, the Western top three might welcome, in theory, a pliable emirate - but as long as it does not exhibit North Waziristan-style ultra-fundamentalist tendencies, as in Pakistan's tribal area.

It's an open game, because at this stage no one really knows the degree of influence Islamists will be able to wield in post-Gaddafi Libya. A week from now, in Paris, some answers might be on the table; that's when the "friends of Libya" (FOL) will gather with council leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil and prime minister Jibril to talk business regarding what is gearing up to be a new NATO protectorate.

Meanwhile, from Benghazi to European capitals, the dancing is to the tune of a Guns 'n Roses megahit, now rebranded Sweet Crude of Mine. France and Germany are already pressing the "NATO rebels" leadership for juicy deals, Italy starts today (Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is meeting Jalil in Milan) and the Brits and the Americans are about to join the fray.

Up to now, Libya's National Oil Company was essentially awarding service contracts on old, profitable oil fields to Libya's national subsidiaries. But what BP, Total, Exxon Mobil and the Qatar oil company really want is serious involvement in new fields, and those famous production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that allow stratospheric profits. They want the full bonanza they didn't get in Iraq - where some of the juiciest contracts went to Russian, Chinese or Malaysian players.

As for those players that were already on Libyan soil, such as Spain's Repsol and Italy's ENI, they are planning to be back in business before the end of September. No one knows what will happen to Chinese investments.

What WikiLeaks had already revealed [1] will certainly be back in the form of dogfights, such as between US companies and Italy's ENI for the cream of the contracts. Largely because of Berlusconi's very tight "bunga bunga" links with Gaddafi, ENI was already pumping almost 200,000 barrels of oil a day before the tribal/civil war.

Anyway, from the point of view of corporations linked to the war "winners", no more Gaddafi is already a surefire guarantee of ultra sweet contracts and an array of concessions.

Follow the money

On the banking front, WikiLeaks once again had already revealed [2] that the privatization of Libya's central bank was regarded as a golden "opportunity" for US banks. The shadow "rebel" bank facilitated by HSBC in all probability will take over - obviously not independent as the previous Libya Central Bank but aligned with the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bankers' central bank.

So bye-bye to "subversive", unifying Gaddafi ideas such as dumping the US dollar and the euro so Arab and African nations would start dealing in a new single currency - the gold dinar. It's crucial to note that most African nations - and a lot of Arabs - backed up the idea. The only serious contrarians in the region were South Africa and the Arab League (influenced by the House of Saud). Obviously Washington and the European Union (EU) were furious - to the point of calling NATO to the rescue.

It's never enough to remember that in late 2002 Iraq under Saddam Hussein started accepting payment in euros instead of US dollars for its oil. Everybody knows what happened next. Don't mess with the petrodollar, or else ...

So the oil and the flow of money will be secure in the hands of the "winners". Now for the strategic design. The Pentagon's Africom - after its first successful African war - will be rewarded with its first African base, thus abandoning its headquarters in that lovely African bush, Stuttgart. And NATO will proceed in its sacred mission of turning the Mediterranean into a "NATO lake". Northern Africa is already in the bag; now for the eastern Mediterranean, to teach a lesson to those pesky Syrians.

Whose flag is this?
To qualify the TNC's cast of characters as "dodgy" is in fact an understatement. Virtually everyone is "invisible". Few may remember that the TNC's Jalil was the judge that condemned those Bulgarian nurses to death - a notorious case in France that warranted muscular intervention by neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy, who even regimented his trophy wife Carla Bruni to seduce the Big G. After the nurses were freed, Jalil was promoted by Gaddafi to justice minister, lasting from 2007 until his opportunistic defection last February.

To believe that this motley crew of disgruntled tribals, radical Islamists, fake "socialists" of the Tony Blair variety, cynical opportunists on the payroll of oil giants, military defectors and outright thugs will pray in the altar of "democracy" is a mirage. Not to mention that they invited NATO and regressive Arab monarchies to bomb their motherland - certainly not where they live, but "the other side", Tripolitania.

It remains to be seen how most people and tribes in Tripolitania will relate to the people of Cyrenaica - which they view as lowly country bumpkins - seizing power. They are already fuming at being degraded in the new Libyan flag - which is basically the Cyrenaica flag (black rectangle with a white Islam crescent) with two additional strips, red for Fezzan and green for Tripolitania

No one knows how the next stage of this "kinetic" war that is not a war (copyright: The White House) will play out. Yet there are serious reasons to believe this may turn out to be a devastating remix of the 2001 "defeated Taliban" and 2003 "Mission Accomplished" scenarios.

Bedouins and Berbers, at war, are all about strategic retreat and ambushing. That is, guerrilla. No one knows what degree of tribal support Gaddafi may still count on not only around Tripoli but around his fiefdom of Sirte or in the high desert. Yet it's a sure bet that he'll go the guerrilla way. Whether he'll end up like Saddam or play "the road goes on forever" like the Taliban is the $100 billion question (the amount of Libyan funds to be unfrozen by the "winners"). Quagmire looms.

Note
1. See WikiLeaks cables show that it was all about the oil.
2. See Libya makes progress on banking reform.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.

Disaster capitalism swoops over Libya By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE
Disaster capitalism swoops over Libya
By Pepe Escobar

Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P ("responsibility to protect"). Instead of neo-conservatives, we had humanitarian imperialists.

But the target is the same: regime change. And the project is the same: to completely dismantle and privatize a nation that was not integrated into turbo-capitalism; to open another (profitable) land of opportunity for turbocharged neo-liberalism. The whole thing is especially handy because it is smack in the middle of a nearly global recession.

It will take some time; Libyan oil won't totally return to the market within 18 months. But there's the reconstruction of everything the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed (well, not much of what the Pentagon bombed in 2003 was reconstructed in Iraq ...)

Anyway - from oil to rebuilding - in thesis juicy business opportunities loom. France's neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David of Arabia Cameron believe they will be especially well positioned to profit from NATO's victory. Yet there's no guarantee the new Libyan bonanza will be enough to lift both former colonial powers (neo-colonials?) out of recession.

President Sarkozy in particular will milk the business opportunities for French companies for all they're worth - part of his ambitious agenda of "strategic redeployment" of France in the Arab world. A compliant French media are gloating that this was "his" war - spinning that he decided to arm the rebels on the ground with French weaponry, in close cooperation with Qatar, including a key rebel commando unit that went by sea from Misrata to Tripoli last Saturday, at the start of "Operation Siren".

Well, he certainly saw the opening when Muammar Gaddafi's chief of protocol defected to Paris in October 2010. That's when the whole regime change drama started to be incubated.

Bombs for oil
As previously noted (see Welcome to Libya's 'democracy', Asia Times Online, August 24) the vultures are already circling Tripoli to grab (and monopolize) the spoils. And yes - most of the action has to do with oil deals, as in this stark assertion by Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at the "rebel" Arabian Gulf Oil Company; "We don't have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil."

These three happen to be crucial members of the BRICS group of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which are actually growing while the Atlanticist, NATO-bombing economies are either stuck in stagnation or recession. The top four BRICs also happen to have abstained from approving UN Security Council resolution 1973, the no-fly zone scam that metamorphosed into NATO bringing regime change from above. They saw right through it from the beginning.

To make matters worse (for them), only three days before the Pentagon's Africom launched its first 150-plus Tomahawks over Libya, Colonel Gaddafi gave an interview to German TV stressing that if the country were attacked, all energy contracts would be transferred to Russian, Indian and Chinese companies.

So the winners in the oil bonanza are already designated: NATO members plus Arab monarchies. Among the companies involved, British Petroleum (BP), France's Total and the Qatar national oil company. For Qatar - which dispatched jet fighters and recruiters to the front lines, trained "rebels" in exhaustive combat techniques, and is already managing oil sales in eastern Libya - the war will reveal itself to be a very wise investment decision.

Prior to the months-long crisis that is in its end game now with the rebels in the capital, Tripoli, Libya was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. Once resumed, this could reap Tripoli's new rulers some US$50 billion annually. Most estimates place oil reserves at 46.4 billion barrels.

The "rebels" of new Libya better not mess with China. Five months ago, China's official policy was already to call for a ceasefire; if that had happened, Gaddafi would still control more than half of Libya. Yet Beijing - never a fan of violent regime change - for the moment is exercising extreme restraint.

Wen Zhongliang, the deputy head of the Ministry of Trade, willfully observed, "Libya will continue to protect the interests and rights of Chinese investors and we hope to continue investment and economic cooperation." Official statements are piling up emphasizing "mutual economic cooperation".

Last week, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), told Xinhua that all deals and contracts agreed with the Gaddafi regime would be honored - but Beijing is taking no chances.

Libya supplied no more than 3% of China's oil imports in 2010. Angola is a much more crucial supplier. But China is still Libya's top oil customer in Asia. Moreover, China could be very helpful in the infrastructure rebuilding front, or in the technology export - no less than 75 Chinese companies with 36,000 employees were already on the ground before the outbreak of the tribal/civil war, swiftly evacuated in less than three days.

The Russians - from Gazprom to Tafnet - had billions of dollars invested in Libyan projects; Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and the construction company Odebrecht also had intrests there. It's still unclear what will happen to them. The director general of the Russia-Libya Business Council, Aram Shegunts, is extremely worried: "Our companies will lose everything because NATO will prevent them from doing business in Libya."

Italy seems to have passed the "rebel" version of "you're either with us or without us". Energy giant ENI apparently won't be affected, as Premier Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi pragmatically dumped his previous very close pal Gaddafi at the start of the Africom/NATO bombing spree.

ENI's directors are confident Libya's oil and gas flows to southern Italy will resume before winter. And the Libyan ambassador in Italy, Hafed Gaddur, reassured Rome that all Gaddafi-era contracts will be honored. Just in case, Berlusconi will meet the TNC's prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, this Thursday in Milan.

Bin Laden to the rescue

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - of the famed "zero problems with our neighbors" policy - has also been gushing praise on the former "rebels" turned powers-that-be. Eyeing the post-Gaddafi business bonanza as well, Ankara - as NATO's eastern flank - ended up helping to impose a naval blockade on the Gaddafi regime, carefully cultivated the TNC, and in July formally recognized it as the government of Libya. Business "rewards" loom.

Then there's the crucial plot; how the House of Saud is going to profit from having been instrumental in setting up a friendly regime in Libya, possibly peppered with Salafi notables; one of the key reasons for the Saudi onslaught - which included a fabricated vote at the Arab League - was the extreme bad blood between Gaddafi and King Abdullah since the run-up towards the war on Iraq in 2002.

It's never enough to stress the cosmic hypocrisy of an ultra-regressive absolute monarchy/medieval theocracy - which invaded Bahrain and repressed its native Shi'ites - saluting what could be construed as a pro-democracy movement in Northern Africa.

Anyway, it's time to party. Expect the Saudi Bin Laden Group to reconstruct like mad all over Libya - eventually turning the (looted) Bab al-Aziziyah into a monster, luxury Mall of Tripolitania.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.