Interesting entertainment choices for a family who run a country under strict Islamic law.
Beyonce, Carey distance themselves from Gaddafi
Mar 3, 2011
(Reuters) - Singers Beyonce and Mariah Carey have sought to distance themselves from the tainted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, for whose entourage they both performed at glitzy New Year's eve parties.
They joined Canadian artist Nelly Furtado, who used her Twitter account on Monday to declare she would give away the $1 million she received to perform a 45-minute set in Italy for Gaddafi's family in 2007.
Pop stars' association with Gaddafi and his sons has caused considerable embarrassment this week as the Libyan ruler orders a brutal crackdown on an uprising against his rule.
The music press has highlighted how artists including Beyonce and Carey have earned large paydays for sometimes brief appearances at lavish parties hosted by Gaddafi family members, including his son Muatassim. The stars have faced calls from fans and the public to give back the money they made.
Beyonce said she donated the cash she earned at a private party on the Caribbean island of St. Barts on New Year's Eve, 2009 to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti after learning the promoter had links to Gaddafi.
"Once it became known that the third party promoter was linked to the Qaddafi (Gaddafi) family, the decision was made to put that payment to a good cause," she said in a statement posted on her website.
On Thursday, Carey confirmed she had performed at a similar function "thrown by the sons of vicious, crazy dictator" Gaddafi and expressed her embarrassment, although she stopped short of promising to give the cash earned to charity.
A statement on her website said: "At the time, Libya was not in the news...Now it's become an issue in hindsight, which is sort of ridiculous."
She added that she would donate the proceeds from a new song "Save the Day" for unspecified "human rights issues" and stressed her previous charity work.
"I was naive and unaware of who I was booked to perform for," she said.
"I feel horrible and embarrassed to have participated in this mess. Going forward, this is a lesson for all artists to learn from. We need to be more aware and take more responsibility regardless of who books our shows.
"Ultimately we as artists are to be held accountable."
The International Criminal Court prosecutor said on Thursday that Gaddafi, his sons and members of their inner circle could be held responsible for crimes by their security forces.
The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Gaddafi and his family on Saturday, and referred Libya's crackdown on demonstrators to the court.
But Mr Gates said a no-fly zone - banning the Libyan military from taking to the air - could be created only after "an attack on Libya" to destroy the country's aerial defences.
In an interview with BBC political editor Nick Robinson, Mr Hague said any such action in Libya "would have to be legal".
"...if people were being attacked in huge numbers, then it's unlikely the world would just want to stand idly by."
"It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out." - Heraclitus
"There aren't enough small numbers to meet the many demands made of them." - Strong Law of Small Numbers
It's as if the bloodbaths of Iraq and Afghanistan had been a bad dream. The liberal interventionists are back. As insurrection and repression has split Libya in two and the death toll has mounted, the old Bush-and-Blair battle-cries have returned to haunt us.
The same western leaders who happily armed and did business with the Gaddafi regime until a fortnight ago have now slapped sanctions on the discarded autocrat and blithely referred him to the international criminal court the United States won't recognise.
While American and British politicians have ramped up talk of a no-fly zone, US warships have been sent to the Mediterranean, a stockpile of chemical weapons has been duly discovered, special forces have been in action, Italy has ditched a non-aggression treaty with Tripoli and a full-scale western military intervention in yet another Arab country is suddenly a serious prospect.
Egged on by his neoconservative lieutenants, David Cameron went furthest. Fresh from his tour selling arms to Gulf despots, the British prime minister talked excitedly about arming Libyan rebels, and only staged a hasty retreat when he found himself running ahead of the US administration.
But neither American caution nor UN security council opposition should obscure the fact that there is now a serious danger of western armed action in Libya. Unlike in the rest of the region, we are no longer talking mainly about the security forces confronting demonstrators but a split in the heart of the regime and the military, with large areas of the country in the hands of an armed opposition.
With Colonel Gaddafi and his loyalists showing every sign of digging in, the likelihood must be of intensified conflict – with all the heightened pretexts that would offer for outside interference, from humanitarian crises to threats to oil supplies.
But any such intervention would risk disaster and be a knife at the heart of the revolutionary process now sweeping the Arab world. Military action is needed, US and British politicians claim, because Gaddafi is "killing his own people". Hundreds have certainly died, but that's hard to take seriously as the principal motivation.
When more than 300 people were killed by Hosni Mubarak's security forces in a couple of weeks, Washington initially called for "restraint on both sides". In Iraq, 50,000 US occupation troops protect a government which last Friday killed 29 peaceful demonstrators demanding reform. In Bahrain, home of the US fifth fleet, the regime has been shooting and gassing protesters with British-supplied equipment for weeks.
The "responsibility to protect" invoked by those demanding intervention in Libya is applied so selectively that the word hypocrisy doesn't do it justice. And the idea that states which are themselves responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in illegal wars, occupations and interventions in the last decade, along with mass imprisonment without trial, torture and kidnapping, should be authorised by international institutions to prevent killings in other countries is simply preposterous. The barefaced cheek of William Hague's insistence that there would be a "day of reckoning" for the Libyan regime if it committed crimes or atrocities took some beating.
The reality is that the western powers which have backed authoritarian kleptocrats across the Middle East for decades now face a loss of power in the most strategically sensitive region of the world as a result of the Arab uprisings and the prospect of representative governments. They are evidently determined to appropriate the revolutionary process wherever possible, limiting it to cosmetic change that allows continued control of the region.
In Libya, the disintegration of the regime offers a crucial opening. Even more important, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, it has the strategic prize of the largest oil reserves in Africa. Of course the Gaddafi regime has moved a long way from the days when it took over the country's oil, kicked out foreign bases and funded the African National Congress at a time when the US and Britain branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
Along with repression, corruption and a failure to deliver to ordinary Libyans, the regime has long since bent the knee to western power, as Tony Blair and his friends were so keen to celebrate, ditching old allies and nuclear ambitions while offering privatised pickings and contracts to western banks, arms and oil corporations such as BP.
Now the prospect of the regime's fall offers the chance for much closer involvement – western intelligence has had its fingers in parts of the Libyan opposition for years – when other states seem in danger of spinning out of the imperial orbit.
But Libya has a compelling history of foreign occupation and resistance. Up to a third of the population are estimated to have died under Italian colonial rule. Those calling for western military action in Libya seem brazenly untroubled by the fact that throughout the Arab world, foreign intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship is regarded as central to the problems of the region. Inextricably tied up with the demand for democratic freedoms is a profound desire for independence and self-determination.
That is clear in reaction on the ground in Libya to the threat of outside intervention. As one of the rebel military leaders in Benghazi, General Ahmad Gatroni, said this week, the US should "take care of its own people, we can look after ourselves".
No-fly zones, backed by some other opposition figures, would involve a military attack on Libya's air defences and, judging from the Iraqi experience, be highly unlikely to halt regime helicopter or ground operations. They would risk expanding military conflict and strengthening Gaddafi's hand by allowing the regime to burnish its anti-imperialist credentials. Military intervention wouldn't just be a threat to Libya and its people, but to the ownership of what has been until now an entirely organic, homegrown democratic movement across the region.
The embattled US-backed Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh claimed on Tuesday that the region-wide protest movement was "managed by Tel Aviv and under the supervision of Washington". That is easily dismissed as a hallucinogenic fantasy now. It would seem less so if the US and Britain were arming the Libyan opposition. The Arab revolution will be made by Arabs, or it won't be a revolution at all.
"Arrogance is experiential and environmental in cause. Human experience can make and unmake arrogance. Ours is about to get unmade."
Breaking news from Al Jazeera claims Libya government has accepted a peace plan put forth by Hugo Chavez. They say that this peace plan was previously rejected but has now been accepted.
virtually unknown in the West: Libya's water resources 3/3/11
We still wonder how on earth did Gaddafi manage to stay in power for forty years? Did no one notice his madness until now?
Did no one notice that he built a HUGE FRESH WATER PIPELINE to the Benghazi region, that lunatic?
Were they waiting for him to finish?
The 1st of September marks the anniversary of the opening of the major stage of Libya's Great Man-Made River Project. This incredibly huge and successful water scheme is virtually unknown in the West, yet it rivals and even surpasses all our greatest development projects. The leader of the so-called advanced countries, the United States of America cannot bring itself to acknowledge Libya's Great Man-Made River. The West refuses to recognize that a small country, with a population no more than four million, can construct anything so large without borrowing a single cent from the international banks.
...In the 1960s during oil exploration deep in the southern Libyan desert, vast reservoirs of high quality water were discovered in the form of aquifers. ...
...In Libya there are four major underground basins, these being the Kufra basin, the Sirt basin, the Morzuk basin and the Hamada basin, the first three of which contain combined reserves of 35,000 cubic kilometres of water. These vast reserves offer almost unlimited amounts of water for the Libyan people.
The people of Libya under the guidance of their leader, Colonel Muammar Al Qadhafi, initiated a series of scientific studies on the possibility of accessing this vast ocean of fresh water. Early consideration was given to developing new agricultural projects close to the sources of the water, in the desert. However, it was realized that on the scale required to provide products for self sufficiency, a very large infrastructure organization would be required. In addition to this, a major redistribution of the population from the coastal belt would be necessary. The alternative was to 'bring the water to the people'.
In October 1983, the Great Man-made River Authority was created and invested with the responsibility of taking water from the aquifers in the south, and conveying it by the most economical and practical means for use, predominantly for irrigation, in the Libyan coastal belt.
By 1996 the Great Man-Made River Project had reached one of its final stages, the gushing forth of sweet unpolluted water to the homes and gardens of the citizens of Libya's capital Tripoli. Louis Farrakhan, who took part in the opening ceremony of this important stage of the project, described the Great Man-Made River as "another miracle in the desert." Speaking at the inauguration ceremony to an audience that included Libyans and many foreign guests, Col. Qadhafi said the project "was the biggest answer to America... who accuse us of being concerned with terrorism."
The Great Man-Made River, as the largest water transport project ever undertaken, has been described as the "eighth wonder of the world". It carries more than five million cubic metres of water per day across the desert to coastal areas, vastly increasing the amount of arable land. The total cost of the huge project is expected to exceed $25 billion (US).
Consisting of a network of pipes buried underground to eliminate evaporation, four meters in diameter, the project extends for four thousand kilometres far deep into the desert. All material is locally engineered and manufactured. Underground water is pumped from 270 wells hundreds of meters deep into reservoirs that feed the network. The cost of one cubic meter of water equals 35 cents. The cubic meter of desalinized water is $3.75. Scientists estimate the amount of water to be equivalent to the flow of 200 years of water in the Nile River.
The goal of the Libyan Arab people, embodied in the Great Man-Made River project, is to make Libya a source of agricultural abundance, capable of producing adequate food and water to supply its own needs and to share with neighboring countries. In short, the River is literally Libya's 'meal ticket' to self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency?!? Absolutely Not Allowed. Banksters don't like that sort of thing one bit.
This project has been in the works for many years. Have you ever heard of it? We had not until today...
virtually unknown in the West: Libya's water resources 3/3/11
We still wonder how on earth did Gaddafi manage to stay in power for forty years? Did no one notice his madness until now?
Did no one notice that he built a HUGE FRESH WATER PIPELINE to the Benghazi region, that lunatic?
SNIP
This project has been in the works for many years. Have you ever heard of it? We had not until today...
Me neither... until I saw it prominently marked out on that very interesting map of African resources and infrastructure projects upthread, a few hours before I saw this post.
So it must not be all that unknown.
Did you know that the German Reich under Hitler built the Autobahn, plans for which had languished under the Weimar democracy?!
Under Stalin the Soviet Union managed to industrialize in just 10 years, something unprecedented in the world until then, achieving a national independence and productivity that were essential to survival in World War II.
China just built the Three Rivers Dam! It's biiiiiiig!!!
So, what's the point? How does the water transfer project justify Gaddafi's rule, any more than Apollo makes great men out of Johnson and Nixon?
.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
It doesn't surprise me that Germany, Russia and China or even the US will undertake a project like that, but Libya is a small country. This project is a big resource that is apparently ripe for the picking.
Last edited by chump on Fri Mar 04, 2011 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In a move that surprises all but Middle East experts, Israel has promised Libya’s dictator of over 40 years, Colonel Gaddafi, 50,000 troops to aid in crushing rebels set on overthrowing his his murderous rule. According to news sources inside Israel, “troops” are being hired across Africa, Uganda, Sudan, Chad and the Central Africa Republic, including Al Qaeda fighters, to be deployed against demonstrators and rebel forces currently involved in heavy fighting in a two week old attempt to overthrow the Libyan ruler that has left thousands dead.
In the last 72 hours, rebel leaders have been in contact with Britain and the United States, nations that have promised aid and have positioned forces in the Mediterranean for a decisive strike against Gaddafi. Additional US Marines have been sent to reinforce assault teams on the USS Kearsarge, a helicopter assault ship now stationed off Tripoli awaiting orders to begin operations.
Libyan airspace is currently open as are her ports, slated for the scheduled influx of military support from Israel, a clear violation of UN sanctions.
Oil exports from rebel held areas have resumed though oil prices continue to spike, threatening the American economy.
Though Israeli advisors and intelligence personnel have been on the ground in Tripoli for some time, there are questions as to whether the Gaddafi’s regime can hold on until substantial aid arrives, particularly in light of increasing pressure for a US strike, widely called for, bringing Gaddafi’s rule to an abrupt end. Sources in the region tell us;
“Israeli military advisors have been “in place” since the first and Mossad teams who have long used Libya as a base of operations in Africa are working to “decapitate” rebel leadership.”
With American and British forces at the ready and a possible strike eminent, the American military community has expressed concerns about the potential of another “Somalia” disaster. Though American amphibious forces may represent a credible threat to Gaddafi, the actual potential for any American ground deployment in Libya is remote. However, an air action against command and control centers in Libya is much more likely.
Support for such a strike has been growing across the Middle East after initial concerns about US involvement in the oil rich nation.
THE TEL AVIV- TRIPOLI “WIKI-TANGO”
Despite his outward image as an Arab nationalist leader, Gaddafi has maintained close ties with Israel since his takeover of Libya in a military coup in 1969. That friendship, “strange bedfellows,” has finally come to light, one of the many “closeted partnerships” between Israel and Middle Eastern dictators that were exposed by Wikileaks.
Gaddafi, a Marxist, was himself the subject of a coup planned by British SAS founder David Sterling early on. Sterling was shocked when ordered to stand down, being told that Gaddafi was, though a communist, under the protection of both the United States and Israel.
Though, for decades, the western press has depicted Gadaffi as a staunch enemy of Israel and Zionism, the two nations have shared covert projects that can be traced as far back as the early 1970s. A consortium of “rogue” states, Iran under the Shah, apartheid South Africa, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Gaddafi’s Libya and Israel sold arms, developed weapons technologies and operated a network of spies, particularly inside the United States, keeping the Soviet Union abreast of NATO military and intelligence secrets and defense plans.
Of the original “Axis of Evil,” only Libya and Israel remain.
“AXIS OF EVIL” NUKES/BLAIR’S VISIT
Libya, in partnership with Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, began developing chemical and germ warfare capabilities. These WMDs were used by the South African forces in Angola and elsewhere, thousands died. Libya funded one of the largest chemical and biological weapons programs in the world, rivaling the former Soviet Union in size, a program thought to be in place as late as 2004. During the same period, a year after the American invasion of Iraq to end a WMD program now proven non-existent, Libya, with Israeli help, developed a nuclear capability and is said to control several “Hiroshima” style weapons, uranium based fission devices.
As part of this combined program, South Africa built 10 nuclear weapons at their Pelindaba facility between 1975 and 1980.
The three nations performed one successful weapons test, an 18.2 kiloton uranium weapon on September 22, 1979 on Prince Edward Island in the seas north of Antarctica. This test was observed and verified by both US and Soviet nuclear intelligence services and a “weapons signature” was developed. South Africa ended its program in 1990, shipping 6 of the remaining weapons to the US for dismantling. Three were sold and then transferred to British control and eventually shipped to Oman but disappeared in transit.
One of these weapons exploded in North Korea in 2009, their only successful nuclear test. Two are missing.
In March,2004, we are told by informed sources in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair made an “emergency” flight to Libya to meet with the Libyan leader, assuring him he would not be facing the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who had been captured only a few months before by American forces and was awaiting trial.
It is believed that one of the subjects discussed by Blair was the “possibility” that Libya possessed the two missing weapons from South Africa, weapons Britain had failed to recover.
Blair left that meeting with a $200 million oil contract for Royal Dutch Shell and an undisclosed long term agreement between Libya and BAE Systems, a British defense contracting firm. There were no reports of what Gaddafi offered Blair in return. Some claims were made that Libya had agreed to end its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs but these reports, though widely circulated, are both unsubstantiated and unverified.
Now Libya is threatening its population with chemical and biological weapons with more possibly on the way from Israel.
Blair has remained an ardent supporter and defacto spokesman for the Libyan “strongman” since being forced to leave office in 2007.
EARLIER CLASH BETWEEN ISRAEL AND AMERICA
This could be the first face-off between the US and Israel in the region since the USS Liberty attack in 1967. During that “incident,” Israeli air and sea forces attacked a lightly armed American naval vessel killing or wounding 201 of 296 crew members. American sailors repulsed Israeli attempt to seize the vessel and its crew. USS Liberty survivor, Phil Tourney reports that Israel surveillance planes had tracked the clearly marked American vessel for several hours before the attack Tourney describes as “murderous.”
“Israel still has a life raft from the Liberty, one they had strafed from gunboats who were also firing on fire and rescue personnel, on display in Tel Aviv as a “war trophy.”
Though the crew of the USS Liberty is the most decorated in US Naval history, until recently all were sworn to secrecy and threatened with imprisonment for revealing the details of the Israeli assault.
OBAMA UN VETO NOW CRIPPLES US POLICY
President Obama used his first United Nations Security Council veto to stop a move toward citing Israel for humanitarian violations against its Palestinian population. In fact, the United States has vetoed UN resolutions calling for humanitarian reforms by Israel and has done so dozens of times.
Now Israel has become militarily involved in Libya, directly against US policy and UN prohibitions and has done so, oddly protected in these acts by the United States and its “ever so reliable” Security Council veto of any move to modify Israeli behavior.
Libyan civilians may well, in days to come, be facing Israeli weaponry and even troops, as have the people of Gaza.
Now American Marines may well be facing that same fate.
"Once you label me, you negate me." — Soren Kierkegaard
TRIPOLI, Libya — Libyan rebels have captured a British special forces unit in the east of the country after a secret diplomatic mission to make contact with opposition leaders backfired, Britain's Sunday Times reported.
The team, understood to number up to eight SAS soldiers, were intercepted as they escorted a junior diplomat through rebel-held territory, the newspaper said.
The Foreign Office said in a brief statement it could neither "confirm or deny" the report.
Earlier on Saturday the Geneva-based Human Rights Solidarity group, which employs a number of Libyan exiles, told Reuters by telephone that a team of "eight special forces personnel" had been seized by rebels. Both the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office repeatedly declined to comment on the group's report.
The SAS intervention apparently angered Libyan opposition figures, who ordered the soldiers locked up on a military base, according to the Sunday Times.
Opponents of longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi fear he could use any evidence of Western military intervention to rally patriotic support away from a two-week-old uprising against his 41-year autocratic rule.
Citing Libyan sources, the Sunday Times said the special forces troops were taken by rebels to Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and epicenter of the insurrection, and hauled before one of its most senior politicians for questioning.
The paper said the junior diplomat they were escorting was preparing the way for a visit by a more senior colleague ahead of establishing diplomatic relations with the rebels.
The Sunday Times said Libyan opposition officials were said to be trying to hush up the incident for fear of a backlash from ordinary Libyans.
Seesaw battle Earlier, government forces in tanks rolled into Zawiya, the opposition-held city closest to Tripoli, after blasting it with artillery and mortar fire, while rebels captured a key oil port and pushed toward Gadhafi's hometown in a seesaw Saturday for both sides in the bloody battle for control.
With the Gadhafi regime's tanks prowling the center of the city of Zawiya, west of Tripoli, residents ferried the wounded from the fierce fighting in private cars to a makeshift clinic in a mosque, fearing that any injured taken to the military-controlled hospital "will be killed for sure," one rebel said after nightfall.
The rival successes — by Gadhafi's forces in entering resistant Zawiya, and by the rebels in taking over the port of Ras Lanouf — signaled an increasingly long and violent battle that could last weeks or months and veered the country ever closer to civil war.
Western leaders focused on humanitarian aid instead of military intervention, and the Italian naval vessel Libra left from Catania, Sicily, for the rebel-held port of Benghazi in eastern Libya, with 25 tons of emergency aid, including milk, rice, blankets, emergency generators, water purifying devices and tents. It is due to arrive early Monday.
The crisis in Libya has already deepened far beyond any of the other uprisings this year in the Arab world, as Gadhafi has unleashed a violent crackdown against his political opponents, who themselves have taken up arms in their attempt to remove him from office after ruling the country for more than 41 years. Hundreds have been killed.
Gadhafi has drawn international condemnation for his actions. President Barack Obama has insisted that Gadhafi must leave and said Washington was considering a full range of options, including the imposition of a "no-fly" zone over Libya.
'The number of people killed is so big' The storming of Zawiya, a city of some 200,000 people just 30 miles west of Tripoli, began with a surprise dawn attack by pro-Gadhafi forces firing mortar shells and machine guns.
"The number of people killed is so big. The number of the wounded is so big. The number of tanks that entered the city is big," the rebel in Zawiya said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal. The rebels vowed to keep up the fight in the city.
Witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone with gunfire and explosions in the background said the shelling damaged government buildings and homes. Several fires sent heavy black smoke over the city, and witnesses said snipers shot at anybody on the streets, including residents on balconies.
The rebels initially retreated to positions deeper in the city before they launched a counteroffensive in which they regained some ground, according to three residents and activists who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
By midafternoon, the rebels had reoccupied central Martyrs' Square while the pro-regime forces regrouped on the city's fringes, sealing off the city's entry and exit routes, the witnesses said. Members of the elite Khamis Brigade, named for one of Gadhafi's sons who commands it, have been massed outside the city for days.
The pro-Gadhafi forces then blasted Zawiya with artillery and mortar fire in late afternoon before the tanks and troops on foot came in, firing at buildings and people, witnesses said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Qaid said "99 percent" of Zawiya is under government control.
Opposition capturing SAS forces and being angered by their presence is not good for any intervention plan. If it had been the Gaddafi side who caught them, they could have had a big confrontation and no compromises and ultimatum or else.
I shall repeat: There won't be any fast interventions in Libya. Gaddafi would have to last a lot longer than it seems he will. Just by their scale the ongoing events are exposing how puny US military power has become, given the commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
