The Libya thread

[JackRiddler]

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Damn, tried to edit but all it did was quote (time's up) so here's the second article I posted again:

http://counterpunch.org/mountain07272011.html

July 27, 2011

Worse Than Iraq
Lies of the Libyan War

By THOMAS MOUNTAIN

As exposed here on CounterPunch the lies used to justify the NATO war against Libya have surpassed those created to justify the invasion of Iraq. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both had honest observers on the ground for months following the rebellion in eastern Libya and both have repudiated every major charge used to justify the NATO war on Libya.

According to the Amnesty observer, who is fluent in Arabic, there is not one confirmed instance of rape by the pro-Gadaffi fighters, not even a doctor who knew of one. All the Viagra mass rape stories were fabrications.

Amnesty could not verify a single "African mercenary" fighting for Gaddafi story, and the highly charged international satellite television accounts of African mercenaries raping women that were used to panic much of the eastern Libyan population into fleeing their homes were fabrications.

There were no confirmed accounts of helicopter gun ships attacking civilians and no jet fighters bombing people which completely invalidates any justification for the No-Fly Zone inSecurity Council resolution used as an excuse for NATO to launch its attacks on Libya.

After three months on the ground in rebel controlled territory, the Amnesty investigator could only confirm 110 deaths in Benghazi which included Gadaffi supporters.
Only 110 dead in Benghazi? Wait a minute, we were told thousands had died there, ten thousand even. No, only 110 lost their lives including pro-government people.

No rapes, no African mercenaries, no helicopter gun ships or bombers, and only 110 ten deaths prior to the launch of the NATO bombing campaign, every reason was based on a lie.

Today according to the Libyan Red Crescent Society, over 1,100 civilians have been killed by NATO bombs including over 400 women and children. Over 6,000 Libyan civilians have been injured or wounded by the bombing, many very seriously.

Compared to the war on Iraq, these numbers are tiny, but the reasons for the Libyan war have no merit in any form.

Saddam Hussein was evil, he invaded his neighbors in wars that killed up to a million. He used Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) in the form of poison gas on both his neighbors and his own people, killing tens of thousands. He was brutal and corrupt and when American tanks rolled into Iraq the Iraqi people refused to fight for him, simply put their weapons down and went home.

Libya under Col. Gadaffi hasn't invaded their neighbors. Gadaffi never used WMD's on anyone, let alone his own people. As for Gadaffi being brutal, in Libya's neighbor Algeria, the Algerian military fought a counterinsurgency for a decade in the 1990's that witnessed the deaths of some 200,000 Algerians. Now that is brutal and nothing anywhere near this has happened in Libya.

In Egypt and Tunisia, western puppets like Mubarak and Ben Ali had almost no support amongst their people with few if anyone willing to fight and die to defend them.

The majority of the Libyan people are rallying behind the Libyan government and "the leader", Muammar Gadaffi, with over one million people demonstrating in support on July 1 in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Thousands of Libyan youth are on the front lines fighting the rebels and despite thousands of NATO air strikes authentic journalists on the ground in western Libya report their morale remains high.

In Egypt the popular explosion that resulted in the Army seizing power from Mubarak began in the very poorest neighborhoods in Cairo and other Egyptian cities where the price of basic food items like bread, sugar and cooking oil had skyrocketed and lead to widespread hunger. In many parts of Egypt's poor neighborhoods gasoline/benzene is easier to find then clean drinking water. Medical care and education is only for those with the money to pay for it. Life for the people of Tunisia is not that much better.

In contrast, the Libyan people have the longest life expectancy in the Arab world. The Libyan people have the best, free public health system in the Arab world. The Libyan people have the best, free public education system in the Arab world. Most Libyan families own their own home and most Libyan families own their own automobile. Libya is so much better off then its neighbors every year tens of thousands of Egyptians and Tunisians migrated to Libya to earn money to feed their families, doing the dirty work the Libyan people refused to do.

When it comes to how Gadaffi oversaw a dramatic rise in the standard of living for the Libyan people despite decades of UN inSecurity Council sanctions against the Libyan economy honest observers acknowledge that Gadaffi stands head and shoulders above the kings, sheiks, emirs and various dictators who rule the rest of the Arab world.

So why did NATO launch this war against Libya?

First of all Gadaffi was on the verge of creating a new banking system in Africa that was going to put the IMF, World Bank and assorted other western banksters out of business in Africa. No more predatory western loans used to cripple African economies, instead a $42 billion dollar African Investment Bank would be supplying major loans at little or even zero interest rates.

LIbya has funded major infrastructure projects across Africa that have begun to link up African economies and break the perpetual dependency on the western countries for imports have been taking place. Here in Eritrea the new road connecting Eritrea and Sudan is just one small example.

What seem to have finally tipped the balance in favor of direct western military intervention was the reported demand by Gadaffi that the USA oil companies who have long been major players in the Libyan petroleum industry were going to have to compensate Libya to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for the damage done to the Libyan economy by the USA instigated "Lockerbie Bombing" sanctions imposed by the UN inSecurity Council throughout the 1990's into early 2000's. This is based on the unearthing of evidence that the CIA paid millions of dollars to witnesses in the Lockerbie Bombing trial to change their stories to implicate Libya which was used as the basis for the very damaging UN sanctions against Libya. The government of the USA lied and damaged Libya so the USA oil companies were going to have to pay up to cover the cost of their governments actions. Not hard to see why Gadaffi had to go isn't it?

Sure, these are all casus belli to the Western imperial planners, but why leave out the indispensable, proximate cause, without which they would have never had the opportunity to mount an attack? Without Tunisia and Egypt, and the resulting genuine (if obviously *not* universal) uprising in Libya, the CIA could have tried for years to stir up shit in Libya and gotten nowhere.

The Libya attack is first of all an intervention to limit the direction of the Arab Spring. A few secular tyrants can go while the oil kingdoms are defended with real military commitments on their behalf but without the loud propaganda.

It was also very much a European-led war push, at least to start. Without France and UK, there would have been no campaign. Thing is, European politicians can back down on such an adventure without dire political consequences. The USG cannot. In the minds of its controlling elites, it can never afford to look like a loser, or like its giving up once committed.

Add the fact that Gadaffi had signaled clearly that he saw both Libya's and Africa's future economic development linked more to China and Russia rather than the west and it was just a matter of time before the CIA's contingency plan to overthrow the Libyan government was put on the front burner.

NATO's war against Libya has much more in common with NATO's Kosovo war against Serbia.

Yes, that's the template: A perfect war for a modern Democratic president.

ON EDIT: Oh right, except for the part where it now looks like they're going to lose or launch an invasion, if they can't come up with a face-saving negotiated settlement.

But one still cannot compare Gadaffi to Saddam or even the much smaller time criminals in the Serbian leadership. The Libyan War lies are worse than Iraq.


Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He was a member of the 1st US Peace Delegation to Libya in 1987. He can be reached at: thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

[8bitagent]

Nordic, spot on. It's like hear you go....Obama(TM) or Team Mccain/Palin(TM) Make your selections now!

Most people don't seem to be into or aware of truly independent/more underground film, music, etc. I do find myself sadly at super walmarts the more broke I get, but I still do a lot of my shopping
at Trader Joes and other cheaper organic stores.

Because the American populance has been brainwashed into believing that they are "consumers" and they can pick their "brands". They've been trained this way, like mice learning to negotiate a maze to get a bit of food.

But we've also been brainwashed to only choose from the "brands" made available to us.

I think about this every time I go to Ralph's, which is one of the Big Three Grocery chains in this country (it's Kroger, and the others are Safeway and Albertson's). I look at the stuff on the shelves and realize I don't really want any of the crap they offer. Yet most people feel they have no choice.

People feel they have no choice, but, like the mice, they have to hit one of the levers to feel good. That's the training.

It's either (R) or it's (D) in this country. People don't even QUESTION that.

If you bring up a third party or the notion of getting rid of these parties altogether people just give you the blankest stares, like you just talked about making a car that runs on carrot juice or something.

In my neck of the woods, I don't get blank stares when I mention a third party, I get an angry parroting of the MSM company line about how Nader personally delivered the 2000 election to that dastardly greater of two evils; G.W. Bush.

We CAN'T have a third party! We sort of vaguely, not even half-heartedly tried that once and it didn't work out, and well, you know what they say? If at first you don't succeed in making the most minuscule effort to wrest control of your country back from the cloven hooves of a corporo-fascist junta, then continue to apathetically play first-person shooter games on your iPod, watch John Stewart, and vote for the latest puppet wearing your team's colors.

After all, you don't want Sarah Palin to be President, do you!?!?!?!?!?

Haha...yeah Im so sick of all these liberal tropes. "9/11 was blowback for our involvement in the middle east", "Bush did Iraq to finish what his daddy couldnt", "Nader cost Al Gore the election".
I think that's why I rag on the campus left so much, as they seem as easily susceptable to fabricated talking points like the Tea Party

[JackRiddler]

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Very interesting...

http://counterpunch.org/lamb08022011.html

August 2, 2011
Dispatch From Libya
End Game for Benghazi Rebels as Libyan Tribes Prepare to Weigh In?

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Tripoli

On July 30, the day before this 97.5 per cent Muslim country began the holy month of Ramadan, NATO spokesperson Roland Lavoie has been lamely attempting to explain to the press at the Rexis Hotel and internationally, why NATO was forced to bomb three Tripoli TV towers at the Libyan Broadcasting Authority, killing three journalists/technicians and wounding 15 others. Like most people currently in central Tripoli, this observer was awakened at 1:50 a.m. by the first of a series of nine blasts, three of which I watched from my balcony as they happened, and which seemed to be about 800 yards away as I saw one TV tower being blown apart. On the four lanes' divided highway adjacent to my hotel and below my balcony, that runs along the sea front, I could see two cars frantically swerving left and right as they sped along, presumably trying to avoid a NATO rocket, fearing they themselves might be targeted.

According to NATO spokesperson Lavoie, allowing Libya’s population to watch government TV, and by implication, to hear terrorist public service announcements concerning subjects as gasoline availability, food distribution for Ramadan, updates on areas to be avoided due to recent NATO bombing, prayers and lectures by Sheiks on moral and religious subjects during Ramadan or see the Prayer Times chart posted on government TV, during this month of fasting, plus children’s programs and normal programming, had to stop immediately.

The reason to bomb Libyan government TV, according to NATO is that Libyan leader Ghaddafi has been giving interviews and speeches following repeated NATO bombings which recently have included hospitals, Ramadan food storage warehouses, the nation’s main water distribution infrastructure, private homes, and more than 1,600 other civilian sites. NATO believes that preventing Qaddafi’s use of Libya’s public airwaves by bombing transmission towers is within UN resolutions 1970 and 1973, the scope of which are being expanded beyond all recognition from their original intent. NATO spokesperson Lavoie claims that Libya’s leadership is using TV broadcast facilities to thwart NATO’s “humanitarian mission” and, yet again are, “putting civilian lives at risk.”

Government officials admit using the media for communication with the population, including to urge tribal unity, to dialogue with those based in Benghazi referred to here as “NATO rebels”, to argue for an immediate ceasefire and yes, even to call for all Libyans to resist what many here, including Colonel Ghaddafi, call “the NATO crusader aggressors.”
In western Libya, and even among many in the east, according to recent rebel defectors who daily arrive on the western side, NATO has lost the respect of this country, Africa, the Middle East and increasingly the international community. The reasons are well known here and include the serial false premises and descriptions of what happened in February in Benghazi and Misrata areas.

In addition, NATO daily bombing strikes have increased approximately 20 per cent since July 25 and will continue to increase according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet who, along with UK Defense Minister Liam Fox, while publicly saying NATO must continue the bombing, is privately expressing his frustration with the killing of rebel military commander Abdul Fatah Younnis. This assassination, according to Libyan officials was very likely carried out by Younnis’ rebel leaders or Al Qaeda. Both are said to feel that the rebel leadership in Benghazi is collapsing. So do many NATO leaders and the Obama Administration.

One Libyan government supporter who just arrived here in Tripoli, claims he spent the past two months on the ground in Benghazi “undercover” as a liaison between the rebels and NAT0. He told his rapt audience at a Tripoli hotel this week many details of what he claims is NATO’s frustration with the deterioration, the corruption and incompetence of their “team” in the east and the CIA view that “Al Qaeda will eat Mahmoud Jibril and the entire rebel leadership for Iftar during one of the Ramadan feasts during August. They are just waiting for the right opportunity to make a dramatic move.”

Only the zealots of “humanitarian intervention” could seriously have contemplated the kind of protracted, bloody land war in Libya that would have been necessary to win. So, the bet on an alliance with NATO now appears to have been doomed from the start, even on its own terms.

The force that is rapidly entering into this conflict is the leadership of Libya’s more than 2000 tribes. In a series of meetings in Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere, the Tribal Council is speaking out forcefully and forging a political block that is demanding an end to Libyans killing Libyans.

Generally considered Libya’s largest tribe, are the Obeidis to which the Younnis family belongs. Some of the tribal leaders and members have vowed revenge against rebel leaders and as they carried the coffins of Abdul Fatah and his two companions they chanted, under the gaze of security forces, “the blood of martyrs will not go in vain."

Libya’s Tribal Council has issued a manifesto which makes clear that it intends to end this conflict, help expel “the NATO crusaders”, achieve reforms while supporting the Gaddafi, Tripoli based government. Before Ramadan is over, it intends to end Libya’s crisis even if it needs to rally its hundreds of thousandsof active members to march on Benghazi.

NATO, according to various academics at Al Nasser and Al Fatah University, and Libya’s Tribal leadership, appear surprisingly ignorant and even contemptuous of this country’s tribes and their historic roles during times of crises and foreign aggression and occupation. One tribal leader well known to Italy was Omar Muktar.

As NATO and its backers contemplate their End Game they may want to consider some excerpts from the Libyan Tribal Council’s manifesto issued on July 26. Speaking for Libya’s 2000 tribes, the Council issued a Proclamation signed by scores of tribal leaders from eastern Libya.

“By this letter to the extraordinary African Summit, convening in Addis Ababa, the notables of the Eastern tribes of the Great Jamahiriya confirm their complete rejection of what is called the Transitional Council in Benghazi which hasn't been nominated nor elected by Tribal representatives but rather imposed by NATO.”

"What is called the Transitional Council in Benghazi was imposed by NATO on us and we completely reject it. Is it democracy to impose people with armed power on the people of Benghazi, many of whose leaders are not even Libyan or from Libyan tribes but come from Tunisia and other countries.”

…

“The Tribal Council assures its continuing cooperation with the African Union in its suggestions aimed at helping to prevent the aggression on the Libyan people”.…

“The Tribal Council condemns the crusader aggression on the Great Jamahiriya executed by the NATO and the Arabic regressive forces which is a grave threat to Libyan civilians as it continues to kill them as NATO bombs civilian targets.”…

“We do not and will not accept any authority other than the authority that we chose with our free will which is the People’s Congress and Peoples Committees, and the popular social leadership, and will oppose with all available means, the NATO rebels and their slaughter, violence and maiming of cadavers. We intend to oppose with all the means available to us the NATO crusader aggressors and their appointed lackeys”.

According to one representative of the Libyan Supreme Tribal Council, “The tribes of Libya have until today not fully joined in repelling the NATO aggressors. As we do, we serve notice to NATO that we shall not desist until they have left our country and we will ensure that they never return.”

Franklin Lamb is in Libya and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

[stefano]

Gaddafi camp works with Islamist rebels, son says

Muammar Gaddafi's camp is courting Islamist rebels to turn against liberals, his son said in an interview, a sign of efforts to exploit divisions within the insurgency after the killing of its military chief.

The New York Times said an Islamist rebel figure named by Gaddafi's son as his interlocutor had confirmed the contacts but denied he had split with liberals in the rebellion.

Gaddafi cracked down firmly on Islamists during his 41 years in power, and many Islamists have sided with more liberal, pro-Western rebels trying to oust him.

Talk of splits within the Benghazi-based rebellion have escalated since the killing last week of their top military commander, General Abdel Fattah Younes, who was assassinated after having been summoned back from the front line.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi told the New York Times that he had made contact with Islamists among the rebels. The government and the Islamists would announce an alliance in a joint statement within days, he said.

"The liberals will escape or be killed," Saif al-Islam, once seen as a reformist and a potential successor to his father, told the newspaper.

"We will do it together ... Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?" he said. "I know they are terrorists. They are bloody. They are not nice. But you have to accept them," he added of the Islamists.

He said he had been in contact with an Islamist rebel figure, Ali Sallabi, describing him as the "real leader" of the rebellion and the "spiritual leader" of its Islamists.

The New York Times quoted Sallabi as acknowledging contacts with Saif al-Islam but saying he remained allied with liberals seeking to oust the Gaddafi family from power.

"Liberals are a part of Libya," the newspaper quoted Sallabi as saying. "I believe in their right to present their political project and convince the people with it."

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi had had "many discussions" with the opposition, Sallabi said. "The first thing discussed is their departure from power."

The killing of Younes has yet to be fully explained. It exposed tribal rivalries within the rebellion as well as divisions between its Islamist and liberal wings, and raised concerns over whether the rebels would be able to maintain stability if they eventually take power.

As Gaddafi's former interior minister, Younes had many enemies, including among Islamists targeted in government crackdowns.

Saif al-Islam said the Gaddafi camp had met twice with Younes in Italy before he was killed.

"We told him, 'you will be killed at the end of the day, because you are playing with the snakes,' and he said, 'Nonsense.'"

[StarmanSkye]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... leId=25947

Leak of a 70 page Criminal NATO Plan to Occupy Libya
UAE Would Occupy Tripoli in Post-Gadhafi Libya


by Jason Ditz


Global Research, August 9, 2011
Antiwar.com

West Prepares New State Radio, Mass Arrest of 'Fifth Column' Opponents of Rebel Regime....

A 70-page plan detailing Western designs for the occupation of post-Gadhafi Libya, and apparently signed off on by the political leadership of the rebel Transitional Council in East Libya has been leaked, and paints a grim picture of the new regime NATO is planning on installing after the war.
The plan includes keeping large portions of the Gadhafian security apparatus intact, with a number of the leaders of the brutal regime’s crackdown left in position on condition of loyalty to the new, pro-West regime.

Even more controversial will be the “Tripoli task force,” a 15,000-man force operated by the United Arab Emirates which will, after Gadhafi is out of power, occupy the capital city of Tripoli and conduct mass arrests of Gadhafi’s top supporters.

The arrests won’t stop there, as of course they never do for a regime looking to stifle dissent. Indeed the plan also includes discussion of a new state radio network that will broadcast orders to the public to support the new government, and warning anti-Gadhafi factions that haven’t endorsed the new regime to stand down. The assumption in the report is that these factions, termed a “fifth column,” would also be arrested. The new state media will of course be necessitated all the more by the NATO attacks on the existing media.

The Transitional Council confirmed the authenticity of the report, and while the rebel ambassador to the UAE expressed “regret” that the truth had come out he said it was “important that the general public knows there is an advance plan.” It is a plan that likely won’t sit well with the protesters who were demanding democratic reform, nor those NATO members who acquiesced to the war on the assumption that it was doing something other than swapping brutal regimes in Libya.


Jason Ditz is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Jason Ditz

[JackRiddler]

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In a fairly sudden turn the last couple of days the rebel forces appear to be inside Tripoli and the mass media is saying Gaddafi's fall is imminent.

Here are a couple of interesting articles I'd accumulated this month:

August 16, 2011
Not the Left
Who Will Save Libya From Its Western Saviours?

By JEAN BRICMONT
and DIANA JOHNSTONE


Last March, a coalition of Western powers and Arab autocracies banded together to sponsor what was billed as a short little military operation to “protect Libyan civilians”.

On March 17, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 which gave that particular “coalition of the willing” the green light to start their little war by securing control of Libyan air space, which was subsequently used to bomb whatever NATO chose to bomb. The coalition leaders clearly expected the grateful citizens to take advantage of this vigorous “protection” to overthrow Moammer Gaddafi who allegedly wanted to “kill his own people”. Based on the assumption that Libya was neatly divided between “the people” on one side and the “evil dictator” on the other, this overthrow was expected to occur within days. In Western eyes, Gaddafi was a worse dictator than Tunisia’s Ben Ali or Egypt’s Mubarak, who fell without NATO intervention, so Gaddafi should have fallen that much faster.

Five months later, all the assumptions on which the war was based have proved to be more or less false. Human rights organizations have failed to find evidence of the “crimes against humanity” allegedly ordered by Gaddafi against “his own people”. The recognition of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as the “sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people” by Western governments has gone from premature to grotesque. NATO has entered and exacerbated a civil war that looks like a stalemate.

But however groundless and absurd the war turns out to be, on it goes. And what can stop it?

This summer’s best reading was Adam Hochschild’s excellent new book on World War I, To End All Wars. There are many lessons for our times in that story, but perhaps the most pertinent is the fact that once a war starts, it is very hard to end it.

The men who started World War I also expected it to be short. But even when millions were bogged down in the killing machine, and the hopelessness of the whole endeavor should have been crystal clear, it slogged on for four miserable years. The war itself generates hatred and vengefulness. Once a Great Power starts a war, it “must” win, whatever the cost – to itself but especially to others.

So far, the cost of the war against Libya to the NATO aggressors is merely financial, offset by the hope of booty from the “liberated” country to pay the cost of having bombed it. It is only the Libyan people who are losing their lives and their infrastructure. So what can stop the slaughter?

In World War I, there existed a courageous anti-war movement that braved the chauvinist hysteria of the war period to argue for peace. They risked physical attack and imprisonment.

Hochschild’s account of the struggle for peace of brave women and men in Britain should be an inspiration – but for whom? The risks of opposing this war are minimal in comparison to 1914-1918. But so far active opposition is scarcely noticeable.

This is particularly true of France, the country whose President Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead in starting this war.

Evidence is accumulating of deaths of Libyan civilians, including children, caused by NATO bombing.

The bombing is targeting civilian infrastructure, to deprive the majority of the population living in territory loyal to Gaddafi of basic necessities, food and water, supposedly to inspire the people to overthrow Gaddafi. The war to “protect civilians” has clearly turned into a war to terrorize and torment them, so that the NATO-backed TNC can take power.

This little war in Libya is exposing NATO as both criminal and incompetent.

It is also exposing the organized left in NATO countries as totally useless.There has perhaps never been a war easier to oppose. But the organized left in Europe is not opposing it.

Three months ago, when the media hype about Libya was launched by the Qatari television Al Jazeera, the organized left did not hesitate to take a stand. A couple of dozen leftist French and North African organizations signed a call for a “solidarity march with the Libyan people” in Paris on March 26. In a display of total confusion, these organizations simultaneously called for “recognition of the National Transition Council as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people” on the one hand and “protection of foreign residents and migrants” who, in reality, needed to be protected from the very rebels represented by that Council. While implicitly supporting the military operations in support of the NTC, the groups also called for “vigilance” concerning “the duplicity of Western governments and the Arab League” and possible “escalation” of those operations.

The organizations signing this appeal included Libyan, Syrian, Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian exile opposition groups as well as the French Greens, the Anti-Capitalist Party, the French Communist Party, the Left Party, the anti-racist movement MRAP and ATTAC, a widely based popular education movement critical of financial globalization. These groups together represent virtually the entire organized French political spectrum to the left of the Socialist Party – which for its part supported the war without even calling for “vigilance”.

As civilian casualties of NATO bombing mount, there is no sign of the promised “vigilance concerning escalation of the war” deviating from the UN Security Council Resolution.

The activists who in March insisted that “we must do something” to stop a hypothetical massacre are doing nothing today to stop a massacre that is not hypothetical but real and visible, and carried out by those who “did something”.

The basic fallacy of the "we must do something" leftist crowd lies in the meaning of "we". If they meant “we” literally, then the only thing they could do was to set up some sort of international brigades to fight alongside the rebels. But of course, despite the claims that "we" must do "everything" to support the rebels, no serious thought was ever given to such a possibility.

So their "we" in practice means the Western powers, NATO and above all the United States, the only one with the "unique capabilities" to wage such a war.

The "we must do something" crowd usually mixes two kind of demands: one which they can realistically expect to be carried out by those Western powers - support the rebels, recognize the TNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people - and the other which they cannot realistically expect the Great Powers to follow and which they themselves are totally incapable of accomplishing: limit the bombing to military targets and to the protection of civilians, and stay scrupulously within the framework of UN resolutions.

Those two sorts of demands contradict each other. In a civil war, no side is primarily concerned about the niceties of UN resolutions or the protection of civilians. Each side wants to win, period, and the desire for revenge often leads to atrocities. If one "supports" the rebels, in practice one is giving a blank check to their side to do whatever they judge to be necessary to win.

But one also gives a blank check to the Western allies and NATO, who may be less bloodthirsty than the rebels but who have far greater means of destruction at their disposal. And they are big bureaucracies that act as survival machines. They need to win. Otherwise they have a "credibility" problem (as do the politicians who supported the war), which could lead to a loss of funding and resources. Once the war has started, there is simply no force in the West, lacking a resolute antiwar movement, that can oblige NATO to limit itself to what is allowed by a UN resolution. So, the second set of leftist demands fall on deaf ears. They serve merely to prove to the pro-war left itself that its intentions are pure.

By supporting the rebels, the pro-intervention left has effectively killed the antiwar movement. Indeed, it makes no sense to support rebels in a civil war who desperately want to be helped by outside interventions and at the same time oppose such interventions. The pro-intervention right is far more coherent.

What both the pro-intervention left and right share is the conviction that "we" (meaning the civilized democratic West) have the right and the ability to impose our will on other countries. Certain French movements whose stock in trade is to denounce racism and colonialism have failed to remember that all colonial conquests were carried out against satraps, Indian princes and African kings who were denounced as autocrats (which they were) or to notice that there is something odd about French organizations deciding who are the "legitimate representatives" of the Libyan people.

Despite the efforts of a few isolated individuals, there is no popular movement in Europe capable of stopping or even slowing the NATO onslaught. The only hope may be the collapse of the rebels, or opposition in the United States, or a decision by ruling oligarchies to cut the expenses. But meanwhile, the European left has missed its opportunity to come back to life by opposing one of the most blatantly inexcusable wars in history. Europe itself will suffer from this moral bankruptcy.


Jean Bricmont is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be
Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade. She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug20 ... -a16.shtml

World Socialist Web Site
wsws.org


Professor Cole “answers” WSWS on Libya: An admission of intellectual and political bankruptcy

By Bill Van Auken
16 August 2011

Last week, Professor Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle Eastern history, posted a comment on his Informed Comment blog slandering the World Socialist Web Site with the lie that we support efforts by the Gaddafi regime to reconquer the east of Libya and would welcome a massacre of Libyan civilians.

On August 10, the World Socialist Web Site issued “An open letter to Professor Juan Cole: A reply to a slander,” answering Cole’s lies and demanding that he post a “full and public retraction” on Informed Comment.

On August 11, we received the following emailed reply from Cole:

“Hi. I hope you will stop supporting the murderous Qaddafi regime and attacking people who want the people of Benghazi to be safe from him.

cheers,

Juan”

This is the kind of response one would expect from someone who is drunk. In Cole’s case, however, this would be an unduly charitable interpretation.

The reality is that he is incapable of articulating any coherent defense of his position. Cole’s one-sentence reply merely reiterates his original slander without adding a word of substantiation.

His hostility toward the WSWS stems from our refusal to line up with the filthy imperialist operation in Libya that he promoted. We based ourselves on the fundamental socialist and Marxist principle of opposition to imperialist wars against historically oppressed countries. We oppose Gaddafi from a socialist standpoint, based on the fight for the independent mobilization of the working class against his bourgeois regime and imperialism itself.

Five months after the launching of the Libyan war, for which Cole offered his services as the most unabashed cheerleader, the intervention has turned into a debacle and his own position is compromised and exposed. People in such a situation are prone to respond to any challenge in a cynical and dishonest manner.

He writes as if nothing has happened since last March when he issued his “Open Letter to the Left,” urging support for the Libyan war.

While Cole continues to use his Informed Comment blog to cheer on what he refers to as the “Free Libya Forces,” the conduct of the war and the evolution of these same forces have made it abundantly clear that what is involved is neither a “liberation” struggle nor a crusade for “human rights,” but rather a war by the imperialist powers for the conquest of Libya and the installation of a more pliant regime.

As Cole himself acknowledged in June, in a column entitled “Top ten mistakes in the Libyan war,” the US-NATO campaign has hardly been focused on protecting civilians.

“That the Libyan intervention is legal does not mean that the war has been prosecuted wisely,” wrote Cole. “I urged after the UNSC resolution that it be a limited intervention aiming at protecting civilians from Muammar Qaddafi’s vicious attacks…”

Instead, he acknowledged, NATO opted for “a ‘shock and awe’ strategy of pounding the capital, Tripoli, especially targeting the compound of dictator Muammar Qaddafi… and to the extent that it looks like a targeted assassination, it raised questions in critics’ minds about the purpose of the intervention.”

Cole “urged” the imperialist powers to stick to the letter of the Security Council resolution. However, they did not hear the professor’s advice because they were too busy executing a war of aggression aimed at establishing unfettered control over the oil-rich North African country. The resolution merely provided cover for this neocolonialist venture, as did the bleating of Professor Cole.

And what of the “Free Libya Forces?” Professor Cole sent his reply to the WSWS just days after the president of the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council (TNC), Abdul Mustafa Jalil, dismissed his entire cabinet over suspicion that its members were involved in the July 28 assassination of General Abdel Fatah Younis, the former Gaddafi interior minister who defected to become the TNC’s military chief.

The dismissal of the government is apparently aimed at forestalling the outbreak of a civil war among the “rebels,” pitting Younis’s powerful Obeidi tribe against the US-backed TNC in Benghazi.

Meanwhile, reports mount of summary executions, torture and ethnic cleansing by the “rebels.” Given these acts and the composition of the TNC’s leadership—ex-Gaddafi ministers, longtime CIA “assets” and Islamists—there is no reason to believe that its victory would install a regime less corrupt or repressive than that of Gaddafi.

Even the pro-war New York Times found itself compelled to admit that the supposed struggle to “liberate” Libya has emerged as a “murkier contest between factions and tribes” that “could disintegrate into the sort of tribal tensions that have plagued Libya for centuries,” i.e., a bloodbath.

More people have already died in the US-NATO war against Libya than were ever killed by Gaddafi’s repression, and the threat of a far greater massacre is looming.

Whatever Cole says now, he has blood on his hands. The shoddy role that he played was to lend his authority as a well known intellectual with a reputation as an opponent of the US war in Iraq to promote a naked imperialist enterprise in Libya.

Unwilling and unable to honestly answer the critique of his position made by the World Socialist Web Site (first presented last April in “Libya, imperialism and the prostration of the ‘left’ intellectuals: The case of Professor Juan Cole”), Cole resorts to lies and slanders.

We reject Cole’s fatuous response to our open letter and continue to demand that he publicly retract his reactionary slanders against the World Socialist Web Site.


Copyright © 1998-2011 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

http://counterpunch.org/patrick08112011.html

August 11, 2011

Dubious Allies
Libya's Ragtag Rebels

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Rebels, from the Wars of the Roses up to the present civil war in Libya, usually try to postpone splitting into factions and murdering each other until after they have seized power and are in full control. However deep their divisions, they keep them secret from the outside world.

Not so the Libyan rebels. Members of their Transitional National Council (TNC) in Benghazi last month detained their military leader, General Abdel Fatah Younes, on suspicion of treachery, lured him away from his bodyguards and murdered him. This week the head of the TNC, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, sacked his whole government on the grounds that some were complicit in the killing. He was apparently forced to do so in order to quell the rage of the powerful Obeidi tribe to which Younes belonged.

A ludicrous aspect of the whole affair is that at the very moment the rebel leaders are at each other's throats, they are being recognised by country after country as the legitimate government of Libya. This week TNC diplomats took over the Libyan embassies in London and Washington and are about to do so in Ottawa. In a masterpiece of mistiming, Britain recognized the rebel government on the day when some of its members were shooting their own commander-in-chief and burning his body.

If this is how the rebels behave today, when it is much in their interests to make a show of unity, how will they act once they are installed in power in Tripoli? But NATO's sole policy is to do just that. A UN Security Council resolution, intended to stop Gaddafi's tanks taking Benghazi for humanitarian reasons in March, transmuted rapidly into a bid to overthrow him. Britain and France, with essential backing from the US, still maintain that the good of the Libyan people requires the replacement of Gaddafi with those sturdy democrats from Benghazi and eastern Libya represented by the TNC.

Could a strategy of brute force work in a purely military sense? Could the rebel columns of pick-up trucks with machine-guns in the back advance to capture Tripoli behind a creeping barrage supplied by NATO firepower? The Libyan capital is increasingly short of fuel, consumer goods and electricity.

The rebels have been making gains on the ground to the east and south-west of the capital. But even with the support of NATO air strikes the advance has been slow. If the rebels make such a meal of taking a town like Brega, with a population of 4,000, on the Gulf of Sirte, can they really fight their way into Tripoli with a population of 1.7 million?

Gaddafi may fall, but it looks increasingly that, if he does, it will be at the hands of a rag-tag collection of militias ever more dependent for success on being backed by tactical support from NATO aircraft. Given that the rebels lack a coherent leadership or a united military force, the outcome is unlikely to be a clear-cut victory. Even if victorious, the rebels will depend on foreign support at every level to exert authority over this vast country.

As with Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the US and Britain found it was one thing to overthrow the Taliban or Saddam Hussein and quite another to replace them. Treating dubious local allies as the legitimate government has a propaganda value, but it is unwise to pretend that the local partner carries real authority. With this experience under its belt, it required real fecklessness for Britain to plunge into another conflict on the assumption that this time we were betting on a certain winner. Gaddafi may be overthrown but the struggle for power between internal factions is likely to continue.

Colorful, but woefully misleading

The foreign media had its failings in Iraq, was worse in Afghanistan but has reached its nadir in covering the war in Libya. Reporting has become largely militarized. Much of it is colorful stuff from the frontline about the dashes backwards and forwards of rebel militiamen. It takes courage to report this and reporters naturally empathize with the young men with whom they are sharing a trench. Their coverage tends to be wholly in favor of the rebels and in opposition to Gaddafi.

When Abdel Fatah Younes was murdered almost nobody in the foreign media had an explanation as to how or why it had happened. The rebel leadership, previously portrayed as a heroic band of brothers, turned out to be split by murderous rivalries and vendettas. Some reporters simply regurgitated the rebel authorities' unlikely claim that the general had been killed by pro-Gaddafi fighters with camps in Benghazi, while others mentioned that there were 30 different Islamic militias in the city.

To this day politicians justify NATO's intervention in Libya by citing atrocities supposedly carried out by pro-Gaddafi forces such as mass rape or extensive use of mercenaries. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch long ago revealed that there was no evidence for most of the atrocity stories, as did a UN commission headed by the distinguished legal scholar Cherif Bassiouni. These well-researched reports were almost entirely ignored by the media which first published the Gaddafi atrocity stories.

The militarization of reporting in Iraq and Afghanistan was boosted by the system of "embedding" reporters with military units. This was inevitable to a degree given the danger from Iraqi insurgents or Taliban. But the outcome has been that war reporting has reverted to what it was during imperial skirmishes in the 19th century, with the world getting only a partial and often misleading account of what is happening in Libya.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.

The following may shortly prove premature...

July 29 - 31, 2011
CounterPunch Diary

At Last! The Head of Ghad ... General Younis

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

It is surely one of the great strategic screw-ups in the history of war and intelligence analysis. In March, after the second UN Security Council resolution used by NATO to launch its bombing campaign, the predictions were that Tripoli and thus Ghadafi would fall within two or three weeks. Right and left alike, though not yrs truly, said it was a sure thing.

Yet, here the Guide still is, addressing rallies in Tripoli surrounded by a sixth of Libya’s entire population, while in the other end of the country, it seems that one faction in Benghazi, that of Mustapha Abdul Jalil, head of the rebel Transitional National Council, has just murdered Abdel Fatah Younis, commander of the Libyan rebel forces. There are various accounts, none of them attaching the slightest credence to Jalil’s faltering initial suggestions that it was Ghadafi’s guys who did it. One has Younis being taken prisoner on grounds of opening secret negotiations with Tripoli (very conceivably true), then taken to the desert and shot, along with his bodyguard of two colonels; another that he was tortured to death in Benghazi. Either way this renders moot Sen. John McCain’s letter last week to Jalil warning that credible accounts of serious human violations by the rebels were undercutting whatever support the NATO onslaught retained in Congress.

We are beginning to see some very graphic accounts and videos of the actual conduct of the rebels in torturing and executing prisoners and suspected Ghadafi loyalists in Benghazi, not to mention compulsory reimposition of the burka for women and kindred evidence of rabid fundamentalism among NATO’s clients.

The same day this news of Younis’s killing came, Britain recognized the rebels at the legitimate government of Libya and gave them the okay to take over Libyan government facilities in London. There seems to be civil war in London, since foreign secretary William Hague had come off his hardline stance against negotiations with Tripoli. By way of thank you, as his men pumped bullets into Younis, Jalil swiftly requested the $25 billion in Libyan government funds, held by NATO powers, which if turned over, -- which I strongly doubt -- will no doubt enter many a private rebel account, not to mention private NATO accounts – which aim was evident from the start, when Benghazi opened a “central Libyan bank.”

This is one of the greatest humiliations of NATO in its history (also, to be petty, a terrific smack in the eye for the analytic and political acumen of a prime propagandist in progressive circles for the rebels, Prof. Juan Cole, whose blogs on Libya have been getting steadily more demented.) Incidentally, they keep calling for Ghadafi to “step down.” In constitutional terms, which is what NATO must keep in mind, I believe he did some time ago.

[153den]

http://news.sky.com/home/article/16054179 If this is true then yikes.

[153den]

I wouldn't want to get what Muammar Gaddafi is going to get when the rebels get their hands on him.

[seemslikeadream]

I wouldn't want to get what Muammar Gaddafi is going to get when the rebels get their hands on him.

they won't...Gadaffi is going away to a country that will not send him to the Hague


on edit..kinda like this

Deal gets dictator out to end killing

John Follain
From: The Australian
August 22, 2011 12:00AM

MUAMMAR Gaddafi has been offered safe conduct out of Libya and a chance to live the rest of his life in exile as fears grow of a bloodbath if he stages a last stand in Tripoli.

Under the proposal presented at negotiations in Tunisia last week, Gaddafi, 69, would escape facing the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which has issued a warrant for his arrest for crimes against humanity.

Sensing victory, the rebel National Transitional Council published a plan to hand over power to an elected assembly within a year, to draft and adopt a new constitution.

The priority for many, however, is Gaddafi's fate. Mansour Seif al-Nasr, the NTC's envoy to Paris, said rebels were willing to spare Gaddafi, his family and lieutenants from judicial retribution to prevent further bloodshed.

"Gaddafi is responsible for many crimes at home and abroad. He executed 1200 political prisoners in one night in 1996, he was behind the bombing of the Pan Am jet in 1988 over Lockerbie (which killed 270 people), he's responsible for more than 30,000 deaths," Mr Nasr said.

"But to save human lives and stop the fighting now, Gaddafi can leave Libya -- on condition that he leaves with his family and those members of the regime whose hands are stained with blood."

Asked whether Gaddafi would avoid judicial proceedings, Mr Nasr said this was "very possible".

The deposed leader's new home should be "a country which hasn't ratified the treaty of Rome setting up the International Criminal Court; that country could refuse a request for extradition".

Mr Nasr said Libyans who were "not representatives of the NTC but supporters of it" had argued for the exile solution in talks with Abdel Ilah Khatib, the special UN envoy for Libya, on the Tunisian island of Djerba last week.

Participants in broader negotiations at Djerba reportedly included two Gaddafi emissaries and an envoy of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has denounced the West's "imperialist aggression" against Libya.

If Gaddafi decided to stay and fight, he would face death. "If he stays, he must be judged for crimes against humanity by a Libyan court. The sentence for that is death by hanging," Mr Nasr said.

Asked what he expected the Libyan leader to do, Mr Nasr said: "I think he will leave Libya with his family. He knows he committed crimes and he won't want to face justice or the revolutionaries or the people of Tripoli."

A source close to the NTC said British diplomats and military chiefs had pressed the rebels to offer Gaddafi and his family refuge in southern Libya in the spring, before he was indicted by the ICC. "But this was unthinkable for the rebels. They don't want him living in Libya or in any neighbouring country, as he could destabilise the future rulers," the source said.

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, a high-profile rebel supporter, dismissed fears that the rebels' disarray could lead to a power vacuum if Gaddafi fell.

"Of course they have different origins and positions, but they've got common objectives and democrats are a big majority," he said.

[seemslikeadream]

here we go the end is nigh

Rebels stream into Libya's capital, capturing Qaddafi's sons

Libyan rebels claims to have the entire capital city of Tripoli under their control, except for Qaddafi's compound.

Libyan rebel fighters ride through the town of Maia celebrating after advancing to the outskirts of Tripoli, August 21, 2011.

By Ulf Laessing and Missy Ryan, REUTERS / August 21, 2011
AL-MAYA/TRIPOLI

Rebel fighters streamed into Tripoli as Muammar Qaddafi's forces collapsed and crowds took to the streets to celebrate, tearing down posters of the Libyan leader.

A convoy of rebels entered a western neighbourhood of the city, firing their weapons into the air. Rebels said the whole of the city was under their control except Qaddafi's Bab Al-Aziziya-Jazeera stronghold, according to al-Jazeera Television.

Qaddafi made two audio addresses over state television calling on Libyans to fight off the rebels.

"I am afraid if we don't act, they will burn Tripoli," he said. "There will be no more water, food, electricity or freedom."

Qaddafi, a colourful and often brutal autocrat who has ruled Libya for over 40 years, said he was breaking out weapons stores to arm the population. His spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, predicted a violent reckoning by the rebels.

"A massacre will be committed inside Tripoli if one side wins now, because the rebels have come with such hatred, such vendetta...Even if the leader leaves or steps down now, there will be a massacre."

NATO, which has backed the rebels with a bombing campaign, said the transition of power in Libya must be peaceful.

After a six-month civil war, the fall of Tripoli came quickly, with a carefully orchestrated uprising launched on Saturday night to coincide with the advance of rebel troops on three fronts. Fighting broke out after the call to prayer from the minarets of the mosques.

Rebel National Transitional Council Coordinator Adel Dabbechi confirmed that Gaddafi's younger son Saif Al-Islam had been captured. His eldest son Mohammed Al-Qaddafi had surrendered to rebel forces, he told Reuters.

Only five months ago Qaddafi's forces were set to crush the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the leader warning in a television address that there would be "no mercy, no pity" for his opponents. His forces, he said, would hunt them down "district to district, street to street, house to house, room to room."

The United Nations then acted quickly, clearing the way for creation of a no-fly zone that NATO, with a campaign of bombing, used ultimately to help drive back Qaddafi's forces.

"It's over. Qaddafi's finished," said Saad Djebbar, former legal adviser to Libyan government.

Al Jazeera television aired images of people celebrating in central Tripoli and tearing down posters of Qaddafi, which had dominated Libyan cities for decades.

In Benghazi in the east, thousands gathered in a city-centre square waving red, black and green opposition flag as news filtered through of rebel advances into Tripoli.

"It's over!" shouted one man as he dashed out of a building, a mobile telephone clutched to his ear. Celebratory gunfire and explosions rang out over the city and cars blaring their horns crowded onto the streets. Overhead, red tracer bullets darted into a black sky.

"It does look like it is coming to an end," said Anthony Skinner, Middle East analyst, Maplecroft. "But there are still plenty of questions. The most important is exactly what Gaddafi does now. Does he flee or can he fight?"

"In the slightly longer term, what happens next? We know there have been some serious divisions between the rebel movement and we don't know yet if they will be able to form a cohesive front to run the country."

Qaddafi, in his second audio broadcast in 24 hours, dismissed the rebels as rats.

"I am giving the order to open the weapons stockpiles," Qaddafi said. "I call on all Libyans to join this fight. Those who are afraid, give your weapons to your mothers or sisters.

"Go out, I am with you until the end. I am in Tripoli. We will ... win."

A Libyan government official told Reuters that 376 people on both sides of the conflict were killed in fighting overnight on Saturday in Tripoli, with about 1,000 others wounded.

A diplomatic source in Paris, where the government has closely backed the rebels, said underground rebel cells in the capital had been following detailed plans drawn up months ago and had been waiting for a signal to act.

That signal was "iftar" -- the moment when Muslims observing the holy months of Ramadan break their daily fast. It was at this moment that imams started broadcasting their message from the mosques, residents said.

[Jeff]

they won't...Gadaffi is going away to a country that will not send him to the Hague

I'm not sure. Events moved so fast today he may not have gotten out.

[seemslikeadream]

they won't...Gadaffi is going away to a country that will not send him to the Hague

I'm not sure. Events moved so fast today he may not have gotten out.

they're sending him the Aristide Special

[seemslikeadream]

Oil prices fall as rebels close in on Libyan capital
Libyan rebels celebrating Fighting between the government and Libyan rebels has affected oil exports from the country

Oil prices have fallen on speculation the conflict in Libya may be coming to an end as rebels entered the capital Tripoli.

Hunt on for Gadhafi as rebels surge into Tripoli; sons seized


By Suliman Ali Zway, Hannah Allam and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers

BENGHAZI, Libya — The long, brutal reign of Col. Moammar Gadhafi appeared to collapse Sunday as rebels swept into Tripoli, captured two of his sons and set off wild street celebrations in a capital that he’d ruled by fear for more than four decades, Libyan officials and NATO said.

With NATO bombings paving the way, rebel forces entered Tripoli with surprising ease and by early Monday controlled large swaths of the city. Gadhafi’s personal guard surrendered to rebel forces, and live television footage showed crowds of opposition fighters in Tripoli unfurling the country’s pre-Gadhafi tricolor flag and smashing the ruler’s portraits in scenes that were unthinkable just days ago.

“This is historic,” Amal Abdelrazk, a 42-year-old resident of downtown Tripoli’s Andalus Street, said by phone. “After 41 years, eight months and 27 days, we witness this moment….

“The whole thing is like a dream.”

As rebels partied in the streets, hailed “as the victors of war,” Abdelrazk said, rebel military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani told McClatchy that his forces were hunting Gadhafi in and around Tripoli. Gadhafi’s whereabouts were unknown, but a U.S. official said, “We have no reason to believe (he) has left the country.”

Late Sunday Gadhafi made a brief audio statement on Libyan TV, sounding desperate as he called on individual tribes and cities to “take weapons” and defend “beautiful Tripoli."

"All the tribes, you must all march to Tripoli in order to defend and purify it,” he said, calling the rebels agents of Western powers. “Otherwise you will have no dignity; You will become slaves and servants in the hands of the imperialists.”

But the mercurial leader was nowhere to be seen, and for many Libyans, the regime’s death blow had come anyway with the rebels’ arrest of Saif al Islam, Gadhafi’s feared and powerful son and onetime heir apparent, who’d vowed after the uprising against his father began earlier this year that the regime would fight its opponents “until the last bullet."

The rebels’ Transitional National Council in the eastern city of Benghazi confirmed Saif al Islam’s arrest. Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told CNN that he’d begin talks with the rebels Monday on transferring him to the custody of the court, which issued a warrant for his arrest in June on charges of crimes against humanity.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement: “The Gadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Gadhafi realizes that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better _ so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.”

President Barack Obama, asked about the situation while he was vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., said, "We're going to wait until we have full confirmation of what has happened... I'll make a statement when I do."

Thousands of Libyans celebrated in Benghazi, cheering and dancing to mark the apparent climax to an uprising that began there more than six months ago. Thunderous rounds of celebratory gunfire echoed as Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of the Transitional National Council, announced Saif al Islam’s capture shortly before midnight.

“Finally, Libya is liberated,” said Ibrahim Shebani, 29, who joined the raucous party near Benghazi’s courthouse. “Stay tuned, world _ you will finally get to meet the real Libyans.”

It marked a stunningly successful final push by rebel forces _ for months described as ragtag and badly organized, and thought to be reeling from the mysterious assassination just weeks ago of their commander, Abdel Fattah Younes, a longtime Gadhafi lieutenant who defected at the start of the uprising. Younes’s death instead appeared to embolden the rebels, who in recent days routed pro-Gadhafi fighters from the strategic town of Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, and surged into the capital Sunday with little trouble.

Bani, the rebel military spokesman, said that rebels from Zawiya were joined by reinforcements of scores of fighters from Misrata and Zlitan, two other rebel-held cities, who landed on a beach in Tajura, on Tripoli’s eastern edge, arrived by boat shortly after noon Sunday.

“It’s over. There is no more Gadhafi, no more secret police, no more blood,” Bani said.

Gadhafi has cut a dramatic, erratic and eccentric figure across the world stage for the past half century.

To the West he ran an outlaw regime that funded revolutionary groups, from the Irish Republican Army to the Black Panthers. He was said to be behind terrorist attacks across Europe _ the most notorious being the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet that crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 others on the ground.

A former Libyan foreign minister who defected earlier this year has said that the Gadhafi regime was behind the explosion.

His speeches before the United the Nations became tortuously long harangues. He often dressed in sumptuous traditional garb and traveled with a retinue of armed female bodyguards and a huge Bedouin tent

The son of Bedouins himself, born in a tent, Gadhafi chose a far different course, receiving a university education and attending the Libyan Military Academy. There he some fellow disgruntled officers hatched a plot to overthrow Libya’s monarchy, which they did on Sept. 1, 1969, when he was 27.

The United States had long ago cut ties with his regime, but a rapprochement began under President George W. Bush, who sought Gadhafi’s cooperation against terrorism. He renounced support for terror groups and have up his nuclear weapons ambitions, and was widely believed to be grooming British-educated Saif al Islam to succeed him when the Arab Spring protests blossomed this year _ and began the downfall of his regime.

Gadhafi’s most die-hard supporters tried to remain defiant. His chief spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, visibly rattled and sweating profusely, warned a news conference in Tripoli that Libya would be plunged into civil war as tribes and towns loyal to the regime struck back at rebels. Online anti-Gadhafi activists described it as his “last appearance.”

“We have thousands and thousands of fighters who have nowhere to go but to fight,” Ibrahim warned.

He said the rebels couldn’t be trusted because “they killed their own commander and they are penetrated by al Qaida extremists.” He said the advancing rebels had left a trail of burned houses and looted shops as they entered Tripoli.

But Abdelrazk, the Tripoli resident, reported a different perspective. Prisons were open and Libyan political detainees were being freed, she said. By late Sunday night, state TV had ceased official programming and was playing patriotic songs.

[Luther Blissett]

The danse of the imperial 2011-style photoshopped Gaddafi death photos are already beginning (graphic warning): http://i.imgur.com/lRLus.png

[Sweejak]

Mahdi Nazemroaya from Tripoli early 22 August
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMdArruZjA