Obama’s war on Libya, What we did to them and how it is working out.

Libya Braces for Unrest on Anniversary of Qaddafi Revolt

By Brigitte Scheffer & Christopher Stephen - Feb 14, 2013 5:01 PM ET BLOOMBERG

Long lines of foreigners massed over the past couple of weeks at Tripoli International Airport looking to secure a flight out. Across town, Libya’s parliament meets in a tent.

As Libya gears up for the second anniversary of the revolution that ousted Muammar Qaddafi, the euphoria from his toppling and death after more than 40 years has given way to violence and political gridlock.

“Most people have taken the sensible decision, foreigners in particular, not to be around, it could be a celebration or a civil war,” said John Hamilton, of Cross Border Information, a U.K.-based consultancy. “It’s hard to imagine any politician from any country being able to tackle these challenges.”

The test may come today, when protests are expected in Benghazi, the birthplace of the uprising, raising the possibility of violence. Official commemorations are on Feb. 17.

The protests, in part, are against the militias and Islamists who are blamed for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, dead. The Islamists argue the protests are an attempt by pro-Qaddafi elements to undermine the revolution, said Firas Abi Ali, head of Middle East and North Africa Forecasting with Exclusive Analysis, a political risk consultancy.

“If fighting leads to tens or hundreds of casualties, there would be a severe risk that rival militias would attempt to seize key government buildings and infrastructure, including refineries, state energy firms’ offices and airports,” he said in an e-mailed note.

Security Boosted

The authorities have boosted security and temporarily shuttered the land borders with Egypt and Tunisia before the anniversary. Officials said 1,400 roadblocks are being set up by government security forces and allied militias.

While Prime Minister Ali Zaidan appealed last week for calm, the call has not impressed Libyans like 22-year-old Hani Al Aswad, who says the government, like its post-Qaddafi predecessor, has done nothing.

“We were all expecting so much, for it to be better, and there’s nothing,” the unemployed 22-year-old said in a recent interview in Tripoli. “Nobody gets a job, and look, there is rubbish everywhere.”

Unlike other nations that saw leaders ousted in the Arab Spring uprisings, Libya has no external financing needs because of its oil wealth. The country’s gross domestic product, which contracted 60 percent in 2011, is expected to grow by 17 percent in 2013 and average 7 percent for the period between 2014 and 2017, assuming an improvement in the domestic security situation, the International Monetary Fund said in November.

Islamist Militias

Zaidan, who assumed his post on Oct. 31, inherited a nation saddled with a dilapidated infrastructure, few functioning state institutions and an upsurge in Islamist militia activity. In addition, there are regional grievances, including unresolved demands for local autonomy in the east and south.

A declaration issued earlier this month by several political parties in Benghazi blamed the government for “leading the country into an abyss of extremism and anarchy.” Other groups and militias billed today as a “Day of Rage,” and are calling for protests.

Such warnings may have helped prompt a temporary suspension in flights to the country by Germany’s Lufthansa and Austrian Airways. Last month, the British Embassy advised its citizens to evacuate Benghazi -- a warning that came two weeks after the Italian consul-general’s car was shot at.

‘Significant Deterrents’

Attacks on foreign diplomats and the “enduring security concerns remain significant deterrents to foreign investment,” Torbjorn Soltvedt, senior analyst at U.K. risk consultancy Maplecroft, said in e-mailed comments.

Libya and the nations that supported the uprising against Qaddafi met on Feb. 12 in Paris, with the focus on border security. The issue gained importance after the widened conflict in Mali and the fatal attack by militants on an Algerian natural gas facility last month that left 38 foreigners dead. Algerian authorities say the attackers crossed through Libya as they made their way into the country.

The attack signaled increased risk for international oil company executives in Libya, many of whom work in desolate desert regions where security has been organized by the Libyan military and a new Oil Ministry security force.

Reviving investor confidence in Libya has also been made harder by a still-incomplete legal reform.

“To be fair, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said John Brooke, an attorney with international law firm Clyde and Co, referring to a review of contracts by the government signed during the Qaddafi era. “The government is being sensibly cautious, but it’s reaching a stage where sensible caution is starting to look indecisive.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Brigitte Scheffer in Tripoli at bscheffer@bloomberg.net; Christopher Stephen in Tripoli at cstephen9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

WHAT DID RON  PAUL PREDICT?

What did Barack Obama say at the time?

The Art of Being Free

TUESDAY, FEB 12, 2013 08:29 AM EST

What does a police state look like?

Violence, arrests of Occupy protesters and stop-and-frisk. Plus: A worshipful media

BY DAVID SIROTA

What does a police state really look like in practice in America? Is it the cartoonish dystopia of sci-fi books? Is it like 1998′s “The Siege,” which predicted a wholesale instatement of martial law? Or in the age of the drone-wielding police department, is it something more mundane and subtle yet nonetheless pernicious? From this city in the middle of Middle America, it looks like the latter.

When people think of Denver, many think of skiing and, since the last election, marijuana. But from here in the Mile High City, things seem a bit different. In the day to day operation of the city, we aren’t as much defined by snow and pot as we are by the fact that we live under the rule of an increasingly brutal police force. It is a police force that our political leaders are more than happy to deploy to punish undesirables, and worse, that the most powerful media organ is more than happy to defend.

We have become, in short, a national cautionary tale — one that no doubt epitomizes similar trends throughout the country.

This sad situation has been long in the making. Over the last decade, while then-Mayor John Hickenlooper was gaining national plaudits for his geek-scientist charm, he was overseeing a police department that has become so violent toward citizens, that the U.S. Department of Justice is now considering a formal civil rights investigation. In all, a Cato Institute study shows that in terms of official misconduct, Denver’s police force is the sixth worst in the entire country.

The highest-profile incidents tell the bigger story.

For instance, after the 2008 Democratic convention, Hickenlooper’s administration was forced to settle a lawsuit showing evidence that he ordered his police force to engage in “indiscriminate arrests.”

In 2011, new Mayor Michael Hancock joined with now-Gov. Hickenlooper to become the first government officials to sic riot-gear-clad police on peaceful Occupy Denver protesters, thus turning the state Capitol grounds into the visual definition of the term “police state.” The episode included firing tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed citizens.

As a follow-up, rather than initiating a formal investigation into the police, the Denver City Council then passed an ordinance empowering police to arrest homeless people, effectively criminalizing poverty in the middle of a recession and foreclosure crisis. Meanwhile, as the police department continues to reinstate officers who have been caught brutally beating citizens, the department’s independent oversight office is so flooded with brutality charges that it cannot even process them all.

Considering this, you might think that the state’s largest newspaper, the Denver Post, would be sounding the alarm. But quite the opposite has happened: It has used its monopoly power to cheer on the police state.

That’s not entirely surprising, of course. The paper is owned by archconservative Dean Singleton who, as I showed in a recent Harper’s magazine report, is a 21st century caricature of Citizen Kane. In recent years, his editorial page has been so over the top in its vilification of his political enemies that an outsider couldn’t be faulted for assuming the paper is an Onion-esque satire.

For instance, there was the infamous front-page editorial vilifying then-Gov. Bill Ritter as Jimmy Hoffa for merely allowing public employees to unionize. There was the editorial insisting that the criminalization of homelessness was designed to help the homeless. And there were the constant attacks on the Occupy movement culminating in one editorial praising police for forcibly crushing the protest and then another telling those who want to protest government policy to simply “go home.”

This weekend, however, was perhaps the shining example of what the propaganda of a police state really looks like. Next to a hysterical screed railing on a state proposal to guarantee firefighters’ workplace rights, the Post published an editorial opposing legislation to prevent municipal police departments from using armed drones. That’s right, in response to an initiative that would prevent “police from outfitting drones with devices such as Tasers and teargas,” the newspaper of record in a city already plagued by police violence says such an idea is “a step too far.”

If you don’t live in Denver but this nonetheless all sounds familiar, that’s not surprising. As the recession has caused more social foment across the country, and as media has consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer status-quo-loving plutocrats, the collective response from the power establishment has been authoritarian in nature. We see it in New York City, where surveillance and stop-and-frisk tactics are running rampant — and yet where billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg is regularly portrayed in the media as a great “freedom mayor,” thanks, in part, to the fact that reporters fear he will be their boss one day. And we see it in other cities where police are trying to prevent citizens from even documenting acts of police brutality.

Taken together, whether in Denver or anywhere else, the trend is clear. “Police state” is no longer a hyperbolic term, nor should it imply some fictional fantasy world. It is already here, and it operates in an insipid way whereby its worst atrocities are deftly normalized by power-crazed politicians and power-worshiping media outlets. In that, it is less “1984″ than “Brave New World” — less blatantly horrific than subtly pernicious. Either way, though, the result is the same: a police state that turns the word “liberty” into a meaningless political slogan, and not much more.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website

Decisions Decisions

"When Obama kills without due process, he disobeys the laws he has sworn to uphold, no matter who agrees with him. When we talk about killing as if it were golf, we debase ourselves. And when the government kills and we put our heads in the sand, woe to us when there is no place to hide.”

OBAMAS SECRET COURT FOR KILLING

by Judge Andrew Napolitano -TENTH AMENDMENT

President Obama willingly admits he dispatched CIA agents to kill an American and his teenage son and the son’s American friend while they were in a desert in Yemen in 2011. He says he did so because the adult had encouraged folks to wage war on the United States and the children were just “collateral damage.” He says further that he’ll do this again when he is convinced that killing Americans will keep America safe. He says he knows the adult encouraged evil, and his encouragement caused the deaths of innocents. The adult was never charged with a crime or indicted by a grand jury; he was just targeted for death by the president himself and executed by a CIA drone.

International law and the law of war, to both of which the U.S. is bound by treaty, as well as federal law and the Judeo-Christian values that underlie the Declaration of Independence (which guarantees the right to live) and the Constitution (which permits governmental interference with that right only after a congressional declaration of war or individual due process) all provide that the certainty of the identity of a human target, the sincerity of the wish for his death, the perception of his guilt and imminent danger are insufficient to justify the government’s use of lethal force against him. The president may only lawfully kill after due process, in self-defense or under a declaration of war.

The reasons for the constitutional requirement of a congressional declaration of war are to provide a check on the president’s lust for war by forcing him to obtain formal congressional approval, to isolate and identify the object of war so the president cannot kill whomever he pleases, to confine the warfare to the places where the object’s military forces are located so the president cannot invade wherever he wishes, and to assure termination of the hostilities when the object of the war surrenders so the president cannot wage war without end.

But when war is waged, only belligerents may be targeted, and advocating violence against the U.S. is not an act of wartime violence and does not make one a belligerent. Were this not so, then nothing would lawfully prevent the U.S. from killing Americans who spoke out in favor of al-Qaida, and then killing Americans who spoke out against war and killing, and then killing Americans whose words became an obstacle to killing.

That’s the reason the enabling federal legislation enacted in support of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force specifically exempts expressive conduct from the ambit of prohibited criminal or warlike behavior that can provide the basis for any government prosecution or military belligerence. So, the feds can shoot at a guy with a bomb in his hands when he is about to explode it, but not at a guy with a megaphone in his hands when he is about to speak through it.

Thus, if New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki had been shooting at American troops at the time the government took aim at him, naturally, the troops can shoot back. But when he merely encourages others to shoot, his behavior is protected by the natural law, the First Amendment and numerous federal statutes. As well, he was 10,000 miles from the U.S., never known to have engaged in violent acts, and having a private conversation at a roadside cafe in a desert when he was killed. No law or legal principle justifies the U.S. government killing him then and there; in fact, numerous laws prohibit it.

The president’s use of the CIA for offensive killing also violates federal law. Intelligence agents may only lawfully kill in self-defense, not offensively. Only the military may lawfully kill offensively. In the al-Awlaki case, intelligence sources have confirmed to Fox News that a team of American and Yemeni intelligence agents had followed al-Awlaki and had him under continuous observation at the time of his killing and for the preceding 48 hours. They easily could have arrested him – had he been charged with a civilian crime or a war crime, which he wasn’t.

Of course, the murder of his Colorado-born son and the son’s American friend are not even arguably defensible, and the president’s spokesman who suggested that the young al-Awlaki should have “chosen a different father” shows a seriously defective thought process and an utter antipathy for the rule of law in places of power.

We now confront the truly unthinkable: a proposal to establish yet another secret court, this one with the authority to authorize the president and his designees to kill Americans. This proposal has come from Congress, which seems more interested in getting in on the killing than in upholding the Constitution. The federal government only has the lawful powers the states delegated to it. As the states cannot kill Americans without due process, neither can the feds. Congress cannot create this killing court, and no judge on such a Stalinesque court can authorize the president to kill.

The president has made a political calculation that it will be easier for him to justify killing folks he can demonize than it will be to afford them due process, by capturing, housing and trying them. Now, he has come to believe that it will be easier still if unnamed federal judges meeting in secret take the heat. Politically, the president may be correct. But he has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and he lacks the moral and legal basis to reject that in favor of killing.

When he kills without due process, he disobeys the laws he has sworn to uphold, no matter who agrees with him. When we talk about killing as if it were golf, we debase ourselves. And when the government kills and we put our heads in the sand, woe to us when there is no place to hide.

IT IS CLASSIFIED. TRUST US:

Dramatic CCTV: Meteorite blast wave blows out doors, windows in Russia

This poor bastard thought it was an ICBM!





From the Independent

A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 400 people, many of them hurt by broken glass.

"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were OK," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region. 

"We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone. 

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement. 

Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said more than 400 people had sought medical treatment after the blasts, and at least three had been hospitalized in serious condition. Many of the injuries were from glass broken by the explosions. 

Kolsenikov also said about 600 square meters (6000 square feet) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed. 

Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteor. 

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash. 

Russian news reports noted that the meteor hit less than a day before the asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid - about 17,150 miles (28,000 kilometers). There was no immediate demonstrable connection. 

Small pieces of space debris — usually parts of comets or asteroids — that are on a collision course with the Earth are called meteoroids. When meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere they are called meteors. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere, but if they survive the frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are called meteorites.

"Obama’s legacy may be in the process of being forged. We might call it Shadow War Forever – coupled with the noxious permanence of Guantanamo. The Pentagon for its part will never abandon its “full spectrum” dream of military hegemony, ideally controlling the future of the world in all those shades of grey zones between Russia and China, the lands of Islam and India, and Africa and Asia.”

Obama and the Illusory State of the Empire

By Pepe Escobar

Global Research, February 13, 2013

Asia Times

Double O’s legacy

Obama’s legacy may be in the process of being forged. We might call it Shadow War Forever – coupled with the noxious permanence of Guantanamo. The Pentagon for its part will never abandon its “full spectrum” dream of military hegemony, ideally controlling the future of the world in all those shades of grey zones between Russia and China, the lands of Islam and India, and Africa and Asia.

Were lessons learned? Of course not. Double O Bama may have hardly read Nick Turse’s exceptional book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, where he painstakingly documents how the Pentagon produced “a veritable system of suffering”. Similar analysis of the long war on Iraq might only be published by 2040.

Obama can afford to be self-confident because the Drone Empire is safe. [1] Most Americans seem to absent-mindedly endorse it – as long as “the terrorists” are alien, not US citizens. And in the minor netherworlds of the global war on terror (GWOT), myriad profiteers gleefully dwell.

A former Navy SEAL and a former Green Beret have published a book this week, Benghazi: the Definitive Report, where they actually admit Benghazi was blowback for the shadow war conducted by John Brennan, later rewarded by Obama as the new head of the CIA.

The book claims that Petraeus was done in by an internal CIA coup, with senior officers forcing the FBI to launch an investigation of his affair with foxy biographer Paula Broadwell. The motive: these CIA insiders were furious because Petraeus turned the agency into a paramilitary force. Yet that’s exactly what Brennan will keep on doing: Drone Empire, shadow wars, kill list, it’s all there. Petraeus-Brennan is also classic continuum.

Then there’s Esquire milking for all it’s worth the story of an anonymous former SEAL Team 6 member, the man who shot Geronimo, aka Osama bin Laden. [2] This is familiar territory, the hagiography of a Great American Killer, whose “three shots changed history”, now abandoned by a couldn’t-care-less government machinery but certainly not by those who can get profitable kicks from his saga way beyond the technically proficient torture-enabling flick – and Oscar contender – Zero Dark Thirty.

Meanwhile, this is what’s happening in the real world. China has surpassed the US and is now the biggest trading nation in the world – and counting. [3] This is just the first step towards the establishment of the yuan as a globally traded currency; then will come the yuan as the new global reserve currency, connected to the end of the primacy of the petrodollar… Well, we all know the drill.

So that would lead us to reflect on the real political role of the US in the Obama era. Defeated (by Iraqi nationalism) – and in retreat – in Iraq. Defeated (by Pashtun nationalism) – and in retreat – in Afghanistan. Forever cozy with the medieval House of Saud – “secret” drone bases included (something that was widely known as early as July 2011). [4] “Pivoting” to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and pivoting to a whole bunch of African latitudes; all that to try to “contain” China.

Thus the question Obama would never dare to ask in a SOTU address (much less in a SOTE – State of the Empire – address). Does the US remain a global imperial power? Or are the Pentagon’s – and the shadow CIA’s – armies nothing more than mercenaries of a global neoliberal system the US still entertains the illusion of controlling?

Entire article

I was not masochistic enough to endure Obama’s and The US Congressional Jackass Show. Here is Rand Paul’s State of the Union:

Feb. 12, 2:05 a.m. — The Korean Central News Agency reports that North Korea succeeded in its third underground nuclear test. “The test was carried out as part of practical measures of counteraction to defend the country’s security and sovereignty in the face of the ferocious hostile act of the U.S. which wantonly violated the DPRK’s legitimate right to launch satellite for peaceful purposes.”

North Korea confirms 'successful' nuclear test

North Korea has confirmed that it has carried out its third nuclear test, after international monitors detected seismic activity close to the nation's nuclear test site

TELEGRAPH

The North Korean regime said it had "successfully" detonated a miniaturised nuclear device with "greater explosive force" in an underground test.

"A third nuclear test has been successfully staged," the state-run Korean Central News agency said.

"The nuclear test was conducted as part of measures to protect our national security and sovereignty against the reckless hostility of the United States that violated our republic's right for a peaceful satellite launch," KCNA said.

The confirmation came after monitors in Seoul, Japan and the US detected an "artificial quake" at 11:57am Korean time (02:57 GMT).

The South Korean Yonhap news agency said it measured 5.1 in magnitude and was located in Kilju county, where the Punggye-ri test site is located.

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The US Geological Survey measured it as a 4.9-magnitude quake at a very shallow depth of just 0.6 miles.

South Korea raised its military alert level after reports of a quake and the presidential office said that it was "likely" to be a nuclear test, according to Yonhap. Shortly later, a UN Security Council diplomat confirmed it was a nuclear test.

"We've been informed by the South Koreans that there's been a (North Korean) nuclear test," a UN Security Council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

North Korea is not prone to seismic activity. It conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

The reclusive and isolated state is banned under United Nations Security Council resolutions from developing nuclear and missile technology.

Confirmation of the test throws down a stark security and diplomatic challenge to US President Barack Obama at the start of his second term, and to regional neighbours China, Japan and South Korea, all of which have new or incoming leaders.

The UN Security Council has convened an emergency meeting to discuss the test later today.

The first priority for the international community will be determining the precise nature and yield of any test and what it reveals about the technical level of the North's nuclear weapons programme.

The United States and its allies have been on edge since North Korea said last month it will conduct its third nuclear test to protest against toughened sanctions over a December rocket launch that the UN called a cover for a banned missile test.

North Korea's powerful National Defence Commission said Jan. 23 that the United States was its prime target for a nuclear test and long-range rocket launches. North Korea accuses Washington of leading the push to punish Pyongyang for its December rocket launch.

Last October, a spokesman from the commission told state media that the country had built a missile capable of striking the United States, but did not provide further details. A missile featured in an April 2012 military parade appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, but its authenticity has not been verified by foreign experts.