Naked Aggression: ‘Libya assault planned months ahead’

(H/T Empire Strikes Black)

Middle East & Africa News and Disinfo

(If there are professional photographers set up to take pictures of crashing “rebel” planes, why are there no photos of Gadhafi troops advancing on rebel positions? Good question, huh?)

Look Over There! Look Over There! Nothing to See Here… Look OVER THERE!!!

by Scott Creighton

While most of the MSM focuses entirely on Japan or the drifting fallout, winds of CHANGE are blowing through the Obama administration who are definitely taking advantage of the distraction. The president has chosen this particular moment in time to take up the question of gun control in the wake of the shooting in Arizona which took place more than 2 months ago. Hillary Clinton has once again been pushing for the establishment of a no-fly zone and military intervention in Libya in a G-8 Summit meeting in Paris but several other leaders don’t seem to want to help her and her CIA linked MI-6 “diplomats” overthrow the Gadhafi regime.  You will never see a better equipped and more violent group of “pro-democracy demonstrators” in the entire Middle Eastern uprising.  The Obama administration played down the violence against the protesters in Egypt and Tunisia and even called for the corrupt regimes there to remain while “modifications” to their rule were slowly worked out.  Those protesters had no heavy truck-mounted weapons, no MI-6 “advisers”, and no offer from Israeli security companies to fund “separation forces”.

Isn’t it funny how the “progressive” Obama regime is in the same camp on this one that John McCain and “Fightin” Joe LIEberman are in calling for an all out invasion of Libya to remove Gadhafi? Of course, Obama’s been in the same camp as those two neocon fraudsters for years.

Yet while the Obama administration works hard to unseat Gadhafi because his forces are fighting back against the heavily armed insurgents in Libya, the peaceful protesters in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are being slaughtered without so much as a peep coming from our Peace Prize “winning” president.

In Yemen the pro-western dictator of 30 years, President Saleh, is using poison gas and live rounds on his unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators to keep his hold on power. Hunt oil has a big pipeline deal in Yemen and lots of natural gas to steal from those poor people. The poisoned gas he is using is reported to have come from the U.S. and Britain.  But not a word from Obama the peace-maker.

Saudi police open fire during protest

by Sarah El Deeb, Washington Post

Saudi police opened fire Thursday to disperse a protest in the section where minority Shiites live, leaving at least one man injured, as the government toughened its efforts to prevent a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world from reaching the kingdom.

The rare violence raised concern about a crackdown ahead of planned protests after Friday prayers in different cities throughout the oil-rich kingdom. Violence there could reverberate through the world’s markets because of the importance of Saudi oil exports.

[read the rest, here]

The Fake Color Revolution is Back in Iran – Globalist Destabilization Efforts Under Cover of Egypt’s Real Revolution

by Scott Creighton

In every crisis, real or manufactured, there is… opportunity.

Contrary to Julian Assange’s assessment, the current wave of pro-democracy movements in the Middle East (recently called a “virus” by John McCain) was not created by the CIA honeypot called Wikileaks. Nor, as the one-time Lyndon LaRouche follower Webster Tarpley has put it, was it all a CIA destabilization plan. There are causes that track back to the United States, English banks, and Wall Street which mainly deal with accelerating food prices due to rampant speculation, a global wave of unemployment due to a planned demolition of the global economy, and the despotic dictatorial rule by U.S. and British friendly puppet regimes, so yes, you can trace the roots of these outbreaks back to the global interests the CIA serves.

But these uprisings are mainly in countries that already serve our “national interests” ie our banks and multi-national corporations and many of them are critically important to ongoing venture capital programs like Egypt (Suez Canal) and Yemen (Hunt Oil Pipeline) for starters.

So why lite those fires when the outcome is uncertain at best?

C.I.A. destabilization plans are used in countries that are not already friendly to our interests (see above) such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and of course… Iran.  The differences between the real revolutions and the fake ones are very important. We cannot forget.

… the struggle against power “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Milan Kundera

Rachid Ghannouchi returns to Tunisia after exile

Global Post

Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia Sunday after 22 years in exile as the country works to establish a new government after the ousting of the president weeks ago.

… President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali jailed or exiled thousands of Islamists during the past two decades. He exiled Ghannouchi in 1989, a time when Islamists were considered the nation’s strongest opposition force.

[read the rest, here]

Tunisia PM vows to quit after polls

(Ghannouchi tried to take over the presidency after Ben Ali was driven from office by the outbreak of major protests across Tunisia. When that didn’t pan out, he set to work filling cabinet positions with pro-IMF and pro-western allies of the former president. But the protests have been continuing and now he has to promise to step aside after the U.S. and other interests rig the next election to ensure yet another neoliberal puppet regime keeps control of the country.)

from Al Jazeera

Mohamed Ghannouchi, the Tunisian prime minister, has pledged to quit politics after elections that he says will be held as soon as possible, amid protests by citizens still angry at officials linked to their deposed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime.

Ghannouchi said in an interview on Tunisian television on Friday he will leave power after a transition phase leading to legislative and presidential elections “in the shortest possible timeframe.”

Protesters have been demanding for days the departure of all remnants of the old guard under ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Ghannouchi was an ally of Ben Ali and has been struggling to restore calm under a new multiparty government.

[read the rest, here]

Tunisia and the IMF’s Diktats: How Macro-Economic Policy Triggers Worldwide Poverty and Unemployment

(The Ben Ali government had imposed the neoliberal IMF/World Bank reforms on the people of Tunisia and he was steadily losing popularity. Tunisia was also a partner in the GWOT.  Too many writers out there are repeating the economic figures from the World Bank in order to argue that Tunisia was some kind of utopia for its people. Those numbers are bullshit, just like the economic numbers here are bullshit.  I even read one dissident recount the words of Christopher Hitchens when describing conditions in Tunisia (look up Hitchens’ views on the Iraq invasion for a clue there) and I just heard Jack Blood quoting economic numbers from Vanity Fair of all things. Ben Ali was an IMF tool whom they decided needed to be replaced, but replaced with another IMF tool. That is why the people of Tunisia are STILL protesting and rioting.  The people there were tired of living under these conditions.)

by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

General Zine el Abidine Ben Ali , the defunct and deposed president of Tunisia is heralded by the Western media, in chorus, as a dictator.

The Tunisian protest movement is casually described as the consequence of an undemocratic and authoritarian regime, which defies the norms of the “international community”.

But Ben Ali was not a “dictator”. Dictators decide and dictate. Ben Ali was a servant of Western economic interests, a faithful political puppet who obeyed orders, with the active support of the international community.

Foreign interference in Tunisia’s domestic affairs is not mentioned in the media reports. The food price hikes were not “dictated” by the Ben Ali government. They were imposed by Wall Street and the IMF. 

Dictatorship and Neo-Liberalism: The Tunisian People’s Uprising

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research

The Tunisian people’s uprising is in part an answer against the vicious  police state in Tunisia run by the dictator Zine Al-Abidine Bin Ali. In part, the Tunisian uprising is also an answer to the hideous neo-liberal model of economic development that was imposed by Bin Ali in Tunisia. In this regard, the U.S. and the E.U. were the primary benefactors of the harsh economic measures imposed in Tunisia by Bin Ali.

Up until 2011, Tunisia has consistently been paraded and touted as an ideal state and as a model of success and development by the U.S., the E.U., the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, amongst others. Never once have the human right violations, the murders, and the repression in Tunisia been criticized by any of these bodies or their officials.

Up until after Bin Ali fled (January 14, 2010), the mainstream media in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and the Arab World have mentioned nothing about the brutal repression in Tunisia. Inversely, the mainstream media has white-washed most of the Bin Ali  regime’s crimes and instead talked about Tunisia as a success story.

[read the rest, here]

Arab Activism: Brought to you by a White Man

from Uhuh-she-said Blog

According to Elizabeth Dickinson over at Foreign Policy and referenced as one of the top stories on the Huffington Post, one Julian Assange practically ousted the President of Tunisia himself. Oh sure, there was that whole self-immolation thing that started it. There are the myriad of fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, husbands and mothers risking, and loosing, their lives for a change in government. But we can’t bask in the revolution of a Muslim Arab nation for too long. No. Better to credit that white guy.

[read the rest, here]

Assange Apologists Credit Wikileaks for Tunisian Revolution

by Scott Creighton

“Tunisia’s government has collapsed, partially due to food price inflation and unemployment, but also because of WikiLeaks.” Business Week / Information Clearinghouse

“Rather, WikiLeaks acted as a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for political outcry. Which is probably the best compliment one could give the whistle-blower site.”   Foreign Policy

“The truth is: this is a major, er, coup for Wikileaks and the transparency it promotes – especially against tyrants like Ben Ali.”  Andrew Sullivan

Unless you’re a blatant sycophant just looking for something to praise Assange for these days, you are not going to come to the conclusion that this is a coup “for Wikileaks” and it most certainly was not “triggered” by Wikileaks either.  That is, you won’t come to these conclusions unless all you read are the writings of these types of sycophantic Assange-worshipping opportunists.

These riots and this revolution were caused by crony capitalism and the neoliberalization of Tunisia at the direct expense of the vast majority of her people.

Mass unemployment and recent food shortages set in motion a tide that was not to be reversed. Tunisia was a tinder-dry field just waiting for a spark and no matter how many Assange zealots try to tell you otherwise, it wasn’t Wikileaks that set it off.