Libya Mostly Illiterate? No Way - It's All About OIL

Also check out this graph of the oil situation in Libya.

Notice that most of the oil before the invasion has gone to Italy's ENI. Notice the US's Conoco Philips, Marathon, Hess and Occidental waiting in the wings. In short:

Libyan Reserves: 44 billion (at $100/barrel, that is $4.4 TRILLION)
Total Libyan Production: 1.8 million barrels/day
Total Estimated Exports: 1.5 million barrels/day

Destination, in 1000s of barrels per day, before the invasion:

Europe:

Italy - ENI: 244
BASE: 100
Total: 55
Respol: 45
OMV: 33
Statoil: 45

USA:

Conoco Phlips: 45
Marathon: 46
Hess: 22
Occidental: 11

It will be interesting to see how this is going to change. From this article, the king overthrown by Muammar Ghadaffi: "was generally considered a puppet of British and American oil companies." And at least some of the opposition are monarchists.

Libya’s Tangled Opposition – Youth, Tribes, Monarchists, Regime Castoffs and Oil
March 1, 2011 by peterrfay

Will the uprising in Libya be “just like” Egypt and Tunisia? That is, popular youth uprisings with strong (perhaps critical) backing of the labor movement? Wide-scale opposition to a brutal regime backed only by a crust of the military?

This seems unlikely as Libya is a nation not at all like Egypt, nor Tunisia. Muslim, yes, but very diverse with myriad competing tribes, ethnicities, and dialects – each played against each other by every ruler since the nation was formed. Perhaps Libya is more like Iraq in its ethnic regions or like Yemen in its tribes than like Egypt or Tunisia. In no way is it a united modern nation-state. And therefore both the opposition to, and supporters of, Gaddafi take on a mottled, complex hue. Not surprisingly, these complexities could even push the uprising into a trajectory wholly different than the others – even into an internecine and degenerative one.

A thousand years of history weigh on Libya today. One-hundred forty tribes stretch across three formerly separate kingdoms of what is now Libya. First controlled separately by the Ottoman empire, the three were merged into a state by Italian colonialists only in the 1950s. For over a millenium, the three kingdoms, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan, were separated by desert and had little in common. The ethnic divides were between Arabs, Arab-Berbers, Berbers and Tuareg cultures and their many tribes. When finally merged into modern Libya, the Cyrenaica kingdom, the eastern-most region led by King Idris, won control, leaving the other regions in the cold. He instituted the neocolonial Kingdom of Libya in the 1950s, to the advantage of Cyrenaican tribes – the Zuwayya and others, which are today revolting.

Perhaps this could explain some of the strange images arising from the current ‘democratic’ revolt:

    “Opposition demonstrators to Colonel Gadaffi used the old tricolour flag of the monarchy and some carried portraits of the king.”

    Libyan protester

King Idris, who was overthrown by Qaddafi in 1969, had banned all political parties, signed 20-year leases for American and British military bases, constantly reshuffled administrative regions to destabilize tribal challenges, and was generally considered a puppet of British and American oil companies.

The Free Officers Movement in 1969, of course, overthrew not only the King, but the control of Libya by the Cyrenaican tribes in the east of the country. Qaddafi rose to leadership, replacing previous tribes with his own small Gadhadhfa tribe from central Libya, and the larger Warfalla and Maqariha tribes, originally from the southwest. These three tribes have held key positions in Qaddafi’s armed forces, police and intelligence services.

However, as is common in tribal societies, allegiances come and go. Qaddafi, like King Idris before him, tried to rule by supporting, then undercutting various tribes over time. Leaders of an attempted coup by members of the 1-million-member Warfalah tribe was purged by Qaddafi in 1996, and the tribe denounced him. When the revolt broke out this year, the head of the Warfalah defected to the opposition, leaving only Qaddafi’s tribe and the Maqariha tribe (which dominates Fezzan and some parts of Tripolitania) supporting the government. The areas dominated by these tribes are currently steadfastly supporting Qaddafi, including the city of Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace. Sirte has repeatedly stopped today’s rebel forces attempting to pass it on their march from Cyrenaica to Tripoli.

Again, there is no love lost between feuding tribes in Libya:  today’s rebel leader Colonel Tarek Saad Hussein from Cyrenaica said he would “finish” the people of Sirte (mostly the Gadhadhfa tribe) if they opposed the rebels:

    “I want to deliver a message to the people of Sirte: You are with us or against us. Because when we move to Tripoli, you either join us, or we will finish you.”

Is today’s battle for national liberation or for tribal domination?  Both are in evidence, but only one can succeed.

    “[The domination by the tribes] led some to worry that the seizure of the eastern third of Libya last week would lead to the creation of a secessionist state with Benghazi as its capital. This wouldn’t be surprising: Until the 1930s, the three major Libyan provinces of Tripolitania in the northwest, Fezzan in the southwest and Cyrenaica in the east were independent kingdoms, and Cyrenaica has always had a distinct culture and politics.

But is there no homogeneous democratic opposition to Qaddafi?  While there may be some strong unifying currents, there are still widely differing motivations for opposing Qaddafi.

Firstly, there are many unemployed and disaffected workers and youth who have seen none of the benefits from the newly privatized oil wealth or billions of foreign investment. ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, holds a 16.3 percent interest in the Waha concessions; Marathon Group has a 16 percent in operations in the Sirte Basin; the list goes on… Hess, Occidental, BP, Shell, Standard Chartered.  But vast sections of the working class, especially youth, have been shut out and have watched others enrich themselves.

Libyan investments

But there are other motives:  the families of Islamists sympathizers, 1200 of whom were massacred by Qaddafi’s men in a prison riot in 1996.  There are thousands of Libyan army officers, who after two decades of defunding by Qaddafi, quickly jumped ship to the opposition, hoping for a better future.  There are leaders of former coup attempts.  There is Libyan opposition leader Ibrahim Sahad of the CIA-funded National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) who gives interviews in front of the White House in Washington D.C. There are over a million foreign workers (one-sixth of the population) from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan who have no allegiance to Qaddafi.  There are even those who want to restore the Monarchy.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there are simply tribes who wish to return historical control to Cyrenaica, as describe by one Libyan:

    “When Qaddafi overthrew the King he essentially was taking away power from the tribes in Cyrenaica and placing the power with his tribes in Tripolitania.

    “What’s going on today is that those tribes and and indigenous Berbers located in the Eastern half of Libya known as Cyrenaica have decided to take back what is rightfully theirs and what Gaddafi and the tribes backing him have stolen from them.  These are no ‘protesters’ but Libyans belonging to oppressed classes and tribes that are willing to fight to return back to the seat of power of the country that was once theirs. This is why Gaddafi is fighting so strongly. He doesn’t consider them part of ‘His’ Libya and is frightened at Cyrenians gaining control of the country.”

The battle cry of “Freedom for Libya” may mean one thing to a Zuwayyan from Benghazi but the opposite to a Gadhadhfan from Sirte.

The 1969 Young Officers Movement’s vision of a “united socialist society”, of “free brothers” along the egalitarian model of Egypt’s Nasser was abandoned. The “path of freedom, unity, and social justice, guaranteeing the right of equality to its citizens, and opening before them the doors of honorable work” devolved into medieval tribalism over forty years. Perhaps nothing changes until tribalism is washed away by a new unity of one national working class in Libya.  This is a lesson that could be well-taught by Egypt and Tunisia.

Al-Qaeda And NATO - peas in a pod

NATO SLAUGHTER IN TRIPOLI: "Operation Mermaid Dawn" Signals Assault by Rebels' Al Qaeda Death Squads
by Thierry Meyssan
Global Research, August 21, 2011
Voltaire Network

Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 22, 2011, 1 AM CET– On Saturday evening, at 8pm, when the hour of Iftar marked the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the NATO command launched its “Operation Mermaid Dawn” against Libya.

The Sirens were the loudspeakers of the mosques, which were used to launch Al Qaeda’s call to revolt against the Qaddafi government.

Immediately the sleeper cells of the Benghazi rebels went into action. These were small groups with great mobility, which carried out multiple attacks. The overnight fighting caused 350 deaths and 3,000 wounded.

The situation calmed somewhat on Sunday during the course of the day.

Then, a NATO warship sailed up and anchored just off the shore at Tripoli, delivering heavy weapons and debarking Al Qaeda jihadi forces, which were led by NATO officers.

Fighting stared again during the night. There were intense firefights. NATO drones and aircraft kept bombing in all directions. NATO helicopters strafed civilians in the streets with machine guns to open the way for the jihadis.

In the evening, a motorcade of official cars carrying top government figures came under attack. The convoy fled to the Hotel Rixos, where the foreign press is based. NATO did not dare to bomb the hotel because they wanted to avoid killing the journalists. Nevertheless the hotel, which is where I am staying, is now under heavy fire.

At 11:30pm, the Health Minister had to announce that the hospitals were full to overflowing. On Sunday evening, there had been 1300 additional dead and 5,000 wounded.

NATO had been charged by the UN Security Council with protecting civilians in Libya. In reality, France and Great Britain have just re-started their colonial massacres.

At 1am, Khamis Qaddafi came to the Rixos Hotel personally to deliver weapons for the defense of the hotel. He then left. There is now heavy fighting all around the hotel.

Video: LATEST REPORT FROM TRIPOLI: NATO's Mainstream Media: "Killing The Truth"
Global Research report from Rixos Hotel
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Global Research correspondent Mahdi Nazemroaya, who is stationed in a central Tripoli hotel with the international press, says the journalists are being targeted by the rebels and the NATO forces that support them. While he is speaking to RT, shooting can be heard.

“They are specifically targeting the areas where international journalists are, to sow panic here,” he argued. “NATO has done all the heavy work. This is a NATO war. They heavily bombed cities west of [Tripoli], they’ve bombed all night, without even 10 seconds of stopping. They have bombed this entire city and NATO landed the insurgents on the coast of Tripoli.”

But the city’s defenders are not pessimistic, continues Nazemroaya.

“The situation has gone tenser,” said Nazemroaya. “More members of the hotel staff have returned with guns. Obviously they have been fighting. These are volunteers, not soldiers. They returned with a picture which is not a picture of loss and they are confident.”

The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will not receive NATO air support. From Stephen Gowans' blog:

what's left
In Libya, Lies and Imperialism on the Verge of Victory
Posted in Bahrain, Imperialism, Libya, NATO by gowans on August 22, 2011
By Stephen Gowans

Nato’s mandate in Libya was to protect civilians, not to take sides in a civil war between secular nationalists on one side and  20:19 23-8-11Al Qaeda Islamists and CIA backed-exiles on the other. (1) But all pretence that the organization was neutral was swept aside in the Western media’s celebration of the rebel march into Tripoli.

Now it is acknowledged that “NATO warplanes had flown overhead for days, bombing targets in the capital and its surroundings to clear the (rebel’s) path to Tripoli” (2); that “intensification of American aerial surveillance in and around the capital city (was) as a major factor in helping to tilt the balance after months of steady erosion of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military”; that “coordination between NATO and the rebels…had become more sophisticated and lethal in recent weeks”; that “Britain, France and other nations deployed special forces on the ground inside Libya to help train and arm the rebels”; and that the rebels had become “more effective in selecting targets and transmitting their location, using technology provided by individual NATO allies, to NATO’s targeting team in Italy.“ (3)

In effect, the rebels—aided by Nato special forces—acted as Nato’s army. It was a Nato regime change operation all along, with Libyan rebels as pawns. Gaddafi won’t be swept from power by a popular uprising, but by nine parts Nato bombs and special forces and one part Libyan rebels from the east.

Some will rationalize Nato’s violation of its UN mandate by pointing to the probable outcome: the toppling of a dictator. But Nato has little concern for the type of government a country has, so long as it is open to exploitation by Western banks, corporations and investors.

One need only contrast the Nato war on Libya with the West’s muted response to the violent suppression of a popular uprising in Bahrain to see this is so.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has played a key role in the Nato war on Libya, greets Bahrain's crown prince in May, soon after Bahraini authorities, with the help of Saudi tanks and troops, violently suppressed a popular uprising . Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The Khalifa tyranny’s killing of its own people—with the help of Saudi tanks and troops–merited no punitive action by Nato and no indictments from the International Criminal Court. On the contrary, Bahrain’s absolutist monarch, King Hamid, was invited by Queen Elizabeth II to the royal wedding in April, while British Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed “Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to London in May, greeting him on the doorstep of No 10 (Downing Street) with a firm handshake and bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘blood on our hands’.” (4)

Why the double standard?

Significantly, Bahrain—home to the US Fifth Fleet–is a virtual wet dream for Western investors, boasting no restrictions on repatriation of profits, no corporate income taxes (except on oil companies), absent regulation, no restrictions on foreign investment, and no minimum wage.

Libya, on the other hand, provoked Washington’s ire by practicing “resource nationalism” and amending labor laws to “Libyanize” the economy, as a leaked State Department cable revealed.(5) Gaddafi’s insistence on screening foreign investment, imposing performance requirements on foreign investors, and demanding that Libyans have a 35 percent stake in the country’s economy, did little to help his cause in Washington, London and Paris, even if it did help Libyans enjoy the highest standard of living in Africa.

It appears as if Gaddafi’s days are numbered. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves that this represents an advance of democracy. All that has happened is that a local dictatorship, one which at least had the merit of promoting Libya’s independent economic development, is about to be succeeded by a puppet government answerable to a dictatorship of foreign corporations, banks and investors.

1. For Al Qaeda involvement in the uprising see particularly, David Pugliese, “DND report reveals Canada’s ties with Gadhafi”, The Ottawa Citizen, April 23, 2011 and Rod Nordland and Scott Shane, “Libyan shifts from detainee to rebel, and U.S. ally of sorts”, The New York Times, April 24, 2011.
2. Kareem Fahim, “Instead of a bloody struggle, a headlong rush into a cheering capital”, The New York Times, August 21, 2011.
3. Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Meyers, “Surveillance and coordination with NATO aided rebels”, The New York Times, August 21, 2011.
4. Mehdi Hasan, “Let them eat doughnuts: the US response to Bahrain’s oppression”, The Guardian (UK), July 11, 2011.
5. Steven Mufson, “Conflict in Libya: U.S. oil companies sit on sidelines as Gaddafi maintains hold”, The Washington Post, June 10, 2011.

Excellent analysis from Webster Tarpley on the Alex Jones show.

There are so many connections between 'Al-Qaeda', the CIA and Pakistan's ISI, that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there was MASSIVE state collusion with the attacks on 9/11.

The problem is that they are doing the bidding of the trillionairs. There is a BIG question as to whether we can get our democracy back from them. Getting rid of Al-Qaeda requires getting rid of the trillionairs fortune and ending the hyperaccumulation of wealth on this planet.

From setting up Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the 1980s, to Osama bin Laden being found hiding out in a Pakistan Army military town, where is the evidence that Al-Qaeda ever stopped working for the CIA/ISI in between? Even the attack on 9/11 was a fulfillment of the wishes expressed by PNAC (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) in 2000.

If the statements below check out (and the 80% or more literacy is proven - see posts above), then the legitimate question is, what is the invasion of Libya for, if not for control of Africa's oil and to check it's independence as a continent? From the Mathaba blog:

http://networkedblogs.com/mNDK2

Ghana joins Nigeria on Libya and is obeisant to NATO
Posted: 2011/09/15

Over a million people demonstrated in Libya on July 1 in support of the revolutionary government of Muammar Gaddafi.
By Prince Akyeampong

After what recently happened in Libya, one is apt to wonder what democracy really stands for. If democracy is the keyword used to justify the destruction of human lives and property, then God help us all!

Yes, the NATO-aided NTC rebels have apparently managed to do away with Muammar Gaddafi, and Ghana, among other African countries has, after a little hesitation, decided to do obeisance to the western powers by recognizing these anti-Gaddafi miscreants. The question now remains: does a "post-Gaddafi Libya" hope to become a land of milk and honey? Believe me, that would be a very tall order because actually, whether you like Gaddafi or not, Libya, by all appreciable standards, had the highest standard of living in Africa, under Gaddafi. If western-style democracy was a yardstick for determining developmental success, Ghana, Nigeria and other countries in Africa would not be in their present predicaments. Let’s take a look at some of the comforts and benefits Libyans enjoyed under Gaddafi and draw our own conclusions.

When Gaddafi took over, Libyans had an average annual income of about $60. His government brought Libya from poverty and debt to prosperity and debt-free status education from the kindergarten stage through college was free. Health care was free as well. Under Gaddafi’s oil-revenue-sharing program, each Libyan had $500 (five hundred US dollars) deposited into his or her bank account each month. After marriage, each couple was given as much as $60,000 (sixty thousand US dollars) to spend. Libya gave free land and seeds to anyone who wanted to take up farming as an occupation.

Water and electricity were free in Libya. Petrol/fuel was sold at 75 cents a gallon under Gaddafi. There was virtually no homelessness as everyone was given a home. Undernourishment in Libya under Gaddafi was as low as 2% – a figure lower than that of the world center of “democracy,” the USA. For any medical care or health treatments that were unavailable in Libya, the Libyan citizen’s full expenses for travel, treatment and accommodation to wherever was required for treatment were borne by the Libyan government. Before Gaddafi, literacy in Libya was only 10%. Under Gaddafi’s leadership, literacy has risen to over 80%. Unlike some Arab states, women in Libya under Gaddafi had equal rights; not only as a philosophy, but in practice.

Libyans had a direct participatory democracy based on people’s conferences. The Gaddafi government invested billions to bring fresh water from southern Libya’s desert to coastal areas like Tripoli and Benghazi. This man-made river is a worldwide acclaimed achievement that stands as a testimony to Gaddafi’s huge contribution to the economic development of Libya. Folks, note that this project which cost Libya about $35 billion (US dollars) was exclusively financed by Libya’s Central Bank without borrowing a cent from abroad.

So, if these eye-popping achievements are not enough, then what exactly is the NATO agenda? What are they bringing to Libya that is better than what Gaddafi achieved? I sympathize with Libyans – and why not? In the name of western-style “democracy,” a hitherto affluent African nation has decided to take a dangerous u-turn and thus join the large group of third world countries in Africa.

The western propaganda machine is so deadly that they pick and choose what to report to the outside world with regards to the situation in Libya. Whatever event goes against their interests and machinations is not reported. How can NATO bomb roads, ports, buildings and oil fields’ equipment and yet claim to be assisting in a just cause? It’s about democracy, they contend; and some of us have ignorantly bought into that nonsense! If this maze of confusion and corruption in Ghana is what democracy is about, I’d rather take a Gaddafi-type system any day. Ultimately, life is about the search for the best means of achieving improved and quality lifestyles. Did Gaddafi fail Libyans in that regard?

For NATO, it’s been a job “well executed.” They have managed once again to bring a strong and thriving economy to its knees. Even as these ignorant rebels chant and wave flags, they are yet to come to grips with reality; they do not realize that they are now in the full clutches of the west – they have now become YES-MEN; and would listen to and obey their NATO masters. As Ghanaians and Africans, we must honestly ask ourselves whether our so-called leaders have what it takes to stand up to the west when it comes to issues that are not in our interest. The usual “Uncle Tom” attitude exhibited by our leaders does not bode well for the African continent. What is the essence of the AU if our leaders cannot take an emphatic stand and come to the aid of one of their own in times of need? A bunch of “Uncle Toms,” that’s what they are!

Ghanaian and African leaders had better wake up and get their act together! If the Libyan situation has not served as an eye-opener to our recalcitrant and NATO-serving leaders, I don’t know what will. God bless mother Ghana!