(an old map) Iran. After 41 years of not-stop trying, the U.S. has not been able to achieve its goal of regime change.
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This evening Rob and Ibrahim will discuss what could happen in Trump’s last three months in office. Prince and Kazerooni will explore the idea of the “wounded beast syndrome”. Will Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo stoke chaos in the Middle East as the president’s domestic standing and election prospects erode? Will Donald Trump resort to such a plan?. Ibrahim and Rob look at this period prior to the November, 2020 presidential election as entering a period of pronounced turmoil – even more so than what we have experienced these past three and half years. Iran? Libya? Syria? Iraq? Palestine?
These countries could all be possible targets. All that and more this evening on Hemispheres and the Middle East Dialogues.
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What we can say is that the period prior to the November, 2020 presidential election will be a period of pronounced turmoil – even more so than what we have experienced these past three and a half years. There are a number of concerns about Trumps tactics in this period, that he will create different kinds of chaos that he suggests that he alone can manage. Our other concern is that he might resort to a “wounded beast” syndrome type event.
Rob Prince
Why all the turn over, the instability in the office with the ones selected either bolting from the jobs or being fired?
It’s because on the one hand Trump hasn’t the slightest clue about foreign policy. He leaves it in the hands of his secretaries of state. But these diplomats have to operate having to deal with two conspiring forces within the Administration – AIPAC (2) and the overall Zionist forces and the other one is the Christian Zionist (3) and Christian extremist elements that overlap. Given the intense pressured exerted by these elements – the Administration has not been able to come up with a consistent policy, thus the Secretaries of State, working under such contending pressures, decided to leave.
Ibrahim Kazerooni
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Jim Nelson: A president in trouble with less than three months to go. Will this be a case of “wounded beast syndrome” for Donald Trump? A wounded beast can be dangerous and unpredictable. Does this apply to the current administration? As the November, 2020 presidential election approaches, Trump has been acting increasingly erratic and authoritarian.
This could present a global danger.
Who starts?
Rob Prince: I’ll start.
Here we are, less than 2 ½ months prior to the presidential election. As we speak it’s the second night of the Republican Party convention. It’s hard to tell where this election is going right now. according to the Wall Street Journal “Trump Trails Biden, but Polls Show the President Has Some Strengths.” Biden leads Trump in the polls 52% to 43% at the moment.
As most of us are aware – that could change.
The question emerges: What happens when president’s domestic standing erodes? What is he willing to do to regain popular support. Often they often go to war…
There is a long history of what the media refers to as “an October Surprise.” A president goes to war just prior to an election hoping to unite the country behind them enough to carry the vote on election day. An early example comes from Great Britain in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher was in trouble, her standing in the polls had plummeted. She instigated a poorly conceived war in the Falkland Islands against Argentina. As a result her poll soared and she handily defeated her appointment to remain in power.
There are American examples as well.
What we can say is that the period prior to the November, 2020 presidential election will be a period of pronounced turmoil – even more so than what we have experienced these past three and a half years. There are a number of concerns about Trumps tactics in this period, that he will create different kinds of chaos that he suggests that he alone can manage. Our other concern is that he might resort to a “wounded beast” syndrome type event. Read more…
The News from Grodno…
Poland in 1933; At the time both Grodo and Bialystok were a part of Poland. After WW2, Grodno was separated from Poland and became a part of Belarus
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Grodno is in the news. That doesn’t happen here in Colorado very often. But there it is, Grodno has made the NY Times!
It appears to be on the verge of one of those “color revolutions” that suggest so much radical change – but in the end – don’t deliver very much of anything. Look at Hungary, Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine. Communism might have failed – it did – but capitalism has been no picnic either. It’s one of those situations where people know what is wrong with what they have but don’t have the vaguest clue as to what lies ahead. And in all these cases – as the political systems veer sharply right – pro-Nazi wackos, bigoted ethnic nationalists, or in the case of Poland a seethingly reactionary Catholic Church come charging out of the woodwork.
Ah yes, and then there is all that foreign interference – National Endowment for Democracy, and the like – who offer vague prescriptions and virtually no program other than Wester neo-liberalism and, it appears, Lithuanian and Polish meddling each wanting a bit of western Belarus for their own maps. They are involved too.
How will it play out in Belarus? Too early to tell, but the government there does have a lot to answer for.
If I am interested in Grodno, Belarus’s major city on its western border with Poland, it is because it is from Grodno that both of my grandfathers, Abraham Prensky and Julius (Yehudah) Magaziner, hailed. The Neman (sometimes spelled “Neiman”) flows through it. It was across the Neman that Napoleon invaded Russian in 1812. I was told that for centuries my ancestors lived along that river, as fishermen and rabbis. Further north on the Neman is the Lithuanian town of Prienai, which Jewish residents nicknamed “Pren.” “Prensky” – the name I was born with before my father legally changed it at age 3 – means someone who comes from Prienai, and so somewhere back there in history my ancestors left Prienai and moved south to Grodno, still along the Neman River. “Back in the day” even Vilnius, now capitol of Lithuania was a part of Poland.
Palestinian Youth, incarcerated in Israeli Prisons
At its July 2020 meeting, the State Central Committee of the Democratic Party voted to endorse H.R. 2407 – the House of Representatives resolution “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.
The vote in favor was an overwhelming 163 in favor, 26 opposed, 43 no position and 16 abstentions.
Over the past few years a number of Colorado groups have educated and agitated about the fate of Palestinian children incarcerated in Israeli prisons, many tortured and otherwise mistreated. Friends of Sabeel, the Center for Freedom and Justice in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center have all endorsed the bill and lobbied different Congressional delegations asking for support.
The passage of a resolution in support of H.R. 2407 suggests that the ground work done by these groups was not in vein.
Colorado Dems Support HR 2407 but the leadership blocked discussion on the resolution and refused to put it in the state platform
Some months ago the Denver Democratic Central Committee came out in support of HR 2407, now the same bill was overwhelmingly passed at the state Democratic Party Central Committee meeting. Read more…
Libya”s government – overthrown in 2011 by Western powers (orchestrated in Washington DC) in the name of “humanitarian intervention” (once again).
“Trump’s Last Three Months in Office? Chaos, The Wounded Beast Syndrome and Trump’s M.E. policy” Tuesday, August 25, 2020 @ 6pm MST, KGNU: Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues.
Hosted by Jim Nelson with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince, Commentators. (Now in its 11th year)
Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Record Dissected in Diana Johnstone’s “Queen of Chaos”
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“Facts are stubborn things”
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The quote’s credit has been alternatively given to the second U.S. president, John Adams, to Stalin – and many others.
If Joe Biden wins the presidency – an open question at this point – I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Hillary Clinton will have considerable sway over Biden’s foreign policy – either directly or through a proxy (Kamala Harris?).
Just started this book, Queen of Chaos by Diana Johnstone. It’s a political biography of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy activités. The book was published by “Counterpunch” – the on-line left journal and came out just prior to the 2016 election. As the 2020 presidential election approaches, it is worth re-examining.
“Some of my best friends” will scream “foul!” – but then again, there are those “stubborn things” – the facts… and Diana Johnstone exposes and analyzes their meaning as well as anyone … and probably better!
It reads well – actually better than that. So many friends – Facebook or elsewhere – “love” Hillary Clinton. There is the Hillary Clinton of Bill C’s 1992 presidential run talking about universal healthcare – and giving a rousing speech to that end at the back of Norlin Library on the C.U.-Boulder campus. Thousands were present, me included, actually wishing that Hillary was the candidate rather than Bill.
Ah, for the good old days, the good old Hillary!
But….
It’s all been downhill for Hillary since then.
What has been missing from most of the discussions about Hillary Clinton is her awful foreign policy record. Not unusual, the eyes of most Americans glaze over when it comes to foreign policy – be it Honduras, Libya or wherever Hillary has left her mark – her mark being the overthrow of governments and the assassination of their leaders.
Not everyone who criticizes Hillary Clinton is a misogynist.
Not everyone who criticizes Hillary Clinton is a misogynist.
It is not a pretty picture – and there IS a well documented record. Johnstone is unsparing in her criticisms of Hillary Clinton – but not without facts, reason behind the allegations.
Hillary Clinton a foreign policy hawk. She needs to be held accountable.
When push comes to shove, she was not better in directing the main lines of U.S. foreign policy than John Bolton in his brief fling with causing foreign policy chaos or that of the present Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Bolton and Pompeo are, like the president they serve, graceless. Hillary is more graceful, does a better job hiding behind the screen of “democracy” and “humanitarian intervention” but the policies of all three dove tail nicely. There is no difference. It’s more a question of “How do you want your imperialism? Sugar coated or hard core?”
The introduction sets the tone – Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State – helps engineer the 2009 coup which overthrows Andorran president Manuel Zelaya from power, and then connives to make sure he cannot return to the presidency by a fierce campaign of repression and assassination of Honduran social activists – trade unionists, democrats. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the more recent U.S. sponsored overthrow of Bolivian president Evo Morales: a military coup of officers trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia that puts a U.S. puppet in power and crushes the protest movement trying to restore democracy.
We have Honduran friends here in Denver, forced to leave Honduras and trek across the Mexican-U.S border to placed in an immigration holding camp for six months in Texas, who left Honduras in the aftermath of the Zelaya coup. Fearing for their lives made unlivable in an orgy of post coup government orchestrated violence, they are a part of unstoppable wave of Central Americans fleeing the repression, crime and chaos that Hillary Clinton did so much to foster in that country. And most of us aware of the not-so-gentle embrace with its nazi like policies with which the both the Obama and Clinton Administrations greeted Honduran refugees seeking asylum in the United States
Johnstone’s brief introductory expose on Hillary’s Honduran coup machinations is just the opening salvo to a record of Clinton’s global war-mongering. Will reflect more on this record – and in greater detail – when I get to the chapters on her role of overthrowing Khadaffi in Libya where the “true Hillary” comes into her own.
Not too late to buy a copy.
COVID -19 vaccine vials developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute in Moscow. Phony vaccine – or “the real thing”?
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According to Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian financier and investor, defending the Russian announcement, Russia has been working on developing anti-Coronavirus vaccines since 1980, that is to say for forty years. Remember that COVID-19 is the 19th form of the Coronavirus that includes the common cold and different manifestations of flu. In an article published by Sputnik, a Russian news source, but blackballed to date by the Russian media, Dmitriev claims that Russia has already received orders for a billion doses of the Russian vaccine and has concluded international agreements to produce 500 million doses with the intention to produce more.
Bill Gates must be in a tizzy!
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Until a few days ago, when the subject came up with some old “Radical Information Project” friends “on a Zoom” discussion, I knew nothing about the fact that the Russians had developed a vaccine to treat COVID-19, the condition caused by the Coronavirus that has reached epidemic proportions. Grave concern was expressed about what the Russians are up to. Once again.
From what I had followed – general information – there has been nothing short of an international scientific stampede in which enormous sums of money can be made or lost by whomever develops a successful vaccine – if that is even possible – and that such “race to the finish” – essentially between bio-tech firms, pharmaceuticals etc, because of the urgency, would probably be down and dirty. Was not surprised that the Russians would be involved.
It is more than a little unsettling – and already very well known to anyone following this thread – that all the major players – from the President himself, to Fauci, Bill Gates, the WHO, the pharmaceuticals – that they are ALL invested in one or another of what each hopes to be the “magic bullet” technical fix cure for this worldwide epidemic; have the Russians been any more “irresponsible” in this effort than others? What do I know? All the same – in the current hysteria against Russia combined with lightening fast manner that the United States has rejected Russian assertions that the vaccine is safe – I have to wonder.
They issue came to a head this morning when Russian President Putin announced that the Russian has approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, that it was registered as such internationally and will soon go into mass production. Developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute, the vaccine has been named Sputnik-V, a reference to the surprise 1957 launch of the world’s first satellite by the Soviet Union. It has yet to go through crucial Phase 3 trials where it would be administered to thousands of people.
The announcement has caused nothing short of an uproar in the West, especially in the United States.
The main arguments given against the Russian vaccine are that it hasn’t gone through vital “Phase 3” tests and that 2000 – the number of humans that will be tested with the Russian vaccine is not adequate. Nature (online) headlined “Russia fast-track coronavirus vaccine draws outrage over safety.” NPR, somewhat more subdued – but with essentially the same message – led off with “Skepticism Greets Putin’s Announcement Of Russian Coronavirus Vaccine.” A number of articles have appeared in major news outlets (NY Times, Washington Post) suggesting the Russia vaccine nothing less than a sham, that it has been poorly tested on humans and, in fact, as a result could be quite dangerous if administered on a broad international level. In what appears to be something of a panicked response, the NY Times ran not one but two articles on the Russian vaccine. The first was entitled “Russia Approves Coronavirus Vaccine Before Completing Tests.” The essence of this article is that pretty much every country “in the West” has rejected this vaccine for the above reasons and has rejected Russian offers to share it. As if to add emphasis, a few hours later, the Times published a second article “‘This Is All Beyond Stupid.’ Experts Worry About Russia’s Rushed Vaccine.”
Undoubtedly, in a classic example of what Chomsky and Herman wrote about how the state and mainstream media “manufacture consent” this line of thinking will be picked up by the major media and repeated ad nauseum. I am skeptical of where all this is going. I do not have sufficient scientific information or background to draw any conclusions scientifically and admit it. The whole weight of the developing mainstream narrative is that the Russians, a la Sputnik, wanted to beat the West to the punch developing a vaccine and that theirs is a political move not based on science. The Trump Administration, which has done more to undermine and discredit scientific research in the USA is suddenly accusing the Russians of being unscientific and political!
The Russians have rejected these accusations.
According to Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian financier and investor, defending the Russian announcement, Russia has been working on developing anti-Coronavirus vaccines since 1980, that is to say for forty years. Remember that COVID-19 is the 19th form of the Coronavirus that includes the common cold and different manifestations of flu. In an article published by Sputnik, a Russian news source, but blackballed to date by the Russian media, Dmitriev claims that Russia has already received orders for a billion doses of the Russian vaccine and has concluded international agreements to produce 500 million doses with the intention to produce more.
Bill Gates must be in a tizzy!
I would simply note a few points at this juncture.
While it might not be generally known – after all what is known, appreciated about Russia (or the former USSR) these days – is that Russia has a world leader in vaccine research and anti-viral remedies for centuries with scientific pioneers like Dmitri Ivanovski and Nikolaï Gamaleïa who studied at Paris’ Pasteur Institute leading the way. This tradition continued during the period of Soviet Communism and was so respected that even at the height of the Cold War, three Soviet scientists were granted entry into the USA to help develop the vaccine against polio. Today, nearly thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, Russia retains the largest library on viruses in the world. Why would Russia ruin its reputation in this sphere by putting out a sloppy product?
Dmitriev’s article does not specify the countries that have already ordered their vaccine. Who are they? Are they acting responsibly? Would they risk the health of their citizens for a cheap, quick fix?
More soon on this to follow.
Bensonhurst by B. Lawrence Goldberg – A “Sort of” Book Review..
Bensonhurst by B. Lawence Goldberg
Bensonhurst is a west Brooklyn, New York City neighborhood, the western tip of which is within a mile or so of the Verrazzano Bridge. To its west along the water’s edge, Fort Hamilton, where I took my first of two draft physicals for the U.S. army in late autumn of 1968. So I have a sentimental attachment to the neighborhood., sort of and remember well that human meat grinder that offered free one way tickets to SE Asia – all expenses paid.
Moving east from Bensonhurst is Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, and to the east of that, just a couple of miles away is East Midwood, another personal landmark. There, on Avenue K, just east of Nostrand Ave is the dry goods store by my maternal grandmother, Sarah Magaziner, who both ran the store and tended to the material and spiritual needs of the seven surviving children of the fourteen she to whom she gave birth, in the one long room in the back. (1) If I am reading a book entitled “Bensonhurst” – it ain’t East Midwood – but it’s close! If I read Bensonhurst, it was at least in part, to see if it corresponded at all with my family’s history.
Besides, long ago I knew the author.
Bensonhurst (the book) by B. Lawrence Goldberg is a fictionalized narrative of intra-Mafia struggles based upon an actual event – the attempted, nearly successful, assassination of mafia boss Joe Colombo, head of one of the five families of the American Mafia in NYC. Although the assassination attempt appears in the book, the event itself is treated in a cursory fashion. Instead, the narrative probes people involved and the events the events leading up to the assassination attempt attempt including the complex personal relations between Colombo’s operation that of challenger, Joey Gallo and the FBI.
This is a fine book. Read more…
Year of the Plague – 26 – COVID-19 and Stress: Trying To Deal With It (The first of a series)
I just call it “Oy vey – Now What Do We Do?” Munch’s “The Scream”… it’s become an icon… but nobody does it better than a depressed Nordic
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What follows is just some personal musings; I am no psychologist or therapist and don’t claim to be. What follows are more inquiries than “prescriptions” either on a personal or society level. People are hurting – alone and in whatever grouping they feel apart of. More and more indications of stress and depression. For the moment, for whatever reason – call it temporary insanity – I’m not depressed. I’m not worried. That will pass. And although it has not been constant, at different moments I’ve ate, slept with, wrestled with stress and had to come up with a plan to address it, which I have done, sort of – inelegantly I might note – but all the same.
How to get through “this mess” – the pandemic, climate change, the danger of nuclear war, the explosion of racism and anti-immigrant hatred we’re experiencing – in my personal case – my worries about the world my daughters, their partners and our grandson have in front of them? Have a few insights, nothing serious frankly, but thought I’d look at ways of dealing with stress and depression individually and socially.
Of course nothing would help more than replacing the current system we live in with Socialism… but we need some intermediate strategies until then.
Cheers, Rob P.
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COVID-10 and Stress. A stressed out nation in an increasingly stressed out world. I read where there is the anti-depressant Zoloft in the water supply of many cities, so much of it that soon people won’t have to buy anti-depressants with prescriptions, all they need to do is drink the water.
People get depressed, “stressd out,” “burnt out” but this is a certain annoying variety: But what we are now facing is stubborn, persistent, nasty. The thing won’t go away not even with Zoloft. Damn! Not the stress of some temporary situation. It’s long-term, it won’t go away for a while (if ever) – it’s as they say – “structural” in nature. How to live with it? How to overcome it? It’s both a personal and societal challenge.
(A Facebook friend, former philosophy prof at Regis College, John Kane, has started writing about dealing with it – perhaps I shouldn’t but I think of stress and depression somewhat interchangeable. Certainly the one leads to the other. Anyhow, I mention it because it was his very (as usual) thoughtful post which got me thinking last night and this morning).
Yesterday I ran into several examples – names are not important.
Stress is everywhere and among all sectors of society. Here are a few examples I ran into yesterday:
Beirut – after the blast. Largest explosion in an urban area since the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (photo – EPA)
A kind of master of theatrics, French President Macron flew to Beirut in a show of support and solidarity with the people of Beirut. Long time friends – some with diplomatic experience – were “moved nearly to tears” by Paris’s show of support and contrasted it with President Trump’s apparent lack of interest or concern.
I found Trump’s off the cuff remark along the lines that the generals told him it was “a bomb attack” – rather than the result of human error – curious and of interest, but one that could be interpreted in different ways.
Of course French regional interest in the Middle East, and France getting a jump on its allies had nothing to do with Macron’s visit. Nothing at all. Just remember how the French were over anxious to bomb Libya and send in their special forces to kill Khadaffi to position themselves for the spoils of that intervention.
Macron’s visit did not move me to tears, rather it made my stomach churn. And his remark in Beirut about how he’d “roll up his sleeves, and take over!!’ did likewise to many Lebanese, reminding them – as if they needed reminding of France’s colonial legacy in Lebanon and Syria.
What’s he up to?
What’s NATO up to and how will they, once again, using the well worn but completely cynical pretext of humanitarian intervention, find a pretext to send troops that will one day a week deal with the crisis in Lebanon but six days a week set their sights on turning back the advances made by Washington’s foes – Hezbollah, the Syrian government, Iraq and of course Iran? The U.S. and Israel’s hands have gotten burnt though military intervention in Lebanon in 1983 and again in 2006. Perhaps they’ll be more prudent this time? Dunno.
135 dead, 5000 wounded, 300,000 people displaced from their home and the port of Beirut which supplies 80% of Lebanon’s food supply, that part that is imported, is in tatters. The hospitals are already overworked, the wave of anger of the entire country exploding to unprecedented levels. This Lebanese government is, as they say, toast.
And into this vacuum, grave dangers for Libya-like NATO intervention, which will be cheered on by many as they cheered on the overthrow of Khadaffi.
Do I know all this for a fact, of course not, but there other examples, aren’t there?
Concerning who is responsible for this horrific event. Hold your fire; already competing narratives are at work. Teasing out whether it was massive incompetence and corruption by the Lebanese harbor authorities, ie, a non military incident as both the Israelis and Hezbollah originally stated, or something darker more insidious, ie, sabotage of some sort, remains to be seen.
What is clear is that a political vacuum has been created that is extraordinarily dangerous for Lebanon and the Middle East region as a whole. Keep in mind that just prior to Beirut explosion that Lebanon was already “on the edge” – if not at the very precipice of an out of control situation. With the explosion, the crisis has come to a head.
Concerning who is responsible for this horrific event. Hold your fire; already competing narratives are at work. Teasing out whether it was massive incompetence and corruption by the Lebanese harbor authorities, ie, a non military incident as both the Israelis and Hezbollah originally stated, or something darker more insidious, ie, sabotage of some sort, remains to be seen.
At this early date it is a mistake to get wedded to this or that scenario. I have confidence that the causes will be determined and I am guessing that it will be clarified in the not too distant future.
I do assume, from experience, that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv are in any way innocent players in the affairs of Lebanon but that doesn’t add up too much. While they both try to distant themselves from the actual explosion there is little doubt that both Washington and Tel Aviv will try to use the Beirut explosion – a la 9-11, New Orleans – in a “Shock Doctrine” manner to advance their own agendas.
As to what that means in terms of responsibility for the Beirut blast, I don’t know and think that it is a mistake – to rush to judgement.
for one of the better analyses of the situation – The Graystone with Aaron Mate – on the Beirut explosion
Trident III nuclear weapon site – Northeastern Colorado. (photo credit: Jennifer Otey)
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There will be a demonstration on the west steps of the Capitol in Denver from 8-9 am on Thursday, August 6, to mark the occasion and draw attention to the new fast-escalating nuclear arms race – another kind of COVID-19 epidemic that won’t go away.Might come out of Coronavirus hibernation for that one – the will to is certainly there.
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The 75th Anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) is upon us.
And now the nuclear arms race is heating up again and in many ways it is far more dangerous than that of the Cold War years.More than a $1 trillion is programmed to renew, upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal, new and more dangerous nuclear weapons are being developed while the infrastructure of the country is falling apart, educational system – once the world’s finest – spiraling downward, a healthcare system that the Coronavirus has revealed in shambles… but the government is proceeding full steam to make new nukes – and at the same time withdrawing from arms control treaties.
A novel about the aftereffects of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima – also a movie by Shohei Imamura
KGNU Hemispheres – June 30, 2020 – Transcript… Segment Three (Part One, Part Two)
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The NATO invasion (of Libya)fractured the centralized government creating weaker regional authorities (partitioning the country de facto), as a result, Western powers are in a much stronger bargaining position to make favorable deals for oil and natural gas with either the Haftar elements in eastern Libya, with the Tripoli-based (poorly named) Government of National Accord or with a number of other mercenary groupings controlling different sources of oil and natural gas production in different areas of the country.
Ibrahim Kazerooni
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First, it needs to be recalled in the current crisis that the overthrow of the Khadaffi government and the murder – and it was really quite obscene – of Muammar Khadaffi – that all this was “made in Washington DC” as Ibrahim mentioned in 2010. Even if the foot soldiers were French, British and Italian as well as the mercenary militias that popped up all over the country, the plan was hatched in the USA.
But between 2011 and now there has been an interesting evolution, or de-evolution of the U.S. role. Since then U.S. power and influence in the Middle East has declined markedly. It has declined to such a degree that in the current situation in Libya, U.S. influence over the current crisis is rather modest. What emerges now are the regional players that have their own national interests in Libyan oil.
Rob Prince
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Ibrahim Kazerooni continues: Let’s briefly look at the timeline
2010. The decision to attack Libya and overthrow Khadaffi, “regime change”, was taken in the United States and NATO in 2010 to stop Khadaffi from proceeding with his plan (to trade oil and natural gas in gold rather than dollars) and to protect the dollar and the economic market in the West (for an elaboration on this – see the link just above).
February 2011. Demonstrations against the Khadaffi government broke out in February 2011. Western special forces, particularly the British S.A.S. and the French special forces, were immediately dropped into Libya to distribute all kinds of weapons – a huge amount of weapons were distributed and supplied to mercenary elements there. The Western media referred to these elements as involved in a “popular uprising” but these were orchestrated by these foreign special forces.
March 2011. See how quickly they moved! As in Iraq and they (the US/NATO) was planning to do in Syria. One of the first acts after overthrowing and killing Khadaffi: fracturing the centralized Libyan government, the rebels create a new oil company and a central bank to replace the central bank that existed during Khadaffi’s rule, as well as replacing the bank that Khadaffi had already established – earlier – the independent bank with a different bank. (Khadaffi’s independent bank would be based on gold and silver back exchanges for the buying and selling of oil and natural gas to African countries – again, see the link above in the first paragraph).
This newly establish bank was based on Western banking procedures, based on petrodollars again, but not based upon a gold or silver standard.
What surprised everyone – I remember reading about this at the time – was how Al Qaeda terrorists (involved in Khadaffi’s overthrow) acting as astute banking specialists were capable of establishing a whole new banking authority for an oil rich nation. Establishing this bank was the first order of business of the post-Khadaffi period in Libya proving that the primary importance of the invasion was destabilize and dismantle the Libyan banking system as well as the country’s oil industry.
All this continues up until today.
One of the results of the 2011 U.S. inspired NATO invasion of Libya: slave markets. Boubaker Nassou describes the prisons where he was held in Libya as “slave markets.” He was repeatedly bought and sold into and out of these prisons before being taken into bonded labour. Now he lives in a shelter run by the Tunisian Red Crescent. (photo credit: Ruth Sherlock/NPR)
KGNU Hemispheres – June 30, 2020 – Transcript…Part Two (continued from Part One, Part Three)
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I cite for example the article of Robert Fisk when he visited Baghdad in the initial period of the occupation of Iraq just after the March, 2003 U.S. led invasion. At the time the National Museum of Iraq was being looted. Fisk noted that he was, at the time, within a mile of Iraq’s oil ministry, center of the country’s oil industry. He hurried to the American troops in the process of securing the oil ministry and told them of what was happening at the museum. The officers in charge responded that “that’s not our concern.” They were ordered to guard the oil ministry.
- Ibrahim Kazerooni
And as it is very poor public relations to admit that these invasions were about securing oil, and so the different pretexts that play better with public opinion were contrived – humanitarian intervention, weapons of mass destruction and the like.
What amazes me is that so many analysts, intelligent and “good people’ can’t see through this nonsense because that is all it’s ever been; and it continues
- Rob Prince
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Rob Prince continues: In any case, another moment, besides 1973 when U.S. energy policy was called into question and was in crisis, was, interestingly enough 2001. “It” happened just prior to 9-11.
Just to remind the listeners, in the year 2000, George W. Bush was elected president. He was for all practical purposes a rather weak president with a very strong vice president, Dick Cheney. Cheney came out of the oil industry, Halliburton – a company that produces all kinds of products for oil manufacturing. Early in the Bush Administration, Cheney put together what became known as the national energy task force (formally the National Energy Policy Development Group) which in short order produced the National Energy Policy of 2001.
At the time, U.S. energy consumption was such, that the country found itself increasingly dependent upon Middle East oil, then as now, still the overwhelming source of that energy supply. Read more…
Turkey’s political wet dream: ship natural gas from E. Libya to Turkey and from there to Europe. Control of E. Libyan oil and natural gas fields the heart of the conflict between Turkey and Egypt
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(Although this month’s program was, in the end, of decent quality overall, for the first time in 11 years of doing “Hemispheres’ Middle East Dialogues” we had technical problems with the transmission. I have tried to edit out some of the discussions of those technical problems in the audio. As I am rather novice at it, the result is a bit choppy at the beginning, but still I believe of some social value and so it is reproduced in its edited form here.)
KGNU Hemispheres – July 28, 2020 – Transcript…Part One. (Edited)
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There is an opposing narrative that argues that U.S. foreign policy is framed by its dependence on oil. A wealth of material exists substantiating the second claim (that oil is central to U.S. foreign policy making). We note the “revolving door” between the State Department and the major oil producing corporations. They bounce back and forth between the State Department and the oil industry. The go from the industry to the State Department and then back into the oil industry again.
We have ample proof of this relationship.
- Ibrahim Kazerooni
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But Kissinger wanted to fashion the (post 1973 Middle East War oil agreement) in such a way that much of the profits that oil producing countries would now enjoy would somehow find their way back to the United States and the West. His genius was to find a way to recycle those oil profits and thus stabilize relations between oil producing and consuming countries of the core of the global economy.
- Rob Prince
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Host Jim Nelson: Tonight we’re going to be discussing the danger of a war igniting in Libya between Egypt and Turkey, the background of which we discussed in some detail last month. Something that I enjoy about doing this program that explores events taking place elsewhere in the world. Despite the Coronavirus pandemic, the upcoming presidential elections “the world still turns” and there are developments taking place internationally that we don’t often hear in the corporate mainstream.
This is one reason I enjoy hosting the Middle East Dialogues. It keeps us informed and often the news presented is “breaking news.” Tonight the news about Libya is no exception. A lot going on in the region that we don’t often read in the American press.
Gentlemen, who starts?
Rob Prince: I’ll lead off.
Tonight’s subject is the impending war in Libya in which the main players will be Egypt and Turkey, but to begin with we’d like to put it in context. For starters, some relevant memories.
In 2004, Ibrahim and I participated in a panel at George Washington High School in Denver dealing with the March 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq. At the time, what we were hearing, including from other members of the panel was that the main reason for the U.S. led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein was that a humanitarian intervention was required to save the Iraqi people from Saddam, that the Iraqi military possessed weapons of mass destruction, etc.
Our argument was that, in its essence, this was an invasion about controlling Iraq’s massive amounts of oil and natural gas.
We all know how that played out. Read more…
A Summer’s Morning At Barr Lake…
Swallows at Barr Lake, Adams County, Colorado. July 28=9, 2020
I went out to Barr Lake this morning.
Needed to clear my head from spending two days in front of computer screen, preparing for our (Ibrahim Kazerooni and my) KGNU program last night on the possible war between Egypt and Turkey in Libya. Also needed to get out of the city to a place where there wouldn’t be too many people and where most of them would be wearing masks.
Barr Lake State Park was the right place.
Haven’t been there since February when I went to look for eagles… and there were dozens of them. From the look out post on the west side of the lake they were easy to spot although because of the distance involved it was hard to get a good shot. Still, to see so many eagles congregating in one place is something of a thrill, particular for a boy born in Brooklyn.
They’re gone now but in their place is a colony of American pelicans. A lot of them. Can’t give a precise number but would guess it’s somewhere in the hundreds, maybe more. They congregate in large groups – 20, 30 sometimes more. There were other birds too; I saw goldfinches, a house wren, several Western kingbirds, a grayish hummingbird I was unable to photograph, the pervasive great blue heron, and in a ditch, looking for a non-existent way out, either a giant catfish or carp. Not sure which.
Returning to the car I walked a spell with a nice woman, also a birder, who is a retired nurse from the University of Colorado Medical Center. We were both wearing the obligatory Coronavirus masks. Her son has climbed eight fourteeners and whose daughter is about to go off to Wellesley College, from whence Madelaine Albright and Hillary Clinton graduated. The daughter’s hero is Madelaine Albright. I liked this woman with a “Resist” sticker on the rear of her car, so I didn’t mention how Albright had said that it was worth killing half a million Iraqi children to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Nor did I want to discourage the daughter about the shrinking opportunities of getting any kind of paying job with a degree in international relations.
Never have done the full tour of the lake which spans 8.8 miles. Think I did around 4 miles – two out and two back, dropping in to explore the little side trails that brought me closer to the lake and its festival of birds this time of year. The park is popular with birders; over 350 species have been observed. Named after a railroad official, one “Mr. Barr,” it was, prior to Euro-American settlement a buffalo wallow, a natural low area that collected water during the rainy season. It was also a stop on the Goodnight-Loving Trail cattledrive from Texas to the railhead in Cheyenne Wyoming.
As the Friends of Barr Lake blog tells it:
In 1886, A small dam was built at the north end of the buffalo wallow forming the Oasis Reservoir. The Burlington Canal was built to bring water from the South Platte River to site, then called the Oasis Reservoir. Shortly thereafter, the place turned ugly. Due to the rapid population growth of Denver post WW II raw sewage from the overflow of the Denver sewage treatment plan, slaughter houses, and packing plants along the banks of the South Platte River flowed into the South Platte River and ultimately into Barr Lake. Barr Lake became known as the largest open sewage lagoon in the nation,
A powerful thunderstorm over the headwaters of the South Platte River swelled the waters of the river and adjacent canals and brought the possibility of renewal. To protect the dam at Barr Lake the valves north of the dam were opened and the polluted water was drained from Barr Lake. After repairs to the head gate on the South Platte River, canals, and dam fresh water flowed into Barr Lake. The clean water afforded Barr Lake a chance of renewal. New water quality laws and construction of the new sewage treatment plant down stream from the Burlington Canal head gate improved the quality of the South Platte River water and the water in Barr Lake.
In the early 1970s the state of Colorado bought the property for $2 million and began renovations. Barr Lake State Park was opened to the public in 1977.
Pelicans at Barr Lake State Park. Adams County, Colorado. July 29, 2020
Muammar Khadaffi, murdered October 20, 2011, his government overthrown by a NATO invasion of Libya orchestrated and approved by the Obama Administration
“Libya: The Gathering Storm: Turkey, Egypt and the Wrestling Match for Libyan Oil” Tuesday, July 28, 2020, 6-7 pm Mountain States Time. KGNU: Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. Hosted by Jim Nelson.
Turkey and Egypt appear to be lurching towards war in Libya, each one backing an opposing Libyan faction. Supporting the one, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) is Turkey backed financially by Qatar. On the other side the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army headed by Khalifa Haftar supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Russia has intervened to a certain extent in support of the Haftar forces; France, Greece and Cyprus are concerned about expanded Turkish influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. While Washington, which orchestrated the 2011 invasion, overthrow of the Khadaffi government – as well as his gruesome murder, as gruesome as that of Jamal Khashoggi – sits back and let’s the factions fight it out.
All that and more: KGNU, Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues, this coming Tuesday…
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 