-
IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here. The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.
Socialism
- Thread starter Leongsam
- Start date
So nordic countries are not socialist?
Besides venezuela was a one product country. It depended 100% on its oil and nothing else unlike say, norway.
Only for Corbyn et al.
No Nordic countries are not socialist. They are all capitalist economies and are ranked highly in "ease of doing business" and "economic freedom".
For your info and education:
Face It, Nordic Countries Aren’t Socialist – OpEd
June 10, 2018 MISES 1 Comment
By MISES
By Daniel Lacalle*
One of the most common fallacies of the new populists is to say that their model is the “Nordic” one and that those countries are successful examples of how “socialism works”. When I mentioned it to the Finnish Finance Minister Petteri Orpo at a recent ECR dinner, he could not believe it.
Expropriations, massive tax increases, appropriation of savings and subordinating the growth model to political control is what populists defend. The same as Venezuela, which all of them praised — from Bernie Sanders to Owen Jones or Corbyn and Chomsky — until it collapsed. Then they moved on to the fallacy of “the Nordic model”.
Do you know what interventionists forget about the Nordic nations?
They are leaders in the economic freedom index (Heritage) and ease of doing business according to the World Bank.
Private property is guaranteed by law and citizens’ savings are fully private and free of government control. All Nordic countries have been lowering the tax wedge and — until the recent US tax cuts — had lower corporate tax rates than the US.
The state does not dictate or impose schooling and healthcare (most have co-payment schemes). It simply administers and promotes choice between private and state-run services.
They are leaders in private banking, which finances the vast majority of economic activity (80%).
They are leaders in attracting capital, guaranteeing legal security and private investment.
Nordic countries are also leaders in the privatization of inefficient state-owned entities and applying world-class private company corporate governance and defending shareholder interests in semi-state owned companies (Statoil, etc).
The public sector does not dictate the growth pattern or the way in which the economy should be run, it is generated from the private sector, which finances more than 60% of research and development, and government applies private-sector best practices of efficiency and transparency in the management of public services. In addition, public officials do not have a life-long position. The opposite of the political control these populists defend.
Nordic countries have carried out successful privatizations of state sectors, from telecommunications to electricity generation and distribution. Even the postal service and some forests were privatized.
They have a labor market that is among the most flexible in the world.
In these countries, private education is encouraged through school vouchers, not forced state-run schools.
There is also the fact that it is virtually impossible to copy in the US a model used in countries with fewer inhabitants than New York, but the most important difference is that choice, freedom and private initiative are the cornerstone of Nordic nations, pillars of a society that none of the populists want to implement.
No, socialism is not the model of the Nordic countries. And the interventionists that use these countries as their “model” have a completely different system in mind. State control.
I recommend you read Scandinavian Unexceptionalism by Nima Sanandaji or “The Secret of their Success” in The Economist.
The success of the Nordic countries has been to take pro-market measures, privatize inefficient sectors and guarantee private property, wealth creation as well as legal and investment security.
The Nordic countries know that there is no welfare state without a thriving private sector, economic freedom, and private investment and that the public sector is there to facilitate, not absorb the country’s economic activity. They know that there are no tax revenues without a flourishing private sector. And they know, because they made the mistake in the past, that multiplying state intervention only leads to failure. That’s why they rejected socialism.
There is nothing Socialist about the Nordic Nations. Being leaders in Economic Freedom, free enterprise, defense of private property, leaders in private banking and entrepreneurship promotion is the opposite of socialism. Interventionists willingly want us to confuse a welfare system in a capitalist society with socialism.
Socialism is the political and economic theory which defends that the means of production, distribution, and financing should be owned or controlled by the state. Nordic countries are NOT socialist. They are capitalist societies with a welfare state, like most capitalist nations have, by the way. The US as well. And they are the first ones that understood what we all know: socialism never works.
The problem with laissez faire capitalism -- which is the opposite extreme -- is that governments have crafted it as socialism for the rich, rather than as true, equal opportunity competition without fear or favour.
Rather than debating between two extremes, one should find the middle ground. This needs strong and sound government, not strong corporations or even strong democracy.
Rather than debating between two extremes, one should find the middle ground. This needs strong and sound government, not strong corporations or even strong democracy.
Ideologies such as ‘socialism,’ ‘economic growth’ and ‘democracy’ continue
to be bandied about in mainstream discourse with the highest degree of distortion.
This is often intentional in order to justify political and military action that simply
enriches the global elite at the expense of humanity at large.
Venezuela under Hugo Chavez (1999-2012) was a thorn in the side of Western globalists,
as Chavez became one of the greatest and most vocal critics of Western exploitation of
his time.
He named Nicolas Maduro as his successor in 2012. Maduro has been in power ever since,
winning elections in 2013 and 2018.
While Maduro amassed over two-thirds (67.8%) of the popular vote in 2018, his inauguration
a few weeks ago was soon followed by statements from the European Union and others that
they did not accept Maduro as the legitimate president based on election ‘irregularities.’
In a move that seems impossible to justify on constitutional grounds, juan guaido,
leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled national assembly,
recently declared himself president of Venezuela,
despite the fact that he did not even run in the presidential election.
Those nations under the control of globalists are offering their support to guaido.
This is simply because support for Guaido is support for the Globalist agenda,
which in this case is bringing Venezuela’s vast resources, including the largest proven oil reserves
in the world, under the control of Globalist oligarchs.
Meanwhile the swiss are still laughing at the idiots.
Thats right. Like Libya..theres oil and gold tere. Now US want her puppet Guaido, to be the president.
USA called Gadafi a dictator. But this "dictator" took care of his citizens. But as the norm if u go against USA, u will be her next target of lies and deceit.
Ten Reasons Libya Under Gaddafi Was a Great Place to Live
- Was Gaddafi a dictator? Yes! However, he also had a heart for his country and the world conveniently skips that part every time.
- Libya under Gaddafi was not entirely hellish as the world has been made to believe. The citizens did not have the luxury of voting but Gaddafi made sure they had a high standard of living to compensate for curtailed freedoms. Was this enough? That is a moot point but the fact remains: Libya was a great place to stay under Gaddafi (provided one did not try to usurp power).
Under Gaddafi, education and health care were free for all. A response to this claim by Masareef Edareeya, a Libyan citizen claimed the quality of education and health was appalling but that does nothing to the fact that it was free. No system is perfect but most are imperfect and still expensive. Gaddafi made sure his system was subsidised and even Mercy Corps attested to the fact in its Beyond Gaddafi: Libya’s Governance Context. That is more than the so-called “democratic leaders” can say for their countries.
Newlyweds received U.S $50,000 from the government
Gaddafi’s government had legislation providing for a grant to newlyweds to buy their first apartment so as to help start a family. Claims are that the process was tedious and bureaucratic to the extent that not many people bothered to follow it through but the $50,000 was there if one followed through. Again Mercy Corps confirmed Gaddafi provided housing for newlyweds. Criticising the grant on grounds of tedious processes is a vindictive trial at attacking every good Gaddafi stood for. It is a personal attack rather than an attack on policy.
Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project
The Gaddafi regime embarked on one of modern man’s edifices of development: the Great Man-Made River Project to make water available to the whole country. As is known, Libya is in a desert region and Gaddafi’s plan to ascertain every citizen of access was the Great Man-Made River Project.
Libya had no external debt and had reserves of $150 billion most of which were frozen globally
Libya was a well-endowed state. To put this into perspective, the self-acclaimed champion of democracy and capitalism, the USA has a debt of over $18 trillion. Libya had none. Enough said.
The price of petrol was $0,14 per litre
In 2011, Staveley Head, a UK-based provider of insurance products compiled a list of countries with the lowest petrol prices in the world. China.org.cn reported the listing which put Libya at third position with its low $0,14.
Having a home was considered a human right
Gaddafi’s Green Book categorically stated, “The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” The Green Book was Gaddafi’s bible of political philosophy and had first been published in 1975. He vowed that he would not secure a house for his own parents until every citizen had one.
Gender equality actually a reality
Women in Libya were free to work and dress as they liked, subject to family constraints. The “dictator” did not impose any particular repressive canon on women and considering the sensitivities of the Arab community to gender roles, this was a big feat. Universal access to primary education was achieved in a relatively short space of time under Gaddafi.
The Human Development Index was better than two-thirds of the countries reported on
The Human Development Report has been published since 1990 and it is in the report that the HDI is found. The last time the report was released with Gaddafi in power, Libya was ranked 53 of 163 countries with comparable data. The HDI of Arab states was 0,641 while Libya’s was 0,760. Libya was therefore better off than most Arab States. The HDI provides a composite measure of health, education and income. Does being placed above the Arab States average mean all was rosy? By no means! It simply means there were worse countries that the Western “whistle-blowers” did not “rescue”. In 2009, Libya was reported to be on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
People had enough food
This does not need to be qualified. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirmed that undernourishment was less than 5% with a daily calorie intake of 3144. This was one “oppressor” whose subjects had enough. With the Great Man-Made River Project, Gaddafi was securing an even brighter agricultural future to feed his nation. Pessimists can be claimed he was feeding citizens for the slaughter.
Privatization of all Libyan oil to every citizen
On 21 February 2011, Gaddafi launched a programme to privatize all Libyan oil to every citizen of Libya. This would initially provide $21,000 to every citizen from a total of $32 billion in 2011 and effectively lead to the dissolution of the ministries of health, education and others to eliminate corruption, theft of oil by foreign companies and to decentralise power.
Was Gaddafi a dictator? Yes. Did he violate the human rights of some citizens? Yes. Did he keep his dead victims in coolers as trophies of his macabre exploits? So they say! However, he also had a heart for his country and the world conveniently skips that part every time. How one man could be such a paradoxical figure is a wonder.
Last edited:
Gaddafi's quixotic and brutal ruleThats right. Like Libya..theres oil and gold tere. Now US want her puppet Guaido, to be the president.
USA called Gadafi a dictator. But this "dictator" took care of his citizens. But as the norm if u go against USA, u will be her next target of lies and deceit.
Ten Reasons Libya Under Gaddafi Was a Great Place to Live
View attachment 53038
Education and medical treatment were free
- Was Gaddafi a dictator? Yes! However, he also had a heart for his country and the world conveniently skips that part every time.
- Libya under Gaddafi was not entirely hellish as the world has been made to believe. The citizens did not have the luxury of voting but Gaddafi made sure they had a high standard of living to compensate for curtailed freedoms. Was this enough? That is a moot point but the fact remains: Libya was a great place to stay under Gaddafi (provided one did not try to usurp power).
Under Gaddafi, education and health care were free for all. A response to this claim by Masareef Edareeya, a Libyan citizen claimed the quality of education and health was appalling but that does nothing to the fact that it was free. No system is perfect but most are imperfect and still expensive. Gaddafi made sure his system was subsidised and even Mercy Corps attested to the fact in its Beyond Gaddafi: Libya’s Governance Context. That is more than the so-called “democratic leaders” can say for their countries.
Newlyweds received U.S $50,000 from the government
Gaddafi’s government had legislation providing for a grant to newlyweds to buy their first apartment so as to help start a family. Claims are that the process was tedious and bureaucratic to the extent that not many people bothered to follow it through but the $50,000 was there if one followed through. Again Mercy Corps confirmed Gaddafi provided housing for newlyweds. Criticising the grant on grounds of tedious processes is a vindictive trial at attacking every good Gaddafi stood for. It is a personal attack rather than an attack on policy.
Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project
The Gaddafi regime embarked on one of modern man’s edifices of development: the Great Man-Made River Project to make water available to the whole country. As is known, Libya is in a desert region and Gaddafi’s plan to ascertain every citizen of access was the Great Man-Made River Project.
Libya had no external debt and had reserves of $150 billion most of which were frozen globally
Libya was a well-endowed state. To put this into perspective, the self-acclaimed champion of democracy and capitalism, the USA has a debt of over $18 trillion. Libya had none. Enough said.
The price of petrol was $0,14 per litre
In 2011, Staveley Head, a UK-based provider of insurance products compiled a list of countries with the lowest petrol prices in the world. China.org.cn reported the listing which put Libya at third position with its low $0,14.
Having a home was considered a human right
Gaddafi’s Green Book categorically stated, “The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” The Green Book was Gaddafi’s bible of political philosophy and had first been published in 1975. He vowed that he would not secure a house for his own parents until every citizen had one.
Gender equality actually a reality
Women in Libya were free to work and dress as they liked, subject to family constraints. The “dictator” did not impose any particular repressive canon on women and considering the sensitivities of the Arab community to gender roles, this was a big feat. Universal access to primary education was achieved in a relatively short space of time under Gaddafi.
The Human Development Index was better than two-thirds of the countries reported on
The Human Development Report has been published since 1990 and it is in the report that the HDI is found. The last time the report was released with Gaddafi in power, Libya was ranked 53 of 163 countries with comparable data. The HDI of Arab states was 0,641 while Libya’s was 0,760. Libya was therefore better off than most Arab States. The HDI provides a composite measure of health, education and income. Does being placed above the Arab States average mean all was rosy? By no means! It simply means there were worse countries that the Western “whistle-blowers” did not “rescue”. In 2009, Libya was reported to be on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
People had enough food
This does not need to be qualified. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirmed that undernourishment was less than 5% with a daily calorie intake of 3144. This was one “oppressor” whose subjects had enough. With the Great Man-Made River Project, Gaddafi was securing an even brighter agricultural future to feed his nation. Pessimists can be claimed he was feeding citizens for the slaughter.
Privatization of all Libyan oil to every citizen
On 21 February 2011, Gaddafi launched a programme to privatize all Libyan oil to every citizen of Libya. This would initially provide $21,000 to every citizen from a total of $32 billion in 2011 and effectively lead to the dissolution of the ministries of health, education and others to eliminate corruption, theft of oil by foreign companies and to decentralise power.
Was Gaddafi a dictator? Yes. Did he violate the human rights of some citizens? Yes. Did he keep his dead victims in coolers as trophies of his macabre exploits? So they say! However, he also had a heart for his country and the world conveniently skips that part every time. How one man could be such a paradoxical figure is a wonder.
By Tarik KafalaBBC News
- 20 October 2011
- Share this with Facebook
- Share this with Messenger
- Share this with Twitter
- Share this with Email
- Share
Libya after Gaddafi
- The Libyans gaining ground on IS
- Beheadings and racial tension: Life under Islamic State
- Has Libya pulled back from the brink?
- Control and crucifixions: Life in Libya under IS
He was 27 years old, inspired by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser and he seemed to fit the regional template of Arab nationalist from the military becoming president. But he outlasted his contemporaries.
During nearly 42 years in power he invented his own system of government, supported radical armed groups as diverse as the IRA in Northern Ireland and the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and presided over what may have been North Africa's most totalitarian, arbitrary and brutal regime.
In the last years of his rule, Libya emerged from the international isolation that followed the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988. The country was once again courted by Western governments and companies drawn to its vast energy reserves and the rich contracts on offer in an ambitious infrastructure programme.
KEY FACTS: LIBYA
- Col Muammar Gaddafi has led since 1969
- Population 6.5m; land area 1.77m sq km
- Population with median age of 24.2, and a literacy rate of 88%
- Gross national income per head: $12,020 (World Bank 2009)
Jamahiriya
Col Gaddafi was born to a Bedouin family in Sirte in 1942.
He always played on his humble, tribal roots, preferring to greet visitors in his tent, and to pitch it when on foreign visits. His legitimacy depended on his anti-colonialist credentials at first, and then on keeping the country in perpetual revolution.
His stated political philosophy, expounded at length in the Green Book, was "government by the masses".
In 1977, Gaddafi proclaimed the Libyan "Jamahiriya" - a neologism meaning roughly state of the masses.
The theory was that Libya had become a democracy of the people, governed through local popular Revolutionary Councils.
In practice, all key decisions and state wealth remained tightly under his control.
Col Muammar Gaddafi
- Born in Sirte, Libya 7 June 1942
- Attended military academy in Libya, Greece and the UK
- Seized power on 1 September 1969
- The Green Book published in 1975
- Married twice, with seven sons and one daughter
- Killed on 20 October 2011 in Sirte after two months in hiding
Gaddafi was a skilled political manipulator, playing off different tribes against each other and against state institutions or constituencies. He also developed a strong personality cult.
More and more, his rule became characterised by patronage and the tight control of a police state.
The worst period for Libyans was probably the 1980s, when Col Gaddafi experimented on his people with his social theories.
As part of his "cultural revolution" he banned all private enterprise and unsound books were burned.
He also had dissidents based abroad murdered. Freedom of speech and association were absolutely squashed and acts of violent repression were numerous.
This was followed by a decade of isolation by the West after the Lockerbie bombing.
For Libyans critical of Col Gaddafi his greatest crime may have been the squandering of wealth on foreign adventures and corruption.
With a population of only six million and annual oil revenues of US $32bn in 2010, Libya's potential is huge. Most Libyans do not feel this wealth and living conditions can be reminiscent of far poorer countries.
A lack of jobs outside government means that unemployment is estimated to be 30% or more.
Libya's particular form of socialism does provide free education, healthcare and subsidised housing and transport, but wages are extremely low and the wealth of the state and profits from foreign investments have only benefited a narrow elite.
In 1999, the Libyan leader made a comeback from almost total international isolation when he accepted the blame for the Lockerbie bombing.
Following 11 September 2001, he signed up to the US government's so-called "war on terror". Soon after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Libya announced that it was abandoning its nuclear and biological weapons programmes. Both of these were seen by his critics as highly cynical moves.
In the final years of his rule, as questions of succession arose, two of his sons seemed to be in open and damaging competition against each other for his favour.
The influence of Saif al-Islam, the elder son who took an interest in the media and human rights issues, appeared to be waning as the influence of Mutassim, who had a powerful role in the security services, grew.
Inspired by neighbours to the west and east, Libyans rose up against 40 years of quixotic and often brutal rule in early 2011.
Gaddafi's quixotic and brutal rule
By Tarik KafalaBBC News
- 20 October 2011
- Share this with Facebook
- Share this with Messenger
- Share this with Twitter
- Share this with Email
- Share
Image captionA military coup brought Muammar Gaddafi to power 40 years ago
Libya after Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi came to power in Libya in September 1969 as the leader of a bloodless military coup which overthrew the British-backed King Idris.
- The Libyans gaining ground on IS
- Beheadings and racial tension: Life under Islamic State
- Has Libya pulled back from the brink?
- Control and crucifixions: Life in Libya under IS
He was 27 years old, inspired by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser and he seemed to fit the regional template of Arab nationalist from the military becoming president. But he outlasted his contemporaries.
During nearly 42 years in power he invented his own system of government, supported radical armed groups as diverse as the IRA in Northern Ireland and the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and presided over what may have been North Africa's most totalitarian, arbitrary and brutal regime.
In the last years of his rule, Libya emerged from the international isolation that followed the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988. The country was once again courted by Western governments and companies drawn to its vast energy reserves and the rich contracts on offer in an ambitious infrastructure programme.
KEY FACTS: LIBYA
The uprising that eventually overthrew him started in February 2011 in Libya's second city Benghazi, a city he had neglected and whose residents he mistrusted throughout his rule.
- Col Muammar Gaddafi has led since 1969
- Population 6.5m; land area 1.77m sq km
- Population with median age of 24.2, and a literacy rate of 88%
- Gross national income per head: $12,020 (World Bank 2009)
Jamahiriya
Col Gaddafi was born to a Bedouin family in Sirte in 1942.
He always played on his humble, tribal roots, preferring to greet visitors in his tent, and to pitch it when on foreign visits. His legitimacy depended on his anti-colonialist credentials at first, and then on keeping the country in perpetual revolution.
His stated political philosophy, expounded at length in the Green Book, was "government by the masses".
In 1977, Gaddafi proclaimed the Libyan "Jamahiriya" - a neologism meaning roughly state of the masses.
The theory was that Libya had become a democracy of the people, governed through local popular Revolutionary Councils.
In practice, all key decisions and state wealth remained tightly under his control.
Col Muammar Gaddafi
Social theories
- Born in Sirte, Libya 7 June 1942
- Attended military academy in Libya, Greece and the UK
- Seized power on 1 September 1969
- The Green Book published in 1975
- Married twice, with seven sons and one daughter
- Killed on 20 October 2011 in Sirte after two months in hiding
Gaddafi was a skilled political manipulator, playing off different tribes against each other and against state institutions or constituencies. He also developed a strong personality cult.
More and more, his rule became characterised by patronage and the tight control of a police state.
The worst period for Libyans was probably the 1980s, when Col Gaddafi experimented on his people with his social theories.
As part of his "cultural revolution" he banned all private enterprise and unsound books were burned.
He also had dissidents based abroad murdered. Freedom of speech and association were absolutely squashed and acts of violent repression were numerous.
Image captionCol Gaddafi experimented on his people with his social theories during the 1980s
This was followed by a decade of isolation by the West after the Lockerbie bombing.
For Libyans critical of Col Gaddafi his greatest crime may have been the squandering of wealth on foreign adventures and corruption.
With a population of only six million and annual oil revenues of US $32bn in 2010, Libya's potential is huge. Most Libyans do not feel this wealth and living conditions can be reminiscent of far poorer countries.
A lack of jobs outside government means that unemployment is estimated to be 30% or more.
Libya's particular form of socialism does provide free education, healthcare and subsidised housing and transport, but wages are extremely low and the wealth of the state and profits from foreign investments have only benefited a narrow elite.
In 1999, the Libyan leader made a comeback from almost total international isolation when he accepted the blame for the Lockerbie bombing.
Image captionThe demonstrations spread to Tripoli after after cities in the east appeared to fall to the opposition
Following 11 September 2001, he signed up to the US government's so-called "war on terror". Soon after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Libya announced that it was abandoning its nuclear and biological weapons programmes. Both of these were seen by his critics as highly cynical moves.
In the final years of his rule, as questions of succession arose, two of his sons seemed to be in open and damaging competition against each other for his favour.
The influence of Saif al-Islam, the elder son who took an interest in the media and human rights issues, appeared to be waning as the influence of Mutassim, who had a powerful role in the security services, grew.
Inspired by neighbours to the west and east, Libyans rose up against 40 years of quixotic and often brutal rule in early 2011.
The Big Lie About the Libyan War
The Obama administration said it was just trying to protect civilians. Its actions reveal it was looking for regime change.
The new Libyan flag is raised during a parade in the eastern city of Benghazi to celebrate the second anniversary of Nato's first military operation in Libya on March 19, 2013. On 19 March 2011, Kadhafi's troops and tanks entered the city and the same day French forces began an international military intervention in Libya, later joined by coalition forces with strikes against armoured units south of Benghazi and attacks on Libyan air-defence systems, after UN Security Council Resolution 1973 called for using "all necessary means" to protect Libyan civilians and populated areas from attack by government forces. AFP PHOTO / ADBULLAH DOMA (Photo credit should read ABDULLAH DOMA/AFP/Getty Images)
In this fifth anniversary week of the U.S.-led Libya intervention, it’s instructive to revisit Hillary Clinton’s curiously abridged description of that war in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices. Clinton takes the reader from the crackdown, by Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime, of a nascent uprising in Benghazi and Misrata; to her meeting — accompanied by the pop-intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy — with Mahmoud Jibril, the exiled leader of the opposition National Transitional Council; to her marshaling of an international military response. In late March 2011, Clinton quotes herself telling NATO members, “It’s crucial we’re all on the same page on NATO’s responsibility to enforce the no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya.”
Just two paragraphs later — now 15 pages into her memoir’s Libya section — Clinton writes: “[By] late summer 2011, the rebels had pushed back the regime’s forces. They captured Tripoli toward the end of August, and Qaddafi and his family fled into the desert.” There is an abrupt and unexplained seven-month gap, during which the military mission has inexplicably, and massively, expanded beyond protecting civilians to regime change — seemingly by happenstance. The only opposition combatants even referred to are simply labeled “the rebels,” and the entire role of the NATO coalition and its attendant responsibility in assisting their advance has been completely scrubbed from the narrative.
In contemporary political debates, the Libya intervention tends to be remembered as an intra-administration soap opera, focused on the role Clinton — or Susan Rice or Samantha Power — played in advising Obama to go through with it. Or it’s addressed offhandedly in reference to the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi. But it would be far more pertinent to treat Libya as a case study for the ways that supposedly limited interventions tend to mushroom into campaigns for regime change. Five years on, it’s still not a matter of public record when exactly Western powers decided to topple Qaddafi.
To more fully comprehend what actually happened in Libya five years ago, let’s briefly review what the Obama administration proclaimed and compare that with what actually happened.
On March 28, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the nation: “The task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone.… Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Two days later, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon declared, “The military mission of the United States is designed to implement the Security Council resolution, no more and no less.… I mean protecting civilians against attacks from Qaddafi’s forces and delivering humanitarian aid.” The following day, Clinton’s deputy, James Steinberg, said during a Senate hearing, “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”
From the Defense Department, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen informed David Gregory of Meet the Press, “The goals of this campaign right now again are limited, and it isn’t about seeing him go.” Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates echoed the administration line: “Regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission.” (Emphasis added.)
Now, contrast Gates’s assertion in 2011 with what he told the New York Times last month:
“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” Mr. Gates said.
“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” Mr. Gates said.
Publicly, he said, “the fiction was maintained” that the goal was limited to disabling Colonel Qaddafi’s command and control. In fact, the former defense secretary said, “I don’t think there was a day that passed that people didn’t hope he would be in one of those command and control centers.”
This is scarcely believable. Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to “take him out” from the very beginning of the intervention. On March 20, 2011, just hours into the intervention, Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a British submarine stationed in the Mediterranean Sea struck an administrative building in Qaddafi’s Bab al-Azizia compound, less than 50 yards away from the dictator’s residence. (This attack occurred just 100 yards from the building that Ronald Reagan authorized to be bombed by F-111s a quarter-century earlier in retaliation for a Berlin discothèque bombing ordered by the Libyan leader.) Just as the dictator somehow survived the attack on his personal residence in 1986, he also did in 2011.
Later that day, Vice Adm. William Gortney, director of the Joint Staff, was asked by the press, “Can you guarantee that coalition forces are not going to target Qaddafi?” Gortney replied, “At this particular point, I can guarantee that he’s not on a targeting list.” When it was then pointed out that it was Qaddafi’s personal residence that had been attacked, Gortney added, “Yeah. But, no, we’re not targeting his residence. We’re there to set the conditions and enforce the United Nations Security Council resolution. That’s what we’re doing right now and limiting it to that.”
In fact, not only was the Western coalition not limiting its missions to the remit of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, but it also actively chose not to enforce them. Resolution 1970 was supposed to prohibit arms transfers to either side of the war in Libya, and NATO officials claimed repeatedly that this was not occurring. On April 19, 2011, a brigadier general stated, “No violation of the arms embargo has been reported.” Three weeks later, on May 13, a wing commander admitted, “I have no information about arms being moved across any of the borders around Libya.” In fact, Egypt and Qatar were shipping advanced weapons to rebel groups the whole time, with the blessing of the Obama administration, while Western intelligence and military forces provided battlefield intelligence, logistics, and training support.
Yet, the most damning piece of evidence comes from a public relations video that NATO itself released on May 24, 2011. In the short video, a Canadian frigate — the HMCS Charlottetown — allegedly enforcing the arms embargo, boards a rebel tugboat and finds small arms, 105mm howitzer rounds, and “lots of explosives,” all of which are banned under Section 9 of Resolution 1970. The narrator states, “It turns out the tugboat is being used by Libyan rebels to transport arms from Benghazi to Misrata.” The Charlottetown captain radios NATO headquarters for further guidance. As the narrator concludes, “NATO decides not to impede the rebels and to let the tugboat proceed.” In other words, a NATO surface vessel stationed in the Mediterranean to enforce an arms embargo did exactly the opposite, and NATO was comfortable posting a video demonstrating its hypocrisy.
n truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.
In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.
The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days. Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had abandoned their vehicles. Fittingly, on Oct. 20, 2011, it was a U.S. Predator drone and French fighter aircraft that attacked a convoy of regime loyalists trying to flee Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. The dictator was injured in the attack, captured alive, and then extrajudicially murdered by rebel forces. The intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there’s a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield. Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military. Civilian and military officials are often instructed to use specific talking points to suggest the scope of particular operations is minimal relative to large-scale ground wars or that there is no war going on at all. Note that it took 14 months before the Pentagon even admitted, “Of course it’s combat,” for U.S. soldiers involved in the ongoing mission against the Islamic State in Iraq. Meanwhile, the public learned just this week — only because Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed on Saturday — that there is a previously unannounced detachment of Marines in northern Iraq providing “force protection” for the Iraqi military and U.S. advisors. The gradual accretion of troops, capabilities, arms transfers, and expanded military missions seemingly just “happens,” because officials frame each policy step as normal and necessary. The reality is that, collectively, they represent a fundamentally larger and different intervention.
During the theatrical and exhaustive Benghazi hearing in October 2015, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Clinton about a video clip that read, “‘We came, we saw, he died [meaning Qaddafi].’ Is that the Clinton doctrine?” Clinton replied, “No, that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.” Yet, this was never the military mission that the Obama administration repeatedly told the world it had set out to achieve. It misled the American public, because while presidents attempt to frame their wars as narrow, limited, and essential, admitting to the honest objective in Libya — regime change — would have brought about more scrutiny and diminished public support. The conclusion is clear: While we should listen to what U.S. and Western officials claim are their military objectives, all that matters is what they authorize their militaries to actually do.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/
Why Qaddafi had to go: African gold, oil and the challenge to monetary imperialism
What was NATO's violent intervention in Libya really all about? Now we know, writes Ellen Brown, thanks to Hillary Clinton's recently published emails. It was to prevent the creation of an independent hard currency in Africa that would free the continent from economic bondage under the dollar, the IMF and the French African franc, shaking off the last heavy chains of colonial exploitation.
The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap."
"We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."
US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring.
As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."
Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa.
Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.
But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."
The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.
Mission accomplished?
Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton's private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:
"Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)."
In a 'source comment', the original declassified email adds:
"According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:
1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa."
Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.
Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist Robert Parry. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, and of Al Qaeda embedded in the US-backed opposition.
Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Parry suggests they may have originated with Blumenthal himself. They include the bizarre claim that Qaddafi had a "rape policy" involving passing Viagra out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a UN presentation. Parry asks rhetorically:
"So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this 'regime change' by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya's wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa - or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!"
Toppling the global financial scheme
Qaddafi's threatened attempt to establish an independent African currency was not taken lightly by Western interests. In 2011, Sarkozy reportedly called the Libyan leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.
It is banks, not governments, that create most of the money in Western economies, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called 'fractional reserve' lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.
In 1944, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing.
A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including 'structural adjustment' policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.
After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar's gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to 'back' the dollar with oil, creating the 'petro-dollar'. Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.
In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq's Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.
In Libya, Qaddafi also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency. As these developments are detailed by blogger Denise Rhyne:
"For decades, Libya and other African countries had been attempting to create a pan-African gold standard. Libya's al-Qadhafi and other heads of African States had wanted an independent, pan-African, 'hard currency'.
"Under al-Qadhafi's leadership, African nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification. The countries discussed the possibility of using the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy African oil.
"Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country's 143.8 tons of gold.
"Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community - with a single gold currency by 2023.
"African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas."
Showing what is possible
Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it.
Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention. Rather, as Canadian Professor Maximilian Forte put it in his heavily researched book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa,
"the goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within Africa that would facilitate increased African self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental European powers, namely the US."
Mystery solved
Hilary Clinton's emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early commentators. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:
"This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising."
It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:
"Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi's overthrow ... may never be known for certain - at least not publicly."
There the matter would have remained - suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption - but for the publication of Hillary Clinton's emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman's suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people.
It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.
What was NATO's violent intervention in Libya really all about? Now we know, writes Ellen Brown, thanks to Hillary Clinton's recently published emails. It was to prevent the creation of an independent hard currency in Africa that would free the continent from economic bondage under the dollar, the IMF and the French African franc, shaking off the last heavy chains of colonial exploitation.
The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap."
"We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."
US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring.
As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."
Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa.
Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.
But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."
The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.
Mission accomplished?
Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton's private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:
"Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)."
In a 'source comment', the original declassified email adds:
"According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:
1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa."
Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.
Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist Robert Parry. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, and of Al Qaeda embedded in the US-backed opposition.
Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Parry suggests they may have originated with Blumenthal himself. They include the bizarre claim that Qaddafi had a "rape policy" involving passing Viagra out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a UN presentation. Parry asks rhetorically:
"So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this 'regime change' by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya's wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa - or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!"
Toppling the global financial scheme
Qaddafi's threatened attempt to establish an independent African currency was not taken lightly by Western interests. In 2011, Sarkozy reportedly called the Libyan leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.
It is banks, not governments, that create most of the money in Western economies, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called 'fractional reserve' lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.
In 1944, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing.
A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including 'structural adjustment' policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.
After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar's gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to 'back' the dollar with oil, creating the 'petro-dollar'. Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.
In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq's Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.
In Libya, Qaddafi also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency. As these developments are detailed by blogger Denise Rhyne:
"For decades, Libya and other African countries had been attempting to create a pan-African gold standard. Libya's al-Qadhafi and other heads of African States had wanted an independent, pan-African, 'hard currency'.
"Under al-Qadhafi's leadership, African nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification. The countries discussed the possibility of using the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy African oil.
"Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country's 143.8 tons of gold.
"Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community - with a single gold currency by 2023.
"African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas."
Showing what is possible
Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it.
Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention. Rather, as Canadian Professor Maximilian Forte put it in his heavily researched book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa,
"the goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within Africa that would facilitate increased African self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental European powers, namely the US."
Mystery solved
Hilary Clinton's emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early commentators. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:
"This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising."
It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:
"Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi's overthrow ... may never be known for certain - at least not publicly."
There the matter would have remained - suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption - but for the publication of Hillary Clinton's emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman's suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people.
It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.
Meanwhile....its all about OIL....
Treasury sanctions Venezuela state-owned oil firm in bid to transfer control to Maduro opposition
The Trump administration will sanction Venezuela's state-owned oil firm, a move the White House has long put off for fear that it would raise oil prices and hurt American refiners.
The move comes after a turbulent week for Venezuela that has created a standoff over the country's leadership. The sanctions aim to transfer control of Venezuela's oil wealth to forces that oppose socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro and deprive the strongman of resources that could prolong his grip on power.
Last week, the opposition leader of Venezuela's National Assembly, Juan Guaido, named himself interim president amid street protests. President Donald Trump soon recognized Guaido as the nation's leader and his administration has been marshaling international support for the opposition figure since then.
Maduro, having recently started another term after highly disputed elections, is refusing to back down. He is supported by the country's minister of defense and Russia.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday determined that people operating in Venezuela's oil sector are subject to U.S. sanctions.The nation's energy industry is dominated by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, better known as PDVSA.
Mnuchin said PDVSA has long been a vehicle for embezzlement and corruption by officials and businessmen. The sanctions will prevent the nation's oil wealth from being diverted to Maduro and will only be lifted when his regime hands control of PDVSA to a successor government, he added.
"The path to sanctions relief for PDVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the interim president or a subsequent democratically elected government who is committed to taking concrete and meaningful actions to combat corruption," Mnuchin said during a White House news briefing.
Under the sanctions, U.S. companies can continue to purchase Venezuelan oil, but the payments must be held in an account that cannot be accessed by the Maduro regime.
"If the people in Venezuela want to continue to sell us oil, as long as that money goes into blocked accounts, we'll continue to take it," Mnuchin said. "Otherwise we will not be buying it."
Oil prices pared some losses after news of the sanctions broke, but major benchmarks were still down more than 2.5 percent following the official announcement. U.S. crude ended Monday's session 3.2 percent lower earlier in the day.
In order to minimize disruptions and support for humanitarian aid, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued general licenses that authorize some transactions and activities with PDVSA to continue for a limited time, Mnuchin said. European and Caribbean companies will also be granted licenses so they can wind down business with PDVSA in an orderly fashion.
PDVSA's Citgo refineries in the U.S. will be allowed to continue to operate, but revenue must be placed in an escrow account in the United States. Citgo operates three U.S. refineries with a combined ability to process about 750,000 barrels per day of crude oil into fuels.
Earlier Monday, Reuters reported that Guaido's coalition is racing to take control of Citgo before an interest payment linked to PDVSA's bonds maturing in 2020 comes due in April. If PDVSA fails to make the payment, it would open a path for creditors to make a claim on Citgo's assets.
Venezuela's oil production has cratered in recent years after a long stretch of mismanagement and economic crisis that has prevented PDVSA from maintaining output, creating a vicious cycle of falling supplies and revenue.
Still, Venezuela remains one of the largest suppliers to U.S. refineries. Venezuela shipped an average of 580,000 bpd of crude oil and petroleum products to the country in the year through October 2018, the last month data were available.
Venezuela is a major supplier of heavy oil, which is largely used to produce distillates like diesel and jet fuel. PDVSA relies on imports of super light oil to dilute its heavy crude before its shipped out.
The U.S. sanctions will place limits on selling oil products, Mnuchin said, but the Treasury is not currently pursuing an embargo against sales to Venezuela.
Confirmation of the administration's intent to sanction PDVSA came from Sen. Marco Rubio before to the news conference, after Axios earlier reported the impending actions.
"The Maduro crime family has used PDVSA to buy and keep the support of many military leaders," Rubio said in a statement. "The oil belongs to the Venezuelan people, and therefore the money PDVSA earns from its export will now be returned to the people through their legitimate constitutional government."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/28/tre...venezuela-state-owned-oil-firm-sen-rubio.html
Treasury sanctions Venezuela state-owned oil firm in bid to transfer control to Maduro opposition
- The Trump administration announces sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned energy company PDVSA.
- The sanctions aim to transfer control of Venezuela's oil wealth to the forces that oppose socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro.
- U.S. companies can continue to import oil from Venezuela, but the funds must be held in accounts that are not accessible to the Maduro regime.
The Trump administration will sanction Venezuela's state-owned oil firm, a move the White House has long put off for fear that it would raise oil prices and hurt American refiners.
The move comes after a turbulent week for Venezuela that has created a standoff over the country's leadership. The sanctions aim to transfer control of Venezuela's oil wealth to forces that oppose socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro and deprive the strongman of resources that could prolong his grip on power.
Last week, the opposition leader of Venezuela's National Assembly, Juan Guaido, named himself interim president amid street protests. President Donald Trump soon recognized Guaido as the nation's leader and his administration has been marshaling international support for the opposition figure since then.
Maduro, having recently started another term after highly disputed elections, is refusing to back down. He is supported by the country's minister of defense and Russia.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday determined that people operating in Venezuela's oil sector are subject to U.S. sanctions.The nation's energy industry is dominated by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, better known as PDVSA.
Mnuchin said PDVSA has long been a vehicle for embezzlement and corruption by officials and businessmen. The sanctions will prevent the nation's oil wealth from being diverted to Maduro and will only be lifted when his regime hands control of PDVSA to a successor government, he added.
"The path to sanctions relief for PDVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the interim president or a subsequent democratically elected government who is committed to taking concrete and meaningful actions to combat corruption," Mnuchin said during a White House news briefing.
Under the sanctions, U.S. companies can continue to purchase Venezuelan oil, but the payments must be held in an account that cannot be accessed by the Maduro regime.
"If the people in Venezuela want to continue to sell us oil, as long as that money goes into blocked accounts, we'll continue to take it," Mnuchin said. "Otherwise we will not be buying it."
Oil prices pared some losses after news of the sanctions broke, but major benchmarks were still down more than 2.5 percent following the official announcement. U.S. crude ended Monday's session 3.2 percent lower earlier in the day.
In order to minimize disruptions and support for humanitarian aid, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued general licenses that authorize some transactions and activities with PDVSA to continue for a limited time, Mnuchin said. European and Caribbean companies will also be granted licenses so they can wind down business with PDVSA in an orderly fashion.
PDVSA's Citgo refineries in the U.S. will be allowed to continue to operate, but revenue must be placed in an escrow account in the United States. Citgo operates three U.S. refineries with a combined ability to process about 750,000 barrels per day of crude oil into fuels.
Earlier Monday, Reuters reported that Guaido's coalition is racing to take control of Citgo before an interest payment linked to PDVSA's bonds maturing in 2020 comes due in April. If PDVSA fails to make the payment, it would open a path for creditors to make a claim on Citgo's assets.
Venezuela's oil production has cratered in recent years after a long stretch of mismanagement and economic crisis that has prevented PDVSA from maintaining output, creating a vicious cycle of falling supplies and revenue.
Still, Venezuela remains one of the largest suppliers to U.S. refineries. Venezuela shipped an average of 580,000 bpd of crude oil and petroleum products to the country in the year through October 2018, the last month data were available.
Venezuela is a major supplier of heavy oil, which is largely used to produce distillates like diesel and jet fuel. PDVSA relies on imports of super light oil to dilute its heavy crude before its shipped out.
The U.S. sanctions will place limits on selling oil products, Mnuchin said, but the Treasury is not currently pursuing an embargo against sales to Venezuela.
Confirmation of the administration's intent to sanction PDVSA came from Sen. Marco Rubio before to the news conference, after Axios earlier reported the impending actions.
"The Maduro crime family has used PDVSA to buy and keep the support of many military leaders," Rubio said in a statement. "The oil belongs to the Venezuelan people, and therefore the money PDVSA earns from its export will now be returned to the people through their legitimate constitutional government."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/28/tre...venezuela-state-owned-oil-firm-sen-rubio.html
LOL If fucking bully USA removes all its punishing sanctions, venezuela will be ok very soon! Nothing to do with socialism!
Most of norwegian companies are state controlled. Much like singapore.competing unfairly in domestic market.
