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Another Israeli Fiasco

March 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I am repeating this post by Israeli  journalist Barry Chamish, from his blog Circle of 13, regarding the recruitment of African mercenaries for Ghaddafi.

-The Fire Insider

GENERAL ISRAEL ZIV AND LIBYA – ANOTHER ISRAELI FIASCO

by Barry Chamish

Shalom... now who do you want me to kill?

If you’re a leader who is looking for an expensive means of losing power, hire Maj. Gen. Israel Ziv at his firm Global CST and he’ll arrange for your downfall. Just ask Libyan strongman Muamar Ghaddafi for a recommendation.

Quoting reliable Israeli sources Yediot Ahronot and Inyan Mercazi, I recently, if not proved then strongly contended, that a desperate Ghaddafi hired Ziv’s Israeli firm to supply him with a mercenary force to defeat the rebels’ ragtag army on the verge of ousting him from power. Permit me to reprint my claims:

With approval from the government in Tel Aviv, an Israeli security firm is responsible for sending groups of African mercenaries to Libya to fight the protestors who have been calling for the fall of the Gaddafi regime for the last two weeks, reports Al Jazeera’s website, citing a source in the Israeli press. The journalist from Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, who prefers to remain anonymous, said that according to speculation in the security sector, Israel looks at Libya from a strategic perspective and in terms of security. The fall of Gaddafi would open the door for an Islamic regime in Libya, according to speculation. In a meeting on February 18, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defence Minister Barak and Foreign Minister Lieberman decided to recruit African mercenaries to fight alongside Gaddafi, according to the journalist. During the meeting, they decided to let General Israel Ziv, the director of security firm Global CST, which is active in many African countries, to make a group of paramilitary mercenaries from Guinea, Nigeria, Central Africa, Mali, Senegal, Darfur and Southern Sudan available to Abdullah Assinousi, one of the heads of Libya’s intelligence agency.


Since then, details of the plot have emerged from the dark. Attending the fateful Feb. 18 meeting were Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman. They heard assessments from IDF intelligence chief Gen. Aviv Kochavi  and Chairman of the Division of North Africa in the Foreign Ministry, Shalom Cohen, that if Ghaddafi falls, a radical Islamic regime would follow him. Based on this unlikely assessment, the Prime Minister decided, supposedly on behalf of the Israeli people, to bail out Libya’s leader with a well trained and equipped army of African guns for hire. He contacted Gen. Ziv who arranged a meeting with Ghaddafi military representatives in the Chadian capital N’djamena. Joining them were two reps from the Israeli government, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, and Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser. There, a deal between Israel and Libya was cut.

There should be no shock that Ghaddafi agreed. He had two choices; be overthrown or be saved by Israel. Naturally, he

You get oil, I slaughter civilians... so what's the catch?

chose the latter even though the terms were tough. Global CST would supply tens of thousands of mercenaries for 5 billion American bucks. After they slaughtered the last of the rebels, Israel would be granted rights to explore and export Libyan oil hushhushedly and Gen. Ziv would be permitted to operate his army from Libyan soil to spread its unique talents at saving dictators throughout Africa.

Ghaddafi almost got his money’s worth…and then a UN resolution and mostly an American force attacked Libya with bombs and missiles. Suddenly, Ghaddafi could and likely would lose. However, Ziv is not merely a maverick general:

http://nuestrosricos.blogspot.com/2008/04/israel-in-colombia-death-do-we-impart.html

General Ziv is on the payroll of Counterterrorism International and is member of the Task Force on Future Terrorism (FOTFF), created in June 2005 by the Office of Homeland Security of Israel? No, of the USA.FOTFF operates under the orders of then-Secretary Michael Chertoff and Lee Hamilton.

And if Ghaddafi should lose, the thoughtful U.S. Ambassador to the Security Council has requested that the mercenaries intervening in Libya be exempt from prosecution under international law. And if recent history is any indication, Ghaddafi is guaranteed to get shafted. Let’s look at the last five years of Ziv’s career:

In 2006, Maj. Gen. Ziv, heartlessly crushed the Jews of Gush Katif:

http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=625472&Date=8/16/2005

Col. Israel Ziv, a commander in Neve Dekalim, said about 500 to 600 families were left in the Gaza Strip, about one-third of the total population, and that he expected more to leave throughout the day. But thousands of pullout opponents who infiltrated Gaza in recent weeks also remained. Ziv said the army planned to clear out the southern half of Gush Katif, the main bloc of Gaza settlements, today.Amid anger among some settlers over the activities of outsiders who came to support them, Major-General Israel Ziv, operational commander of the general staff, said: “The outsiders have taken the locals hostage. I think that things will now move very fast.”

When told that he would be moving fast against teenagers, his infamous reply was that he would take that into consideration but he had his “limits.”

After leaving 8500 Gazan Jews homeless, Ziv set his eyes on the former Soviet nation of Georgia. He armed the country and convinced it to start a war with Russia. Needless to say, Russia crushed the Georgians and were plenty ticked off at Israel:

http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-27235-israelnews-how-israel-has-helped-georgia-train-troops-and-supply-it-weapons

IDF reservists who helped to train Georgian troops said Sunday that they had been unable to contact soldiers who they trained up until a few months ago, but declared that the recent hostilities came as no surprise. Speaking to reporters, the reservists said the bases used to train the troops had been bombed by Russia even though they weren’t located in the area where the battles are taking place. One reservists identified as L told Haaretz that he was hired by Global CST, owned by Maj. Gen. Israel Ziv, and Defense Shield, owned by Hirsch, about a year ago, right after he left the army. He had served as a combat officer in an elite unit, and he got the adventurous offer through his commanding officers. “It looked interesting. Relative to Israel, the money was excellent, too,” he said.

After betraying fellow Jews and Georgians, Ziv turned his sights on Guinea in 2008, training the troops of dictator Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara. By the next year, the Israeli-trained troops turned their new rifles on a soccer crowd, killing 158. Ziv’s benefactor, Camara, left Guinea for medical treatment in Morocco, and has not been permitted to return home.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/yossi-melman-defense-ministry-fines-firm-that-sent-elite-training-force-to-guinea-1.288559?localLinksEnabled=false

In December 2009 and January 2010, Haaretz published a series of articles describing how Ziv and former Tel Aviv police commander David Tzur, former foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh, former Israeli ambassador to France Nissim Zvili and others got together in order to work in Guinea, a small, resource rich, West African country.

They got a ten million dollar contract, among others, to set up and train a special military guard for Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, who seized power in Guinea and appointed himself president. The contract stipulated that Ziv would supply the force with gear and weapons. To that end Israeli instructors, who were veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and the defense establishment, arrived in Guinea at Ziv’s behest.

And now, it’s Ghaddafi’s turn.

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Massacre!

March 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Libyan spy sent by Qaddafi to divert your attention.


Americans are going about their business while a massacre is going on in Libya.  As they fight over budgets and collective bargaining rights, gossip about the Oscars and talk about the latest sitcoms, Colonel Qaddafi has sent his African mercenaries and his personal army to slaughter his own people as they protest non-violently against his forty-year rule.

It is startling that the United States has not insisted on action except for severing diplomatic relations and tepid sanctions.  Qaddafi, who had been a pariah and promoter of state-sponsored terrorism, suddenly dropped his plans to build weapons of mass destruction and joined the war against terrorism.  Libya became a secret rendition site for the interrogation of suspected terrorists, joining Egypt in the barbaric torture of often-innocent people.  Investigative journalist Russ Baker has filed a significant report on his site, WhoWhatWhy.com that I repeat in full:

“While the US government expresses outrage over the brutality of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi toward his own people, we’re missing a complex but significant wrinkle that ties Qaddafi to America’s cover-up of the true path to war in Iraq.

“In May, 2009, a man named Ibn Shaikh al-Libi supposedly committed suicide while being held in a Libyan jail. Al-Libi is a deeply, deeply interesting fellow. Back in 2002, he was tortured by Egypt under US direction. It appears that the reason the US government had him tortured was not to stop some imminent attack on the United States, but to generate alleged—and false— links between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that could justify invading Iraq.

“Al-Libi was captured and sent to Egypt, where under severe torture including waterboarding, he related what turned out to be false information about purported Saddam-9/11 links. Al-Libi later explained that he provided that material because that’s what his captors wanted to hear, and it ended his torture.

I don't torture. I just like wearing cool shades.

“Nick Baumann wrote about it here in 2009 in Mother Jones: ‘Al-Libi was the man whose false confession, obtained under torture, of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda provided the Bush administration with its casus belli for war with Iraq. It didn’t seem to matter that al-Libi’s claim that Bin Laden had sent operatives to be trained in the use of weapons of mass destruction by Hussein’s people didn’t make any sense. “They were killing me,” al-Libi later told the FBI about his torturers. “I had to tell them something.” A bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee report would later conclude that al-Libi lied about the link to avoid torture.’”

The enormity of what al-Libi’s revelations represent and his continued presence and ability to bear witness to the true background to the Iraq invasion made him a grave threat to the Bush-Cheney administration since those revelations could potentially have led to war crimes prosecutions.

Thus the fact that he suddenly “killed himself” while being held by Qaddafi’s police state at least raises the question of whether Qaddafi was doing a favor for the US. By 2009 when al-Libi suddenly died, Obama had become president—but it’s safe to say that deep, covert cleanup operations don’t end with an inauguration.

With the world delighting in the abdication of the dictator Mubarak in Egypt and now Qaddafi’s potential demise in Libya, the least we can do is examine the threads that lead back to our own country. If we do not pay attention to these things, we are all culpable.

The obliviousness of Americans to this tragedy is tantamount to complicity.  Where are the demonstrations in support of the Libyan people?  Is there silence because they happen to be Arabs and Americans equate all Arabs with terrorism and hatred of Israel?  Will history say that the Americans had no interest in the slaughter of thousands of people by a dictator who became an ally after years of promoting terrorism?  The silence is deafening.

MacGuffin

Meanwhile in Egypt, the United States continues to give aid to the military which has still not lifted the state of emergency that allowed Mubarak to rule with an iron first.  It is also making no effort to push the Saudis to institute reforms even as it continues to import Saudi oil, relying on the Saudis to produce more oil during the Libyan crisis to keep the prices in check.  When oil prices rise (they already have and will rise more) the American economy will suffer a severe shock, setting back what is already an illusory recovery.   Is the American Establishment more concerned with the price of oil than the massacre of thousands of innocent people protesting non-violently for their basic rights?  If Qaddafi manages to hold onto power then the blood will be on our hands.  This is a turning point in world history and the Americans must decide now if their comfort is more important than the lives of others.

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Three Hundred Billion Barrels Short

February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What's 300 billion barrels between friends?


Whilst all eyes have been on Egypt, with the reactionary regimes in the region pressing Obama to maintain the status quo there lest the revolution spread to them, WikiLeaks has revealed what is probably the biggest story of the moment–that Saudi Arabia has been overestimating its oil reserves by three hundred billion barrels.  Not only has Saudi Arabia reached peak production but production will actually decline in the coming years.

Energy and oil analysts have called this dramatic revelation a wake up call. They have denounced American politicians for behaving as though America’s oil- based economy could go on indefinitely and for not coming up with a comprehensive energy policy.  Perhaps they have not noticed but this is precisely what Obama has been attempting to do. The Republicans? They have had their heads in the sand and their hands outstretched to the oil companies for contributions. These monies are kicked back to the oil companies in the form of federal subsidies.  Dick Cheney notoriously refused to promote an energy policy that was not run by the oil companies themselves, having himself been the CEO of oil giant Halliburton.  The Republicans have made it clear they will thwart any effort by Obama to implement an energy policy not dictated by oil interests.

China is racing ahead of America in developing alternative sources of energy, engaging in lucrative contracts with German wind turbine technology companies and developing its wind energy sector while America lags behind in the energy dark ages.  The powers that be in America are more concerned with prosecuting Julian Assange than paying attention to the disturbing information WikiLeaks has posted with regard to Saudi Arabia’s oil supply.  Until recently, when any member of OPEC was short in its required production, Saudi Arabia would increase its production to make up the difference thus stabilizing world oil prices.  In the near future the Saudis will be unable to continue this practice which means that the price of oil is bound to increase.  To mitigate this, conservation will become a vitally important part of any comprehensive energy policy along with the development of wind and solar technology.

Made in China

While some insist that nuclear energy must be part of such a policy, the cost of nuclear power plants is beyond the scope of private enterprise. Because the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party is opposed to further government expenditures, it is difficult to see how America will be capable of expanding its nuclear energy resources.

Were it not for WikiLeaks the Saudis would have been able to perpetrate the myth of their vast oil reserves, something almost certainly known by American oil companies and CIA, most probably in collusion with them to protect the importance of the powerful American oil companies.  When the last CEO of EXXON-MOBILE retired, he left with a golden parachute of $250 million dollars, which may explain why the oil interests do not have any sense of emergency with regard to alternative energy sources.  Chevron and EXXON keep running ads about how they understand the problem but they have given no clear statement about how much they actually spend on research and development in transforming themselves into comprehensive energy companies.

Not long after Jimmy Carter was elected president, he presciently ordered the Department of Energy to begin developing clean energy sources. This was in the wake of the oil embargo that drove oil prices up dramatically thereby inconveniencing American consumers who were obliged to wait on long lines to get fuel for their cars. I am a man of a certain age; I remember this. Let me assure you, it was not fun.  But Ronald Reagan ridiculed Carter for wearing a cardigan under his jacket while addressing the nation from the White House, famously quipping, “We are not going to freeze in the dark.”  We were Americans he told us, and this was not something we were obliged to accept.

Instead, Reagan promoted breeder reactor technology at the Department of Energy, a project that never got off the ground because of the cost and serious safety hazards.  Instead, he turned back to oil, pronouncing that America would “always protect the House of Saud.”  And protect them America did, even though young Saudis increasingly resented the Saudi royal family, staging a serious protest supported by religious leaders who called from the minarets for a demonstration that took place out of sight of the Americans. One of the chief opponents of the Saudi Arabian royal family proved to be Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks.  Bin Laden’s Saudi handler was Prince Turki, who served as chief of Saudi intelligence and then as the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Wealthy Saudis have contributed to Al Qaeda with money made by American purchases of Saudi oil.

Don't gimme that hippy-dippy, cars-running-on-fryer-grease bullshit!

This could all be a blessing in disguise if Obama strongly makes the case that America cannot rely on Saudi oil or oil from other Middle Eastern countries. This is not only because of the political instability but because the oil is starting to run out.  The American people need desperately to understand that unless America adopts a comprehensive energy policy, the future will become increasingly perilous.

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