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Who are the Libyan rebels?

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Phaedros Posted: Wed, Mar 30 2011 10:35 PM

http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2147759&spid=17424

Michael Scheuer, a CIA Chief of the Bin Ladan desk, says that the rebels really are al-Qaeda backed and says that the air strikes are the equivalent of providing air support to the Taliban. How true is this? He says it's no secret. Will this completely ruin Obama for the general public? I personally hope so. The moment he decided that we should get involved should be the moment that he lost any chances of being reelected. 

Tumblr The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. ~Albert Camus
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A lot of fellow libertarians were deluded by these 'revolutions' in the middle east, thinking of them as some kind of popular movement brought about by facebook and twitter. As soon as I noticed that only people in the pro-west middle east countries were revolting I knew something was up.

These revolts are results of the agitations promoted by terrorist groups, Al-Jazeera (not facebook or twitter) and now some support from countries in the west. Nothing more than that, unfortunately.

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Paul replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 12:18 AM

This is Gaddafi's propaganda from the first week or so, trying to scare other countries into taking his side.  He also blamed the revolts on drug-laden Nescafé...believe that, too?

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Phaedros replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 12:29 AM

Did you listen to the interview? This isn't coming from Gaddafi, although he did say that.

Tumblr The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. ~Albert Camus
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DanielMuff replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 12:56 AM

Paul:

This is Gaddafi's propaganda from the first week or so, trying to scare other countries into taking his side.  He also blamed the revolts on drug-laden Nescafé...believe that, too?

What makes it propaganda?

To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process.
Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!"
Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."

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Paul replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 1:48 AM

Everyone that's repeating it got it from Gadaffi, though...or just made it up.  Gadaffi didn't believe it, of course...a bit later on he said he'd join with al qaeda if he was attacked.  These revolts are al qaeda's worst nightmare -- why would anything think they were supporting them?

Daniel Muffinburg: it's (false) information "aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position" (Wikipedia's definition).

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How do you Gaddafi was lying?

To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process.
Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!"
Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."

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Merlin replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 2:27 AM

The Turkish experience would seem to suggest that Middle East countries tend to oscilalte between militant Islamism and secular fascism. Even if the Libyan regime is done away with, one might expect the allies to be helping the next secular fascist rebellion within the decade.  

The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms.
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CrazyCoot replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 3:03 AM

Syria and Yemen don't strike me as particularly friendly to the regime in DC.  I would appreciate that people back up accusations with some facts as opposed to making blanket accusations. 

 The other issue is that if Al Qaeda is playing a role this does not mean that they are the sole actor, or even the driving actor.

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 4:17 AM

Libya is a one party state so it stands to reason many groups and people with many different outlooks see their opportunity right now. It was the same when the Shah was being overthrown in Iran, or Mubarak in Egypt, all sorts of people came out. Probably the rebels are many things, given its apeal in the recent decades some are undoubtedly Islamists.

But I think there are indications that they are very varied, since from day one you had the rebels who had a very negative view of foreign intervention, who arrested those SAS troops and who flew that famous "NO INTERVENTION" banner, but then you also had the rebels that Al Jazeera was always able to find who always spoke in favour of intervention and who are now posing for the silly pictures of Libyans waving French flags and giving thumbs up for blown up tanks.

And it matters not for Obama's political fortunes whichever faction emerges dominant there. Bush and Clinton both worked with some pretty extreme Islamists and it did not matter. If you didn't see it on MSNBC it didn't happen.

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I heard that some of the leaders in the rebel movement are CIA operatives, it would not be the first time there was a CIA backed coup in another country. Most of the rebels are "freedom fighters" or citizens of the country that have had enough of the dictatorship. Western organisations have been against Gaddafi for decades.

As someone has said, western influence ensures that who ever the rebels are and whatever their motives or cause is, the situation or country is controlled and the outcome will be a western backed one. ie the fact that western military is there ensures that any revolution will result in the west being in control of the country.

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Paul replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 7:34 AM

A few days after claiming the rebels were al Qaeda, Gaddafi said he'd team up with al Qaeda to fight the "crusaders" (US/Europe/GCC/etc.) if they intervened to help the rebels.  If he believed the first statement, the second would have made no sense; therefore he was lying in his first statement.

Have you seen the transitional national council's "vision for the future" document?  Ermm...here.  "Denunciation of intolerance and violence", "democracy" with "equality for women" (and freedom of religion isn't mentioned here, but has been elsewhere), "recognition of the independence of sovereignty of other nations", etc.  Al Qaeda wrote that, you think?

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Jack Roberts:
I heard that some of the leaders in the rebel movement are CIA operatives

So definitely Al Qaida then.

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 8:04 AM

Have you seen the transitional national council's "vision for the future" document?  Ermm...here.  "Denunciation of intolerance and violence", "democracy" with "equality for women" (and freedom of religion isn't mentioned here, but has been elsewhere), "recognition of the independence of sovereignty of other nations", etc.  Al Qaeda wrote that, you think?


No mention of imprisoning and beating up black Africans as suspected Gaddafi mercenaries?

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Phaedros replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 8:09 AM

Yea, we can hope that a grand revolution will take place and the perfect democracy will be set up, but then there's reality.

Tumblr The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. ~Albert Camus
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Paul replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 8:25 AM

No mention of imprisoning and beating up black Africans as suspected Gaddafi mercenaries?

You suggesting they should put that in their constitution??

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 8:55 AM

No mention of imprisoning and beating up black Africans as suspected Gaddafi mercenaries?

You suggesting they should put that in their constitution??

Well it certainly looks like one of their revolutionary principles.

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Marko replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 12:57 PM

Who Are the Rebels?

by Jon Lee Anderson, BENGHAZI, LIBYA

Three of the world’s great armies have suddenly conspired to support a group of people in the coastal cities and towns of Libya, known, vaguely, as “the rebels.” Last month, Muammar Qaddafi, who combines a phantasmagorical sense of reality with an unbounded capacity for terror, appeared on television to say that the rebels were nothing more than Al Qaeda extremists, addled by hallucinogens slipped into their milk and Nescafé. President Obama, who is torn between the imperatives of rescuing Libyan innocents from slaughter and not falling into yet another prolonged war, described the same rebels rather differently: “people who are seeking a better way of life.”

During weeks of reporting in Benghazi and along the chaotic, shifting front line, I’ve spent a great deal of time with these volunteers. The hard core of the fighters has been the shabab—the young people whose protests in mid-February sparked the uprising. They range from street toughs to university students (many in computer science, engineering, or medicine), and have been joined by unemployed hipsters and middle-aged mechanics, merchants, and storekeepers. There is a contingent of workers for foreign companies: oil and maritime engineers, construction supervisors, translators. There are former soldiers, their gunstocks painted red, green, and black—the suddenly ubiquitous colors of the pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag.

read more

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al-Qaeda is a myth.

I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living.
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Amadeus replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 1:47 PM

Rofl Al Quaeda is not a myth. 

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The Power of Nightmares, an excellent documentary on the NeoCons and their lies.

No such organization has ever existed. It's a fantasy that serves the interests of the American bureaucracy and radical Islamists.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7787

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2005/210305alqaedamyth.htm

http://www.twf.org/News/Y2003/0622-Qaeda.html

I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living.
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Al-qaida is a myth. It was created by the CIA.

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Amadeus replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 2:42 PM

Unfortonatley I find the links you sent (most of which I have already read) to be very slective in it's information, as most political peices are. There are major truths in the articles you sent, in that this "al queda" serves the interest of the Oil companies and the Military Industrial complex and the Isreali/American "interest". This does not mean they aren't a real entitiy, and this also doesn't mean that Media has told many lies about the Al Queda and their capabilities, which purley serve to create fear in the public so they can have their freedoms stripped and such. Again, I find these conspiracy theories to be as selective with their information as much as a neo-conservative will cherry pick parts of an intelligence report. There's always a conflict if information regarding these conspiracy theories.I find it pretty obvious that most of these conspiracy theories are as likey to be as wrong as they can be right. Government isn't as smart as you think, and then again not as stupid as most of us think. 

 

I already know what you're thinking, that I've really presented really no argument or actual facts or statistics. But I already know it won't matter if I send you some alternate sources. I hope you don't think it's a cop out by saying that

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John Ess replied on Thu, Mar 31 2011 4:05 PM

I think the media overexagerates the extent to which Africans and the middle-easterners (the average person) hate the West or westerners personally.

Really there are a few countries that get money to except our will, by no means all of them the same that are revolting.  It is not their friendship.  And that pseudo-friendship, given that is extended cultures as different as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, has little correlation to them being in conformity to American freedoms or ideals.  But that is another matter entirely.

I have never met anyone in the Arab world who treated me unkindly.  Europeans are more likely to be jerks to me.  Or other Americans.  Even when I discuss Israel, fewer people are willing to connect it to American ideology at work.  Even people who are anti-semitic tend to think the Americans (white or black or whatever) are merely controlled by the Jews to our detriment. 

There are two mythologies; both of which rely on hate towards the US.  The left needs hate because it is the third world's supposed hatred towards Americanism, which is a projection of their own hatred of it.  (And as even Marxists like Zizek will say is a 'vulgar reductionism' to everything being about America and not anything else; which ironically pairs with hatred of secularism and constitutional freedoms).  The right needs hatred because they need to assert exceptionalism and the need to bomb, plus it looks like jealousy of our awesomeness.  Part of it also ignores the issue of Israel.  And makes it seem more personal.  We don't any aggression in the word.  People just hate us.

At the same time, it is vain to think everything is about the USA.  As if everyone is trying to save Western civilization for amurrrca or destroy it.  As if that is the only goal one wakes up to.  Their decision to do one or the other.  Most people have ideology more local; whether it is naive or more farsighted.  All we know now is that the Arab league and other old school bodies are going to be toast.  And their time just ran out.  We are going to see a different future.  Probably one of more technology and greater sanity, and less physical force.  It is not always utopia.  But every civilization has to switch from the physical state to the ideological state.  From the bludgeon to the school desk.

People should put it out of their minds that it is about conforming to or fighting the US one way or another.  This is basically a media frame that looks good next to stock prices and other things that OPEC 'controls' through coughing or looking at the US the wrong way.  After all, it's not all about us.

o

 

M

 

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Marko replied on Fri, Apr 1 2011 10:29 AM

I think the media overexagerates the extent to which Africans and the middle-easterners (the average person) hate the West or westerners personally.

People in the rest of the world are extremely good at being aware that there is a distinction between peoples and governments. Much more so than Americans or Europeans.

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To answer the OP, it's definately CIA and other western agent provocateurs. The term Al-Qaeda is just a euphemism.

The civil unrest is genuine no doubt. However, the actual rebellion is Western instigated. The same CIA assets from the 1980s are back at the helm, a new central bank is trading oil, oil trade agreements are being made, oil companies are currently holding Libyan nationalization at bay, etc.

You put the pieces together.

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I really enjoyed these two clips. Knowledgeable guests absolutely pummelling the neocon shills for the regime:

Michael Scheuer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A-bez9O-xmk

Jeremy Scahill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dXDZ2AogetA

 

"I don't believe in ghosts, sermons, or stories about money" - Rooster Cogburn, True Grit.
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Marko:

I think the media overexagerates the extent to which Africans and the middle-easterners (the average person) hate the West or westerners personally.

People in the rest of the world are extremely good at being aware that there is a distinction between peoples and governments. Much more so than Americans or Europeans.

 

I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living.
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