Foreboding of Storm - Medvedev vs. Putin

by Israel Shamir for Israelshamir.net

The Arab Rebellion has polarized Russia: some dream that the Spirit of Tahrir will visit Moscow, even as others hope for a NATO crusade to spread Western values all the way to the Volga; yet a third lot prays fervently that nothing will change, now or ever. The recent Russian abstention in the UN Security Council has split the elites and made the growing rift visible at last.

President Dmitri Medvedev has declared Kaddafi persona non grata. He supported the proposal to transfer Libya’s case to the ICC; he then ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to abstain. A few days later, ex-strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin roundly criticised Medvedev’s compliance; he called the Western intervention “a new crusade”, and suggested that the Western leaders should “pray for their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the bloodshed. Medvedev shot back with a meaningless “don’t you dare to speak of crusades” comment, and the pundits made a lot of mileage from this exchange, eager to see first light between the twain. Before this the President and the PM had behaved like Siamese twins. Now it seems they begin to pull apart.

We cannot know what Dmitri Medvedev’s actual political views are, but in recent months he has been promoted (by a clique of his advisers) as a pro-Western and pro-liberal alternative to Putin. Such a vision fits the traditional Russian duality of pro-Western vs. Native thinking epitomised by Turgenev and Dostoyevsky; to wit, Russia has always been part of Europe and yet Russia has always set herself apart. While this might drive a lesser species schizophrenic, the Russians have memorialised this health-giving tension in the two-headed eagle of their coat-of-arms. There is the native head that identifies itself with the non-European world and is strictly against the Libyan war, and then there is the pro-Western head that wants to collaborate with European powers and shares the European system of values, including those that have resulted in the bombardment of Libya.

It is very possible that election time will see Putin challenge Medvedev for the Presidency. Will it be a choice between (a) An independent, sovereign Russia going its own way, and (b) Russia as a massive oil pipeline guarded by yes-men? So say Putin’s followers. Medvedev’s clique declares that the choice is between (a) Russia as a legitimate member of the civilised world, and (b) A rogue Russia lost in the wilderness, like Kaddafi’s Libya.

So far so good, at the very least it sounds like a real choice; but there is a catch: the double eagle is not a real beast. It is only a dream. Putin is not really pro-native, and Medvedev has not really sold his soul to the West. Both pretend to be what they are hardly are.

If Putin were a real supporter of Russian independence, Russia would not keep its money invested in US shares and securities. If Putin really cared about the future of Russia, the profits from the sale of Russian oil would go to repair the country’s infrastructure, not simply enrich a few oligarchs. The storybook Putin would never allow Russia’s new-found wealth to drain away into the pockets of Londoners like Mr. Abramovich and his Chelsea football team.

On the other hand, if Medvedev were a real supporter of Western values, his police would not disperse every demonstration, and his electoral commissions would not block opposition parties from entering the fray. He certainly does not seem to be trying too hard to allow real competition into Russian politics.

Never forget that Medvedev is Putin’s creation, and his ability to stand alone is as yet unproven. That is why so many Russians doubt the sincerity of their low-key, high profile confrontation. The substitution of orchestrated media events in place of real, competitive elections has condemned Russians to demo-cracy: the demo version. Despite having an unrestrained freedom of speech and a near total absence of repression, Russians are unable to elect their rulers according to their own desires. They are free to speak, but their speeches cannot be translated into effective political action.

The man at the helm in the Kremlin isn’t elected by the general populace but is selected by insiders, as it was in Brezhnev’s days. The rule over post-Soviet Russia passes from leader to leader by some elite arrangement rubber-stamped by a visibly fake popular vote. Yeltsin came to power by a coup d’état and then used tanks against the elected parliament after being impeached. In 1996, he falsified the elections beyond anything in Russia’s history. After that, Yeltsin passed the power to Putin, and Putin has more or less transferred it to Medvedev. The only question left to the pundits in Moscow is whether Putin will allow Medvedev to run again or whether he has decided to take the steering wheel back. Pro-Western liberals would love to see Medvedev lock Putin up and run alone. They are afraid of Putin, but they are even more afraid of free elections with their unpredictable results. They prefer succession.

The Grey Eminence

The people who arrange succession are called political technologists, and they are a breed apart. In Russia they have wedded the brain of Karl Rove with the brute force of the Teamsters. Russian political technologists were described for a Western audience by Andrew Wilson when he wrote: “Post-Soviet political technologists see themselves as political meta-programmers, system designers, decision-makers and controllers all in one, applying whatever technology they can to the construction of politics as a whole.” Ivan Krastev explained: “A political consultant works for one of the parties in an election and does his best to help that party win; the political technologist is not interested in the victory of his party but in the victory of ‘the system’. In other words, political technologists are those in charge of maintaining the illusion of competitiveness in Russian politics.”

The use of political technology in the place of real politics has begun to make Russians extremely cynical and fatalistic: whatever move we make, they have already planned for it and it will be only they who will enjoy the fruits. Russians have begun to believe that political technologists are practically omnipotent, and this belief has made them very powerful indeed. For this reason, the éminence grise of Russia is neither priest nor oligarch, but a political technologist named Vladislav Surkov, a gifted writer and a poet of Russian-Jewish-Chechen stock. Some observers consider him to be the real power behind the cardboard figures of Putin the strongman and Medvedev the liberal. This is the view presented in the bestselling novel Virtuoso by Alexander Prochanov, a man with some first-hand knowledge of Surkov - a rarity for the great man is media shy. There is a description of Surkov in Wikileaks cable 10MOSCOW184, and we attach this yet-unpublished cable to this article.

A stage production based on Surkov’s novel Okolonolya (“About Zero”) is now enjoying an extremely successful run in the best Moscow theatres, and is directed by one of the best Russian directors (Kirill Serebrennikov). At $100 per seat, it is sold out for months in advance. I have seen it - and it is scary, in the Tarantino and Hostel style, but Tarantino never meddled in American politics. In the novel and in the play, Surkov contrasts the omnipotence of some people with the total impotence of the rest of us. Dmitri Bykov tipped his hat to the writer in his new play The Bear, when he says to the protagonist: “I can do with you whatever I wish.”

This perfect wave of political technologists, oligarchs, and former security officials has derailed every attempt to bring real democracy into Russian politics. This is a very common complaint of Russian democrats (as liberal Westernisers are called here). However, they rarely admit that there is one reason behind all these political technologies, one reason why the Russians are not allowed to practice political freedoms as they wish and deserve: without all these tricks, the Communists and other indigenous forces would regain a foothold in Russia.

The Communist leader Gennady Zuganov already said he will run for President in 2012, and a very popular Youtube (utilising 2012, the disaster movie trailer) called this vote “an alternative to the catastrophe”. They are still the biggest opposition party, but people doubt they have enough oomph. The Party is too timid, it made too many painful compromises. In 1996 the Communists won the elections, but the same Gennady Zuganov surrendered to Yeltsin’s threats of ‘civil war’. He may submit again, people fear. Putin considers him “harmless”.

The winning mixture would probably include Nationalists and Christians, beside the Communists; i.e. forces that value Russia’s uniqueness, Russia’s Orthodox Christianity, its native solidarity and strong social compassion. In fact, the mixture could include nearly everyone except the extreme Westernisers. “Le gouvernement est encore le seul Européen de la Russie,” as Alexandre Pushkin wrote (in French) to his pro-Western friend Chaadaev almost two hundred years ago, and this saying is still frequently quoted here.

The pro-Western opposition of Khodorkovsky fans, Novaya Gazeta readers, and the Echo Moskwy listeners is loud and omnipresent, but in fact they represent a tiny minority. They front for a plethora of small right-wing parties and groups calling for yet more neo-liberalism, though God knows Russia has seen too much of that. They are united by their loathing for the old Soviet system, by their hatred of Putin, by Western grants, and by other financial arrangements with the oligarchs.

They speak of human rights, but what they really mean is their own rights. They supported Israel’s bombing of Gaza, and now they support the Western bombing of Libya. To them, the West cannot do enough: Julia Latynina, a voice for the opposition, glorified Kitchener’s slaughter of Egyptians as the best way to deal with unruly Muslims. (Here is a timid English version of her screed).The right-wing opposition’s hatred of Muslims may engineer a break with Muslim-populated Tatarstan and North Caucasus. Their main political figure is the redheaded Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Yeltsin’s privatisation, godfather of all oligarchs and a Teflon man who always stands close to the power and money. They speak of democracy but what they really mean is managed democracy, enforced by NATO tanks. Some eighty per cent of callers to their radio station said they would welcome an operation like Dawn Odyssey if it were aimed at Moscow.

Russia’s pro-native opposition is numerically huge but is in disarray. The regime has successfully broken it up and divided it against itself. The last time it made a strong showing, it was under the charismatic personality of Dmitri Rogozin. In 2005, his very success caused his undoing: “Forgetting that he was on a leash, Rogozin began to stray too far and ultimately crossed Kremlin redlines, to the anger of Putin,” in the words of the US Ambassador. A secret Wikileaks cable from Moscow explains “Rogozin's real sin: he stopped playing at being an opposition politician and started acting like one.” (This cable 06MOSCOW10227 is also attached). Rogozin was the only man capable of scaring Putin: he out-Putined Putin. Soon after, Putin stopped playing democracy and Rogozin’s party was disbanded. After spending some time drifting through the political wilderness, Dmitri Rogozin was eventually exiled to Brussels as the Russian Ambassador to NATO, where he was described in another secret Wikileaks cable as “one of Russia's most charismatic, clever, and potentially dangerous politicians”.

It is just possible that by undoing Putin and trying to achieve a great liberal victory, the right-wing pro-Western forces will rub the lamp of freedom one too many times and free the indigenous genie. This has been openly admitted by PM Putin’s most venomous enemy, right-winger Andrey Piontkovsky: “Our glamorous Eloi are paralysed – not by fear of the ferocious Alfa-male, but by dread of facing alien mass of Morlocks without this Alfa male protection”. Indeed, only Putin stands between the people’s anger and the fat cats of Moscow. Much as they hate him, would they dare feed him to the wolves even as he protects them? Perhaps they would, hoping to finesse into place a leader they prefer, like Medvedev or Chubais. That would be a very risky play indeed.

On the other hand, procrastination is usually safe, but you never know when Russians will tire of the games and demand the real thing. It could happen. The Navalny phenomenon is an indication of the latent power of the Russian people. Navalny is a blogger and small-time political activist who became famous for attacking the corrupt practices of the ruling party. Political technologists accused him of being a US orange agent aiming to undermine Russian sovereignty and sell out Russia to NATO. These accusations caused him zero harm. In his TV encounter with a leading member of the ruling party, he won hands down: 99 per cent of responding viewers supported him, with just one per cent accepting the story about the bad Western wolf trying to swallow the innocent flock. These Russians, frustrated by the ballot box, voted with their pocketbooks – thousands of Russians contributed a few roubles each to his struggle against the ruling party until they had built up a multi-million-dollar war chest.

It’s not that Russians don’t believe in Western wolves embodied in NATO and Wall Street, but they have come to the conclusion that their rulers are also wolves - dressed in sheep’s clothing. Russians know that the oligarchs and top Kremlin figures are perfectly integrated into the Western capitalist scheme: they keep their money in Bahamas, they send their children to Oxford, they own houses on the Riviera and Hampstead, they own shares in the transnational companies. And together with their Western chums, they fleece Russians.

So Russia is ripe for change. But which way will it go? Will it be another “managed revolution”? Will the regime promote another pro-Western party while blocking the Left, the Orthodox and the nationalists? Or will the pro-native opposition finally sort through its problems, rescue Rogozin from his Brussels retreat and seriously try to win Russia? We shall see.

(Edited by Paul Bennett)

1992-2011 bis repetita...

To my absolute dismay, what is happening with Libya is a complete remake of what happened in Bosnia.  A quasi-instantaneous armed insurrection, followed by a civil war, followed by a no-fly zone, followed by a peace plan accepted by the "bad guys" and rejected by the "good guys" and now, it appears, followed by the very same Europeans seriously considering sending in "peacekeeping" troops.  They even (re-)created a NATO kangaroo court to judge Gaddafi for his "crimes against humanity" and the rest of the crimes many rulers commit, but only some get prosecuted for.  This is totally sickening and just goes to show that the entire tragedy of the war in Bosnia has been forgotten.  Or is it that it was never understood in the first place?

The US Empire does not even make any real effort to avoid parallels between Bosnia and Libya.  In fact, many imperial-fanboys openly do declare that "just like in Bosnia" the West should now do this or that.  And why not?  The war against Iraq was launched under the utterly ridiculous accusation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and when that was proven to be a lie, the very same accusation, made by the very same people, was hurled at Iran.  And nobody laughed.  In fact, most people began seriously discussing this idiocy.

Following so many other former Imperial puppets (including Milosevic and Saddam!), Gadaffi is now demonized (though he has yet to be called a "new Hitler").  Well, I happen to agree that Gaddafi deserves a good deal of this demonization (just like Slobodan and Saddam did).  Imperial puppets are inevitably deeply immoral thugs who are more than happy to kill, torture or massacre their own people.  But does that really mean that anybody and everybody who opposes them is a knight in shining armor?!

Just look at the leaders of the anti-Gaddafi forces today: Mahmoud Jibril and Khalifa Haftar.  They are high-ranking Gaddafi minions who turned their coats just on time to become "popular leaders"!  Don't these former Gaddafi apparachiks remind anybody of, say, Franjo Tudjman?

Or look at the so-called "civilians" in need of "protection" while being armed, trained and lead by a toxic mix of Western special forces and Wahabi extremists.  Does that not ring a bell? 

I personally loathe Gaddafi.  He is an utterly immoral megalomaniac, a Arab secular nationalist leader (I hate that combination).  A former nationalist turned Soviet puppet, then nationalist again, then US puppet and now back to nationalist.  This secularist clearly also fancies himself as some kind of Muslim leader with quasi-messianic wisdom to dispense to the masses.

Just as I always despised Milosevic, Saddam, Noriega and so many other buffoons who ended up being useless for the Empire and I have no respect whatsoever for Gaddafi.  But that is hardly a reason to give a standing ovation to the next imperial puppets which are already being groomed by the Empire to succeed Gaddafi!

Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo are now colonial banana republics of the Empire (in Iraq things did not go as well for the Empire who broke its teeth on the local Shia resistance).  Is that really the future which all those who cheer on the forces in Benghazi want for Libya?  For Libya to become another Bosnia or another Kosovo (with a Camp Bondsteel, narcotics, prostitution and all)?

From the very beginning of the anti-Gaddafi insurrection I supported the rebellion hoping that it would finally boot this thug out of power and replace him with a reasonably democratic regime.  But when I see these rebels asking for US and NATO military intervention I realize that Libya now has a choice between bad and worse.  And yes, Gaddafi is bad, no doubt in my mind about this.  But an Imperial intervention is worse, there is no doubt in my mind about this either.

And please, dont' give me the argument about the "heavy weapons".  I heard the very same nonsense during the war in Bosnia.  Heavy weapons?  What heavy weapons?!  Just like in Bosnia, the so-called "international community" has slapped an arms embargo on the entire country only to then proceed to arm the "good guys" to the teeth.  So far, I have seen the "lightly armed" Libyan rebels using main battle tanks, APCs and even multiple rocket launchers!  Heck - they even had at least one Mirage aircraft until they shot it down themselves over Benghazi (clearly, the simple folks were not aware of the fact that they had their own air force, however small).

And also, no crocodile tears about the civilians being killed.  The folks currently "protecting" the Libyan civilians just killed over ONE MILLION Iraqis, so you will excuse me if I don't take their "humanitarian" credentials too seriously.

I am equally dismayed by those who constantly campaign to lionize Gaddafi like some kind of anti-imperialist hero.  According to them, the "Great Socialist People's Libyan State of the Masses" was some kind of paradise on earth, with everybody living in large homes, enjoying great social services and in daily bliss.  This is so ridiculous!  While the leaders of the rebellion are clearly Western agents, there can be no denial that a big segment of the Libyan population hated Gaddafi's regime, if only because of its brutal crackdown on Islamic groups.  Again, the fact that the US Empire is loathsome and evil to the core hardly makes Gaddafi a knight in shining armor!

Must we really be stuck in such nonsensical choices?  Milosevic or Thaci?  Omar or Karzai? Bush or Bin Laden?  Why is it so hard to see that often both sides are equally evil and contemptible?  How is a one prostitute better than another  prostitute?  Aren't they equally disgusting?

To be honest, I find myself rather isolated nowadays.  To me, who followed the war in Bosnia day by day, minute by minute, what is going on in Libya is sickening.  But even worse is the sense of hopelessness when I see most observers blindly siding with one party against the other, no matter how clearly corrupt their "good guys" really are.

And just as in Bosnia, its the simple folks, lied to by everyone, who will end up paying the real price of all for the vicious insanity of their leaders.  Make no mistake here, Libya will turn into a typical US colony, with military bases, fast food franchises, prostitution, corruption and misery.  And those few who will still persist in opposing such a wonderful project will end up being tortured, shot, disappeared and jailed.

One last expression of disgust in conclusion: the sheepishly obedient media.  Just like in the case of the war Bosnia, all the reports and talk-shows feature only Western "experts" and "good" Libyans.  When is the last time you saw Saif al-Islam Gaddafi being interviewed to make his case?  Has anybody noticed that the "bad Libyans" have been ordered off the air?

Just like the arms embargo is totally one-side, so is the information blackout.  And even when civilians are being killed in US/NATO bombings in Tripoli al-Jazeera correspondents seriously declare that "they don't know where the bodies found in the rubble came from"!.  Who knows, maybe evil Muammar is keeping secret stores of cadavers of murdered dissidents to be dispersed at the location of any "humanitarian bombings" by the US and NATO?

If by now you are getting the feeling that I am pretty mad about all this you are quite correct.  In fact, I am fuming at the mind-boggling stupidity of the world I live in.  The war in Bosnia was a breaking point for me and I ended up loosing my career over it because I did not "howl with the wolves" (as the French saying goes).  I can't say I regret any of what happened to me, really.  But to see the exact very same bullshit happening a decade later once again really makes me mad.

So please excuse my foul mood.

The Saker

Sudan says found proof of Israeli strike

Reuters reports:

Sudan said Sunday that remnants of a missile used in a mysterious attack that killed two people on April 5 proved that Israel carried out the strike.

Israel has declined to comment on the incident, which mirrored a similar attack on Sudan's east in 2009 for which it neither admitted nor denied responsibility.

A car carrying two Sudanese nationals was targeted near Port Sudan's airport.

"The definitive proof that Israel was behind this attack is that the rockets used by the American-made Apache helicopters are only owned by Israel in the region," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

It said remnants at the scene showed the weapon was an AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missile.

The aircraft, the ministry said, had flown in from the direction of the Red Sea, scrambling Sudanese radar systems and following Port Sudan airport flight paths.

East Sudan has long been a route for the smuggling of arms that often pass through Egypt's Sinai desert and reach the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by Hamas Islamists, via tunnels under the border.

According to the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which monitors arms transfers worldwide, the United States delivered 250 Hellfire missiles to Israel in 1998-1999 and 680 in 2005-2006.

The only other country in the region listed by SIPRI as having Hellfires -- which are also used by U.S. forces -- is the United Arab Emirates, which bought 289 of the missiles in 2005.

Sudan said Israel, which it considers an enemy state, was trying to derail efforts to normalize ties with Washington. The United States started the process of removing Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terror after Khartoum recognized a vote by its south to secede in July.

Sudan has close ties with Hamas, but denies it offers direct support to the group. Washington designates Hamas a terrorist organization, citing its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing Israeli-Palestinian interim peace deals.

Khartoum says it has begun the process of lodging a formal complaint against Israel at the U.N. Security Council.

Personal note - we are both doing well

Dear friends,

My wife is back at home, she is doing well, glory to God for His infinite mercy!

To be honest, last Tuesday was the worst day of my life as the list of really bad diagnoses for her symptoms is rather long one, and the one of (comparatively) "good" diagnoses is rather short.  By God's mercy and your prayers, my wife's ailment turned out to be rather easy to treat (3 units of blood, cauterization, antibiotics and a few pills to take on a regular basis).  Yet for a few excruciatingly terrifying hours I had to look at my worst fears, my own "room 101", to use Orwell's metaphor.

Your kind words of support, whether posted here or directly emailed to me, really deeply touched me and I am very grateful to you all for them.

In the meantime, the people of Japan have had their worst nightmare fully materialized.  David Rovics, whose wife is Japanese, just wrote this sad and beautiful song.  I will leave you all with this home-made video of David singing and I will, God willing, be back on a regular schedule on Monday.

Kind regards and many thanks,

The Saker

Personal note - short time off

Dear friends,

I apologize for the lack of activity on this blog over the past couple of days. My wife was taken to the local hospital due to a bleeding ulcer which triggered a severe anemia. She is now doing well, but we had a pretty tough couple of days with hardly any sleep and we now badly need some rest. I hope to be back to a normal schedule by the week-end.

Kind regards,

The Saker

Saakashvili's war crimes wash off while West blasts Gaddafi

US-NATO options in Libya

There is a lot of nonsense in the media about what is going on in Libya and what the so-called "no-fly zone" is achieving.  I would like to make a few short comments to clarify some of the misconceptions about what is taking place.

The 'no-fly' zone is, of course, not a no-fly zone.  At least not primarily.  We have all seen how lame and inept Gaddafi's air force is and shooting down a couple of aircraft really makes no difference whatsoever to the conflict.  So what is called "air superiority" never was an objective of the US operation.

The "protection of civilians" clause of the UNSC resolution is really mostly what is called "close air support". While a few runways have been bombed and a few buildings or depots destroyed, the main task of the US and now NATO air forces is to strike at the pro-Gaddifi forces engaging the anti-Gaddifi insurgents.  Ideally, that kind of mission is executed by specialized aircraft (A-10, SU-25) and helicopters.  This means coming in low and slow, in a highly maneuverable or even armored aircraft to hit precisely at the forces directly engaged on the front line.  This is *not* an attack on follow-on forces, on second echelon forces, but a direct engagement right on the front line.  This is also not the engagement of targets of opportunity in a 'free fire zone' a la Vietnam.

There are two problems for NATO in this context.  The vast majority of NATO aircraft are not at all suited for that kind of missions: they are too fast, not survivable enough, and often they lack the proper gear to detect and discriminate between targets. 

The second problem for NATO is that the pro-Gaddafi forces have man portable air defense systems (like the US 'Stingers'), some of them very effective (like the Russian SA-24 which somebody provided the Libyans with).  The presence of these (undetectable) missiles forces US and NATO to mostly fly at higher than ideal altitudes.

There are a number of options available to the US/NATO forces overcome these difficult circumstances.  They all consist of the same basic solution: to bomb from high with some kind of means to direct these strikes from other resources.

Forget about satellites.  They are too costly to operate and come with a large number of operational restrictions.  Specialized aircraft (AWACS or JSTARS) can help, but are not really suited for providing close air support for small units engaging each other from a close distance.  It's one thing to strike an armored regiment on the move and quite another to find a specific Toyota with a 23mm gun welded on top of it.

Forget slow speed aircraft with 'forward air controllers' (FACs) on board.  They can too easily be shot down by anti-aircraft guns or missiles.  And if they get shot down, then the pilots might need to be extracted, which add another *huge* 'layer' to the already complex mission.

Drones are very good at that kind of stuff, but most of them lack the range to be used over the huge Libyan territory.  Unless, of course, they are launched from the ground but that means "boots on the ground" launching and operating them.

The best option, of course, are FACs near the front line..  But that also means 'boots on the ground', doesn't it?

Bottom line: no matter how you look at it, boots on the ground are absolutely essential to provide good close air support to the anti-Gaddafi forces.  They can be with the fighting forces, they can operate drones, they can direct airstrikes from special observation posts, but they absolutely must be on the ground.  A corollary to this is that if you do not have FACs on the ground, the efficiency of the US/NATO airstrikes will decrease dramatically and all sorts of mistakes will happen (strikes on civilians, "blue on blue" or "friendly fire" situations, etc.).

Needless to say, FACs must either be capable of protecting themselves, or they must be protected.  That means even more 'boots on the ground'.

My best guess is that, typically, the US and NATO came up with yet another 'half-backed' 'solution': a few FACs on the ground combined with a mostly ineffective and error-prone engagement strategy.  This strategy is not sustainable, at least not for an Empire which fancies itself as the 'only superpower on the planet'.  So the options are either to blame the rebels and withdraw, or put more and more boots on the ground.

Here again, I can only think of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.  In both cases the US Empire ended up using local forces (Croats, Bosnian-Muslims and the KLA) as a ground force to which NATO and the USA provided close air support.  But we need to remember here that in the Serbian Krajinas and in Bosnia, the Serbs were previously disarmed by UNPROFOR and only then massively attacked by the USA, NATO and local forces.  This will not happen in Libya.

So the US Empire has the option to do what it did in Kosovo and Lebanon (in 2006): direct its attacks at the "bad" civilian population and infrastructure in order to obtain a surrender.  Except that in the case of Kosovo, the US Empire could count on Milosevic betraying the Kosovo-Serbs (just like he had betrayed the Krajina-Serbs and Bosnian-Serbs right before). Gaddafi is unlikely to fold the same way.

Frankly, considering all that, I believe that the least bad option for the Empire would be to launch a limited invasion of Libya, probably by NATO forces only.   That would allow for as many FACs on the front lines as needed, and it would provide the rebels with much needed military assistance.  The political consequences of such a move, however,  would be another tsunami of anti-US and anti-NATO feelings all over the world.

Yet again, any tactical victory for the Empire will come at the costs of yet another strategic defeat.

Copyright or Censorship?

It is my contention that spurious accusations of copyright infringement can be used to suppress videos that are not liked, in certain circles, and that YouTube's reporting procedure favours the accuser over the accused, who is not even given the minimum amount of information necessary to be able to challenge any claim, let alone a false one.

Anthony Lawson

Fukushima nuclear disaster - getting worse and worse? (UPDATED)

Commentary: listening to these experts on Russia Today makes me wonder whether the western corporate media is, yet again, engaging in another cover-up to protect its corporate and political bosses.

UPDATE:

To get a good idea of the real extend of the damage suffered by the Fukushima nuclear plant please click here for some high resolution overhead pictures.

Predictably, YouTube censors Alan Lawson's video on the 'Holocaust', hate speech and 'stupid' Germans

Dear Sirs,

Re:  Spurious Copyright Claim
YouTube Account:  http://www.youtube.com/user/alawson911

I have just received the following notice:

We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from James Allan Khan claiming that this material is infringing:

Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gycNMf0xAc

I think that this is a spurious action; an attempt to infringe my right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 20 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

While making the video in question I was careful to ensure that any material noted as being the subject of a copyright notice was not used.  Furthermore, I have been unable to find any reference to a person named James Allan Khan on the Internet, using Google's search engine.

As with all of my videos, this one was made for educational purposes; I will not derive any financial benefit from uploading it, and I sincerely think that the material I've used is in the public interest and, therefore, comes under the protection of Fair Use in the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code) as follows:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

If the accuser, James Allan Khan can demonstrate otherwise, I will remove the material in question and re-upload the edited video.  If not, I think that it is incumbent on the owners of YouTube to try and prevent Mr. Kahn and others like him from stifling a free exchange of ideas on its otherwise excellent website.

One of the main issues I have with being accused of a copyright infringement, and having one of my videos suspended, more accurately suppressed, is that my accuser was not, apparently, required to make any specific charge as to what image or images or quoted text he has based his claim on (the only musical content in the video is my own work: a single chord).

Accusers should be bound to give YouTube's legal department a reasonable amount of detail regarding the alleged infringement—at the very least the item that has been allegedly infringed—and this should be passed on to the alleged culprit, who should be given a reasonable amount of time to dispute such a claim, before any action is taken.

Shortly, I will be uploading a video regarding this notice, giving others the benefit of what I have learned from what I think is a spurious attack on my right to freedom of expression as well as my time in having to respond to what I regard as a nuisance accusation.

Sincerely,

Anthony Lawson
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Addendum by The Saker

Here is the "offending" video:

If Blogger also removes this video, I will make it available for download from Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire, The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, Torrent411, Rutor, Rutracker, OneBigTorrent, Wawa-Mania, Quebec-team, TorrentSpain and whatever number of file hosting sites needed to keep it available to those who care about the truth.

The Saker

Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid?

Libya rebels: Gaddafi could be right about al-Qaeda

Two documents suggest northeast Libya, centre of rebellion, is an al-Qaeda hotspot

By Alexander Cockburn for The First Post reports:

The war on Libya now being waged by the US, Britain and France must surely rank as one of the stupidest martial enterprises, smaller in scale to be sure, since Napoleon took it into his head to invade Russia in 1812.

Let's start with the fierce hand-to-hand combat between members of the coalition, arguing about the basic aims of the operation. How does "take all necessary measures" square with the ban on any "foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory". Can the coalition kill Gaddafi and recognise a provisional government in Benghazi? Who exactly are the revolutionaries and national liberators in eastern Libya?

In the United States, the offensive was instigated by liberal interventionists: notably three women, starting with Samantha Power, who runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights in Barack Obama's National Security Council. She's an Irish American, 41 years old, who made her name back in the Bush years with her book A Problem from Hell, a study of the US foreign-policy response to genocide, and the failure of the Clinton administration to react forcefully to the Rwandan massacres.

She had to resign from her advisory position on the Obama campaign in April of 2008, after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an interview with the Scotsman, but was restored to good grace after Obama's election, and the monster in her sights is now Gaddafi.

America's UN ambassador is Susan Rice, the first African-American woman to be named to that post. She's long been an ardent interventionist. In 1996, as part of the Clinton administration, she supported the multinational force that invaded Zaire from Rwanda in 1996 and overthrew dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, saying privately that, "Anything's better than Mobutu".

But on February 23 she came under fierce attack in the Huffington Post at the hands of Richard Grenell, who'd served on the US delegation to the UN in the Bush years. Grenell dwelt harshly on instances where, in his judgment, Rice and her ultimate boss, Obama, were dropping the ball, and displaying lack of leadership amid the tumults engulfing the Middle East and specifically in failing to support the uprising against Gaddafi.

Both Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton took Grenell's salvo to heart. Prodded by the fiery Power, they abruptly stiffened their postures and Clinton lobbed her furious salvoes at Gaddafi, "the mad dog". For Clinton it was a precise re-run of her efforts to portray Barack Obama as a peace wimp back in 2008, liable to snooze all too peacefully when the red phone rang at 3am.

For his part, Obama wasn't keen on intervention, seeing it as a costly swamp, yet another war and one bitterly opposed by defence secretary Robert Gates and the joint chiefs of staff. But by now the liberal interventions and the neo-cons were in full cry and Obama, perennially fearful of being outflanked, succumbed, hastening to one of the least convincing statements of war aims in the nation's history.

He's already earned a threat of impeachment from leftist congressman Dennis Kucinich for arrogating war-making powers constitutionally reserved for the US Congress, though it has to be said that protest from the left has been pretty feeble. As always, many on the left yearn for an intervention they can finally support and initially many of them have been murmuring ecstatically, "This is the one". Of course the sensible position (mine) simply states that nothing good ever came out of a Western intervention by the major powers, whether humanitarian in proclaimed purpose or not.

So much for the instigators of intervention in the US. In France the intervention author is the intellectual dandy and "new philosopher" Bernard-Henri Levy, familiarly known to his admirers and detractors as BHL. As described by Larry Portis in our CounterPunch newsletter, BHL arrived in Benghazi on March 3. Two days later BHL was interviewed on various television networks. He appeared before the camera in his habitual uniform – immaculate white shirt with upturned collar, black suit coat, and disheveled hair.

His message was urgent but reassuring. "No," he said, "Gaddafi is not capable of launching an offensive against the opposition. He does not have the means to do so. However, he does have planes. This is the real danger."

BHL called for the scrambling of radio communications, the destruction of landing strips in all regions of Libya, and the bombardment of Gaddafi's personal bunker. In brief, this would be a humanitarian intervention, the modalities of which he did not specify.

Next step, as BHL explained: "I called him [Sarkozy] from Benghazi. And when I returned, I went to the Elysee Palace to see him and tell him that the people on the National Transition Council are good guys."

Indeed, on March 6, BHL returned to France and met with Sarkozy. Four days later, on March 10, he saw Sarkozy again, this time with three Libyans whom he had encouraged to visit France, along with Sarkozy's top advisors.

On March 11, Sarkozy declared the Libyan National Transition Council the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people. Back in Benghazi, people screamed in relief and cheered Sarkozy's name. Popularity at last for Sarko, whose approval ratings in France have been hovering around the 20 per cent mark.

So much for the circumstances in which intervention was conceived. It has nothing to do with oil; everything to do with ego and political self-protection. But to whom exactly are the interveners lending succour? There's been great vagueness here, beyond enthusiastic references to the romantic revolutionaries of Benghazi, and much ridicule for Gaddafi's identification of his opponents in eastern

In fact, two documents strongly back Gaddafi on this issue.

The first is a secret cable to the State Department from the US embassy in Tripoli in 2008, part of the WikiLeaks trove, entitled "Extremism in Eastern Libya", which revealed that this area is rife with anti-American, pro-jihad sentiment.

According to the 2008 cable, the most troubling aspect "... is the pride that many eastern Libyans, particularly those in and around Dernah, appear to take in the role their native sons have played in the insurgency in Iraq … [and the] ability of radical imams to propagate messages urging support for and participation in jihad."

The second document, or rather set of documents, are the so-called Sinjar Records, captured al-Qaeda documents that fell into American hands in 2007. They were duly analysed by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point. Al-Qaeda is a bureaucratic outfit and the records contain precise details on personnel, including those who came to Iraq to fight American and coalition forces and, when necessary, commit suicide.

The West Point analysts' statistical study of the al-Qaeda personnel records concludes that one country provided "far more" foreign fighters in per capita terms than any other: namely, Libya.

The records show that the "vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their home town in the Sinjar Records resided in the country's northeast". Benghazi provided many volunteers. So did Dernah, a town about 200 kms east of Benghazi, in which an Islamic emirate was declared when the rebellion against Gaddafi started.

New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid even spoke with Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi who promulgated the Islamic emirate. Al-Hasadi "praises Osama bin Laden's 'good points'," Shadid reported, though he prudently denounced the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Other sources have said that this keen admirer of Osama would be most influential in the formation of any provisional government.

The West Point study of the Sinjar Records calculates that of the 440 foreign al-Qaeda recruits whose home towns are known, 21 came from Benghazi, thereby making it the fourth most common home town listed in the records. Fifty-three of the al-Qaeda recruits came from Darnah, the highest total of any of the home towns listed in the records. The second highest number, 51, came from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But Darnah (80,000) has less than two per cent the population of Riyadh. So Darnah contributed "far and away the largest per capita number of fighters".

As former CIA operations officer Brian Fairchild writes, amid "the apparent absence of any plan for post-Gaddafi governance, an ignorance of Libya's tribal nature and our poor record of dealing with tribes, American government documents conclusively establish that the epicentre of the revolt is rife with anti-American and pro-jihad sentiment, and with al-Qaeda's explicit support for the revolt, it is appropriate to ask our policy makers how American military intervention in support of this revolt in any way serves vital US strategic interests".

As I wrote here a few weeks ago, "It sure looks like Osama bin Laden is winning the Great War on Terror". But I did not dream then that he would have a coalition of the US, Great Britain and France bleeding themselves dry to assist him in this enterprise.