The National Transitional Council has announced that Sharia will be the basis of the law under the new government.
Say what you will about Gadhafi, but he was clearly a force for modernity, but the West gets their bankster friendly successor state, but it’s likely to be a medieval one.
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!So, now that we are looking into the corruption and cronyism in Mubarak’s Egypt, and it turns out that it has its roots in the American led privatization of the Egyptian economy, just like the rampant corruption in post-Soviet Russia:
Beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. A different outcome is only now becoming visible in the fallout from Egypt’s Arab Spring.
Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the center. Over time, members of the group would assume top roles in Egypt’s ruling party and government.
Today, Gamal Mubarak and four of those think tank members are in jail, charged with squandering public funds in the sale of public resources, lands and government-run companies as part of a dramatic restructuring. Some have fled the country, pilloried amid the public outrage over insider deals and corruption that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
“It became a crony capitalism,” Magda Kandil, the think tank’s new executive director, said of the privatization program advocated by its founders. Because of the corruption, the center now estimates, the assets that Egypt has sold off since 1991 have netted only about $10 billion, $90 billion less than their estimated worth.
The privatization saga is a cautionary tale about the power and perils of U.S. foreign aid — most notably the nearly $8 billion that the United States has provided to Egypt since the 1990s to push the country toward economic reforms.
This is not a bug, it’s a feature. This sort of economic liberalization is all about creating a few corrupt individuals, because it’s cheaper to allow cronies to get siphon off a billion or two while our banksters steal the rest than it is to allow those resources to accrue legally to the workers and the country.
I may seem cynical about this, but the corruption in Egypt, or Russia, or pretty much all of other privatization schemes outside of the Scandinavian countries run this way, so I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the actual goal of these policies.
Obama is sending troops to Uganda:
President Obama is sending about 100 special forces troops to central Africa to help target the leadership of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious militia that has been raping and pillaging in the remote jungles of northern Uganda and neighboring countries for more than two decades.
The first team of armed advisors arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. Over the next month, the remaining U.S. troops, most of them Army Green Berets, will be sent to Uganda and surrounding countries, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.
In a letter notifying Congress on Friday, Obama said the goal of the U.S. mission was to assist regional African forces in removing “from the battlefield” the militia’s leader, self-declared prophet Joseph Kony. But the U.S. troops will not fight unless fired upon, the letter said.
A militia known for forcing abducted children to fight and for mutilating its victims, the Lord’s Resistance Army has long been condemned by the U.S. and human rights organizations for atrocities against civilians.
Not only are we going into a yet another counter-insurgency, but we are going on a Mohamed Farrah Aidid style bug hunt.
When Obama said that he was opposed to “Stupid Wars” in 2003, what he neglected to say was that he doesn’t believe that any wars are “stupid”.
Obama has signed of on building an archipelago of secret drone bases in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula:
The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.
One of the installations is being established in Ethiopia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.
The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.
The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.
This is completely nuts, the Pentagon is going to bankrupt us by placing a constellation of bases around the world that:
This sh%$ simply has to stop.
Or will be in a matter of hours.
I was listening to NPR, and they were hoping that the rebels would not go medieval on former Gaddafi loyalists, but that is a pipe dream.
They have no credibility, because they were installed largely as the result of direct military action by NATO, which requires the widespread application of violence against any potential opposition.
Additionally, because they are effectively clients of big oil and finance NATO, they will have to aggressively implement “free market reforms”, which means the end of their publicly financed healthcare and education systems, as well as signing sweetheart deals with big oil, which will not be supported by the general populace.
It’s good that Gaddafi is gone, but because he was removed through what was essentially a colonial intervention, the new regime will for the foreseeable future be a colonial administration, which may in the long run prove worse for the average Libyan.
Normally, this would not start happening until after a successful foreign backed revolution, but with a stalemate on the ground, I guess it’s time that the various factions of the Libyan rebels have decided to start killing each other to determine who gets the spoils.
The first head on a stake is that of their chief of staff Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis:
The chief of staff for rebel forces fighting to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was attacked and killed Thursday, according to the rebels’ leadership council.
In a terse announcement that left many questions unanswered, the president of the council said Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis and two other commanders were killed as they returned from the eastern front near Port Brega to Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital.
Reading haltingly from a brief communique, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, president of the Transitional National Council, said pro-Kadafi gunmen had infiltrated rebel-held areas, but he did not specifically blame them for the killings. Abdul Jalil refused to take questions from reporters.
In response, the council has ordered all militias to stand down, and to integrate into the formal security forces.
This was foreseeable. This is a group with no real leader, and no credibility beyond the support that it receives from NATO, so it was inevitable that we would see this.
Of course, this means that NATO will feel compelled to escalate in order to show their credibility, so I expect to see British and French troops on the ground as “advisers” in the not too distant future.
It’s kind of like Vietnam writ small.
I am referring, of course, to The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, where forces supporting the guy who won the election, Alassane Ouattara, have taken the capital, Yamoussoukro:
Rebel forces in Ivory Coast have taken control of the official capital, as power seems to be slipping away from the president, Laurent Gbagbo.
Residents and military sources said troops loyal to Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, had entered Yamoussoukro, meeting little resistance as security forces fled. The port city of San Pedro also fell.
This has been going on for how many months now, (Hint: it’s been 5) and hot a hint of anyone wanting to intervene, because, of course, they don’t have oil.
So you have two African leaders, both without much in the way of support, who are oppressing their opponents and the general population, but the one that is a mid-level oil producer gets the full NATO bombing treatment, while the world’s leading exporter of cocoa gets some minor finger wagging in the general assembly of the United Nations.
A little bit of oil we spend blood and treasure on, but a lot of chocolate, that ain’t worth nothing.
Talk about screwed up priorities.
And that whole “no fly zone” thing just got a lot more difficult, because, it is reported that reble jets and helicopters just sank two of Qaddafi’s warships, as well as bombing a government controlled airfield.
If this is true, it does not signify a change in the recent reversals that the rebels have experienced, but it may very well make a meaningful no-fly zone impossible to enforce.
I don’t have much to add, so I’ll point you to the Guardian.
It’s clearly an end game:
This is not going to be pretty, but it is completely outside of my intellectual strengths, such as they are.
Unfortunately, unlike Egypt, there are not a lot of press on the ground, so what is coming out is sketchy.
We are all Julian AssangeBut the Swedish prosecutors promptly appealed the decision, meaning that he spends at least another 48 hours in custody, which in his case means rather harsh isolation.
On the other hand, it appears that reports of a grand jury investigating an indictment under the 1917 espionage act may be baseless.
Truth be told, a good prosecutor can find an sitting already sitting grand jury, and Mr. Assange from a legal perspective is certainly a ham sandwich.
Were I a prosecutor, I would not begin any process until Assange were in Sweden, where extraditions appears to be more likely than in the UK.
Of course, while this is going on, the internet is still being roiled by attacks on both sides of the issue, with Anonymous emerging from 4chan to hit the financial and IT companies that cut Wikileaks off, and other hackers going after Wikileaks, in a game of dueling DDOS attacks.
Hanging over all this is Assange’s poison pill file, which has been distributed to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, waiting for the decryption key that will be distributed if anything happens to him or Wikileaks by a dozen or so of his colleagues.
And then there is the absurdity that Amazon, after tossing Wikileaks from their servers, is now selling copies of the cables for the Kindles.
In the mean time, here are the crucial government secrets that we now know as a result of the cables:
Of course there is some truly sensitive and shocking information out there, specifically that, the DPRK (North Korea) was willing to take significant steps to reassure the US and the ROK (South Korea) in exchange for an Eric Clapton concert in Pyongyang.
Merciful heavens, we can’t let the citizenry know about that.
The final word on this is Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg’s, “EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.“
The process, intended to prevent the sales of diamonds that are mined by entities, largely guerrilla armies, who systematically violate human rights, better known as “Blood Diamonds.”
Well, the Kimberly Process has now allowed Zimbabwe to sell diamonds from its Marange diamond fields.
Not only has the diamond mining there been rife with allegations of human rights abuses, included killings and forced labor, but the proceeds go directly to support the cronies in Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF:
Zimbabwe has been denied formal approval for its Marange diamond exports since evidence began to emerge around 2008 that the military had overrun the area to take control of the fields and organize smuggling of diamonds across the nearby border with Mozambique. Human rights activists say they suspect that profits are being used to finance the political and military elite around President Robert Mugabe.
Seriously, any certification of diamonds by the Kimberly Process, or the World Diamond Council, are simply not credible.
I have been following the comings and goings in Zimbabwe since Tsvangirai’s election, subsequently stolen, as President in 2008.
At first, I did so because I thought that we could see a real game change and a peaceful transition from one of the nastier pieces of work on the African continent, Robert Mugabe.
This has not happened, largely because Mugabe does not care, but additionally because the surrounding community, in particular South Africa and its former President Thabo Mbeki, have been most accommodating to Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.
I don’t see this changing, and I have been posting about once a month because I feel guilty about not caring any more, which is a silly reason to post.
I have little knowledge of the area, nor of the complex social and political dynamics of the region, and honestly, little interest, just some guilt, so I’m throwing the towel in.
I would suggest the BBC and the Guardian for updates if you want them.
There has been a military coup in Niger:
Niger’s military said it suspended the constitution and dissolved government institutions after overthrowing the regime of President Mamadou Tandja.
The coup was carried out in the name of the Supreme Council for the Restoration for Democracy, military spokesman Abdul Karim Goukoye told reporters at a late-night briefing in an army camp in the capital, Niamey. He didn’t say who had led the coup.
…………
Tandja dissolved parliament in May and assumed emergency powers after the Constitutional Court rejected his call for a referendum to change the constitution to eliminate term limits. In July, he disbanded the court after it ruled a third time against his plans to serve a third term.
Not clear as to who the good guys are in this whole thing, or even if there are any good guys in this whole thing.
David Bahati, author of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, and Ugandan Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo are expected to come to the United States to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
Let’s be clear: These people are proposing genocide against gays in Uganda.
They should not be granted a visa.
If Barack Obama does not want a diplomatic dispute over this, I think that he is wrong, but he then has another option: Be the first President since Dwight Eisenhower not to attend the breakfast, saying that he will not break bread with them.
If he does neither, he is immoral, and he is a coward, and he does not deserve the public trust.
It is possible that Obama will take steps to prevent this, such as pressuring “The Family”, the secretive Christo-Fascist group that has organized the prayer breakfasts, to dis-invite them.
But if he sits down to break bread with people who are this deeply evil, he is giving his personal imprimatur to genocide, and anyone who supports gay rights should not support him.
Not surprising.
It appears that there is upside to Somali piracy. The pirates have scared off the people plundering the fishing grounds off of the Somolian coast:
MALINDI, Kenya–Kenyan fisherman are perhaps the only people in the world who have reason to be grateful to Somali pirates – they keep away illegal fishing boats.
In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia’s coast and scooped up the ocean’s contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.
“There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates,” said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.
One of the reasons for the popularity of the Somali pirates in Somalia is because they are perceived as going after foreign poachers.
If the external powers started policing the 200 mile limit for Somalia, or better yet, commissioned and supported a Somali Coast Guard, and pursued the people who are strip-mining their coastal waters, we might find some real improvement in the piracy problem.
It appears that the two Ugandan legislators who have been the driving force for putting forward a bill to apply the death penalty for homosexuality intend to come to the United States next year to attend the National Prayer Meeting, as they did last year.
The kicker is that Barack Obama attended it this year and is expected to attend it next year.
The appropriate response to these folks is to deny them entry to the USA, but my guess is that he won’t do that, and if they show up, he’ll probably talk anyway, spouting something about the need for people to talk.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on the subject.
The macro picture is that Mugabe continues to refuse to behave in accordance with any of the agreements that he signed, and Tsvangerai can’t do much about it, and the SADC in general, and South Africa in particular, won’t do much about it.
It’s kind of a dysfunctional stasis.
That being said, the trial of Roy Bennett, the MDC treasurer and nominee for deputy agriculture minister, the government’s star witness has said on the stand that his earlier testimony was coerced by torture.
The judge has ruled that eter Michael Hitschmann’s confession cannot be used against Bennett because of this.
The big news is the political fight over a bill to reform the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which after much conflict, was finally passed by Parliament.
What likely led to this meeting of the minds was evidence that the incompetent and corrupt management of RBZ Director Gideon Gono was driving away potential donors and foreign investors.
That being said, I do not think that the RBZ bill was why China has signed an $8 billion investment deal.
In any case, Gono was last seen attempting to strong-arm banks into lending to expropriated farms, which is not surprising as the ZANU-PF is stepping up its farm seizures for corrupt bureaucrats program.
In any case, the unity government is holding cabinet meetings again, which is a good sign, I guess.
Of more significance is the fact that Botswana President Ian Khama is calling for new elections and explicitly blaming the ZANU-PF for the lack of progress.
It’s nice that someone involved the SADC “Enable Mugabe Program” is pushing back.
Additionally, we are starting to see protests in Europe against the SADC’s support of Mugabe: Zimbabwe Vigil has petitioned the EU to suspend all aid to members of the SADC, which is a start.
More significant, though may be the fact that PM Morgan Tsvangirai is to meet with Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, current chairman of the AU.
This is a positive development for a number of reasons:
So, after massive smuggling, murders by the authorities, and forced labor, the Kimberley Process decides against suspending Zimbabwe’s certification as a being not “conflict diamonds”, despite a
report from their own investigators saying that they should be suspended.
This reveals the Kimberly process a complete and utter joke, and on queue, once the threat of suspension is lifted, the New Reclamation Group Ltd. mining company sweeps in with a contract.
There is a promise by the Zimbabwe government not to export diamonds until measures are in place to prevent abuse, but I don’t trust this very much, if it comes from the Prime Minister’s office, then it means nothing, and if it comes from Mugabe, it’s a flat out lie.
Of note, The Rapaport Group and the RapNet Diamond Trading Network have announced that they are “implementing an immediate trading ban on all diamonds from Zimbabwe due to severe human rights violations in Marange,” and Leber Jeweler Inc. has announced the same.
Meanwhile, outside of the diamond trade, things continue apace, with Mugabe and the ZANU-PF planning to introduce a law which would require that foreign owned companies be majority black owned. Note: not even the majority locally owned, this is determined by the pigmentation of the equity holders.
ZANU-PF has become the party of Apartheid in Zimbabwe.
We also have continued use of the state security apparatus to intimidate the opposition, with the head of the national trade union being arrested on trumped up charges, as well as the increasingly bizarre trial of deputy agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennett.
What do we have on the case of Bennett, we have a judge who made statements at the trial of the chief witness against Bennett that indicate bias. This is important because this witness, Peter Hitschmann, has recanted his testimony and alleged that it was extracted by torture.
We also have the police presenting weapons that were not seized from Bennett’s house as evidence, and that the Defence is has a request to have the police log books on this matter made available to them, and the police, as well as the attorney general, are vociferously fighting this.
It looks like the Republic of South Africa has had enough, and it has cancelled its order for the EADS A400M Transport.
I guess that between a 3 year (and growing) delay on deliveries, continuing cost escalation, and the fact that it is overweight and incapable of carrying its specified payload might lead one to look at other transport alternatives.
It’s been about 3 weeks, so it’s time to update everyone on the hell hole that Bobby Mugabe made again.
On the bright side, the UK is saying that they will give Zimbabwe $100 million in aid, though I wonder if recent developments (see below) may interfere with this.
First, we have the case of deputy agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennett, who has been imprisoned on what are clearly trumped up charges, with an improperly filed indictment for, “possessing weapons for the purposes of insurgency and banditry,” a crime that carries the death sentence. (See also here)
While he was finally granted bail, this was one of the proximate causes of Tsvangirai and his MDC-T
disengaging from the ZANU-PF, which means that they are no longer attending cabinet meetings.
It should be noted that Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and his MDC-M are also participating in the boycott of cabinet meetings.
Tsvangirai is Trying to get the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to intervene on what has increasingly become a phony power sharing arrangement.
Meanwhile, ZANU-PF harassment of the MDC and human rights activists continues apace with raids on MDC offices in Harare (also here) claiming that they were looking for arms…..Shades of Bennett’s kangaroo court.
Inter party talks between the MDC and ZANU-PF have broken off without a resolution, and the human rights situation in the country has gone straight into the twilight zone with Mugabe detaining, and then expelling the “UNHRC special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” Manfred Nowak.
Meanwhile, the Marange diamond fields, which are one of the few sources of hard currency available to Mugabe to keep his supporters paid off, are under a Kimberly process investigation for widespread torture, forced labor, and smuggling, which could lead to ban on the export of their gems.
The reports are that, once again, the Kimberly process will wimp out and do nothing , even after members of the Zimbabwe delegation to the meeting threatened and harassed witnesses at the meeting.
Finally, we have the ZANU-PF ordering the state run media to stop covering any MDC activities.