Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005China Confidential
Thursday, February 24, 2011
HIGHEST US GASOLINE PRICES IN 21 YRS
MORE PAIN AT THE PUMP FOR REGULAR FOLKS;BAHRAIN UPRISING NOW 11 DAYS OLD
Jihadist Opportunities in Libya
KHADAFY STRIKES BACK WITH FURY
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
KHADAFY DIGS IN FOR FINAL CONFLICT
OIL HITS $100
CRUDE UP, EQUITIES DOWN AMIDDrive-By Video of Khadafy Mercenaries
'KHADAFY INC' EXPOSED
KHADAFY ORDERS MASSACRE
China Evacuating Citizens from Libya
SARKOZY CALLS FOR LIBYA SANCTIONS
CLASHES IN JORDAN
More Online Calls for Protests in China
BAHRAIN KING VISITING SAUDI ARABIA
MB Calls for Million-Man March in Cairo
KHADAFY ORDERS OIL SABOTAGE: TIME SOURCE
The Libyan madman has ordered his elite troops to blow up Libya's oil pipelines, according to a magazine source, as the price of oil hit a 28-month high on fears of interrupted supplies of crude. Click here and here for the reports.3,500 British Expats Trapped in Libya
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Khadafy Vows to Kill Protesters 'House by House'
Egypt's Junta Reshuffles Cabinet
In Defense of US Hearings on Radical Islam
N. Korea to World: Drop Dead
Irish Radical Tries to 'Arrest' Israeli FM
IRGC SAYS IT ATTACKED VOA WEBSITE
EGYPTIAN WOMEN UNDER ASSAULT
Libya Linkage: Gold, Silver, Oil Up
Libyan Lunatic Says He'll 'Die as a Martyr'
Russia's English-Language TV Network Promotes Global Conspiracy Theory Explanation of Historic Mideast Turmoil
MUSLIM PIRATES KILL 4 AMERICANS
FORMER BUSH OFFICIAL URGES OBAMA TO RETALIATEJORDAN MB VOWS MORE PROTESTS
Shiite Leader Calls for Bahrain Revolution
Demonstrators Demand Yemeni Leader's Ouster
KHADAFY CLINGS TO POWER
Russia Blames Google for Egypt Revolt
TRIPOLI IS A WAR ZONE
Monday, February 21, 2011
EGYPT SIGNALING SHIFT ON ISRAEL
Thursday, 24 February 2011
EARLY WARNING: LIBERAL LOONS SEE OPPORTUNITY IN CRISIS
It's springtime for OPEC and Obama's enviro-elite, winter for everyone else ... as liberals lock up real energy resources .... domestic oil and gas ... and coal and shale ... while cold temperatures continue to grip the United States, forcing people in the nation's northern half to spend more for heat. No matter, liberal loons advise: you will gain from the pain. Greener energy pastures are just over the horizon, pundits and politicians assure the brainwashed masses. Smash the "oil addiction," the elitists shout, ignoring the obvious--that the world runs on oil and that America's problem is that it is addicted to foreign oil. The green party line: Forget about all that newAmerican oil that can be produced from old oil fields--using proven technologies--enough for decades of use. Pay no attention to the big American oil fields waiting to be developed on and off shore. Spend zero to produce and pipe American natural gas, a potential fuel for every municipal bus and taxi. Coal liquefaction? No good. Heavy crude and tar sands? Evil stuff. Shale? Don't even think about that. Or any of the above--all fossil fuels. Pure poison.These things produce carbon dioxide! And millions of well-paying, permanent jobs--with benefits. Unlike uneconomic, inefficient non-job-creating windmills and solar "farms" and ... cellulosic ethanol ... which is always only one or two years away from commercial use.
Therein lies America's future, the Useful Idiots of Big Oil and OPEC argue. Bicycles and handcarts! An electric car in every garage! More monorails! Who knows from where the electricity comes, or what it costs? Who cares? It's theidea of energy that matters most. Reality is so ... Republican. Besides, Al Gore explained everything we needed to know about energy and "climate" in a slide show. And he's an Oscar winner. And a Nobel Prize winner--like Obama.
And the mainstream media love it, lap it up, accept all the lies and exaggerations and half-truths at face value. Because green energy/global warming is the new religion.
So it goes in the endless winter of 2011.
By Scott Stewart
As George Friedman noted in his geopolitical weekly “Revolution and the Muslim World,” one aspect of the recent wave of revolutions we have been carefully monitoring is the involvement of militant Islamists, and their reaction to these events.
Militant Islamists, and specifically the subset of militant Islamists we refer to as jihadists, have long sought to overthrow regimes in the Muslim world. With the sole exception of Afghanistan, they have failed, and even the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan was really more a matter of establishing a polity amid a power vacuum than the true overthrow of a coherent regime. The brief rule of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council in Somalia also occurred amid a similarly chaotic environment and a vacuum of authority.
However, even though jihadists have not been successful in overthrowing governments, they are still viewed as a threat by regimes in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In response to this threat, these regimes have dealt quite harshly with the jihadists, and strong crackdowns combined with other programs have served to keep the jihadists largely in check.
As we watch the situation unfold in Libya, there are concerns that unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the uprising in Libya might result not only in a change of ruler but also in a change of regime and perhaps even a collapse of the state. In Egypt and Tunisia, strong military regimes were able to ensure stability after the departure of a long-reigning president. By contrast, in Libya, longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi has deliberately kept his military and security forces fractured and weak and thereby dependent on him. Consequently, there may not be an institution to step in and replace Gadhafi should he fall. This means energy-rich Libya could spiral into chaos, the ideal environment for jihadists to flourish, as demonstrated by Somalia and Afghanistan.
Because of this, it seems an appropriate time to once again examine the dynamic of jihadism in Libya.
A Long History
Libyans have long participated in militant operations in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq. After leaving Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a sizable group of Libyan jihadists returned home and launched a militant campaign aimed at toppling Gadhafi, whom they considered an infidel. The group began calling itself the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in 1995, and carried out a low-level insurgency that included assassination attempts against Gadhafi and attacks against military and police patrols.
Gadhafi responded with an iron fist, essentially imposing martial law in the Islamist militant strongholds of Darnah and Benghazi and the towns of Ras al-Helal and al-Qubbah in the Jabal al-Akhdar region. After a series of military crackdowns, Gadhafi gained the upper hand in dealing with his Islamist militant opponents, and the insurgency tapered off by the end of the 1990s. Many LIFG members fled the country in the face of the government crackdown and a number of them ended up finding refuge with groups like al Qaeda in places such as Afghanistan.
While the continued participation of Libyan men in fighting on far-flung battlefields was not expressly encouraged by the Libyan government, it was tacitly permitted. The Gadhafi regime, like other countries in the region, saw exporting jihadists as a way to rid itself of potential problems. Every jihadist who died overseas was one less the government had to worry about. This policy did not take into account the concept of “tactical Darwinism,” which means that while the United States and its coalition partners will kill many fighters, those who survive are apt to be strong and cunning. The weak and incompetent have been weeded out, leaving a core of hardened, competent militants. These survivors have learned tactics for survival in the face of superior firepower and have learned to manufacture and effectively employ new types of highly effective improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
In a Nov. 3, 2007, audio message, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri reported that the LIFG had formally joined the al Qaeda network. This statement came as no real surprise, given that members of the group have long been close to al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Moreover, the core al Qaeda group has long had a large number of Libyan cadre in its senior ranks, including men such as Abu Yahya al-Libi, Anas al-Libi, Abu Faraj al-Libi (who reportedly is being held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay) and Abu Laith al-Libi, who was killed in a January 2008 unmanned aerial vehicle strike in Pakistan.
The scope of Libyan participation in jihadist efforts in Iraq became readily apparent with the September 2007 seizure of a large batch of personnel files from an al Qaeda safe house in the Iraqi city of Sinjar. The Sinjar files were only a small cross-section of all the fighters traveling to Iraq to fight with the jihadists, but they did provide a very interesting snapshot. Of the 595 personnel files recovered, 112 of them were of Libyans. This number is smaller than the 244 Saudi citizens represented in the cache, but when one considers the overall size of the population of the two countries, the Libyan contingent represented a far larger percentage on a per capita basis. The Sinjar files suggested that a proportionally higher percentage of Libyans was engaged in the fighting in Iraq than their brethren from other countries in the region.
Another interesting difference was noted in the job-description section of the Sinjar files. Of those Libyan men who listed their intended occupation in Iraq, 85 percent of them listed it as suicide bomber and only 13 percent listed fighter. By way of comparison, only 50 percent of the Saudis listed their occupation as suicide bomber. This indicates that the Libyans tended to be more radical than their Saudi counterparts. Moroccans appeared to be the most radical, with more than 91 percent of them apparently desiring to become suicide bombers.
The Libyan government’s security apparatus carefully monitored those Libyans who passed through the crucible of fighting on the battlefield in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and then returned to Libya. Tripoli took a carrot-and-stick approach to the group similar to that implemented by the Saudi regime. As a result, the LIFG and other jihadists were unable to pose a serious threat to the Gadhafi regime, and have remained very quiet in recent years. In fact, they were for the most part demobilized and rehabilitated.
Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, oversaw the program to rehabilitate LIFG militants, which his personal charity managed. The regime’s continued concern over the LIFG was clearly demonstrated early on in the unrest when it announced that it would continue the scheduled release from custody of LIFG fighters.
The Sinjar reports also reflected that more than 60 percent of the Libyan fighters had listed their home city as Darnah and almost 24 percent had come from Benghazi. These two cities are in Libya’s east and happen to be places where some of the most intense anti-Gadhafi protests have occurred in recent days. Arms depots have been looted in both cities, and we have seen reports that at least some of those doing the looting appeared to have been organized Islamists.
A U.S. State Department cable drafted in Tripoli in June 2008 made available by WikiLeaks talked about this strain of radicalism in Libya’s east. The cable, titled “Die Hard in Derna,” was written several months after the release of the report on the Sinjar files. Derna is an alternative transliteration of Darnah, and “Die Hard” was a reference to the Bruce Willis character in the Die Hard movie series, who always proved hard for the villains to kill. The author of the cable, the U.S. Embassy’s political and economic officer, noted that many of the Libyan fighters who returned from fighting in transnational jihad battlefields liked to settle in places like Darnah due to the relative weakness of the security apparatus there. The author of the cable also noted his belief that the presence of these older fighters was having an influence on the younger men of the region who were becoming radicalized, and the result was that Darnah had become “a wellspring of foreign fighters in Iraq.” He also noted that some 60-70 percent of the young men in the region were unemployed or underemployed.
Finally, the author opined that many of these men were viewing the fight in Iraq as a way to attack the United States, which they saw as supporting the Libyan regime in recent years. This is a concept jihadists refer to as attacking the far enemy and seems to indicate an acceptance of the transnational version of jihadist ideology — as does the travel of men to Iraq to fight and the apparent willingness of Libyans to serve as suicide bombers.
Trouble on the Horizon?
This deep streak of radicalism in eastern Libya brings us back to the beginning. While it seems unlikely at this point that the jihadists could somehow gain control of Libya, if Gadhafi falls and there is a period of chaos in Libya, these militants may find themselves with far more operating space inside the country than they have experienced in decades. If the regime does not fall and there is civil war between the eastern and western parts of the country, they could likewise find a great deal of operational space amid the chaos. Even if Gadhafi, or an entity that replaces him, is able to restore order, due to the opportunity the jihadists have had to loot military arms depots, they have suddenly found themselves more heavily armed than they have ever been inside their home country. And these heavily armed jihadists could pose a substantial threat of the kind that Libya has avoided in recent years.
Given this window of opportunity, the LIFG could decide to become operational again, especially if the regime they have made their deal with unexpectedly disappears. However, even should the LIFG decide to remain out of the jihad business as an organization, there is a distinct possibility that it could splinter and that the more radical individuals could cluster together to create a new group or groups that would seek to take advantage of this suddenly more permissive operational environment. Of course, there are also jihadists in Libya unaffiliated with LIFG and not bound by the organization’s agreements with the regime.
The looting of the arms depots in Libya is also reminiscent of the looting witnessed in Iraq following the dissolution of the Iraqi army in the face of the U.S. invasion in 2003. That ordnance not only was used in thousands of armed assaults and indirect fire attacks with rockets and mortars, but many of the mortar and artillery rounds were used to fashion powerful IEDs. This concept of making and employing IEDs from military ordnance will not be foreign to the Libyans who have returned from Iraq (or Afghanistan, for that matter).
This bodes ill for foreign interests in Libya, where they have not had the same security concerns in recent years that they have had in Algeria or Yemen. If the Libyans truly buy into the concept of targeting the far enemy that supports the state, it would not be out of the realm of possibility for them to begin to attack multinational oil companies, foreign diplomatic facilities and even foreign companies and hotels.
While Seif al-Islam, who certainly has political motives to hype such a threat, has mentioned this possibility, so have the governments of Egypt and Italy. Should Libya become chaotic and the jihadists become able to establish an operational base amid the chaos, Egypt and Italy will have to be concerned about not only refugee problems but also the potential spillover of jihadists. Certainly, at the very least the weapons looted in Libya could easily be sold or given to jihadists in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, turning militancy in Libya into a larger regional problem. In a worst-case scenario, if Libya experiences a vacuum of power, it could become the next Iraq or Pakistan, a gathering place for jihadists from around the region and the world. The country did serve as such a base for a wide array of Marxist and rejectionist terrorists and militants in the 1970s and 1980s.
It will be very important to keep a focus on Libya in the coming days and weeks — not just to see what happens to the regime but also to look for indicators of the jihadists testing their wings.
The above article was provided by STRATFOR.
Not to worry, Obama and his dumbbell Democrats and environmental zealots will surely say. There is crisis in opportunity, the anti-real energy party and its adoring media mouthpieces and flunkies will tell the American people, advancing the cause of phony green energy--uneconomic, inefficient, and non-existent solutions dependent on government mandates and incentives. No need to tap America's awesome energy resources, the global warming fanatics will argue. Wind! Solar! Electric cars! Break the oil addiction! A better ... cleaner ... world is possible, the dreamers, schemers, and scammers will shout ... as food, gasoline, heating oil go through the roof, killing any chance of recovery, crippling what's left of a hollowed-out economy, pauperizing millions of middle class Americans, crushing the working poor.
Memo to the Republicans: Your fiscal responsibility/balance-the-budget message is appreciated, but overblown--by no means the be-all and end-all that you think. Not when an economy hangs by a thread that could be cut by characters like Ahmadinejad and Khadafy. More time spent developing and promoting a truly serious, job-creating plan for energy independence--and long-term prosperity based on unlocking America's hidden-in-plain-view natural resource wealth--might win you the White House in 2012. Contrary to the nonsense that both you and the Democrats love to spout on national TV programs, a great, big country like the United States needs ... demands ... great, big companies. The road to prosperity is not paved by perennially undercapitalized, pathetic little businesses, incapable of providing employees with proper benefits and job security.
Memo to the President: Had you opted for a genuine, truly historic economic stimulus ... creation of a national oil company that would put a vast army of Americans to work developing domestic oil and gas resources that can be profitably produced by presently available and proven methods ... but perhaps not profitably enough to satisfy the shareholders of multinational energy behemoths ... had you done that instead of catering and caving into the Hollywood/Ivy League "save the planet" climate change crowd ... and greedy Wall Street bankers drooling over the prospect of minting billions through the trading and leveraging of carbon credits ... you would have by now been hailed as the new FDR, an unbeatable hero.
The world--our entire modern civilization--runs ... depends ... on oil, and will continue to run and depend on oil for at least another generation. Pretending that isn't true is not only foolish; it's downright suicidal. Just ask the Chinese. They may pay lip service to the theory that human activity is causing the planet to warm up--when there is convincing data that shows that the Earth has actually begun to cool. They have to go along with the idiocy, even they know that, regardless of whether the atmosphere is warming or cooling, the idea that such cycles are caused by industry, and the branding of life-sustaining carbon dioxide (released by instead of causing warmer temperatures) is both absurd and inherently political. China's leaders may talk a good game about wind and solar farms, biofuels and biomass--they have to for diplomatic reasons. But the folks in charge of the world's fastest-growing economy, committed as they are to lifting hundreds of millions of their citizens out of poverty, understand very well the difference between real and phony energy supplies. The Chinese are no more anti-oil than they are anti-air.
China has begun a mass evacuation of its citizens from Libya.
China said Wednesday it is sending a fleet of ships, buses and planes to Libya to evacuate over 30,000 Chinese nationals.
A chartered plane left Beijing Wednesday loaded with food and medical supplies, and will also take part in the mission.
Scores of Chinese working on Chinese-funded oil fields and rail and telecommunications projects have been attacked by armed looters and robbers.
Embattled Libyan leader Muamar Khadafy on Tuesday appeared to try to justify the violence by drawing parallels with the Chinese Communist Party's use of deadly military force to put down the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest.
Chinese censors have blacked out Khadafy's reference on news reports, including those aired by international broadcasters.
SHIITE UPRISING INTENSIFIES
The Saudis fear "fragmentation," see Bahrain's Shiite majority--and Saudi Shiites--as loyal to Iran. The survival of Bahrain's monarchy is a essential, in the view of the impossibly rich men running the dysfunctional royal family business masquerading as a country called Saudi Arabia.
Egypt's clerical fascist Muslim Brotherhood is asserting itself while working through fronts and stooges. Click herefor the news from chaotic, post-Mubarak Egypt.
Bibi Netanyahu is right: hope for the best--but prepare for the worst.
Will liberal loons welcome crushingly high oil prices? Click here for the answer.
An influential, large-circulation American Jewish community newspaper weighs in on an extremely important topic--over here.
Prediction: A year from now, it will be almost impossible for senior Israeli officials to visit Europe owing to the Continent's capitulation to the radical Muslim Menace.
Grains and soybeans suffer because of fears rising oil prices will make food more expensive, reducing demand (spurring starvation). Click here to read the report.
KHADAFY DEFIANT, DETERMINED TO FIGHT ON;
LIKE HITLER, DERANGED DESPOT SEEMS TO THINK
ANOTHER LONG SPEECH WILL RALLY THE TROOPS
A REVEALING (OF RUSSIAN THINKING)
RT NEWS AND INTERVIEW SEGMENT ...
The terrible news is unfortunately not shocking to informed observers who recall the rescue in 2009 of U.S. merchant marine Captain Richard Phillips by Navy SEALs. The captain, who was held hostage by Islamist-backed Somali pirates, was rescued in spite of Obama, not because of him, on account of the fact that the President restrained the SEALs and nearly prevented them from acting in time to save the American from certain death.
Related:
POSTSCRIPT: The innocent Americans were butchered--shot to death in cold blood--by African Muslim savages. But America's government-supported, Islamist-appeasing National Public Radio deliberately downplayed the atrocity by reporting that the victims were "found dead" on the hijacked yacht. Click here for the NPR piece. It is just a matter of time--a few days or weeks, maybe--until NPR and other liberal media outlets produce stories aimed at generating sympathy for the ... pirates. Really. Thirteen of the savages were captured (they should have all been killed) and their supposed civil rights will now become a major liberal concern, in keeping with the hoary liberal tradition of caring more about violent criminals than their victims.
In fact, liberals almost always blame the ... victims for ... well ... walking into the bullets and bombs, knives and clubs, and fists and feet of "oppressed" and "underprivileged" murderers, muggers, and rapists--and, most especially, Muslim terrorists. Thus, it is only a matter of time, too, before Islamist-appeasing liberals blame the four murdered Americans for entering "Muslim waters" in the first place. They should have known better! What were they doing there in the first place? Attack the root causes of piracy, not the pirates, who are themselves victims ... withlegitimate grievances ... and so on and so forth. This reporter can see and hear the stomach-turning, mind-boggling, perfidious propaganda now. So it goes in Obamanation.
Related:
China, too, fears the Obama administration's dance with the Islamist devil--specifically, a replay of Washington's Cold War-era Tibet policy, with western Chinese Muslim separatists (Uighurs) cast in the role of U.S.-backed Tibetan nationalists. But that's another story.
EARLY WARNING: Back in the USA, liberal loons, environmental extremists, and dumbbell Democrats will cheer higher oil prices, viewing the crushing development as an Allah-sent opportunity to push for government-mandated and subsidized alternative energy schemes and scams--uneconomic, inefficient, and non-existent solutions. Will U.S. Republicans have the sense to support massive development and unlocking of domestic oil and gas, coal and shale--real energy production capable of making the nation energy independent and producing millions of well paying, permanent jobs? Or will it be business as usual, with the Republicans going along with Big Oil--multinational behemoths for which the national interest is merely a quaint concept? If ever there was a Tea Party issue, this is it. It will take a populist movement to defeat the unholy alliance of Big Oil and Global Warming Mongers that threatens to choke the country's lifeblood--energy--and pauperize the middle class.
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