the shock doctrine as a diversionary tactic

Now, with the world reeling again at the safety implications of nuclear power's use near large population centers, is obviously the best time to press the war on Terra.

Chris Floyd:

And so now, another war. Led by the United States and the religious extremists in Saudi Arabia, the UN Security Council voted to intervene on behalf of one side in the Libyan civil war. Having already armed and trained Moamar Gadafy's armies and security forces, the Western war-profiteers have now decided to do the same for his opponents.

These opponents, it must be noted, are at present led by top players who only weeks ago were at the center of Gadafy's murderous, repressive regime -- which was itself, only weeks ago, considered a worthy partner by Western governments and business interests. As As'ad AbuKhalil -- a fierce critic of Gadafy for many years -- noted today, before the UN vote:

The Libyan people have been betrayed. Their revolution against the Libyan tyrant has been hijacked by US and Saudi Arabia. That lousy henchman for Qadhdhafi, Mustafa Abd-Al-Jali [leader of the rebel's Libyan National Transition Council], is now a Saudi stooge who hijacked the uprising on behalf of a foreign agenda. I mean, what do you expect from a man who until the other day held the position of Minister of Justice in Qadhdhafi's regime, for potato's sake? And don't you like it when Western media constantly refer to him as "the respected Libyan minister of Justice." Respected by who? By Western governments.

It should also be noted that the Saudis are even now staging a military intervention in Bahrain to help the autocratic regime there put down -- with deadly force and brutal repression -- a peaceful resistance movement seeking democracy and justice. "“We want to support the opposition who are standing against the dictator,” Hillary Clinton declared today. But she was talking about the dictator in Libya, not the dictator in Bahrain, who has willingly turned his country into a fueling station for the projection of American dominance in the Middle East.

Finally, it should be noted that the UN Resolution is not in any way restricted to establishing a "no-fly zone" to keep Gadafy from bombing Libyan cities. This has been the holy grail of our humanitarian interventionists who, despite the evidence of their own eyes over several decades, still seem to believe that military action -- the application of massive, violent force -- can be done without hurting anybody but the mean old bad guys whom we suddenly don't like anymore for whatever reason.

But this is no "light touch" intervention. The UN decree greenlights everything short of an outright land invasion of Libya. Indeed, within minutes of the resolution's passing, American officials were already talking about a "no-drive zone": direct attacks on Libyan tanks and artillery. What's more, US officials were already considering sending in "military personnel to advise and train the rebels..."

How deft of the Laureate. Similar to the 150,000 'Merikans in Iraq who with the stroke of a pen were changed from "troops" to "advisors", I suppose.

...Today Hillary Clinton decried the "terrible things" that Gadafy will do "to Libya and its neighbors." And why will he do this? Because he is, of course, a monster: "It's just in his nature. There are some creatures that are like that."

But this creature has now spent the past several years as a staunch ally of the West, especially in the "counterterrorism" fight. The Americans and the British have given him arms, training, equipment, expertise and other support. (Just as they did, for years, with Saddam Hussein.) He was precisely the same "creature" then as he is now. Western elites knew that Gadafy had done "terrible things to Libya and its neighbors" for years before they embraced him -- and his oil money --- with open arms. None of this bothered them before.

But now that Gadafy is doing exactly what the United States government would do if an armed faction took over whole swathes of its territory -- respond with furious, murderous force -- he has suddenly become a monster again.

Luckily for Washington, the Libyan opposition -- "the more secular and radical trend represented by the professional associations" noted by AbuKhalil -- has, as he said, been hijacked by ex-Gadafy goons and Saudi tools who will now, with the West's military intervention, avidly seek to provide the same kind of profitable "stability" in Libya that we see in such wondrous beacons of democracy and enlightenment as Bahrain.

What forces will now be loosed in Libya in the chaos, corruption, hatred, fear and corruption that invariably attends these "humanitarian interventions"? Iraq and Afghanistan give us ample warning.

Strange how the Austerians always have billions for humanitarian interventions, designed to uplift the accounts of the bank$ters that own the oil: public risk, privateer profit again.