Libyan Rebels Have Already Established A New Central Bank Of Libya

[Ares]

<img src="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Central-Bank-245x250.jpg"/>

The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company. Perhaps when this conflict is over those rebels can become time management consultants. They sure do get a lot done. What a skilled bunch of rebels - they can fight a war during the day and draw up a new central bank and a new national oil company at night without any outside help whatsoever. If only the rest of us were so versatile! But isn't forming a central bank something that could be done after the civil war is over? According to Bloomberg, the Transitional National Council has "designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi." Apparently someone felt that it was very important to get pesky matters such as control of the banks and control of the money supply out of the way even before a new government is formed.

Of course it is probably safe to assume that the new Central Bank of Libya will be 100% owned and 100% controlled by the newly liberated people of Libya, isn't it?

Most people don't realize that the previous Central Bank of Libya was 100% state owned. The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's article on the former Central Bank of Libya....

The Central Bank of Libya (CBL) is 100% state owned and represents the monetary authority in The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and enjoys the status of autonomous corporate body. The law establishing the CBL stipulates that the objectives of the central bank shall be to maintain monetary stability in Libya , and to promote the sustained growth of the economy in accordance with the general economic policy of the state.

Since the old Central Bank of Libya was state owned, it was essentially under the control of Moammar Gadhafi.

But now that Libya is going to be "free", the new Central Bank of Libya will be run by Libyans and solely for the benefit of Libyans, right?

Of course it is probably safe to assume that will be the case with the new national oil company as well, isn't it?

Over the past couple of years, Moammar Gadhafi had threatened to nationalize the oil industry in Libya and kick western oil companies out of the country, but now that Libya will be "free" the people of Libya will be able to work hand in hand with "big oil" and this will create a better Libya for everyone.

Right?

Of course oil had absolutely nothing to do with why the U.S. "inva---" (scratch that) "initiated a kinetic humanitarian liberty action" in Libya.

When Barack Obama looked straight into the camera and told the American people that the war in Libya is in the "strategic interest" of the United States, surely he was not referring to oil.

After all, war for oil was a "Bush thing", right? The Democrats voted for Obama to end wars like this, right? Surely no prominent Democrats will publicly support this war in Libya, right?

Surely Barack Obama will end the bombing of Libya if the international community begins to object, right?

Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize. He wouldn't deeply upset the other major powers on the globe and bring us closer to World War III, would he?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has loudly denounced "coalition strikes on columns of Gaddafi's forces" and he believes that the U.S. has badly violated the terms of the UN Security Council resolution....

"We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council resolution."

So to cool off rising tensions with the rest of the world, Obama is going to call off the air strikes, right?

Well, considering the fact that Obama has such vast foreign policy experience we should all be able to rest easy knowing that Obama will understand exactly what to do.

Meanwhile, the rebels seem to be getting the hang of international trade already.

They have even signed an oil deal with Qatar!

Rebel "spokesman" Ali Tarhouni has announced that oil exports to Qatar will begin in "less than a week".

Who knew that the rag tag group of rebels in Libya were also masters of banking and international trade?

We sure do live in a strange world.

Tonight, Barack Obama told the American people the following....

"Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different."

So now we are going to police all of the atrocities in all of the other countries around the globe?

The last time I checked, the government was gunning down protesters in Syria.

Is it time to start warming up the Tomahawks?

Or do we reserve "humanitarian interventions" only for those nations that have a lot of oil?

In fact, atrocities are currently being committed all over Africa and in about a dozen different nations in the Middle East.

Should we institute a draft so that we will have enough young men and women to police the world with?

We all have to be ready to serve our country, right?

The world is becoming a smaller place every day, and you never know where U.S. "strategic interests" are going to be threatened next.

The rest of the world understands that we know best, right?

Of course the rest of the world can surely see our good intentions in Libya, can't they?

Tensions with Russia, China and the rest of the Arab world are certainly going to subside after they all see how selfless our "humanitarian intervention" has been in Libya, don't you think?

In all seriousness, we now live in a world where nothing is stable anymore. Wars and revolutions are breaking out all over the globe, unprecedented natural disasters are happening with alarming frequency and the global economy is on the verge of total collapse.

By interfering in Libya, we are just making things worse. Gadhafi is certainly a horrible dictator, but this was a fight for the Libyan people to sort out.

We promised the rest of the world that we were only going to be setting up a "no fly zone". By violating the terms of the UN Security Council resolution, we have shown other nations that we cannot be trusted and by our actions we have increased tensions all over the globe.

http://www.benzinga.com/11/03/958264/wow-that-was-fast-libyan-rebels-have-already-established-a-new-central-bank-of-libya#ixzz1I2Q0PC9r

[mightymanx]

Suprised I am not.


Rembember boys and girls it was all about freedom.

[Cebu_4_2]

Me thinks them rebels are recruits to topple the non IMF country.

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

The rebels have also set up their own oil bourse and are in talks to cut the "official" libyan govt out of the picture economically...


The rumor is that the head of the rebels is a CIA asset...


So of course they set up a centralized bank.

[Book]

http://www.armytimes.com/xml/news/2007/07/army_recruiting_070724w/at_recruiter1_800_070724.JPG
"You will be trained to protect the new Rebel Central Bank of Libya."

[Ponce]

Remember who armed the rebels and you will know which way the "war" will go......is not a matter of protecting the people but of protecting the oil = money.

[Errosion Of Accord]

Source: 21st Century Wire

By Eric V. Encina

One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. The world’s globalist financiers and market manipulators do not like it and would continue to their on-going effort to dethrone Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, bringing an end to Libya as independent nation.

Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.



When the smoke eventually clears from all the cruise missiles and cluster bombs, you will see the Allied reformers move in to reform Libya’s monetary system, pumping it full of worthless dollars, priming it for a series of chaotic inflationary cycles.

GLOBALIST TARGET: Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned 800px Central Bank of Libya

GLOBALIST TARGET: The Central Bank of Libya offices in Tripoli.

The CBL is currently a 100% state owned entity and represents the monetary authority in The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The financial structure and general operation procedures of a state bank is of course much different than that of an American or European based central bank. Form starters it is not privately owned, for-profit bank with a undisclosed list of private shareholders like the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are. Libyan constitutional law establishing the CBL stipulates that its central bank maintains monetary stability in Libya and promotes sustained growth of its national economy. Libya also holds more bullion as a proportion of gross domestic product than any country except Lebanon, according to the London-based World Gold Council using January data from the International Monetary Fund. The value of gold is based on the March 25 close of $1,429.74 an ounce.

Will this gold remain in Libya once Allied forces have taken control of Tripoli, or will it lost, or exchanged for pallets upon pallets of paper aka US dollars?
FOLDING LIBYA INTO THE NEW WORLD ORDER

In the Libyan banking charter, one of the primary mandates will be that it is regulating the quantity, quality and cost of credit to meet the requirements of economic growth and monetary stability. This of course, is the very opposite role which privately owned central banks play elsewhere in the world. Private central banks elsewhere create inflation, periodically inflating bubbles by design and then popping them in order to transfer large sums of wealth out of lower and middle class hands and into the hands of the financial elites.

It is becoming easy to diagnose the very root-causes of chaos in the Middle East and the ongoing war-attacks against Libya. Finance, oil, militarization & imperialism, globalization- all of these comprise a running agenda for the New World Order. Egypt and Tunisia have both fallen to interim military dictatorships and have been hooked with billions in cheap loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank.

Any country or nation that is running against the grain of this agenda- going against the orthodoxies of the New World Order, will eventually be flagged and brought to heal by way of military hammer. Regular acts of war against these non-globalist nation states are designed to humiliate, degrade and compromise international human rights- a condition that has become embarrassing to the world at large.

CANADIAN PUPPET DESIGNATED AS LEADER FOR NATO’S LIBYAN OPERATION

Most observers would claim that Canada is neutral in the Libyan conflict. But on this occasion, it’s been the consensus of the world axis of greedy powers that Canada will be running the front-of-house for their intervention in Libya’s civil chaos. With respect to Honourable Canadian leaders and officials, Canada’s participation in this particular war and in the cover-up for Obama in Libya is too adroit for the sake of profits and taking over resources in that particular region of the world.

“Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said Friday that Lt. General Charles Bouchard has been designated to lead the alliance’s military campaign in Libya. (Yahoo News, March 25, 2011). “Bouchard is stationed in Naples, Italy, at the Allied Joint Force Command. Bouchard’s recent job was deputy commander of NORAD, reporting to an American general. MacKay adds here, “He will be commander of the NATO operations, yet to be fully defined NATO operations”.

GLOBALIST TARGET: Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned

NATO’S FALL GUY: Lt. Canadian General Charles Bouchard will be running the Libyan shop floor for the US, UK and France.

Here is another challenge for the Canadian people. Another repercussion is that the Canadian budget will also be leached by such participations as the national Bank of Canada is also based on debt finance. If Canada, in not too distant future, would continue to participate in war(s), it would then become a fully fledged globalist war-nation, joining the likes of the USA and the UK.

One wonders what will become a world that is at perpetually at war with itself? Why build wealth only to have it destroyed by wars? Why collect more taxes, spend and wantonly waste state revenue, create money out of nothing at the point of usury, and lend and/or borrow money at interest that disastrously piles up national debt at sky-rocketing rates? We see the results time and time again: the economy collapse, creation of poverty, and the continuing finance of weapons’ manufacturing, arms sales and the most technologically sophisticated wars in history that cause the most unimaginable devastations and irreparable damages to human lives and nations.

If the Western based foreign policies continued to be war-based, bent on controlling the world’s resources, there seems to be no worse future for mankind.

One big reason for the Western assault on Libya: Libya owns and issues its own money.

[DMac]

The rebels have also set up their own oil bourse and are in talks to cut the "official" libyan govt out of the picture economically...


The rumor is that the head of the rebels is a CIA asset...


So of course they set up a centralized bank.


I'm reminded of the 'rebels' that were apparently flying MIGs when the fighting first began as well. These are some seriously well funded 'rebels'.

[Twisted Titan]

The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company..

...............................

The rebels seem to be getting the hang of international trade already.

They have even signed an oil deal with Qatar!

Rebel "spokesman" Ali Tarhouni has announced that oil exports to Qatar will begin in "less than a week".

Who knew that the rag tag group of rebels in Libya were also masters of banking and international trade?
We sure do live in a strange world.



UNFRICKEN BELIEVEABLE.


THE FAILURE OF THE MSM TO EVEN TOUCH ON THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MINDBOGGLING

[General of Darkness]

http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/free-logo.gif

[Ponce]

General? if you really want to destroy another country just tell helicopter Ben to drop bundles of dollars over their land.........more affective than bombs.

[mick silver]

you just cant make stuff up like this . dam we are seeing history being made . my dad past away 15 years back an he would not know this country ... hell i dont know this country

[Libertarian_Guard]

I'll need to see this story confirmed by some other sources before I buy it.


Could tbtb be that blatant, so early in the conflict? Almost like showing your hand in poker, before the bidding is done.

[Cebu_4_2]

Yes my friend welcome to the NWO



The rebels in Libya are in the middle of a life or death civil war and Moammar Gadhafi is still in power and yet somehow the Libyan rebels have had enough time to establish a new Central Bank of Libya and form a new national oil company..

...............................

The rebels seem to be getting the hang of international trade already.

They have even signed an oil deal with Qatar!

Rebel "spokesman" Ali Tarhouni has announced that oil exports to Qatar will begin in "less than a week".

Who knew that the rag tag group of rebels in Libya were also masters of banking and international trade?
We sure do live in a strange world.



UNFRICKEN BELIEVEABLE.


THE FAILURE OF THE MSM TO EVEN TOUCH ON THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MINDBOGGLING

[Twisted Titan]

I'll need to see this story confirmed by some other sources before I buy it.


Could tbtb be that blatant, so early in the conflict? Almost like showing your hand in poker, before the bidding is done.




No that is how effectively they have removed the process of Critical Thought from the population

They cant even following the bouncing ball.

[Errosion Of Accord]

I'll need to see this story confirmed by some other sources before I buy it. Could tbtb be that blatant, so early in the conflict? Almost like showing your hand in poker, before the bidding is done.




This was planned well in advance, as was the rest of the Muslim turmoil. I think this thread with MSM links tells the story.

http://gold-silver.us/forum/news-and-current-events/are-the-rothschilds-in-on-the-uprisings/msg193462/#msg193462

[lapis]

Could tbtb be that blatant, so early in the conflict?

Yes.

"They" have been planning this attack for years.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/2/gen_wesley_clark_weighs_presidential_bid

[Interview with Wesley Clark]

"So I came back to see him [unidentified general] a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it’s worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs"—meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office—"today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don’t show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!"

[vacuum]

I can understand the rebels throwing an oil company together and maybe trying to get some deals. Oil is their national resource, and making deals would help them be funded. This is already a pretty big stretch while their fighting like they are, but believable.

But establishing a new central bank? Are these rebels concerned about inflation, or perhaps loss of consumer credit? Are they going to sell bonds based on their future ability to tax the Libyan people? I just don't see how it makes sense. Also, are they a bunch of economists and bankers? How would they draft up a charter so easily? I can't see an 'official' explanation that could even be plausible to sheep...

[vacuum]

Someone should photoshop a picture of Libyan rebels in a bunker drawing up a charter for a central bank

[osoab]

American Media Silent on CIA Ties to Libya Rebel Commander (http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24041)


It has been six days since Khalifa Hifter was appointed the top military commander for the Libyan rebel forces fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. His appointment was noted by reporter Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers, a US regional chain that includes the Sacramento Bee and the Kansas City Star.

Two days later, another McClatchy journalist, Chris Adams, wrote a brief biographical sketch of Hifter that left the implication, without saying so explicitly, that he was a longtime CIA asset. It headlined the fact that after defecting from a top position in Gaddafi’s army, Hifter had lived in northern Virginia for some 20 years, as well as noting that Hifter had no obvious means of financial support.

The World Socialist Web Site published a perspective March 28 taking note of both the McClatchy articles and earlier reports providing more details of Hifter’s connections to the CIA. These included a 1996 article in theWashington Post and a book published by the French weekly Le Monde diplomatique. (See A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels”)

Both the McClatchy sketch of Hifter’s background and the WSWS perspective have been widely circulated on the Internet. The WSWS perspective has been linked to by a myriad of left-liberal and antiwar web sites, although, significantly, there has been no mention of Hifter in the press of the International Socialist Organization and other pseudo-socialist groups that adapt themselves politically to the pro-Obama liberal milieu.

Hifter has been interviewed and his appointment reported by the European press, including the Independent of Britain, the German weekly Stern, and newspapers in Spain, France, Italy and Turkey (with variant spellings, including Heftar and Haftar). But not in America.

Hifter’s name has not appeared in the bulk of the corporate-controlled US media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times have all been curiously silent, despite having more journalists in the war zone than McClatchy. The US television networks have likewise kept quiet on the identity of the Libyan rebel commander, with the exception of a brief interview with Hifter on ABC News March 27, which made no reference to his previous long-term residence within five miles of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

There is no credible explanation for this silence from the standpoint of journalism. There is no security reason to keep the name of the Libyan commander secret—it was publicly announced by the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, and Hifter is certainly well known to Gaddafi, who employed him as a commander of Libyan-backed forces in the civil wars in Chad in the 1980s.

The obvious conclusion is that the American media is keeping silent in order to deprive the American people of information that would help clarify the nature of the US military intervention in Libya—and trigger opposition to it. The selection of a longtime CIA collaborator as commander of the rebels makes nonsense of the official claim that the United States is intervening militarily in Libya to protect civilian lives, rather than taking sides in a civil war in order to gain control of Libya’s oil assets and strengthen the position of American imperialism in the region.

Two words that were notably absent from Obama’s Monday night speech on national television were “rebels” and “CIA.” Both the Obama administration and the US intelligence apparatus want to downplay their role in the direction of the rebel ground forces. For the American media, that amounts to a direct order, to which the editors of the Times, Post, etc., salute and say, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

Only two months ago, Times editor Bill Keller penned a lengthy screed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine section. In the course of his denunciation of a genuine journalist, this courtier of the American state declared that the role of “an independent news organization” was “to exercise responsible judgment about what to publish and what not to publish …” (See “The New York Times’ Bill Keller on WikiLeaks: A collapse of democratic sensibility”)

In the case of Khalifa Hifter, this responsibility “not to publish” extends beyond the concealment of the documentary evidence of American war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies uncovered by WikiLeaks. The American media is withholding from the American public basic facts about the war in Libya, widely reported overseas and easily available to those who know where to look. There is no other word for this but censorship.

[osoab]

So, are we(the bankers) just extracting our pound of flesh?

Oil, Uranium, and Water are a good combo of resources to have control over. A CIA stooge is running the rebs?

The Fed Bailed Out A Libya-Owned Bank (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fed-bailed-out-libya-owned-bank)


Here's one for the WTF files. While it is neither a secret that back in 2009 America had a thriving relationship with the world's suddenly most hated man Moammar Gaddafi (see "Obama is the first U.S. president to shake Gaddafi's hand") only to turn around and bomb him, nor is it surprising since after all when it comes to oil our administration will do anything and everything to procure it, no matter how many Nobel peace prizes are trampled in the process, it may come as a surprise to some that a bank majority owned by the Libya Central Bank, was the direct recipient of US taxpayer largesse in the form of discount window borrowing. Bloomberg writes that Arab Banking Corp., a lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a branch in New York to borrow at least $5 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve as credit markets seized up in 2008 and 2009. Indeed a quick word search through the compiled daily releases will confirm that the Fed dispersed funds to the Libya-owned venture on well over 30 occasions. And while we have querried in the past how it is possible that various Libyan financial interests managed to get past domestic Anti Money Laundering provisions, when it comes to direct funding from taxpayers would it be too much to ask of Ben Bernanke not to transact with institutions operating on behalf of various so-called tyrants, mutants and, broadly, Antichrists?

[Hatha Sunahara]

American Media Silent on CIA Ties to Libya Rebel Commander

The American mainstream media is silent. But the alternative media on the internet isn't so silent.

Do you remember earlier that Kaddhafi climed it was al Qaeda that was rebelling against him? Did you think he was crazy? Here's an Alex Jones video explaining how Al Qaeda is a creation of the Pentagon and the CIA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8txxny-E7w

And here's a bit more background on who the 'rebels' are which supports the idea that they are a CIA controlled bunch.

http://tarpley.net/

It all makes sense.


Hatha

[osoab]

American Media Silent on CIA Ties to Libya Rebel Commander

The American mainstream media is silent. But the alternative media on the internet isn't so silent.

Do you remember earlier that Kaddhafi climed it was al Qaeda that was rebelling against him? Did you think he was crazy? Here's an Alex Jones video explaining how Al Qaeda is a creation of the Pentagon and the CIA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8txxny-E7w

And here's a bit more background on who the 'rebels' are which supports the idea that they are a CIA controlled bunch.

http://tarpley.net/

It all makes sense.


Hatha


I have been searching for the "why now" answer. As in, why is Libya now a "threat". I don't think the resources are the reason. They would be there later on I would presume. Is this an attempt to stop any confusion within Libya before Qaddafi kicks the bucket? Basically they are making sure that the guy is power is the one they want.

[Hatha Sunahara]

Note in the article below how usury is not allowed in Libya. And the central bank is not owned by the Rothschilds. That alone is enough to have TPTB bombing you 24/7. We are being lied to by the MSM and by our politicians.

Hatha



http://www.rense.com/general93/truth.htm
The Truth About Libya
By Stephen Goodson
4-1-11


Colonel Muammar Gadaffi is frequently referred to in the media as a "mad dictator" and "bloody tyrant", but do these allegations accord with the facts?

Libya consists of over 15O tribes, with the two main groups, the Meghabra living in Tripolitania in the west and the Wafallah living in Cyrenaica in the east. Previous attempts to unite these tribes by the Turkish (1855-1911) and ltalian {1911-43) colonial rulers failed and the country was split in two for administrative purposes.

Oil was discovered in Libya in 1959, but King ldris of the Senussi tribe allowed most of the oil profits to be siphoned into the coffers of the oil companies. The coup d'etat on 1 September 1969 led by Colonel Gadaffi had countrywide support. He subsequently married a woman from the royal Barqa tribe and adroitly unified the nation.

By retaining Libya's oil wealth for the benefit of all its people, Gadaffi had created a socialist paradise. There is no unemployment, Libya has the highest GDP in .Africa, less than 5% of the population is classified as poor and it has fewer people living below the poverty datum line than for example in Holland. Life expectancy is 75 years and is the highest in Africa and I0% above the world average.

With the exception of the nomadic Bedouin and Tuareg tribes, most Libyan families possess a house and a car. There is free health care and education and not surprisingly Libya has a literacy rate of 82%. Last year Gadaffi distributed $500 to each man, woman and child (population 6.5 million).

Libya has a tolerable human rights record and stands at 61 on the International Incarceration Index, comparable with countries in central Europe (the lower the rating, the lower the standing - the USA occupies the no.1 spot!). There is hardly any crime and only rebels and traitors are dealt with harshly.

Anyone who has read Gadaffi's little Green Book will realize that he is a thoughtful and enlightened leader. Libya has been accused of having committed numerous acts of terrorism in the past, but many of these have been perpetrated by foreign intelligence agencies as false flag operations - the Lockerbie bombing being a prime example.

The CIA and MI6 and their frontmen have been stoking up dissent in the east of the country for almost 30 years. Libya produces exceptionally high quality light crude oil and its production cost of $1 a barrel, compared to the current price of $115, is the lowest in the world.

Riba (usury) is not permitted. The Central bank of Libya is a wholly-owned by the Libyan Government and is run as a state bank, issuing all government loans free of interest. This is in contrast to the exploitative fractional reserve banking system of the West. The no-fly zone and the bombing of Libya have nothing to do with the protection of civilians. It is an act of war * a blatant and crude attempt by the oil corporations and international bankers to steal the wealth of Libya.

[Errosion Of Accord]

That pretty well tells the tale, Hatha.

[Twisted Titan]

Oil was discovered in Libya in 1959, but King ldris of the Senussi tribe allowed most of the oil profits to be siphoned into the coffers of the oil companies. The coup d'etat on 1 September 1969 led by Colonel Gadaffi had countrywide support. He subsequently married a woman from the royal Barqa tribe and adroitly unified the nation.


I always wondered who was in control of Libya before Kadaffi........ever since I was a child the man is charge

Thanks for resting this pet peeve of mines.


T

[osoab]

Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html)


You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes"vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".

There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.

Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."

For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.

The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.

Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".

What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.

And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.

[b]Globocop is on a roll
Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.

The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libyia; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.

A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.

The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.

This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).

Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.

According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.

[gunDriller]

So, are we(the bankers) just extracting our pound of flesh?

Oil, Uranium, and Water are a good combo of resources to have control over. A CIA stooge is running the rebs?

yeah, there's been more than one article about it.

these aren't rebels, they're mercenaries funded & trained by the American CIA, which also makes them assets of Israel.

this has nothing to do with oil.

it's just time to continue their plan of re-making the MidEast is Israel's (Very Fucking Ugly) Image.

[Errosion Of Accord]

Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

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April 14, 2011
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By Ellen Brown - Web Of Debt

Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:

I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.

Alex Newman wrote in the New American:

In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”

Another anomaly involves the official justification for taking up arms against Libya. Supposedly it’s about human rights violations, but the evidence is contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News website on February 28:

As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body's Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya's human rights record.

The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a "priority" and for bettering its "constitutional" framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens -- who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.

Whatever might be said of Gaddafi, the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people live in such comfort:

[Libyans] are entitled to free treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S. dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe, and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful, are not inclined to drink, and are very religious.

They maintained that the international community had been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. “Tell us,” they said, “who would not like such a regime?”

Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya. The GMMR provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya’s vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.

Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that it is “all about oil,” but that theory too is problematic. As noted in the National Journal, the country produces only about 2 percent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if Libyan oil were to disappear from the market. And if it’s all about oil, why the rush to set up a new central bank?

Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview of U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. “I don’t know!” was the response. “I guess they don’t know what else to do!” Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted that “ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.”

According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Lybia – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar,” Gadaffi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gadaffi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.

And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:

One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. . . . Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.

Libya not only has oil. According to the IMF, its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS, the IMF and their rules?

All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS website states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed to have as their single or primary objective “to preserve price stability.” They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don’t interfere with this mandate. “Price stability” means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit of the state, either directly or as loans.

In a 2002 article in Asia Times titled “The BIS vs National Banks,” Henry Liu maintained:

BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under financial globalization no longer serve national interests.

. . . FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.

He added, “Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.” The “state theory of money” refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.

The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government’s own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly-owned or privately-owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government’s own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50%.

And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include “issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya” and “managing and issuing all state loans.” Libya’s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.

That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.

So is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both – and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible. Most countries don’t have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation’s own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.

If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and health care continue to be free.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com and http://ellenbrown.com.



http://www.blacklistednews.com/Libya%3A_All_About_Oil%2C_or_All_About_Banking%3F/13503/0/0/0/Y/M.html

[gunDriller]

an interesting article on OilDrum this AM, about whether a recent increase in Saudi oil production makes up for the decline in Libyan oil production.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7801#more

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Screen%20shot%202011-04-13%20at%207.55.52%20AM.png


personally, one of the things that i find interesting about Libya is their alleged involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.

my understanding is that the suitcase with the bomb, aka the "Magic Suitcase", went on a dizzying combination of luggage conveyor belts before it ended up on the Lockerbie flight.

and that what was happening was, an American military officer had been dispatched to investigate some corruption in the US military, found some major drug dealing that involved TPTB, and got on the plane to fly home - the Lockerbie plane.

not wanting their scams to end, the Talmud-worshippers arranged to blow up the plane, and to blame it on Libya.