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To: Valuepro who wrote (305074)	4/1/2011 10:44:03 AM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

It All Depends on Who's in the White House (Andrea Mitchell's on Libya vs Iraq) Media Research Center ^ \| 4-1-11 mrc.org “This intervention could wind up being Barack Obama’s finest hour. His intentions are pure — this is a humanitarian mission, not blood for oil. We’ve got a coalition with us, the United Nations, the Arab League. And the diplomacy has truly been masterful — future military planners will surely use Obama’s Libya template as a guide.” — NBC chief foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press, April 1, 2011 VS “It’s terrible that Saddam Hussein is butchering his people, but the United States simply cannot send in the Marines to take on every dictator. And, while the Bush administration likes to brag about the 30 nations in their coalition, it will be the United States that does most of the fighting in Iraq. I fear this is the wrong war at the wrong time and in the wrong place.” — Mitchell talking about the Iraq war on Meet the Press, April 1, 2003.

To: Valuepro who wrote (305074)	4/1/2011 11:31:27 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Libya-Owned Arab Banking Corp. Drew at Least $5 Billion From Fed in Crisis Arab Banking Corp., then part-owned by the Libyan state, used a New York branch to borrow at least $5 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve in 2008 and 2009. By Donal Griffin and Bob Ivry - Apr 1, 2011 bloomberg.com Arab Banking Corp., the lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed. The bank, then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan state, had aggregate borrowings in that period of $35 billion -- while the largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to Fed data released yesterday. In October 2008, when lending to financial institutions by the central bank’s so- called discount window peaked at $111 billion, Arab Banking took repeated loans totaling more than $2 billion. Fed officials say all the discount window loans made during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s have been repaid with interest. The U.S. government has since frozen assets linked to the regime of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi and engaged in air strikes against his military forces, which are battling a rebel uprising in the North African country. Arab Banking got an exemption that allows the firm to continue operating while barring it from engaging in any transactions with the Libyan government, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. “It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, wrote in a letter to Fed and U.S. officials. Bernanke, Geithner The letter was addressed to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and John Walsh, acting comptroller of the currency. The figure refers to the aggregate amount of loans the bank received under U.S. lending programs. Arab Banking owed about $4 billion to the Fed under other bailout programs in the fall of 2009, data released in December show. Jack Gutt, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, declined to comment. Arab Banking said Dec. 2 that Libya’s stake in the Manama, Bahrain-based lender had increased to 59 percent. “There was an uneasy detente between the United States and Libya” when the loans were made, said William Poole, senior economic adviser to Merk Investments LLC and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “It would not happen in the morning.” Park Avenue Branch David Siegel, treasurer of Arab Banking’s branch on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, declined to comment. The New York branch deals mainly in trade finance, according to its website. The bank’s chairman is Mohammed Hussain Layas, chief executive officer of the Libyan Investment Authority. The CEO is Bahrain- based Hassan Ali Juma. Arab Banking reported a loss of $880 million in 2008 as it took a $1.1 billion charge tied to structured investment vehicles and derivative products known as collateralized debt obligations. Arab Banking recovered during the next two years, posting profits totaling $265 million. Libya previously shared the bank with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the Kuwait Investment Authority, both sovereign investment funds. The Libyan Central Bank bought out the Abu Dhabi stake in 2010 and took majority control, which prompted Fitch Ratings in December to downgrade Arab Banking’s credit rating. In March, after the U.S. froze Libya’s assets, Fitch downgraded the bank’s credit rating again, this time to “junk” status. Contracts to protect Arab Banking’s debt, which typically rise as investor confidence deteriorates, increased by 186 basis points to 500 during March. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt. Uncertain Outcome “Nobody knows how the situation in Libya is going to work out finally and who will ultimately be in charge and obviously who will be running institutions like the central bank,” Philip Smith, a London-based Fitch analyst, said in a phone interview. Under the asset freeze, the bank has been prevented from conducting transactions with the Qaddafi regime and can thus continue trading with other customers as usual, Smith said. The bank listed deposits of $17.5 billion at the end of 2010. According to a report from the Fitch Ratings firm, the Libyan Central Bank places “sizeable deposits” with the lender. Marti Adams, a spokeswoman for the Department of Treasury, declined to comment on whether any of the bank’s deposits are subject to the asset freeze. “It is today escaping the economic sanctions imposed to hobble Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal regime,” Sanders said in his letter. “Why would the U.S. government exempt the Arab Banking Corporation from economic sanctions when it is primarily owned by the Central Bank of Libya?” Bloomberg News has posted the Fed documents for Bloomberg Professional Service subscribers, as well as online at www.bloomberg.com.

To: Valuepro who wrote (305074)	4/2/2011 10:23:52 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Samantha Power to be the next Secretary of State? Irish Central ^ \| 04/02/11 \| Cathy Hayes irishcentral.com A flattering New York Times profile has increased speculation that Samantha Power, the Dublin-born aide to President Obama, could be his next Secretary of State or National Security Adviser. She has been the main architect, along with Hillary Clinton, of the Libya policy and has an increasing influence in the White House inner circle. No Irish-born person in recent history has had such influence on a president. Power, now 40, moved to the US from Ireland at age 10. With Hillary Clinton due to step down after Obama’s first term, she would be a live candidate to succeed her if Obama wins re-election. The Times reported that on Monday night last, Samantha Power took to the podium at Columbia University in New York two hours before President Obama was due to address the nation on Libya and received a rock star reception. Power, who is one of Obama’s key advisers on foreign policy, insisted that Libya was not going to be the main topic of conversation. “I’m not going to talk much about Libya,” she said, as quoted in The Times. However, when later questioned she defended the administration’s decision in establishing a no-fly zone, adding failure to do so would have been “extremely chilling, deadly and indeed a stain on our collective conscience.” Since she began her career working as a war correspondant in Bosnia at the tender age of 22, Power has believed that nations have a moral obligation to prevent genocide. She can bring life to these ideals from her position of the National Security Council. “She is clearly the foremost voice for human rights within the White House,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times “and she has Obama’s ear.” Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book on genocide, entitled “A Problem from Hell,” which examined the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. The book argues that the Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia and Rwanda genocides occurred because of government authorities averted their eyes and individuals made the choice not to intervene. “The most common response,” Ms. Power wrote, “is, ‘We didn’t know.’ This is not true.” Some of her critics say that she could be pushing the U.S. into another Iraq. The conservative blog American Thinker says that Obama has “outsourced foreign policy” to the Dublin woman. She has also drawn the ire of the Israeli lobby for her pro-Palestinian positions. Power attempts to keep a low profile after she described Hillary Rodham Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Her remarks saw her step down from her position as an advisor on Obama’s campaign. Since then, the women have reconciled. Obama initially headhunted Power in 2005, after reading her book. After a long meeting, Power decided to take leave from her Harvard professorship to work for the then senator. Despite her efforts to remain low key, the Dublin woman has an impressive artillery with two Ivy League degrees (Yale undergraduate, Harvard Law). She once posed in an evening gown for Men’s Vogue and played a game of basketball with George Clooney. She has been described by the Daily Beast as “the femme fatale of the humanitarian assistance world.”

To: Valuepro who wrote (305074)	4/2/2011 10:24:44 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal Asia Times Online ^ \| Apr 2, 2011 \| Pepe Escobar atimes.com 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 [Bahrain] 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. 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 Libya; 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.

To: Valuepro who wrote (305074)	4/6/2011 1:45:36 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

President Obama's New Anti-American Secretary of State ......................................................... Townhall.com ^ \| April 6, 2011 \| Ben Shapiro townhall.com Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it clear that she will not serve another term under President Obama. Who can blame her? She has become the face of a fecklessly reckless administration, a pathetic press relations lackey for the worst foreign affairs president in the history of the country. To replace her, Obama is reportedly looking to tap another prominent female diplomat. Her name is Samantha Power, and she bills herself as a human rights activist. A Yale University graduate, Power became a leftist foreign policy journalist for various major news organizations. She then came back to the United States, where she attended Harvard Law School. Her book, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," implicated the United States in virtually every major genocide of the last century. As a fellow radical Harvard Law School grad, she quickly penetrated Barack Obama's inner circle and became his senior foreign policy adviser during the 2008 campaign. Now she is a member of the National Security Council, and according to media reports, successor to Hillary's throne. There's only one problem: Power is an anti-Israel fanatic and a myopic internationalist who couldn't care less about doing what is right for America. Back in 2002, Power told a University of California at Berkeley interviewer that America should put military forces on the ground in Israel to prevent Israeli "human rights abuses." "What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation," she said. Channeling the conspiratorial ruminations of anti-Semitic scholars the world over, Power added, "And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israel's, you know, military, but actually in investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support, I think, what will have to be a mammoth protection force." Then Power went even further -- she stated that America should impose a solution on Israel. "You have to go in as if you're serious, you have to put something on the line," she explained. Not only does this ignore the fact that the human rights abuses in the Israel-Palestinian conflict have been almost universally attributable to the Palestinian Arabs, it throws our liberal democratic ally under the bus. But then again, Power is used to throwing allies under the bus. She, along with her NSC colleague Ben Rhodes, reportedly told President Obama to undercut Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in order to please the Arab street. Pleasing the Arab street seems to be first priority for Power. It was Power, along with Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who pushed President Obama to go to non-war in Libya. Her fingerprints cover this abortive military operation. The problem in Libya isn't that we have no exit strategy -- it's that we had no entrance strategy, no definable goals or reasons for being there. That is, no reason except for prevention of "genocide" as broadly defined by Power. Each time Obama cites the prevention of genocide as a rationale for intervention -- even as Muslims slaughter Christians wholesale in Darfur, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, and kill non-radicals in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- Samantha Power's ventriloquism shines through. Samantha Power is, at best, an ignoramus when it comes to long-term American policy. At worst, she uses human rights rhetoric as a club to wield against America itself. She has argued in favor of the so-called "responsibility to protect," an internationalist fantasy requiring the United States to place its men and women in harm's way in order to stop anything bad going on anywhere in the world. Unless it's something bad being committed by radical Muslims, of course -- in that case, we must look for root causes in Western behavior. Power is yet another theory-first, know-nothing liberal who places her vaguely cotton candy ideals above realistic appraisal of American interests. Unfortunately, her asinine ideas have disastrous real-world consequences. Consequences about which President Obama does not care, apparently. When it comes to the White House, idiocy loves company.