Why we're bombing Libya

By Stephen Gowans

While the class character of regimes under siege by Western powers is often explored in analyses of imperialist interventions and is frequently invoked to justify them, it neither explains why capitalist imperialist powers intervene nor stands as a justification for their actions.

The relevant consideration in explaining why interventions occur is not the political orientation of the government under siege, nor its relations with its citizens, but whether it accommodates the profit-making interests of the dominant class in the intervening countries. Does it welcome foreign investment, allow repatriation of profits, demand little in the way of corporate income tax, open its markets, and offer abundant supplies of cheap labor and raw materials? Or does it impose high tariffs on imports, subsidize domestic production, operate state-owned enterprises (displacing opportunities for foreign-private-owned ones), force investors to take on local partners, and insist that workers be protected from desperation wages and intolerable working conditions?

Much as it might be supposed that imperialist interventions target worker and peasant-led governments alone, this is not the case. Regimes that promote national bourgeois interests by denying or limiting the profit-making interests in their own countries of the dominant class of other countries are routinely targeted for regime change, especially if they are militarily weak or have pluralist political systems that afford space for destabilization and political interference. Since the effects are the same in imperialist countries of a local regime, say, expropriating a foreign-privately-owned oil company, no matter whether the company is turned over to local business people, the state, or the company’s employees, it is a matter of supreme indifference to imperialist countries whether the expropriation is carried out by communists, socialists or radical nationalists. Whether you’re inspired by Marx and Lenin, 21st century socialism, or the actually-existing capitalist policies that the United States, Germany and Japan followed to challenge Britain’s industrial monopoly, if you’re going to mess with the profit-making opportunities of an imperialist country’s capital class, it will mess with you.

Al Gore's assault on the integrity of science

I am skeptical of long-term forecasts about global warming. According to Al Gore, this makes me a "denier", a term implying that I not only reject alarmist claims about human-caused climate change, but that I am a Holocaust "revisionist," which is to say an anti-Semitite and, therefore, a racist.

In an interview with an Alex Bogusky, Gore makes absolutely clear his intention to draw a parallel between skepticism about anthropogenic climate warming and racism.

Although this is a claim of astounding asininity, it is, presumably, an effective tactic in what Gore terms "winning the argument," an argument in which he has a huge personal financial stake.

But it is much more than that. It is an obscene attack on civilized and rational discourse.

Climate change projections are just that, projections. There is nothing settled about projections that cannot be definitively tested in less than the time over which the projections have been made.

Yes, science is about projections. But what scientific illiterates such as Al Gore like to call "settled science" is about projections that have been experimentally verified with such certainty that they are described as laws, although even as laws they are subject to skepticism, for otherwise they would not be a part of science. But there is no way that a 50- or 100-year projection of climate variation can be tested with absolute certainty in less than 50 or 100 years.

And even then, confirmation of a projection is not proof of the principles underlying the projection. In the case of climate projection, proof of the underlying principles appears to be theoretically impossible, since the climate is a complex, non-linear system. It was precisely the realization of the non-linearity of climate models that gave rise to chaos theory, which reveals the fundamental unpredictability of most of what happens in the World.

But there are much simpler reasons for skepticism about alarmist predictions of climate warming. Such predictions are based, for the most part, on attempt to project the effect on climate of human-caused increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But as experts in the field readily acknowledge, there are many other effects of human activity that impact climate, but which current climate models fail to adequately consider.

Black carbon, for example, or soot, a product of fossil fuel and vegetation burning, also traps energy in the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating the warming effect of carbon dioxide, whereas atmospheric sulfur pollution adds reflective white sulfate particles to the atmosphere, which have a direct cooling effect while serving as nuclei for water droplet, and hence cloud, formation.

Clouds, have a large effect on the Earth's energy balance by blocking outgoing radiation between Earth and space and reflecting incoming solar radiation. Such cloud effects are likely much greater than those of  either carbon dioxide or black carbon.

The variable activity of the sun must also be considered. For example, the sun's magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth's upper atmosphere. The mesons, to which cosmic rays give rise in the atmosphere cause water vapor nucleation and cloud formation. Moreover, long-term fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field seems to explain historic changes in global temperature rather well. This and other solar effects need to be fully evaluated before climate change models could possibly have significant long-term predictive value.

Another great uncertainty concerns the fate of anthropogenic carbon dioxide once it has been added to the atmosphere. Some of it is assimilated by vegetation and increases the pool of carbon in soils and plants. Some dissolves in the ocean. Some is sequestered through geological processes. We know rather little about how changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration affect the rates at which these various sinks for carbon dioxide function.

Therefore, the one thing we can say with certainty about the effect of human activity on climate, is that we cannot predict it with any certainty.

This is not to say we should be unconcerned about human effects on the environment. There is merit in the precautionary principle, and I firmly believe we should aim to reduce the human impact on the environment. But we cannot turn the World's economy on a dime and we should not be focusing on carbon dioxide very largely to the exclusion of all else. Technology is advancing rapidly across the spectrum of industrial activity. Recycling is intensifying, resource use efficiency is increasing. We may need to encourage these trends in some areas. But we should be motivated on the basis of rational discourse, not by insults from self-serving bullies.

Image source

Al Gore's participation in the debate about climate change constitutes a serious threat to the integrity of science. His resort to blind brutal partisanship encourages bad science by inhibiting vigorous criticism of research that supports the climate alarmist view, while promoting vicious attacks on scientists with the temerity to investigate ideas that counter the climate alarmist program.

And it should be remembered that Al Gore's Nobel prize was not a science prize. It was a "peace" prize awarded by the same corrupt or unbelievably stupid Norwegian politicians who awarded the "peace" prize to President Barak O'Bomber.

See also:
Climate Science: Peak Civilization?

How odd was it to pack 17 Navy Seals in one helicopter as backup to Army Rangers on a routine mission?

On August 6, 17 members of the US Navy's elite commando SEALs Team 6 died when the Chinook helicopter they were in was brought down in Afghanistan by insurgent rocket fire. The SEALs were providing back-up to an Army Ranger raid on an "insurgent cell." All 38 people aboard the aircraft died, resulting in the greatest one-day loss of American life during the Afghanistan war.

Bad luck, one might think, but neatly balanced by the good luck that the very same Navy SEALs Team enjoyed on May 2nd when their helicopter "malfunctioned as it approached Osama bin Laden’s compound at about 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, stalling as it hovered." Fortunately, the pilot was able to "set the machine down gently inside the walls of the compound, but then couldn’t get it going again."

It was a heart-stopping moment for President Barack Obama, who had been monitoring the raid in the White House Situation Room since 1 p.m., surrounded by members of his war cabinet.

Obviously, everyone was thinking about Black Hawk Down and Desert One,” a senior administration official recalled.

But not to worry.

The SEALs disembarked.

The assault team went ahead and raided the compound, even though they didn’t know if they would have a ride home”

The special forces put bombs on the crippled chopper and blew it up, then lifted off in a reinforcement craft just before 4:15 p.m., capping an astounding 40 minutes that gave the United States a tectonic victory in the 10-year war on terror touched off by 9/11.

“The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden,” Obama said at the White House Monday.

1980, Desert One helicopter crash

That happy outcome was good luck not only for the SEALs, who got to live another 95 days, but for President Obama who took the credit for authorizing the SEALs intrepid incursion into the sovereign territory of America's ally, Pakistan, during which they bravely assassinated the sick and aging former US ally, Osama bin Laden, shot bin Laden's wife in the leg and, for no apparent reason, killed bin Laden's son Khalid.

Had that stalling helicopter crashed and the SEALs Team 6 been wiped out, Obama's chances of reelection in 2012 would have been as dismal as Jimmy Carter's chances of a second term following the failed Iran hostages rescue mission, which ended in disaster when a helicopter crashed into a C-130 Transport, killing eight servicemen.

But not everyone believes things went so well for the SEALs at Abbottabad. As Paul Craig Roberts reported:

The Pakistani News Agency has provided a live interview with an eye witness to the US attack on the alleged compound of Osama bin Laden. The eye witness, Mohammad Bashir, describes the event as it unfolded. Of the three helicopters, "there was only one that landed the men and came back to pick them up, but as he [the helicopter] was picking them up, it blew away and caught fire." The witness says that there were no survivors, just dead bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. "We saw the helicopter burning, we saw the dead bodies, then everything was removed and now there is nothing."

Which naturally raises the question, how come no SEALs were reported killed during the Abbottabad raid?

If they died, the news was surely bound to come out. So what point would there have been in failing to report such deaths at the time?

In order to fake a more satisfactory account of their deaths at another time and another place?

As we noted earlier:

Helicopters go down all the time in Afghanistan. Four Chinooks, and several other types this year already. So it would have been simple enough to conceal losses in Pakistan -- just add the names to the list of those killed in the latest crash, and return some well charred bodies for burial. Without a DNA test, the deception would be undetectable.

Now it seems, not everyone in the US military is satisfied by the account of the way in which Seal Team 6 met its end. Thus, the The New York Times reports, Admiral William H. McRaven, the  new commander of American Special Operations forces, has had to defend the use of 17 members of  the elite Navy Seals Team 6, to back up the August 6 raid by Army Rangers on an Afghanistan "insurgent" cell, which ended in disaster when the chopper was brought down by enemy fire.

According to the Times,

 The commander, Adm. William H. McRaven, said “there was nothing unusual about this mission” to warrant the sustained criticism heard from some retired commandos and military analysts, who have questioned how the operation was planned and carried out and whether it was an appropriate use of the vaunted Navy Seals.

 Furthermore, said the admiral the most highly trained Navy and Army commando teams are "regularly assigned to support commanders of units in a local area of combat if that contributed to the overall mission."

“We have to be fungible as a force,” Admiral McRaven said. “And if we are not fungible as a force, then we are not of value. It is not unusual at all for Seals or Rangers or Army Special Operations forces to be part of a quick-reaction force, as in this case.”

So there you have it. Nothing odd about a crack special forces team being wiped out while serving as back-up during a routine anti-insurgency mission in Afghanistan. Just fungibility.

Libya: No need for pith helmets

Manuel Noreiga: jailed since 1989

In his article, Take Up the White Man's Burden, Eric Margolis adopts the "re-colonization of Libya" meme. But the notion is hopelessly misleading.

There will be no return to the tropics of pith-helmeted white men bound to serve "their captives' need." There are plenty of Libyan Ph.D.'s in economics and politics and all the rest of the technical twaddle deemed necessary for the management of a modern government.

Post-Gaddafi, the Government of Libya will be of the people, by the people, and ostensibly for the people, provided that the presumed interests of the people happen to coincide with those of the New World Order.That is to say, there will be an elected government, the members of which will find it richly rewarding to conform to the wishes of the multinational corporations so anxious to reconstruct Libya after the recent unfortunate deconstruction by aerial bombardment.

Saddam hanged: Image source

The Libyans who make up the government will enjoy all the perquisites of office, including the after-office payoffs that make puppetry such an rewarding occupation for the likes of Blair/Brown/Cameron/Sarkozy/Obama. And should they ever think to betray their corporate masters, they have the horrible examples of Saddam, Manuel Noriega, and now Gadhafi to remind them of their own true interest.

They will be assimilated: Resistance is futile

Image source

In Libya, so many are saying, we are witnessing the recolonization of Africa.

NATO’s operation in Libya is a perfectly planned political spectacle which marks the beginning of the second colonization of Africa

so says Lode Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian Parliament.

But this is to misunderstand what is happening not only to Libya, not only to Africa, but to the entire World.

Colonization is about Lebensraum. It is the process of occupying land for the purpose of establishing populations derived from that of the occupying power. Colonization is about nationalism and the expansion of strong nations at the expense of the weak.

What is happening in Libya and throughout most of the World today has nothing to do with nationalism or the expansion of living space for the dominant nations of the World. What we are seeing is the exact opposite of nationalism. It is the assimilation of all nations into a single melting pot controlled by a corporate, mainly financial, elite in collaboration with the great Western foundations established by robber barons, past and present.

The objective is not to establish European, or American or Chinese colonies in Africa. The objective is to impose a global system of monopoly capitalist control.

There is nothing nationalistic or racist about this system. Anyone can join the racket. Europeans, Russians, Indians, Chinese, Africans, all are welcome to join the ruling elite, provided only that they have a billion or two behind them and they are prepared to sacrifice the interest of their own people without limit.

Locally, US/NATO installs a compliant native group in government. Members of the puppet regime, the African or central Asian equivalents of Blair/Brown/Cameron/Sarkozy/Obama enjoy both the perquisites of government and the bribes and after-office payoffs of the corporate interests that are to receive unfettered access to national resources and markets.

Gadhafi was, in contrast, an old-fashioned tyrant who believed in building up his country's infra-structure, educational system, and industry. He had the daft idea that Libya is somehow for the Libyans. Well bollocks to that racist poison: hence, We Came, We Saw, He Died.

But once assimilated into the globalist collective, Libyans will, apparently, be able to look forward to a brighter future under the leadership of the Al Qaeda terrorist commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj.

Or as Tony Cartalucci says in a post headed Libya: The Greatest Betrayal:

...let's not labor under any delusions. Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy are heads of state in name only. It is the depravity and megalomania amongst the banks, corporations, and the institutions they have contrived, that are responsible for the most egregious betrayal in Western history. For 10 years the West's leadership have stirred up hatred and fear amongst their populations to justify a lengthy and very costly global war that has sent US, British, Canadian, German, French, and many other troops, around the world, into dangerous adversity, and ultimately to their graves to fight "the forces of terror."

Now, almost as if savoring the irony, the New York Times, on behalf of the corporate-financier oligarchs that presume dominion over the Western world, fully admit that Al Qaeda terrorists, men who literally killed US troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan are now in Libya and are the benefactors of billions of dollars in Western aid, diplomatic recognition, training, weapons, the lending of intelligence assets, the full unwavering support of the West's "media," NATO-member air support, and even graced with Western special forces fighting side-by-side with them on the ground. This timely confession is also in response in part to revelations that the Libyan rebel commander now filling the streets of Tripoli with indescribable horror is a hardcore Al Qaeda leader, reported first in the Telegraph months ago, and again this week on RT and covered in depth by respected geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley...

Read more

On the Libya NATO is in the process of destroying, Aangirfan reports here.

On the chief of the plutocratic oligarchy that seeks power in Libya now, Aangirfan reports here.

Utoya, Norway - Breivik Atrocites: The police were running an exercise

Source: Aftonpost, August 26, 2011

Trente på Utøya-scenario 22. juli

 Norwegian to English translation

On July 22, only hours before Anders Behring Breivik began shooting children on Utøya, the police emergency squad concluded an exercise in which they enacted an almost identical scenario.

AVANDREAS GROUND FOSS

Four days in advance, and also the same Friday that the [Breivik] attacks were carried out, a trained police special unit carried out a terror attack exercise that corresponded almost exactly to the situation that hours later met the 22 police officers in the emergency squad on Utøya. 

Aftenposten has confirmed from key sources in the management of the Oslo police that the exercise was terminated at 1500 hours that same Friday. 

All officers from the emergency squad that participated in the government quarter of Oslo following the car bombing and later came ashore on Utøya and arrested Anders Behring Breivik had earlier that same day and in the previous days participated in training on a very similar scenario.

The training involved: a mobile terrorist attack in which one or more perpetrators only goal would be to shoot as many people as possible and then shoot the police when they arrive.

Massacre 
Police special unit trains continuously. But every quarter, they train to different types of scenarios. 
These are different scenarios police envisions might occur where the emergency squad must be inserted. There may be actions indoors, in cities or out in other environments. 

According to police, this is a scenario they train on several times a year and has trained for several years, especially after some events in other countries.

The similarity with what actually happened on Utøya, was mere coincidence, says a key police source, who declined to be quoted by name.

26 minutes
The car bombing in the government quarter of Oslo occurred only 26 minutes after the emergency exercise ended.

At 17.30 staff of the Oslo police were told a shooting at Utøya. 

The Emergency squad set out for the North Buskerud Police District, but at 18.02, six minutes before they arrived, they were advised to meet with local police at Storøya. 

Seven people from the emergency squad and three officers from Nordre Buskerud Police District climbed into a 4.9 meter long police dinghy, but the boat was so heavily loaded that it began taking on water. The police then transferred to a privately-owned boat and headed for Utøya.

See Also:

Norway's 9/11: The Horror Is In The Message Winter Patriot

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE NORWAY ATTACKS, AND 9 11 Aangirfan

Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites Peter Dale Scott

The violent videos of Breivik's 'mentor' Telegraph

CONFIRMED: Libya War is CIA Op 30 Years in the Making

An article by Tony Cartalucci, confirms the CIA/private think tank pedigree of the war on Libya.

In a separate piece, Tony Cartalucci exposes the current NATO operations inside Libya as a desperate psychological war with the corporate media explicitly deceiving the public with misleading headlines under which facts are buried by mountains of minutia, carefully worded propaganda, unverified innuendos, and outright lies.


Photo: Images and reports are beginning to trickle in as NATO-backed genocide unfolds throughout Tripoli's streets, indicating the destruction of infrastructure and the specific targeting of black Africans written off by the corporate media as "suspected mercenaries." Benghazi rebels have been long reported to harbor extremist ideologies and an intense ethnic & racial hatred.

And here's Webster Tarpley on the Al Qaeda pirates taking over of the Mediterranean (U-Tube Vid).

And Chris Floyd on Dead Sirte: Another Murderous Twist in NATO's Coil of Lies

NATO Unloads more ordnance on Libya than the Luftwaffe dumped on Britain during WW2

Nazi Luftwaffe over England
Image source

As of yesterday, NATO reports having conducted a total of 20,395 air sorties over Libya since March 31, including 7,681 strike sorties.

NATO does not report how much high explosive was delivered to Libyan targets, but we can make a rough estimate. A Canadian CF-18 can deliver between six and eight tons of armaments, depending on which particular version of the plane is deployed, whereas and American B-2 stealth bomber can deliver up to 60 tons in a single sortie. It would seem conservative, therefore, to assume an average bomb load of around ten tons per strike sortie (even allowing for a percentage of aborted missions), or a total of 77,000 tons.

That compares favorably with the 74,000 tons that the Nazis managed to drop over England during the Blitz of WW2, and amounts to more than ten kilograms of high explosive for every citizen of Libya.

NATO blast in Tripoli. Image source

There is a difference, though, between the Luftwaffe dropping bombs more or less haphazardly in the vicinity of London or some other very large target -- usually at night from above a blanket of cloud -- and NATO delivering laser guided smart bombs in Libya today. Smart bombs yield much more useful death and destruction per ton.

Nazi bombing of Britain during WW2 killed about 40,000 civilians. No reliable estimates of the death toll from NATO bombing in Libya are available: but is it likely to be less than 40,000?

Meantime:

The Tripolitanians aren't cheering that much;

the African Union won't recognize the rebel Transitional Council;

But unlike Libya all is peaceful in Morocco (Human Development Index rank 125 versus Libya, the highest in Africa, at 58)

And those ingrates in South Africa have started talking about NATO war crimes in Libya.

And NATO declares being in Gadaffi’s political camp a capital offence.

On a more cheeful note: NATO nations set to reap spoils of Libya war.

Tripoli Falls: Why No Celebration?

Where are the crowds throwing flowers? Image source

Gadhafi falls. Yet the news headlines are hardly triumphal. The reason, I suspect, is that few believe we have seen the end of NATO's war on Libya. Almost certainly, what we are seeing now is only the end of the beginning.

Their way smoothed by NATO bombing, the rebels, who may have been aided by any number of Iraq- or Afghanistan-war-hardened mercenaries funded by NATO, have been able to enter Tripoli and will most likely soon occupy the seats of government.

We saw something very much like this in Afghanistan when the US bombed a way open for the Northern Alliance to enter Kabul in the first months of the war. Yet that war is still ongoing ten years later.

Likewise in Iraq. The Iraq Army, softened up by heavy aerial bombardment, was unable to mount a significant defense of Baghdad. But the occupation of the capital was only the beginning of the war, which continues sporadically even now.

At latest report, Gadhafi sons "released" by rebels. Source

Gadhafi is said to have distributed millions of automatic weapons to the Libyan populace. The prospect of deadly violence for years to come seems high.

But this war may differ from the others in that NATO troops will play little if any role on the ground. Why? Because NATO now has an army of trained mercenaries at its disposal who, under the guise of Libyan rebels, can do any necessary ground fighting as effectively and more cheaply than American, Canadian or other NATO forces and without that unpleasantness with flag-draped coffins returning home to America, Britain, France, etc. on a regular basis.

There is already talk of the foreign oil companies returning to Libya. But a return to full production could take years if Libyan nationalists and Gadhafi loyalists engage in a guerrilla struggle to expel the colonists.

Offshore exploration, authorized by the "Rebel" government may now proceed, although the possibility that the loyalists are able to launch the odd Skud missile could be a deterrent. A Macondo-sized spill in the Med, would end any prospect of offshore drilling for years to come.

Meantime:

The Tripolitanians aren't cheering that much;

the African Union won't recognize the rebel Transitional Council;

But unlike Libya all is peaceful in Morocco (Human Development Index rank 125)

And those ingrates in South Africa have started talking about NATO war crimes in Libya.

The New American World Order: How It Works

To understand how the American empire works, one needs to know three things.

First, asVitali and colleagues at Einstein's alma mater -- the ETH in Zurich Switzerland -- demonstrate in a highly technical arxiv.org publication, a few dozen mostly financial corporations have direct or indirect control over a large proportion of the rest of the World's transnational corporations.

Second, as theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explains, the large multinational corporations based in the United States are dependent for their intellectual resources not on Americans or the American educational system, but on the H1B, the genius visa, that brings to America scientific and engineering talent from throughout the World.

Third, as John Stewart demonstrates, American democracy is a system under which the multinational corporations, through ownership of the media, ensure that the American people vote for one or other of the candidates acceptable to -- which is to say controllable by -- the managers of the great multinational corporations, i.e., the dynamic members of the plutocratic elite. (As the John Stewart clip indicates, Ron Paul is not an acceptable candidate for President because he is opposed to multiple, trillion dollar wars, which are an important source of income to a number of very large multinational corporations and the means by which those corporations gain unrestricted access to the World's resources and markets.)

From these premises, the basic characteristics of the American New World Order can be inferred:

Money rules: global governance means plutocracy.

National governments must serve global, not national, interests. For example, the failure of America's government-mandated and controlled education system to develop to the full the intellectual resources of the American population is not a concern, since American corporations can obtain intellectual resources more cheaply by pillaging the resources of other nations than by supporting a first-rate, tax-funded system of education in America.To the extent that America's educational system minimizes the resistance of the public to brainwashing by advertising and the media, it serves a positive New World Order function.

Redrawing the Middle East Map, as proposed by war strategist Ralph Peters
 in the US Armed Forces Journal: Image source.

Consistent with their role under the New World Order, national governments must seek to destroy the identity, culture, religion, and unique genetic inheritance of every nation, thereby facilitating the international free flow of people, capital and goods that is essential to profit maximization by transnational corporations. This is a policy of universal genocide, as the term genocide was defined by Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term.

National governments that seek to remain independent, whether to maximize the human potential and well-being of their own people, or to further the ambitions of their own ruling elite, are to be destroyed by US/NATO, the enforcement arm of the New World Order. After the crushing of Libya, the nation with the highest human development index in Africa, on the absurd pretext of protecting the people from their own government, will come the subordination of Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, or so it has been announced (see map). There will then remain to be dealt with, those most nationalistic of nations, Russia and China.

By then, the United States, itself, will present no impediment to the global rule of a deracinated international plutocracy. Having served its purpose as the engine for the destruction of the nations of the Earth, America will have fragmented into an assemblage of racial, religious and cultural entities at war with one another and incapable of a coherent democratic will able to assert a national interest.

Are the alternative media just nuts?

There are plenty of complacent self-congratulatory bloggers who will tell you that the mainstream media (MSM) are rubbish and that the only useful sources of information are the alternative media, a claim that is utterly absurd. The alternative media provide almost no news at all. They leech off the MSM, picking and choosing and putting their own spin on the selected data.

Almost no alternative media site offers original news reporting. Wikileaks, for example, provides not news, but carefully screened stolen documents, including some that may be doctored or entirely fraudulent.

True, some in the alt. media world occasionally make some actual news gathering effort. Matt Drudge made a lightening visit to Afghanistan in the opening days of the American assault on that country with laughably trivial results in reportable news. Webster Tarpley recently spent a couple of days reporting from Libya. But collectively, the alt. media news gathering effort is essentially nil.

The MSM provide more than just news, however. Opinion is cheaper than news and the MSM is full of it. Here the alt. media provide real competition, some of which may be enlightening. Yet much, probably most, comment in the alt. media is ill-informed, paranoid or outright insane -- proving that George H. W. Bush is a reptilian extra-terrestrial being one amusing example.

The questionable value of alt. media commentary is a common feature not only of the work of unknown bloggers, but of people who might be expected to make some sense. Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (CM), for example, whose blog caters to a bizarre collection of Communists, settler immigrants, Anglophobic racists, Muslim proselytizers and other oddities.

Among the oddities, was occasionally to be found the worthy Canspeccy attempting to engage with advocates of various bizarre ideas in the belief that it could be fruitful to attempt rational debate on the Internet. But I have now, it seems, been banned from commenting on craigmurray.org.uk, which is perhaps as well, since there are surely being better things to do with what remains of my one and only life.

However, inasmuch as I am inclined to devote time to scribbling on the Internet, craigmurray.org.uk offers a fascination source of nonsense for examination.

Here, for example, is Craig Murray writing today about the recent UK riots and, in general, on Britain's current social and economic difficulties.

... In both public and private organisations, the earnings differential between the highest and lowest paid should be limited by law to a factor of four, including the effect of all non-salary perks and benefits. ... Will Hutton has been promoting a factor of ten in the public sector – that is far too wide an equality gap.

My response to this, which failed to pass "moderation" was:

The first half dozen paragraphs of this post are excellent. Nicely written. Punchy. To the point.

But the rest is totally nuts.

"the earnings differential between the highest and lowest paid should be limited by law to a factor of four ..."

LOL

Exit the financial services industry, which accounts for 9.4% of Britain's GDP, produces a 25 billion pound annual trade surplus and pays a quarter of all corporate taxes.

For that matter, exit pretty well all relatively senior business people, professionals and civil servants, including ambassadors, for better paid opportunities abroad. Or will the Murrayite Socialist Republic have a wall around it like East Germany?

There are quite sensible and simple solutions to poverty and ignorance, but recreating a Soviet-style system in Britain is not one of them.

It is the widespread acceptance of the idea that all problems must be solved by a further expansion of a monstrous bureaucracy (which already consumes more than half the wealth of the country) that is destroying Britain.

But I suppose one last push by the Commies for total control of everything might be useful inasmuch as it will hasten the day of the counter-revolution.

To quote further, Murray wrote:

... [the] wish to promote worker partnership and cooperatives needs to be given concrete form by legislation forcing all companies to give truly significant – I am thinking around forty per cent – shareholdings to employees.

Oh, dear! exit all footloose corporations from the UK.

Then comes:

[If one] really wants to roll back the excesses of the last thirty years, then natural monopolies like the utilities companies and the railways need to be returned fully to public ownership. PFI should be discontinued and all PFI assets nationalised without compensation.

Oh dear! again. Murray, I suppose, is too young to remember what a crap state Britain's major industries were in the last time they were nationalized. I actually worked for one of them, The Central Electricity Generating Board, at their Research Centre on the Campus of the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Capenhurst in Chester -- next to the uranium enrichment plant.

In some ways, it was a great place to work. My colleagues were smart people. During the year that I spent there, I shared an office with a physicist and a chemist from whom I learned more useful science than during the three previous years I'd wasted in university obtaining a PhD.

The pay was good. Whether it exceeded four times the then average wage I am not sure, but my starting salary, at the age of 23, was twice that of a university assistant lecturer. And the conditions of work were excellent. When I traveled on business, a secretary obtained first-class rail tickets for me and arranged a taxi to take me to the station.

The thing was, though, that the entire project was absurd. Our objective? To find ways to increase the national demand for electricity.

LOL.

But CM's economic vision extends even more widely.

There is of course much else, of which limiting banking transactions to the actual funding of purchase of property, goods and services, rather than gambling on future values of those things, is perhaps the most important.

Well, I suppose that's OK since the banking sector will pretty well have abandoned Britain due to the cap on incomes, so no new ex-migration of capital, technology or talent can be expected to come from this. And I suppose the Government could restore the Post Office's role as a savings bank. Probably a post office manager can still be had for less than four times the average wage.

But why not simply impose sensible controls on private credit creation and then allow the market to work within that framework? The banking industry worked well under post 1929-crash regulations until those regulations were idiotically or criminally repealed. The obvious thing is to restore those regulations. But to rely on a market mechanism operating within a sensible framework of laws, when you can impose government micro-management on every aspect of business activity is, I suppose, anathema to an advocate of Soviet-style Utopia.

Under CM's "radical reforms" the average wage will, incidentally, be much lower than now, not only because half of Britain's companies will have packed up and gone offshore driving the country into the deepest of economic depressions, but simply because by eliminating salaries more than four times the present average, the average will be greatly reduced.

Hammarskjöld's plane shot down: Utoya push back?

Wreckage of Hammarskjöld's plane, Northern Rhodesia, 1961.

Evidence reported yesterday suggests that the plane that crashed in Northern Rhodesia killing UN Chief, Dag Hammarskjöld, on September 17, 1961 may have been shot down by one of the colonial powers.

According to telegrams seen by the Guardian that were dispatched in the days immediately prior to Hammarskjöld's death reveal:

US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash on pilot error.

Does the timing of this report indicate a coordinated Scandinavian push back in response to the Breivic attrocities in Norway?

Meantime, Sweden has made an offer of military assistance in the war on Libya that NATO has found it possible to refuse.

As a neutral country, Sweden has had a longstanding interest in seeing the UN work as an honest mediator of international disputes. Sweden's failure to offer anything of use in NATO's perverse interpretation of UN Resolution 1973, is not, therefore, altogether surprising.

As the toll of Libyan civilians killed by NATO bombing mounts in a fraudulently justified war for control of Libyan resources, this might be a good time for Canada to consider adopting a position of political neutrality. Not that one can expect such originality of thought either from the Tories or the pathetic pro-war NDP opposition.

Moreover, Canadian neutrality would be costly, since as a neutral, we could not expect automatic access to NATO military technology, e.g., dud British subs, or overpriced US-built F-35's.

But perhaps we could enter into some shared-cost programs with Sweden. They have a very quiet sub with an air-independent propulsion (AIP) system based on the Stirling engine, and a punchy littler fighter too.

Hackgate Udated August18, 2011

News of the World Hollywood reporter is arrested Guardian
James Murdoch admits News Corp. paid off convicted criminal The Raw Story
MP calls for review of 24-year-old murder case BBC
Concern in Jewish World Over Murdoch Fallout Arutz Sheva
Murdoch reporter's letter blows whistle on News International phone cover-up Daily Mail
Tom Watson, MP on latest revelations CNN Vid.
Murdoch Lawyer: James Murdoch's "very misleading" evidence to MPs Presse Gazette
James Murdoch CM&S testimony ‘contradicted by emails sent to committee’ John Ward
News of the World reporter's implicates Murdochs in hacking cover-up Guardian
And much more here Murdoch Empire and Its Nest of Vipers

UK Riots: Updated August 18, 2011

It's a yob: Brian Gable, Globe and Mail

Not the last time London will burn New Internationalist Blog
London riots: Social meltdown Fulham interview U-Tube Vid
Riot-hit London boroughs among worst unemployment blackspots Guardian
How the Government handled the 1911 Llanelli riots Wales on Line
Libs plan to shame rioter, make them clean up their own mess Mirror
The long history of London's riotous mob Vancouver Sun
London police read encrypted Blackberry messages of arrested rioters Guardian
Mom distraught after turning in daughter over U.K. riots TO Star
The Real Source of the British Riots U-Tube Vid.
Police water cannon and plastic bullets? The failure of the welfare state Peter Hitchens
"Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally."
Cameron: 'national service' for 16-year-olds and human rights law reform Daily Mail
After the inferno Economist
...the backlash could extend beyond crime to include welfare and other social issues. "The left is imploring the public to consider the underlying causes of the riots. They should be careful what they wish for. Voters might conclude that the deep-seated causes are not poverty, discrimination and austerity—the riots took place in a country whose government currently spends half of its national income—but welfare dependency, broken homes and moral nihilism. ..."
Cameron: Riot-hit UK must reverse `moral collapse' AP
UK gangs thrive in August riots AP
Hackney Woman Says NO to London Rioters U-Tube Vid
London Riots and the Big Picture Gilad Atzmon
Riots and corruption: The fish rots from the head down Washington's Blog
Tottenham is a government-created welfare ghetto Freedom Radio

Chuckie and Cam visit riot-hit Tottenham. Image Source

David Starkey On Newsnight (Whites Have Become Blacks) Newsnight
Historian attacked for noting that that many urban white youths have adopted black ganster culture
Trying to be honest in a rigid culture of unjustified certainty John Ward
The Run-up for the Riots in London Occidental Observer
Bill Bratton Accepts Job to Help Britain Control Gang Violence NBC
Britain, having deliberately recreated America's racially divided society, imports an American to manage the resulting conflict.

Great Britain Great No Longer

Image Source

The American historian, Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) explained how England emerged as the World's greatest empire (1588 - 19??) by virtue of a geographical advantage: the security provided by the narrow waters of the English Channel, an advantage that ended with the creation of new weapons based on air power in the period after 1935. ...

Having security from the Continental powers gave Britain freedom of action. It could chose whether or not to intervene in Continental disputes and, if it did intervene, it could limit its commitment. If such a limited commitment were exhausted it could choose to break off or increase the commitment. Moreover, by supporting the second strongest Continental power against the strongest power, it could frustrate the ambition of the strongest power at rather small cost. By such balance-of-power tactics, Britain played a decisive role on the Continent, while retaining a surplus of resources for imperial ventures.

The Continental powers rarely had such freedom of action:

When the security of a continental Power was threatened by a neighbor, it had no freedom of action, but had to defend itself with all its resources. Clearly, it would be impossible for France to say to itself, "We shall oppose German hegemony on the Continent only to the extent of 50,000 men or of $10 million." Yet as late as 1939, Chamberlain informed France that England's commitment on the Continent for this purpose would be no more than two divisions.

Britain's position on the Atlantic, combined with her naval control of the sea, gave her a great advantage when the new lands to the west of that ocean became one of the chief sources of commercial and naval wealth in the period after 1588. ...

At the same time, Britain's insular position deprived her monarchy of any need for a large professional, mercenary army such as the kings on the Continent used as the chief bulwark of royal absolutism. As a result, the kings of England were unable to prevent the landed gentry from taking control of the government in the period 1642-1690.

The triumph of the landed oligarchy over the monarchy created a social tradition quite distinct from that on the Continent. As a result:

England did not obtain a bureaucracy such as appeared on the Continent. This lack of a separate bureaucracy loyal to the monarch can be seen in the weakness of the professional army ... and also in the lack of a bureaucratic judicial system. In England, the gentry and the younger sons of the landed oligarchy studied law in the Inns of Court and obtained a feeling for tradition and the sanctity of due process of law while still remaining a part of the landed class. In fact this class became the landed class in England just because they obtained control of the bar and the bench and were, thus, in a position to judge all disputes about real property in their own favor. Control of the courts and of the Parliament made it possible for this ruling group in England to override the rights of the peasants in land, to eject them from the land, to enclose the open fields of the medieval system, to deprive the cultivators of their manorial rights and thus to reduce them to the condition of landless rural laborers or of tenants. This advance of the enclosure movement in England made possible the Agricultural Revolution, greatly depopulated the rural areas of England (as described in The Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith), and provided a surplus population for the cities, the mercantile and naval marine, and for overseas colonization.

Naturally, during the heyday of Empire, no one in England had any idea that their imperial supremacy was the result of mere chance. Indeed, Britain's extraordinary intellectual and artistic efflorescence during the age of empire pointed entirely the other way. Shakespeare was the poet for all ages. Newton invented modern science. Adam Smith and David Ricardo invented economics. Locke, Berkeley and Hume established the only useful school of philosophy the World has ever known. Britain did not produce the greatest musical composer, but the greatest musical composer, Georg Friedrich Haendel, became a naturalized British citizen.

Thus, when Darwin convinced the world that competitive success was the ultimate measure of all things, how could it be doubted that Britain's extraordinary success was due to the genius of the British nation?

Unfortunately, this delusion drove the British to assume that their post WW2 difficulties would be solved by the more liberal application of British genius. Thus, for example, as Terence Keeley wrote (2)

There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too much science...

Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects--to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976.

Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country.

And science was not the only field in which massive innovation was attempted. During the twentieth century Labour governments pursued a programme of democratic socialism that involved massive nationalization of industry: coal, steel, electricity, railways, gas, airlines, and much else, including partial nationalization of banks by the last Labour Government. The net result, inevitably, was massive overmanning, managerial incompetence and corruption throughout a large part of British industry.

Thus, as any sane person can see, application of British genius to social engineering has done more harm than good. But now Britain is almost entirely in the hands of statist innovators. The idea that Britain's past wealth and intellectual achievements were dependent on the exceptional individual freedom of the British people is rarely considered and never advocated by politicians whatever their political stripe. Thus virtually all wealth accumulates in the hands of either a massively bureaucratic government that now spends more than 50% of the nation's income, or the increasingly foreign business and financial elite that buys protection for its interests by funding elections and paying off politicians as they retire.

In the social, as in the economic sphere, freedom is continually diminished. Political correctness is rigidly enforced not only by government agencies, but increasingly, by individuals brainwashed by the state through the subjection of every citizen to between ten and twenty years of propaganda delivered in the guise of education.

But undoubtedly the most astounding consequence of Britain's psychotic response to the reality of her declining position in the world, is that it aims at the physical and cultural destruction of the British people as a genetic and cultural entity. Government sponsored hate speech is directed at anyone speaking for the preservation of the British race, the existence of which is blandly denied. We are all one happy, identical human race, so the elite inform working class Brits marginalized economically by an influx people from all over the World (3). Yet delusional as they are, the elite, while denying the existence of the British race, champion diversity, never explaining how creating a racially and culturally diverse community can result in anything but either a multicultural disaster or through the process of homogenization, the destruction of diversity.

And, if the images of the English riots provided by the media are at all representative, the process of national auto-genocide in Britain is now far advanced. The English, it would appear, are a minority in all of those urban centers subject to the recent breakdown in social order and decency.

Not only is Great Britain no longer great, it is, except in name, increasingly not even British.

Neither is it democratic, since most of the population are opposed to mass immigration, nor is it civilized. As recent Polish immigrant, Monika Konczyk, told reporters after she had been forced to leap from a second floor apartment set on fire by London rioters:

I came to England because I thought it was a great country full of kind and gentle people. I thought London was a civilised society full of gentlemen and ladies. But it is not like that. England has become a sick society.

I found myself jumping for my life after being attacked by thugs and thieves. They set fire to my building without any thought for anyone's safety.

They were happy for me to die. They were like animals, greedy selfish animals who thought only of themselves.

(1) Carroll Quigley, 1966. Tragedy and Hope.
(2) Terence Kealey, October 13, 1996. Wasting Billions, the Scientific Way (The Sunday Times).
(3) Such reference to the negative impact of immigration on the local population is dismissed by the brainwashed and the propagandists as "racism," whereas it is merely an expression of the impact of immigration on the interests of the indigenous people of Britain. It in no way implies criticism of immigrants, no doubt fine people in most cases, who are doing what each of God's creatures must do, serving their own interest, as best they can. Provided they do so in accordance with law, they should not be condemned for being immigrants. Illegal immigrants, however, who are numerous in Britain, are another matter.

UK Riots Update August 13, 2011

Tariq Jahan holds a picture of his son,
Haroon, murdered during Birmingham riots 

Mark Duggan's Ganster Relations The Sun
Britain’s Riots: Thuggery, Looting, Lawlessness… By the Ruling Class Global Research
England is sick, says woman who jumped from blazing building Telegraph
Legacy of a society that believes in nothing A.N. Wilson
Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain Peter Oborne
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.
Who is to blame? John Ward
POLITICANS MUST TAKE THE BLAME FOR RIOTS, SAYS MP David Davies
Three Pakistani youths murdered by hit and run driver in Birmingham Times of India
Islamists call for further violence as cover for terrorist outrage Montreal Gazette
Race forms backdrop to riots Guardian
Social media not quite  the tool of democratic change some claimed CBC
Primary school assistant pleads guilty to looting Guardian
Disbelief as looting and violence spread to Gloucester Guardian
Ghanaians arrested, 3 charged Ghana Web

NATO Mission Failure in Libya

By Thierry Meyssan
From Voltair.net

The following is a rough translation of the French language article by Thierry Meyssan, that appears on Voltairenet.org.

Meyssan explains the failure of NATO's strategy to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. He argues that if the mission is continued, NATO's strategy will continue to be ineffectual and that, if Gaddafi is killed, the war will likely spread, not only across North Africa, but also into Southern Europe.

Despite the bleak picture, the project will not be abandoned. In Iraq we saw a "cakewalk" turn into a long drawn out and bloody war, which has yet to give way to peace. In Libya, NATO will not be deterred by the spilling of blood. NATO is the most powerfully armed military camp the world has ever seen. Unless NATO itself collapses due to circumstances unforeseen, it will continue blundering from one war crime to the next, bombing and killing until Libya submits or there are no more Libyans left to offer submission.

After 150 days of bombing, NATO has razed many facilities in Libya, but has achieved no significant military result. This was due to the lack of strategic planning. NATO applied in Libya methods designed for other environments, but which proved useless in this particular case. The greatest military alliance in history, formed to confront the USSR, dreamed of becoming the world's policeman, but the transformation has failed.

NATO intervened in Libya with a UN mandate to protect civilians, but it sought an objective beyond the UN mandate, which was to change the political regime of the country.

After almost 150 days of war, NATO has failed to undermine Libya's institutions. Given the disparity of forces, we must admit the military failure and question the strategy.

The Alliance started from a faulty analysis that the eastern and southern tribes hostile to Muammar Gaddafi would easily take Tripoli with the aid of air support. Instead, however, the tribes viewed the bombing as a foreign aggression and rallied to the "Brother Leader" to repel the invasion of crusaders.

As a result, the Alliance could count on only two ground components: the 3000 trained soldiers that General Younes Abdel Fatah had brought with him when he defected from Gaddafi, and the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fighters from the Arab networks of Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, known as the "Al Qaeda nebula."

After the killing, in a particularly atrocious way, of General Younes by jihadists of Al Qaeda, rebel forces have collapsed: Younes' soldiers rallyied to Colonel Gaddafi to fight Al Qaeda and avenge their leader. Operational command of rebel forces has devolved to Haftar Khalifa, i.e., the special forces of the CIA, which does not hesitate to recruit anyone to fight for the rebel cause, including child soldiers.

This improvised army, announces every other day a victory, but in fact suffers only defeats. Each battle scenario is the same: NATO bombs the population, forcing them to flee their homes. The locality is immediately besieged by rebel forces who announce that they have gained ground. Only then does the battle begin with the Libyan army moving into the city and massacring the rebels. Then the population moves back into the partially destroyed town.

The Atlantic Alliance could interpret U.N. Resolution 1973 broadly and consider that although the text explicitly prohibit the deployment of foreign troops on the ground, such a deployment is legitimate if it is intended to "protect civilians".

NATO would then face a population armed to the teeth and ready to do battle. The Libyan leader Gaddafi has indeed delivered a Kalashnikov and ammunition to every adult male. While the Libyan population lacks organization compared with that of NATO, it has a clear numerical superiority, and is prepared to accept heavy losses, whereas NATO troops are unwilling to die for Tripoli.

At the outset, strategists in Washington felt that this asymmetry was of no important because NATO has complete control of the air.

This doctrine, unchallenged in the United States, has been openly challenged by European members of NATO. Belief in the superiority of air power arose with General Giulio Douhet based on the outcome of the Italo-Ottoman War, that is to say the Libyan war of 1911. At the time, the Italians bombed Tripoli, the first aerial bombardment in history. Frightened by this new weapon, the Ottoman Empire ceded without a fight. Italian troops took possession of Tripoli without firing a shot, which convinced Douhet that it was possible to win a war solely with air power. This analysis is incorrect because it confuses the reaction to aerial bombardment of Libya's Ottoman rulers with the reaction of Libyans. The Libyan response to Italian aggression occurred later with the Libyan uprising.

Exactly a century later, the same conceptual error about the significance of air power has been repeated. To control the country, NATO would have to in send ground troops and, like the Italians in the years 1912-14, kill more than half of the population of Tripoli, which is not exactly the purpose of Resolution 1973.

To date, the Atlantic Alliance has designed its bombing campaign according to the doctrine of Douhet and improvements that have been made since, including the theory of the five circles of John A. Warden III, who gained experienced in Iraq. The idea is that the targets should not be chosen to destroy the enemy armed forces, but to paralyze the command centers, including cutting the means of transmission and circulation.

NATO has discovered that Libya is ruled by people's congresses and Muammar Gaddafi has reduced most of the administration functions to their simplest expression. There are no major departments sovereign, just small offices. The ministers are not leading figures, but team leaders who surround themselves with skilled professionals. The power is diluted and elusive. What was a headache for businessmen who came to Libya -- finding the right people -- has become a puzzle to NATO strategists -- who should they target? Five months of bombing have failed to find the answer.

The Atlantic Alliance is fixated on Muammar Gaddafi. Is he not the Father of the Nation? Would not eliminating him, destroy the principle of authority in Libyan society, resulting in instant Iraqisation, which would plunge the country into chaos? But, unlike Iraq after the removal of Saddam, tribal structure and the horizontal structures of power would remain. Even when torn by internal conflicts, the Libyan people remain an organic entity defiant of the foreign invasion. Not only would no military problem be solved by the removal of Gaddafi, but the theater of war would be cease to be delimited: the war would inevitably spill across North Africa and into southern Europe. Killing Gaddafi could be NATO's worst mistake.

In the absence of an effective strategy, the Alliance has fallen back on the old habits of the American military culture, those of the Korean War and Vietnam: making life impossible for the population so as to dissociate it from the leadership. Since the beginning of Ramadan, NATO has strengthened the naval blockade to cut off the supply of gasoline and food, it has bombed power plants, water supply systems, agricultural cooperatives, small fishing ports and public meeting halls.

In short, the Alliance has done exactly the opposite of what it was mandated to do by the Security Council and the various parliaments of the Member States: instead of protecting the civilian population against a tyrant, NATO terrorizes civilians to compel them to rebel against The leader they support.

This strategy is expected to last until the end of Ramadan, by which time there will remain only three weeks for the Alliance to achieve significant victory before the bell rings on September 19, and the United Nations General Assembly meets. It could seek clarification on the current operation, note the failure of the Security Council to restore peace, and enforce its own recommendations.

For the resumption of fighting on the ground in early September, NATO has supplied weapon to the rebels in Misrata and will clear the road for the advance on Zlitan. France has refused to supply additional weapons to the rebels, but Qatar has supplied a plane to deliver weapons, despite the UN embargo. On the night of August 8 to 9, the Alliance cleared Majer Hill that could serve as an outpost in the defense of Zlitan. It also bombed farms and tents that housed twenty displaced families, killing 85 people including 33 children.