Novo Lectio on the Real Reasons behind the Overthrow of Gaddafi

This is a very informative video I found on YouTube laying bare what was really behind the revolution in Libya against Colonel Gaddafi. And as we’ve seen with the Iraq invasion, this had absolutely nothing to do with liberating the country’s people from an evil tyrant. The real causes were Islamic politics in the Arab world on the one hand, and the desire of the French under Sarkozy to get their hands on Libyan oil. The video states that the uprising against Gaddafi was part of the Arab Spring series of revolutions and protests throughout the Arab world such as that against the military dictatorship in Egypt. These were hailed by the west as protests against tyranny. The rebellion against Gaddafi, however, was by moderate Islamic organisations and groups similar to the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood. They were backed by Qatar as a way of increasing its power in the region and counterbalancing the extreme Islamists like ISIS backed by Saudi Arabia.

The presenter states that Gaddafi was a dictator, but under his rule the country kept control of its own oil and its people enjoyed a reasonable standard of living. The rebellion broke out in the east of the country, along the traditional fault lines between Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and a third region. Gaddafi’s forces were able to crush it in the most of the country, and were about to move on its centre when the Muslim rebels appealed to Sarko and the West for help. According to emails received by Hillary Clinton’s office, the rebels offered the French 35 per cent of the country’s oil if it would help to overthrow this Mad Dog of the Middle East. So Sarko and Blair sent in the planes to bomb the country, and Gaddafi was overthrown. He was kneecapped and sodomised with a stick before being shot.

Another reason Sarko wanted him gone was because Gaddafi was planning on ditching the North African Franc in favour of an African currency. If that had gone ahead, it would have meant France losing economic domination of the region.

The result of the revolution has been to split Libya in two, with one half backed by France, Syria and Russia and another backed by the West and the EU. Supplies of oil from Libya have collapsed.

In other words, it’s another revolution that was all about western imperialism and Islamic geopolitics than promoting liberty or democracy.

The presenter sounds Arab and the accompanying text contains the sources for the video, so it seems solidly based in fact, narrated by a person indigenous to the region.

Telesur English: Venezuela Drops Petrodollars, Threatens US Global Power

Venezuela this week officially stopped using the petrodollar. In this short clip from Telesur English’s Breaking the Chains, they explain why this is important, and may result in very aggressive action by the US to force the Venezuelans to return to using it. Forcing the other countries in the world to pay for their oil in dollars allows the US to export its currency around the world. This allows it to refinance its debt, and import other countries goods at very low prices. If the other countries stop using the petrodollar, it becomes a severe blow to US global domination. The report states that America has been accused of using extreme measures, from assassination to war, to force the world’s nations to use their national currency as the international medium for purchasing oil.

Looking through some of the other videos on YouTube on this subject, it seems that Venezuela isn’t alone. Other countries also would like to jettison the petrodollar. These include the BRICS nations and Iran. I got the impression from reading Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, on George Dubya and the Iraq invasion, that this was partly caused by Saddam Hussein threatening to jettison the petrodollar. American couldn’t possibly allow that. If it did, and other nations followed suit, then America’s economic domination of the world would be smashed, and the recession the country’s experiencing would become much, much worse.

I therefore seems to me that the threats Trump made against Iran and Venezuela have nothing to do with the nature of those countries’ regimes. America has propped up numberless Fascist dictators and mass-murderers around the world with no qualms whatsoever, so long as they support America and America’s corporate interests. What frightens America is when other countries don’t accede to its corporate demands. And then it does invade – look at the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz’s government in Guatemala. This was overthrown in the 1950s because Arbenz, a democratic Socialist who wanted to help the peons working the banana plantations, nationalized them. Many of them were owned by the US United Fruit Company, and so the US invaded, and then justified it through propaganda which claimed, quite falsely, that Arbenz was a Communist. And this is only one example of many, many others. If you want a complete list, read one of William Blum’s pieces on the subject.

Trump would just love to start a war with Iran, to continue the Neocons agenda of destroying and destabilizing the other Middle Eastern states for the benefit of the Israelis and Saudis, and he’s terrified of a socialist Venezuela, or at least one that has no fear about standing up to America.

If he does decide on military action, you can expect the usual pernicious twaddle about liberating their countries from oppressive governments. They will be flat out lies. America wants to invade these nations for the same reason it invaded Iraq – to seize their oil, and whatever state and other industries American big business wants.

Vox Political: Grayson Perry Sculpts Bell-End to Represent Bankers

Mike also put up another hilarious article on Thursday about a piece of work Grayson Perry produced to represented the financial sector. Perry’s a Turner-prize winning artist, specialising in pottery and ceramics. He found the world of banking and finance to be increasing male the further one went up the hierarchy. To symbolise this, he sculpted a giant phallus, embossed with pound coins, and the heads of bankers, including George Osborne.

See the article at:http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/19/artist-embosses-sculpture-about-bankers-with-george-osbornes-face-heres-what-it-looks-like/ Warning for those easily shocked: it’s got a picture of the pottery penis in question.

Perry states that it’s not his most subtle work. Possibly not, but it is accurate. There have been a number of scandals about the lack of women in the upper levels of the financial sector, and it is a very, very masculine environment. One report about the imbalance said that not only were there very sexist attitudes towards women – they were divided up into ‘babes’, ‘mums’ and ‘dragons’ – but that the bankers themselves had a very cynical and exploitative attitude to their clients. Indeed, they often boasted about how they had shafted them. This is the world of the Wolf of Wall Street and Gordon Gecko.

And quite often members of the financial sector do describe themselves in phallic terms. One financial whizzkid, whose book was reviewed back in the 1990s by Private Eye, even described himself as ‘a big swinging dick on the stockmarket floor’.

You can also find support for Perry’s ceramic penis from the sociobiological interpretation of mythology. One academic used sociobiology, or as it is now, evolutionary psychology, to explain the phallic shape of ancient Greek herms, or boundary markers. He noticed that troops of baboons similar post guards with erect willies as sentries when out foraging, and males also engage in ‘penis fencing’. He therefore concluded that the shape of the herms was a similar primate display of masculine guardianship over place. You could therefore argue that Perry’s pottery penis is thus an apt sociobiological comment on the extremely culturally phallocentric culture of the financial sector.

Or am I reading too much into this?

As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’