NATO operation in Libya is “piracy on an international scale”
NATO is not interested in a ceasefire in Libya as it craves regime change in the country, believes International Action Center activist Sara Flounders.
”What NATO wants is regime change. They want absolute and total control of the largest oil resources in Africa,” she said. “They want ownership of the billions of dollars, more than $70 billion that Libya holds just in immediate assets from those past oil and gas sales. They want control of the whole infrastructure. None of this is about the humanitarian defense of the people of Libya, or of any group in Libya.” ”It really is piracy on an international scale,” Flounders added. As for Syria, according to Sara Flounders, the US is already actively engaged with the country’s internal situation. ”It is important to recognize that the US is already taking action in Syria, that there is real destabilization going on, that for years there have been sanctions on Syria, that Syria is occupied in Golan by Israel, all with US funding,” she said. “There has been for a very long time US intervention, US sanctions, US destabilization.” ”Syria, like every country, has internal problems that must be dealt with,” Flounders continued. “The country must, absolutely, take time as they themselves acknowledge, but that must be without foreign imperialist intervention, and that is what is going on now.”
According to Michel Chossudovsky from the Canadian-based Center for Research on Globalization, there are several signs that we might soon see American boots touch Libyan soil. ”At this stage NATO, in consultation with the Pentagon, is preparing a new phase of this war, in other words, the process of military escalation, which could eventually lead to the landing of US – NATO military commandoes on Libyan soil,” he said. “In other words, they are in the process of changing the terms of reference of the so-called no-fly zone to supporting a ground war.” “Now they have shifted the emphasis from aerial bombardment to helicopter operations as well as low-flight operations over Libya, which would of course be supportive of boots on the ground,” Chossudovsky added. “So, this is a very disturbing development and it certainly indicates an escalation in military activities.”
As for the recent UN report which states that both sides of the Libyan conflict have committed war crimes, Oxford University professor, Mark Almond, said that the rebels’ treatment of prisoners poses many uneasy questions. ”We know the rebels claimed to have captured 800 African mercenaries, they said, in March and April. Now apparently, they tell the UN they only have 16 prisoners. What has happened to another 784?” he said. “This is rather alarming, I think, for the NATO governments because they have a moral and perhaps even legal responsibility for the way the rebels treat prisoners.”
