Gadaffi a vital ally in war on terror, documents reveal

There's a bit of a stink rising in Great Britain about how tight the Gadaffi regime was with various Western intelligence services.

Specifically, Gadaffi had a very cosy relationship with Britain's MI6, cosy to the point that Gadaffi's torturer-in-chief Mousa Kousa and various senior Brit anti-terror types were on a first name basis.

So cosy that they collaborated on the illegal rendition of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

So cosy that they worked together to set up a phoney radical mosque.

So cosy that if Gadaffi was ever to face charges of crimes against humanity, the entire upper echelon of the British security services would have to be sitting in the prisoners box at the Hague right there alongside him.

Which would explain the untoward haste with which Gadaffi was dispatched to his reward.

US loses key Africa ally and it's Gadaffi's fault

Up until today the land-locked African country of Mali was a key US ally in everything from the war on Libya, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the war on Chinese influence in Africa.

All gone in the blink of an eye.

No wonder the White House is leading the chorus of "international" condemnation of the coup that has Mali President Toure running for his life. "International" in this case means the usual basketful of US vassal states in Africa and beyond.

It's interesting to see how Western media are spinning this story. Up until today Mali has been consistently portrayed as a model African democracy. Sure, it's one of the poorest countries in the world, but their President is democratically elected, and they play along with all the standard US initiatives like the war on Gadaffi and the war on drugs, so obviously they are good guys.

The democratically elected President was ousted by "renegade soldiers" according to CNN and Reuters. Fox had them as "drunken soldiers". Hey, I guess that would explain why you'd want to overthrow a "democratic" US-friendly government in one of the world's poorest countries...

So how was this Gadaffi's fault?

Mali has for many years had issues with its Taureg minority. The Taureg are a nomadic tribe that wander in and out of the various countries around the Sahara. They suffered the usual litany of abuse that nomadic people everywhere in the world suffer, but they found a friend in the eccentric Gadaffi.

Gadaffi not only allowed the Libyan-based Taureg the same rights as all Libyans, but he welcomed Taureg from neighboring countries into his military. When Gadaffi was deposed by last year's nine month NATO campaign, tens of thousands of them headed home, looting military stockpiles along the way.

When they got back to Mali they joined up with their fellow tribesmen who have been staging a long-term struggle for independence from the most stable democracy in Africa.

With their ill-gotten booty from the looted Libyan military stockpiles they've been easily kicking the shit out of the regular (US sponsored) Malian army. And it's that army that today pushed our ally President Toure out of the Presidential Palace.

Another one bites the dust.

Libyan militias rampage across North Africa

You remember our guys, the NATO rebels in Libya.

School-teachers and clerks and truck-drivers, consumed with a sudden lust for freedom and democracy. With nothing but their will to win and daily NATO bombing runs they managed in a mere eight months to overthrow the tyrant Gadaffi.

With that victory in hand, the smug NATO overlords patted themselves on the back, declared mission accomplished, and went home. Presumably the Libyan school-teachers were to go back to their classrooms, the clerks to their clerking, and the truck-drivers to their Volvos and Hinos.

Alas, the freedom-fighters have had a taste of power and they like it! Who the hell wants to sit in the cab of a Hino diesel twelve hours a day when they can loot and pillage instead? And what fun is a classroom compared to the thrill of roaming from town to town executing Gadaffi loyalists?

Five months after their successful rebellion our rebels continue to keep Libya in a state of anarchy. Up to three hundred disparate militias control the entire country, none of them reponsible to any central authority. The lame-duck NTC sits powerlessly in Benghazi, or more often in London, and waits for the benevolent NATO powers to unfreeze more Libyan assets.

What they'll do then nobody knows, but at least they'll have the assets.

In the meantime, our rebels are busy exporting freedom and democracy to neighboring lands across North Africa. Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan are all benefitting from the efforts of our rebels-gone-wild.

In Mali the rebels have taken control of at least seven cities in the north of the country. That is seven more than they ever took in Libya without NATO assistance. Clearly the former school-teachers and clerks have had quite the impressive learning curve.

Their successful drive into Mali has created over 60,000 refugees thus far and threatens the viability of the country's government.

Where will our rebels stop? Who knows? We organized them and armed them, but we're not responsible for them anymore.

Sean Penn appears on TV to hail Libyan revolution while Gadaffi loyalists retake Bani Walid

You have to admit that was an ironic coincidence of timing.

There's Sean Penn opining on the deeper significance of the Libyan revolution on Piers Morgan's CNN show and even as his lips are moving a number of news sites are claiming the town of Bani Walid has fallen to Gadaffi loyalists.

Four months after the victory.

I was a little disappointed in Sean's take on Libya. He seems to think it was an exceptionally positive use of America's bully stick. If there was some evidence that the people of Libya are now better off, I might be inclined to let that go unchallenged. But, are they better off?

But I like Sean Penn, so I'm inclined to make allowances for his ignorance of events in Libya. Of course, he is a well-connected dude and maybe he knows stuff that I'm not privy to. So we'll have to wait and see, but everything I've heard and read says the people of Libya spent the last year getting a royal screw-over.

They will emerge from this with a greatly reduced standard of living. They will be in debt to America, other NATO countries, and the World Bank/IMF diad of doom in perpetuity. They will be paying for the new jets and weapon systems that their NATO pals will push on them. Western construction conglomerates will feast on the rebuilding contracts to rebuild what the Western military complex just smashed up.

But they will be "free".

So I think Sean's got that one wrong, but we'll see. The other day I said he had Haiti wrong too.

I still believe he does, but at the same time I have to salute his resolve to make a difference. He's investing a lot of himself in his Haiti mission. That takes a lot more than sitting in my comfy chair carping about it.

At the same time, while his projects are a short term relief to some people who really need it, what are they in the long term? Penn spoke a bit about a manufacturing industry that could be operated out of Haiti with a smaller carbon footprint than running it in China. Why? Because it's only and hour and a half from the US. That says something about his vision for Haiti's future.

Haiti: the low-wage assembly site of choice. We will undercut child labor rates in China and Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Similarly, viable housing solutions can't happen in Haiti until the ruling elite agree to land redistribution. By propping up the status quo you help the ruling elite avoid that necessary step for Haiti's future.

Without that fundamental step, everything else is just bandaids.

NATO rebels run riot in Libya

With the help of thousands of bombing sorties by various NATO air forces our plucky rebels were able to rid their country of their eccentric dictator. Now it seems they're trying to get rid of their newly non-elected National Transitional Council.

A mob of rebels stormed the temporary parliament in Bengazi today. They're pissed off about being side-lined by the new non-elected leadership, most of whom have spent decades living in London and New York until returning recently to help unlock the secret of the missing Gadaffi billions.

As soon as that secret is unlocked most of them can be counted on to return to London and New York, which is what concerns the rebels. They seem to be catching on to the fact that they're just as much the victims of a massive screw-over as was Gadaffi himself.

The Gadaffi-era welfare state, by far the most comprehensive in Africa, lies in ruins. The rule of law, such as it was, is a distant memory. The NATO sugar daddy has found new preoccupations now that Libya's oil is secure.

Give these rebels a few more months and they'll all be Gadaffi loyalists again.

Another evil dictator unveiled as CIA asset

It's interesting how stories this juicy can become what are technically referred to as "yawners" in the journalism business.

The story of Charles Taylor starts off remarkably like that of Eddie Murphy's character in Coming to America. After a well-rounded liberal education in Boston area schools Charles was well on his way to becoming just another Massachusetts moderate when the hand of fate intervened.

The hand of fate in this case was the hand of Taylor's CIA handler, who thought Taylor might just be the kind of up-and-coming go-getter who might be helpful in doing God's work on the dark continent.

Taylor returned to Liberia and worked his way into the political elite. Not content with his CIA stipend he found himself on the run accused of embezzling millions of dollars from his impoverished country.

He found himself back in Boston where authorities locked him up pending extradition. He then masterminded the first ever successful escape from the Plymouth House of Correction, an escape he now claims was arranged by his CIA sponsors.

Returning again to Africa he pal'd up with the late Monster of the Maghreb to train a rebel army which he would use to overthrow the government of Liberia. From this point on he was working both for the CIA and Gadaffi simultaneously.

There followed one of the most vicious civil wars in history which took at least a quarter million lives in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and which was rampant with the most lurid human rights violations.

Child rape, child murder, cannibalism, hacking childrens' limbs off in front of their parents; it was all in a days work for our man in Africa. Sure enough, both the US and Gadaffi had put their money on a winning horse. In 1997 Taylor, still on the CIA payroll, became president of Liberia.

Today he's sitting in a cell in The Hague, in a trial that doesn't generate a lot of headlines on this side of the Atlantic.

Which is a shame, because it's a very compelling story.

Gadaffi's Canadian connections

The plots thicken.

Just an hour south of Falling Downs there's a family waiting to hear from their dear daughter, incommunicado in a Mexican jail, busted on some trumped up claim that she was the mastermind of a dastardly plot to spirit one of the Gadaffi brood into the country.

Meanwhile, the National Toast, wannabe national newspaper of record, founded by Conrad Black and hastily fobbed off on Izzy Asper just before he died, has revealed that the very Gadaffi spawn our Mount Forest neighbor was sneaking into Mexico already owns a penthouse condo in Toronto. A 1.6 million dollar condo no less.

In downtown Toronto 1.6 million gets you about the same square footage that you got in a Don Mills tract bungalow for five grand earlier in my lifetime. No matter. The National Toast thinks it's a big deal.

Not mentioned in these news stories is that this is the same Gadaffi who hired the world's fastest man as his personal trainer a few years ago. That's right. Ben Johnson, gold medal sprinter at the Seoul Olympic games, was Saadi's trainer back in the day when Saadi aspired to a career in pro football.

Ben was the fastest man in the world for about 24 hours, when he got busted for illegal doping. That was the era when everybody was doping and who got busted was pretty much a question of politics. Suffice it to say that Big Ben got caught with his political pants down, whereas Lance Armstrong, just to pick a name out of the doping hat, has always kept his teflon political bicycle pants way up.

So Saadi is hiding out in Niger, Saif is the one in the hands of those rebels in Libya, and Safdi is the guy up in my attic with his three wives and eight kids.  The randy old Colonel had more kids than the other Colonel had chickens. It's hard to keep them straight.

But for the record, when the folks upstairs get finished cleaning up the bat shit up there, I'll fulfill my end of the bargain; a trip to Michigan. After that they're on their own. Will they get to Mexico or will they stay put in Dearborn?

Who knows?

Alzheimer lottery; the luck of the draw

My mother had two brothers. Both of them came of age in DP camps in Denmark after the WW II. Then their paths diverged.

The elder one found a millwright apprenticeship in Switzerland. Plied his trade at the Degussa works in Rheinfelden for a few years. Came to Canada in the mid fifties. Gave General Electric the rest of his working life. Welding inspector. Spent his days inhaling the same toxic stew every day that I did. In fact, we worked together for a time. He's into his eighties now. Sharp as the proverbial tack.

The younger brother took a scholarly turn. Breathed a more rarefied air. Had a great career. History professor. Delivered learned papers at symposia in Geneva and Heidelberg and Tubingen. Wrote books. Took early retirement because of the dementia snapping at his heels. Today he sits in front of the TV, talking to Colonel Gaddafi.

I'm at an age where I'm wondering. I've been to the Alzheimer Society's website. They've got a top ten list of symptoms. I can see all of them. Then again, I'm pretty sure I could have seen all of them thirty years ago if I'd been looking for them. So I don't know what to think. I'm hoping the toxic welding fumes that inoculated the elder brother might have worked their magic on me too.

But on a bad day I'm pretty sure I can hear it sniffing round my door.