GILBERT ACHCAR: " Well, it’s absolutely obvious that oil is a key factor in NATO’s intervention, and had Libya not been an oil country, they wouldn’t have intervened. That’s absolutely obvious. Now, the issue here is, as you just mentioned, it’s not a mat
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: "... a deliberate strategy used by the U.S. and its allies, including NATO, for opening the door into the African continent by expanding the so-called “Global War on Terror.” This will give purpose to the U.S. objective of expanding its military presence in the African continent and it will also justify the creation of the Pentagon’s AFRICOM, which is meant to manage Africa by creating an African version of NATO as a means for establishing Washington’s control. In this regard, the U.S. and its allies have already put budgets aside to fight the very terrorist organizations that they have cooperated with, encouraged, nurtured, armed, and proliferated across the map of Africa from Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Mali to Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, and Nigeria."
by Vijay Prashad: The section of the UN report on the town of Tawergha is most startling. The thirty thousand residents of the town were removed by the Misratan thuwar. The general sentiment among the Misratan thuwar was that the Tawerghans were given preferential treatment by the Qaddafi regime, a claim disputed by the Tawerghans...
Sami Ramadani, senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University and a political refugee from Saddam's regime: "A shift in Turkey's policy is very significant for the region. Turkey over the last few years built friendly relations with Iran, with Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, and with the Syrian regime it developed very close links. They decided—Turkey decided to agree to installing the anti-ballistic missile umbrella in Turkey. Before that, they objected to such installation. This started souring relations with Iran. When it came to the demonstrations inside Syria, gradually Turkey took the side of those who want to militarize the conflict."
Gilbert Achcar Aug 16, 2012. Slutsats: "The situation in Libya—as in Tunisia and Egypt and all the other countries of the Middle East where the present revolutionary process is unfolding—is only at the beginning of a protracted and tumultuous course of development. This is the normal destiny of revolutionary upheavals. Western powers will have much difficulty controlling the process. They don’t have troops on the ground—let alone the fact that they failed anyway to control the situation in countries where their forces are deployed, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The process of peoples’ liberation and self-determination is convoluted, and can well go through ugly phases. But without this process and the readiness to pay the inherent cost, which may prove heavy indeed, the whole world would still live under absolutist regimes."