THE
ROVING EYE Have lobby, will
travel By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great
Arab Revolt, please click here.
We interrupt the global fascination with
the non-stop psycho drama of the DSK (Dominique
Strauss-Kahn) case - Was he "a perv?" Was she "a
hooker"? Was there a conspiracy? - to inform how a
post-modern "kinetic military action" is won; in
the public relations arena, where else.
This implies that the DSK powerful white
male/poor African woman combat in a Manhattan
hotel suite does indeed match the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) war on Libya; no
matter what happened or
happens, the party with the best "com" - or able
to recruit the best PR team - wins.
This
also proves that the much-incensed Libyan "rebels"
- that dodgy bunch of opportunist defectors,
Central Intelligence Agency assets, jihad-related
Salafi clerics and greedy tribal leaders - is not
as pure and innocent as the massive Western
propaganda barrage would like world public opinion
to believe.
And this also explains why the
"rebels" have once again rejected a sensible peace
plan proposed by the African Union (AU) late last
week - immediate ceasefire, deployment of a United
Nations peacekeeping force, Colonel Muammar
Gaddafi staying out of transition negotiations -
as a "non-starter". They'd rather spin another
"massive" offensive towards Tripoli, with weapons
- illegally - supplied by neo-Napoleonic Nicolas
Sarkozy's France and the inevitable NATO air
strikes.
Bets can be made that this
"offensive" - essentially groups of spirited
fighters with AK-47s in pick-up trucks against
Gaddafi's Soviet Grad missiles with a range of
nearly 40 kilometers - will hardly move the de
facto border in the Gulf of Sirte between
Tripolitania - controlled by the Gaddafi regime -
and Cyrenaica.
We want the money
The "rebel" government - which is now
named, after numerous permutations, the Interim
Transitional National Council of Libya - has hired
Patton Boggs, one of Washington's leading (and one
of the most profitable) PR firms, to "advise and
assist" them in, well, winning the war - or at
least providing the illusion they are winning the
war (shades of NATO's PR campaign in Afghanistan).
Patton Boggs is already furiously lobbying
for the "rebels" to be globally accepted as the
"legitimate government of the sovereign nation of
Libya". The agreement was signed between Patton
Boggs and former Libyan ambassador Ali Suleiman
Aujali, the "rebel" top dog in the US. Senior
partner Thomas Hale Boggs Jr will be in charge of
the account.
Italy, Britain, France, Qatar
and now Turkey have already recognized the Interim
Transitional National Council; the Barack Obama
administration has already allowed them to open a
Washington office. But inevitably this is most of
all about money; what the council wants are the
billions of dollars in frozen funds from the
Gaddafi regime held in the US.
Patton
Boggs, by some reports, bags a maximum of
US$50,000 a month - charged by the hour. The
"rebels" will only pay when they have funds -
virtually dry at the moment. For nearly three
months they've already had another top Washington
PR firm, The Harbour Group, spinning their case on
a pro-bono basis - especially on that crucial
"unfreeze the funds" front.
It's relevant
to note that one of the Patton Boggs lobbyists
already involved with the "rebels" is Vincent
Frillici, a former director of operations at NATO
for the alliance's 50th Anniversary Host
Committee. That's sweet; a NATO-connected lobbyist
selling Libya's alleged popular/indigenous
uprising.
So thanks to a Washington
lobbyist paradise, the US government will
eventually recognize one belligerent side of a
northern African civil war, represented by a shady
"council" - and enable them to grab billions of
dollars to, as the spin goes, "help the Libyan
people".
Screw that American boat
A quick look at the facts on the ground
would rather suggest a neo-colonial agenda of
bribing mercenaries to topple the regime - as
unsavory as it may be - of an energy-wealthy
country that wouldn't play ball with the
International Monetary Fund, and wanted to form a
union of African countries that would not sell
their natural resources for anything but gold.
Meanwhile, the same rebel-happy US
government refuses to admit that the Israeli
blockade of Gaza is illegal. As the irrepressible
former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Ray
McGovern - on board the Audacity of Hope
boat trying to sail to Gaza - has written on
Commondreams.org, "Before leaving the United
States, I was cautioned by a source with access to
very senior staffers at the National Security
Council that not only does the White House plan to
do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from
Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White
House officials 'would be happy if something
happened to us'."
So the White House, as
McGovern was told, is "perfectly willing to have
the cold corpses of [American] activists shown on
American TV" - while showering lavish praise on a
dodgy "council" eager to feast on Libya's wealth.
Tibetans, Uyghurs, Burmese, Uzbeks,
Chechens and countless others may be eagerly
reading the writing on the wall. Wanna start a
revolution? Do it in English - not your local
language. Trouble with the concept? Invoke "R2P"
("responsibility to protect") and Western powers
will be knocking at your door in no time, UN
resolution in hand and Robocop NATO ready to roll.
Can't afford to buy guns? Do it the Libyan "rebel"
way - hire a powerful Washington lobbyist to sell
you as legitimate and thus enabled to plunder your
central government's resources.
None of
this applies, of course, if your patch of land is
not drenched in oil.
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