( photo courtesy AFP/GETTY) Our man in Libya.
So we’ve all heard about the National Transitional Council of Libya and that they are a “temporary” government until a new one can be established in a post Gaddafi world.
So who’s who in this Council? What’s their angle and background? What’s in it for the west?
First up is Mahmoud Jibril (Mahmoud Jibril el-Warfally)sitting as the Interim Prime Minister of Libya. His education is in Political Science and Economics University of Cairo and attained a Doctrate in Political Science from University of Pittsburgh in 1985. From 2007-2011 he served on the National Economic Development Board (created bu US/UK interests) in Libya promoting privatization and relaxing of the economic laws there. Guess why he is still there then eh?
Of note he was apparently against Gaddafi’s wealth redistribution program where the Colonel would take oil revenues on a monthly basis and redistribute in the form of monthly payments to citizens to invest for themselves. So now we know why Gaddafi had to go! Well that and gold but more on that later.
The media mostly focuses on our main man Mahmoud but who are the other members? There is an English link here for a quick summary but I’ll outline a few of interest below in a quick summary.
Abdul Hafiz Ghoga is the spokesperson for the council and is a human rights lawyer. From what I can find anyway most of the council seems to be made up of former political dissidents and others who were in hot water with the previous regime. The newsgroup called hamsayeh.net allege that most of the council are members of the Harabi Tribe with Al Qaeda links (vis a vis the CIA) keep in mind though that hamsayeh is from the Iranian point of view. But to be fair they aren’t the only ones who claim this and many other researchers assert this claim as well. So was there something to all of the talk about Al Qaeda when the war first started? Anyone still remember Gaddafi talking about Al Qaeda on the news, sounded like crazy talk at the time. Thing is though maybe it’s not. Also Gaddafi was trying to start a Pan African organization not subject to the Anglo American alliance rules. That’s enough to get a guy killed right there.
So the rabbit hole gets deeper! Gaddafi was also going to go to a gold dinar instead of the U.S. dollar , guess he didn’t learn from when Saddam Hussein tried the same thing right before Iraq was invaded. Here’s a good video from RT News that gives a quick summary.
Next up for regime change are other countries that think they can make their own rules concerning gold and oil such as Iran and Syria. Here’s an almost prophetic news article from 2007 about gold reserves being bought up. And puts another piece of the puzzle together. Iran has its own oil bourse which has customers buying its oil in currencies other than U.S. dollars. -EvS