pam on Nostr: I was reading this book (‘The world for sale’ by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy) ...
I was reading this book (‘The world for sale’ by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy) which started off on how this oil and gas trading company called Vitol provided fuel for the rebels during the Arab Spring with the protection of NATO and funding from Qatar, and it piqued my curiosity on Libya’s rebel support.
Qatar was an intermediary between Western governments and Libyan rebels. It facilitated the provision of arms and fuel through commodity traders. Vitol was a commodity trader.
Some backstory on Libya. Libya was governed by Gaddafi for a very very long time - 42 years. (I’ve written some bits on the political states of North Africa over the last few decades somewhere along these posts).
But Gaddafi’s leadership is often commented from opposite ends - One side calls him a ruthless dictator. The other side calls him the most democratic leader in Africa.
Muhammad Ali stated in his autobiography that the US and Gaddafi did not see eye to eye because of the political influence on religion. But more importantly Gaddafi controlled Libya’s oil by nationalizing it.
Nationalization swept the countries in the middle east and africa in the 70s which loosened the clutches of the global oil dominance by the infamous “Seven Sisters” . In this case, nationalizing it allowed for free trade to happen? (and in the process - petrostate was formed).
Libya is in the top 10 crude oil producers in the world. Many wanted their hands on it but it was hard when Gaddafi was controlling it.
During the Arab Spring which was a wave of uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, including Libya, rebel factions rose against Gaddafi's regime.
I think when you run for 42 years, even if you were a good person, it prevents strong and decent opponents to rise, and instead creates a vacuum that extremist are quick to fill in. But this period marked a turning point, as both internal dissent and external interventions, including CIA’s and NATO’s involvement, led to Gaddafi's fall and the subsequent struggle for control over Libya’s oil wealth.
Back to Vitol and Qatar and funding the rebels - the only way rebels can win the war in Libya is with more fuel (if you remember the Desert Fox incident during WW2- never run out of fuel in the deserts of Africa). And the only way for global powerhouses to control oil in Libya is to fund the rebels to bring down Gaddafi.
There was a lot of competition among commodity traders to work with rebels as they barter trade fuel for crude oil through the pipelines. But nothing beats Vitol’s founder Ian Taylor who was a leading donor for the Tories party who won the project. Also ironically Washington sanctioned Gaddafi from buying fuel or selling crude oil, but waived sanction for anyone buying from Vitol’s company.
Benghazi, a key city in Libya and a hub for the oil industry, became a battleground during the civil war between rebels and Gaddafi’s government forces. It became a lawless militant state with rising death rates and poorly managed hospitals, food supply etc and people were suffering. Heavily armed youths patrolled the city (a few years down the road, a mob would break into the US consulate and murder the ambassador).
Unfortunately Gaddafi was murdered during the NATO-led intervention during the Arab Spring. I read that he was sodomised brutally by rebels with a bayonet and was beaten to death. His gruesome murder was apparently recorded on phone and broadcasted globally.
Libya grew from the poorest country - to the richest country in the continent under Gaddafi.
And now it’s back to a poor and struggling country controlled by rebels.
Gaddafi also had billions of dollars frozen in Western bank accounts. In September 2011, $300 million in Libyan assets in the West was unfrozen - not to aid Libyan citizens, but to settle payments owed to Vitol for supplying fuel to the rebels.
Many of these large commodity traders apparently have their offices in sleepy towns in Switzerland or New England. And they work for profit hence supporting whichever rebels or gov’ts that benefited them. From the book, it states "Their numbers have remained relatively small: a large share of the world’s traded resources is handled by just a few companies, many of them owned by just a few people."
I am attaching here another piece of article on Libya's governance under Gaddafi. It talks about how Gaddafi promoted direct democracy and was not a dictator because many of his proposals were countered by congress like him wanting home schooling, abolishing capital punishment, to give all oil profits back to the people and even wanting to eliminate the central government. Things he managed to push forth was free schooling, free hospitalisation and free electricity.
The combination of socialism and capitalism in Libya can be expanded to a topic of its own (Someday if i have the time, I will write on the historical bridges of socialism and capitalism around the world).
This article also talks about CIA interventions and how it advocated the rise of extremist militant Muslims around the world from Muslim brotherhood in Egypt to Sarekat Islam in indonesia to Jamar Al islami in Pakistan to al Qaeda and ISIS over the last 4-5 decades.
Will this be the year the CIA is abolished ? Only time would tell.
The story of Libya has always saddened me. Makes me hope more than ever for the liberalizations of people in situations like this
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/20/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-terrorist-haven-after-us-intervention/
Qatar was an intermediary between Western governments and Libyan rebels. It facilitated the provision of arms and fuel through commodity traders. Vitol was a commodity trader.
Some backstory on Libya. Libya was governed by Gaddafi for a very very long time - 42 years. (I’ve written some bits on the political states of North Africa over the last few decades somewhere along these posts).
But Gaddafi’s leadership is often commented from opposite ends - One side calls him a ruthless dictator. The other side calls him the most democratic leader in Africa.
Muhammad Ali stated in his autobiography that the US and Gaddafi did not see eye to eye because of the political influence on religion. But more importantly Gaddafi controlled Libya’s oil by nationalizing it.
Nationalization swept the countries in the middle east and africa in the 70s which loosened the clutches of the global oil dominance by the infamous “Seven Sisters” . In this case, nationalizing it allowed for free trade to happen? (and in the process - petrostate was formed).
Libya is in the top 10 crude oil producers in the world. Many wanted their hands on it but it was hard when Gaddafi was controlling it.
During the Arab Spring which was a wave of uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, including Libya, rebel factions rose against Gaddafi's regime.
I think when you run for 42 years, even if you were a good person, it prevents strong and decent opponents to rise, and instead creates a vacuum that extremist are quick to fill in. But this period marked a turning point, as both internal dissent and external interventions, including CIA’s and NATO’s involvement, led to Gaddafi's fall and the subsequent struggle for control over Libya’s oil wealth.
Back to Vitol and Qatar and funding the rebels - the only way rebels can win the war in Libya is with more fuel (if you remember the Desert Fox incident during WW2- never run out of fuel in the deserts of Africa). And the only way for global powerhouses to control oil in Libya is to fund the rebels to bring down Gaddafi.
There was a lot of competition among commodity traders to work with rebels as they barter trade fuel for crude oil through the pipelines. But nothing beats Vitol’s founder Ian Taylor who was a leading donor for the Tories party who won the project. Also ironically Washington sanctioned Gaddafi from buying fuel or selling crude oil, but waived sanction for anyone buying from Vitol’s company.
Benghazi, a key city in Libya and a hub for the oil industry, became a battleground during the civil war between rebels and Gaddafi’s government forces. It became a lawless militant state with rising death rates and poorly managed hospitals, food supply etc and people were suffering. Heavily armed youths patrolled the city (a few years down the road, a mob would break into the US consulate and murder the ambassador).
Unfortunately Gaddafi was murdered during the NATO-led intervention during the Arab Spring. I read that he was sodomised brutally by rebels with a bayonet and was beaten to death. His gruesome murder was apparently recorded on phone and broadcasted globally.
Libya grew from the poorest country - to the richest country in the continent under Gaddafi.
And now it’s back to a poor and struggling country controlled by rebels.
Gaddafi also had billions of dollars frozen in Western bank accounts. In September 2011, $300 million in Libyan assets in the West was unfrozen - not to aid Libyan citizens, but to settle payments owed to Vitol for supplying fuel to the rebels.
Many of these large commodity traders apparently have their offices in sleepy towns in Switzerland or New England. And they work for profit hence supporting whichever rebels or gov’ts that benefited them. From the book, it states "Their numbers have remained relatively small: a large share of the world’s traded resources is handled by just a few companies, many of them owned by just a few people."
I am attaching here another piece of article on Libya's governance under Gaddafi. It talks about how Gaddafi promoted direct democracy and was not a dictator because many of his proposals were countered by congress like him wanting home schooling, abolishing capital punishment, to give all oil profits back to the people and even wanting to eliminate the central government. Things he managed to push forth was free schooling, free hospitalisation and free electricity.
The combination of socialism and capitalism in Libya can be expanded to a topic of its own (Someday if i have the time, I will write on the historical bridges of socialism and capitalism around the world).
This article also talks about CIA interventions and how it advocated the rise of extremist militant Muslims around the world from Muslim brotherhood in Egypt to Sarekat Islam in indonesia to Jamar Al islami in Pakistan to al Qaeda and ISIS over the last 4-5 decades.
Will this be the year the CIA is abolished ? Only time would tell.
The story of Libya has always saddened me. Makes me hope more than ever for the liberalizations of people in situations like this
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/20/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-terrorist-haven-after-us-intervention/