March 21, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:00
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| Time | Text |
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| So the Libyan situation is almost exactly like the novel 1984. | |
| We are now at war with East Asia. | |
| We have always been at war with East Asia, though yesterday they were an ally. | |
| So what are the facts about the situation? | |
| Well, according to the Freedom House rankings, Libya ranks alongside the world's worst dictatorships, such as North Korea and Burma, and has for the 40-plus years that Gaddafi has been in power. | |
| The Obama administration approved $40 billion in private arms sales to countries including Libya and Egypt in 2009. | |
| This is the man of peace, right? | |
| Under Bush, it was only $34.2 billion. | |
| State figures have detailed sales of US defense items for Egypt, $101 million, and Bahrain, $88 million. | |
| $458,000 of tear gas sales to Egypt, where there are numerous reports that U.S. supplied crowd-controlled gas, suppressed the protesters in Cairo. | |
| There's been a huge surge of almost $500 million in armament sales to Libya by European nations, Italian military aircraft, Maltese small arms and British munitions. | |
| In the months before the Libyans revolted and Obama told Gaddafi to go, the US government was pressing to do business with the Gaddafi regime on an increasing scale by very quietly approving a 77 million dollar deal to deliver at least 50 armored troop carriers to the dictator's military now. | |
| The US only allows non-lethal sales, so they took the machine guns off because with 40 billion dollars worth of US arms floating around the world, it would be impossible for him to get weapons any other way, of course. | |
| Now, this no-fly zone, the idea being that it would not allow Gaddafi's air superiority to pound the rebels, well, it's complete nonsense. | |
| He's still got immense and vast superiority in tanks, artillery, and other ground forces. | |
| He can crush the poorly armed and poorly trained rebels. | |
| And the no-fly zone, how well does it work? | |
| Well, you can look at the example of Iraq, where there was a no-fly zone in place for over 12 years. | |
| Enforced by the U.S. and the U.K. military for over 12 years before the invasion in 2003. | |
| Now it is true that after 2003, Gaddafi abandoned his weapons of mass destruction, made other concessions to the West, looking at the smoking crater where Saddam Hussein's regime was. | |
| He became amenable to, quote, reason for a while, but this U.N. resolution, which calls for a freeze and a non-initiation of aggression, well, Gaddafi's taken back a whole bunch of Area that the rebel forces had gained, so in fact if the rebel forces tried to expand their opposition to Gaddafi, they would be in violation of the UN resolution, which scarcely seems exactly what people are talking about. | |
| Now, what's really going on, of course? | |
| Well, U.S. oil companies have spent the last few years setting up significant operations in Libya at the invitation of the Gaddafi regime. | |
| And of course, as the U.S. has begun to talk trash about Gaddafi, he's offered Russia, China, and India a stake in the Libyan oil industry, saying, come down, you can have the preferred contracts, you can invest here, which means that Russia and China and India are much more likely to oppose the military action. | |
| Now, France, which initiated and is shouting the loudest for military action against Libya, a few weeks ago offered Ben Ali police assistance when the uprising against him was in full swing. | |
| President Sarkozy formally received Gaddafi four years ago in great ceremonial pomp in Paris to negotiate trade deals worth billions of dollars. | |
| In 2004, one Tony Blair visited Libya and hailed Gaddafi as a partner in the war on terror. | |
| British businesses trailed after him like sharks behind a pirate ship throwing over stowaways and signed lucrative oil contracts and, And they say, of course, the Americans and the French and the British and everyone else who's lobbing bombs in say, well, it's for democracy. | |
| It's for the protesters. It's to oppose a corrupt and brutal regime. | |
| Well, the U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain, where Sheikh Al Khalifa has shot down unarmed protesters with Saudi support. | |
| What about Gaza, where the Palestinians are regularly strangled and shut down? | |
| What about Yemen, where the Western-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently shot dead some 50 protesters? | |
| Well, you see, those are allies, so it's very different. | |
| So there are, I mean, specific and obvious economic interests that are occurring here, of course. | |
| But more importantly, the one thing that is common, the three leaders who are attacking Libya at the moment, Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama, what is the one thing that is in common between them? | |
| They're all down in the polls. | |
| Well, Cameron faces growing opposition to his austerity measures in the UK and is attempting to emulate his model Margaret Thatcher's 1982 Malvinus War. | |
| Hopes a war against Libya can divert attention and rally the public. | |
| It's a surefire way to boost your popularity in the polls is to start slaughtering people overseas. | |
| It's even worse for Sarkozy. | |
| Recently, polling institute said Sarkozy's own UMP party scored just 16% popularity in a poll, barely ahead of the National Front. | |
| So things aren't looking too pretty for Mr. | |
| Carlo Bruni. Recent polls indicate that only 28% of American voters strongly approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. | |
| 40% strongly disapprove. | |
| Republicans hold an eight-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot. | |
| And that's what you do when your poll numbers go down as you launch $100 million worth of missiles into a country that is not strategic to the United States. | |
| Ah, so Libya produces oil, so what? | |
| If it reduces its production, all that means is that the price will increase, which would be an incentive for other countries to pump out more oil to compensate. | |
| Another, of course, unintended consequence of this kind of attack is that if it is perceived by rebels in other countries that the United States will create no-fly zones and other forms of inhibitions to the ruling powers, then it's more likely that they're going to rebel, which means that there can be a general black hole sucking sound of US military resources, financial and hardware, going down into the region. | |
| And that is monstrously difficult to sustain. | |
| But of course, I think the most important thing to remember was two things I think that are very important in this kind of truly tragic situation. | |
| The first is that if you feel a surge of patriotic nationalism and loyalty to the commander-in-chief during this kind of immoral initiation of force, then you are the reason why they're doing it, right? | |
| So if you go around are cheering and supporting and baying for blood with the other soulless people around, then you are the reason why it's occurring. | |
| So you need to withdraw your support from your government when they do these kinds of things. | |
| It's absolutely essential because it is your Adherence to the ruling powers that is the cause of these kinds of endless attacks. | |
| So you need to withhold your support morally and intellectually from these kinds of monstrous horrors. | |
| That's the first thing. The second thing to understand is that the $100 million worth of missiles that the US launched into Libya is not the fundamental war. | |
| It's not the fundamental war. The fundamental war is against the US taxpayers. | |
| It's the $100 million that is extracted from the U.S. taxpayers by force, by violence, by threat of imprisonment in government-run rape rooms that is driving the military. | |
| The military is a mere effect of taxation, particularly the income tax. | |
| And so, to oppose taxation is to oppose war, most fundamentally. | |
| I mean, look, Gaddafi has $50 billion. | |
| That is what happens when you have a government and evil people take it over. | |
| It's the surest way to sleazy wealth in the history of the world. |
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