Canadaโs Foreign Minister Meets Libyan โRebelsโ
James Corbett
The Corbett Report
28 June, 2011
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird met this week with the leadership of Libyaโs National Transitional Council, the rebel organization based in Benghazi that is claiming to be the โsole representative of all Libya.โ
Despite media-friendly rhetoric about bringing โunityโ and โdemocracyโ to the country, the Council represents less than half of Libyaโs 141 tribes and conducts all of its meetings in secret without keeping minutes of the proceedings. Critics note that the groupโs leadership consists almost entirely of elitist, Arab, pro-Western businessmen with American Ph.D.s. Some of the NTCโs first official actions were to form a central bank to act as monetary authority over a country they do not control and to establish a corporation to make contracts with foreign governments for oil in rebel-held territories.
In an apparent attempt to give the insurgency more โlegitimacy,โ Baird declared the council Libyaโs โbest hopeโ for a democratic government, positing that โno government can be worse than the Gaddafi regimeโ before hastening to add that there will be challenges in the transition and that Libya is โnot going to move from Gaddafi to Thomas Jefferson overnight.โ
The visit comes after Canadaโs precedent-setting move last week to officially recognize the NTC as the representative of the Libyan people, effectively affording it an equivalent diplomatic standing to the actual government of Libya. As former Middle East diplomat Louis Delvoie told the Toronto Star: โWeโve been sympathetic to revolutionary movements [before], but didnโt recognize them. Even though we had a well-established policy of opposing apartheid, we never recognized the African National Congress.โ
The move represents Canadaโs attempt to foster a diplomatic process to back up their military support for the extra-judicial assassination of the leader of a foreign country and the overthrow of a sovereign nationโs government. The Canadian parliament voted 294 to 1 earlier this month to extend Canadaโs military involvement in Libya for a further three months, with members of the Conservative government and the left-wing NDP opposition uniting in support of a so-called humanitarian mission to drop bombs on civilian populations. Just last week NATO was forced to admit that their mission to โsupportโ the Libyan people โaccidentallyโ flattened a two-story house, killing two children and seven adults. Canada has so far committed 650 troops, 7 CF-18 fighters and a frigate to the campaign.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has proceeded with an ICC prosecutorโs request to issue an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, his son, and his brother-in-law for alleged crimes against humanity. The warrant cites ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampoโs brief last month alleging that Gaddafi issued verbal orders to shoot civilians at opposition rallies. The brief relied exclusively on seond-hand reports and no one from the prosecutorโs office actually visited Libya to confirm its veracity.
Moreno-Ocampo also alleged that Gaddafi ordered mass rapes of women and ordered containers full of Viagra-type drugs for his troops. The allegation has since been shown to have been entirely fabricated, with no evidence whatsoever to support the claim.
No word yet on when the ICC is going to issue arrest warrants for Tony Blair and George Bush over the Downing Street Memo, a leaked government document that proves Bush and Blair had decided on military action against Saddam Hussein as early as July 2002 and then pre-meditatedly lied to the public to justify that action.
NATO also has yet to comment on whether it is prepared to launch a humanitarian bombing of Washington over Barrack Obamaโs claims that he has the right to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world at any time without trial or oversight.
