Reply #19: Wow! Thanks for this post. It greatly expands my understanding of the Libya situation.

[Peace Patriot]

I figured it had something to do with Libya's sovereignty--nationalization of the oil, control of the oil. Maybe the oil barons in Italy, Spain, England and the rest were tired of some of the profits going to Libyans, and so tried to segue the Egyptian and other protests into a controlled rebel group taking over Libya and privatizing the oil or at least re-writing the contracts. It struck me as a democracy protest that maybe got triggered too early and quickly descended into a civil war for control of the government and thus control of the oil. This suggests some conflicted tides within the rebel movement--probably the would-be Gaddafi's looking for their opportunity. It's a very complex tribal situation and immediately starting looking less and less like it had anything to do with democracy at all.

Anyway, that's how far I got. As dictators go, Gadaffi wasn't so bad, until the civil war started, and now it's just that--a civil war, with various tribes and people seeking ascendance, and with what has heretofore been the legitimate, recognized government of Libya fighting for its continuance, with quite a lot of loyal military support.

I have never for one moment believed anything the U.S. government or other "western" powers or their press have said about Libya. The ONLY sensible thing that has been said was Hugo Chavez calling for a ceasefire and peace talks. The U.S. and the "western" powers never did that, which I find appalling. Then they started ARMING one side of the civil war--and probably have been funding/training their own operatives all along. And now, they have fucking started a war with Libyan military loyal to Gaddafi.

This has also been a truly ominous escalation of the power of the U.S. president, to just go bomb anybody he damn pleases. I'm reminded of how Clinton set up Iraq for Bush, with the sanctions and the no-fly zone and so on. Iraq didn't even have an airforce by the time they started the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad. What is Obama setting up for whoever ES&S/Diebold decides to put in the White House next year? The precedent is EXTREMELY worrisome.

So, the World Bank and the IMF. Why does this not surprise me? But I had no knowledge of it before. This is new to me.

They are talking of their own currency in Latin America, the "sucre." I'm not sure how far it's gotten--but one thing is clear, Latin America is much more united and much better prepared to deal with U.S. bullshit than the African states are. They just formed an all-Latin America (no U.S., no Canada) alternative to the (U.S.-dominated) OAS. Its headquarters have been established in Caracas, Venezuela. It's called the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Celac). UNASUR--the regional organization formalized in 2008, with headquarters in La Paz, Bolivia--is all-South America. But CELAC is all-Latin America, including Central America and the Caribbean. One of their express purposes is to prevent U.S. coups in their region--as we recently witnessed in Honduras--and as UNASUR helped to foil in Bolivia, in Sept 2008, shortly after UNASUR was formalized.

I didn't realized how far along CELAC had come. Its formalization recently took me by surprise. And I'm wondering about the 'sucre' plan--if that will follow the same curve--that word of it reaches the hinterlands of the U.S.A. in fits and spurts, and then, suddenly, it's happening. That happened with UNASUR, too--also with ALBA, the Venezuela/Cuba organized barter trade group for Central America/the Caribbean. I read talk of them, then, after a period of quiet (and my thinking, yeah, right, they're really going to do this?), boom, the new institution is off and running.

Venezuela is A LOT less vulnerable to a monetary-motivated, or oil-motivated, or anti-Left-motivated U.S. military strike than Libya was, for two reasons: 1. Contrary to all you may have heard, Venezuela is a strong, well-functioning democracy (with a Gallup poll this week putting Venezuela 5th in the entire world on its citizens' rating of their own well being); and 2) This strong backing of the whole region against attack upon individual democracies. Brazil has been a stalwart in backing up Venezuela. Now it's formal and now everybody is part of a regional organization for that purpose.

The 'sucre' plan, though, could go away--as just too provocative of the U.S. Latin America doesn't want trouble. They just want peace, social justice and progress--and respect (sovereignty, independence). If the U.S. gives up its bloody, arrogant meddling, maybe Latin America will give up having their own common currency.