EU turns blind eye to fuel for arms smuggling as migrants drown

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Zwara, the westernmost town on the Libyan coast, boasts turquoise water, endless sand beaches, and delicious fresh fish. You can even sit at a beach café at night and have an espresso while gazing at the Mediterranean. Over the course of several visits in 2011-12, it seemed the most Europeanized place in Libya. But for the last three months, local sources complain that the fish stores have been empty: every fishing boat is involved in human trafficking instead. And photos of corpses of drowned migrants on those endless beaches have shocked the conscience of the world. On Sept. 19th alone, almost 4,800 migrants were rescued off Libya. An estimated 130,000 have crossed from Libya to Europe this year to date, mainly from Subsaharan Africa.

On Sept. 28, the European Union Naval Force for the Mediterranean (EUNav) announced that on October 7 it would begin “Operation Sophia” to intercept smugglers’ ships and capture their crews, escalating from the current policy of merely tracking them. EU authorities have identified 17 Libyan boats involved in the trade. It is likely most if not all belong to citizens of Zwara.

One question is why the EU authorities made an advance announcement that gives the ship owners time to switch to other vessels. Another is why the announcement was made just as the summer smuggling season draws to a close.

The biggest question is why the EU ignores the fact that migrant smuggling is just one part of the activities of a well-funded mafia that includes not only the expected Libyan citizens, but also EU citizens.

http://atimes.com/2015/10/eu-turns-blind-eye-to-fuel-for-arms-smuggling-as-migrants-drown/

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1. Turkey rebuffs EU on refugee deal, accuses bloc of 'political bribery'

European Union plans to entice Turkey into helping ease the bloc’s refugee crisis with $3.41 billion in aid and “re-energized” talks on membership were seemingly rebuffed by Ankara on Friday, with the country’s ruling party dismissing the proposal as political bribery.

European leaders meeting in Brussels announced early Friday that an “action plan” had been agreed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cooperate on improving the lives of two million Syrian refugees in Turkey and encouraging them to stay put. They were also said to have agreed to better coordinate border controls to slow the influx of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East and heading to Europe via Turkey. In return, EU members would offer aid and an accelerated path for Turkey’s citizens to travel visa-free through the bloc, while also encouraging the country’s accession ambitions.

But speaking later, Erdogan appeared to pour cold water on the idea and accused the EU of being insincere about Turkey's membership.

Erdogan accused Europe of waking up too late to the scale of Syria's refugee crisis, suggesting that it was only when pictures of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi — whose body washed up on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum last month — started circulating, that EU members started to act.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/16/turkey-pours-cold-water-on-eu.html

[KoKo]

2. Another reason why "liberating Libya" had grave consequences?

Both articles were interesting....

From the article:

The smuggling kingpin is Fahmi Slim Mousa Ben Khalifa, aka Fahmi Slim. Slim, a dark-skinned Zwara native said to be about 45, served a few years of a 15-year sentence for drug smuggling in Gaddafi days before the revolution opened the prisons. Now he is so powerful that part of the harbor in Zwara is known simply as “Fahmi Slim’s harbor.” While he is not directly involved with human smuggling currently, locals say that he works with some of the human smugglers in other illegal ventures.

Editor’s note: an official of an international agency confirms that Fahmi Slim is involved in fuel-smuggling activities in Libya and is known to French, Maltese and Italian authorities as a person of interest.

The EU could put pressure on Slim and anyone he controls easily: Fahmi Slim is a partner in and director of the Maltese corporation ADJ Trading Ltd. ADJ, under its old name of ADJ Swordfish, also owns a tanker called Basbosa Star that has a history of movements that suggest diesel smuggling. As Zwara does not have an oil terminal – the nearest one is in Zawia, 100km east – any tankers that call at its port are ipso facto suspect. Asia Times editors have seen evidence linking the Basbosa Star and its sister ship, the tanker Amazigh F, in suspicious activity.

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3. The EU and its politicians. Well, one doesn't really know here to start.

They are primarily reacting to the refugee movements, and naturally come up with an effort that is punitive, and defensive, and ignores the causes of the problem, because along with other parties they were the cause of the problem.

[KoKo]

5. .....bothersome

Last edited Tue Oct 20, 2015, 07:33 PM - Edit history (1)

The EU had to know this was coming...and were complicit in all of it.

Now they claim "We are having to Deal with this Immigrant Influx and we are Doing the Best We Can" ...because underlying this is that "We Have a History from WWII of ignoring what was going on with the Nazi's...so...We Must Do Something! to look like we are helping.

Yet, we have the United Nations.. we have "Think Tanks" PAID to do Analysis...We have Foundations Working for "Humanity" and NGO's and other Humanitarian Efforts we pay for with OUR Tax Dollars (along with interesting Big Money Interests pretending to bring "Freedom & Democracy&quot and it always ends up with WAR...Regime Change...Keeping America Safe and the rest of the Clap Trap that our Media spews out while Millions of Innocents Suffer and the Climate is Compromised with Bombs containing Toxic Spews that effect our Planet. And...in the End ...Nothing is Resolved! Except more money for Weapons of Mass Destruction.


Whatever....Every once in awhile I get into a Rant..... But, Ranters are not ALONE....they are just always Minimized.......Because Internet Protocol doesn't like Caps, Rants and those who do this are considered ...Low Level Thinkers.

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8. Yeah. "Can't they see we're busy building a free market utopia? Don't they care?" nt

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4. Pacifying the northern Sunni tribes: Contrasting Russian and US approaches

Prof. Codevilla has something on his mind today.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is engaged in a military-political fight against the Sunni tribes that live West of the Fertile Crescent in the Arabian Peninsula’s northern tip. This population is fighting Russia (as it fought America) only incidentally as part of a larger war it is waging against its neighbors who belong to other Islamic sects. Putin, for his part, is also fighting Sunnis only incidentally in the context of Russia’s larger objectives. Putin’s objective regarding the Sunni, is to pacify them. That was also the Bush and Obama administrations’ objective. But Putin’s Russia is approaching it with methods poles apart from those of the US government.

The contrasts between America’s and Russia’s approaches are enlightening.

First: While the US government quickly confused America’s interests with those of the Sunni, Putin remains focused on Russia’s. Saddam Hussein’s regime had been a thorn in America’s side. By May 2003, the straightforward military campaign that overthrew him had taken care of America’s business in Iraq. By occupying the country as part of a “nation build” scheme, however, the US made the conflicts between Iraq’s different peoples its own. The Shia majority was grateful, (at first). The largest of the minorities, the Kurds, focused on building Kurdistan. But the Sunni, judging that the Americans had wrecked their way of life, made war on the Americans as well as on the Shia. The US, after fighting mostly against them for more than three years, tried to convince the Sunni to “buy into” the American order. The US did this by reconciling itself to the effective sovereignty of the Sunni in their regions; indeed by arming them, paying them and protecting them against the Shia. In short, by serving their interests.

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By contrast, when Putin met with Saudi and Gulf leaders — the Sunni world’s powers — he did so as the embodiment of the power behind their chief sectarian and geopolitical enemy — Iran. He did not have to spell out to them, any more than to the Islamic State’s Sunni hosts in former Syria and Iraq, that he has the power to increase or to decrease the amount of deadly pressure that Iran can bring against them. In exchange for their good behavior on a matter so peripheral to them as the northern Sunni tribes’ behavior regarding the Russian/Shia enclave, Putin can forbear harming their central interests. This is an offer that they can’t afford to refuse.

http://atimes.com/2015/10/pacifying-the-northern-sunni-tribes-contrasting-russian-and-us-approaches/

[KoKo]

6. Bits and Pieces from an Interesting Article....

To maintain and cushion Russia’s naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean shore, Vladimir Putin’s expeditionary force aims to establish a substantial enclave of Alawis (a subset of Shia) around it. The military mission is straightforward and seems destined to succeed. But that enclave can be secured for the long run only if these very same Sunni tribes, which are now at war with Russia’s Shia clients and hence with Russia, do not chew away at its edges in the future — tying up Putin and his clients’ forces. Russia’s intervention will not have succeeded until it reconciles them to the new order it’s creating. Russia’s strategy for the Sunni seems to involve the opposite of serving their interests. It aims instead to weaken them while brandishing Moscow’s capacity to enhance or to limit neighboring Shias’ capacity to hurt them.

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Geography, ethnography, as well as Russia’s strategic sense explain the delayed nature of the clash as well as the necessity thereof. All the forces that press against the enclave that shields Russia’s naval base are Sunni and drawn largely from the local Sunni population. The Islamic State is the largest of these. But since IS is farthest away, it poses the least immediate danger to the enclave. By the time its turn comes, its Sunni constituency will know what Russia has in store for its enemies. Unlike the US, Russia practices old-school conventional war, with a third-world final chapter. Just as Putin has no doubt that the Sunni stand in the way of his plans, he has no doubt about who is eager to kill them en masse and indiscriminately: The Shia militias.

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In sum, the contrasts between America’s and Putin’s approach to pacifying the Northern Sunni tribes illustrates the contrasts between our foreign policy establishment consisting of Liberal Internationalists, Neoconservatives and Realists and, on the other hand, a statesman who follows the normal rules of human behavior.

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7. He and Bhadrakumar have slipped over int o Putin love a bit.

However, the basic point he makes: that our foreign policy stopped being reality based some time back, after WWII, (good old Truman and the Dulles brothers finishing up the work that Woody Wilson started) is sound, and has much to do with why nothing seems to work these days.

[KoKo]

9. Speaking of the Dulles Bros.....

Last edited Wed Oct 21, 2015, 01:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Don't know if you've already seen this...just passing along...

They are getting some renewed attention/scrutiny with this book just out:

"The Devils Chessboard"--David Talbott

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-talbot/the-devils-chessboard/

And, DU'er "Octafish" has a snip and comment about the book posted here last year:

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Octafish (49,147 posts)
7. David Talbot is writing a book on this very subject, ''The Devil's Chessboard''...

...he said is the working title. I heard him speak at the JFK "Passing the Torch" Conference at Duquesne.

David Talbot did not mince words in his presentation. He publicly named former CIA director Allen Dulles not only as participant in the cover-up of events concerning CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy, Talbot said Dulles was the chief architect of the assassination.

Mr. Talbot has worked for more than two years on a book that I believe will shake the nation's financial and political establishment to its core. Here are Mr. Talbot's words, outlining why:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4496406{/b]