Hillary emails confirm US and NATO destroyed Libya over gold-backed currency

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Hillary emails confirm US and NATO destroyed Libya over gold-backed currency

Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.

The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook.


But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.

Gaddafi addressing the United Nations

Hillary’s Death Squads

A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya, sent by long time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the  part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:

Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.

(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).

While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.

While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.

There is, however, ample documentation by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]

Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.

These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:

After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded up since Gaddafi fell in August.

It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.

Al-Qaeda and Western Special Forces Inside Libya

The same intelligence email from Sydney Blumenthal also confirms what has become a well-known theme of Western supported insurgencies in the Middle East: the contradiction of special forces training militias that are simultaneously suspected of links to Al Qaeda.

Blumenthal relates that “an extremely sensitive source” confirmed that British, French, and Egyptian special operations units were training Libyan militants along the Egyptian-Libyan border, as well as in Benghazi suburbs.

While analysts have long speculated as to the “when and where” of Western ground troop presence in the Libyan War, this email serves as definitive proof that special forces were on the ground only within a month of the earliest protests which broke out in the middle to end of February 2011 in Benghazi.

By March 27 of what was commonly assumed a simple “popular uprising” external special operatives were already “overseeing the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels” including “a seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition.”

Yet only a few paragraphs after this admission, caution is voiced about the very militias these Western special forces were training because of concern that, “radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command.”

The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests

Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 email sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.

The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”

Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war [emphasis mine]:

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)

Though this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent from the briefing.

Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency.

French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.

The Ease of Floating Crude Propaganda

Early in the Libyan conflict Secretary of State Clinton formally accused Gaddafi and his army of using mass rape as a tool of war. Though numerous international organizations, like Amnesty International, quickly debunked these claims, the charges were uncritically echoed by Western politicians and major media.

It seemed no matter how bizarre the conspiracy theory, as long as it painted Gaddafi and his supporters as monsters, and so long as it served the cause of prolonged military action in Libya, it was deemed credible by network news.

Two foremost examples are referenced in the latest batch of emails: the sensational claim that Gaddafi issued Viagra to his troops for mass rape, and the claim that bodies were “staged” by the Libyan government at NATO bombing sites to give the appearance of the Western coalition bombing civilians.

NATO bombing Libya

In a late March 2011 email, Blumenthal confesses to Hillary that,

I communicated more than a week ago on this story—Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing—though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, Robert gates gives credence to it. (See story below.)

Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.

Not only did Defense Secretary Robert Gates promote his bizarre “staged bodies” theory on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” but the even stranger Viagra rape fiction made international headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made a formal charge against Libya in front of the UN Security Council.

What this new email confirms is that not only was the State Department aware of the spurious nature of what Blumenthal calls “rumors” originating solely with the rebels, but did nothing to stop false information from rising to top officials who then gave them “credence.”

It appears, furthermore, that the Viagra mass rape hoax likely originated with Sidney Blumenthal himself.

[1] The most comprehensive and well-documented study of the plight of black Libyans is contained in Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (publ. 2012, Baraka Books) by Maximilian Forte, Professor Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec.

SEE ALSO:

– 10 things about Gaddafi they don’t want you to know
– The truth about Gaddafi and Libya (watch and learn)

'US beating drums of war against Russia to increase European defense spending'

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'US beating drums of war against Russia to increase European defense spending'

Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford testifies during the Senate Armed Services committee nomination hearing to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 9, 2015.

European leaders know that the US wants to get them to spend money on military equipment which will be purchased from the US, says Brian Becker of the anti-war Answer Coalition. But Europe knows the dangers from the experience of two world wars, he added.

Several senior American officials say Russia is the greatest threat to their country's national security. First it was Secretary of the Air Force Deborah James, then General Joseph Dunford at his confirmation hearing for the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called Russian actions “nothing short of alarming.”


RT: Several senior American officials say Russia is the greatest threat to US national security. Why is such rhetoric being employed by senior American officials?

US military leaders call Russia ‘greatest threat’, demand more funding

Brian Becker: We have to understand this rhetoric and these presentations first by the Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Major General Joseph Dunford, soon to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both of whom pose the presentation that Russia is an existential threat and the greatest threat to America.

They also say, and this is very interesting, that it requires the 28 NATO members to step up and do their part to spend at least two per cent of their GDP on military spending in NATO, and only four of the 28 members of NATO are doing it so far. What the US military officials are basically telling NATO is: “Get in line, this is an existential threat, you have to spend more of your money, money that is being drained from other parts of the economies of Europe." A lot of that money will go to US war contractors. So the ABCs of the war propaganda Russia is an existential threat is that it is very good, very necessary in fact for the biggest war contractors, the biggest parts of the military industrial complex in America. That is one part of the story.

RT: What is calling Russia 'the biggest threat'' and lumping it in with Islamic State going to lead to?

BB: It doesn’t just lump Russia in with ISIS, it says “Russia is a greater threat to the US and to the West, and to world peace than ISIS.” Now you see the US’s government right now is at war, endless war with IS because purportedly it poses an existential threat. But if the existential threat posed by Russia is even greater than IS, you can make the case, and I think it’s absolutely true, that the US military is preparing the American public for military confrontation, conflict of some type with Russia, which would seem to all people to be absolute madness.

Nonetheless, they must be doing this to prepare the population to allow greater and greater military threats to go against Russia. Now, once the Pentagon claims the escalation ladder, carries out massive war exercises on Russia’s border, Russia will be compelled to meet that threat. That’s how conflicts go from small conflicts to bigger conflicts, and even possible global conflicts.



RT: European officials have been so far reluctant to boost military spending for NATO. Do they not fear any imminent threats that the US is citing?

BB: The European powers know absolutely that this is hogwash. They know with certainty that the US is beating the drums of war in order to get them to spend more of their money on military equipment, much of which will be purchase from the US. And they also know that it’s easy for American politicians, and the Generals in America are just politicians in uniform before they become big businessman when they circulate back into corporate America, they know that they are playing with fire. It is very easy for American officials to talk tough against Russia. But Europe knows all too well, the dangers of real war, the danger of WWI and WWII which is 70 years over this year. They don’t take lightly to the fact that the Pentagon is playing with fire. And of course it will be the European people who will be on the frontlines, not Americans.

RT: US military officials said that they knew Europe was facing tough economic challenges, but NATO commitments should still be a priority. Is this talk of threats a way to secure NATO funding?

BB: Yes, that was my point. I think a lot of this is to keep the alliance together. They know that Germany and France, and other major European powers could start to have very warm and good relations - economic, political, and even possibly military relations with Russia. They are trying to keep the discipline of the alliance, and they are also trying to make sure that those countries pay their fair share to the war effort, to the NATO war effort, which, as I said, benefits US war corporations.

Units from NATO allied countries take part in the NATO Noble Jump 2015 exercises, part of testing and refinement of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) in Swietoszow, Poland June 18, 2015.

US Secretary of the Air Force and United States Marine Corps general not diplomats

Paul Heroux, Middle East expert also commented on Deborah James’s and General Joseph Dunford’s statements that Russia is the greatest threat to US national security saying that “Their job is to bring to attention what, in their point of view, is going to be a big threat.”

RT: European officials have been so far reluctant to boost military spending on NATO. Why do you think that is?

Paul Heroux: There could be a number of reasons. The crisis in Greece right now is putting pressure on other European counties because there is maybe a need for a debt bailout. But at the same time we don’t want to go back to the old ways of huge deficit spending on the military. I would like to think we’ve progressed a lot more and we’re going to do more diplomatic solutions.

RT: You talk about diplomatic solutions... Is it diplomatic to call Russia 'the biggest threat' to American security?

PH: No, I don’t think it is. But I also think that was made by somebody whose job is not to be a diplomat, somebody who is either a general or secretary of one of the branches of our [US] armed forces. Their job is to bring to attention what, in their point of view, is going to be a big threat.


We also have other people in the US saying that the biggest threat to US security is cyber terrorism, or cyber security; other people say it might be global warming; other folks might say it’s ISIS or terrorism, and some might even say the nuclear program in Iran.

RT: Does calling Russia "the biggest threat" suggest the deterioration in relations between Moscow and Washington? Is that the sign there is no real hope for dissent dialogue in the next coming weeks and months?

PH: Deterioration has been going on for a number of years, that’s right. From the point of view of the US, Russia is the problem, from the point of view of Russia; it’s probably the US that’s the problem. The important thing is that they keep working together. What we need to do is basically take baby steps, small, realistic goals that can be achieved rather than trying to change the whole landscape of the negotiations and the state of affairs between the two countries. Small realistic baby steps will help develop a sense of trust and a sense of shared interest. And I think that’s the direction we should be going in.

‘Artificially hostile atmosphere’: Moscow blasts US claims of Russian threat

RT: Why has the trust deteriorated so badly, do you think on the both sides since the so-called reset?

PH: I think it could be a number of issues. Just the interest of the US and Russia. Russia, for example, is trying to reclaim its former kind of Eastern superiority, and that may sometimes complete with some US interests or some of NATO’s interests. Other times the US is also trying to keep ourselves from sliding into place where other countries don’t want to work with us, and it’s a difficult balance. Also it largely could be just the personalities of different leaders. We see that with Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu; we saw that starting with Vladimir Putin and George Bush. So personalities do play a large role in these negotiations and discussions.