I am pretty annoyed. Quite aside from the current arguments about humanitarian help for the beleaguered rebels, in my opinion this is Cameron and Sarkozy’s war, and its about Libyan oil. (The biggest reserves in North Africa). Italy’s ENI are the biggest players, followed by Germany’s Wintershall, and France’s Total. The US have only started getting back into Libya since 2005 – the famous Blair handshake. The UK government has been working behind the scenes trying to get Shell and BP into this market for over a decade – Blair and Major before him (Major representing US company Carlyle).
The UK want the rebels to grant us oil rights in gratitude. The French are in there protecting Total’s investment. The Germans and Italians know better what war is all about and don’t want to be a part of it. What’s going on is all about the oil, just dressed up in humanitarian/democratic arguments: if it was really about the latter we’d be enforcing NFZs over Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, and there’d be more than just Qatar and UAE on the UN ticket sanctioning action.
Tomahawks – the US navy’s cruise missiles (which they only sell to the UK navy), of course, are made by Raytheon – a US/UK arms company, and have control systems made by BAE. The Brits bought a load of the new ones in 2004 and have just used up a load of their old ones on Libya. A little googling turns up some really quite wild conspiracy stuff!
Funnily enough – the Turkish Prime Minister agrees “Using incendiary language directed at France in a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said: “I wish that those who only see oil, gold mines and underground treasures when they look in [Libya’s] direction, would see the region through glasses of conscience from now on.”
STOP PRESS:
26th August 2011
Sept 1st Update:
And so the bidding begins, with French and British companies set to do well.
Feb 10th 2012 Update:
http://www.cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/2196