Tripoli bombings hit Britons’ in the wallet.

As civilian deaths in Libya grow, anger mounts among the Western taxpayers footing the bill for the military intervention. The conflict is expected to cost one of its key players, the UK, hundreds of millions of pounds.

Britons are already calling it the “billion-pound war”. It is calculated that if the military campaign in Libya goes on for six months, it will cost the British taxpayer US$1.6 billion. But that initial “humanitarian mission” is now a “get-rid-of-Gaddafi” operation – and that could take a lot longer.

“Assuming their goal is simply to oust him from power, one imagines this is not going to end until he is killed or leaves office, so this could potentially drag on for months more. And as we see, they’ve already extended the operation by another three months,” journalist James Corbett said.

That is unlikely to be popular with a British public that is watching government spending like a hawk right now – already furious at seeing services and jobs slashed. Even so, Downing Street’s war wallet is open, and it is taking the lead in Libya.

Data gathered by Britain’s Guardian newspaper from defense ministries and news reports shows that Britain has flown 25 per cent of all sorties in Libya, second only to the US. By the second week of May, 6,000 strike missions had been ordered.

Blogger Daniel Renwick says the UK is likely to have weighed up the cost. But with a warm wind blowing westwards from Libyan rebels and youth movements, Britain reckons a billion pounds is a pretty good investment.

“It’s about having control of North Africa’s resources, particularly Libya’s crude oil, which is easily accessible. Sales have already started to be made through the transitional council,” he told RT.

Some bombs cost up to $1.5 million dollars each, and with the UK cutting defense spending, it seems unlikely they will be replaced. And when you’re dealing with such big numbers, small things make a big difference.

“The Eurofighter Typhoon [aircraft] costs 90,000 pounds an hour [to operate], so small changes in the number of hours you estimate produce big changes in cost estimates. I would go for the upper end,” Shank Joshi from the Royal United Services Institute said.

Wars are always expensive, but the costs back home could prove more difficult to afford. Next in line to strike are a million public sector workers, who are being asked to work more and get less. The disruption to services could run into weeks.

The commitment to continue in Libya for however long suggests a blank check at a time when there is little in the kitty. The deployment of Apache helicopters does not appear to have given NATO the tactical advantage it hoped for; and every time a plane takes to the sky or drops a bomb, the cost for Britain and its beleaguered European neighbors creeps higher and higher.

www.rt.com 

20.06,11

Million Man, Woman and Child March in Tripoli, Libya.

The Libyan people have been demonstrating and showing their adherence to their historic hero, Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, who seized power from a corrupt ignominious king in 1969 and handed to to the masses on 2nd March 1977 when the world's first self-governing masses society came into existence, thanks to direct participatory democracy by way of people's conferences and people's committees.

Since then, Mu'ammar has dedicated his life to the people of Africa and the world, speaking truth to power,putting forward solutions to the problems facing humanity, and left The Green Book as his legacy to all future generations.

Since his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, in which he called for reform of the organization, he has been targeted for elimination by those who control the UN Security Council.

www.mathaba.net

19.06,11

NATO official: Gadhafi a legitimate target

(CNN) -- A U.N. resolution justifies the targeting of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a senior NATO military official with operational knowledge of the Libya mission told CNN Thursday.

The resolution applies to Gadhafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official was not authorized to talk to the media.

Asked by CNN whether Gadhafi was being targeted, the NATO official declined to give a direct answer.

But NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu disputed the claim, saying the alliance was not specifically targeting Gadhafi.

"We are targeting critical military capabilities that could be used to attack civilians, including command and control centers that could be used to plan and organize such attacks," Lungescu said.

"We are simply not targeting individuals."
NATO has been ramping up pressure on the regime, employing helicopters last weekend for the first time against Gadhafi's forces. Explosions are heard often in Tripoli, evidence of allied air strikes.

NATO intervened in March in the months-long civil war under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians as Gadhafi tried to crush the revolt against him.

The resolution adopted by the U.N. Security Council authorized "all necessary measures," with the exception of a ground invasion, to protect civilians.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday it is time to start planning for what to do in Libya after Gadhafi's departure "because Gadhafi's reign of terror is coming to an end."

But Gadhafi has refused to step down, going so far this week as to do a live audio broadcast as NATO warplanes bombed his Tripoli compound.

"We will not surrender," he said during Tuesday's broadcast.

NATO recently announced its decision to extend its mission in Libya by 90 days.

www.CNN.com
10.06.11

----------------------------------------------------------------------

What about killing Prabakaran and his terrorist gang? Is killing them a war crime?

But killing a leader of a country is not a war crime. Such a hypocrisy. What kind of animals are these ‘Nato’ fascists?

මුන්ට පිස්සුද? අපිට පිස්සුද ?

Chinthaka
10.06.11

Libyan NATO rebels force captured Libyan army soldiers to eat raw dog meat

YouTube is full of evidence such as this, proudly recorded by NATO's "Libya rebels" on their mobile phones, and without any condemnation whatsoever by NATO countries.

Other videos widely circulated but too graphic to display on a news agency web site, include the cold blooded murder of a surrendered soldier who said his heart is with Muammar Qaddafi, was then beheaded while handcuffed, and his heart cut.

www.mathaba.net

08.06.11

What is this? These are the real war crimes. Why the west keep their silence on these crimes while accusing Sri Lanka of war crimes.

Chinthaka

Aircraft carrier left us to die, say migrants

Exclusive: Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised

Refugees from Libya reach Lampedusa. A warship failed to rescue a boat in trouble – leaving 61 people on board to die.

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned. Two of the nine survivors claim this included a Nato ship.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

International maritime law compels all vessels, including military units, to answer distress calls from nearby boats and to offer help where possible. Refugee rights campaigners have demanded an investigation into the deaths, while the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, has called for stricter co-operation among commercial and military vessels in the Mediterranean in an effort to save human lives.

"The Mediterranean cannot become the wild west," said spokeswoman Laura Boldrini. "Those who do not rescue people at sea cannot remain unpunished."

Her words were echoed by Father Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs the refugee rights organisation Habeshia, and who was one of the last people to be in communication with the migrant boat before the battery in its satellite phone ran out.

"There was an abdication of responsibility which led to the deaths of over 60 people, including children," he claimed. "That constitutes a crime, and that crime cannot go unpunished just because the victims were African migrants and not tourists on a cruise liner."

This year's political turmoil and military conflict in north Africa have fuelled a sharp rise in the number of people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with up to 30,000 migrants believed to have made the journey across the Mediterranean over the past four months. Large numbers have died en route; last month more than 800 migrants of different nationalities who left on boats from Libya never made it to European shores and are presumed dead.

Underlining the dangers, on Sunday more than 400 migrants were involved in a dramatic rescue when their boat hit rocks on Lampedusa.

The pope, meanwhile, in an address to more than 300,000 worshippers, called on Italians to welcome immigrants fleeing to their shores.

The Guardian's investigation into the case of the boat of 72 migrants which set sail from Tripoli on 25 March established that it carried 47 Ethiopians, seven Nigerians, seven Eritreans, six Ghanaians and five Sudanese migrants. Twenty were women and two were small children, one of whom was just one year old. The boat's Ghanaian captain was aiming for the Italian island of Lampedusa, 180 miles north-west of the Libyan capital, but after 18 hours at sea the small vessel began running into trouble and losing fuel.

Using witness testimony from survivors and other individuals who were in contact with the passengers during its doomed voyage, the Guardian has pieced together what happened next. The account paints a harrowing picture of a group of desperate migrants condemned to death by a combination of bad luck, bureaucracy and the apparent indifference of European military forces who had the opportunity to attempt a rescue.
The migrants used the boat's satellite phone to call Zerai in Rome, who in turn contacted the Italian coastguard. The boat's location was narrowed down to about 60 miles off Tripoli, and coastguard officials assured Zerai that the alarm had been raised and all relevant authorities had been alerted to the situation.
Soon a military helicopter marked with the word "army" appeared above the boat. The pilots, who were wearing military uniforms, lowered bottles of water and packets of biscuits and gestured to passengers that they should hold their position until a rescue boat came to help. The helicopter flew off, but no rescue boat arrived.

No country has yet admitted sending the helicopter that made contact with the migrants. A spokesman for the Italian coastguard said: "We advised Malta that the vessel was heading towards their search and rescue zone, and we issued an alert telling vessels to look out for the boat, obliging them to attempt a rescue." The Maltese authorities denied they had had any involvement with the boat.

After several hours of waiting, it became apparent to those on board that help was not on the way. The vessel had only 20 litres of fuel left, but the captain told passengers that Lampedusa was close enough for him to make it there unaided. It was a fatal mistake. By 27 March, the boat had lost its way, run out of fuel and was drifting with the currents.

"We'd finished the oil, we'd finished the food and water, we'd finished everything," said Kurke, a 24-year-old migrant who was fleeing ethnic conflict in his homeland, the Oromia region of Ethiopia. "We were drifting in the sea, and the weather was very dangerous." At some point on 29 or 30 March the boat was carried near to an aircraft carrier – so close that it would have been impossible to be missed. According to survivors, two jets took off from the ship and flew low over the boat while the migrants stood on deck holding the two starving babies aloft. But from that point on, no help was forthcoming. Unable to manoeuvre any closer to the aircraft carrier, the migrants' boat drifted away. Shorn of supplies, fuel or means of contacting the outside world, they began succumbing one by one to thirst and starvation.

The Guardian has made extensive inquiries to ascertain the identity of the aircraft carrier, and has concluded that it is likely to have been the French ship Charles de Gaulle, which was operating in the Mediterranean on those dates.

French naval authorities initially denied the carrier was in the region at that time. After being shown news reports which indicated this was untrue, a spokesperson declined to comment.

A spokesman for Nato, which is co-ordinating military action in Libya, said it had not logged any distress signals from the boat and had no records of the incident. "Nato units are fully aware of their responsibilities with regard to the international maritime law regarding safety of life at sea," said an official. "Nato ships will answer all distress calls at sea and always provide help when necessary. Saving lives is a priority for any Nato ships."

For most of the migrants, the failure of the ship to mount any rescue attempt proved fatal. Over the next 10 days, almost everyone on board died. "We saved one bottle of water from the helicopter for the two babies, and kept feeding them even after their parents had passed," said Kurke, who survived by drinking his own urine and eating two tubes of toothpaste. "But after two days, the babies passed too, because they were so small."

On 10 April, the boat washed up on a beach near the Libyan town of Zlitan near Misrata. Of the 72 migrants who had embarked at Tripoli, only 11 were still alive, and one of those died almost immediately on reaching land. Another survivor died shortly afterwards in prison, after Gaddafi's forces arrested the migrants and detained them for four days.

 The route of the boat

Despite the trauma of their last attempt, the migrants – who are hiding out in the house of an Ethiopian in the Libyan capital – are willing to tackle the Mediterranean again if it means reaching Europe and gaining asylum.
"These are people living an unimaginable existence, fleeing political, religious and ethnic persecution," said Zerai. "We must have justice for them, for those that died alongside them, and for the families who have lost their loved ones."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/08/nato-ship-libyan-migrants

Russian math genius answers $1 million question

 Reclusive Russian math genius Grigory Perelman finally explained his rejection of a $1 million prize for solving a problem that has puzzled scientists for over a century, the Russian newsru.com website reported on Friday.
"Emptiness is everywhere and it can be calculated, which gives us a great opportunity ... I know how to control the universe. So tell me, why should I run for a million?" Perelman said in an interview with journalist Alexander Zabrovsky, quoted in Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda


In March 2010, the Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced that Perelman, 43, would be awarded the million dollar prize for proving the Poincare conjecture, one of seven problems on the institute's Millennium Prize list.

Perelman declined the prize.

"I learned how to calculate voids, along with my colleagues we know the mechanisms for filling in the social and economic voids," he said.

The conjecture, first proposed by Henri Poincare in 1904, posits that the three-sphere is the only type of bounded three-dimensional space possible that contains no holes.

Perelman presented proofs on the conjecture in 2002 and 2003. Several high-profile teams of mathematicians have since verified the validity of his proof.

In 2006, Perelman refused to attend a congress in Madrid where he was to receive a Fields Medal, often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Perelman calls himself a "man of the Universe." It is rumored that his brain is already estimated to be worth $1 million or more, Komsomolskaya Pravda said.

Perelman, who lives in a small apartment in St. Petersburg with his elderly mother, is unemployed and neighbors say he lives in poverty. He has rejected job offers at several top U.S. universities.

MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti)

Russia celebrates Great Victory.