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Whenever a horrific terror attack hits the West, the media/political etiquette rejects any linkage between the atrocity and the Wests wars in the Arab world, a blackout now applying to the Manchester bombing, notes John Pilger.

By John Pilger

The unsayable in Britains general election campaign is this: Thecauses of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist assets in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal review.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years. The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organization, which seeks a hardline Islamic state in Libya and is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida.

The smoking gun is that when Prime Minister Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in battle: first to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a terrorist watch list and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a political target in Britain. Why wasnt he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on May 22?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the lone wolf spin in the wake of the May 22 attack thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trumps apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britains biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial West and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

The Manchester Boys

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the Manchester boys.Implacably opposed to Muammar Gaddafi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders house arrest when anti-Gaddafi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. I was allowed to go, no questions asked, said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africas largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gaddafi in the 1990s bankrolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the U.S. seized the opportunity of a humanitarian intervention and attacked Libya. They were joined by NATO under cover of a United Nations resolution to protect civilians.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of erroneous assumptions and that the attack had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa. The Commons committee quoted what it called President Barack Obamas pithy description of Camerons role in Libya as a shit show.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the shit show, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning genocide against his own people. We knew that if we waited one more day, said Obama, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda. The Commons committee reported, The proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.

Destroying Libya

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 strike sorties of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the U.N. childrens organization, reported a high proportion of the children killed were under the age of ten.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a liberator, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britains SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the Manchester boys.

To the Americans and British, Gaddafis true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the U.S. as it prepared to enter Africa and bribe African governments with military partnerships.

After losing control of Tripoli, Gaddafi fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was captured and sodomized with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as a rebel.

Having plundered Libyas $30 billion arsenal, the rebels advanced south, terrorizing towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that countrys fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony to fight al-Qaida, the menace they had helped create.

On Oct. 14, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending Special Forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, U.S. combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

Selling Weapons

In London, one of the worlds biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the demonstration effect in Libya. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the banks arms party lauded the unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.

The Manchester atrocity on May 22 was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. Iraq! he said. We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered Iraq and Blair as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bushs blood-soaked shit show, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on May 22.

The spin is back, not surprisingly: Salman Abedi acted alone; he was a petty criminal, no more than that; the extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a political target in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a war on terror that has failed. As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria.Iran is said to be next.Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilgers Web site is:www.johnpilger.com. His new film, The Coming War on China, is available in the U.S. from http://www.bullfrogfilms.com

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Libya's Link to Manchester's Tragedy - Consortium News

CAIRO Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was quick to launch air strikes on militants in Libya in response to a deadly attack on Coptic Christians in Egypt - but the attacks do not seem to be targeting those responsible.

The response was popular with many Egyptians. The country's state-owned and private news media celebrated it as swift justice, but the president has been vague about exactly who he is attacking.

Graphic on air strikes: tmsnrt.rs/2qGHiPd

The strikes have been directed at Islamist groups other than Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for Friday's massacre of dozens in the southern province of Minya, and seem to be intended to shore up Sisi's allies in eastern Libya.

"The attacks in Minya were claimed by Islamic State, and there are Islamic State elements active in Libya, but the reports coming indicate Cairo is targeting other groups," said H.A. Hellyer, senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

In any case, analysts say the strikes will not do much against Islamists in Cairo, Sinai and Upper Egypt, where they have had a stronghold since the 1990s and have been attacking tourists, Copts and government officials.

Bombing the camps in Libya is seen as a diversion for a failure to defeat Islamists inside Egypt.

"It's easier to strike a terrorist camp in Libya by air than it is to clean up serious problems inside Egypt; sectarianism, radicalization, that led to this and other attacks," said Michele Dunne, director of Carnegie's Middle East program.

"All the horrific terrorism that is happening inside Egypt has purely domestic drivers and probably would be happening if Islamic State did not exist. It is not all that different from the home-grown terrorism Egypt experienced in the 1990s, before Al Qaeda or Islamic State even existed," she said.

LIBYAN ALLY

Egyptian and Libyan officials said strikes had been launched on camps and ammunition stores belonging to the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council (DMSC). Areas targeted include the western entrance toDerna, Dahr al-Hamar in the south, and al-Fatayeh, a hilly area about 20 km (12 miles) from the city.

Yet the DMSC has never been involved in attacks outside Libya and in fact mostly limits its activities to Derna, rarely fighting in larger conflicts within Libya, according to Mohamed Eljarh, an Atlantic Council political analyst in Libya.

The group has denied taking part in attacks inside Egypt.

In fact, many suggest the air strikes had been planned in advance to shore up support for Sisi's main Libyan ally, Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), and that the Minya massacre was used as a pretext to launch them.

Forces loyal to Haftar, a military strongman like Sisi, have long been fighting the DMSC, cutting off supply routes to the city and hitting it with occasional air strikes. Despite the LNA's siege, the military situation in Derna has been in stalemate for months.

Egypt has also carried out strikes in Jufra, where the LNA has been fighting Islamists who fled Benghazi as well as forces linked to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.

The LNA lost dozens of men there in a surprise attack on an air base earlier in May, but has since consolidated control.

The Minya attack was a catalyst for those inside the Egyptian government and military who are in favor of military intervention in Libya, said Mokhtar Awad, who researches extremism at George Washington University.

"This is Egypt taking action not because of the Minya attack but ... to drive out as many extremists as possible from the east," he said.

'THEY ARE ALL TERRORISTS'

Egypt says it does not target specific groups but that it goes after all militants who could be a threat to its security. A military spokesman told state media on Monday that all the groups targeted have the same ideology as those who carried out the Minya massacre, which is reason enough to bomb them.

"Names are not important for us, they are all terrorists. Those who carried out the Minya operation do not necessarily have to be in these camps but their followers are," an Egyptian intelligence source told Reuters.

Eljarh also said it was likely the air strikes has been planned in advance and that the Minya attack was an opportunity to carry them out, as part of a larger policy toward supporting Haftar, with Egypt bombing groups that constitute the strongest opposition to him.

Egypt sees any militant activity in eastern Libya, which is near its border, as a threat to its national security. One of the reasons Sisi has supported Haftar since 2014 is to ensure that all Islamists are driven out of eastern Libya.

Sisi is getting more involved now because of improved relations with Washington, Eljarh said. He believes U.S President Donald Trump has given him the green light to fight jihadists in Libya and elsewhere.

When Sisi announced the first round of air strikes on television on Friday, he implored Trump to support him.

Trump, who has made a point of improving relations with Cairo, said his country stood with Sisi and the Egyptian people.

(Additional reporting by Eric Knecht, Amina Ismail and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Aidan Lewis in Tunis; editing by Andrew Roche)

SEOUL South Korean President Moon Jae-in's top security aide left for Washington on Thursday as the new leader tries to reassure Seoul's main ally he won't scrap a deal to host a missile defense system that has angered China.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said he would announce on Thursday his decision whether to keep the United States in a global pact to fight climate change, as a source close to the matter said he was preparing to pull out of the Paris accord.

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump talked trade with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a White House visit on Wednesday and welcomed the signing of business deals worth billions of dollars and the jobs they would create.

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Is Egypt bombing the right militants in Libya? - Reuters

OPEC oil output rose in May, the first monthly increase this year, a Reuters survey found on Wednesday, as higher supply from two OPEC states exempt from a production-cutting deal, Nigeria and Libya, offset improved compliance with the accord by others.

According to Reuters surveys, a drop-in output in Angola and Iraq and continued high compliance from Gulf producers, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, helped lift OPECs adherence with the supply cut deal to 95 per cent from 90 per cent in April.

OPEC pledged to reduce output by about 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) for six months from January 1, 2018 as part of a deal with Russia and other non-members.

Oil prices has gained some ground but an inventory glut and rising supply by outside producers has kept prices below the $60 a barrel that Saudi Arabia wants.

A sustained output rise from Libya and Nigeria poses further challenges.

To provide additional support for prices, the producers decided at a meeting last week to prolong the deal until March 2018.

They discussed whether to include Nigeria in the output cap but decided against for now, OPEC delegates said.

Nigeria and Libya were exempted because their output has been curbed by conflict.

However, supplies from both nations staged a partial recovery in May, lifting overall OPEC output by 250,000 bpd to 32.22 million bpd.

The biggest increase came from Nigeria, where the Forcados production stream began loading cargoes for export.

The Forcados pipeline had been mostly shut since it was bombed by militants in February 2016.

In Libya, the state oil firm said output had reached 827,000 bpd on Wednesday, around levels last seen in 2014. But production is still half the 1.60 million bpd Libya pumped before the 2011 civil war.

While the exempt nations pumped more, those bound by output targets boosted compliance.

Adherence by OPEC with the deal has been higher than in the past, reaching a record according to the International Energy Agency and other analysts.

Angolan supply showed the largest decline due to fewer scheduled exports after a jump in April. Iraq exported slightly less crude from its southern terminals, the survey found.

Saudi Arabia pumped more although its compliance was the second-highest in OPEC. Even with Mays increase, the total curb achieved by OPECs top producer Saudi Arabia is 564,000 bpd, well above the target cut of 486,000 bpd.

Output in Iran and the United Arab Emirates was steady. Iran was allowed a small increase in the OPEC agreement and, having sold the oil it had held in floating storage, appears to have reached a short-term peak.

The UAE, with lower compliance than other Gulf producers, has said suggestions that it is failing to comply fully can be explained by the gap between its own figures and those estimated by the secondary sources that OPEC uses to track compliance.

OPEC announced a production target of 32.50 million bpd at its November 30 meeting, which was based on low figures for Libya and Nigeria and included Indonesia, which has since left.

No new target was announced last week to reflect this change or the addition of Equatorial Guinea, which OPEC said on May 25 joined the group with immediate effect. The country will be added to the Reuters survey from June.

The Libyan and Nigerian increases mean OPEC output in May averaged 32.22 million bpd, about 470,000 bpd above its supply target, adjusted to remove Indonesia and not including Equatorial Guinea.

The Reuters survey is based on shipping data provided by external sources, Thomson Reuters flows data, and information provided by sources at oil companies, OPEC and consulting firms.

(Reuters/NAN)

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Nigeria, Libya pump more oil as OPEC output rose in May - Premium Times

Geneva - The United Nations on Tuesday launched a $75.5 million appeal to tackle a swelling humanitarian and migration crisis in Libya.

The UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the funds would go toward providing essential services for displaced people, refugees and asylum-seekers.

The appeal is in partnership with the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM).

"We have urgent work to do in Libya and can only do it together," said UNHCR head Filippo Grandi in a statement. "We are going the extra mile in trying to make a difference for hundreds of thousands of people."

The work will buttress the IOM's own appeal, launched last month, which set down a three-year $180-million plan.

Rival administrations and militias have fought for control of the oil-rich country since the 2011 uprising that toppled Moamer Kadhafi.

Libya is also the hub for African migrants desperate to reach Europe. Their trek is notorious for exploitation and maltreatment and for the dangerous sea crossing.

The IOM Tuesday that it had tallied 1,481 migrant deaths on the Mediterranean, with a further 1,720 people missing, since the start of the year.

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UN launches $75m appeal for Libya | News24 - News24

Financial Times

Don't let Venezuela become the next Libya Financial Times For more than two months, protesters and government forces have faced off all over Venezuela, leaving more than 50 dead and hundreds wounded and imprisoned. The stand-off occurs against the backdrop of a fall of nearly a third in per capita income, the ... and more »

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Don't let Venezuela become the next Libya - Financial Times