By the Editor.

Chatham House, the UK arm of the American Council on Foreign Relations held a Libya Working Group meeting on August 18. Two days before NATO’s murderous assault on Tripoli, the meeting was held to discuss “policy options for transition“, on the premise that “the end game for Colonel Gaddafi’s regime was approaching“.

For context, the corporate membership of Chatham House includes: oil multinationals such as Chevron Corporation, BP plc, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Saudi Petroleum Overseas Ltd, and Royal Dutch Shell, powerful globalist financial interests such as the City of London, AIG, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, mining companies such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, Zionist propaganda outlets such as the BBC and Bloomberg, and weapons makers such as Lockheed Martin. The Embassy of the United States of America is even listed as a major corporate member.

No reasonable adult can deny that Chatham House exists to serve its backers. As with the Council on Foreign Relations, it has a very simple purpose – to lobby and manipulate foreign and domestic policy, bending it in the direction of its globalist and Zionist sponsors.

A number of discussions were held at the Libya Working Group meeting on August 18, 2011, based around three main areas: “the ongoing conflict; challenges of the transition; and questions of social and economic reconstruction“.

The notes from the meeting (click here to download the pdf) expose the wishful thinking on the parts of the participants (who cannot be identified due to the ‘Chatham House Rule‘). The support for Gaddafi in Tripoli is grossly underestimated by Chatham House, despite them admitting they cannot substantiate their claim: “unsubstantiated figures suggest that support for the regime is as low as 30%“.

A particularly enraging passage reads: “A political settlement has been hampered by the intransigence of the regime,” something we know to be false. Gaddafi has repeatedly offered to negotiate, but it is NATO and the rebels who reject all offers – choosing the path of violence instead of dialogue.

Without admitting that arming ones own population, as Gaddafi has done, is not exactly characteristic of a ‘dictator’, the group discussed the need to disarm Libyan civilians:

The fact that large sections of the civilian population will be left with arms was highlighted as a key concern. In the immediate post-conflict period there will be an urgent need to establish a process for the collection of the weapons…

But doing what it does best, in catering to its corporate paymasters, Chatham House discusses the agricultural and retail sectors of Libya, and how they require ‘new regulation’. This is a euphemism for ‘deregulation’, whereby foreign multinationals will be allowed to swoop in and privatise everything, bringing Libya under the globalist neoliberal economic doctrine.

In the interim it is necessary to move towards resuming production levels of oil and gas – it was suggested that it might take three years to return those seen prior to the conflict. However, it was emphasized that there will be an incremental increase and that production will be able to resume at some capacity almost immediately. There will also need to be reconstruction efforts and new regulation for the agriculture and retail sectors, which are also substantial in Libya.
…
Restoring exports will be a matter of priority, both for short-term needs and for long-term development. International companies will be keen to restore production because it affects their profits, and some have already commented that they are keen to return to Libya. It was said that the new government would need to engage with foreign oil companies.

It was made clear that from here on out, Libya will be at the behest of the foreign oil companies who will be the ones defining the terms of oil contracts:

A participant suggested there would be little desire from the Libyan side to renegotiate the terms of contracts, although another participant noted that new Libyan officials might want to drive harder bargains. However the results from some of the companies that invested in 2005 have not been particularly successful, and this may limit a new government’s negotiating position.

This is reminiscent of what happened to Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The occupying powers granted complete freedom to multinational oil companies, freedom to sign 30-year contracts on extortionate terms, taking the profits overseas. For a nation that garnered most of its income from its oil, and whose economy had already been utterly eviscerated across the spectrum by relentless bombing and this very same neoliberal doctrine, this was and is a recipe for perpetual poverty and misery.

Chatham House signals the very same fate for Libya. Yet another nation whose economy relies heavily on oil for its survival and development, will have to look elsewhere as Libya’s sweet crude is stolen:

It was agreed that while there will need to be long-term thinking regarding the diversification of the Libyan economy away from oil and gas. In the immediate instance resuming production in the energy sector is of utmost importance to satisfy domestic needs and finance the provision of basic services. Previously the economy was 70% oil-and gas-driven.