Britain, France could try no fly zone resolution this week

Antara News, Tue, March 8 2011

United Nations (ANTARA/AFP) - Britain and France are drafting a UN resolution on a no fly zone over Libya which could be put to the Security Council this week, a diplomat said.

"You should expect something on Libya this week," the diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Saturday that his country is working with Britain on a no-fly zone resolution. Britain has spoken out strongly for an exclusion zone to stop raids by Moamer Kadhafi`s warplanes on opposition rebels.

"The French and the British are working on a text. It will be put to the 15 members of the UN Security Council quite quickly. There is a feeling of urgency now," the UN diplomat said.

"You cannot leave the population to be massacred and do nothing," the envoy added.

The UN Security Council unanimously passed sanctions against the Kadhafi regime and ordered a crimes against humanity investigation on February 26. Any new move toward military action is likely to face tough resistance from China, Russia and other members of the 15.

The council is to be briefed on the turmoil in North Africa on Tuesday from UN under secretary general B. Lynn Pascoe.

Editor: B Kunto Wibisono

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(Guardian: US Diplomat Meets Burma Leader - 12 Oct 2007)

.... Many governments have urged stern U.N. Security Council action against Burma, but members China and Russia have ruled out any council action, saying the crisis does not threaten international peace and security.

"This issue does not belong to the Security Council," China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said Thursday. "These problems still, we believe, are basically internal." ...

Aung San Suu Kyi freed from house arrest (Nov. 13, 2010)

"I just don't think we can talk about preventing genocide if we're going to ignore the human rights organs of the UN." (Gay McDougall, a UN advisor at the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide)

Wen Jiabao makes pledge to China's poor at National People's Congress

Gorbachev Turns 80, Slams Putin over Russian Democracy

Israeli troops use tear gas against women protesters (video)

RT, Mar 5, 2011

Israeli soldiers have been found using tear gas and smoke grenades against female protesters in an attempt to disperse them. One Swedish activist, from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was hurt when a gas canister scraped her arm and singed her hair. She was treated by Palestinian paramedics at the scene.

Dozens of Palestinian women along with international activists demonstrated in northern Jerusalem, calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West bank. The Palestinian activists are inspired by the calls for democracy that toppled autocratic leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.

Bradley Manning's forced nudity to occur daily

Salon, by Glenn Greenwald, Mar 5, 2011

To follow-up on yesterday's observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future -- not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees. They claim that it is being done "as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent him from injuring himself."

Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs -- especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring? There's no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself? And if this is truly such a threat, why isn't he on "suicide watch" (the NYT article confirms he's not)? And why is this restriction confined to the night; can't he also off himself using his briefs during the day?

Let's review Manning's detention over the last nine straight months: 23-hour/day solitary confinement; barred even from exercising in his cell; one hour total outside his cell per day where he's allowed to walk around in circles in a room alone while shackled, and is returned to his cell the minute he stops walking; forced to respond to guards' inquiries literally every 5 minutes, all day, everyday; and awakened at night each time he is curled up in the corner of his bed or otherwise outside the guards' full view. Is there anyone who doubts that these measures -- and especially this prolonged forced nudity -- are punitive and designed to further erode his mental health, physical health and will? As The Guardian reported last year, forced nudity is almost certainly a breach of the Geneva Conventions; the Conventions do not technically apply to Manning, as he is not a prisoner of war, but they certainly establish the minimal protections to which all detainees -- let alone citizens convicted of nothing -- are entitled.

Continue reading

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Mervyn King slams banks for putting profits before people and preying on the vulnerable

Daily Mail, by DAILY MAIL REPORTER, 5th March 2011

Mervyn King said problems in the banking
sector still remained and 'imbalances' in
the system were 'beginning to grow again'

The Governor of the Bank of England has slammed high-street banks for preying on the 'gullible or unsuspecting' and urged them to take a longer-term approach to their business and not simply try to 'maximise profits next week'.

Mervyn King also warned Britain risks suffering another financial crisis unless fundamental reforms of the profit-obsessed banking sector are pushed through.

He said problems still remained and 'imbalances' in the system were 'beginning to grow again'.

The intervention, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, comes as a Government commission is considering whether financial institutions should be forced to separate retail and investment banking arms.

'We allowed a (banking) system to build up which contained the seeds of its own destruction,' Mr King said.

'We've not yet solved the 'too big to fail' or, as I prefer to call it, the 'too important to fail' problem. The concept of being too important to fail should have no place in a market economy.'

Asked if there could be a repeat of the financial crisis, Mr King said: 'Yes. The problem is still there. The search for yield goes on. Imbalances are beginning to grow again.'

Mr King suggested that the culture of short-term profits and bonuses could be to blame for the issues. Traditional manufacturing industries had a more 'moral' way of operating.

More...

• 'Tortured on the telephone' over loan of £20,000: Judge attacks credit card firm and axes debt Standard Chartered hits out at messy banking rules
  
  
• 'They care deeply about their workforce, about their customers and, above all, are proud of their products,' he said.

'(With the banks) there isn't that sense of longer-term relationships. There's a different attitude towards customers. Small and medium firms really notice this: they miss the people they know.

'If it's possible (for financial services firms) to make money out of gullible or unsuspecting customers, particularly institutional customers, that is perfectly acceptable.'

King stood by previous comments that appeared to endorse the
coalition's strategy for reducing the deficit. Shadow chancellor
Ed Balls has warned the governor against becoming too political

However, good businesses 'keep a clear vision of who their customers are, and are run by people who don't think they should simply maximise profits next week', according to the governor.

He stood by previous comments that appeared to endorse the coalition's strategy for reducing the deficit. Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has warned the governor against becoming too political.

But Mr King said: 'It is inconceivable that the governor has no view on the size of the deficit and the need to reduce it.

'It would be a dereliction of duty for me not to warn. You need a credible plan to reduce it, over the lifetime of a Parliament. But it is for ministers, not for me, to say how this should be done.'

Pressed on the chances of an imminent interest rate rise - potentially as early as next week - Mr King said there was a 'perfectly reasonable case for doing it now'.

But he added that increasing rates too soon would be a 'futile gesture'.

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Interpol issues alert against Libyan leader, associates

English.news.cn 2011-03-05

BRUSSELS, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The international police organization Interpol on Friday issued an Orange Notice against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and 15 others, including his family members and close associates, according to a statement posted on the Interpol website.

The notice urged the Interpol's 188 members to enforce United Nations sanctions against Libya, and to support investigations into alleged crimes against humanity in the oil-rich North African country by the Hague-based International Crime Court (ICC).

The ICC announced on Thursday that it would investigate Gaddafi as well as several commanders and officials with formal or de facto authority over forces that allegedly attacked peaceful demonstrators.

The Interpol Orange Notices are often issued to warn police, public entities and other international organizations about potential threats from disguised weapons, parcel bombs and other dangerous materials.

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Army charges WikiLeaks suspect with more offenses

The Jakarta Post, Robert Burns, The Associated Press, Washington | Thu, 03/03/2011

The U.S. Army said Wednesday it has filed 22 additional charges against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group.

Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning

Army officials said the charges accuse Manning of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."

The charges follow seven months of Army investigation. "The new charges more accurately reflect the broad scope of the crimes that Pvt. 1st Class Manning is accused of committing," said Capt. John Haberland, a legal spokesman for the Military District of Washington.

One charge - aiding the enemy under the Uniform Code of Military Justice - is a capital offense, but the Army's prosecution team has notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the major general in charge of continuing with legal action.

In a written statement detailing the new charges, the Army said that if Manning were convicted of all charges he would face life in prison, plus reduction in rank to the lowest enlisted pay grade, a dishonorable discharge and loss of all pay and allowances.

Trial proceedings against Manning have been on hold since last July, pending results of a medical inquiry into Manning's mental capacity and responsibility.

If that inquiry determines that he is mentally fit to be tried, the military equivalent of grand jury proceeding may be held. The Army said Manning was notified in person of the additional charges on Wednesday.

He is confined in the Marine Corps Base Quantico brig in Quantico, Virginia, south of Washington.

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Student files lawsuit over FBI's GPS tracking

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Reporters Without Borders condemns attacks on WikiLeaks

Student files lawsuit over FBI's GPS tracking

AP, Mar 3, 2011

In this Jan. 5, 2011 photo shows Yasir Afifi at his home in San Jose, Calif. Afifi says
he's never done anything that should raise the attention of federal law enforcement
is suing the FBI for secretly putting a GPS on his car. Afifi says a mechanic doing an
oil change in October discovered the device stuck under his car with magnets. Afifi
says two days later, agents showed up outside his apartment and demanded their
property back. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A community college student who says he's never done anything that should attract the interest of federal law enforcement officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the FBI for secretly putting a GPS tracking device on his car.

Yasir Afifi, 20, says a mechanic doing an oil change on his car in October discovered the device stuck with magnets between his right rear wheel and exhaust. They weren't sure what it was, but Afifi had the mechanic remove it and a friend posted photos of it online to see whether anyone could identify it. Two days later, Afifi says, agents wearing bullet-proof vests pulled him over as he drove away from his apartment in San Jose, Calif., and demanded their property back.

Afifi's lawsuit, filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, claims the FBI violated his civil rights by putting the device on his car without a warrant. His lawyers say Afifi, who was born in the United States, was targeted because of his extensive ties to the Middle East — he travels there frequently, helps support two brothers who live in Egypt, and his father was a well-known Islamic-American community leader who died last year in Egypt.

FBI Spokesman Michael Kortan declined to discuss the lawsuit or the agency's investigation into Afifi, but said, "The FBI conducts investigations under well-established Department of Justice and FBI guidelines that determine what investigative steps or techniques are appropriate. Those guidelines also ensure the protection of civil and constitutional rights."

Afifi, who is a business marketing major at Mission College and works as a computer salesman, said at a news conference to announce the suit that the agents never gave him a clear answer as to why he was being monitored.

"I'm sure I have done nothing wrong to provoke anyone's interest," Afifi said, although he noted that his family is from Egypt, he's a young man and he makes a lot of calls overseas. "So I'm sure I fit their profile."

Judges have disagreed over whether search warrants should be required for GPS tracking.

Afifi's lawyers say they are filing this lawsuit in hopes of a decision saying that any use of tracking devices without a warrant in the United States is unconstitutional.

The federal appeals court in the Washington circuit where Afifi's case was filed ruled in August that the collection of GPS data amounts to a government "search" that required a warrant. The Obama administration asked the court to change its ruling, calling the decision "vague and unworkable" and arguing that investigators will lose access to a tool they now use "with great frequency."

The lawsuit says the agents who showed up to collect the device were "hostile," threatening to charge Afifi if he didn't immediately cooperate and refusing his request to have a lawyer present. The suit also says agents showed they knew private details about his life, such as which restaurants he dined at, the new job he'd just obtained and his plans to travel abroad.

"At first I was really confused," Afifi said at the news conference, adding that he finally decided to turn over the GPS. "I did give it back to them after a lot of pressure."

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Anti-gay US church has right to picket funerals: court

Anti-gay US church has right to picket funerals: court

RNW, 2 March 2011

A church that pickets military funerals with signs saying "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags" is protected by the US constitution's right to free speech, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday
upheld the Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest outside
of military funerals. (Associated Press)

"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain," said the decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist church, which pickets soldiers' funerals, claiming God killed them to show anger over US tolerance of homosexuality.

"On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an eight-to-one decision in favor of the church made up mainly of direct members of the family of founder and leader Fred Phelps.

Phelps was sued several years ago for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of distress by the father of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq in 2006 -- and was not gay.

According to the Supreme Court decision, the Westboro Baptists picketed Matthew Snyder's funeral, carrying signs with slogans including "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "America is Doomed, "Fag Troops," and "You're going to hell."

But they picketed peacefully and with police permission on private land about 1,000 feet (300 meters) from the Maryland church where the funeral was held, the decision says.

While the signs "fall short of refined social or political commentary... they reflect the fact that the church finds much to condemn in modern society," the justices said, characterizing the Westboro Baptist Church's message as "speech on a matter of public concern."

"The funeral setting does not alter that conclusion," the decision added.

The lone dissenting justice, Samuel Alito, denounced the church's "brutalization" of Snyder, which he said should not be allowed on the pretext of defending First Amendment rights to free speech.

"Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case," Alito said.

"In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like the petitioner."

Many ordinary Americans were rooting for Snyder and his family, whose grief was compounded by the fact that the justices handed down their decision almost five years to the day that Matthew died in Iraq at the age of 20.

In a Facebook posting, Matthew's sister Sarah said she was "appalled and saddened that our country would allow this to happen."

"Matt was killed 3/3/06 in Iraq fighting for a country he completely believed in, fighting for the very rights that these people have taken to an entirely new level," she said.

A supporter of the family, Joey Zovich, posted the phone number of the Supreme Court and urged Americans to exercise their First Amendment right by phoning it to express their disgust.

But free speech advocates like lawyer Andrew Contiguglia hailed the decision -- even if they disagreed with the way the Westboro Baptists express themselves.

"This shows that the old adage 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' still stands strong in the 21st century," Contiguglia said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the decision had found the fine balance between respecting the Snyder family's grief and not abandoning "core First Amendment principles designed to protect even the most unpopular speech on matters of public concern."

The justices, who had mulled arguments presented by both sides in the case since November, admitted that the decision was "narrow" and reached with difficulty.

"We are required in First Amendment cases to carefully review the record, and the reach of our opinion here is limited by the particular facts before us," they said.

"Westboro believes that America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about Westboro," they wrote in their opinion, which upholds a 2009 appeal court ruling rejecting a federal jury's decision that awarded Snyder's father $11 million, reduced to $5 million, against the church.

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Gorbachev Turns 80, Slams Putin over Russian Democracy

Novinite.com, World, March 2, 2011, Wednesday

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (L) speaks with former Soviet Union
president Mikhail Gorbachev (R) during their meeting at the Gorki residence
outside Moscow, Russia 02 March 2011. EPA/BGNES

On his 80th birthday former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev has criticized the Russian state leadership in the face of PM Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev.

In an interview for Russian weekly "Argumenty i Fakty", Gorbachev has urged Putin to learn from the civil unrest in the Arab countries government by their presidents for decades, and not to seek a new presidential term in the election in 2012.

"If I were him I would not run for president. People don't want to be a mass, a herd, led for decades by the same shepherds," Gorbachev said pointing as an example to the fate of outsted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Putin served two terms as president between 1999 and 2008 before being appointed prime minister by Medvedev, his successor and political protégé. While Russia's constitution forbids a leader from serving more than two consecutive terms, Putin could stand again in next year's presidential election.

In comments last month, Gorbachev, who was the Soviet leader from 1985 until the collapse of the Communist government in 1991, said Putin's United Russia party reminded him of the Communist Party and described Russian democracy as an "imitation".

"We have everything - a parliament, courts, a president and a prime minister, but these all are to a larger extent an imitation," Gorbachev said.

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize winner lent his support to a new political movement called Civic Dialogue, headed by prominent human-rights defendants and other public figures.

Gorbachev was acclaimed in the West during the final days of the Cold War for his "perestroika" and "glasnost" programs of economic and political reform. He stepped down at the end of 1991, following the failure of a hardline coup to depose him as the Soviet Union broke apart. He has been a marginalized figure in Russia, with many holding him responsible for the political and economic upheavals which followed the collapse of the communist system.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did award Gorbachev a St. Andrew medal for his work as a state leader on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

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General Assembly suspends Libya from UN Human Rights Council

UN News, Mar 1, 2011

UN General Assembly

1 March 2011 – The General Assembly today suspended Libyan membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council because of President Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s violent repression of peaceful protesters demanding his ouster.

The vote by the 192-member Assembly, following a request from the Geneva-based Council itself last Friday that it suspend Libya, one of the top UN right’s body’s 47 elected members, was the latest measure taken by the UN, where the Security Council has already imposed sanctions on Mr. Qadhafi’s regime and requested that the International Criminal Court investigate it for possible crimes against humanity.

Ex-Goldman director charged with insider trading

Chron.com, By MARCY GORDON and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press Writers © 2011 The Associated Press, March 1, 2011

FILE - In this Jan. 3, 2009 file photo, Rajat Kumar Gupta,Chairman
of Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, listens to
a statement, during a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland. Federal regulators have charged Gupta, a Goldman Sachs
former board member with insider trading, saying Tuesday, March 1, 2011,
he provided confidential information to the central figure in a major
hedge fund probe.(AP Photo/Keystone/Alessandro Della Bella, file)

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have charged a former Goldman Sachs board member with insider trading, saying he provided confidential information to the central figure in a major hedge fund probe.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the civil charges against Rajat Gupta on Tuesday. The agency said Gupta told Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway planned to invest $5 billion in Goldman before it was publicly announced in Sept. 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.

Gupta also is charged with giving Rajaratnam confidential quarterly earnings information from Goldman and Procter & Gamble. Gupta served as a board member at Goldman from 2006 until last May. He was board member at P&G until voluntarily resigning on Tuesday, after the charges were announced.

Gupta was an investor in some of the Galleon hedge funds when he passed the information along, and he had other business interests with Rajaratnam that were potentially lucrative, the SEC said. Rajaratnam used the information from Gupta to illegally profit in hedge fund trades, the SEC said.

The information on Goldman made Rajaratnam's funds $17 million richer, the SEC said. The Proctor & Gamble data created illegal profits of more than $570,000 for Galleon funds managed by others, the SEC said.

Gupta "has vigorously denied the SEC accusations that are being leveled at him and is stepping down in the interests of the company, to prevent any distraction to the P&G board and our business," Paul Fox, P&G spokesman in Cincinnati, said Tuesday.

Gupta's attorney, Gary Naftalis, wasn't immediately available for comment. Gupta also is a board member of AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines.

Rajaratnam, a one-time billionaire who is free on $100 million bail, is scheduled to go on trial next week in a probe that has resulted in criminal charges against more than 25 people. Of those, 19 have already pleaded guilty to charges with the majority of them cooperating.

Prosecutors have said Rajaratnam generated profits of more than $50 million by getting inside information about earnings statements by public companies and plans for mergers and acquisitions. He has pleaded not guilty and has maintained that he only traded on information that was already public.

Jim McCarthy, a spokesman for Rajaratnam, declined to comment on the civil charges against Gupta.

"Prosecutors are going after the biggest heads and now it has infiltrated the largest brokerage and hedge funds around," said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago securities attorney who has handled insider-trading cases. "We are seeing the reaches of insider trading at the highest level."

The case against Gupta will be heard by an administrative law judge at the SEC. That proceeding will determine whether Gupta should pay restitution and civil fines and if he should be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company, the SEC said.

The criminal securities fraud against Rajaratnam, who has both U.S. and Sri Lankan citizenship, was announced in October 2009 by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Prosecutors described it as the largest hedge fund insider-trading prosecution in history. It was also described as the first time investigators made extensive use of wiretaps in an insider-trading probe. The investigative tool is more traditionally used in drug and organization crime probes.

Late last year, prosecutors revealed that the Rajaratnam investigation had resulted in an expanded probe focusing on those in the securities industry who provide insider information about public companies to hedge funds, but disguise the information as the product of research.

If convicted, Rajaratnam faces up to 185 years in prison. Potential penalties in insider-trading cases can sound ominous when the statutory limits are stacked together. But they can shrink dramatically when the cases are resolved.

Neumeister reported from New York. AP Business Writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Rachel Beck in New York contributed to this report.

A television at the NYSE showed the effect of fraud charges on
Goldman Sach’s stock price on on Friday. (AFP Photo/Getty Images)

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U.S., British officials benefited from thaw in Libya relations

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U.S., British officials benefited from thaw in Libya relations

Some who led effort to end sanctions in 2003 later did business with Gadhafi regime

MSNBC, By Michael Isikoff, National investigative correspondent, NBC News, Feb 28, 2011

The U.S. government’s condemnation of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in recent days followed an eight-year period in which U.S. and British leaders sought to appease the Libyan dictator and play down his human rights abuses in an effort to open up his oil rich country for lucrative business deals.

Those policies — after years of international sanctions — later proved profitable for some of those officials, as they left government and went to work for companies doing business in that country.

The chief U.S. diplomat who negotiated the restoration of U.S.-Libya relations was later hired as a vice president for Bechtel, the giant engineering company, and put in charge of overseeing projects in Libya. The top British spymaster who helped arrange for Gadhafi to give up his nuclear weapons program was then hired by BP to oversee the oil company’s massive exploration deal in Libya.

Now, the efforts to curry favor with Gadhafi — endorsed by both the Bush and Obama administrations — are triggering harsh reactions in some quarters amid the reports of the Libyan dictator's violent suppression of the popular revolt inside his country.

“All those people in the diplomatic world who thought somehow he would be a modern progressive leader should be ashamed of themselves,” Rabbi Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was among the 259 people killed in the Libya-orchestrated 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, told Al-Jazeera last week. “When we make it possible for a brutal dictator to stay in power and oppress his own people we are complicit.”

Read more reporting by Michael Isikoff in "The Isikoff Files"

After Gadhafi agreed to give up his nuclear and chemical weapons programs in 2003, the administration of former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government moved to “normalize” relations with Libya. The one-time pariah state was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, economic sanctions were lifted and full diplomatic relations were restored.

(In fact, there are now doubts about whether Gadhafi lived up to his bargain. A video recording has surfaced that allegedly shows chemical and biological weapons that have been seized in the past two days in Misrata, Libya, from a "security brigades' storage unit" by rebels opposed to Gadhafi’s regime.)

Gadhafi himself was treated to visits from a parade of senior officials, including Blair in 2004 and 2007 and then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008. (Gadhafi had previously heaped praise upon Rice, telling Al-Jazeera, "I support my darling black African woman. ... Leeza, Leeza, Leeza. ... I love her very much.")

Obama continues courtship

The move to cultivate Gadhafi continued under President Barack Obama’s administration. In July 2009, Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, traveled to Tripoli and promoted greater military cooperation between the U.S. and Libya to fight terrorism. When asked about Libya’s human rights records (sharply criticized in multiple State Department reports), Feltman said that would not be an obstacle for Obama in securing a closer “partnership” between the two countries.

Obama “is not in the business of standing up and pointing fingers when he sees others do not live up to … these principles,” Feltman said during his trip when asked about past U.S. criticism of Libya’s human rights record.

At about the same time, prominent U.S. lobbying firms got big contracts to represent Gadhafi’s regime in Washington and burnish its international image. And the chief of a business group that lobbied Capitol Hill for closer ties with Libya landed a top post in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Among the examples of the “revolving door” relationships involving top U.S. and British officials and big Western corporations doing business in Libya:

• David Welch. The senior U.S. diplomat who led the negotiations that restored full diplomatic ties between U.S. and Libya, Welch quit the State Department at the end of 2008 and immediately went to work as a vice president for Bechtel, responsible for the company's Middle East and European divisions.. Among his duties: landing Bechtel contracts to build power plants and other projects in Libya. Welch’s efforts appeared to bear fruit last year when Bechtel announced that it had opened up a new office in central Libya “to support expansion of business in the country.” A spokesman for Bechtel did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
  
  
• Bob Livingston. A former Louisiana congressman and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Livingston’s Washington lobbying firm — the Livingston Group — signed a $2.4 million contract to represent Libya in Washington in 2008. Livingston told Fox8-TV last week he later “fired” Libya after Gadhafi’s government gave a hero’s welcome to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, after he was released from a Scottish prison and returned to Libya in August 2009.
  
  
• David Goldwyn. An international energy consultant who now serves as the State Department’s “coordinator for energy affairs,” Goldwyn previously served as executive director of the U.S.-Libya Business Association, a consortium of major oil companies (including BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Halliburton) and other multinationals that lobbied for closer ties with Libya in order to facilitate new business opportunities. Goldwyn testified before Congress on the issue and, after leading a delegation of business executives to Tripoli in December 2008, talked about the “fantastically warm reception” they received from senior Libya officials. A State Department spokesman said that in his new job, Goldwyn does not work on Libya affairs.

The U.S. cultivation of Gadhafi was overshadowed by an even bigger effort to curry favor with the Libyan dictator by the British government, as documented in a report to Parliament last month.

That report showed that under the previous Labor governments of Blair and Gordon Brown, the British government went to unusual lengths to please Gadhafi, in part to nail down a $900 million oil exploration deal that BP had signed in 2007.

A key BP consultant on the project: Mark Allen, the former MI6 British spymaster for the Mideast who developed a personal relationship with Gadhafi in U.S. and British negotiations aimed persuading him to give up his nuclear program in 2003.

Documents released in the British government report shows that Allen and another BP executive personally lobbied British officials about the importance of signing a “prisoner transfer agreement” with Libya that might allow for the release of Al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber. Libyan officials had warned that the failure to release al-Megrahi would jeopardize the BP oil deal. (BP has consistently declined to comment on Allen’s role, but has insisted that the company never directly lobbied the British government for al-Megrahi’s release.)

(Libya’s former justice minister, Abdel Jalil, has said in recent days he has “proof” that the bombing was ordered by Gadhafi and that al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, threatened to “spill the beans” if the Libyan leader did not arrange his release from prison.)

The British government report included the release of friendly letters that Brown wrote to Gadhafi, taking a personal interest in his family, extending Ramadan greetings, and expressing his interest — as he put in one Sept. 27, 2007, note — in “developing a close and productive relationship with you personally.” That letter included plugs for the BP oil deal and approval of a separate deal by General Dynamics UK and the European consortium MBDA to sell a tactical air defense system to Libya.

Brown’s government was sharply criticized in the report for making a policy decision – never publicly stated — to secure al-Megrahi’s release by the Scottish government. Brown, in a statement after the report was released last month, called the Lockerbie bombing “an unspeakable act of terrorism” and said he never pushed the Scottish government to release the convicted bomber. He also emphasized that in another letter he sent Gadhafi in August 2009 he told the Libyan leader “there should be no public celebration in Libya if he (al-Megrahi) were released” — a plea that was ignored by Gadhafi.

The policy of appeasing Gadhafi now may be causing at least some of those who implemented it some second thoughts. Blair, who twice traveled to Tripoli to meet with Gadhafi in 2004 and 2007, last on Friday personally called the Libyan leader and asked him to stop killing protesters.

In the U.S., Elliot Abrams, a former National Security Council official in the Bush administration who handled Mideast affairs, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday defending the decision to lift sanctions against Libya in exchange for him giving up weapons of mass destruction.

“Seen from this bloody February of 2011,” Abrams wrote, “the agreement with Libya was still the right policy. Gadhafi in his bunker with control over missiles, chemical weapons, and a rudimentary nuclear program is a terrifying thought.”

But Abrams said he hoped that the Libyan people would not remember the U.S. only for the most recent chapter of its relationship with Gadhafi.

“Gadhafi’s “vicious regime has left Libya far worse than he found it on the day of his coup in 1960,” Abrams wrote. “Like Idi Amin and Emperor Bokassa, Gadhafi will soon join the pantheon of grotesque dictators who leave their countries in ruins. Given the last years — when quiet disapproval replaced forcefully denunciation as U.S. policy — we can only hope that Libyans remember the decades when we were Gadhafi’s worst enemy.”

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