Operation Oil Theft: Week 2. Day 3.

After advancing through Brega and Ras Lanuf the Libyan rebels are now preparing to attack Sirte, the birthplace of Qaddafi and the seat of his tribe. Obviously this places the civilians in Sirte in danger and under the terms of UN resolution 1973(2011) places an obligation on foreign forces to bomb the rebels in order to halt and turn back their advance. Foreign forces have yet to take any steps to meet that obligation and instead have been bombing Libyan government positions in and around Sirte. This has prompted Russia to publicly accuse NATO of breaching the terms of the UN resolution. We are yet to see if Russia will continue to limit itself to simply shouting criticism from the sidelines or whether it will now table a motion at the UN to have resolution 1973(2011) revoked and review it's authors places on the Security Council.

Meanwhile Britain is preparing to host a meeting of the coalition of foreign powers taking military action against Libya in London tomorrow (29/3/11). You may have been tipped off to this fact by the discovery today (28/3/11) of a "dissident Republican" bomb which failed to explode in LondonDerry, Northern Ireland. The main problem at the London meeting is that it is now rather redundant. When it was first called it's purpose was to allow the coalition partners to decide how much of Libya's oil they would have to take control of in order to make military action economically viable. Now NATO have assumed full control of operations in Libya that decision should have been taken out of the coalition's hands. The second problem is how Canada will be represented. Since the meeting was called the Canadian Parliament has been dissolved after the minority Conservative government lost a vote of no confidence and the Prime Minister, Stephan Harper was personally found to be in contempt of Parliament. With a general election not scheduled until May 2nd while Canada is bombing Libya in order to bring democracy to the middle east Canada itself is back under direct rule from the Queen of England meaning that the Canadian people have no democratic representation of their own.

In related political news over the past weekend which saw people in Britain stage a large protest against the British government the political party of French President, Nicholas Sarkozy did very badly in local elections despite a small bounce in popularity brought about by the bombing of Libya. Today (28/3/11) Silvo Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, another coalition partner made his first court appearance in one of four active criminal prosecutions against him for charges ranging from fraud and abuse of office to sex with an underage girl. It is not yet clear if the American political leadership have realised that their mistake at the UNSC has put them within a hairsbreadth of undoing 40 years hard work trying to bring peace to Israel and Palestine. However we are sure that Mrs Clinton will have some interesting views on the tactic of starting a foreign war in order to distract attention from a domestic sex scandal.