Operation Oil Theft: Month 3, Week 4, Day 1.

Following the intensification of the air campaign to co-incide with the G8 Summit fighting in Libya has settled back into it's normal pattern. NATO are carrying out around 60 bombing missions per day and around two dozen people are being killed everyday as Libyan government forces and rebels exchange fire in Misrata in the west and Brega in the east.

This stalemate has caused a particular problem for NATO because the mission in Libya was originally only authorised for 90 days and was set to come to an end at the end of June. On June 1st (1/6/11) NATO extended that authorisation and the mission will now continue until the end of September 2011 at the earliest.

Although Britain and France authorised the use of ground attack helicopters last week (27/5/11) there has been no evidence that they are actually being used in Libya. This is probably due to concerns that the use of ground forces would clearly put Britain in France of UN resolution 1973(2011). I don't see why they're that worried about the helicopters though because on Tuesday (31/5/11) this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju-xouWdImM emerged which shows 11 white, western men fighting alongside the rebels in Misrata. The men have since been identified as de-badged members of Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) and the Parachute Regiment although there is no word on when they left the British army and when they intend to re-join. Yesterday (1/6/11) this incident forced the British government to officially deny that it has deployed ground troops in Libya although few people in Britain will be aware of that because the BBC was showing wall to wall coverage of the FIFA election.

Following the theme of media manipulation yesterday (1/6/11) it was again announced that the Libyan oil minister, Shukuri Ghanem had defected to the rebels. As this was the fourth time that Ghanem's defection had been announced not even the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) believed it until they were shown footage of a press conference Ghanem had given in Italy.

After the International Criminal Court's (ICC) investigation into war crimes in Libya the UN released a report on their own investigation into the matter yesterday (1/6/11). Unlike the ICC investigation it found that both sides in the conflict had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The rebels specialised in ethnic violence specifically the torture and killing of sub-Saharan (black) migrant workers. So I guess the Libyan National Front aren't that much different from the British National Front after all.

In the most worrying development of the conflict the Tibetsy hotel in Benghazi which houses foreign diplomats visiting the rebels TNC was hit by a car bomb yesterday (1/6/11). Although no-one was killed in what seems to be a rather crude attack the incident is reminiscent of events in post-invasion Iraq just before the country descended into carnage.