Yesterday (2/6/11) a Chevron owned oil refinery exploded in Pembrokshire, west Wales killing four. Clearly this was no accident. Instead it was designed to send a two part message. Firstly as the dead workers have been described as "contractors" it is Britain's way of denying that it has deployed ground troops in Libya by arguing that the 11 men caught on video on Tuesday (31/5/11) were private military security contractors (PMSC) rather then British soldiers. Although the practice of de-badging members of the SAS so they can take part in covert/illegal operations has been going on since Oman in the 1970's this argument still doesn't really work. Apart from banning the deployment of ground troops the UN resolutions on Libya also call on foreign governments to prevent their citizens from travelling to Libya to act as PMSC or mercenaries as they're more commonly known.
More ominously the incident also appears to be Britain sending the message to American that if they in any way interfere with Britain's attempts to steal Libyan oil from out under their noses Britain will respond by attacking American economic interests. That's probably something America will want to bring up through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) court.
Speaking of courts Ratko Maldic today (3/6/11) made his first appearance in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. He has been committed to trial on two counts of genocide including Srebrenica, one count of persecution, three counts of extermination, two counts of deportation/forcible transfer, two counts of inhumane/unlawful acts designed to cause terror and one count of hostage taking. No plea was entered but the next part of the trial was scheduled to take place on July 6th 2011. However it's clear that in this proceeding both the accused and the court intend to be belligerent and we might not just be talking about the Mladic case.
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