United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto a “travesty”. Then Clinton duly incited “friends of democratic Syria” to keep working for regime change, which was the object of the resolution. The copyright for this idea is held by the liberator of Libya, neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said Paris was already working to create a NATOGCC “Friends of the Syrian People Group” in charge of implementing the Arab League’s regime change plan.

Right on cue, Paris puppet Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the opposition umbrella group – also summoned these countries “friendly to the Syrian people”. Everybody knows who they are; the US, Britain, France, Israel and GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With “friends” like these, the “Syrian people” certainly don’t need enemies.

Those ‘disgusting’ BRICS

United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – a top cheerleader of R2P, also known as humanitarian bombing – called the double veto “disgusting”.

Even the venerable stones of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only Washington has the right to wield veto power at the UN – overwhelmingly to protect the state of Israel’s right to kill Palestinian men, women and children with tanks and shelling without bothering about pesky UN resolutions.¹

Russia, vocally – and China, silently – had been adamant for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But, in fact, all the five BRICS – plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world – are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and – the summit of hypocrisy – devised by the “democratic” House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to the draft resolution directly to Clinton; “The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone’s doubt.” But to no avail; the resolution remained “unilateral” – demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, “No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance.” Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and Beijing “responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide”, and facilitators of a “license to kill”. Lavrov is imperturbable; “We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes.”

Homs: Who’s killing whom?

Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari strongly denied the opposition’s accusation of regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people – arguing that “no sensible person” would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity”. Like France’s performance during the Algerian war?

To understand what’s at stake, it’s crucial to keep in mind who’s defecting from the Syrian army. Syria’s top military – also members of the Ba’ath Party – are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi’ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting.

The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The government’s response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.

So what’s really happening on the ground in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds … unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on “activists”) without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people … just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is that there are no army presence in Homs. My parents left the city then came back Saturday morning on the day of the alleged massacre and there was nothing. They usually call a hotline (115) and ask if the roads are safe and security operator will tell you to come to Homs or not. This time they told them to come and indeed there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of course doesn’t mean that most of the city and particularly the old city is under the control of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube videos show how the FSA cleared the army roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one guarding our neighborhood.

People in my neighborhood did not complain of any major harassment or problem, however the “revolutionaries” did indeed break into a couple of homes that their people left either days earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants but no other complaints. I mean, considering what these FSA do to Alawites, then the Christians are really getting very fair treatment so far.

What many believe now is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in Khalidiya and which are alleged to be “men, women and children” killed by a bombardment of the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites who were not liberated (or actually exchanged). When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites started to kidnap in return to exchange the prisoners. This doesn’t always work and some people who weren’t “exchanged for” turned up dead in Khalidiya.

All in all up to this point there really isn’t any offensive by the Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to attack other checkpoints. People are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs. It’s devastating for me to see my neighborhood become another battleground and many of my friends leaving.

All this dovetails with an explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World; Homs is essentially a question of rebels seizing government checkpoints – and government forces shelling a few neighborhoods with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with regime fighters … No opposition fighters were killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I said not fighters). Now that’s a lot of people but if you were watching the news … you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city.

Compare this with my Syrian source worried that “people are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs”.

Imagine an armed insurrection in a mid-sized city in the US; the whole world saw how peaceful Occupy Wall Street was dealt with by billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. The “disgusting” BRICS have made it clear; there will be no NATOGCC humanitarian bombing of Syria. But NATOGCC may be succeeding in its plan B: to plunge Syria into civil war.

• First published at Asia Times.

1. Here’s a partial summary of US vetoes at the UN

Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not.

When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.

The Arab League’s Ministerial Committee had approved the report, with four votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against; guess who, Qatar – which is now presiding the Arab League because the emirate bought their (rotating) turn from the Palestinian Authority.

So the report was either ignored (by Western corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed – by Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even discussed – because it was prevented by the GCC from being translated from Arabic into English and published in the Arab League’s website.

Until it was leaked. Here it is, in full.

The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.

Once again, the official NATOGCC version of Syria is of a popular uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead, BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes of the developing world see it as the Syrian government fighting heavily armed foreign mercenaries. The report largely confirms these suspicions.

The Syrian National Council is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated with both the House of Saud and Qatar – with an uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of the Assad regime, but most of all is infested with these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, especially Salafist gangs.

Still NATOGCC, blocked from applying in Syria its one-size-fits-all model of promoting “democracy” by bombing a country and getting rid of the proverbial evil dictator, won’t be deterred. GCC leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed their own report and went straight to the meat of the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the UN Security Council.

So the current “Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown” in Syria at the UN is no less than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects Washington, London and Paris have been forced to fall over themselves to assure the real international community this is not another mandate for NATO bombing – a la Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as “a path for a political transition that would preserve Syria’s unity and institutions”.

But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is. Another BRICS member – India – alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled draft UN resolution.

There won’t be another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be blocked – again – by Russia and China. Even NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players – Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo – has a different long-term geopolitical agenda. Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbor and trading partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any regime change scheme.

So here’s a suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since you’re so seduced by the prospect of “democracy” in Syria, why don’t you use all your American weaponry and invade in the dead of night – like you did to Bahrain – and execute regime change by yourselves?

•  First published at Asia Times.

Jose Marti was among the glorious legion of patriots who. throughout the second half of the 19th century, fought against the loathsome colonialism brandished by Spain for 300 years. Marti most clearly foresaw such a dramatic destiny and expressed this view in the last lines he would write prior to engaging in tough combat against a well-equipped and battle-hardened Spanish column. He declared that the primary objective of his struggles were “… preventing in time, by Cuba’s independence, that the United States should expand through the Antilles and pounce with that added strength on our lands of America. Everything that I have done up to now and will do in the future shall be done for this purpose.”

Today one cannot be a patriot or a revolutionary without thoroughly understanding this profound truth.

Without a doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of technical resources, and the substantial funds earmarked for misleading and making the masses mindless today represent considerable but not insurmountable obstacles.

Cuba showed that —despite being a factory of Yankee colonialism with widespread illiteracy and generalized poverty— it was possible to stand up to the country that threatened to definitively take over the Cuban nation. No one can argue that at the time there was a national bourgeoisie that was opposed to the empire. In fact, the Cuban bourgeoisie at the time had developed such close ties to the empire that, shortly following the triumph of the Revolution, it sent 14,000 unprotected children to the United States based on the horrendous lie that Cuba was to abolish parental authority. History would come to remember this event as Operation Peter Pan and as one of the worst manipulations of children for political ends ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.

Barely two days after the triumph of the Revolution the national territory was invaded by mercenary forces —made up of former Batista soldiers and sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie— armed and escorted by the United States with ships from the US Navy fleet including aircraft carriers with equipment ready for action. The defeat and capture of almost the entire force of mercenaries in less than 72 hours, and the destruction of their planes that were operating out of Nicaraguan bases and naval transportation means, represented a humiliating defeat for the empire and their Latin American allies who had underestimated the Cuban people’s capacity to fight.

Responding to the stoppage of oil supplies from the US, the previous total suspension of traditional Cuban sugar quotas in the US market, and the ban on trade in place for more than 100 years, the USSR began to supply fuel, to buy our sugar, to trade with our country and, finally, to supply the arms that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of pirate attacks organized by the CIA, sabotages and military actions by groups created and armed by the US, before and after the mercenary attack and that would culminate with the United States’ military invasion of Cuba, gave rise to the events that pushed the world to the brink of total nuclear war that no sides or even humanity itself would have survived.

Those events no doubt cost Nikita Jruschov his job. He had underestimated his adversary, ignored opinions and information, and did not consult his final decision with those of us who were in the frontline. What could have been a significant moral victory became a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the US continued to commit the worst crimes against Cuba and many, such as its criminal blockade, are still carried out today.

Jruschov made extraordinary gestures to our country. At the time I did not hesitate in strongly criticizing the agreement reached with the United States without consultation. But it would be ungrateful and unjust to not acknowledge his extraordinary solidarity at difficult and decisive junctures for our people in their historic battle for independence and their revolution in face of the powerful US empire. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and that he did not want to lose a minute when he made his decision to remove the missiles and the Yankees, very secretly, agreed to not carry out their invasion.

Despite all the decades that have passed and make up more than half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into Yankee hands.

Current news from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, England, the Malvinas and several other parts of the planet are serious and all foretell political and economic disaster due to the foolhardiness of the United States and its allies.

I will limit myself to just a few topics. I must point out that the campaign to select a Republican candidate as the possible future president of this globalized and far-reaching empire has become —I say this in all seriousness— the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been heard. But as I have things to do, I cannot dedicate any time to this topic. I knew it would be like this.

I prefer to analyze some other press dispatches that show the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of these reports, with amazing tranquility, tells the story of a Cuban “political prisoner” who, according to the article, died after a 50-day hunger strike. A journalist from Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio or any other [Cuban] news agency might make a mistake writing on any given topic, but they would never make up a news story and fabricate a lie.

The article published in Granma confirms that the 50-day hunger strike did not take place. The prisoner was in jail for committing a common crime and sentenced to four years for an assault that left his wife’s face battered. The man’s own mother-in-law went to the police to request their help. All family members were aware of all the procedures taken regarding the medical care he received and were thankful of the efforts carried out by the specialist doctors who attended him. The article goes on to say that he received care at the best hospital in eastern Cuba, as any other citizen would have received. He died as a result of secondary multiple organ failure associated with an acute respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the available medical care from a country that possesses one of the best medical systems in the world and that provides these services free-of-charge, despite the empire’s blockade against our country. It simply represents a duty in a country where the Revolution proudly respects, as it always has for more than 50 years, the principles that gave it its invincible force.

Given their excellent relations with Washington, it would be best if the Spanish government went to the United States to take a look at what happens in Yankee prisons, their ruthless treatment of millions of prisoners, their electric chair policy, and the horrors committed against prisoners and public protesters.

On Monday, January 23, Granma published a full-page, hard-hitting editorial entitled Cuba’s Truths. The article details the exceptional degree of shamelessness in the latest campaign of lies launched against our Revolution by some governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuban subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the standards that have governed over the irreproachable conduct of our Revolution since the first combat and that has never been sullied throughout more than half a century. They also know that they can never be pressured or blackmailed by their enemies. Our laws and regulations will invariably be abided by.

This is worthwhile to point out with total clarity and openness. The Spanish government and the beat-up European Union, in the midst of an acute economic crisis, should know what to abide by. It is a disgrace to read declarations from both regions in news reports that are full of shameless lies attacking Cuba. Try to save the Euro first if you can, try to resolve chronic unemployment that increasingly affects young people, and respond to the indignados who have only received attacks and constant beatings from the police.

We cannot ignore that those who currently govern in Spain are admirers of Franco, who sent members of the Blue Division along with SS and SA Nazis to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the bloody attacks. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war, the Leningrad Blockade where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division were part of the forces that attempted to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never forgive that horrendous crime.

The right wing fascists led by Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire must know about the 16,000 fatalities suffered by their predecessors of the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses that Hitler awarded the officials and soldiers of that division.

It is not a surprise then to see how the Gestapo police are treating the Spanish men and women who demand the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why do the mass media outlets of the empire lie so shamelessly?

Those who control those media outlets are determined to deceive and make the world mindless with their gross lies, maybe believing that they represent the main recourse necessary to maintain the global system of domination and plunder, especially against those victims close to the mother country —the close to 70 million Latin Americans and Caribbean people who live in this hemisphere.

The fraternal republic of Venezuela has become one of the main targets of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Agreement on all of the people of the continent living south of the United States; an area that holds the planet’s largest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals as well as great energy resources, which, when managed in solidarity with the other people in the world, constitutes resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals that impose a suicidal and despicable system.

It is enough, for example, to look at the map to understand the criminal dispossession carried out against Argentina of a piece of its territory in the far south. In the Malvinas, the British employed their decadent military apparatus to assassinate inexperienced Argentine recruits dressed in summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States and their ally Augusto Pinochet shamelessly supported England in this endeavor. Currently, with the London Olympics on the horizon, British Prime Minister David Cameron is once again proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The British government is unaware that the world is changing and that the disdain felt in our hemisphere by the majority of the people against the oppressors is growing with each day.

The case of the Malvinas is not alone. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan will end? A few days ago US soldiers committed outrages against the bodies of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone aircraft.

Three days ago a European news agency published an article stating that Afghani President Hamid Karzai gave his support of a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban, stressing that it must be resolved by citizens in his country. Hamid Karzai added that the peace and reconciliation process belongs to the Afghani nation and that no foreign country or organization can take away this right from Afghanis.

An article in the Cuban press written in Paris reported:

Today France suspended all its military training and support operations in Afghanistan and threatened to move up the date for the withdrawal of its troops after an Afghani soldier killed four French military officers in the Taghab valley in the province of Kapisa…Sarkozy gave instructions to Defense Minister Gerard Longuet to immediately travel to Kabul, and warned of the possibility of an early withdrawal of troops.

When the USSR and the Socialist Camp disappeared, the United States government thought that Cuba would not be able to support itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counter-revolutionary government to preside over our country. The same day that Bush began his criminal war against Iraq, I requested that our authorities stop with the policy of tolerance towards the counter-revolutionary leaders in Cuba that had been hysterically calling for an invasion of Cuba. In reality, their actions constituted an act of treason against the Homeland.

Bush and his stupidities reigned for eight years at a time when the Cuban Revolution had already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has never fallen into the lap of the empire. Cuba will never become another force used by the empire to expand over the people of the Americas. Marti’s blood will not have been shed in vain.

France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy gains headlines, and mostly for appropriate reasons. He is in the news almost every day – marriage to a celebrity model, leading the charge against dispatched Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whom he befriended months earlier, scuffling with Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel over how to save the Euro and French banks, camera shots with the new baby, and at an October 7, 2011 meeting in Armenia stating that “Turkey’s refusal to recognize the [Armenian] genocide would force France to make such denials a criminal offense.”

Peoples who suffered genocide have the right to solicit compensation for displaced survivors from the guilty government and to seek means to correct the wrong. Others have an obligation to help. Nevertheless, knowing that President Sarkozy’s statement would irritate Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and force him to reject the bill, there must be more to the French President’s actions and to the French National Assembly December 20, 2011 vote that proposed a year in jail and a fine of $58,000 to those publicly denying the alleged genocide.

Note: The expression ‘alleged genocide’ is used for impartiality. There is neither intention to deny genocide nor assent to a thesis that it did not occur.

What does the bill accomplish for France?

Is denial of an Armenian genocide a polarizing issue in France? Do citizens of La Patria openly debate Ottoman Empire responsibility for an alleged genocide that happened one hundred years ago? Does French jurisprudence need this bill to prevent a significant offense? The necessity to pass a law that makes it a crime to deny the alleged Armenian genocide is baffling. To whom is it directed and what is its purpose?

The bill will not help the victims; after all, they are gone. What happened in the Armenian part of Turkey almost a century ago is not a French issue, and therefore will neither resolve a present or future French problem nor change French life. It is doubtful that many citizens thought about the issue and argued a need for the bill.

The bill will create problems

Old wounds are opened, and with them renewed hatreds will occur. As the western world starts to overcome its prejudices and learns to appreciate the Turkish nation, Sarkozy shakes the world with accusations of criminal behavior by the almost ancient Ottoman government.

Just when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on reconciliation with Armenia and his own Armenian citizens, a challenge interrupts the peace-minded progress. After decades of hostility, Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement in October 2009 to establish diplomatic relations and open their borders. Unfortunately, neither government has ratified the agreement due to the lack of settlement of a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that was formally inside Azerbaijan and, since a 1990s war, is occupied by ethnic Armenians.

The bill, written one hundred years after an event, makes it illegal for people to rebut accusations that their ancestors initiated genocide and considers them complicit in the atrocities if they defend their elders. The Turks are probably asking themselves: “If this bill is necessary, why aren’t there bills concerning complicity of many western powers in the mass killings of Indigenous populations in the Western Hemisphere, African populations throughout Africa, which includes slavery in the United States, Asians, most prominently in China, India, and the Philippines, and their own populations in Europe?”

Not stopping atrocities, and then criminalizing words that question the extent of the atrocities, smacks of duplicity; an attempt to hide failures by achieving political correctness. Isn’t there something wrong in a democratic nation when opinions can be made illegal and illegal deeds are not prevented?

Why aren’t remaining effects of previous genocides not directly countered?

Existing effects of previous genocides require more attention than bills that punish people for denying genocide. In North, Central and South America, Indigenous peoples who suffered genocide continue to struggle for cultural survival and to maintain their dignity. Inca and Mapuche from South America, Maya from Central America, and Indigenous peoples in North America remain disempowered in trying to regain the land and resources stolen from them and find themselves slowly decimated and slipping into obscurity. Grief still inhabits their faces and squalor is forced upon them.

Disadvantages arising from past actions have been, and always will, impede descendants of American slaves in their progress. While severe disadvantage is not easily overcome, advantage is capitalized and adds to advantage. African Americans deserve a compensation that enables them to overcome the disadvantages in order to achieve an equal status with White America.

Why are these victims of genocide not being properly helped? The answer is simple: the economic capital (a huge amount to right the wrongs done to the African Americans) will not return a positive political benefit. Note that these genocides are often denied with one statement – a natural course of history – and the detractors are not punished.

What motivated a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged genocide?

Proving hidden motivations for passage of the bill cannot be easily justified or demonstrated. Frame the question in another context: Knowing that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan would disregard President Sarkozy’s statement and vehemently reject the bill, how will others benefit from a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged Armenian genocide?

Prime Minister Erdogan has taken independent stances that lead many to regard him his courage. His stances and moral attitude have generated opposition and disturbed those who envy his popularity. The French bill shifts the moral compass from Erdogan to Sarkozy and reduces the impact from Erdogan’s independent positions.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has steered Turkey away from the severe nationalist polices of its militarist predecessors. The bill places Erdogan and his AKP Party in a difficult position. Accept the bill and lose favor with a great majority of the Turkish electorate. Reject the bill and give the appearance of following a renewed nationalist policy.

Those who view Turkey as too independent, too large, and too Muslim seek any excuse to keep Turkey out of the European Union. Add to the list Turkey’s unwillingness to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s culpability in the alleged Armenian genocide.

When friendly with Turkey, Israel rejected recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide. Now that the two nations are declared antagonists, is it possible that Israel, whose Knesset held a renewed discussion on recognizing the Armenian genocide, played a role in promoting the bill in order to embarrass Erdogan?

Armenia has an unresolved situation with Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian lobby consistently works to keep the atrocity alive and direct sympathy to Armenia.

France has a law that calls genocide denial a criminal offense. People are questioning why the law is applied to the World War II holocaust and not to other genocides.

An Armenian lobby and contributors can play a significant role in the coming French presidential election.

The bill might backfire on President Sarkozy and damage French interests.

An injured Turkey, that has become dubious of a wounded European Union, might shift its allegiance and interchange from the western world to Russia, China and India. If that happens, NATO, who relies greatly on Turkey’s geo-strategic position, will find itself engaging a more difficult partner.

Preventing genocide and assisting its remaining victims has highest priority. However, perpetually aggravating hatred rather than pursuing reconciliation and using a genocide for enhancing a personal or national agenda create suspicion. Making criminals of those who recognize atrocities but deny that ancestors deserve to be included as purveyors of genocide is a controversial afterthought and an arm twister: “Say uncle or go to jail.”

The next day, the self-immolation was confirmed as a suicide: Lise Bonnafous had died from the third-degree burns that covered 95% of her body. So ended the life of this 44-year-old teacher who had been working for ten years at the Jean-Moulin Lycée at Béziers, one of the largest in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

In a carefully worded statement the 280 teachers at the lycée declared: “This symbolic act has left us reeling and has caused us all much heart-searching (‘nous interroge tous’). This gesture is a call to solidarity for the entire staff and bears witness to the difficulty we have in accomplishing our mission.”

Teaching at the lycée was suspended as staff and students attempted to come to terms with this gruesome event. The teaching staff declared a strike of indefinite duration until responsibility for the tragedy could be established. The French teaching union SNES called for a “debate” concerning the tragedy and pressed the ministry of education for “an improvement in the general conditions of work for teachers, which have become considerably more demanding in the last few years”. Another union, SNALC, said that the suicide points to “an immense malaise in the entire profession”. The unions organised a “white march” (“marche blanche”) in Béziers on 18 October and a further march in Montpellier the following day.

Officials were quick to portray the suicide as the isolated act of a mentally unstable teacher. The French minister of education, Luc Chatel, referred to her “psychologically fragile state” and said that she had been receiving “pedagogical and medical treatment”. However, this claim is denied by colleagues: “Luc Chatel is lying, she was not being treated medically nor was she fragile, but she was conscientious, competent, she loved her work, and she had courage,” said a colleague, a certain F. Peru. Other colleagues pointed out that teachers generally have been reduced to a “fragile” state because of a steady deterioration in their conditions of work.

In any case, this was no ordinary suicide: rather, a symbolic act of self-immolation with all the horrifying impact on those involved, especially the eye witnesses. But even if one may deplore this self-inflicted violence and the trauma it has caused, one cannot ignore the context in which such an extreme act was carried out. Indeed, some of her colleagues regard her as a hero, and admire her for paying the supreme sacrifice in order to draw attention to the problems within the French education system. Morale among French teachers is after all low, as teachers are contending with a number of problems simultaneously, including government cuts, “reforms” (widely suspected as money-saving ploys) and increasingly disruptive behaviour on the part of students.

In the 2011 budget, 16,000 lycée posts are scheduled to disappear out of a total of 850,000 teachers. The increased class size (40 or more) is making effective teaching more difficult and also adding to the marking load for each teacher. The cuts are perceived as all the more perverse because they do not correspond to a decrease in the number of students.

Teachers feel abandoned and misunderstood, that they are not being listened to. They say that recent “reforms” have been introduced without their views being taken sufficiently into account. One symptom of this is that the one-year teacher-training course, in which students taught half-time and spent the rest of the time in training – has been abolished: from now on young teachers will be forced to face the classroom for the first time with almost no preparation. Instead, the trainees are obliged to attend a few “training sessions” throughout the year. Exactly what is taught in these sessions has emerged in a report about one such session held in Bordeaux on 3 December last year. Trainees were lectured on their rights and duties as civil servants – but were not given any actual training on classroom teaching. Instead, they “benefited” from a talk in which two army officers tried to persuade trainees to steer their students towards a career in the army!¹  “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army,” said Frederick the Great. Towards what career is the French government trying steer its students, if not a military one?

Disruptive behaviour in the classroom is another concern, pointing to problems within society at large. Sometimes this leads to assaults on teachers, which are on the increase. The FNEC FP-FO teaching union links the increase in violence and incivility to the suppression of teaching posts and CPEs (a team of administrators responsible for disciplinary matters): more than 60,000 positions abolished since 2007. If the recent changes have a negative effect on student behaviour or performance, the cuts will have turned out to be a false economy.

The attempt to instil martial virtues is not the only example of insensitivity on the part of the educational authorities. Bad feeling has also been caused by the increase in bonuses paid to the rectors of education academies (the regional bodies responsible for implementing national education policy) at a time when less money is being allocated for teaching. In fact bonuses are a normal part of the benefits package of France’s top civil servants. In this case, however, the bonuses were doubly outrageous: first, they were being awarded to proviseurs in proportion to the number of posts or institutions they were able to abolish; second, for 2011 the bonus had been increased from 19,000 to 22,000 euros – money that could have been used to help pay the somewhat meagre salary of teachers. The issue of bonuses was highlighted when a retired lycée director, Michel Ascher, an officer in the order of “Palmes Académiques”, handed back his decoration in protest. In an open letter dated 22 December 2010 he publicly lambasted the French educational system as being concerned exclusively with money. Other holders of the same distinction quickly followed suit.

A sign that teaching resources are being stretched is that the rules governing the conditions under which teachers are supposed to work are being flouted. Several teachers have been assigned classes in schools from 35 to as many as 66 kilometres apart, even though the rules clearly state that the teacher may be asked to teach only in the same town or in a neighbouring one. This immediately creates extra work in terms of commuting and multiplication of meetings with staff and parents. Of course, a teacher has the right – after a months-long appeal process – to refuse these extra demands, but at a price. The proviseurs (lycée directors) wield a lot of power. They can put pressure on you to teach another subject instead of paying someone else who is qualified to do it; they can assign you to larger classes if you exercise your right to refuse to work more than two supplementary hours; or they can simply order you to teach those extra hours.

Other “reforms” are in the pipeline. A proposed new law would change the way lycées are inspected. Instead of the current independent inspectorate, the task of inspecting would fall to the directorate of the lycée itself. Apart from the fact that the work schedules of proviseurs and vice-proviseurs are already stretched, the proposal almost guarantees that the process will be carried out in a perfunctory way at best. At worst, favouritism, or the suspicion of favouritism, is an obvious danger, not to mention conflict of interest and lack of impartiality. Such a measure merely reinforces the suspicion among teachers that the so-called “reforms” are a thin disguise for money-saving ploys.

On suspects too that Sarkozy is playing to popular discontent with civil servants, the category to which lycée teachers belong. French bureaucracy is cumbersome and expensive, and civil servants are often seen as lazy, overpaid and over-protected. Anything that would bring their pay and conditions into line with the private sector is seen by many as a good thing. However, while it is true that some civil servants are well paid, this is not the case with most lycée teachers. Teachers face the added problem of a restrictive work schedule: whereas most workers can take time off then they please, teachers are obliged to turn up for the classes and cannot change their schedule. The stereotype of feather-bedded bureaucrats does not apply to teachers.

Secondly, Sarkozy wants to go one better than the private sector: in an effort to cut down on absenteeism, it is being proposed that civil servants forfeit one day’s pay for each period of sick leave. Apart from the measure’s obvious unfairness in criminalizing illness, it could have the reverse effect to the one intended: workers who are genuinely sick the first day could well decide to take a second or even a third day off in addition, even if they are not sick, just to get their “money’s worth”.

France is generally viewed as a “worker-friendly” country where employees receive generous social benefits and can be sacked only with difficulty. The reality, however, is that unhappiness at the workplace is a major problem in France. (It was probably a factor behind the recent strikes against pension reforms.) Renault was hit by a spate of workplace suicides a few years ago. France Telecom lost a staggering 58 of its employees to suicide within three years. In a grim premonition of the Lise Bonnafous case, one worker killed himself by setting himself on fire. Another “model” in the Bonnafous case could have been street vendor’s suicide that sparked off the revolution in Tunisia.

Both Renault and France Telecom were facing difficulties at the time the suicides occurred, and low morale would have been an issue even under the best management. In the specific case of France Telecom, it has been alleged that there was a policy of attempting to reduce staff without resorting to redundancies.[8] The suspicion must be that, precisely because redundancy is such a laborious and expensive process in France, in certain cases employers are resorting to ruthless tactics to slim down their workforce: making life hell for their employees in the hope that they will leave – unless, that is, they commit suicide first.

In the case of the French education system, however, the likely culprit is incompetence and lack of imagination rather than ruthless pursuit of profit. However you view the causes, Lise Bonnafous’s is by no means the first suicide among teachers: recent cases include a school director in July, two teachers in June, and in August a young trainee who had been dismissed. According to a study by Inserm (a public research institute) dating from 2002, the suicide rate among teachers in the national education system is unusually high, at 39 per 100,000 per year.

French teachers are hoping their educational system will not become another France Telecom.

1. “Des militaires pour former les profs stagiaires”, www.rue89.com/2010/12/15/des-militaires-pour-former-les-profs-stagiaires-180932, based on an eye-witness account given to a representative of the SNES of Lot-et-a-Garonne

How could the U.S. behave so recklessly, not realize it was responsible for the atomic arms race and for allowing and even moving others to obtain the bomb? Why does it not consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Answers to both these questions expose an almost purposeful U.S. policy to drive others to obtain the “doomsday explosive” and, if we concede the Islamic Republic is developing a bomb, give meaning to Iran’s determination to develop a nuclear weapon. A simple proposition can deaden that determination, and not only for Iran; the world’s major powers can give any nation that entertains a “first strike” a rethink: do it and get demolished.

The consequence of not facing down to India and Pakistan defines the real arms race; nuclear weapons in the military depots of nations that contain extremist elements who kill mercilessly and, if able to obtain the weapons, would apply them worldwide, including at the United States. Iran’s possibility of obtaining a nuclear capability is conjectural and not as significant as the actual; Pakistan has many bombs and Pakistan is politically stable. The laxity is emphasized by the lack of control on previous actions by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s (in)famous nuclear physicist.

In 2004, Dr. Khan indicated he had provided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs and centrifuge technology to aid in nuclear weapons programs. Where was the CIA when Khan roamed the world? Pondering about Iran, no doubt, and developing policies that have driven North Korea to develop a nuclear deterrent and motivating Iran to do the same.

Noting U.S. intensive hostility towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), coupled with its extensive military presence in Japan and South Korea, shouldn’t the Pyongyang leaders be apprehensive? Their apprehension inspired them to welcome previous treaties.

In October 1994, President Clinton negotiated the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework:

North Korea agreed to freeze its existing plutonium enrichment program and be monitored by the IAEA;
Both sides agreed to replace by 2003 North Korea’s reactors with light water reactors, financed and supplied by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO);
The United States agreed to provide heavy fuel oil to the DPRK for energy purposes until atomic energy was available;
The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations;
Both sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula; and
Both sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

What happened to this anxiety relieving treaty? The charges, countercharges, truths, and distortions are difficult to unravel.

Not debatable is that the George W. Bush administration signaled North Korea with unfriendly intentions. Despite it being the most significant milestone in the treaty, the first reactor, promised for delivery by 2003, was pushed up until 2008 at the earliest. A leaked version of the Bush administration’s January 2002 classified Nuclear Posture Review mentioned North Korea as a country against which the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons.

After starts and stops, self-destruction of nuclear facilities and reconstruction of the same facilities, the DPRK proceeded to definitely develop nuclear weapons. Their arguments for this posture had validity. The United States did not meet its most important commitment, President George W. Bush designated North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” the State Department continually equated not having a peace treaty with Pyongyang violations of human rights, and Washington carelessly inferred that, if hostilities developed, North Korea could expect a nuclear attack. What did the Bush administration expect of the ‘hermit state’ leaders? The U.S. State Department evidently imagined, by being conciliatory, Kim Jong IL would take advantage and secretly develop an atomic bomb. However, by not being conciliatory, it assured the DPRK would be provoked into securing a nuclear weapon.

Except for the United States’ offensive attack against Japan, the nuclear club nations that signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty developed the weapons as deterrents. The Soviet Union needed to neutralize USA power. Great Britain and France requisitioned a nuclear arsenal to defend against the Soviet Union. China had the greatest fear; it was surrounded by a world of enemies.

Of those who have not signed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — all, except Israel had deterrent as an immediate reason. India feared China, Pakistan feared India and North Korea feared the United States. When Israel allegedly started nuclear weapons developments in 1963, none of its antagonists were even thinking nuclear.

The United States claims that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons because Iran’s developments will provoke a Middle East nuclear arms race. However, by allowing Israel to develop the weapons, the U.S. and friends already stimulated the Middle East arms race. It is mainly due to the United States, Great Britain, and France that Israel has nuclear capability. As a consequence, Middle East nations sought means to neutralize the Israel bomb.

Saddam Hussein clearly expressed this dilemma in a speech he made at al-Bakr University, 3 June 1978.

“When the Arabs start the deployment, Israel is going to say, ‘We will hit you with the atomic bomb.’ So should the Arabs stop or not? If they do not have the atom, they will stop. For that reason they should have the atom. If we were to have the atom, we would make the conventional armies fight without using the atom. If the international conditions were not prepared and they said, “We will hit you with the atom,” we would say, “We will hit you with the atom too. The Arab atom will finish you off, but the Israeli atom will not end the Arabs.”¹

France started Israel on the road to nuclear capability with the sale of a nuclear reactor and uranium fuel.

“Franco-Israeli nuclear cooperation is described in detail in the book Les Deux Bombes (1982) by French journalist Pierre Pean, who gained access to the official French files on Dimona. The book revealed that the Dimona’s cooling circuits were built two to three times larger than necessary for the 26-megawatt reactor Dimona [supplied by France] was supposed to be — proof that it had always been intended to make bomb quantities of plutonium. The book also revealed that French technicians had built a plutonium extraction plant at the same site. According to Pean, French nuclear assistance enabled Israel to produce enough plutonium for one bomb even before the 1967 Six Day War. France also gave Israel nuclear weapon design information.”²

Great Britain paved the road for Israel to reach the bomb. When he was UK prime minister, Harold Wilson supplied Israel with plutonium.

“In Harold Macmillan’s time the UK supplied uranium 235 and the heavy water which allowed Israel to start up its nuclear weapons production plant at Dimona — heavy water which British intelligence estimated would allow Israel to make ‘six nuclear weapons a year.’”³

The United States looked the other way.

“After the United States discovered the Dimona reactor in 1960, U.S. nuclear specialists inspected Dimona every year from 1965 through 1969, looking for signs of nuclear weapon production. It is not clear what they found, but in 1968 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported to President Lyndon Johnson its conclusion that Israel had already made an atomic bomb. In 1969, Israel limited inspection visits by U.S. scientists to such an extent that the Americans complained in writing. Without explanation, the Nixon administration ended the visits the following year.”²

After tacitly agreeing to Israel’s nuclear weapon developments and permitting India and Pakistan to go nuclear, the United States engages Iran in a similar manner to its engagement with North Korea — provoking Iran to develop a bomb in another “lose-lose” situation.

Blind to the effects on Iran’s posture, the U.S. stages its military in adjacent nations to Iran, constantly harangues Iran about its human rights record and its despotic government and accuses Iran of all sorts of terrorist activities. None of the activities are specified nor does the charge consider that Iranians are mysteriously getting assassinated, their facilities are blowing up, their computers are attacked by the Stuxnet virus, and CIA spies are being uncovered and arrested by them and Hezbollah. Who are doing these nefarious activities? Aren’t they terrorists?

Although insurgents in Iraq carry U.S. weapons, the U.S., without proof, accuses Iraq of arming them. In Afghanistan, the U.S. rails against alleged Iranian assistance to the Taliban, although the Taliban is an enemy of Iran and is interfering with a myriad of business deals the Iranians are arranging with the Karzai government, with whom it is friendly. By deeds the U.S. is telling Iran: “If you want to survive, get yourself a deterrent.” The U.S. policies towards Iran, similar to most State Department policies, are counterproductive and push Iran to invest in nuclear weapons.

Shouldn’t the U.S. State Department consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Great Britain has the bomb, but there is no possibility it will use the weapon. There is little probability that even if about to be defeated, the DPRK will use the bomb — against whom, their own brethren? Only Pakistan radical elements and Israel can effectively use the bomb in an offensive manner; the former because they have suicidal tendencies, and the latter because it does not face nuclear retaliation.

Pakistan’s present government won’t use it, but it is entirely possible that anarchy in Pakistan can deliver bombs to radical groups that have no compunction against using the deadly weapon.

If Israel faces defeat, it could use the bomb. In several wars, especially during the December 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel demonstrated a disregard for enemy life. Even if an engaged nation had a nuclear weapon, and presently none of Israel’s foes have a mass destruction device, Israel’s small size and closeness to Arab peoples give it an advantage in a nuclear war. The possibility of inflicting severe damage to innocent Arab populations hinders a retaliatory action. Israel’s principal reason to have the bomb is for the threat, real or imagined, it poses to any nation that counters its policies, including Iran, who is concerned about the possible loss of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem and is disturbed about Israel’s expansion and oppression of the Palestinian people.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel faced possible defeat, a fear existed that unless the United States assisted Israel with more armaments, Israel might use nuclear weapons against its adversaries. A large U.S. airlift of military aid finalized the battle in favor of Israel. A French official explained the situation.

In 1986, Francis Perrin, high commissioner of the French atomic energy agency from 1951 to 1970, was quoted in the press as saying that France and Israel had worked closely together for two years in the late 1950s to design an atom bomb. Perrin said that the United States had agreed that the French scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project could apply their knowledge at home provided they kept it secret. But then, Perrin said, ‘We considered we could give the secrets to Israel provided they kept it a secret themselves.’ He added: ‘We thought the Israeli bomb was aimed against the Americans, not to launch it against America but to say ‘if you don’t want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us, otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs. ‘⁴

The Islamic Republic cannot use nuclear weapons for an offensive purpose. Any attempt to do that and Iran’s enemies will extinguish the Islamic Republic in a flash of the radioactive light. Its bomb can only neutralize other bombs.

Which leads to the only ways to halt nuclear proliferation in the Middle East — either dismantle all existing bombs or neutralize them.

Better yet — signal that a first nuclear strike by any nation will be met by a severe strike on that nation with conventional weapon from the great powers of the United Nations Security Council. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. Not far fetched!

1. Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) Record No. SH-PDWN-D-000-341, “Speech at al-Bakr University,” 3 June 1978
2. Israel’s Nuclear Weapon Capability: An Overview, The Risk Report, Volume 2 Number 4, July-August 1996
3. Secret sale of UK plutonium to Israel, Meirion Jones, BBC Newsnight, 10 March 2006
4. Ibid

In the late 1960s I was traveling low budget, working in vineyards, hitchhiking, sleeping under bridges or in youth hostels, visiting medieval castles.  After six months in Europe, I went to North Africa and the Middle East, then back to see more of Europe.  I got a ride on a Greek freighter, working my way, washing pots and pans in the galley.  The ship was headed for the French port of Marseilles. The month was May.

But as we neared our destination, the ship changed course.  ”The port is closed,” the captain said. “There’s a strike.”  He spoke little English and I understood no Greek, so that was all I knew for the moment.  We were now heading for Genoa, Italy, where we docked the next day.  There I left the ship and set about to see Italy.  I was thinking of going to Rome, but I’d barely set foot on land when I heard news of something really big happening in France.  It wasn’t just a local dock strike in Marseilles.

Being the incorrigibly curious person that I am, I had to see it, whatever it was, and the place to see it was obviously Paris.  So I set out northward, hitchhiking up through Switzerland and into France, where I lucked out and got a ride all the way to Paris.  I was doubly fortunate in that the driver was a Britisher who had spent much of his life studying French history, specializing in the late 19th century.  ”This is 1871 all over again,” he told me.

What happened in 1871?  I wanted to ask, but was too embarrassed to reveal my ignorance of French history.  I could nevertheless look around me now and see that the whole country was shut down, clearly in a state of extreme upheaval.

The driver turned on the radio from time to time, and we heard President Charles de Gaulle making an impassioned speech to the nation. Not understanding French, I only caught the closing line. “Vive la république!”  Then they played La Marseillaise.

“He’s finished,” the driver told me.  ”Just like Louis Napoleon.”  He spoke with the assurance of one who knew his subject.

We passed fields and vineyards.  When we got to the toll roads, we were asked by the local toll-keepers for donations to support the strike.

It was evening when we reached Paris. Darkness had fallen, and a loud banging sound of explosions could be heard from not too far away.  ”Do you think they’re shooting it out?” I asked.  The driver shook his head.  He looked worried

“Let me off here,” I said.  ”I have to see what’s happening.”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” he advised me.

The explosions were somewhere off to the right.

I promised him I would be careful, and, thanking him for the ride, I set out in the direction of the blasts.  Looking back at my youthful curiosity, I still shudder at my presumptions of immortality.  Having already passed through so many ostensibly dangerous places, I’d come to feel as though I were a non-material being, a ghost-traveler, immune to the hazards of the road.

The dark streets were empty, and all the lights in the buildings seemed to be off.  I could hear the hollow knocking of my footsteps on the pavement, and I wondered where all the people were.  After walking a few blocks, I came to a broad avenue where a large crowd was gathered.  As I got closer, I saw they were behind a barricade fashioned of cobble stones and whatever was at hand.  Making my way to the front of the crowd, I saw in the distance a phalanx of riot police.  They were launching bombs or grenades in our direction which burst with a very loud sound and a flash of light.  I guessed that they were intended for psychological effect, as they didn’t seem to be causing physical damage or injuries.  Nobody seemed bothered by them.

Finally the gendarmes charged, and everybody ran up side streets, then regrouped.  I watched this repeated several times over.  Finally, late in the night, I found a space on the floor of a large crowded hall where I could unroll my sleeping bag.  I think it was in the Sorbonne University, which was occupied by the students.

In the morning I went out to see what was going on.  Everything was fairly quiet, with only a few cars on the streets.  The gendarmes were nowhere to be seen, not even the traffic cops who normally stood in the intersections. In their place were the demonstrators, the students and workers, directing the traffic. That sight impressed me, a world of no gendarmes.  They had been driven from the streets, and the world of Paris was now in the hands of the demonstrators.

It was an eerily calm and peaceful world. Shops and stores were closed.  No windows seemed to be broken.  Debris littered the streets, and there were still the remains of barricades here and there.  Nobody manning them now, the police being gone.

I thought of the riots which were then taking place in so many in U.S. cities, where there’d been burning and looting, but there was none of that here in Paris.  I marveled at the order and self-discipline of the French; truly a cultured people, who rioted without breaking windows.  I used the word “riot,” but was it a riot?  Or was it something else?

I saw it all, but I had no idea what I was looking at.  A revolution?  Was this what a revolution looked like?  Surely it couldn’t be a revolution, but what was really going on around here?

Being unable to speak French, I finally found someone who spoke English, and I asked, “What’s happening?”  The guy looked at me as though I were the biggest idiot he’d ever in his life encountered, and he said: “Can’t you see for yourself?”

Finally I looked up Bernard, a friend who lived in the Latin Quarter.  I’d met him a couple years earlier, on my way to Japan.  He’d been out in the demonstrations of the night before. Since he was a friend, I felt I could ask him the question nobody else seemed willing to answer.  ”What is going on?” I asked him. “Can’t you see for yourself?” he replied.

I stayed a few more days in Paris, then set out for England.  But on reaching the port of Calais, I found that it too was closed.  Why had I even bothered to go to Calais?  I should’ve known it would be shut down like the rest of France.

So I went a different way; I went to Germany and up through Scandinavia.  Eventually, I came back to France, and everything seemed to be pretty much back to normal.  Gendarmes were directing traffic at intersections, just as they always had.  It was like nothing had happened  The massive, nationwide strike, shutdown, whatever it was, was over.  Gone.

On some streets, artists were vending posters with revolutionary slogans.  That was all.  As before, it was useless to ask my friend.  ”You can see for yourself,” he would have said.

Later I learned the tragedy of what had happened.  The nation-wide strike I’d witnessed had been more than a protest; it had been a bid for change, in effect, a revolution, that failed because the very large French Communist Party, which controlled the unions and dominated the left, had taken over the strike and sent the workers back to work.

The May rebellion took place more than forty years ago, but the story of what happened in France was enough to make me eternally suspicious of the establishment left–whether it’s the allegedly radical Communist Party, or the supposedly progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Others seem to feel the same way today.  When Occupy Wall Street came into existence last September, activists carefully steered clear of the Democratic Party, the party which has offered so much hope and delivered so much disappointment.  And so Occupy has established itself outside of our broken political system, and this has been key to its instant traction and phenomenal growth as a movement about occupying public space, buildings, and our imaginations.

Vive la France?  Vive l’Amérique?  Mais non! Vive Occupy!  Vive le monde!

To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.

So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week.  He went on:

The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.

The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .

But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.

Why not?  According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries’ borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”

As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working.  The same authors write:

Euro-zone leaders are negotiating a potentially groundbreaking fiscal pact . . . [that] would make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. . . . European officials hope a new agreement, which would aim to shrink the excessive public debt that helped spark the crisis, would persuade the European Central Bank to undertake more drastic action to reverse the recent selloff in euro-zone debt markets.

The Eurozone appears to be in the process of being “structurally readjusted” – the same process imposed earlier by the IMF on Third World countries.  Structural demands routinely include harsh austerity measures, government cutbacks, privatization, and the disempowerment of national central banks, so that there is no national entity capable of creating and controlling the money supply on behalf of the people.  The latter result has officially been achieved in the Eurozone, which is now dependent on the E.C.B. as the sole lender of last resort and printer of new euros.

The E.C.B. Serves Banks, Not Governments

The legal justification for the E.C.B.’s inaction in the sovereign debt crisis is Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by EU members in 2007.  As Jens Eidmann, President of the Bundesbank and a member of the E.C.B. Governing Council, stated in a November 14 interview:

The eurosystem is a lender of last resort for solvent but illiquid banks. It must not be a lender of last resort for sovereigns because this would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.

The language of Article 123 is rather obscure, but basically it says that the European central bank is the lender of last resort for banks, not for governments.  It provides:

1.  Overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility with the European Central Bank or with the central banks of the Member States (hereinafter referred to as ‘national central banks’) in favour of Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited, as shall the purchase directly from them by the European Central Bank or national central banks of debt instruments.

2.  Paragraph 1 shall not apply to publicly owned credit institutions which, in the context of the supply of reserves by central banks, shall be given the same treatment by national central banks and the European Central Bank as private credit institutions.

Banks can borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, the minimum rate available for banks.  Member governments, on the other hand, must put themselves at the mercy of the markets, which can squeeze them for “whatever the market will bear”—in Italy’s case, 6.5%.

The Real Reason Eurozone Countries Are Drowning in Debt

Why should banks be able to borrow at 1.25% from the E.C.B.’s unlimited fountain of euros, while the tap is closed for governments?  The conventional argument is that for governments to borrow money created by their own central banks would be “inflationary.”  But private banks create the money they lend just as government-owned central banks do.  Private banks issue money in the form of “bank credit” on their books, and they often do this before they have the liquidity to back the loans.  Then they borrow from wherever they can get funds most cheaply.  When banks borrow from the E.C.B. as lender of last resort, the E.C.B. “prints money” just as it would if it were lending to governments directly.

The burgeoning debts of the Eurozone countries are being blamed on their large welfare states, but these social systems were set up before the 1970s, when European governments had very little national debt.  Their national debts shot up, not because they spent on social services, but because they switched bankers.  Before the 1970s, European governments borrowed from their own central banks.  The money was effectively interest-free, since they owned the banks and got the profits back as dividends.  After the European Monetary Union was established, member countries had to borrow from private banks at interest—often substantial interest.

And the result?  Interest totals for Eurozone countries are not readily accessible; but for France, at least, the total sum paid in interest since the 1970s appears to be as great as the French federal debt itself.  That means that if the French government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it could have been debt-free today.

The figures are nearly as bad for Canada, and they may actually be worse for the United States.  The Federal Reserve’s website lists the sums paid in interest on the U.S. federal debt for the last 24 years.  During that period, taxpayers paid a total of $8.2 trillion in interest.  That’s more than half the total $15 trillion debt, in just 24 years.  The U.S. federal debt has not been paid off since 1835, so taxpayers could well have paid more than $15 trillion by now in interest.  That means our entire federal debt could have been avoided if we had been borrowing from our own government-owned central bank all along, effectively interest-free.  And that is probably true for other countries as well.

To avoid an overwhelming national debt and the forced austerity measures destined to follow, the Eurozone’s citizens need to get the fire hose of money creation out of the hands of private banks and back into the hands of the people.  But how?

Governments Cannot Borrow from the E.C.B., but Government-owned Banks Can

Interestingly, Paragraph 2 of Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty carves out an exception to the rule that governments cannot borrow from the E.C.B.  It says that government-owned banks can borrow on the same terms as privately-owned banks.  Many Eurozone countries have publicly-owned banks; and as nationalization of insolvent banks looms, they could soon find themselves with many more.

One solution might be for the publicly-owned banks of Eurozone governments to exercise their right to borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, then use that liquidity to buy up the country’s debt, or as much of it as does not sell at auction.  (The Federal Reserve does this routinely in open market operations in the U.S.)   The government’s securities would be stabilized, keeping speculators at bay; and the government would get the interest spread, since it would own the banks and would get the profits back as dividends.

Taking a Stand in the Class War

In a November 25th article titled “Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over,” Paul Craig Roberts writes:

The European Union, just like everything else, is merely another scheme to concentrate wealth in a few hands at the expense of European citizens, who are destined, like Americans, to be the serfs of the 21^st century.

He observes that Mario Draghi, the new president of the European Central Bank, was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International, a member of Goldman Sachs’ Management Committee, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board.  Italy’s new prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed rather than elected, was a member of Goldman Sachs’ Board of International Advisers, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (“a US organization that advances American hegemony over the world”), and a member of the Bilderberg group.  And Lucas Papademos, an unelected banker who was installed as prime minister of Greece, was Vice President of the European Central Bank and a member of America’s Trilateral Commission.

Roberts points to the suspicious fact that the German government was unable to sell 35% of its 10-year bonds at its last auction; yet Germany’s economy is in far better shape than that of Italy, which managed to sell all its bonds.  Why?  Roberts suspects an orchestrated scheme to pressure Germany to back off from its demands to make the banks pay a share of their bailout.

Europe is in the process of being “structurally readjusted” by a private banking cartel.  If its people are to resist this silent conquest, they need to rise up and, using the ballot box and public banks, throw out the new banking hegemony before it is too late.

Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“This morning we reminded the Israeli ambassador how much we deplore the consequences of this raid for the head of our consulate and his family,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Immediately a pretext was added: “While we recognize Israel’s need to ensure its security, …”

Why is it that the security of the perpetrator of violence is emphasized but the victim of the violence’s security is not mentioned? Why is the violence deplored when one’s own group members die at the hands of violence but so little is said when out-group victims die? Many would call this racism.

Gaza is under a siege that is illegal and immoral. It is immoral because of the principle which holds that any actions against an enemy must be targeted solely against that enemy such that civilians are not put at risk. The Israeli actions target indiscriminately — not separating combatants from non-combatants.

As for Israeli violence against Palestinians, any and all violence from the Israelis is unjustifiable and immoral — even on the pretext of Palestinians having fired rockets into Israel.

Why? Because Israel was established through the dispossession of an indigenous people, the Palestinians, whose land was occupied. Only if dispossession and occupation are deemed acceptable actions can the responses of Israeli be justified. Hence, since the Palestinians were dispossessed, and since their land was occupied, then Palestinian actions against the siege, dispossession, and occupation are justifiable. The principle is that the dispossessed and occupied have the inalienable right to resist such dispossession and occupation. If the dispossessed/occupied/oppressed do not have the right to resist, then what is to stop dispossession, occupation, and oppression?

Lies Do Not Shake Friendships in Empire

As French president Nicolas Sarkozy made known in Cannes recently, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a liar” and a person he “cannot stand.” Sarkozy subsequently wrote to Netanyahu to affirm his friendship, despite their “differing views on the Middle East.”

Their differences are mild in comparison to their similarities. Israel and France are allies. What does this mean for the Palestinians? It does not matter because the Palestinians are people in the way of Eretz Israel.

Empire is not built on moral principles — and lies, even between imperialist allies, are just part of Empire’s endgame.

The title of an article in the Sun declared: ‘Dead dog.’ (October 24, 2011)

The Daily Star reported that Gaddafi’s son Mutassim had been filmed smoking a cigarette and drinking water shortly after being captured. The paper took up the story:

But in graphic images that have baffled UN investigators, he is then shown dead, lying next to Mad Dog, with bullet holes in his neck and stomach.

In his report, “Mad Dog” “was the name journalist Gary Nicks used to refer to the executed Libyan leader. Nicks continued: ‘New footage emerged yesterday of Mad Dog’s dying words to a baying mob.’

Gaddafi and his son were not the only victims of the mob. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that between six and ten people appeared to have been executed at the scene of the Libyan leader’s capture. Around 95 bodies were found in the immediate vicinity, many of them victims of Nato air strikes. In fact, it is clear that NATO, with the assistance of special forces (although ground troops were strictly forbidden by UN resolution 1973), had maintained a no-drive zone around Sirte: a crucial factor facilitating the murder of Gaddafi.

CBS reported 572 bodies ‘and counting’ in Sirte, including 300, ‘many of them with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head’, collected and buried in a mass grave.

HRW reported the massacre of 53 people by anti-Gaddafi fighters at the Mahara hotel in Sirte. Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at HRW, commented on the atrocity:

This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting, and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law.

The BBC covered the massacre on its News at Ten (October 24). Wyre Davies reported:

Some say Gaddafi’s home town is where transitional government forces took their revenge; collective punishment for Gaddafi’s own crimes. A vivid and graphic example of that in Sirte today. The bodies of 53 Gaddafi supporters, discovered shot with their hands tied.

The segment lasted 20 seconds, with commentary on the massacre and footage of the bodies lasting 10 seconds. As one surviving resident of Sirte asked:  “What would people in Europe and America say if Gaddafi was doing this?”

The answer is hardly in doubt — wall-to-wall coverage and volcanic outrage. Gaddafi was certainly a vicious tyrant responsible for gross human rights abuses. But callous indifference to human suffering was supposed to be the reason he was so beyond the pale, so unlike “us”.

Channel 4 anchor Matt Frei responded to the massacre in a style familiar from his years as the BBC’s Washington correspondent:

You could say even about this regime, this government, that they don’t have a second chance to make a first impression. So just how worried are they?

When “our side” is responsible, even a massacre becomes, first and foremost, a PR problem.

The response from Ian Black, the liberal Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, to the torture and extrajudicial killing of Gaddafi was a stark:  “good riddance”.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, giggled with CBS journalists as she joked about Gaddafi’s murder:  “We came, we saw, he died.”

Incongruous laughter appears to be a trait.

British prime minister David Cameron also found mirth amid the gore in a speech celebrating the Hindu festival of Diwali:

Obviously, Diwali being the festival of a triumph of good over evil, and also celebrating the death of a devil [audience laughter], perhaps there’s a little resonance in what I’m saying tonight.¹

One of our regular message board posters, Chris Shaw, expressed his “despair and horror at the footage of a 69 year old man being beaten, tortured and murdered by a mob”.² The natural response of a feeling human being, one might think.

By contrast, Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Telegraph: “the one thing Gaddafi retained to the very end was his ability to put on a show… [His] demise was as box-office as his 42-year rule”.

We suspect that most journalists are not actually unfeeling brutes. They are conformists wary of the high price they can be made to pay for even the suspicion that they might be ’apologists’ for an official enemy. A risk that has increased markedly in our age of ‘political convergence’, deprived as it is of any established mainstream political dissent.

Cameron’s First Military Victory

As ever, the broadcast media rushed to vindicate their warrior-leaders. Indeed, on August 22, the BBC’s deputy political editor, James Landale, was a month early in describing Downing Street’s satisfaction “that all David Cameron’s critics, who said that this couldn’t be done – that aerial bombardment would not work – have been proved wrong”.³

Last week, Landale’s senior colleague, Nick Robinson, brought viewers up to date, assuring them that Downing Street “will see this, I’m sure, as a triumphant end”. (News at Six, October 20, 2011) Robinson added:

Libya was David Cameron’s first war. Colonel Gaddafi his first foe. Today, his first real taste of military victory.

We are living in strange times when a senior BBC journalist can portray the fighting of endless wars as the normal way of things, as though Cameron had taken some kind of prime ministerial rite of initiation.

In an interview with new UK defence secretary, Philip Hammond, BBC ‘rottweiler’ John Humphrys asked:

What apart from a sort of moral glow – and there’s nothing wrong with that – have we got out of it?⁴

The BBC’s chief political correspondent, Norman Smith, commented:

I imagine, privately, David Cameron must surely feel vindicated because the Libyan enterprise was a big political risk.⁵

As ever, an ostensibly neutral BBC reporter endorsed what he was supposed only to be reporting: Cameron “must surely feel vindicated”. How could he possibly feel otherwise?⁶

In Washington, the BBC’s Ian Pannell thought hard and joined the mainstream herd:

I think President Obama is feeling that his foreign policy strategy has been vindicated – that his critics have been proven wrong.

An editorial in the Telegraph agreed:

His death vindicates the swift action of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in halting the attack on Benghazi and supporting the rebellion.

A Tweet from someone called Micah Zenko made more sense to us: “Qaddafi summarily executed is apt conclusion to false narrative of Libya intervention. No arms embargo, selective NFZ, boots on the ground.”

Zenco might also have mentioned the unnoticed irony that UN resolution 1973, which authorised the misnamed ‘no-fly zone’, was among other things: ‘Condemning…torture and summary executions.’

As though concluding a bed-time story, the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall commented: “The Arab spring had claimed another infamous scalp. The risky western intervention had worked. And Libya was liberated at last.”

Andrew Grice, political editor of the Independent, applauded: “Mr Cameron took risks on Libya – but they paid off… Mr Cameron proved the doubters wrong… By calling Libya right, Mr Cameron invites a neat contrast with Tony Blair.”

Murdoch’s Times observed that only the ‘political courage’ of Sarkozy and Cameron had prevented disaster at ‘the beginning of another genocide’.⁷

In Murdoch’s grim fantasy world, any nation obstructing Western corporate control is, by happy coincidence, either perpetrating or planning ‘genocide’.

Jesus And Buddha – Hang Your Heads In Shame!

The comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, once commented on a striking feature of modern propaganda:

It’s been largely based on denigrating somebody over there and saying we’ve got to go in and knock them out. The main awakening of the human spirit is in compassion and the main function of propaganda is to suppress compassion, knock it out. Well, it’s in public journalism all the time now, too.⁸

Compassion is a threat because it is politically incorrect, resistant to robotic demonising by the cheerleaders of hate. Compassion is a spontaneous trembling of the heart based on an awareness of shared humanity, shared suffering, shared Being. And yet, even the normally insightful Glenn Greenwald, clearly appalled by the murders in Libya, reminded readers of something he had previously written:

No decent human being would possibly harbor any sympathy for Gadaffi, just as none harbored any for Saddam.

We Tweeted him: “Jesus and Buddha hang your heads in shame!”

Greenwald replied:

I had this debate when I first wrote that – it doesn’t mean you don’t object to what’s done to them: they’re just not sympathetic.

How easily we forget that compassion - even for a vicious, hated enemy -has long been recognised as one of the highest, most precious achievements of human civilisation.

As the Buddhist sage Je Gampopa commented:

Those who are hurt by others in return for the goodness they show them, yet, despite this, still act beneficially towards them, are the finest humans in the world: people who can return good for bad.⁹

Does anyone doubt that a Jesus or a Buddha would not merely have harboured sympathy for Gaddafi but would have intervened to save his life? And who would dare claim that doing so would make them ‘apologists’ for tyranny?

Philosopher A.C. Grayling sounded a rare note of dissent:

In accepting the pragmatic case for shooting malefactors, just as we shoot mad dogs, we state that we do not wish to pay the high cost of living according to law and civil liberties. We champion our Western principles about the rule of law and the rights of individuals, we thus say, only until they become a burden and an inconvenience; and, when they do, we summarily shoot people in the head instead.

The “inconvenience” requires explanation. In truth, if they are to survive, ‘Third World’ leaders are most often obliged to prioritise Western corporate interests over the needs of local people (see our discussion of John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man). This rankles with the victims, of course, and so Western clients typically have numerous skeletons in their human rights cupboard – hidden with Western military, financial and diplomatic help. These skeletons can be brought to light in a moment, if the client strays. A compliant media is always on hand to declare the crimes “Hitlerian”, “genocidal”, “exceptional”, and surely justifying whatever violent measures Western governments deem fit for the preservation of civilisation: in reality, the preservation of their control of the target nation.

In the rush to celebrate Cameron’s ‘first taste of military victory,’ the UK media ignored or downplayed a whole host of problems with the war, including:

– The fact that even establishment think tanks like the International Crisis Group reported that NATO and the ‘rebel’ Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), rather than the Gaddafi regime, had rejected all peace initiatives out of hand:

UNSC resolution 1973 emphatically called for a ceasefire, yet every proposal for a ceasefire put forward by the Qaddafi regime or by third parties so far has been rejected by the TNC as well as by the Western governments most closely associated with the NATO military campaign… neither the TNC nor NATO has made a ceasefire proposal of its own and there has yet to be a meaningful attempt to test Qaddafi’s seriousness or pose conditions on acceptance that would subject a putative ceasefire to effective independent supervision.¹⁰

– The fact that there was no UN mandate for regime change, even though this was very obviously NATO’s illegal aim.

– The striking lack of evidence - not least from other towns recaptured by pro-government forces - that Gaddafi planned to commit a massacre in Benghazi.

– “Rebel” estimates of 50,000 dead as a result of the war as far back as the end of August. The Guardian’s Seumas Milne is a rare, honest voice in noting that “while the death toll in Libya when NATO intervened was perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it is probably more than ten times that figure.” Milne added:

If the purpose of western intervention in Libya’s civil war was to “protect civilians” and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure.

– The bombing of Libyan state TV by British aircraft in July, which reportedly killed a number of journalists and was condemned as a war crime by Reporters Without Borders, UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists.

– The reduction of Sirte, previously a city of 100,000 people, to a smoking ruin as a result of several weeks of siege. The assault included daily indiscriminate bombing, the cutting off of water, food, medicine and electricity supplies, the shelling of a hospital, widespread looting and massacres. Aid agencies described how the attack had created a humanitarian crisis.

– The widespread racist persecution of black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans by anti-Gaddafi forces. Amnesty International reported that ‘black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans are at high risk of abuse by anti-Gaddafi forces’. (Many thanks to Peter, for providing much of this list on the Media Lens message board. A longer list is archived here)

Any horrors to come are likely to be reported in brief as the media eye swivels inexorably towards the next target of “humanitarian intervention”.

1. BBC News at Ten, October 20, 2011
2. Media Lens message board, October 24, 2011
3. Landale, BBC News at Six, August 22, 2011
4. Humphrys to Hammond, BBC Radio 4 Today, October 21, 2011; go to 3:13
5. BBC News Online, 16:34, October 21, 2011
6. Ibid.
7. Campbell, The Hero’s Journey, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p.220
8. Leading article, Death of a Dictator, The Times, October 21, 2011
9. Gampopa, Gems of Dharma, Jewels of Freedom, Altea, 1994, p.155
10. ICG, Popular Protest In North Africa and the Middle East, (V): Making Sense of Libya, Middle East/North Africa Report N°107 – 6 June 2011, pp.28-29

I just don’t seem to get to movies much anymore; it’s truly not even much of a temptation. We have a local theater, though, with cushy velvet seats, homemade cookies and oatmeal stout beer so sometimes you have to give in to all that and just buy a ticket. A movie about neolithic cave drawings, of all things, came up at the theater so I opted to see that one. I’m sure I’ve never seen a movie about that!

In other venues the film was offered in 3-D which sounds terribly hokey, but I guess it was used to nice effect showing the stony undulations of the cave wall surface.  Anyway, my theater has beer, as I mentioned, but no 3-D. A technological trade-off, I suppose.

It’s called “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” and it’s a lovely film, allowing the viewer a glimpse of this world that will never be fully opened to the outside (for its own protection — other caves have had mold issues from the breath of tourists).

The drawings found in Chauvet cave were of such exquisite quality that when they were discovered in the 90s, it was originally thought that they represented the very pinnacle of the art, so would likely be newer than the known caves, but when the dating came back it shocked everyone, as the work is evidently much older than the examples in places like Lascaux, in the realm of 30,000-35,000 years old.

It cast my mind in a painful direction, however. I immediately felt queasy, acutely aware of the ugly grid where we reside, everyone with fears, but hard to battle creatures. All in the presence of unsatisfying agents pressed together as facsimiles of nature and shelter. It’s all so terribly ugly, especially here in North America where the strip malls scream loudly, even though they are half empty most of the time. I want to close my eyes when I see them, but I don’t since I’m driving. And I want to vomit if they house businesses that leech off the unfortunate, and that’s most of the time. I don’t think there’s any place left to just be, as many of the Occupy movement participants have found out. They want to legislate away the strays. In all of this your mind must be as a blueprint, easily read as you pull into your allotted spot, if you are fortunate enough to have one.

Would anyone find beauty in our reproductions, our factory pressed wheels with no creator beneath? Or at least not a creator we dare consider — probably a soft spoken young person in a sweatshop of sorts in a far flung place.  This cave is in also in a far flung place. (I say that about every place I’m not). It’s a valley in the South of France with little but vineyards in the immediate vicinity. The area used to be home to every animal Maurice Sendak could imagine. Modern humans walked with them as did Neanderthal man. Chauvet Cave was hidden for such a time due to a rock slide; the depictions of long gone species have this one place they still can live.

I wonder if we could all draw with such fluid strokes if we weren’t so trapped by highways and right angles? Was he unique, that man who did so much of the work in the cave? If I were there, I’d hold his head in my hands, peering past the eyes to figure it out.  Why did you do this? But I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

But the reason wouldn’t have words any more than those drawings do, just a compelling pull.

One of the bison has eight legs. I’m sure in firelight it looks like he is running. Everything is beautiful seen in the glow of a fire; fluorescent light might give you a seizure.

That one artist stands out because his hand prints are literally everywhere, and you know it’s him because of the crooked — maybe once broken –pinkie finger. I’d like to have tasted the red ochre off that live finger, old dust even 30,000 years ago, made of all manner of earth, the heavier flakes from the furnace of a star. I wonder if they felt that original source in the ochre, even if they didn’t have words to describe it. I don’t have words to describe it either.

But always, the broad, sweeping strokes.  I think they are still alive, more than our over-duplicated forms, copied yesterday, and always from hard lines. We don’t ever seem to use anything else.

I hope he made these images because he wanted to show he was part of the world of carnivores as well as massive grazers, a frail but clever participant who had no need to destroy anything, just to give them a spot to run. I don’t think the images would be so beautiful if the mind behind them wanted dominion. That’s what our world carries and demands, always more than what it really takes to survive.

I want to see a world with softer lines that blur into the incorporeal, not the cages we sit in and pass the time with anxiety and clutter. How did we come to this unnatural place? There’s no words for that either and I don’t know the reason.

The things that can cross your mind when the hard lines start to dissolve.

In the past, however, many theorists of imperialism of varying political persuasion, ranging from Max Weber to Vladimir Lenin, argued that imperialism unified the country, reduced internal class polarization and created privileged workers who actively supported and voted for imperial parties.  A historical, comparative survey of the conditions under which imperialism and democratic institutions converge or diverge can throw some light on the challenges and choices faced by the burgeoning democratic movements erupting across the globe.

The Nineteenth Century

During the 19th century, European and US imperial expansion covered the world.  In tandem, democratic institutions took root, the franchise was extended to the working class, competitive parties emerged, social legislation was passed, and the working class increased its representation in the legislative chambers.

Was the simultaneous growth of democracy and imperialism a spurious correlation reflecting divergent and conflicting underlying forces, one favoring overseas conquest and another promoting democratic politics? In fact, there was a great deal of overlap between pro-imperialist and democratic politics and not simply among the elites.

Throughout the 19th and especially in the 20th century, important sectors of the labor and social democratic parties and numerous prominent leftists and revolutionary socialists, at one time or another, combined support for workers’ demands and imperial expansion.  None other than Karl Marx, in his early journalistic writings in the New York Herald Tribune critically supported the British conquest of India as a “modernizing force” breaking down feudal barriers, even as he supported (with criticism) the European revolutions of 1848.

The ruling classes, the driving force of imperialism, were divided. Some saw the democratic reforms, “citizenship”, as a means of raising mass conscriptions for imperial wars; others feared that the democratic reforms would enhance social demands and undercut the accumulation of capital and rule by the elite.  Both were right.  Along with greater popular participation came virulent modern nationalism, which fueled empire building.  At the same time  mass access to democratic rights led to heightened class organizations, which threatened or challenged class rule. Within the ruling classes, democratic institutions were seen as an arena to peacefully resolve conflicts between competing sectoral elites. But once they took a mass character they were perceived as political threats.

Imperial and class-based parties competed for voters among the newly enfranchised urban workers and rural poor.  In many cases, imperial and class allegiances “co-existed” within the same individuals.  The question of which of the two – imperialist or class consciousness – would become ‘operative’ or ‘salient’ was, in part, contingent on the success or failures of the larger competing political projects.

In other words, when imperial expansion succeeded in easy conquests resulting in lucrative colonies (especially settler colonies) democratic workers embraced the empire.  This was the case because empire enhanced trade; namely, profitable exports and cheap imports, while protecting local markets and manufacturers.  These in turn expanded employment and wages for substantial sectors of the working class.  As a result, labor and social democratic parties and trade unions did not oppose imperialism.  Indeed many supported it.

In contrast, when imperialist wars led to prolonged bloody and costly conflicts, the working class shifted from initial chauvinist enthusiasm to disenchantment and opposition.  Democratic demands to ‘end the war’ led to strikes challenging unequal sacrifice.  Democratic and anti-imperialist sentiments tended to fuse.

The conflict between democracy and imperialism became even more apparent in the case of an imperial defeat and military occupation.  Both the defeat of France in the German-French war of 1870-71 and the German defeat in the First World War led to massive democratic socialist uprisings (the Paris Commune of 1871 and the German revolution of 1918) attacking militarism, ruling class domination and the entire imperial capitalist institutional framework.

The Imperialism and Democracy Debate and “History from Below”

Historians, especially practitioners of the fashionable “history from below”, exaggerated the democratic values and struggles of the working class and understated the prolonged and deep felt support among important sectors for successful imperial expansion and conquest.  The notion of ‘inherent’ or ‘instinctual’ class solidarity is belied by the active role of workers in imperial conquest as soldiers, overseas settlers, merchant mariners and overseers.  Imperial collaborators and empire loyalists were numerous among English and French workers and, especially later, within the US labor movement.

The theoretical point is that the pre-eminence of democratic over imperial consciousness and action among workers is contingent on the practical material outcomes of imperial policies and democratic struggles.

Workers and Imperialism

Empire building makes demands on workers to produce more for less in order to export and invest profitably in colonized regions.  This led to capital-labor conflict, especially in the initial phase of imperial expansion.  As imperial rulers consolidated their control over the colonized countries they intensified exploitation of markets, labor and resources.  Imperial exports destroyed local competitors.  Profits rose, wages increased and workers turned from initial opposition toward imperialism to demanding a share of the increasing income of the export oriented manufacturers.  Labor leaders and trade unionists approved of the policies of ‘imperial preference’, which protected local industries from competition and privileged monopoly control of colonial markets.  They did so because imperial policies protected jobs and raised living standards.

Workers who were active in social struggles, blacklisted or jailed, voluntarily moved or were exiled to colonized countries.  Once settled overseas, they were given privileged access to better paying jobs as overseers, skilled employees or promoted to managerial positions.  Imperial based militant workers, once overseas, became colonial collaborators.  Many encouraged former workmates, relatives and friends to join them as successful settlers or contract workers.  The ‘domestication’ of workers and the reconciliation of democratic and imperialist sentiments was a cause and consequent of successful imperialism.

Empire Loyalism:  Not by Bread Alone

While material benefits accruing to workers from “successful imperialism” are one factor enhancing workers’ imperial consciousness, this was reinforced by symbolic gratification, the sense of being a member of the “leading country in the world” where “the sun never sets on the empire”, was equally important.  It is rare to find a country where the majority of workers express “solidarity” with the exploited miners, plantation workers or displaced peasants and indigenous small landholders in the ‘colonies’.  The stronger the hold of the colonial power, the greater the ‘colonial opportunities’, the longer the colonial ties, the deeper the economic penetration, and the stronger the sense of imperial superiority among the imperial states’ workers.

It is not surprising that the British workers, the unions and Labor Party raised few objections to the savagery of the imperial opium wars against China, the imperial-induced genocidal famines in Ireland in the 19th century and India in the 20th century.  Likewise, the French workers’ parties – Socialists especially – were in the forefront of the post WWII colonial wars against Indo-China and Algeria only turning against them in the face of imminent defeat and internal disintegration.

In the same vein, US successful colonial wars against Cuba and the Philippines, its invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries were supported by the American Federation of Labor and many ‘ordinary workers’, even as a minority of radicalized workers opposed these wars.  The ‘partial turn’ of labor against US colonial wars occurred during the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, and was a result of prolonged losses and high economic costs with no victory in sight.  It should be added that US workers, in opposing the imperial wars, expressed no solidarity with the national liberation and workers movements of the colonized countries.

Imperialism and the “True Democrats”

To argue, as some on the Left have, that imperialism does not co-exist with “true” democracy, is to argue that the last 150 years have been devoid of free elections, party competition and citizens’ rights, however abbreviated, especially over the past decade.  The reality is that imperial intervention and expansion has drawn precisely from citizens’ sense of “obligation” to uphold the democratic institutions, which has enabled imperial leaders to elicit legitimacy and active citizen support or compliance in waging bloody, even genocidal, colonial wars.

If democracy has not usually been an obstacle to imperial expansion – indeed a facilitator under certain circumstances – under what conditions have workers and citizens movements turned against imperial wars?  What has been the political response of the ruling class when the majority of the electorate has turned against imperial wars?  In other words, when the democratic institutions no longer function as vehicles for imperial policies, what gives?

From Imperial Democracy to Imperial Police State

The past ten years provide important lessons on the relation between imperialism and democracy in the United States.

Beginning with the controversial political circumstances surrounding known terrorists’ gaining access to the US and subsequently hijacking the airplanes on 9/11/2001, the US government launched two major colonial wars and numerous overt ‘clandestine’ ground and air attacks in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya and other countries.  The “global war on terror”, launched under the Bush regime, and implemented by non-elected senior militarist–Zionist officials in co-operation with NATO and Israel was supported by the democratically elected Congress.  For that matter the vast majority of the electorate, influenced by an immense propaganda campaign of fear, media manipulation and lies endorsed the wars on terror.

Given the unprecedented scope and breadth of the wars, (a global war on terror), the vast increase in military spending and the huge outlays for an all encompassing internal repressive (security) apparatus (Homeland Security), a new executive-centered police state was constructed which superseded the existing democratic institution and rights of citizens.

The trajectory of imperial politics moved from early military successes to problematic prolonged occupation.  This led to escalating resistance, growing state expenditures , a deepening fiscal crises , social decay and rising political opposition.

As in the past, contemporary imperial wars that are prolonged, costly and with no decisive victory in sight, have led to citizen disenchantment, followed by increased open rejection.  The wage and salaried majorities who voted for imperial policymakers and backed their enabling legislation, including laws (Patriot Act) which suspended basic civil and constitutional rights, have turned away from the imperial agenda.  Today the democratic majority prioritize their class, economic interests, especially in the face of a prolonged recession and unemployment and underemployment of close to 20%.  Beginning in 2008-2011 endless wars and prolonged crises have set in motion a conflict between democracy and imperialism.

In other words, the democratic majority has become an obstacle to the implementation and pursuit of imperial wars.  Imperial military activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. did not lead to quick victories, the conquest of lucrative export markets and take-over of natural resource.  Jobs were not created and no benefit accrued to employees and workers in the imperial country.  High expenditures for arms undercut public investments in labor-intensive employment in critically overdue infrastructure projects.  The small number of dangerous jobs in occupied countries was unattractive and too risky for the unemployed.

In other words, unlike most previous imperial-colonial wars, none of the plundered wealth was used to secure workers loyalty to the empire.  The burden of empire progressively undercut wage and salaried workers’ living standards.  Over time, regressive taxation gradually eroded any sense of chauvinist grandeur or superiority.  Instead citizens of the empire developed a political inferiority complex.  Faced with determined Islamic opposition and China’s rising economic power, exaggerated bellicosity among a minority and critical introspection among the majority took hold.  Popular consciousness of “something basically wrong” in Washington and Wall Street took over.  The earlier war chants and mindless flag-waving, as the armies of Empire marched to Afghanistan and Iraq, were replaced by angry defeatism directed at misleaders.  Over 80% of the public now articulates a negative view of Congress, rejecting both war parties.  Similar negative views are held toward the White House, the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

After a decade of war and four years of economic crisis, mass protests erupted.  The “Occupy Wall Street” movement puts new options on the table, displacing the imperial agenda with a powerful denunciation of the militarist-financial elite.

The executive rulers, especially the judicial, intelligence and police apparatuses increasingly implemented arbitrary police state measures.  Tens of millions are subject to surveillance by Homeland Security.  The police state intercepts billions of faxes, e-mails, web sites and taps telephone calls.  The link between imperialism and democracy broke at the point where declining empire no longer could secure the electorate’s support or compliance.

More and more bizarre terrorist plots were fabricated by the intelligence agencies.  The Iranian bomb plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington was the most primitive and crude effort to regain public support for imperial militarism in the Gulf region.  Apart from the politically influential, but infinitely small, pro-Israel Zionist power configuration, US public opinion is not distracted from its domestic agenda, its quest for jobs at home and opposition to Wall Street.

As the conflict between imperialism and democracy intensifies, the previous ‘consensus” fractured.  The White House and Congress opt for imperialism backed by a profoundly anti-democratic police state.  The majority of the electorate presses forward, utilizing their remaining democratic rights to change the political agenda from empire toward a social republic.

Conclusion

We have argued that empire and democracy have been complementary in times of ascendant imperialism.  We have shown that when wars of conquest have been short and inexpensive, and when the results have been lucrative for capital and job-creating for labor the democratic majorities joined in support of imperial elites.  Democratic institutions flourished when overseas empires provided markets, cheap resources and raised living standards.  Workers voted for imperial parties, held positive opinions of executive and legislative officials, and applauded the colonial war veterans (our troops).  Some even volunteered and joined the military.  With vast citizen support for empire, the state more or less ‘abided’ by the constitutional guarantees.  But the marriage of democracy and imperialism is not ‘structural’.  It is contingent on a series of variable conditions, which can cause a profound rupture between the two, as we are witnessing today.

Prolonged, losing, costly imperial wars that increasingly erode living standards for over a generation have undermined the consensus between imperial rulers and democratic citizens.  Early signs of this potential divergence were evident during the latter period of the Korean War, when public opinion turned against President Truman, architect of the Cold War and the US invasion of Korea.  More evidence emerged during the Vietnam War.  Faced with a prolonged, losing war, which imperiled the lives and opportunities of tens of millions of draft age Americans, millions in civilian life and the military opted to end the war and question imperial interventions.  The repressive state was still not organized sufficiently to terrorize and contain the democratic upsurge of the 1970’s.  The end of the Vietnam war represented the high point in democratic America’s quest to counter imperialism and rebuild the republic.

Subsequent small, quick, low cost and militarily successful imperial interventions in Panama, Grenada, Haiti and elsewhere did not provoke any conflict between imperialism and democracy.  Nor did imperial clandestine and surrogate wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan and the Balkans elicit any significant democratic opposition since they were low cost (in lives and funding) and were not accompanied by any sharp cuts in social expenditures and incomes.

The onset of the current Afghanistan, Iraq, and global offensive wars were seen by some imperial strategists in the same light: Quick, low cost victories with few domestic costs.  One highly placed pro-Israel official in the Pentagon even argued that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “self-financing” via an oil grab.

The 21st century wars turned out otherwise:  They followed the Korean-Vietnam pattern, not the Central American/Caribbean pattern.  Immensely costly, the 21st century wars have not led to quick victories and, worse still, occurred in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, without the manufacturing and market boom of the 1950’s/1960’s which had cushioned the retreat from Korea and Vietnam.

The divergence between imperialism and democracy has become acute.  Democratic dissent has increased and the police state has become more prominent and direct.  Imperialism increasingly relies on “fabricated domestic and external terror plots” to augment the powers of the repressive machinery and rule by fiat.  White House exhortations ring hollow.  The public puts less and less credence in their rulers’ claims of ‘justifiable’ arbitrary detentions, massive surveillance and extrajudicial assassinations of US citizens (and even their children).

We now face long-term, large-scale dangers, inherent in imperial democracies.  Not because of “internal contradictions” but because sooner or later imperial powers meet their match in the form of protracted struggles by anti-imperialist and national liberation movements.  Only when imperials wars take their toll on the wage and salaried majority, does the rupture between democracy and imperialism take place.  Then, and only then, are democratic forces set in motion to create a democratic republic, with social justice and without empire.

The present danger is that imperial structures are deeply embedded in all the key political institutions and are backed by an unprecedented vast and sprawling police state apparatus, called Homeland Security.  Perhaps it will take a major external political-military shock to ignite the kind of mass democratic uprising needed to transform an imperial police state into a democratic republic.  A growing sense of isolation and impotence affects the ruling regime in the face of overseas military defeats and unyielding, deepening domestic economic crisis.  The danger is that these fears and frustrations could induce the White House to attempt to regain popular support by attacking Iran under a manufactured pretext.

A US/Israeli assault on Iran will result in a world-wide conflagration.  Iran could and would retaliate.  Saudi and Gulf oil wells would go up in flames.  Vital shipping lanes would be blocked.  Gas prices would skyrocket while Asian, EU and US economies crash.  Iranian troops with their Iraqi allies would lay siege to the US garrisons in Baghdad.  Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the Moslem world will take up arms.  US forces would surrender or retreat.  The war would shatter the US Treasury.  Deficits would spiral out of control.  Unemployment would double.  This likely sequence of events would trigger a massive democratic movement and a decisive struggle between an emerging republic struggling to give birth and a decaying empire threatening to drag the world into the inferno of its own demise.

But unlike Greece, which was forced into recession by misguided EU taskmasters, Britain has inflicted this on itself. Austerity was a deliberate choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Britain’s jobless numbers are the highest in more than 15 years, with unemployment 8.1 per cent, as the government continues to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months.

This call to “balance the books” is also being preached by US President Barack Obama, where even higher unemployment figures (9.1 per cent) and far worse financial woes exacerbate the economic downturn. By slashing government spending, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost there too, with the expected downward multiplier effect as citizens are forced to rein in their spending, leading to ever higher unemployment and ever falling government revenues.

Austerity is politics masquerading as economic policy, intent on lowering wages while maintaining the profit and interest income of the rich in hard times. It rests on the myth that all government spending is wasteful and eats into potential private investment, and is unnecessary to recovery. Just as bad as this hidden agenda is that the result of this stab-in-the-back to the “99 per cent” is to actually increase the government deficit — the very opposite of what is intended.

But if things are bad for Britain, it can perhaps find some consolation in the fact that, for the first time in more than 100 years, British living standards have “risen” above American standards, according to an Oxford Economics (OE) report. The OE explains that increasing incomes for Brits and longer holidays (Americans average two weeks per year vs five weeks in Britain) and free health care mean that the Brits are better off than the Yanks, whose real income today is about the same as it was in the 1970s.

It is perhaps not unusual that a British study might conclude that Brits have the edge on their American brothers. After all, as Mark Twain was fond of saying, there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics” (ironically for OE, the term was coined by British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli). But what about Britain vs Europe? A study published last week by the uSwitch.com consumer website claims that Britain has the worst quality of life in Europe, and — surprise — France the best.

British workers work three years longer and die two years younger than the French, while they pay more for fuel, food, alcohol and cigarettes. The study compared 17 lifestyle factors in France, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Ireland and Britain, and estimated that while Britain had the highest net household income, this was eaten up by a much higher cost of living.

British workers work the longest hours (apart from the Poles) and have the shortest vacations. They are also near the bottom in terms of health and education spending, and — through no fault of their own — sunshine. The French come out on top in all these categories. Said Ann Robinson, head of consumer policy at the British firm: “We earn substantially more than our European neighbours, but this level of income is needed just to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and our homes warm.” The report will please no one (except the French) so we can assume its gloomy conclusion is unfortunately on the mark.

Sifting through these “damned lies”, it seems that the quality of life in Britain is the worst in Europe though still better than in the US. But this is to be expected, given the 20th century imperial legacy of Britain, Europe and the US. Britain was the “great” empire of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and in keeping with the logic of empire was, at its peak, able to amass wealth from its empire and impose its pound sterling as the world’s reserve currency, with all the economic and political advantages that implies, putting even lowly workers among the beneficiaries.

The imperial dreams of France and other European powers were nipped in the bud by the insatiable Disraelis (and Churchills). But empire has its dark side. Economically, the inflow of gold and wealth to the centre eventually turns into an outflow, as capitalists and bankers look abroad for greater profit. Meanwhile, the state is left financing colonial infrastructure and a growing military, necessary to keep the natives in line and to keep the colonial revenues flowing to the motherland. And then there is the need to quell competing empires (the French again, not to mention the Gerries). The 18-19th cc wars with France and the 20th century wars with the Germans bankrupted the British empire, and finally left the US as the empire’s heir.

The exact same logic has plagued the post-WWII American empire with results that are only too obvious today. It faced off against the Soviet Union and now is mired in the futile attempt to conquer the Middle East and Central Asia, destroying itself in the process — and leaving the American people with falling living standards.

Despite Britain’s lack of natural resources, by shedding its empire and adopting socialist policies, its quality of life actually improved dramatically after WWII. A smaller pie more equitably distributed is far better for the masses than a huge, fractious banquet for the elite one per cent, where only crumbs are passed on to the other 99.

The continuing British malaise today is the direct result of two poisonous factors. First, the continuing imperial pretensions that its elite has, prompting its governments, Conservative and Labour alike, to send troops to the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya to support its own residual empire or that of its imperial comrade-in-arms. The ongoing imbroglios in Afghanistan and Libya are now draining British coffers of billions of pounds, even as its government slashes the social programmes thanks to which the British worker’s standard of living has now risen above his/her hapless American counterpart.

The malaise is also the result more broadly of the neo-liberal policies of the Iron Lady, who managed to realise her perverse philosophy that “there is no such thing as society” by dismantling much of the social welfare structure of post-WWII Britain. The result was far from what prime minister Margaret Thatcher expected. Her ideal was “a return to Victorian liberal values, but instead of the Victorian virtues of stability and thrift, the result was a largely proletarian society, characterised by shiftlessness (“flexible labor market”), low inflation and high personal debt, where the state now promotes only the interests of the corporate individuals, and suppresses truly “liberal” social forces like unions. It is better called market totalitarianism. “As Marx perceived, the actual effect of the unfettered market is to overturn established social relationships and forms of ethical life — including those of bourgeois societies,” laments critique John Gray.

The only saving grace for Britain is that it is no longer left holding the imperial bag. It can always pack up and leave — with apologies to the Yanks. It is now a “postmodern state”, along with its fellow Europeans, content to let the Americans make the decisions about who to invade. As for the smug French, their neo-Napoleon at the helm seems intent on catching up with the poor Brits in the race to the Euro-bottom, and repeating all the mistakes of the 20th century in his hallmark frenetic style.

If French President Nicolas Sarkozy has his way (pushing for more imperial interventions, cutting pensions and education spending, raising the retirement age and much more), the next study could well show the French “winning” this race. But not to fear, since the Americans, as the current imperial bag-holder, are guaranteed to be at the bottom of the heap.

Israel’s refusal to say “I apologise” has already proved to be very expensive, and will continue to reverberate, not just in the hollow halls of the ICC, but off the shores of Israel itself, as Turkish warships accompany flotillas breaking the siege, and when Turkey begins drilling for gas in waters that Greek Cyprus and Israel claim for themselves. It will echo when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who US International Trade Undersecretary Francisco Sanchez said was “like a rock star”, crosses the Rafah border to visit Gaza. No one can mistake Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias for Elton John.

There are many reasons for the deterioration of the once smooth relations between Israel and Turkey. Firstly both nations have moved away from their secular roots — Turkey with the return of Islam as a guiding principle in political life under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002, Israel with the rise of Likud in 1977 ending the long reign of Labour. Turkey is naturally returning to its traditional role under the Ottoman Caliphate as regional Muslim hegemon, while the Zionised version of Judaism has ended any pretence of the Jewish state being interested in making peace with the indigenous Muslims.

Israel’s relations with both Cyprus and brotherly Greece — both longstanding foes of Turkey — have warmed up considerably since Israel killed nine Turks last year and Turkish-Israeli relations plunged. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman became the first such Israeli official to visit Cyprus last September. Their Foreign Affairs people have been meeting regularly since, as it becomes clear that Israel is using Cyprus as its proxy in gas and oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

While no one was looking, Greek Cyprus began exploring for gas off the coast. The project by the Texas-based Noble Energy prompted Erdogan and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) President Dervis Eroglu to hurriedly sign an agreement last week on delineation of the continental shelf, while the leaders were attending the United Nations General Assembly meetings. Ankara announced Turkish Petroleum Corporation has commissioned a Norwegian oil and gas firm to set up its own oil and gas exploration rig nearby — accompanied by a warship. In Nicosia, Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Irsen Kucuk vowed “to make every effort and show every kind of resistance to protect our rights and interests”.

With the announcement of the exploration project, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz suggested the risks for Nobel are considerable. “I do not think they will undertake such a work in such a risky area, from a technical and a feasibility point of view.” Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Turkey’s plans were “no bluff”. The US Israel Lobby’s Richard Stone called Turkey’s actions “a reason for war”.

The new friendship between Greece, Cyprus and Israel is a major headache for Turkey, but — apart from possibly leading to war — also has other drawbacks for the Greeks, their Cypriot cousins and the EU as a whole. The gas and oil drilling will put paid to the long-suffering attempt under UN auspices to reunite the island. Greek Cyprus has been divided since a Turkish intervention in 1974 triggered by a Greek-inspired coup. UN-sponsored peace talks between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots have stumbled since they were relaunched in 2008.

Davutoglu warned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York last week that the Greek Cypriot drilling plan will doom the island to permanent division. “If they claim they have their own area where they can do whatever they want, then, by implication, they accept that Northern Cyprus has its own area as well. This is a shift to a two-state mentality.” In the latest move, the KKTC president proposed to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this week that there be a mutual freeze in drilling or at least a joint committee to resolve the dispute. The Cypriot leaders will have a tripartite meeting with the Ban in New York at the end of October.

Hopes for Turkey’s accession to the EU are also dashed. Referring to Cyprus taking on the rotating presidency of the EU next summer, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said, “If the negotiations [on Cyprus] do not end positively and the EU hands over the presidency to southern Cyprus, we will freeze our relations with the EU.”

Cyprus says its hydrocarbon search is to the benefit of all Cypriots, but it fails to mention in its press releases that it is working jointly with Israel on this project. In effect, Israel is getting Cyprus to do its dirty work for it, as an Israeli-sponsored rig would be a red flag to the Muslim bull. This recapitulates the cozying up of Israel to Greece in the past year, their new military cooperation, and Israel’s use of Greece this summer to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from setting out from Greek ports to break the Gaza siege. Cypriot President Christofias accused Turkey of being a regional “troublemaker”, failing to point to the Israeli bull in the regional china shop.

While Cyprus and big guns such as Sarkozy and Merkel openly reject Turkey’s admission into the EU, playing to their right wing anti-immigrant base, sensible voices can still be heard. Secretary General of the Council of Europe Throbjorn Jagland said that Turkey was important for Europe, and that Erdogan’s call in Cairo to create a secular constitution and order in Egypt and Middle East was “of utmost importance”. At a Liberal Democratic Party meeting in Birmingham UK, Turkey’s Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said, “The EU needs Turkey if it wants to remain as an important actor. Turkey will help the Union become a global economic player.” Turkey’s economy grew 9 per cent in 2010 as Europe’s slid. Asked to describe the ruling AKP, Simsek said: “In issues such as family we are conservative. In economy and relations with the world we are liberal. And in social justice and poverty we are socialist.”

But already Turkish opinion is turning against kowtowing to Europe, just as kowtowing to the US and Israel is no longer acceptable. Erdogan’s spectacular reception on his visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya shows where Turkey is appreciated. It is the big winner in the Arab Spring, leaving the US, Israel and Europe to wonder where they fit in.

Hopes to turn a grateful Libya into a NATO base are vain, as Islamists immediately rose to prominence; much like the Communist resistance did in the aftermath to WWII, after bearing the brunt of the Nazi war machine. French President Nicolas Sarkozy should read his French history, including the humiliating consequences of France’s last dabbling in the region — its invasion of Egypt in 1956.

Can the West reshape Libya as it did post-WWII Europe to meet its goals of neocolonial hegemony? Not likely, as Turkey was pragmatic enough to get in on the ground and will be able to ensure that Libyans are not duped by their clever Western advisers. Ditto Tunisia and Egypt. The forceful and principled foreign policy moves of Davitoglu are leaving the West and Israel breathless in the new Bermuda Triangle.

Israeli whining about their trashed embassy in Cairo or their unceremonious expulsion from Ankara can impress no one. Just imagine the scenario if Cyprus is replaced by Egypt in the Bermuda Triangle, and a Turkish-Egyptian alliance decides to take on Israel. The current blockade of Gaza will look like child’s play. Egypt controls the Suez Canal, and Turkey — the eastern Mediterranean. One can only marvel that it has taken over 60 years for Israel’s powerful neighbours — with 20 times the population of Israel — to realise their collective power and ability to impose a just regional order without any kowtowing to Washington.

What is surprising is that the AKP faces no domestic opposition to its policy with either Israel, Cyprus or the EU. The Republican People’s Party is even competing with the AKP on who is more anti-Israel, protesting against plans to install a NATO early warning radar. The once-feared Islamists clearly represent the overwhelming Turkish sentiment, and geopolitical dictates are creating a fait accompli.

Willingness to stand up for the nation’s rights, and to stare down the Israeli enemy and the Islamophobic Euros is where it’s at, and there is little the increasingly powerless US can do about it. The US better wake up soon or, like the EU, it will lose its true ally in the Middle East, and will merely speed up the consolidation of a pax turkana, a latter-day caliphate once again led by Turkey.

You love your country as the nearest, most precious thing to you.  But one day, for example, they may endorse it over to America, and you, too, with your great freedom – you have the freedom to become an air-base.

— From: “A Sad Kind Of Freedom”, by Nazim Hickmet (1902-1963) courtesy of Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO

It is instructive to look at the plethora of 9/11 tenth anniversary pullouts in newspapers to note the commemorative programmes, interviews, memories. The heartbreak, broken and lost lives — the ten year old now twenty, who realized, horror struck, that her father was in the building she watched flaming and falling on television.

There are spreads of other ten years olds, children unborn when their pregnant mother was widowed by a terrible atrocity on a sunlit day, in a city turned dark by smoke and ash. Pregnant survivors, say “experts”, passed their trauma to their children, we learn.

“Share your memories of 9/11 ten years on”, invite newspapers

Photographers have recalled: “the day of horror.”

Yet, with it all comes the realization that seemingly this tragedy of enormity – 2,751 lost souls, in an event which exceeded the deaths of Pearl Harbour, according to the 9/11 Commission Report – is unique.

Carnage across the world has been wrought in subsequent US-driven bloodshed. One assessment to August 2010, using a more conservative death toll than some, is of the equivalent of three hundred and three 9/11s in Iraq and Afghanistan alone in the ongoing post-September 2001 assaults.

This toll, however, is seemingly inconsequential. The lives of others, in numbers beyond comprehension, are not tragedy, searing loss, unimaginable grief, but “collateral damage.”

The acres of coverage of the “orphans of 9/11” are poignant, heart-rending.

In Afghanistan that first post 9/11 onslaught victim, there are two million orphans, of which over 600,000 sleep on the streets. Over 400,000 are maimed from land mines – and over a million children suffer from post- traumatic stress disorder.

One in ten Afghan children are severely malnourished, more than half suffer from stunted growth, and one in every four children dies before age five – the fourth highest level in the world (UNICEF).

Fifty percent of the Afghan population is less than eighteen years of age with almost no education.

Iraq’s figures since the 2003 invasion, again, lest ever forgotten, dwarf even Afghanistan’s appalling plight. Five million orphans, one million widows, nearly five million exiled.

By April 2011, just six weeks in to the “humanitarian” bombardment of Libya, the death toll was already being estimated as high as 30,000. If correct, an average of over two “9/11s”, in human toll a week.

On July 7, the Jordan Times recorded eight hundred deaths in just one graveyard in Misrata.

The paper also noted: “There is no trace of hatred or resentment on the part of the gravediggers in charge of burying their enemies:

“It’s a tragedy. They are our brothers. We did not want all this to happen. I’m sorry for all this,” murmurs Jetlawi.

Colleague Derateia too is sad.

“I wish God saved the lives of everyone. We are used to this, to see the dead, but we are appalled to see Muslims killing each other. It’s pathetic,” he adds.

What a contrast to the encapsulation of what seems to be the Western political and military concept of the peoples and cultures we are decimating.

On BBC Radio 5, (September 9) David Buik, an executive with Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost over six hundred employees in the Twin Towers, told listeners of his understandable fury, yet with little concept that others bleed, suffer, grieve in tragedy.

The dominant emotion still, he said, was “The abuse of life – to us in the West, so precious and to terrorists and religious fanatics so cheap.” Does he not reflect on how what is being done in George W. Bush’s declared “Crusade” in the name of this sacred West is being viewed across the world on a scale equaling some of history’s greatest atrocities?

Libya, another painstakingly developed country, is fast becoming another Iraq in every way, from factional, to ethnic cleansing, especially of those with a darker skin, to factions brought in to ensure there will never be reconciliation, and historical and archeological treasures and heritage looted, bombed, destroyed.

In Bani Walid, with its university campus and population of just over 46,000, the NATO backed National Transitional Council’s “rebels”, have deliberately cut off water and electricity supplies. An indisputable war crime.

But as bodies mount, buildings fall and dreams die, make no mistake, Libya is another looming occupation. With its oil, frozen overseas financial assets possibly as high as $150 billion – with NATO countries estimated holding possibly $99 billion – near inestimable water wealth and a strategic geographic location to dream of, for invaders with eyes on other regional assets and natural resources, the “liberators” will not be planning on leaving any time soon.

Further, by March 1, there were already reports of the US, Britain and France having established bases in Benghazi and Tobruk. Ironically, Tobruk was site of the WW11, 240-day siege of allied forces by Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel.The pinned down troops were finally rescued by the (UK) 8^th Army in the Muslim country in “Operation Crusader.

Tripoli, of course was the site of the vast US Air Force base, appropriated in 1943, when Libya was ruled by the British backed King Idris. The then US Ambassador to Libya had called it: “A little America on the sparkling shores of the Mediterranean.”

The base, renamed “Wheelus”, remained American until Gaddafi overthrew Idris’s regime in 1969 and closed all foreign bases.

The base became Tripoli international Airport, now bombed.The liberators will surely award themselves the rebuilding contracts and planning for the re-opening of the base is, equally surely, underway.

The US had, of course, under the project of AFRICOM, offered African governments money to “host” American bases. Gaddafi, reportedly, offered them twice as much not to, resulting in a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union in 2008.

It was a prescient Tripoli taxi driver, who told the LA Times: “I have a fear that one day we will be like Iraq, wishing for the days of Muammar Gaddafi.”

Afghanistan, bombed and invaded less than a month after 9/11 to free it from a “repressive” and “tyrannical” regime, now has 400 US and “coalition” bases.  Iraq, also freed from the “Butcher of Baghdad” by US-led largesse, based on a pack of lies about as ridiculous as the pack of “Most Wanted” playing cards, now has 14 city sized bases and a list of others, near inexhaustible. The “coalition” are there to stay.

In an interview this week, “Middle East Peace Envoy”, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, still not in the International Criminal Court in the Hague in spite of the best efforts of some towering legal minds, made it clear that Syria and Iran were next, firmly in US/UK sights.

General Wesley Clarke, of course, told “Democracy Now” (March 2, 2007) that in 2001, after 9/11, he was told by a Pentagon official that the US planned to attack seven countries in five years. They were: “Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.” Bombing Afghanistan was already underway.

And the contractors are already queuing to re-arm that which they sold Libya, now destroyed, and to rebuild. Britain, now under Prime Minister “this will be a Libyan led transformation, we have learned from Iraq” Cameron. “Libya – The Future” is a not to be missed Conference, to be held in London, 26 and 27 September:

The race is on for countries and businesses to create strategic alliances with the Libyan National Transitional Council regime. Government body, UK Trade and Investment, plans an invitation only Conference, Tuesday 27^th September.

You really need to be at ‘Libya – The Future’, at the prestigious QE11 Conference Centre, in the heart of Westminster.

At up to £3,000 a delegate …

On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, Abdul Hakim Belhadji, allegedly formerly on US and UK terrorist lists, moved to Tripoli to be Libya’s new leader, backed by the same US and UK. This as his “rebel forces” are reported to have entirely ethnically cleansed Tawarga, a town of 10,000 people, which now lies entirely empty.

After 9/11, “The US enjoyed an outpouring of global sympathy. Within a couple of years, that sympathy had been squandered”, wrote Rupert Cornwell, in the Independent this week.

A friend who has spent every waking hour since the Iraq invasion of 2003 trying to put back the lives of Iraqi refugees who fled the invasion, perhaps said it all for invasions since and planned:

Dear USA, Your 9/11 is our 24/7.

It has been said, “In war, truth is the first casualty”. Libya is no exception. From the lies that started the war, to the rebels linked to al-Qaeda, ethnically cleansing black Libyans, killing civilians, propaganda, PR firms, intelligence agents, and possible occupation; Libya is a more complex story than the fairy tale we have been sold. Reality always is.

What Were the “Reasons for Intervention”?

We were sold the case for war in Libya as a “humanitarian intervention.” We were told, of course, that we “needed” to intervene in Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was killing his own people in large numbers; those people, on the same token, were presented as peaceful protesters resisting the 40-plus year reign of a brutal dictator.

In early March of 2011, news headlines in Western nations reported that Gaddafi would kill half a million people.¹ On March 18, as the UN agreed to launch air strikes on Libya, it was reported that Gaddafi had begun an assault against the rebel-held town of Benghazi. The Daily Mail reported that Gaddafi had threatened to send in his African mercenaries to crush the rebellion.²

Reports of Libyan government tanks sitting outside Benghazi poised for an invasion were propagated in the Western media. ³ In the lead-up to the United Nations imposing a no-fly zone, reports spread rapidly through the media of Libyan government jets bombing the rebels. ⁴ Even in February, the New York Times – the sacred temple for the ‘stenographers of power’ we call “ournalists” – reported that Gaddafi was amassing “thousands of mercenaries” to defend Tripoli and crush the rebels. ⁵ Italy’s Foreign Minister declared that over 1,000 people were killed in the fighting in February, citing the number as “credible.”⁶  Even a top official with Human Rights Watch declared the rebels to be “peaceful protesters” who “are nice, sincere people who want a better future for Libya”.⁷   The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that “thousands” of people were likely killed by Gaddafi, “and called for international intervention to protect civilians.” ⁸ In April, reports spread near and far at lightning speed of Gaddafi’s forces using rape as a weapon of war, with the first sentence in a Daily Mail article declaring, “Children as young as eight are being raped in front of their families by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya,” with Gaddafi handing out Viagra to his troops in a planned and organized effort to promote rape. ⁹

As it turned out, these claims – as posterity notes – turned out to be largely false and contrived. Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International both investigated the claims of rape, and “have found no first-hand evidence in Libya that rapes are systematic and being used as part of war strategy,” and their investigations in Eastern Libya “have not turned up significant hard evidence supporting allegations of rapes by Qaddafi’s forces.” Yet, just as these reports came out, Hillary Clinton declared that the U.S. is “deeply concerned by reports of wide-scale rape” in Libya. ¹⁰  Even U.S. military and intelligence officials had to admit that, “there is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas”; at the same time Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, “told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti-impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to back up the claim.”¹¹

An investigation by Amnesty International, released in June, attempted to assess the on-the-ground (as opposed to ‘in-the-newspapers’) reality of the claims made which led to Western “intervention” in Libya. Among the stories of mass rapes were the use, by Gaddafi, of “foreign mercenaries” and using helicopters and jets to attack rebel forces and protesters. As the Independent reported in June:

An investigation by Amnesty International has failed to find evidence for these human rights violations and in many cases has discredited or cast doubt on them. It also found indications that on several occasions the rebels in Benghazi appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence.¹²

Hillary Clinton stated, “Rape, physical intimidation, sexual harassment, and even so-called ‘virginity tests’ have taken place in countries throughout the region,” and at the same time, the senior crisis responder for Amnesty International who was in Libya for three months following the uprising stated, “we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.”

Human Rights Watch reported, “We have not been able to find evidence.” The rebels had been very active, in fact, in manufacturing and propagating lies that supported intervention and war, as the Amnesty representative explained, “rebels dealing with the foreign media in Benghazi started showing journalists packets of Viagra, claiming they came from burned-out tanks, though it is unclear why the packets were not charred.” Further, in regards to the use of foreign mercenaries, for which many black Africans were killed and imprisoned by the rebels, Amnesty reported, “there was no evidence for this.” The Amnesty rep in Libya declared: “Those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly released… Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without documents.” Others, Amnesty reported, “were not so lucky and were lynched or executed,” as “the politicians kept talking about mercenaries, which inflamed public opinion and the myth has continued because they were released without publicity.”¹²

Those migrants who were shown to foreign media were not represented in that media in a friendly or even falsely unbiased manner. As the Daily Mail reported at the time, publishing photos of the “savage mercenaries” who later turned out to be migrant workers, “they were a pretty sorry bunch,” and that, “you could smell their fear.” The article then went on to declare, “these men are alleged to have been among several thousand foreign thugs and gunmen that Muammar Gaddafi sent against his own people, to kill and destroy and quell the uprising in eastern Libya.” Now, claimed the Daily Mail, “they are the prisoners of the people.” However, the article continued to – several paragraphs below, mind you – quote some of the “savage mercenaries” who made statements to the reporter such as: “We did not do anything… We are all construction workers from Ghana. We harmed no one… they are lying about us. We were taken from our house at night when we were sleeping.” The reporter assessed the situation with: “Still complaining, they were led away. It was hard to judge their guilt.” ¹³

Further, with the “credible” reports – as the Italian Foreign Minister referred to them – of “thousands” of civilians killed by Gaddafi in the early weeks of rebellion, the Amnesty International investigation found that, “there is no proof of mass killing of civilians.” During the first days of the uprising, most of the fighting was in Benghazi, “where 100 to 110 people were killed, and the city of Baida to the east, where 59 to 64 were killed.” However, there were indications that some of these deaths were also pro-Gaddafi forces, and that some “protesters” had weapons, indicating that it may have been a fight as opposed to a massacre. Further, reported Amnesty: “There is no evidence that aircraft or heavy anti-aircraft machine guns were used against crowds. Spent cartridges picked up after protesters were shot at came from Kalashnikovs or similar calibre weapons.” The Amnesty report further criticized Western media coverage of the war:

Much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.¹²

As for the notion that NATO was bombing Gaddafi troops poised for an invasion, even the New York Times quoted a Libyan official who claimed, “that Western powers were now attacking the Libyan Army in retreat, a far cry from the United Nations mandate to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians.” This is an important point, because the reason for the UN no-fly zone was purportedly to “protect civilians,” not to “take sides” in the civil conflict between the government and the rebels. As a Libyan official stated, some Libyan forces “were attacked as they were clearly moving westbound,” as in, away from Benghazi and the rebels in the east. He further stated, “Clearly NATO is taking sides in this civil conflict. It is illegal. It is not allowed by the Security Council resolution. And it is immoral, of course.” At the same time, the NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, declared that, “NATO will implement all aspects of the U.N. resolution. Nothing more, nothing less.” ¹⁴

Days before the Libyan government official claimed that Libyan forces were in retreat as they were bombed (something which would no doubt be immediately cast aside as Libyan propaganda by Western media sources), the New York Times, within days of NATO strikes beginning, reported on 20 March 2011 that, “with brutal efficiency, allied warplanes bombed tanks, missile launchers and civilian cars, leaving a smoldering trail of wreckage that stretched for miles,” and further, outside of Benghazi, “many of the tanks seemed to have been retreating, or at least facing the other way. And others were simply abandoned.” ¹⁵

Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most prestigious and influential think tank in the United States, was also a former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State, former National Security Council Senior Director, who has also been a key figure within the Brookings Institution, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In short, it is a hard thing to be a more institutionalized imperial strategist than Haas; however, even he wrote in early April that, “I did not support the U.S. decision to intervene with military force in Libya. The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent.” However, he, of course, went on to support NATO’s efforts, as – he explained – “we are where we are.”¹⁶

Long before the UN resolution 1973 and the NATO air strikes began, the Russian military, who had been monitoring events in Libya from satellites, said that Libya never launched attacks from helicopters or jets against its own civilians, and that, “as far as they are concerned, the attacks some media were reporting have never occurred.”¹⁷  Of course, this was later confirmed by an independent investigation;¹² however, the war had already been sold on the basis of such dubious reporting. Indeed, far more journalists are “stenographers of power” rather than “investigators of truth”

On March 1, the same day that the Russian military reported that there had been no jets used in attacks by Gaddafi against his own civilians, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, gave a press conference at the Pentagon where one reporter posed the question: “Do you see any evidence that he actually has fired on his own people from the air? There were reports of it, but do you have independent confirmation? If so, to what extent?” Secretary Gates responded: “We’ve seen the press reports, but we have no confirmation of that,” and Admiral Mullen added, “That’s correct. We’ve seen no confirmation whatsoever.”¹⁸ So even the Pentagon itself admitted that it had absolutely “no confirmation whatsoever” that jets and helicopters had been used to attack civilians, yet the whole Western world took this as de facto truth. In this, we can see the power of the media in making a case for war, where their propaganda is more absurd and manufactured than that of the Pentagon’s.

Stenographers of Power?

Glenn Greenwald, an American constitutional and civil rights lawyer who writes for Salon.com wrote an article about the notion of reporters as “stenographers of power.” He quoted an article entitled, “How to be a stenographer”, in which it was written:

If you are considering a career as a stenographer, one of the most important things that you should consider is what type of job duties stenographers have. They transcribe, or type, material which they are dictated. This can include orders, memos, correspondence, reports and various other types of information. ¹⁹

Greenwald, in describing his own personal experience with courtroom stenographers, wrote:

Their defining trait is that they have a fierce devotion to transcribing accurately everything that is said and doing nothing else. It’s not uncommon for lawyers, in the heat of some dispute, to attempt to recruit the stenographer into the controversy in order to say who is right… Stenographers will never do that. They will emphasize that they are only there to write down what is said, not to resolve disputes or say what actually happened… But there’s a fundamental difference: stenographers are far better at their job, since they give equal weight to what all parties say. But Time and friends exist principally to trumpet government claims and minimize and belittle anything to the contrary, and they pretend to “balance” it all only when they’re caught mindlessly transcribing these one-sided claims and are forced to write down what the other side says, too. The bulk of our establishment journalists aren’t merely stenographers. They’re bad stenographers.” ¹⁹

Following the beginning of the Iraq war, many newspapers had to publish small pieces outlining their role as “[bad] stenographers of power” in presenting the case for war in the first place. Of course, at the time that the New York Times, the Washington Post and others were selling the war to the American people, dissenters and critics were unabashedly seeking truth and were able to assess the claims made as “false” long before the war, let alone before these news publications had “discovered” the falsities they reported. Of course, claims will always be made that “hindsight is 20/20″ and “we didn’t know,” but such claims don’t stand to scrutiny when the dissenters, whose voices were never heard in the Times or Post, were far ahead of the media in assessing the validity of the government’s assertions. In 2004, the New York Times had to publish a brief report on its own pre-Iraq war coverage, stating:

We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.²⁰

The Washington Post ran a similar story, detailing the attitude its editors and journalists took in the run up to the war in Iraq. It was reported that any article questioning the validity of claims made by the administration, such as the notion that there were WMDs in Iraq, wouldn’t make the front page. Bob Woodward, Assistant Managing Editor at the Post stated, “We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier.” The article further explained:

“Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration’s evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times… Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?..

Across the country, “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones,” [Washington Post Executive Editor] Downie said. “We didn’t pay enough attention to the minority.”…

From August 2002 through the March 19, 2003, launch of the war, The Post ran more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq. Some examples: “Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified”; “War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack”; “Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein or U.S. Will”; “Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat”; “Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War.”²¹

One story that was submitted to the Post for publication, which threw into doubt all the claims made by the U.S. administration, and which largely quoted retired military officials and outside experts, “was killed by Matthew Vita, then the national security editor and now a deputy assistant managing editor” of the Post. Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor who covered the prewar diplomacy, said quite bluntly that, “Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials had no problem commanding prime real estate in the paper, even when their warnings were repetitive”:

“We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power”, DeYoung said. “If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.” And if contrary arguments are put “in the eighth paragraph, where they’re not on the front page, a lot of people don’t read that far.” ²²

There you have it, a former assistant managing editor of the Washington Post herself admitted that, “We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.” If there had ever been a clearer admission of being stenographers of power, I have yet to hear it.

No doubt, then, that upon the militaristic adventurism of yet another war, the media is again doing what it does best: being a “mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.” Yet, with Libya it is even more profound; sold as a “humanitarian intervention”, this war must be presented in the media as a type of “rescue” operation as opposed to an imperial adventure. This task requires all the more deception on the part of both official statements and media “mouthpieces”.

As the saying goes, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Indeed, it was so in Libya, and continues to be assaulted day-in day-out so long as this unjustified war continues.

Who are the Rebels?

We have been told a great many things about the rebels in Libya. We were told that they were “peaceful protesters”, that they were “nice guys”, and represented a popular uprising. From the flurry of reports about the rebels, the general ‘presentation’given by Western governments and media was that the rebels are average Libyan civilians seeking to liberate themselves from a brutal tyrant who was indiscriminately killing them. Invariably and incessantly, the media in the West, such as the Financial Times, frame the forces as “pro-democracy rebels.”²³ Naturally, such assertions must be more diligently questioned and investigated. So who are the rebels? Who makes up Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC), largely recognized by the Western nations as the “legitimate” government in Libya?

The protests in Libya began in Benghazi on February 15, 2011. Fighting broke out between protesters and government forces, though it was naturally framed by Western media as a massacre, which ultimately turned out to be false. On 27 February, the National Transition Council (NTC) (also referred to as the Transitional National Council – TNC) was formed as a consolidated effort on the part of rebel groups to form an opposition ‘government.’ The TNC immediately called for a no-fly zone to be imposed by the U.N. and for air strikes against Gaddafi forces, which the TNC claimed were committing air strikes against them, which also turned out to be false.²⁴ The rebels, however, were composed of a wide array of different groups. Among them, as Political Scientist and Sociologist Mahmood Mamdani explained, are “four different political trends: radical Islamists, royalists, tribalists, and secular middle class activists produced by a Western-oriented educational system.” Further, “of these, only the radical Islamists, especially those linked organisationally to Al Qaeda, have battle experience.” ²⁵

While many Western media outlets initially tried to frame the rebels as simply, “lawyers, academics, businessmen and youths,” trying to sidetrack the Islamist elements within the rebel groups, eventually the story started to slowly break, though still largely downplayed. The TNC includes many former Libyan government officials who defected to the rebel camp at the start of the fighting. As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, “some of the officials are known in Washington and European capitals as secular, pro-Western and pro-business,” and that, “Islamists among the rebels have been largely kept out of the public spotlight, though they are believed to have support in eastern Libya and have assumed key functions in the rebel efforts.”

The head of the TNC is a man named Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-educated political scientist and economist who previously headed Libya’s National Economic Development Board, “with the mandate to boost foreign investment and economic growth in country.”²⁶ By putting Jibril at the head of the TNC, the Council is “sending a message to foreign companies that the future Libyan government is interested in foreign investment and privatization.”²⁷

According to a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks from 2009, the U.S. ambassador to Libya wrote that Jibril “gets the U.S. perspective,” as in a meeting with Jibril, he had “highlighted the need to replace the country’s decrepit infrastructure and train Libyans,” and “requested American public and private assistance to do so.” Jibril, in his pitch to the ambassador, stated that Libya “has a stable regime and is ‘virgin country’ for investors,” leading the ambassador to conclude: “we should take him up on his offer.”²⁸

Jibril and the TNC released, in late March, a document entitled, “A Vision of a Democratic Libya,” as a type of blueprint for building a ‘new’ Libya. Among the many points in the blueprint were to: “Draft a national constitution; form political organisations and civil institutions including the formation of political parties, popular organisations, unions, societies and other civil and peaceful associations; maintain a constitutional civil and free state by upholding intellectual and political pluralism and the peaceful transfer of power, opening the way for genuine political participation, without discrimination; guarantee every Libyan citizen, of statutory age, the right to vote in free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections; guarantee and respect the freedom of expression; and a firm commitment to “political democracy.” The ‘vision’ further states that it seeks, “the development of genuine economic partnerships between a strong and productive public sector, a free private sector and a supportive and effective civil society.”²⁹

Well, that all sounds well and good, but just how truly “democratic” or “respectful” of ‘human rights’ are the rebels and the TNC? How does their purported statements of support for Libyans “without discrimination” stand up to scrutiny? How truly democratic and peaceful are these groups?

Western Intelligence and the Rebels

The rebel groups are not simply disparate, localized, and grassroots individuals rising up in support of democracy and against a brutal tyrant. In fact, from the very beginning of the fighting, many rebels have been actively supported by Western and NATO intelligence agencies and special forces, including the CIA.

In March it was reported that the CIA had been authorized by President Obama to begin operations in Libya. ³⁰ The CIA was reportedly sent to Libya to gather intelligence for air strikes and “to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels.” As Obama said no U.S. forces were on the ground in Libya, which itself is a direct violation of the UN resolution 1973 which authorized a no-fly zone in Libya (but directly forbade foreign troops on the ground), “small groups of C.I.A. operatives [had] been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military,” reported the New York Times. As they had been in Libya “for several weeks,” they had arrived prior to even the passing of UN resolution 1973 and the imposition of a no-fly zone, indicating directly that there were no plans for peace, and war was the favoured option. Further, in the same report, it was revealed that British special forces and MI6 intelligence agents were also active in Libya. Prior to the UN resolution, which was implemented to only “protect civilians” and not to take sides in the conflict, President Obama signed a secret finding “authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels.”³¹

The CIA officers in Libya, reported the Los Angeles Times, are “coordinating with rebels and sharing intelligence,” and that, “the CIA has been in rebel-held areas of Libya since shortly after the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Tripoli, was evacuated in February.” As the article pointed out, in a clear indication of where the war might be headed:

“In the early days of the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, teams of CIA officers and U.S. special operations troops entered secretly, coordinated with opposition groups and used handheld equipment to call in and aim airstrikes against the government armies.”³²

However, at the time, in late March, Obama and the White House were declaring that, “no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya.”³³  Before the UN resolution was even passed in early March, a report broke in the Independent which revealed a secret plan by the U.S. to arm the Libyan rebels through Saudi Arabia.³⁴ Also before the U.N. resolution was passed, the Wall Street Journal revealed that, “Egypt’s military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington’s knowledge.”³⁵ The Egyptian military is largely subsidized and supported by the United States, thus what it does with U.S. “knowledge” is also done with U.S. “consent”.

The leader of the Libyan rebel’s military command is a man named Khalifa Hifter. As McClatchy Newspapers revealed in March, he had “spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland,” and explained that he had maintained, over those 20 years in Virginia, strong ties to anti-Gaddafi groups without any ‘known’ financial support, while living a mere 20 miles from CIA headquarters.³⁶

There is a significant amount of investigative research, largely not undertaken by the mainstream media, who largely kept Hifter’s name out of the press, that he is, in fact, an asset of the CIA, and has been for a great many years.³⁷ However, the Guardian, in April of 2011, reported that Hifter had, in the early 1980s, “joined a CIA-run anti-Gaddafi force.³⁸

Gaddafi, al-Qaeda, and … Charlie Sheen?

In late February and early March, Gaddafi was claiming that the rebel groups were linked to al-Qaeda, a claim which was largely ridiculed by Western media. Apparently, it is only the Western nations and media who have the ability to claim that all their ‘enemies’ are linked to al-Qaeda. As the Guardianreported on 1 March, “Muammar Gaddafi’s insistent claim that al-Qaida is behind the Libyan uprising – made in all his public appearances since the crisis began – has been dismissed at home and abroad as propaganda.” The group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an affiliate of al-Qaeda, have long been in Libya, and have been long-opposed to Gaddafi’s rule. Established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the group has been responsible for assassinating dozens of Libyan soldiers and policemen. At the time, MI6, the British foreign intelligence agency, was accused of supporting the LIFG in Britain’s vehement campaign to rid Libya of Gaddafi.³⁹

The Western media attempted to ridicule Gaddafi for making such claims, as MSNBC reported Gaddafi’s denouncement as a “rambling phone call to Libyan state TV.”⁴⁰  The media kept up its campaign, with a Guardian headline in early March asking readers to participate in an online questionnaire entitled, “Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway?”⁴¹ Or how about Vanity Fair, which ‘challenged’ their readers with a hard-bitten ‘journalistic’ quiz, asking, “The Two and a Half Men star and the Libyan dictator delivered rambling rants this week. Can you tell who said what?”⁴² As the National Post – Canada’s vociferously imperial national newspaper – wrote in early March:

It’s rare that the news stories that would usually be relegated to the “bizarre news” section make it onto the front pages, but over the last few days the fantasies of two famous men have forced their way into the public consciousness. Muammar Gaddafi and Charlie Sheen have probably never met (though given the proclivity for Hollywood stars to dabble in foreign policy, you never know), but they share a number of qualities, such as a slipping grip on reality and easy access to TV interviewers through which to share their musings.⁴³

This line of ridicule comparing Gaddafi to Charlie Sheen was repeated all over Western news media, as a simple Google search of both of their names will indicate, with several publications engaging in the rank-and-file self-assured ridicule, including the Mirror, MSNBC, New York Magazine, The First Post, the Chicago Tribune, Life, Reuters, Salon, the Telegraph, the Atlantic, ABC News, and comedy pundits like Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central, among many others. So this is what our ‘news’ media has come to, in a situation of impending war and devastation, the destruction of human life and invasion of foreign countries and occupation of foreign peoples, sending our young, largely poor domestic populations to go kill or be killed, turning their guns on other poor, forgotten peoples for the benefit of those who send them. Instead of taking an issue like “humanitarian intervention” in the proper context of a war, which like all wars, would kill inordinate amounts of innocent civilians, our media chose to engage in the disgraceful frenzy of a group joke.

As the claims of Gaddafi were increasingly ridiculed as the crazy rants of a beleaguered psychopathic dictator (note: I am not casting doubt on the fact that he IS a dictator), several intermittent reports slipped through the cracks which, in fact, validated many of Gaddafi’s “crazy” claims.

The Wall Street Journal reported in early April that ex-Mujahideen (CIA-trained) fighters from the Afghan-Soviet war are in Libya aiding the rebels. The ex-Mujahideen fighters that the West trained, armed and supported in Afghanistan in the 1980s are now referred to in common parlance as “al-Qaeda,” unless, of course, we are supporting them. Then, just as Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, we call them “freedom fighters” or “pro-democracy protesters” in Obama’s case. In fact, the actual term “al-Qaeda”, as explained by former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, literally means “the database,” which “was originally the computer file of the thousands of Mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”⁴⁴

In short, al-Qaeda is a “database” of Western intelligence assets used to expand Western imperial interests around the world. They provide an excuse for intervention in countries whose governments you want to overthrow or whose people you want to prevent from ushering in a popular liberation struggle. Or, conversely, you can support them covertly in engaging in warfare against a hated regime, but invariably you would not want to refer to them as ‘al-Qaeda’ in such an instance, as it would conflict with the propagated concept of a worldwide “war on terror,” instead of what it actually is: a “war of terror.”

However, as the WSJ reported from Beghazi, “Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden’s holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan, is training many of the city’s rebel recruits.” Many other officials within the rebel command come from similar backgrounds, as they make up the experienced elements of the rebel army, which is incidentally led by a CIA asset (as explained above).⁴⁵ Even a rebel leader admitted that his fighters have al-Qaeda links, as reported by the Telegraph. ⁴⁶ Further, a senior American Admiral, and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander (leading the attack on Libya), admitted that al-Qaeda was among the rebels.⁴⁷

Yet, while these admissions surfaced in the mainstream media, once reported, in true Orwellian fashion, they were cast into the “memory hole,” all but forgotten. Thus, when any reference or indeed dissenter continues to refer to the rebel’s links to al-Qaeda, they are cast aside as a “crackpot” or a “conspiracy theorist.” It may have even been the very news outlet which is denouncing such claims that actually reported them as fact in the first place. The National Post recently engaged in a hit-piece against independent journalists who were based in Tripoli covering events and views unwanted by the NATO powers. In ridiculing these reports of NATO involvement with al-Qaeda linked rebels, the National Post journalist stated, cynically, “No massive popular uprising, no victorious rebels flooding into Tripoli greeted by throngs of well-wishers among the city’s populace. It was a NATO – Al Qaida job.”⁴⁸

The writer went on to denounce my former employers and colleagues at the Centre for Research on Globalization as “a Canadian clubhouse for crackpots of the anti-war, 911-truth, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist variety. The Centre would not normally be worth noticing except for a laugh.” Seemingly, in the eyes of Terry Glavin and the National Post, “anti-war” and “anti-imperialist” sentiments are the intellectual bastion of “crackpots.” What, might I ask, does that say about the National Post? Personally, the label of “anti-war” and “anti-imperialist” is not an insult to me, nor to my former colleagues; it is a badge of honour, a source of pride and a directive for action. The framing of such anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments as a ‘negative’ label, indeed says more about the National Post than it does about Global Research and its writers.

Is this a Popular Democratic Uprising?

The National Post refers to the rebels as a “massive popular uprising” of “victorious rebels” who entered Tripoli “greeted by throngs of well-wishers among the city’s populace.”  Perhaps we should ask if this is indeed the case. Scott Taylor, a Canadian journalist writing for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald in late August, observed (and it is worth quoting at some length):

The rebellion in Libya has been more of a media war than a full-scale armed clash… To prevent Gaddafi from inflicting reprisals on the rebels, the UN authorized a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya to protect unarmed civilians from being bombed. That, of course, did not apply to civilians living in Gadhafi-controlled sectors, as the Canadian-led NATO coalition soon began mounting airstrikes against government targets.

For more than five months now NATO planes have supported the rebels, and NATO warships have enforced a one-sided arms embargo against Gaddafi’s forces. And all foreign-held Libyan financial assets have been frozen, making it virtually impossible for Libya to purchase any war materiel, or even basic necessities such as fuel…

On a fact-finding trip into Tripoli last week, I saw first-hand that Gaddafi has solidified his control over the capital and most of western Libya. Foreign diplomats still based in Tripoli confirmed to me that, since NATO started bombing, Gaddafi support and approval ratings have actually soared to about 85 per cent.

Of the 2,335 tribes in Libya, over 2,000 are still pledging their allegiance to the embattled president. At present, it is the gasoline shortage due to the embargo and lack of electricity from NATO’s bombing that are causing the most hardship to Libyans inside Gadhafi-controlled sectors.

However, at present, the people still blame NATO — not Gaddafi — for the shortages. In an effort to combat that sentiment and to encourage a popular uprising against Gadhafi, NATO planes have taken to dropping leaflets in canisters over the streets of Tripoli. Unfortunately for the NATO planning staff, the canisters are heavy enough to cause injury and damage roofs when they plummet to the ground…

It is possible that the continued embargo, shortage of fuel and downgrading of Libyan utilities will create a humanitarian crisis inside Gaddafi’s Libya so severe that his followers have no choice but to turn on him for their own survival. However, if that indeed transpires it will be impossible for the West to justify this as being a humanitarian intervention.⁴⁹

It is no surprise that Gaddafi’s support has risen to such extreme levels, as this tends to be the case whenever a country is bombed and attacked by an outside imperial power. It is also no wonder that Gaddafi has such strong support among his people when one considers the human toll of fighting. Reports vary on the amount of deaths, both combatant and civilian, but in early June, the U.N. Human Rights Council mission to Tripoli reported that between 10-15,000 people have been killed in the fighting thus far.⁵⁰ Reports of NATO strikes killing civilians do not help “win the hearts and minds” of Libyans, especially when one such strike killed over 85 innocent civilians, including 33 children. ⁵¹ Also in June, the Italian Foreign Minister, following a NATO bombing of a house in Tripoli, declared, “NATO is endangering its credibility,” and in an extrapolation of how the West is losing the ‘propaganda war,’ he stated. “We cannot continue our shortcomings in the way we communicate with the public, which doesn’t keep up with the daily propaganda of Gaddafi.”⁵²

“Worthy” vs. “Unworthy” Victims: Are the Rebels Committing Ethnic Cleansing?

A typical propaganda tactic used by Western media throughout the entire Cold War (and arguably much longer) is the notion of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims. In any conflict in which the Western world engages and seeks a particular outcome, the presentation to the public – (i.e., propaganda) – determines, by the very way in which it reports the conflict, who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys”. It is important for conflicts to be framed – from the view of the propagandist – in a black and white, simplified manner. Effective propaganda tends to play to the lowest common denominator. If everything is geared towards a very base, simplified audience, with minimal critical thinking and contemplation required, it tends to manifest those very sensibilities in the audience who consumes it. In short, by the very method of reporting, they create the audience they seek.

Make it simple to create a simple audience. Then, that which is contrary to the saturated and filtered version of ‘reality’ is simply rejected outright as lunacy, fantasy, conspiracy theory, or worse. It is rejected almost instinctively because it requires more effort to determine accuracy, to investigate claims, to understand much broader concepts and employ far more contemplation and thinking than is required by the propaganda system. It is not simply that the ‘truth’ itself is more complicated, which makes lies so appealing to the masses, but it is exactly because the method of investigating truth is far more complicated. Thus, setting back into the comforts of ‘simplicity’ (“let the TV tell me what to think”), is far more attractive an option than taking painstaking efforts to investigate and understand an issue.

Thus, in conflicts we come to the nomenclature of ‘worthy’ versus ‘unworthy’ victims. This allows the West – and the public especially – to “take sides” in a conflict before understanding the realities of the conflict itself. That way, intervention can be justified and assured. Strategy, more today than ever before, requires the need of an efficient, organized, and effective propaganda machine. In Israel-Palestine, Israeli citizens and even soldiers (within the Occupied Territories) are deemed as ‘worthy victims,’ while Palestinians are deemed ‘unworthy’ victims. When an Israeli dies, whether a civilian or soldier, the media ensures that the ‘consumer’ knows the names, is exposed to the families, learns the ambitions and dreams of the victims. When Palestinians die, however, they become – if at all even reported – mere statistics, and more often than not, they are blamed for their own deaths, vilified and generally dehumanized. The Palestinians are the ‘unworthy’ victims.

In Libya, it is apparent that the rebels are ‘worthy victims’, while the majority of civilians, (as roughly 85% support Gaddafi) are deemed ‘unworthy’ victims. The deaths of rebels are often hyped and exaggerated; others are denied, underplayed, justified, or simply not covered at all.

The best example of this in the current conflict is the rebels themselves committing atrocities, particularly against black African migrants in Libya. In this scenario, rebels remain the ‘worthy’ victims, and the black Africans ‘unworthy’. This disparity is increased in that the deaths of black Africans were not only largely ignored, but they were first demonized, and thus their deaths became justified. This was the basis for the propaganda rhetoric regarding Gaddafi’s “African mercenaries”. These stories proliferated through the Western media ad nauseam and largely unquestioned; they were accepted at face value. As an Amnesty International investigation revealed, the stories of African mercenaries massacring rebels for Gaddafi emerged largely from the rebels themselves, and as it turned out, was false.⁵³

A Google search of “African mercenaries” and “Libya” from February 15 (when the rebellion began) to March 30, less than two weeks following the NATO ‘intervention,’ turned up over 86,000 matches. As it turned out, the “mercenaries” were, in fact, African migrants working in Libya. A Google search over the same period (February 15-March 30), but with the terms “African migrants” and “Libya” revealed just under 48,000 results. Yet, from as early as February, African migrants reported that, “they’ve become targets for Libyans who are enraged that African mercenaries are fighting on behalf of the regime.” The migrants work in Libya’s oil industry and certain other sectors. It was the reports of African mercenaries – which later turned out to be false – that induced the violence against African migrants, instead of simply justifying them. The Deputy Director of the North Africa Center at Cambridge University stated in late February, in an interview with NPR, “I tell you, these people, because of their skin, they will be slaughtered in Libya. There is so much anger there against those mercenaries, which suddenly sprung up. I think it is urgent to do something about it now, otherwise, a genocide [could occur] against anyone who has black skin and who doesn’t speak perfect Arabic.” ⁵⁴

Al-Jazeera reported in late February that dozens of black Africans were killed, with hundreds more in hiding, as “anti-government protesters” (read: ‘worthy victims’) “hunt down” the “black African mercenaries” (read: ‘unworthy victims’). Migrants fleeing the violence who returned to their home countries were interviewed, and reported that, “We were being attacked by local people who said that we were mercenaries killing people. Let me say that they did not want to see black people.” Further, one witness reported, “Our camp was burnt down, and we were assisted by the Kenyan embassy and our company to get to the airport.” A Senior Fellow with the International Migration Institute posed the question:

“But why is nobody concerned about the plight of sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya? As victims of racism and ruthless exploitation, they are Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population, and their home country governments do not give them any support.”⁵⁵

These cases were rarely reported in Western media; however, African media sources reported much more diligently on these events, as they were more directly effecting their own citizens; thus, the victims are those who may be deemed – in the African media – as ’worthy victims’. Thus, the coverage was much more extensive. One African media outlet reported in early March, that “rebel fighters and their supporters in eastern Libya are detaining, beating and intimidating African immigrants and black Libyans, accusing them of being African mercenaries.” In some instances, “rebels have executed suspected mercenaries captured in battle, according to Human Rights Watch and local Libyans.” Even the rebel-led government “concedes it is rounding up suspects and detaining them for questioning.” Not only is it African migrants who were in danger, but regular black Libyans as well, as in some cases rebels had lynched black Africans, claiming they were mercenaries. Human Rights Watch referred to the assault against black Libyans as “widespread and systematic attacks… by rebels and their supporters.” A Human Rights Watch official explained, “thousands of Africans have come under attack and lost their homes and possessions during the recent fighting,” and referred to the rebels (who are, in our media mostly referred to as ‘pro-democracy’ protesters) as “ad hoc military and security forces.”⁵⁶

Another report explained that the assaults against blacks have “revived a deep-rooted racism between Arabs and black Africans” in Libya, as “discrimination is common not only against migrant Black Africans, but also against darker-skinned Libyans, especially from the south of the country.” The Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in South Africa told IPS in late March, “Against this background, one needs to be a little wary of the accusations of ‘African mercenaries’ or even ‘Black African mercenaries’ that have been bandied around.” Further, he reported that, “about one and a half million Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, out of a population of nearly two to two and a half million migrants, work as cheap labour in Libya’s oil industry, agriculture, construction and other service sectors.” As it turned out, “this is not the first time Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population has fallen victim to racist attack,” as in 2000, “dozens of migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were targeted during street killings in the wake of government officials blaming them for rising crime, disease and drug trafficking.” ⁵⁷

One apparent victim of these assaults told media that, “I bet you many Ghanaians and Nigerians and other nationals of south of the Sahara have been killed and murdered,” and further, “they put the dead bodies in mass graves, while they still pursued others. Sometimes we had to dig deep and wide holes to hide ourselves for fear of being identified by the opposition forces.” ⁵⁸ By early March, there were reports of hundreds of black Africans from over a dozen countries who landed at Nairobi Airport after fleeing Libya by plane, and were arriving “with horrific tales of violence.”

Even in early March, Human Rights Watch told the Sydney-Morning Herald that they were “yet to confirm a single case of a mercenary being used in the conflict.” Even as reports spread out regarding Gaddafi’s “African mercenaries,” Human Rights Watch stated that, “of the hundreds of suspected mercenaries detained in the east, all had turned out to be innocent workers or Libyans in the regular army.”⁵⁹

The most high-profile coverage in the West perhaps came from the Los Angeles Times, in which the reporter had been led by the rebels to view some of their captured “mercenaries,” and the reporter wrote that the so-called mercenaries told the media, “We are construction workers,” as they pleaded their innocence, and then “the interview was abruptly ended and the group of Africans were led away to detention by Muhammed Bala, who described himself as a security officer for the rebel government.” Bala added, “We’re out looking for mercenaries every day.”⁶⁰

Some reports in late March suggested that black Africans had been “slaughtered in the thousands in the ongoing civil war in Libya.” ⁶¹ As the rebels claimed that Gaddafi’s forces were engaging in mass rape, other reports (otherwise unconfirmed) reported that the rebels were themselves, were starting “to detain, insult, rape and even executing black immigrants, students and refugees,” stating that more than 100 Africans were killed by early March, and “some of them were led into the desert and stabbed to death,” while other “black Libyan men receiving medical care in hospitals in Benghazi were reportedly abducted by armed rebels.” Further, there were “more than 200 African immigrants held in secret locations by the rebels.” As the Somaliland Press reported in early March, the attacks reflect racist and xenophobic attitudes among many Arabs in Libya (specifically the east, where the rebels were largely based), some of which was a result of Gaddafi’s ‘pan-Africanist’ views, which many Arabs felt betrayed by:

In many situations, Gaddafi and his inner circle preferred black Africans and Libyans from the south over Libyans from the east. Now the angry mobs using the revolutionary movement across Arabia and North Africa are hunting down black people.

Mohamed Abdillahi, Somaliland, 25, was sleeping at his home in Zouara, when the mobs arrived. “They knocked on the door around 1 o’clock in the morning. They said get out, we’ll kill you, you are blacks, foreigners, clear.”

The testimonials are very similar among the thousands of Africans that saw the ugly side of Libya in the past weeks. “They have attacked us, they took everything from us,” said Ali Farah, Somali labourer 29 years…

Many of the fleeing Africans are terrified to tell their stories. At the checkpoint, they do not mingle with others. When asked about their ordeal, they just freeze, “they stopped us many times and said not tell what has happened here, say there are no problems,” Elias Nour from Ethiopia said.⁶²

Of all the publications, the Wall Street Journal reported in late June that within the rebel-held city of Misrata, black Libyans were being targeted by the rebels who were ethnically cleansing Misrata of its black population. Espousing the lies that the black Libyans from Tawergha, a small mostly black town 25 miles south of Misrata, were being used as mercenaries, this galvanized the rebels and their supporters against them, referring to them as “traitors”. Prior to the siege of Misrata, roughly four-fifths of the population in the poor housing project of Misrata’s Ghoushi neighbourhood were black Tawergha natives. Now, reported the WSJ, “they are gone or in hiding, fearing revenge attacks by Misratans, amid reports of bounties for their capture.” The rebel leadership in Benghazi reportedly stated that they were working on a “post-Gadhafi reconciliation plan,” yet claim that, “Libya is one tribe.” Some were calling for the expulsion of the Tawerghans from the area, and one rebel commander said, “They should pack up… Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata.” As further evidence of the increasingly ethnically focused rebel leadership, some “rebel leaders are also calling for drastic measures like banning Tawergha natives from ever working, living or sending their children to schools in Misrata.” One rebel slogan that has appeared on the road between Misrata and Tawergha refers to the rebels as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin.”⁶³

It is thus a very legitimate concern that if the rebels take power in Libya, they may undertake an “ethnic cleansing” of Libya in order to eliminate threats to their power (as the black Libyans by and large are supportive of Gaddafi), as well as to have a convenient scapegoat target population upon whom they can place blame for all the ills that a post-Gaddafi Libya would surely face. Scapegoats are always necessary for leaders that seek to centralize their power and brutally enforce their rule. Totalitarian leaders throughout history have always employed such a tactic. The possibility of a rebel-led government committing ethnic cleansing in Libya is, I think, an imminent and extremely likely possibility.

By mid-March, the United Nations reported that black migrants were fleeing Libya at a rate of about 6,000 a day, while “some 280,000 have already escaped to neighboring states.” ⁶⁴ As one report in Uganda articulated, a major concern for European nations (who are actively engaged in the NATO assault) was in the possible exodus of black Africans into Europe, as Libya is one of the main routes for African immigrants into Western Europe, a major source of internal social stratification, xenophobia, racism, and political pressure. Thus, if Libya collapsed into a “state of lawlessness,” it could become a major problem for Western Europe. As one BBC reporter stated, “The fear with Libya is that sub-Saharan Africans will try to leave and there are more of them.” The Ugandan Independent reported that following the stories in the Western press about the “African immigrant” came the stories about the “African mercenary.”⁶⁵

In fact, the West European media did prominently feature stories about the impending ‘threat’ of a wave of African immigrants into their countries. An article in the major German publication, Der Spiegel, in late February reported that, “Moammar Gadhafi, in recent years, has enjoyed a cynical role as Europe’s border guard against African immigrants. Italian ministers now warn that if his Libyan government collapses, people will flow across the Mediterranean.” Italy’s Interior Minister, ahead of an EU summit in Brussels, warned that, “hundreds of thousands of immigrants could head for Europe” which would create a “catastrophic humanitarian emergency.” While immediately fearing a wave of immigrants due to “violence that Muammar Gaddafi’s regime has reportedly visited on its own people.” But, according to some observers, “if Libya collapses into anarchy… it could become an immigration route for far more people from sub-SaharanAfrica”, Der Spiegel reported:

“Gadhafi in recent years has played up his role as a bulwark against African immigrants to Europe. Italy and Libya began joint naval patrols in 2008 to stop boatloads of illegal or trafficked immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean, and last year Libya signed a 50 billion euro deal with the European Union to manage its borders as a “transit country” for sub-Saharan Africans.

Italian Foreign Minister Frattini said that some 2.5 million people in Libya — about a third of the population — are non-Libyan immigrants who would flee if the government fell.

Gadhafi himself has enjoyed stoking these fears. “Europe will become black,” he said last December, if European leaders failed to cooperate with him on immigration controls.”⁶⁶

The fear of a wave of African immigrants into Europe was a major topic of discussion at the EU summit in Brussels in February, according to the Financial Times. ⁶⁷ EU ministers heard that, “the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime could result in a tidal wave of refugees and illegal immigrants pouring into Europe,” as roughly 1-2 million refugees “could attempt to make their way across the Mediterranean into southern Europe if the Gaddafi regime collapses.” The Italian Foreign Minister told the members at the EU summit:

We are following very closely the situation. Italy as you know is the closest neighbour, both of Tunisia and Libya, so we are extremely concerned about the repercussions on the migratory situation in the southern Mediterranean… We need a European comprehensive action plan. We should support all peaceful transitional processes that are ongoing in the Middle East while avoiding a patronising position.⁶⁸

The Minister further warned that the collapse of the regime would lead to the “self proclamation of the so-called Islamic emirate of Benghazi.”He added: “I’m very concerned about the idea of dividing Libya in two, in Cyrenaica and in Tripoli. That would be really dangerous. Can you imagine having an Islamic Arab emirate on the borders of Europe? This would be a really serious threat.” The Czech Foreign Minister echoed this fear, warning that the fall of Gaddafi could pave the way for “bigger catastrophes.” ⁶⁸

The rebels are aided in their war – which is largely a “propaganda war”⁶⁹ – by an American public relations firm “to help them earn recognition from the U.S. government.” The firm – the Harbour Group – in early April “signed a pro bono contract with the National Transitional Council.” Pro bono? Since when do public relations firms do charity work? In an article in the Hill, it was reported that Harbour Group “will be working with the council’s U.S. representative, Ali Aujali, who resigned as Libya’s ambassador to the U.S. in protest in February as the revolution began to hold.” The Harbour Group’s Managing Director Richard Mintz “will help manage the PR effort on behalf of the council.” Mintz told The Hill, “It’s the right thing to do. They need help and we are pleased that we are able to do that. It is in the U.S.’s interest, in the world’s interest.” Part of the firm’s work was to be aimed at gaining U.S. recognition of the TNC as the “legitimate” government in Libya, while “other goals for the Harbour Group are to encourage U.S. humanitarian aid to Libya and to push for the release of Gadhafi’s assets frozen by U.S. financial institutions to help pay for that aid.” The article went on:

“To achieve those goals, the firm will help prepare speeches, press releases and op-eds, contact reporters and think tanks and develop a website and social media for the council.

According to the contract, the firm “will provide all of its professional services free of charge to the council,” though the council will be “directly responsible” for “major expenses,” such as Web design and travel.

The Harbour Group is plugged in politically — Mintz is a former director of public affairs for the Clinton administration’s Transportation Department — and is already familiar with the Middle East. The firm is helping to implement “a public diplomacy program” on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, according to Justice records.”⁷⁰

In early July, Patton Boggs, the number one lobby firm in the United States, was hired by the rebels to promote their cause in the U.S., to get America to recognize the TNC as the “legitimate government” in Libya, as well as to unfreeze Libya’s assets in order to provide funds for them. One outside counsel at Patton Boggs stated, “We care about the cause… We want the Transitional National Council to succeed on behalf of all the Libyan people… We are proud that they selected us in assisting them and we hope that we can continue being effective for them.” According to an article in The Hill, a Washington-D.C. paper, “Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., a partner at the firm who is one of Washington’s top lobbyists, will be leading the Libya account.” Boggs wrote that, “We understand that at this time the [Transitional National] Council may not have sufficient funds to pay our fees for these important services… We will charge the Council on an hourly basis for our work, according to our customary hourly billable rates… [and] will not seek payment for these funds and costs until the Council obtains sufficient funds to pay for them.” Further:

“Two lobbyists at Patton Boggs, Stephen McHale and Vincent Frillici, have filed so far to lobby on behalf of the council. Frillici previously served as the director of operations at NATO for the 50th Anniversary Host Committee and was deputy director of finance operations for the Democratic National Convention in 1996. McHale served as the first deputy administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and helped merge the administration into the Homeland Security Department.

Robert Kapla, who has represented foreign governments in the past, and Matthew Oresman, formerly a law clerk within the State Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee, will also work for the council…

Announcing recognition of the Libyan council would cut Gadhafi off from any legal legitimacy, allow the rebels access to funding to help the Libyan people and announce to the international community that only the rebels have the right to “transfer the country’s natural resources,” [Patton Boggs counsel David]Tafuri wrote in a Washington Post editorial.”⁷⁰

The notion that a rag-tag group of rebels fighting a war in a far-off foreign nation know exactly who the best lobbying firm and one of the best PR firms in Washington, D.C. are is hard to believe. The decision to contact these firms, then, was likely suggested by an American voice. As reported, the point man of contact between both firms and the rebels is Ali Aujali, the former Libyan Ambassador to the United States, who clearly still maintains his close ties to Washington.

Sure enough, in July the United States recognized the rebels as the “legitimate” government in Libya.⁷¹ And now in August, there are major pushes for Libya’s frozen assets to be unfrozen for the new rebel government.⁷²

Could Libya Collapse?

Naturally, to prevent such a “catastrophe” as a “tidal wave” of African immigrants, the Europeans – who are now fully involved in the Libyan war – will need to push for an occupation of Libya. While most ad-hoc coalitions try to maintain some vestiges of unity until their initial objectives (overthrowing the state) are achieved, the Libyan rebels have already descended into infighting and murder. In late July, members of the rebel armed forces killed the commander of the armed forces, Abdel Fatah Younis, who was a former Libyan government official who defected to the rebels in the early days of protests.⁷³

This event “triggered fears that opposition fighters battling to oust Col Muammar Gaddafi could instead turn their weapons on each other.” When news spread, many units who were loyal to Younis abandoned their front line posts at the oil town of Brega, and poured into Benghazi “to avenge their commander’s death.” The TNC attempted to blame the murder on pro-Gaddafi loyalists, but his supporters believed he was killed by “his rivals within the rebel leadership.” Some of the supporters even fired on the hotel in Benghazi which the TNC leader and a favourite of the U.S., Abdul-Jalil, earlier gave a press conference. The General, when he was killed, was headed to defend himself in front of four rebel judges who were questioning “illicit contacts he may have had with the Gaddafi regime,” which were instigated when the Daily Telegraph reported that he was “the regime’s main point of contact with the rebels.” As another Telegraph article revealed, “Gen Younes was also engaged in a very public feud with the rebels’ most celebrated battlefield commander, Khalifa Hifter,” which “was seen as an important factor in the pervasive chaos along the front line as the two frequently countermanded one another’s orders.” Thus, the elimination of the General could possibly allow for “greater cohesion” among the rebels on the front lines.⁷⁴ Unreported in that article, however, was the previously revealed fact that Khalifa Hifter, the man who profits most from the assassination, also has a long history of working with the CIA.⁷⁵

Yet, it would still appear inevitable, with remaining divisions among the rebels and competing and contradictory ideas of what a post-Gaddafi Libya would be like, infighting will continue and likely accelerate. There is the possibility of a scenario in which one faction, and most likely the most militant and well-quipped faction (being the Islamist, al-Qaeda-linked faction run by a CIA-operative), simply purges the rebels entirely of competing visions. This assassination could have been the start of that effort already, and even a warning to potential challengers. Regardless of the specifics, the Libyan war is likely to plunge into a total civil war, so the Western nations would perhaps be most interested in having a united, militant, and ruthless proxy army under one leadership and vision, not many. With such enormous support for Gaddafi remaining in the country, and, in fact, accelerating as the NATO bombings and rebel attacks continue, a rapid overthrowing of the Gaddafi government would certainly spark major national unrest far more severe than at present. In such a power vacuum, the Western powers certainly want to ensure the group they backed will be the winning horse on the way to fill the empty seat of power.

Western governments have recognized the TNC as the “legitimate” government of the Libyan people, while the Libyan people – to the tune of 85% – largely support Gaddafi.⁷⁶ So, in the face of such enormous opposition, this ‘horse’in the race would by necessity have to be brutal, exacting, precise, and ruthless. If they do not seize power instantly, and establish a firm control over the country, it would be likely that the nation would plunge into a vicious civil war. Further, if Gaddafi supporters quickly regain the seat of power, Western powers may seek to stoke and actively create the conditions for civil war. It is arguable that they are attempting to do this already. In such a case, it would – from the imperial perspective – be better to ‘divide’ the people among each other, and ‘rule’ over them as a justification for maintaining ‘order.’ In this instance, using recent precedents of the past decades – two conflicts which Western powers claim they “don’t” want Libya to turn into – Rwanda and Iraq, became likely outcomes. Either a situation in which a Western-supported rebel army rushes to power amid a massive wave of carnage and establishes a strong dictatorship, ultimately resulting in the ‘cleansing’ of opponents to the potential of genocide (such as with U.S. support for the RPF in Rwanda). Or, there could be an attempt to establish a liberal democratic government, with a mix of rebels and former government officials, yet dividing power among ethnic or tribal lines, further inflaming those very divisions, and possibly resulting in a total civil war (such as in Iraq). Further, if pro-Gaddafi supporters re-take power quickly and effectively, the rebels would likely go underground and attempt a more insurgent war, attempting to plunge the country into a civil war. The dismantling of Yugoslavia also presents a telling example. In this case, ethnic or tribal rivalries are inflamed, al-Qaeda-linked radical sects are actively armed and aided; these groups engage in ethnic cleansing and a territorial war, with the country ultimately breaking up into several small and easily manageable parts. In whichever case, the potential for Western troops on the ground in Libya is a stark reality.

The Occupation of Libya

In late August, Libyan rebels rapidly advanced on Tripoli, preceded by a massive NATO bombardment of the city. The operation – Mermaid Dawn – was planned weeks in advance by the rebels and NATO. As the Guardian reported: “British military and civilian advisers, including special forces troops, along with those from France, Italy and Qatar, have spent months with rebel fighters, giving them key, up-to-date intelligence,” though the article then claimed that they were also “watching out for any al-Qaida elements trying to infiltrate the rebellion,” ignoring, of course, that we have long been supporting the ‘infiltrated’ elements. One of the rebel organizers of the operation said, “Honestly, Nato played a very big role in liberating Tripoli. They bombed all the main locations that we couldn’t handle with our light weapons.” While “sleeper cells rose up and rebel soldiers advanced on the city, Nato launched targeted bombings,” and American hunter-killer drones were also used in the attacks. According to a NATO diplomat, “Covert special forces teams from Qatar, France, Britain and some east European states provided critical assistance, such as logisticians, forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as damage-assessment analysts and other experts.” Foreign military advisers were on the ground providing “real-time intelligence to the rebels,” or in other words, ‘directing’ the rebels. Apparently, Gaddafi aides attempted to communicate with Obama administration officials, including the Ambassador and Jeffrey Feltman, the Assistant Secretary of State, in order to “broker a truce.” Yet, reported the Guardian, “the calls were not taken seriously.” NATO warplanes bombed convoys of Libyan troops as they sought to re-take rebel advances within Tripoli and elsewhere, and further, NATO undertook “bombing raids on bunkers set up in civilian buildings in Tripoli.” The article continued:

“The western advisers are expected to remain in Libya, advising on how to maintain law and order on the streets, and on civil administration, following Gaddafi’s downfall. They have learned the lessons of Iraq, when the US got rid of all prominent officials who had been members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party and dissolved the Iraqi army and security forces.” ⁷⁷

The rebels who helped in planning the operation had hoped that an invasion of Tripoli would have sparked an uprising among the people, joining with the rebels against Gaddafi, clearly indicating their own ignorance of the support for Gaddafi within Libya and especially Tripoli. The New York Times, explaining why the mass popular uprising never took place, claimed that it was a result of “a bloody crackdown on protesters in February by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces [which] had served as a grim deterrent to those inside Tripoli who might try to challenge the government’s authority.”⁷⁸ Naturally, the New York Times failed to report, as Amnesty International confirmed, that those reports were largely exaggerated, and there were deaths on both sides, indicating that the “peaceful protesters” had – at least a few – fighters among them.

With British and French Special Forces troops on the ground alongside CIA operatives, NATO was integral in launching this “pincer” campaign in Libya, often bombing government troops in retreat.⁷⁹ Britain played a strong role with both military and intelligence officials – Special Forces and MI6 – in planning and coordinating the assault on Tripoli. As the Telegraph reported, “MI6 officers based in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi had honed battle plans drawn up by Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC) which were agreed 10 weeks ago,” while “the RAF stepped up raids on Tripoli on Saturday morning [August 20] in a pre-arranged plan to pave the way for the rebel advance.” Before the official rebel attack even began, the RAF bombed a key communications facility in Tripoli “as part of the agreed battle plan.”⁸⁰

It is likely that in a rebel government, two prominent factions, that which is composed of the former Libyan National Army, founded and now currently run by Khalifa Hafter, a CIA asset; and the Islamist al-Qaeda linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), both of which are currently supported through the TNC by the CIA, MI6, and NATO military structures.⁸¹

So while it is clear that not only are NATO forces already in Libya, but they are, in fact, directing the operations of rebel forces, far beyond the mandate from the United Nations to simply “protect civilians.” But then, that wasn’t the point of the war.

Even as the rebels continue to fight in Tripoli, Western media has jubilantly and prematurely declared a victory for the rebels and for NATO. The Washington Post reported that “the ‘lesson of Libya’ was that, “limited intervention can work.”⁸² But then, this is no surprise from the Post, considering that one of their editors had previously said, “We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.”⁸³ As the rebels were far from victorious – though victory had already been declared – the media engaged in a ‘discussion’ of “post-Gaddafi Libya.” Meanwhile, fighting continued in the streets of Tripoli, as one resident told the Independent, “The rebels are attacking our homes. This should not be happening,” and further:

“The rebels are saying they are fighting government troops here, but all those getting hurt are ordinary people, the only buildings being damaged are those of local people. There has also been looting by the rebels, they have gone into houses to search for people and taken away things. Why are they doing this? They should be looking for Gaddafi, he is not here.”⁸⁴

While British SAS Special Forces were on the ground in Libya helping to hunt down Gaddafi, the British Foreign Secretary declared that, “Gaddafi must accept defeat,” and President Sarkozy of France said, “Gaddafi’s time has run out.”⁸⁴ Average Libyans in Tripoli were nervous with the celebratory rebels, claiming, “The situation here reminds me of Iraq in 2003,” and that, “We don’t know who has entered the city. We don’t know anything about the people who will rule this country, about their mentality.” As one resident explained to the Independent:

The past 42 years we knew everything about the country: our people, our politics, everything. Now we don’t know anything about the future. We are afraid of the end of this, that Gaddafi will use chemical weapons, that there will be a massacre. I am afraid of both sides – of the rebels and of Gaddafi… We have no safety in this city. Now most of the people in this area have left. There are no families in the building now, just the young men.⁸⁵

Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent, drew several parallels between Libya and Iraq, such as the fact when the Americans took Baghdad, Saddam fled underground promising to fight to the death, as Gaddafi just did. Further, as the U.S. was faced with the birth of the Iraqi insurgency in 2003, officials and media pundits alike claimed that the insurgents were “die-hards” who apparently “didn’t realise that the war was over.” As Fisk observed, already a pundit on SkyNews in Britain had claimed the remaining fighters were “die-hards.” Fisk repudiates the notion, as repeated throughout the media and by Western officials, that it is now “up to the Libyans,” as amidst “the massive presence of Western diplomats, oil-mogul representatives, highly paid Western mercenaries and shady British and French servicemen – all pretending to be ‘advisers’ rather than participants – is the Benghazi Green Zone.” Fisk explained:

Of course, this war is not the same as our perverted invasion of Iraq. Saddam’s capture only provoked the resistance to infinitely more attacks on Western troops – because those who had declined to take part in the insurgency for fear that the Americans would put Saddam back in charge of Iraq now had no such inhibitions. But Gaddafi’s arrest along with Saif’s would undoubtedly hasten the end of pro-Gaddafi resistance to the rebels. The West’s real fear – right now, and this could change overnight – should be the possibility that the author of the Green Book [Gaddafi] has made it safely through to his old stomping ground in Sirte, where tribal loyalty might prove stronger than fear of a Nato-backed Libyan force.⁸⁶

Sirte, Fisk elaborated, is an oil rich region with a strongly pro-Gaddafi populace. It was in Sirte where the rebels were defeated by the loyalists in the current war. However, as Fisk opined, “we shall soon, no doubt, have to swap these preposterous labels – when those who support the pro-Western Transitional National Council will have to be called loyalists, and pro-Gaddafi rebels turn into the ‘terrorists’ who may attack our new Western-friendly Libyan administration.”⁸⁶

NATO officials stated that the alliance “will not put troops on the ground,” ignoring the fact that already there are special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground who have been there for several months since even before the war broke out. Though NATO officials claimed that if any organization sends in troops, it would be the UN, with one official commenting, “It is a classic case for blue helmets,” and that, “Nato will help the UN if asked.” The Western “advisers,” according to NATO officials, “are expected to remain in Libya, advising on how to maintain law and order on the streets, and on civil administration, following Gaddafi’s downfall.”⁸⁷

The Telegraph reported that, “Britain is preparing to send a team to Tripoli to help with a key plan to stabilise Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime and prevent any repeat of the chaos seen in post-war Iraq.” Thus, the Western nations are engaging in double-speak, whereby they claim that no boots will be put on the ground, yet simultaneously send boots onto the ground. The trick, however, is in calling these boots “advisers.” This has been a common tactic for decades, as even before the escalation of the Vietnam War, President Kennedy, and Eisenhower before him, had sent “advisers” to Vietnam, which slowly, and inevitably became a massive occupying force. The British plan, which has already begun in effect, “included contacting officials in ministries in Libya by mobile phone to try to persuade them not to abandon their posts.” The British “stabilisation response team” has been sent to Libya by the Foreign Office, Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence. The Development Secretary stated, “It has been clear that we needed to learn the lessons of Iraq and plan for stabilisation and that that needed to take place in an organised and timely way.” Yet, in the same breath – and in the usual double-speak – he claimed, “It was equally clear that the process had to be Libyan led and owned.” The EU also offered to send “experts” to Tripoli “at any minute.” Libyan government officials have been and continue to be contacted “to let them know that they could stay in place under the new regime,” which Western officials proclaim is a lesson they learned from Iraq, where they had simply purged the former Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein and dismantled the army, adding to the chaos and crisis of post-Saddam Iraq. Commenting on this, the Development Secretary stated, “if you can get hold of the chief of police and tell him, ‘You’ve got a job, don’t take to the hills, and you will get paid,’ we can avoid that.” Another aspect of the plan includes unfreezing Libya’s assets around the world to give them to the new provisional government of the TNC.⁸⁸

The plans for the latest assault were organized far in advance. As Debkafile, an Israeli publication, revealed, they were established back in July between the US and France, as they were organizing plans for managing the Israel-Palestine issue:

According to the US-French plan, [an agreement] will take place shortly after the Libyan war is brought to a close – ideally by a four-way accord between the US, France, Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan rebels or, failing agreement, by a crushing NATO military blow in which the United States will also take part. The proposed accord would be based on Muammar Qaddafi’s departure and the establishment of a power-sharing transitional administration in Tripoli between the incumbent government and rebel leaders.⁸⁹

As recently as April, the EU said that they had a ‘ready’ force of 1,000 soldiers poised to be sent in to Libya in case they were needed. The Guardian reported that the EU “has drawn up a ‘concept of operations’ for the deployment of military forces in Libya, but needs UN approval for what would be the riskiest and most controversial mission undertaken by Brussels.” Purportedly, the combat troops would not be engaged in a combat role but would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were threatened.” As one EU official stated, “It would be to secure sea and land corridors inside the country.” Another EU official declared, The operation is agreed. It’s ready to go when we get the nod from the UN.”⁹⁰

How to Get NATO Support: Die and Lie

However, if the EU, NATO, or the UN were to deploy troops into Libya, it would need to be under the guise of providing “peacekeeping” or other “aid” support. Thus, it would only be possible to do so in the event that Libya collapses into chaos, whether there be mass killings, genocide, or civil war. In such a situation, one is reminded of the events surrounding the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ in Bosnia in 1995.

The official account was that roughly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Serb aggressors, thus justifying a NATO intervention. The reality, however, was that the Bosnian Muslims had been struggling for years to “persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf,” writes Edward Herman. In fact: “Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that [Bill] Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5000 at Srebrenica.” ⁹¹ As a result of Clinton’s statement, the town was sacrificed by the Bosnian Muslims, and the propagated claim was that the Serbs had gone in and killed 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, thus justifying the NATO intervention in Bosnia. However, not only did the Bosnians sacrifice the town, but the numbers themselves were subject to much manipulation, and the facts of the circumstances surrounding the event were ignored by the media. The Croatians, along with Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton, were delighted at the reporting of the ‘massacre,’ as for the Croats, explained Herman:

This deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Western Bosnia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media), and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hundred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. This massive ethnic cleansing operation was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serbian civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety.”⁹²

In short, NATO (and Bill Clinton in particular) told the Bosnian Muslims that at least 5,000 Muslims needed to die at the hands of the Serbs in order to justify an intervention and the continuing war against Serbs all across the former Yugoslavia. The fact that a number of 8,000 Muslims having been killed was (and remains) widely propagated, though widely inflated and unsubstantiated (save for the investigations into the manipulation of those numbers), was a ‘convenient’ event for NATO and the Bosnians. Also significant is the fact that such an event took place in the midst of massive ethnic cleansing of Serbs, largely ignored by the Western media, as it was committed by those who NATO were claiming to “save” from “Serbian aggression”; in particular, the Bosnian Muslims and Croatians. Some years later, Madeleine Albright, upon being told of another massacre which was good for U.S. interests, stated that, “spring has come early this year.” ⁹³ Of course, this is also the same woman who said that 500,000 dead Iraqi children (killed by the UN sanctions Albright helped impose and enforce during the Clinton administration) was “worth it.” ⁹⁴ So it is safe to say that we can dispense with any claims of “humanitarian” concerns on the part of NATO leaders. Their interests are imperial. Their propaganda is humanitarian.

The same must be kept in mind about Libya, where we were told we went to “intervene” in order to “protect civilians.” Yet, immediately we began supporting what turned out to be a ruthless military outfit, including al-Qaeda-linked Islamists, who have concocted lies to justify their cause and foreign intervention, and who have been committing ethnic cleansing of black migrants and citizens in Libya. We call these people “pro-democracy” and claim that they represent a “popular uprising.”

The British government stated on 22 August that, “hundreds of British soldiers could be sent to Libya to serve as peacekeepers if the country descends into chaos,” with two hundred troops on standby since the start of July, as well as 600 Royal Marines who “are also deployed in the Mediterranean and would be available to support humanitarian operations.”⁹⁵

The possibility of an invasion seems imminent, as even if the rebels take Tripoli and overthrow Gaddafi, since thereafter the real struggle would begin, and the rebel TNC would likely struggle to maintain unity and possibly engage in attempts to purge various factions from the leadership, as the assassination of the former army commander in late July indicated is already taking place. Uniting these factions remains one of the greatest challenges the rebels will face.⁹⁶

Military sources revealed to some alternative media the plans for the U.S. to occupy Libya with upwards of 30,000 soldiers by October. ⁹⁷ A Debkafile report from July indicates that Western leaders were actively planning for a military invasion and occupation of Libya, starting with the French and British and followed by American troops.⁹⁸ In early July, the Russian envoy to NATO stated that, “I think that now we are witnessing the preparation stage of a ground operation which NATO, or at least some of its members… are ready to begin.” ⁹⁹

The Barons of Humanitarian Imperialism

As the rebels entered the capital, the true nature and purpose of the war and “intervention” in Libya was made known, as Western oil companies made their intentions and interests public, and the rebel TNC established themselves as subservient to those very interests.

Gaddafi may have signed his own death warrant back in 2009, when his government gathered 15 executives from global oil and energy corporations and demanded that they foot the bill – to the tune of $1.5 billion – for Libya’s settlement with victims of the downed Pan Am Flight 103 (itself a very mysterious terrorist attack possibly tracing back to the CIA itself.¹⁰⁰ Libya had been subjected to UN sanctions from 1992-2003 as punishment for the terrorist attack, though it has never been conclusively proven that Libya had any involvement. Gaddafi, for his part, was seeking to make those who profited off of his country’s wealth (foreign oil conglomerates) pay for the costs of their punishment, as the sanctions had largely affected the nation’s economy. Libyan officials warned the oil companies that if they did not comply, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases. In 2004, when trade restrictions were lifted with Libya, Gaddafi gave in to Western interests in the aftermath of the Iraq war, fearing that Libya would be next. As the trade barriers broke down, the U.S. Department of Commerce “began to serve as self-described matchmakers for American businesses,” as companies like Halliburton, Boeing, Raytheon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, and Caterpillar tried to “gain footholds” in the country. However, there were several problems and corporate plundering was increasingly stalled. The Gaddafis often demanded the corporations plunder the nation in joint partnerships with state-owned (and Gaddafi family run) companies, which the foreign conglomerates resisted, in which the State Department tried to intervene (according to diplomatic cables), but often failed to come to an agreement. However, some companies such as Occidental Petroleum, Petro-Canada, and Canadian arms manufacturer, SNC-Lavalin made inroads into Libya.¹⁰¹

In January of 2009, Gaddafi threatened that Libyan oil “maybe should be owned by national companies or the public sector at this point, in order to control the oil prices, the oil production or maybe to stop it.” Forbes magazine asked: “Is Libya about to take the lead of its friends in Venezuela and Russia and launch a new round of energy-sector nationalism?” Postulating on the answer, Forbes wrote: “The thought sends a shiver through the collective spines of ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Amerada Hess, and Royal Dutch Shell. All have made massive new investments in Libya.” Libyan papers had all been discussing the possibility of nationalization.¹⁰²

Libya, as Africa’s largest oil producer, even far surpassing the proven reserves of Nigeria, would be an enormous loss to Western interests. In March of 2009, Libya was trying to convince three American oil companies operating in the country “to sign revised contracts giving the North African nation a greater share of its oil production.” Libya had already revised its contracts with Petro-Canada, ENI of Italy, and Repsol of Spain, as well as Occidental Petroleum in the U.S. It was seeking to revise its contracts with ConcocoPhillips, Amerada Hess, and Marathon Oil, all U.S. companies.¹⁰³

In March of 2010, Middle Eastern press reported that, “Libya is an economic force to be reckoned with,” as it challenged both Europe and America, and gave “a warning to US oil firms that their contracts are in danger.” Oil companies were finding it increasingly difficult to do business in Libya. As one oil industry expert reported, many companies are seeking an exit, “That’s partly because Libyan authorities have, over the past year, taken a very hard line on contract negotiations and renegotiations. A lot of companies developing oilfields are finding it incredibly difficult to make money.” Libya also expelled Swiss companies and even detained two Swiss businessmen after police in Geneva arrested one of Gaddafi’s sons. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley publicly derided Gaddafi, “which in turn provoked a warning from Libya that failure to apologise could hurt US oil companies.” Crowley, in a not-so-subtle display of who the State Department really works for, apologized. As one commentator from an American think tank explained, Libya’s use of oil as political leverage represents a new turn in the country’s leadership: “After decades in isolation, Libya’s oil reserves and a sovereign wealth fund worth around US$60 billion (Dh220bn) have given it unprecedented leverage with western governments.” Italy received roughly a quarter of its energy supplies from Libya, and many other Europeans hoped that Libya’s natural gas fields would free them from dependence upon Russia. One industry analyst explained, “Libya mostly gets its way because people are prepared to pay the price,” and that, “the future of new discoveries really boils down to a small number of companies – such as BP, Shell, ExxonMobil – which have massive exploration programmes going on for the next few years, and which could open new frontiers.” However, “for time being, oil companies are leaving rather than entering.”¹⁰⁴ There was even a diplomatic row in November of 2010 when Libya expelled an American diplomat from the country “for breaching diplomatic rules.”¹⁰⁵

In October of 2010, U.S. oil companies Chevron and Occidental Petroleum did not extend their 5-year licenses with Libya, and instead left the country. The companies, among the first to rush to Libya following the lifting of international sanctions and formation of bilateral relations with the U.S. in 2004, established 5-year contracts with Libya in 2005. Libya, while home to Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, remained largely ‘under-explored,’ and thus, unexploited.¹⁰⁶

Gaddafi’s Libya had many shady dealings with foreign (primarily British, but also French, Italian, and American) companies and individuals. Prime Minister Tony Blair had especially facilitated the emergence of prominent British industrial and financial interests into Libya, setting up meetings with top executives and Libyan officials, both while in office and after leaving. Blair and a former top MI6 official who joined BP, helped the oil conglomerate establish itself in Libya. Business and social relationships were also established between top British elites and Gaddafi’s family. Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, had a cozy relationship with British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, and in 2009, both men were guests of Lord Jacob Rothschild’s at his villa in Corfu. Until 2009, Lord Rothschild was an adviser to the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). Tony Blair, who after leaving office, took up a job at JP Morgan, continued to go to Libya as a representative of the bank, and Gaddafi’s son referred to Tony Blair as “a personal family friend.”¹⁰⁷

JP Morgan Chase reportedly, as of late January 2011, “handles much of the Libyan Investment Authority’s [LIA’s] cash, and some of the Libyan central bank’s reserves.” According to one Libyan financier, by the summer of 2008, “a great percentage of the L.I.A.’s funds were in the interbank money markets, channelled through the central bank. They have given mandates to some of the international banks to manage this liquidity,” such as JP Morgan Chase.¹⁰⁷

Within ten days of Britain’s sanctions on Libya having been lifted in 2004, a secret delegation of British officials had rushed to Libya to open the way for British business interests. Among the officials were Lord Foster of Thames Bank; Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, the former Army Chief of Staff; and the financier Lord Rothschild, who brought his son Nathaniel, “and the party was accompanied by four executives from a public relations firm run by Lord Bell.” As reported by the Times, “At stake was access to oil and gas reserves and the opportunity to profit from the country’s $90 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority.” Lord Rothschild became an adviser to the Libyan Investment Authority, until 2009.¹⁰⁸

As Tony Blair and his secret delegation went to Libya in 2004, their meeting with Gaddafi “led to lucrative Libyan oil contracts for Shell,” and “a month before stepping down as PM, Mr Blair visited-Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli again at the same time that BP signed a $900million deal with the Libyan National Oil Company.” On behalf of JP Morgan, Blair helped develop banking opportunities in Libya.¹⁰⁹ As the fighting broke out in February of 2011, Gaddafi’s “friends” in the West immediately turned their backs on him. A statement from Tony Blair’s office stated: “Tony Blair does not and has never had any sort of commercial relationship or any sort of advisory role with any member of the Gaddafi family, the government of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority nor any Libyan companies.”¹¹⁰

In early March, Britain (and several other nations, including the United States and Canada) froze Libya’s foreign assets in their countries, which had been managed by the Libyan Investment Authority. Over $3.2 billion in assets were frozen in London, and over $32 billion were frozen in the U.S.¹¹¹ As the fighting began, the major Western oil conglomerates closed down their operations and fled.¹¹²

Clearly, Gaddafi, after establishing significant ties with foreign elites, from JP Morgan, to Rothschild, to Prince Andrew of the British Royals and Tony Blair, made ’friends’ of himself and his family to the dominant foreign financial and oil interests. When he began using Libya’s newfound oil wealth as a political tool, his “new friends” quickly became “old enemies.” These Western elites had helped Gaddafi gain access to Western markets and invest in their companies, while those companies tried to plunder the resources of Libya.  As soon as Gaddafi felt secure enough, he began to use his new oil and financial leverage as a political tool. As this began, the West – and in particular the banking and oil elites – found Gaddafi to be much more of a liability than an asset. Now that Gaddafi is “gone,” the jubilation of Western conglomerates can barely be contained.

This is evident in the fact that as the rebels have gone into Libya, foreign oil conglomerates quickly followed behind. On 24 August 2011, the Independent reported that, “British businesses are scrambling to return to Libya in anticipation of the end to the country’s civil war,” yet, “they are concerned that European and North American rivals are already stealing a march as a new race to turn a profit out of the war-torn nation begins.” Thus, it is a new ’scramble for Africa’ as the Western nations and corporations rush to plunder the country’s resources and wealth. British business leaders said that, “plans are in hand to send a trade mission to Benghazi to meet leaders of the Transitional National Council (TNC).” Among the stampeding oil conglomerates, there “is also intense lobbying for the multibillion-pound reconstruction contracts that are likely to be offered once fighting ends.”¹¹³

Even as the rebels had not taken Tripoli, reported the Globe and Mail, “already the leaders of France and Italy, and their national oil champions, were openly courting the top men of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC).” As for who will get to reap the rewards of Libya’s newly “liberated” oil, “the NTC has already said it will reward the countries that bombed Col. Gadhafi’s forces.” One rebel official stated, “We don’t have a problem with Western countries like Italians, French and U.K. companies”.  However, he added, “we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil.” These were, of course, the countries that did not back the strong sanctions on Gaddafi’s regime.¹¹⁴

Conclusion

This is what we call “humanitarian intervention.” A situation in which we go to war against a foreign nation, based upon lies; in which we support – arm, organize, and lead – a militant rebel army; an army which has been committing atrocities, ethnic cleansing, and spreading lies and misinformation; in which we call these rebels ’pro-democracy’ protesters; in which we call a group with less than 15% of the support of the people a “popular uprising”; in which we bomb innocent civilians to allow these rebels to move forward and occupy new territory; in which our oil companies move in to plunder the wealth of the most oil-rich country in Africa. This – this! – is what we call “humanitarian intervention.”

Our leaders do not care for human life. They care about power and profits. They will tell you anything you want to hear in order to justify their imperial conquests around the world. They will send you – most especially the poor ’you’ – off to foreign countries in order to kill poor, foreign people. They will do this in order to obtain control over resources and strategic routes. One of America’s most pre-eminent imperial strategists, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, that America must maintain hegemony over the entire world, but – he wrote – “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of well-being.”¹¹⁵ In the same book, Brzezinski, in blunt language explained the purpose and role for America to play in the world:

“To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”¹¹⁶

Brzezinski, incidentally, supported the military intervention in Libya, which he claimed is “something between war and military intervention, to stop something that is going on, but without really trying to conquer the country,” and that, “if we didn’t act it would be worse.”¹¹⁷

Who are we really helping? Who are we really hurting? And why?

We must not support this cynical and disastrous conquest of “humanitarian imperialism,” whether it is in Libya, or perhaps – quite soon – in Syria. Wherever we “intervene,” we make everything much worse for that vast majority of the people involved. Where our nations go, they spread chaos, war, death, destruction and genocide. When our nations speak, they speak of hypocritical morality and paradoxical ethics. They speak with twisted tongues and poison words.

We must speak truth back. We must “intervene” in the discourse of the powerful around the world, in order to promote the true interests of humanity: freedom, peace, and solidarity. Only when we seek – and speak – truth, can we ever hope to meet the true ‘humanitarian’ needs of the world’s people.

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2. Daily Mail Reporter, Libya declares immediate ceasefire… but Gaddafi forces keep on bombing, Daily Mail, 18 March 2011
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9. Daily Mail Reporter, Fuelled ‘by Viagra’, Gaddafi’s troops use rape as a weapon of war with children as young as EIGHT among the victims, Daily Mail, 25 April 2011
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57. Simba Russeau, Uprising Revives Entrenched Racism Towards Black Africans, IPS, 21 March 2011.
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61. Onwuchekwa Jemie, Black Africans slaughtered in Libya, Business Day, 22 March 2011.
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66. Italy Warns of a New Wave of Immigrants to Europe, Der Spiegel, 24 February 2011.
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73. AP, Libyan rebel forces leader shot dead, The Guardian, 28 July 2011.
74. Adrian Blomfield, Libyan rebels in disarray after mysterious killing of leading military commander, The Telegraph, 29 July 2011.
75. Russ Baker, Is General Khalifa Hifter The CIA’s Man In Libya?, Business Insider, 22 April 2011; Amy Goodman, A Debate on U.S. Military Intervention in Libya: Juan Cole v. Vijay Prashad, Democracy Now!, 29 March 2011; Patrick Martin, American media silent on CIA ties to Libya rebel commander, World Socialist Web Site, 30 March 2011; Chris McGreal, Libyan rebel efforts frustrated by internal disputes over leadership, The Guardian, 3 April 2011.
76. Scott Taylor, Support for Gaddafi soars amid NATO bombing on civilians, Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 21 August 2011.
77. Richard Norton-Taylor and Dominic Rushe, Assault on Tripoli ’planned weeks ago’, The Guardian, 25 August 2011.
78. Kareem Fahim and Mark Mazzetti, Rebels’ Assault on Tripoli Began With Careful Work Inside, New York Times, 22 August 2011.
79. Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller, Allies guided rebel ’pincer’ assault on Tripoli, Washington Post, 22 August 2011.
80. Gordon Rayner, Libya: secret role played by Britain creating path to the fall of Tripoli, Telegraph, 22 August 2011.
81. Daya Gamage, Gaddafi under siege: Two CIA-backed groups, an al-Qaeda-linked LIFG on top of power stakes, Asia Tribune, 22 August 2011.
82. Jason Ukman, The lesson of Libya: Limited intervention can work, Washington Post, 22 August 2011.
83. Howard Kurtz, The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story, Washington Post, 12 August 2004.
84. Kim Sengupta, Terror in Tripoli as loyalists fight to the death, The Independent, 25 August 2011.
85. Portia Walker, ’We are afraid of both Gaddafi and the rebels,’ The Independent, 25 August 2011.
86. Robert Fisk, History repeats itself, with mistakes of Iraq rehearsed afresh, The Independent, 25 August 2011.
87. Richard Norton-Taylor, Nato will not put troops on ground in Libya, The Guardian, 24 August 2011.
88. Duncan Gardham, Libya: Britain prepares to send team to help with stability plan, Telegraph, 23 August 2011.
89. Debkafile, Exclusive Report, Palestinians to apply to Security Council next week for UN membership, DEBKAfile, 7 July 2011.
90. Ian Traynor, Libya conflict: EU awaits UN approval for deployment of ground troops, The Guardian, 18 April 2011.
91. Edward S. Herman, “The Approved Narrative of the Srebrenica Massacre,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (Vol. 19, No. 4, 2006), p. 411-412.
92. Edward S. Herman, “The Approved Narrative of the Srebrenica Massacre,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (Vol. 19, No. 4, 2006), p. 412.
93. Edward S. Herman, “The Approved Narrative of the Srebrenica Massacre,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (Vol. 19, No. 4, 2006), p. 411.
94. Rahul Mahajan, ‘We Think the Price Is Worth It,’ FAIR, November/December 2001.
95. Jason Groves, Ian Drury and Nick Fagge, British troops may act as peacekeepers if Libya descends into chaos, Daily Mail, 23 August 2011.
96. Martin Chulov, Libya rebels have won the war but biggest battle will be uniting factions, The Guardian, 22 August 2011.
97. Aaron Dykes, U.S. Invasion of Libya Set for October, Infowars.com, 15 June 2011.
98. US and NATO prepare final assault on Qaddafi. He threatens terror, DEBKAfile, 3 July 2011.
99. NATO may be preparing ground operation in Libya – Russian envoy, RIA Novosti, 1 July 2011.
100. Marcello Mega, Police chief: Lockerbie evidence was faked, The Scotsman, 28 August 2006; Steve James, Lockerbie-Pan Am 103: Prosecution case evaporates, World Socialist Web Site, 17 October 2000; Susan Lindauer, Libya’s Blood For Oil: The Vampire War, The Intel Hub, 28 March 201.
101. Eric Lichtblau, David Rohde, and James Risen, Shady Dealings Helped Qaddafi Build Fortune and Regime, New York Times, 24 March 2011.
102. Christopher Helman, Is Libya Going To Boot U.S. Oil Companies?, Forbes, 22 January 2009.
103. AP, Libya Wants Greater Share of Its Oil Revenue, CNBC, 3 March 2009.
104. John Thorne, Libya flexes its new oil wealth muscles, The National, 14 March 2010.
105. Libya orders U.S. diplomat to leave: reports, Reuters, 7 November 2010.
106. Ali Shuaib, Libya says Chevron and Oxy exit licenses, Reuters, 2 October 2010.
107. David Rose, The Lockerbie Deal, Vanity Fair, 26 January 2011.
108. David Robertson, Richard Kerbaj and David Brown, Secret delegation went batting for British interests in Tripoli, The Times, 29 August 2009.
109. Nabila Ramdani, Tim Shipman and Peter Allen, Tony Blair our very special adviser by dictator Gaddafi’s son, Daily Mail, 5 June 2010.
110. Michael Peel, Friends in high places turn their back on Tripoli, Financial Times, 23 February 2011.
111. Roula Khalaf, James Blitz and Lina Saigol, UK freezes Libyan wealth fund assets,  Financial Times, 3 March 2011.
112. Javier Blas, Oil groups prepare to close down in Libya, Financial Times, 21 February 2011.
113. Jerome Taylor, Kevin Rawlinson, Laurie Martin and Charlotte Allen, Dash for profit in post-war Libya carve-up, The Independent, 24 August 2011.
114. Eric Reguly, They bombed and therefore they shall reap, Globe and Mail, 24 August 2011.
115. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books: New York, 1997), p. 36.
116. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books: New York, 1997), p. 40.
117. Hiram Reisner, Brzezinski: Libya Action Isn’t War, But Necessary Intervention, NewsMax, 24 March 2011.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

— Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900

As Eid, the great post Ramadan celebration of that month of abstinence, self sacrifice and reflection, dawned on Libya, marked there this year on August 31, the NATO “liberated” country, after seven months, looks a lot like  “liberated” Iraq after eight years.

Queues of cars now wait for petrol in another oil rich country, other queues form, carrying containers for water (the multi billion$ development of Libya’s vast underground aquifers had been dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world).  Shops are without food. The all is “absolute disaster”, according to an eminent legal observer, very familiar with the country. And with electricity largely off, those seeking knowledge as to whether friends and relatives are alive, injured, fled, dead, find internet and telephones dead.

As the terribly injured overwhelm hospitals, many are bombed, damaged or without power and pharmaceuticals. No power, no incubators, life support machines or surgery. Another country with a modern, developed infrastructure reduced to a pre-industrial age, with the rebuilding contracts reportedly already being divvied out — in the West.

NATO Members, however, eat, as their bombs destroy humanity and vital necessities for the living. Over a “working lunch”, on April 14, they “deplored violence” and underlined the: “need … to restore water, gas, electricity and other services …”

Still depriving others of the means to cook, or of any semblance of normality, at another “working lunch” (June 8) they further discussed their “clear mandate to protect civilians (and) populated areas …taking the upmost care to avoid civilian casualties.” This as “Tripoli experienced what were perhaps the heaviest daylight bombardments by NATO since the air strikes began in March.” (Guardian, June 8).

As they masticated and munched, they vowed to bring “a speedy resolution … to put an end to the violence”, under “Operation Unified Protector”.  There’s delusional and there’s, arguably, psychotic.

Just twenty four hours later, on  June 9, the decade long destruction of Afghanistan eclipsed Libya. NATO Defence Ministers met to declare it “NATO’s top operational priority.” General David Petraeus, returned from the ruins and about to be confirmed as CIA Head “explained … progress.”

“A working lunch commenced at 13.00 hours.”

A number of lunches later, on August 23, NATO spokeswoman, Oana Lungesco, re-affirmed their “mandate to protect civilians.” How this squares with hitting “over five thousand legitimate targets (in a) 24/7 operation (with) over twenty thousand sorties”, is confusing. Equally so is how destruction of services essential to maintaining life, State institutions, schools, hospitals, archeological sites and treasures, attacking of all which is illegal under swathes of international law, are included in this “legitimacy.”

By September 1, NATO operations from March  31st had reached “a total of 21,090, including 7,920 strike sorties.”

In context, this latest “shock and awe” brigandage is being rained down by a twenty-eight country alliance, on a country of under six-and-a-half million people (6,419,925) less than the population of London (7,754.000). The population of Tripoli is just 1,065,409 (or was, until unknown numbers of souls were liberated from their lives in a bombardment which, started with the unleashing of 110  Cruise missiles on March 20, eight years to the day – GMT- of the start of the Iraq invasion).

Coincidentally, the considerably Western-backed and funded “uprising” in Benghazi, which preceded the bombing, began on February 15, the eighth anniversary of  millions, in the largest global peace rally in history, from Manchester to Melbourne, Hong Kong to Honolulu, rallying against an attack on Iraq.

The invaders, though, have “learned from past mistakes.”  The “New Libya”, will not be like the “New Iraq” . It is surely beginning to look chillingly like it. A legitimate head of State again has a million$ bounty on his head and is “wanted dead or alive.” Since “boots are on the ground” only unofficially, the pack of playing cards with the “most wanted” on, has not yet been printed. But times are hard, and in 2003, the United States Playing Card Company, commissioned by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, received orders for 750,000 of the packs within a week.

Further, if the US and UK were blindly ignorant of Iraq’s social and tribal complexities, those of Libya are more so in orders of magnitude.

Just prior to the Iraq invasion, General Colin Powell was quoted as telling George W. Bush, that after the onslaught, “You will own twenty seven million people, Mr President.”

At the “Friends of Libya” gathering in Paris on September 1, hosted by Prime Minister Cameron and President Nicholas Sarkozy, a gloating, unnamed British official is quoted in the Economist as saying  that “NATO’s involvement in the Libyan uprising means that now we own it”.

Sarkozy – recipient, claims Quaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, of  his family’s funding for his 2007 French Presidential election campaign  – is widely reported to have been promised one-third of Libya’s oil by the insurgents, the “National Transitional Council”, prior to NATO involvement. With “Friends” like these, Libya certainly needs no enemies.

“The international community will be watching and supporting” Libya, said Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, adding requirements to the new Libyan constitution. There is a “clear road map to democracy”. Afghan and Iraqi puppets now joined by Libyan ones.

When it comes to the rebuilding of Libya, “investors can’t call the tune”, was one theme, it must be “Libyan led.” UK Foreign Secretary William Hague blew that lie. Britain, he said: “would not be left behind”.  Much focus was on rebuilding the oil industry. Heaven forbid that too follows the Iraq model, with the bereaved, dispossessed and invaded blowing up the pipelines – and contractors.

It also transpires that the UK’s surely mis-titled “International Development Minister”, former oil trader, Alan Duncan, allegedly had a hand in, and connections to, Swiss based energy giant Vitol, which established links with the NTC rebels, whilst starving Gaddafi’s troops of transportation fuels.

Vitol President, Ian Taylor, has allegedly donated very large sums to Cameron’s Tory Party. Opposition MPs are citing a  possible covert  “Libyan Oil Cell”, an allegedly billion$ deal, questioning whether Mr Duncan’s fingerprints are on it.

As to the Conference, there was one dissenting voice. Bertrand Badie, an expert on international relations, told Xinhua:

I think this conference is very bad sign, because starting a process of state building by an international conference dominated by western powers …

But even he did not mention mind-bending illegalities.

The half day carve-up (sorry, “meeting”) regarding assets of another sovereign land was followed by “a dinner”, according to a US State Department spokeswoman.

Incidentally, the Paris Cabal took place on the 42nd anniversary of the Free Officers Movement bringing Gaddafi to power (September 1, 1969.)

“You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists’, said George W. Bush on November 1, 2002. Ten years is certainly a long time in politics. There are many who would say they are now funded by the same US and protected by the might of NATO.

Activist Sandra Barr, has compiled just a small snapshot of  a vast tragedy. Afew incidents amongst uncounted others, “collateral” humanity, to add to a pitiless twenty year rampage through mortality, legality, basic values and all the normal hold precious:

May 13,  2011: The murder of 11 Muslim Imams in Brega.

April 30,  2011: The bombing of the Downs Syndrome School in Tripoli

April 30,  2011: The bombing of a Gaddafi residence, murdering Saif Gaddafi, his friend and 3 Gaddafi children.

June 12, 2011: The bombing of the University of Tripoli. Death toll not yet established.

July 22, 2011: The bombing of the Great Man made Waterway irrigation system, which supplies most Libyans with their drinking water.

July 23,  2011: The bombing of the factory which makes the pipes for the water system, and the murder of 6 of its employees.

August 8,  2011: The bombing of the Hospital at Zliten. Resulting in the murder of a minimum of 50 human beings, many of them children. The bombing of hospitals is against all international laws, and a most grievous crime.

August 9,  2011: The bombing of the village of Majer, resulting in the murder of 85 civilians. 33 Children, 32 women and 20 men.

The persistent ongoing bombing of the civilian population in Zliten and Tripoli, death toll not yet established.

David Cameron has admitted that UK special services have assisted the terrorists on the ground in defiance of the UN mandate.

Today, Cameron has gone further, admitting that British forces played a “key role.”

Ms Barr demands the ICC take a stance. Sadly, it would amaze if they did.

On May 1 Muammar Gaddafi’s youngest son, Saif al-Arab, and three grandchildren were reported killed in an allied air strike on Tripoli. Another nauseating anniversary: George W. Bush, declaring: “Mission Accomplished” – the destruction of Iraq.

One can only fervently pray that we do not hear another sickening, “Viceroy” Paul Bremer wannabe, declaring: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got ‘im’,  with accompanying kangaroo court and lynchings.

The “New Libya”, it seems, with its formerly free, high quality health care, is anyway in bit of trouble. This full page advertisement by Medcines san Frontieres appeared in today’s Mail and Guardian (SA):

Tripoli, Libya: Months of conflict have put extreme strain on the Libyan health system.

We desperately need more staff” – Jonathan Whittal, MSF Emergency Coordinator Tripoli, August 23.

MSF URGENTLY NEEDS:

Trauma surgeons
Orthopaedic Surgeons
ER Doctors
OT Nurses
Obstetricians and Midwives.

Available for short term contracts (3-4 weeks) – able to leave IMMEDIATELY.

MSF has been working in eastern Libya since February.

Another “liberation”,  another unimaginable,  international, criminal tragedy.

Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?

– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi’s grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.

In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.

Well, let’s see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like “humanitarian”.

If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn’t want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.

If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate’s imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate’s oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.

If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate’s friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.

If the Triumvirate doesn’t want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court’s prosecution because it has “special global responsibilities”. But this doesn’t stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.

If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related,¹ executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, “Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence.”²

Adding to the list of the rebels’ charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them “foreign mercenaries” but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers. Reported Reuters (August 29): “On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead.” To complete this portrait of the West’s newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): “The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came.”

If the Triumvirate’s propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they’re making an exception this time because …

• The Libyan people are being saved from a “massacre”, both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station’s owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that “Qaddafi was not a man to compromise … his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to.” Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn’t, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
• The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
• The people of Libya are being “liberated”, whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a “dictator” they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?

The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what’s happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels’ uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:

1. They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
2. They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of “citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases”³ and of “the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters”⁴
3. Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country’s oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
4. They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
5. International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence

The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.

Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:

• Gaddafi’s plans to conduct Libya’s trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US’s dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
• A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: “We’ve got a big image problem down there. … Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don’t trust the US.⁵
• An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There’s only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It’ll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
• Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d’être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
• Gaddafi’s role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
• The claim by Gaddafi’s son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign⁶ could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the “no fly zone” and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi’s influence.
• Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
• In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya.⁷ He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya’s oil wealth into foreign hands.
• The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it’s vital that powerful “enemies” be named and maintained.
• For yet more reasons, see the article “Why Regime Change in Libya?” by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan “resource nationalism”)

A word from the man the world’s mightiest military powers have been trying to kill

Recollections of My Life, written by Col. Muammar Gaddafi, April 8, 2011, excerpts:

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called “capitalism,” but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer, so, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us … I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it. … In the West, some have called me “mad”, “crazy”. They know the truth but continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip.

The state of our beloved capitalist system, early 21st century

I pay attention to the fat content of my food, so I was pleased to find a can of Pam canola oil cooking spray that had 0 grams fat per serving. Great, can’t do better than zero fat, can you? I used it often for a few months … until one day I took a closer look at the “Nutrition Facts” … Yes, it said 0 grams fat per serving. A serving. How big was that? Let’s see … “Serving Size about 1/4 second spray” … Hmmm, how does one press down on a button for 1/4 second? Is it humanly possible? Even the manufacturer had to say “about”. I had been taken. My hat is off to you Capitalist Robber Barons — You’re good!

*****

The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks fell 635 points on Monday August 8.

On Tuesday it rose by 430 points.

Wednesday, the market, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fall again; this time by 520 points.

And on Thursday … yes, it rose once again, by 423 points.

The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions.

Upon such marvels of mankind countless people build careers, others wager their life savings, philanthropic foundations and universities risk much of their endowments, and conservative sages deliver sermons to the world on the wisdom and sacredness of the free market.

Main Street is the climax of civilization.
That this Ford car might stand in front of
the Bon Ton store, Hannibal invaded Rome
and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters.

– Sinclair Lewis, “Main Street”, 1920

Do the economic fundamentals really change dramatically overnight? Or is our economic system as psycho as our foreign policy? The Washington Post’s senior economic columnist, Steven Pearlstein, wrote on August 14th of the four days described above: “I suppose there are some schnooks who actually believe that those wild swings in stock prices last week represented sober and serious concerns by thoughtful, sophisticated investors about the Treasury debt downgrade or European sovereign debt or a slowdown in global growth. But surely such perceptions don’t radically change each afternoon between 2 and 4:30, when the market averages last week were gyrating out of control.”

*****

Last month “Pope Benedict XVI denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality that he says is behind Europe’s economic crisis” as he arrived in hard-hit Spain. “The economy doesn’t function with market self-regulation but needs an ethical reason to work for mankind,” he declared. “Man must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by maximization of profit but rather according to the common good.⁸

“I am a Marxist,” said the Dalai Lama last year. Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.⁹

“I don’t believe in anything,” said Barack Obama. “At least not really strongly.” (No, I made that one up.)

Perhaps the worst outcome of the United States “winning the Cold War” is that countless progressive people think there’s no alternative to the capitalist system. Seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people’s minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating “command economy”, no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called “communism”, and they know how awful that is.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.¹⁰

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

– Frederic Bastiat, (1801-1850) French economist, statesman, and author

1. For example, see: The Telegraph (London), August 30, 2011: “Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.” There is a plethora of other reports detailing the ties between the rebels and radical Islamist groups
2. Washington Post, August 31, 2011
3. McClatchy Newspapers, February 20, 2011
4. Wikipedia,Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war, February 19, 2011
5. The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007
6. The Guardian (London), March 16, 2011
7. Reuters, January 21, 2009
8. Associated Press, August 11, 2011
9. Agence France Presse, May 21, 2010
10. Yikes! Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years WorldNetDaily, August 3 2011

The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute about 95 percent of export earnings, 25 percent of GDP, and 80 percent of government revenue.

Prior to the outbreak of conflict, Libya was exporting about 1.3-1.4 million barrels per day from production estimated at roughly 1.79 million barrels per day, of which approximately 280,000 barrels per day were indigenously consumed. But analysts believe that with reconstruction Libya could soon be exporting 1.6 million barrels per day of high-quality, light crude.

But current production is the proverbial mere drop in the bucket. Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa with 42 billion barrels of oil and over 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Causing oil company executives from Houston to Beijing to drool on their Gucci loafers, only 25 percent of Libya’s territory has been explored to date for hydrocarbons.

Libya is already Europe’s single largest oil supplier, the second largest oil producer in Africa and the continent’s fourth largest natural gas supplier and already dominates the Southern Mediterranean’s petroleum sector. According to the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC), more than 50 international oil companies are already present in the Libyan market.

So, peering into Libya’s future, who’s actually ahead?

France, apparently.

On 3 April a letter was allegedly sent by Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) to a coalition partner, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which mentioned that France would take “35 percent of crude oil…in exchange for its total and permanent support” of the NTC. France’s Liberation daily reported on Thursday that it had a copy of the letter, which stated that the NTC’s Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam, would negotiate the deal with France. In 2010 France was the second purchaser of Libyan oil after Italy, with over 15 percent of its “black gold” imported from Tripoli.

Zut alors!

The number one National Transition Council, Moustapha Abdeljalil recently reported that the States would be rewarded” according to support “given to the insurgents.

While NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil has not hidden the fact that the NTC would assign a higher priority for reconstruction and the allocation of oil contracts to countries that supported their uprising, remarking that nations would be rewarded “according to the support” given to the insurgents, the NTC’s UK representative, Guma al-Gamaty, said that future oil contracts would be granted “on the basis of merit, not patronage. The contracts will be concluded in a transparent manner. ”

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe solemnly denied during a radio interview any knowledge of a “formal” or specific deal but brightly added that it would be “logical” for countries like France, which helped the NTC in its struggle against Gaddafi, to take part in reconstruction.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy was the major European advocate for armed intervention in Libya and his administration was the first officially to recognize the NTC as “the sole, legitimate representative of the Libyan people” and the country’s sole governmental authority, as well as lobbying other nations to recognize the NTC.

Seeking a share of “la gloire,” France was also the first state to commence attacks on 19 March against Gaddafi’s armed forces in Benghazi and along with fellow NATO member Britain, have since provided the majority of the military equipment and personnel used during NATO’s operations in Libya. Going into grey areas of international law in its eagerness to oust Gaddafi France also supplied some weaponry to opposition forces in Libya, a move that came under harsh criticism because of the total arms embargo imposed by the UN Security Council on arms deliveries to any side in the conflict.

NTC’s Paris-based envoy Mansour Sayf al-Nasr denied that such a letter had been sent or that any such pledge had been given. But no one was backpedalling more furiously than Information Minister Shammam, who intoned that such an arrangement was unthinkable.

“It’s a joke. It’s false,” Shammam said.

Well, if you cannot believe an Information Minister, who can you trust? Sleazy journalists? It will certainly be interesting to see how the issue plays out in the days ahead, and if France does indeed get it 35 percent cut of the loot, which at present production rates, would average about 500,000 barrels per day.

In contrast, in Northern and Central Europe the hard right and neo-fascist movements have made significant inroads among workers and the lower middle class at the expense of the traditional center-left and center-right parties. ¹ The relative stability, affluence and stable employment of the Nordic working class has been accompanied by increasing support for racist, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic parties. ²

In the case of the United States, with a few notable exceptions, the working class has remained a passive spectator in the face of the right turn of the Democratic Party and the hard right’s capture of the Republican Party.  There are no left wing street politics in the US, unlike Southern Europe, and only a passive rejection and repudiation of the hard right policies of Congress and the White House.

Rather than solidarity, the economic crisis highlights working class fragmentation, disunity and internal polarization.

The Right/Left Polarizations

One of the key reasons for the growth of right wing appeals to Northern European workers is the demise of working class-based ideology, parties and leaders.  The Labor and Social Democratic Parties have initiated and administered neoliberal programs while promoting multi-national corporation-led export strategies.  They have embraced regressive tax ‘breaks’ for big business; they have participated in imperialist wars of aggression (Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya); they have embraced the so-called “war on terror” mostly against Muslim countries while tolerating the growth of the neo-fascist, far-right Islamophobes who practice “direct action” to expel immigrants in Europe.

The European governing parties of the center-left (social democratic and labor) and the center-right (Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkle) have been outspoken in their assault on “multiculturalism” code-word for Muslim immigrant rights. Their tolerance and exploitation of Islamophobia serves as a cheap vote getter among their xenophobic electorate and as a justification for their involvement in US-Israeli wars of aggression in the Middle East and South Asia. As a result the “mainstream” regimes have weakened working class solidarity with immigrant workers and undermined any concerted effort by the state and civil society to actively counteract the neo-fascist racists who ply a more virulent version of Islamophobia embracing the Zionist ideologues’ vision of ethnic cleansing.

The trade unions have lost membership due especially to the growth of ‘contingent or temporary workers’ who are especially susceptible to far-right appeals. Equally important, trade unions no longer engage in political education aimed at strengthening class solidarity among all workers.  While in Northern Europe wages may increase, the trade unions collaboration with the corporate elite has left workers vulnerable to anti-immigrant and Islamophobic propaganda.  In this context a perverse “class struggle” pits the unorganized workers against those “below”, the immigrants.  The neo-fascists gain by promoting and exploiting cultural and chauvinist beliefs which trade unions and social democratic parties no longer actively combat through worker education and class struggle.  In other words, the neoliberal practice and ideology of the “center-left” parties and unions undermine class political identities and open the door for right wing penetration and influence.  This is especially evident when center-left and trade union leaders no longer bother to consult or debate policies with their members:  They impose policies from above, providing the ‘far right’ with a formidable weapon to attack the ‘elitist nature’ of the center-left political system.

In contrast, in Southern Europe the profound economic crisis,  due in large part to the harsh conditions imposed by Northern and Western European bankers and their local center-left and right-wing politicians, has strengthened and sharpened class consciousness and politics.  Right-wing appeals to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politics has little resonance among Southern European workers in the face of skyrocketing unemployment and brutal wage and pension cuts.

Northern European workers have allied with the right, and their own politicians and bankers, in demanding the imposition of greater austerity measures against Southern European countries, buying into the racist ideology that Mediterranean workers are lazy, irresponsible and on permanent vacation.  In fact, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish workers work more days per year, enjoy less vacation time and much less secure pensions.  The same racist sentiments pitting Northern workers against immigrants also promote chauvinist stereotypes against militant Southern European workers and fuel right-wing sympathies.

Creditor Northern European bankers and political leaders squeeze their own working and middle class taxpayers in order to bail-out their counterparts among the Southern European debtor elites, who, in turn, agree to squeeze their workers and public employees to meet the debt payment demands of the North.  The Northern workers in the imperial countries have been convinced that their living standards are threatened by the irresponsible and indebted South, and not by the speculative activity and irresponsible lending of their own bankers.  In the South, the workers have to shoulder the double exploitation of the Northern European creditors as well as their own local elites; hence, they have greater class awareness of the injustice of the imperial and local capitalist system.

To the degree that Northern workers make common cause with their own creditor ruling class and shift their resentments toward workers abroad and immigrants below, they become vulnerable to right wing appeals.  They openly express resentment against striking Greek, Spanish or Portuguese workers’, whose militant struggles might disrupt their planned vacations to the Mediterranean islands and seashore resorts.  The ideological battle which should pit the workers of Northern Europe against their own state creditors and speculator financial elite is transformed into hostility towards Southern European workers and immigrants.  Overseas bailouts, imperial wars and cuts in social programs lead to greater competition over shrinking social expenditures and conflict between employed and unemployed, ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ workers’.

International workers solidarity has been severely weakened and replaced, in some cases, by the proliferation of international far-right networks propagating virulent anti- immigrant (and anti-socialist)  propaganda and, as in the case of the massacre of almost 70 left-wing youth, mostly teenage, activists of the Norwegian Labor Party,  poses a direct murderous threat to progressive supporters of immigrant rights.  The extreme-right began its assault on immigrants and Muslims and has now moved against the local left and progressive movements which support them.  This has taken on an even more complex dimension with the marriage of rabid pro-Israel, Zionist ideologues (mostly based in the US) and the neo-fascist Islamophobes attacking supporters of Palestinian rights, an issue repeatedly stressed by the Norwegian fascist mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik. The problem is that the ‘respectable’ liberal, social democratic and conservative parties, in their electioneering, have pandered to the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim appeals of the far-right in order to attract workers rather than embarking on far-reaching class reforms which would lessen inequalities, financing them via increases in progressive taxes and greater public investments to unify all workers (local and immigrant) against capital.

Lacking working class solidarity, the sons and daughters of immigrants, especially the disproportionately unemployed young workers, engage in forms of direct action such as the pillage of local business, confrontations with the police and general mayhem, as was evident in the nationwide riots in England in the “hot August” of 2011.  The demise of working class politics thus has produced violent right-wing extremism, racial-immigrant riots and pillage.  The labor elite are spectators, confined to condemning extremism and violence, calling for investigations, but without any semblance of self-criticism or any programs for changing the socio-economic structures that produce the right turn and violence among workers and the unemployed.

The United States:  The Rise of the Right

Unlike Europe, the extreme right is at home within the US established order.  Brutal anti-immigration policies have led to the expulsion of nearly 1 million undocumented workers or family members in the first three years of the Obama regime (a three-fold increase over the George W. Bush years).  The Tea Party has elected Congress members in the Republican Party who promote massive cuts in the social safety net with the collaboration of the White House.  The mass media, Congress, the White House, mass-based Christian fundamentalist politicians and leading Zionist personalities and organizations actively promote Islamophobia and lead virulent campaigns against Muslims by fanning public insecurity. The US ‘establishment’ has pre-empted the racist agenda of the far-right in Europe.  The far-right has turned its guns directly on the social programs of the poor, the working class and public employees (especially school teachers).

Moreover, their assault on debt financing and public expenditures has led to conflicts with sectors of the capitalist class, who are dependent on the State.  In the course of the recent Congressional ‘debate’ over raising the debt ceiling, Wall Street joined in a selective struggle against the far-right:  calling for “compromise” involving social cuts and tax reforms while supporting their anti-public union offensive.

Unlike in Europe, the mass of the US working class and poor are passive. They have been neutered: neither engaging in the street riots of England, nor taking the sharp right turn of their Northern European counterparts, nor participating in militant workers’ strikes of Southern Europe.  The US trade unions, with the exception of the public employees union in Wisconsin, have been totally absent from any of the big confrontations. The American trade union bosses concentrate on lobbying the corporate Democratic Party and are incapable of mobilizing their shrinking membership.

The Tea Party, unlike its Northern European counterparts, does not attract many workers because of their virulent attacks on popular public programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and especially Social Security – all of the programs most likely to benefit American workers and their families.  On the other hand, the economic crisis in the US has not led to Mediterranean-style mass action because American trade unions either don’t exist (93% of the private sector is not unionized) or are compromised to the point of paralysis.

So far the US working class is a spectator to the rise of the extreme right, because its organized leaders have tied their fortunes to the Democratic Party, which, in turn, has adopted significant parts of the far right’s agenda.

Conclusion

The US, in contrast to Europe, is experiencing a peaceful transition from neoliberalism to far-right politics, where the working and middle class are passive victims rather than active combatants for either the left or the right.  In Europe, the current crisis reveals a deep polarization between the radical left turn of workers in the South and the growing shift to the far right among workers in Northern Europe.  The ideal of international worker solidarity is being replaced, at best, by regional solidarity among the workers of Southern Europe and, at worst, by a network of rightist parties in the Northern European countries.  With the decline of international solidarity, chauvinist and racist tendencies are rampant in the North, while in the South workers’ movements are joining with a broad range of social movements, including the unemployed, students, small business people and pensioners.

While the electoral right is capitalizing on the disenchantment with the center-left in Southern Europe, they still face formidable resistance from the extra-parliamentary workers and social movements.  In contrast, in Northern Europe and the US, the far-right faces no such conscious opposition – in the streets or in the workplace.  In these regions only the breakdown of the economic system or a prolonged severe economic recession, combined with devastating cuts of basic social programs and protections, may set in motion a revival of working class movements. and hopefully it will be from the class-conscious left and not from the far right.

1. According to a study of workers support for far right wing parties in Western Europe, “workers have become their core clientele”. See Daniel Oesch, “Explaining Workers’ Support for Right-wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland”, International Political Science Review 2008: 29; pp. 350 -373
2. While some of the motivations of the workers vary, the far-right wing parties are the beneficiaries