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.

The popular perception is that the ordinary people have been living “beyond their means”, a false and invidious conventional wisdom which masks the real nature of the crisis. For it is the elites across Europe and the Americas who have benefited most from the European Union, built on Reaganite neoliberalism, which in turn was fashioned to meet the needs of business. The neoliberal policies of all Western governments, “left” or “right” during the past three decades are the direct cause of the current highly skewed income distribution – by some accounts, worse than in any previous era of human history.

The supposed generous patriarch of this big happy family is Germany, with its hard workers and tidy streets. But while the Aesopian Greek hares are told they must tighten their belts and make do with less health and education, the fact that the Greek arms imports continue to grow — importing German weapons and “defence” systems (against what threat?) — is not mentioned. And it is not only weapons, but consumer goods from Germany that have displaced Greek products in the anonymous Euro-market, as Greece increasingly becomes northern Europeans’ decadent playground, albeit with more than its fair share of un- and under-employed.

As long as banks were lending freely to governments to finance this fool’s paradise, the lower classes were not made to feel the pinch, and the system kept chugging along. Now that government debts and bank reserves have approached their limit and reckless banks are going bankrupt, the struggle is on over who should pay for the untenable system. Since the economic elites are also the political elites, naturally they want the broad people to pay with social service cuts, reduced and delayed pensions, regressive sales taxes and the like. The intense propaganda campaign now underway is to convince the poor in the Euro-laggards that they are the guilty ones, not their own elites or the Euro-elites in Frankfurt or Berlin or wherever.

The EU was a project to end the prospect of war in Europe and to gather the broken pieces of shattered empires into a workable collective economic-political force in the world. To a surprising extent it succeeded, but without facing hard choices and a frank debate about who benefits. As the problems sharpen, any sense of collective goodwill evaporates, and chauvinist, even racist parties gain rapidly in popularity, hearkening back to faux-halcyon days of distant imperial privilege. But as history shows, the ability of individual European countries to extract surplus from colonies is not guaranteed indefinitely. The same goes for the ability of Germany to lord it over its Euro-partners. As the knives come out, the very existence of the European project comes into question.

The rich standard of living that Europe has enjoyed over the past few decades is directly a result of first the import of Third World workers (to a large extent Muslim) and then the incorporation of the ex-Socialist bloc after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As the financial crisis plays itself out, these immigrant workers, the very ones who have served Europeans so well, are now targeted and racially profiled, as the elites try to deflect attention from their own hidden role in the ongoing crisis. This is the First World/Third World extension of the above argument about Euro-laggards, with the victims no longer the Greek hares, but Nigerian and Egyptian immigrants.

A similar tale can be told for the US , with its large immigrant population, its Tea Partiers and Islamophobes, unable or unwilling to face the underlying problems resulting from decades of neoliberal policies. In the Americas, it is China that provides the manufactured goods which are paid for by US treasury bonds piling up in Chinese bank vaults, and no one in particular is accused of being the carefree Aesopian hare — state governments merely use their deficits as the deus ex machina — but the pattern is the same.

As the people who have woken up to the reality are arrested and booted out of Trafalgar Square, Zuccotti Park, Chapman Square (Oakland) and dozens of other city commons around the world, the long cold winter of discontent sets in. However, the problems are going nowhere and the people are just waiting for the next opportunity to express their outrage.

The toppling of governments means nothing in this scenario. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Greece’s George Papandreou only handed over power on the explicit understanding that the “fresh faces” would carry out the austerity plans imposed by the EU heavyweights. Berlusconi’s replacement is 68-year-old, ex-EU commissioner Mario Monti, an economics professor steeped in the dogmas that brought Italy to its current impasse. Papandreou’s replacement is ex-European Central Bank vice president Lucas Papademos who immediately announced, “Our membership of the euro is our only choice.” Not much thinking outside the box from these folks, the very ones who got their people into their present fix.

Some Americans at the top are already awake. The 138 members of “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength” (0.005% of all US millionaires) have been lobbying President Barack Obama and congressional leaders for a year now pleading with them: “Please do the right thing, raise our taxes.” Not surprisingly, no response from a president and Congress beholden to the 3.1 million other millionaires — the proverbial 1%.

Occupy Washington DC published their no-brainer proposals 17 November: redistribute income through progressive taxation, end the wars, expand health care, democratise business. This will end the budget deficit overnight, create full employment through stimulating local demand, eventually ending the foreign trade deficit, making America strong and once again the envy of the world. But, of course, Congress is captive to the current military industrial complex, and can and will do nothing.

The slow-motion drift into oblivion is surreal. Clearly momentous changes are in store for both Europe and America, and the sooner thinkers and actors get to work coming to grips with hard, cold reality, the better for the people — and for the elites, who are living on borrowed time, too. How long before the revolution?

For Germany (and her American ally) the Euro-zone is ‘too big to fail.’ And since the European Union lacks a mechanism like the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, only Germany is in a position to underwrite the necessary major bailout. This is a financial gamble of historic proportions, and it comes at a political price: German hegemony in Europe.

Bismarck Makes Germany a Great Power

Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) classifies Germany as the hegemonic (or would-be hegemonic) military-industrial power in Europe from the year 1870. That was when Bismarck, the ‘Blood and Iron’ Chancellor of Prussia, tricked the French Emperor Napoleon III into hastily starting a war that Prussia had long been preparing for. After a stunning defeat (Napoleon was take prisoner when the Prussians surrounded the main French army), Bismarck crowned his somewhat reluctant feudal sovereign as Kaiser Wilhelm I, ruling a vastly expanded, united German Reich (including two captured French provinces and most of the Southern German-speaking states) from his own capital, Berlin.

By the end of the 19th Century, efficient, scientifically-organized German industry was challenging Britain’s outdated industrial plant for economic supremacy. Meanwhile, Prussian militarism, supported by this industrial and financial expansion, prepared for future political hegemony and territorial expansion. During the 20th Century, two drawn-out mechanized World Wars were required to prevent the German Reich from transforming her industrial and financial power into imperial domination of the Continent. The main factors that prevented capitalist Germany’s ‘natural’ ascendancy to European hegemony were military: 1) Geography. Situated in the center of Europe between the vast Russian Empire and her ally the French Republic (still a major military power), Germany was obliged to fight on at least two fronts in both 1914 and 1940, as well as at sea against the formidable British Navy; 2) the rise of a new, and vastly richer military-industrial power, the United States, allied with France and Britain.

Defeated, Divided and Demilitarized, Germany Rebounds

In 1945, the demilitarization and division into East and West of post-WWII Germany was designed to prevent yet another attempt at hegemony, but by 1960 (the year I bought my first VW !) West Germany’s industrial plant had risen from the ruins, modernized and become competitive with U.S. industry. Moreover, demilitarization freed up huge amounts of German capital, whereas Germany’s conquerors, the U.S. and the USSR, were draining their economies in a costly arms race. Moreover, West Germany found unlikely support from an ex-enemy — Charles de Gaulle of France –who forged a close alliance with Chancellor Adenauer, while carrying out a foreign policy independent of the U.S., during the Cold War. By the 1970’s, West German leader Willi Brandt dared to break the ice of the Cold War with his independent Ostpolitik, opening up lucrative German trade with her Warsaw Pact neighbors. Today, Germany and Russia are staunch allies and trading partners to the point where Immanuel Wallerstein talks of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis.

United Germany’s Great Gamble

When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the two Germany’s were reunited in 1990, far-seeing West German capital took the risk of investing huge amounts in integrating and modernizing the impoverished East. The West German investors’ bet paid off — so successfully that a former East German, Angela Merkel, is now ruling a populous, rich, and powerful united Germany, where she presides over the Berlin Chancellery established at by Bismarck back in 1871.

Chancellor Merkel, like Bismarck a Conservative, has dragged her centrist coalition, uniting all factions of German capitalism, into another daring bet. The terms? Bail out the Euro zone and end up owning it: achieve hegemonic power, without militarism. Using diplomacy and ‘soft’ power, the Chancellor will now collect the debts that the Greeks and Italians owe the Frankfort bankers as effectively as the U.S. Marines collected the Central American debts for the N.Y. bankers a century ago. Only, instead of sending gunboats, Merkel has used canny diplomacy and financial clout to engineer the fall of Papandreou and Berlesconi, Europe’s two longest-serving and popular Prime Ministers. (Papandreou was brave enough to call her bluff and announce a popular referendum on the Euro at the Nice summit, but then he shamefacedly backed down). That crafty manipulator Bismarck (who after 1870 actually preferred diplomacy to war) would have been proud of his disciple.

Two Bloodless Beheadings

The deposed Greek and Italian heads of government have now been replaced by ‘technocrats’ subservient to the German-dominated European Union Central Bank. The Chancellor has just dispatched teams of German bankers to ‘advise’ them, much as U.S. Embassy staff ‘advised’ the Mexicans and Nicaraguans: pay up or else! The advisors are there to make sure that the technocratic puppet regimes carry out the most stringent austerity measures and force the Greek and Italian working people to pay the debts previously contracted by their own bankers and rulers. This may not prove to be easy.

Meanwhile, the future implications of Merkel’s historic ‘beheading’ of two European heads of state may be as far reaching in their own way as the double beheading in Tunisia and Egypt. To begin with, Germany’s de facto imposition of these super-national ‘receivership’ regimes means an end to democracy and national sovereignty for Greece and Italy. Ancient Europe’s two historical Great Powers, the fountains of European civilization, the cradles of democracy and of the rule of law, are henceforth vassals states under the regency of German and North European banking capital.

From an international perspective, Merkel’s diplomacy and soft power have succeeded in dominating two countries where Hitler’s hoards came a cropper. As for Germany’s once-vulnerable Eastern front, Wallerstein’s Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis has literally been sealed in concrete with the recent innauguration of the Nordstream pipeline, which will provide Germany with an endless supply of cheap Russian gas and a bottomless market for Mercedes and VWs. And this time around, the U.S., whose precarious finances also depend on the stability of the Euro, will have to support Germany, even if this means reinforcing a rival German-dominated European economy more powerful and productive than the declining American economy. Merkel’s Bismarckian diplomacy has thus succeeded in removing the three principal historical obstacles to German economic-military hegemony: 1) the geographical necessity for a Central European Power to fight a two-front war; 2) the unmatched military and economic power of the United States; 3) inadequate access to modern petroleum-based fuels.

New Possibilities for Struggle?

From the perspective of the European class struggle, this new situation creates new possibilties. For over a year now, the Greek youth and working classes have been striking and rioting against being forced to ‘pay for their crisis’, and now the Italians, with a long history of self-organization, will be called upon to defend their interests as well. These inevitable struggles will take place in the revolutionary atmosphere initiated in the Arab Spring and now gone global with the Occupy Wall Street movement of the 99%-ers. No more illusions about capitalism’s ‘trickle-down’ effect. Moreover, the new technocratic rulers of Greece and Italy and their bean-counting German advisors will be hard put to cope politically with rebellious populations who will see themselves as debt-slaves to the creditor German banks. It would take a showman like Berlesconi or a populist ‘Socialist’ like Papandreou to continue to bambozzle the masses into acquiesance, and now they are gone.

In this new situation in Greece and Italy, one can expect both a rise of national resentments and splits in the national bourgeoisie between ‘Europeans’ and local business interests (tourism, export industries) who may support the working classes, perhaps demanding exit from the Euro so as to devaluate their currencies and become competitive again. If national resentment doesn’t turn into Chavinism and if the bourgeois allies fail to dominate the popular front with the 99%, these developments may open up new prospects for struggle. The key factor will be internationalism. Only if the Greek and Italian working classes are able to unite (and draw in the Spanish, Irish and other European workers) will they escape from debt-slavery to the German-dominated European banks.

Up to now, the European labor unions and the Left parties (Communists and Socialists) have succeeded in confining class conflicts within their national borders, while limiting resistance to ritual one-day ‘general strikes,’ and channeling discontent into local and national elections. (Of course elections are now superfluous under appointed receivership governments responsible to a European super-government). Nonetheless, the entrenched, class-collaborationist national labor unions and ‘Left’ parties — although rejected wholesale by Greek youth and the Spanish indigñados — still have a powerful influence in Italy and France. If more spontaneous, self-organized, horizontal movements like the Arab Spring, the indigñados, and the international Occupy Everything movement spread into Old Europe (including Germany), the straightjacket hold of the official Left on European social movements may be broken, releasing new energies and the creation of international solidarity among the 99%.

This solidarity will be needed when the next financial bubble bursts — as it inevitably will — and turns the Great Recession (from which only the 1% have ‘recovered’) into a globalized Second Great Depression.

This attitude, in part shows a certain arrogance; the people of other countries patting themselves on the back for having such a sane and well run country and for having a group of politicians that would in no way fiddle their expenses or the system. It seems it is still easier to point out someone else’s failing other than your own. It also happily conforms to the stereotype of the disorganized Italians. This is just one example of the lazy pigeonholing of foreigners that almost everyone, to a larger or lesser extent, still tends to do unless they make a conscious effort not to.

If we go back to Italy, lesser-known is that whilst the number of changes in government was undoubtedly high, the Christian Democracy party was the largest single party in the parliament from 1946 to 1994 and many of these changes of government were really reshuffling of coalitions with the same Prime Minister being reappointed immediately. Even less well-known is the fact that the CIA were in part responsible for giving that party a boost and keeping them in power. This was done after the war, much the same as it was in Greece, to stop a communist/socialist alliance becoming elected.

Despite outside meddling, throughout the 50s and 60s the standard of life in Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, improved considerably for most people and it was in part due to the gains in this period that now many Italian families, and not necessarily only the well-to-do, have a second home, usually by the beach. The mess that Italy is in now means in fact that many people are trying to sell these second homes, but as everyone is in the same mess they are finding it hard to do so. These second homes are not however a sign of real wealth. So many Italians are now unemployed, underemployed or earning considerably less than the legal minimum wage that another of the stereotypes about Italians living at home with their parents for too long is becoming truer by the day.

Nowadays, the Italy joke has changed and it is difficult to think about Italy without its “crowning turd in the waterpipe”, Silvio Berlusconi. There is baffled incomprehension all round as to just how this man can survive scandal after scandal and still remain in his position.

Financial and political corruption, prostitution, any number of gaffes and yet he is still there. How is it possible?

Well, I have spent some time going back and forth from Italy and it is too easy to say that the answer is to be found in the lazy stereotypes of corruption and incompetence.

If I could compare with the UK for a moment not too long ago there was a megalomaniac PM who believed (or said he believed) that he was on a mission from God, who invaded several other countries, whose party was involved in corruption allegations (Formula 1 money, cash for access, cash for honours etc) and who most people professed to hate. He also consorted with other war criminals. And yet, this man won every election he entered. After the unnecessary and illegal wars and most of the sleaze, people were still voting for him. In part this was due to his cosy relationship with the major media magnates.

In Italy one of the obvious and oft-cited factors in Berlusconi’s survival is the fact that he controls the media of that country. This has been a major factor in his success. As well as owning the major private broadcaster (Mediaset), his government has the power of appointment over the state broadcaster (RAI). Sky were beginning to stick their nose into the market in much the same way they did in the UK, much to the annoyance of the Berlusconi, by buying up the football coverage. However, recent events have meant that Sky has been occupied elsewhere and there is less talk of this now.

Despite controlling most of the media, the coverage isn’t as crude as something like Fox News in the USA. When the Replublicans are in power Fox revert to the role of cheerleader, when it is the Democrats they are vicious watchdogs. In Italy it plays rather differently. The Berlusconi media do not run constant Silvio Our Saviour stuff, even if there are one or two rather crude examples of that. No, instead it is a constant attack on the opposition. This has led to an attitude in many Italians of “Silvio is an embarrassment, but the others are worse”. Although the specifics are different, this attitude is similar to the one that saw Britain’s Tony Blair consistently re-elected.

And in many places he is hated in the way that Blair was. For example, he has consistently talked about building an enormous bridge from the Italian mainland to Sicily. The polls in Sicily have shown that the Sicilians simply do not want this bridge for entirely sensible reasons. They don’t think it is a good idea to build a bridge between two earthquake zones, they would rather the money was spent on the roads, trains and general infrastructure in Sicily, they are proud of their island status, and finally, with things being the way they are in the South of Italy, they are not sure that the thing would be built properly without money being creamed off to some god-knows-where. Consequently, when someone threw a miniature model of the Milan Cathedral at Berlusconi and broke his teeth, the big joke on facebook was “ora un ponte se lo può fare ai denti” (now he can make a bridge for his teeth). There are also daily protests and mini-strikes that mostly pass without mention.

Whilst he is consistently mocked at home, the mockery and derision from the rest of the world towards him has in a certain sense actually helped Berlusconi. Whenever he is attacked on the BBC or in the major news media there is some statement about how this is an attack on Italy and not on him specifically. There was a period of diminishing returns on this strategy but the recent Merkel-Sarkozy affair has allowed for a reinvigoration of this tactic.

Apart from the media, the craven and/or greedy behavior of the opposition parties in Italy has constantly helped him to survive. Parties in his coalition have supported him in confidence votes despite criticizing him in public. In other cases, if one party has jumped ship from the coalition another one has jumped aboard in return for a few promises and therefore kept him alive.

The good news is that, he is on the way out. He will not survive another election. One of the reasons may not be politics or economics but in fact, religion. Much is made of Italy’s Catholic heritage but I am not quite sure how serious the majority of Italians take it. For example, if you go around any city in Italy you will find condom machines in plain sight outside of every chemist, and not short of customers. Divorce is for the most part not considered bad and abortion, while still controversial, is broadly accepted.

Abortion is though, still an important issue for voters and the parties must on some issues be seen to do what their base wants. For example, there was an enormous fuss made when the EU tried to have crucifixes removed from public school classrooms. The Italian government argued that these were a cultural and not a religious manifestation and should, therefore, be allowed to stay in the classroom. Berlusconi has pushed this too far however. The recent sex scandals are for a lot of people less important than the political, legal, and economic mess he has created or at least worsened. But a large part of his base came from voters of the now defunct Christian Democracy party, and they will not vote for him again in the light of these scandals.

Recent polls suggest that a quarter of the Italian electorate still support him but with the economic crisis worsening the last card he can play, “I’m a successful businessman, I understand the economy,” is not going to make win the game.

Who will come after him is the big question and unsettlingly it may well be the Lega Nord. The Lega are a far-right party that also wish for secession from Italy. At their rallies you can see England, Ireland and, unfortunately for me as a leftist independence supporting Scot, Scotland flags being waved. They maintain they have some sort of Celtic heritage. The fact that their politics are absolutely nothing like those being enacted by the Scottish government doesn’t stop some people making another lazy comparison in this, and this is despite the facts that the economic, cultural, political and historical situations are radically different. Also, it is debatable at this point how much of a desire they really show for secession. It is certainly shouted a lot at their rallies but as part of the Berlusconi government they seem to be more about following neocon economics with a shedload of racism thrown in than actual separation.

The left have a lot of work to do and there have been a few false dawns in their regard. Time will tell.

To finish, certain people should stop laughing at the Italians. The normal Italian person is Berlusconi’s victim, not his supporter. Even if he has been more supported in the past than he is now, the world is full of people who consistently vote against their own interests. One doesn’t need to look to far from home to find them.

In the specific case of Berlusconi, if I am in Italy and someone asks me about him then I always say that he is a clown but unfortunately he is not a harmless clown. Before the most recent round of scandals, Slavoj Zizek called him about right:

Berlusconi is a significant figure, and Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out. If our political choice is between permissive-liberal technocratism and fundamentalist populism, Berlusconi’s great achievement has been to reconcile the two, to embody both at the same time … This is perhaps the saddest aspect of his reign: his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralization.
…
In today’s Italy, state power is directly exerted by the bourgeois, [and Berlusconi and the Bourgeouis] openly exploits it as a means to protect his own economic interest, and who parades his personal life as if he were taking part in a reality TV show.

As it happens, when he is gone, which won’t be long, like many of the people who have been kicked out of the Grande Fratello house, it seems he will have the chance to (re)start a music career.

In contrast the same opinion makers, plus their academic counterparts, project images of the United States and the European Union as stable societies, with steady economic growth, incremental expansion of social welfare programs, resolving issues via consensual compromises and practicing sound fiscal policies.

In recent times, the better part of the current decade, these images have taken on the character of ideological dogmas – they no longer correspond to reality. In fact, a good argument can be made that the roles have been reversed: the US and EU are in perpetual crises and Latin America, at least most of the major countries, have experienced stability and growth which is the envy (or should be) of Washington pundits and financial commentators.

This ‘role reversal’ has been recognized by many US, EU and Asian investors and multinationals, even as respectable journalistic hacks for the Financial Times, NY Times and Wall Street Journal still write about vulnerabilities, imbalances and other weaknesses while grudgingly acknowledging the dynamic growth of the region.

Progressive opinion is equally at fault, focusing on the ‘advances’ of the left regimes but overlooking the underlying dynamics affecting most of the region and thus losing sight of the new points of conflict and contention.

We will proceed to outline the contrasting realities between the crises ridden “North” (US/EU) and the sustained growth of the “South” (South America). The analysis will raise questions of whether the South American experience is transferable to the North and what ‘structural adjustments’ would be necessary to pull the US and EU out of the downward spiral of stagnation and violent conflicts which have characterized these regions for the better part of the past decade.

The Lost Decade, US and EU Style

The Latin American countries during the 1980’s experienced a deep and persistent crises, manifested in negative growth, increased poverty levels and heavy indebtedness, which allowed creditors (like the IMF) to impose harsh and regressive austerity measures and “structural adjustment” policies which came to be known as neo-liberalization. These included the privatization of most strategic, lucrative public enterprises, and the ending of any semblance of state-directed industrial strategies.

For the peasants and the working and middle class the short-lived neo-liberal “boom” of the 1990s was a continuation of the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s. The neo-liberal policies of the 1990s were based on fundamentally flawed structural foundations and polarizing income and public expenditures involving huge transfers of income to capital and downward pressures on wages and welfare. The neo-liberal regimes went into a deep crisis early in 2000 provoking major popular upheavals. The outcome resulted in a new set of political configurations and social power equations, which evolved into new post-neo-liberal regimes, at least in most of the major countries in Latin America.

In contrast and, in part thanks to the profitable opportunities opened by the debt crises and neo-liberalization of Latin America in the 1990s (and in the ex-Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Baltic/Balkan states) the US and EU prospered. In Latin America over 5,000 lucrative extractive resource-based industries, banks, tele-communications and other industries passed into the hands of foreign private MNC and local capital. High returns on bonds and loans and rents from technology transfers enriched the Northern capitalists even as poverty multiplied in the South. The 1990s was the “golden age” of Western capital as profits rose and leftist parties and the traditional urban trade unions appeared unable to withstand the ‘wave’ of predatory capitalism capturing the commanding heights of the economy.

The very successes of the US and EU countries, the enormous easy gains from pillage, speculation, and exploitation led to the dominance of financial capital and the belief in an irrevocable “new world order”. The dominance of the US and EU was built on their military superiority backed by pliant, collaborative, neo-liberal client regimes. The ‘new order’ lasted less than a decade: the economic crises of 1999/2000 smashed the illusions of a century of imperial grandeur. As markets collapsed so too did the Latin American oligarchic electoral regimes (dubbed “democracies”) which along with the financial elite and the military formed the triple alliance that defined Western supremacy. The final blow was the economic crises of 2001-2002 in the US and EU which steeply eroded their capacity to intervene and prop up their collapsing Latin clients ousted by rebellious masses.

The first decade of the new millennia has been the “lost decade”  of the North.   Over the course of the past eleven years the North has witnessed stagnation and recessions which have not given way to recoveries. The capitalist states temporarily saved the bankers but were powerless to set in motion economic growth.

The credit rating of the US economy was downgraded by the risk agencies. Unemployment and underemployment hovers close to one-fifth of the labor force, figures comparable to stagnant Third World countries. Social programs  are severely slashed in the US and throughout the European Union, reversing decades of incremental gains. Trade and budget deficits in the US have become chronic, while private and public lenders are becoming increasingly reticent to lend in the face of deep-seated recessionary tendencies.

The financial sector in the US and EU is rife with large scale fraud, swindles, mismanagement and falsified balance sheets, conditions previously prevalent among Latin economies. Wars proliferate. Military spending far exceeds productive investments, draining the US economy in a fashion reminiscent of the weapons spending during the reign of the warlords of Africa and the military dictators of Latin America.

In the EU, faced with brutal cuts in wages, pensions and jobs millions of workers and unemployed youth in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy have taken to the streets. General strikes threaten the stability of increasingly isolated regimes, reminiscent of the popular rebellions which resulted in regime changes in Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the US, public protests reflect deepening private discontent: over 75% of the population expresses negative views of the Congress and 60% of the White House. Deepening political alienation of the US electorate is comparable to the loss of popular faith in Latin governments during the “lost decades”, 1980-2000.

Both the US and the EU have been radically transformed for the worse during the lost decade of the current century. Economically, politically and socially the ‘North’ has been “Latin Americanized”: social instability, economic stagnation, political alienation, growing class inequalities and poverty is presided over by corrupt political elites.

Signs of the Better Times: Latin America

Recently the finance minister of Brazil raised the possibility that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) might take a hand in a “rescue plan” to prop up the crises-ridden economies of Europe. While the statement had greater symbolic rather substantive consequences, it does reflect a certain reality: while the North plunges into deeper, unending crises, the Latin economies are doing reasonably well.

Except for the Latin countries still under US dominance, especially Mexico and most of Central America, the rest of Latin America has not only avoided the crises afflicting the North but have been growing at a healthy rate, three times that of the US over the decade. The new millennium, especially between 2003-2011 (except for a brief interlude in 2009) has been a period of high growth, general prosperity, booming exports, rising imports, greater inter-regional co-operation, and large scale poverty reduction.

Brazil alone has reduced the number of poor by 30 million. Regular elections, relatively honest and competitive, result in stable legitimate transfers of political power. Except for US-backed coups in Honduras and intervention in Haiti and Venezuela, violent seizures of power have disappeared over the past decade. Regional institution–building has prospered with the advent of UNASUR and a Latin American regional bank.  Because of fiscal controls and banking regulations, both results of the lessons learned from the crisis of the lost decades (1980-2000), Latin America was only slightly affected by the US-EU financial crash of 2008-2011.

Latin American trade has doubled, especially with Asia, aided by China’s double digit growth. Demand for agro-mineral commodities has tripled. The key to this new export-powered growth is Latin America’s growing economic independence. This has led to the diversification of its markets, taking advantage of new opportunities and reducing their dependence on the US. Latin America’s emphasis on economic growth, new markets and investments has led it to avoid entanglements in the proliferating and costly colonial wars which engage the US and EU.

While the US and EU print more money and increase indebtedness to cover trade deficits, Latin America has quadrupled its foreign reserves. These cushion any downturns and avoid any dependence on the IMF, architect of the lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s.

Within Latin America, the issue of poverty reduction has been tackled with varying degrees of effectiveness. With Venezuela under President Chavez leading the way the general direction has been toward increasing social payments, by increments in most cases, but with greater efforts in others. Except for Mexico, nothing resembling the social cuts of the US-EU has taken place in Latin America. The most striking structural advances have occurred in Venezuela and to a lesser degree in Argentina. They have significantly increased the minimum wage and pensions and increased welfare payments to the most vulnerable (single mothers, the disabled, those in extreme poverty).

With the exception of Colombia (the US’s principle military ally in the region) which is still the murder capital of the world for human rights advocates, trade unionists and peasant activists, human rights violations have declined. While the US-EU have vastly increased their human rights violations geometrically via multiple colonial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and clandestine death squad ‘operations’, Latin America’s overseas human rights violations are largely limited to its occupation forces in Haiti – at the behest of the US and EU. Nevertheless repression of popular movements, especially indigenous peoples and peasant movements and students has increased in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere as the high growth policies on community rights and social expenditures.

Because of Latin America’s current political stability and dynamic growth, institutional and corporate investment is pouring into the region. In contrast the US and EU are suffering from disinvestment and declining rates of private investment. In other words, the development of Latin America is the other side of the coin of the US-EU under-development.

Latin America: New Contradictions

The class struggle is still the motor force in the social progress of Latin America. But unlike EU-US, Latin America’s class struggle is directed at increasing social and monitory wages, even if incrementally, as part of an offensive strategy to capture a greater share of rising income. In the US and EU the class struggle is ‘defensive’: an effort to stop declining income shares, limit job losses and cuts in pensions.

While militant class action including land occupations, street demonstrations and strikes are still part of the repertory of working class social weapons, they take place within the political parameters of democratic institutions. In Europe the elites have increasingly ignored mass street protests and strikes, largely pursuing austerity policies dictated by non-elected domestic and foreign bankers and creditors.

The limitations and ‘contradictions’ affecting all Latin American countries are located in the internal class inequalities. As national income has increased and exports boom, the inequalities between the ruling investor class and the mass of wage earners has increased. While initially the problem of class inequality was papered over by the general rise in living standards and employment, over time the employed and productive classes are no longer satisfied with incremental gains which barely surpass inflation rates. The rising standards of living have raised expectations. The percentage of poor may have declined but subsisting just above $4 dollars a day is increasingly unacceptable. Growth brings forth its own set of contradictions and a new set of demands. Formerly excluded classes included in the system, but exploited, have only their class organizations as their weapons to advance their socio-economic interests.

This is clearly the case in contemporary Chile where long term growth is accompanied by deeply entrenched inequalities comparable to the worse in the OECD. Beginning in July 2011 massive student protests over the high cost of public and private education and low levels of social expenditures have detonated mass activity from trade unions covering the gamut of economic sectors from teachers to copper miners.

The new and explosive issue confronting rulers and ruled in most of high growth Latin America is raising incomes for whom? The class issues are front and foremost in the current period and immediate future.

Growth, stability and democratic class struggles characterize most of the major countries, but not all. In several countries, the authoritarian and violent legacy of the dictatorial regimes continues robust. Colombia’s practice of murdering trade unionists, peasant leaders, journalists and human rights activists continues unabated: over 30 trade unionists were murdered during the first eight  months of 2011.

Honduras’ ruling regime, product of a US-backed coup and its allies among the paramilitary private armies of landowners, have killed scores of peasants and dozens of pro-democracy political and social activists.

Mexico’s killing fields are notorious: over 40,000 people have been killed by the police, military and drug gangs in a ‘war on drugs’ promoted by Obama and implemented by President Calderon.

What these three retro-regimes have in common is that they continue to follow the dictates of Washington, remain highly militarized states, with a strong US military and police presence in the form of bases, overseas advisers, and an intrusive role in setting policy. All three have failed to diversify markets and continue with a high degree of dependence on the stagnant US market. All have secured, or are in the process of signing, bi-lateral free trade agreements at the expense of exploring greater links with the dynamic Asian markets.

The three retro-regimes have never experienced the kind of popular rebellions and resultant center-left regimes which have emerged in most of Latin America. In Mexico pro-democracy candidates were twice defrauded of electoral victories, first in 1988 and later in 2006. In Honduras, a progressive liberal democratic President seeking to diversify markets was ousted by a military coup backed by the Obama regime in 2010. In Colombia, the murder of 5,000 activists and leaders of the pro-democracy Patriotic Union between 1984-86, the subsequent assassination of several thousand social activists, blocked a democratic opening. The abrupt termination of peace negotiations in 2002 and the total militarization of the country (2002-2011) funded by $6 billion in US military aid precluded the emergence of the political and social changes, which have dynamized the rest of Latin America’s sustained growth and opened the door for ‘democratic class struggle’.

While most of Latin America has forged ahead, thus far largely avoiding the instability and economic crises of the US and EU, past legacies and present inequities present a new set of structural impediments to the consolidation of long-term growth and political and social stability. The biggest structural contradiction is found in the high growth/increasing inequalities, socio-economic model based on the “3 ½ alliance”: foreign capital-national capital-the developmental state and the co-opted trade union/peasant leaders.

The profits and investments of this power configuration has been driven by the growth of agro-mineral exports, rising commodity prices, easy consumer credit and state regulation of financial markets. The economic returns on growth have been disproportionately appropriated by the “big three” with incremental payoffs to a minority of better paid organized workers. The ‘residuals’ are used to “lift the poor” from abject poverty to subsistence.

These growing inequalities have been “papered over” by the general rise of income, easy credit and improved public services. But rising incomes have set in motion a new set of class conflicts which will be exacerbated when the prices of commodities decline and the governments can no longer fund incremental improvements. Even today, severe conflicts have emerged between predator mining and timber, multi nationals and Indian/peasants in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Chile. These sometimes violent struggles between the state/MNC and peasants in the “periphery of the countryside” can detonate a larger conflict in the central cities, if export revenues decline.

The second contradiction is between the “marginalized working poor” and a new class of local middle and business class investors who have invested their “savings” in shares of the foreign and locally-owned mining companies. Conservative and closely aligned with the rapacious multi-nationals, these new middle class investors have enriched themselves on the bases of unregulated plunder of natural resources and contamination of the adjoining rural communities. If, and when, commodity prices nose dive, the regimes will face a bankrupt hysterical middle class looking for a political savior where none exist, at least among the existing civilian parties.

The rightward drift of the center-left regimes and their opportune links to big business especially in Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay has led to corruption in high places. Liberalization and exorbitant executive salaries has been accompanied by “unofficial payoffs” to public officials. Corruptions has eroded the social ethic of center-left politicians and replaced it with the ethos of “bringing in new and bigger investments”, whatever shortcuts and payoffs it requires. Corruption at the top spreads downwards greasing the wheels for foreign investors, but certainly lowering the trust and loyalties of employees and formal and informal workers not in the ‘magic circle’, a bribe takers and givers. “Patronage” and poverty reduction payouts can limit the fallout from corruption in high places among poverty-funded recipients. However, in time of economic downturn, it can turn social protests toward political regime change.

The third contradiction is found between the high level of dependency on commodity exports (which heretofore have been the dynamic element of growth) and the relative and absolute decline of manufacturing exports and production. The growth of income from commodities has led to the appreciation of the currency which has lessened the competitiveness of nationally produced manufactured products, leading to a sharp decline in profits and even bankruptcy.

Asian manufacturer-exporters – especially in China and to a lesser extent India and Korea – are increasingly penetrating Latin markets with lower cost finished products “de-industrializing” the Latin economies. In some cases, Latin American capitalists are looking to investing in Asia to lower costs and exporting back to their “home markets”. Brazilian industry, which has been hardest hit, has initiated “protectionist” measures including tariffs, 65% local content rules and state subsidies to counter the de-diversification of the economy.

The fourth contradiction is found precisely in the successful economic growth and high returns, which has attracted both speculative and “takeover” capital as well as productive investments. Speculative capital will flee and destabilize the financial system at the first sign of slowdown. Foreign ownership will lessen the government’s ability to leverage investment decisions in time of crises. Productive investments respond to expanding markets. They do not create them.

In summary, Latin America’s decade long dynamic growth has certainly out-performed the US and EU on a whole series of important economic, social and political dimensions. Yet, out of this growth have emerged a new set of contradictions and the need to correct increasingly grave “imbalances”: popular demands for a shift in income distribution, industrialist pressure for a rebalancing of the economy from dependence on finance and commodities to manufacturing and the urban poor demand improved social services especially in public health care and crowded classrooms.

These changes require a structural adjustment in the power structure. The economic imbalances reflect the growing concentration of political power among the extractive capitalists, bankers and local middle class investors of the major cities. Public employees, labor, the urban poor, the peasants and environmentally concerned Indians and ecologists, are marginalized from the key economic posts. They need to once again take to the streets with new independent movements which raise two basic questions: What kind of growth and growth for whom?

Lessons of Latin America: Listen Yankees and Eurocrats

Can the positive lessons of the dynamic Latin American experience provide a ‘model’ for the US and Europe? Is the “model”, in whole or part, transferable to the North or are the two regions so different that the lessons are not applicable?

Granted there are vast historical, cultural, economic and political differences between the regions yet some lessons from the Latin America’s decade of dynamic growth provides new ideas to counter the negative, self-defeating economic formulas put forth and practiced by US and EU experts, economists and policymakers.

Let us start from the beginning. The rise of Latin America was precipitated by a deep economic crisis, the breakdown of the economy, large scale unemployment and the impoverishment of the middle class. The crises led to the total discrediting of what has been called alternately the “free market”, “neo-liberal” and “de-regulated” capitalist model. So far so good: the US and EU likewise are experiencing a prolonged and deepening economic crises which has bankrupted Southern Europe, plunged the US into a double dip recession and led to a 20% un and underemployment rate. The entire “political class” in the US and Europe is largely discredited. From there forward the regions diverge.

In Latin America, the crises led to mass protests, popular uprisings and regime changes. Post neo-liberal center-left regimes, under mass pressure, subsequently launched employment generating investments and aid poverty reducing public works programs. Argentina, facing a financial crisis similar to Greece, Portugal and Spain today, defaulted on its foreign debt – channeling public revenues into reviving the economy. Because financial speculation linked to Wall Street and the City of London precipitated the crises, the Latin regimes instituted financial controls and regulations which limited financial volatility. The new regimes, influenced by the commodity boom, diversified their trading partners, entering dynamic Asian markets, reaping high returns and stimulating local consumption and public investments. What lessons can the crises-ridden US and EU learn from the Latin America’s successful recovery and expansion?

First, the beginning of a successful response depends on a political transformation. Regime change, a complete break with the ‘neo-liberal’ free market, and the political leaders and parties who are totally embedded in failed institutions and policies. Regime change presupposes the eruption of dynamic mass organizations, new, old, improvised and organized, capable of moving from protest and resistance to political power.

The object is to rebalance the US and EU economies from “financialization” and “militarism” to large scale, long term investments in manufacturing, applied technology, civilian infrastructure and social services. Direct public investments and loans applied to concrete employment-generating projects; total rejection of trickle down, monetary policies which never move from private banks to public works.

The entire militarist- Zionist-permanent war mentality is entirely vulnerable to change: doing so, will create jobs, the top priority for over two-thirds of the US public. The “war on terrorism”, the banner of the warlords in office, is considered a priority by only 3% of Americans. Once again the shift from militarism to the civilian economy in Latin America was a result of popular civilian upheavals via the street and the ballot box.

Of course, the Latin American republics had an easier time in rebalancing their economic priorities from failed military rulers and discredited neo-liberal policies. Citizen movements in the US and EU imperial states will have a harder time in closing down hundreds of military bases, ousting militarist politicians backed by powerful domestic and foreign lobbies and converting the empires to productive republics. Yet, Latin American exporters have prospered by avoiding entanglement in overseas imperial wars. They continue to pursue new markets in the Middle East and elsewhere instead of destroying adversaries of Israel as the EU and US have done through colonial wars in Iraq and Libya and sanctions against Iran, Syria and Venezuela.

The contrasting performance between Latin American republics and Euro-American empire builders is striking. The US and EU should shed their self-centered images of “successful” developed countries and outdated stereotype of Latin America as a collection of “volatile”, coup prone underdeveloped countries. The US is in deep trouble and it is heading into a deeper, less manageable economic crisis with few resources to counter it. Internationally it is increasingly isolated and in conflict with potential economic partners. Washington sides with Israel, alienating over 1.5 billion rich and poor Islamic peoples, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and all points east, west and south. It antagonizes Brazil via financial pump priming, overpricing the real (Brazilian currency) without helping US recovery.
Domestic and international failures multiply as the crisis deepens and nothing proposed by the blighted incumbents and besotted opposition offers any programmatic solution.

As in Latin America during the first years of this decade we need a popular rebellion: we need a profound regime change; we need to think of productive public investments not monumental loss of capital via Wall Street speculation and the waste of public resources via expenditures in weapons of destruction.

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.

1. Chris McGreal, Gaddafi’s army will kill half a million, warn Libyan rebels, the Guardian, 12 March 2011
2. Daily Mail Reporter, Libya declares immediate ceasefire… but Gaddafi forces keep on bombing, Daily Mail, 18 March 2011
3. Mark Townsend, Benghazi attack by Gaddafi’s forces was ‘ploy to negate air strikes’, The Guardian, 19 March 2011
4. Libya jets bomb rebels, Reuters, 14 March 2011
5. Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick, Qaddafi Massing Forces in Tripoli as Rebellion Spreads, New York Times, 23 February 2011
6. Msnbc.com staff and news service reports, Libya protesters to try to capture Gadhafi, MSNBC, 24 February 2011
7. Laura Rozen, Who are the Libyan rebels? U.S. tries to figure out, The Envoy, 22 March 2011
8. Ahmed Jadallah, Gaddafi defiant as protesters killed, The Independent, 25 February 2011
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
10. Flavia Krause-Jackson and Caroline Alexander, Rape as Weapon of War Is UN Focus, Bloomberg, 6 July 2011.
11. NBC News, US intel: No evidence of Viagra as weapon in Libya, MSNBC, 29 April 2011.
12. Patrick Cockburn, Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war, The Independent, 24 June 2011.
13. Richard Pendlebury, Outside the rebels were jubilant. Inside the court I came face to face with Gaddafi’s savage mercenaries, Daily Mail, 25 February 2011.
14. David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim, Libyan Rebels March Toward Qaddafi Stronghold, New York Times, 27 March 2011.
15. Kareem Fahim, With Confidence and Skittishness, Libyan Rebels Renew Charge, New York Times, 20 March 2011.
16. Richard N. Haas, What Next in Libya?, Huffington Post, 6 April 2011.
17. RT, Airstrikes in Libya did not take place – Russian military, Russia Today, 1 March 2011.
18. News Transcript, DOD News Briefing with Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen from the Pentagon, U.S. Department of Defense, 1 March 2011.
19. Glenn Greenwald, Bad stenographers, Salon, 28 November 2007.
20. Editors, The Times and Iraq, New York Times, 26 May 2004.
21. Howard Kurtz, The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story, Washington Post, 12 August 2004.
22. H0ward Kurtz, The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story, Washington Post, 12 August 2004.
23. Neil MacDonald, Rebels vow to open up Libya to investment, Financial Times, 15 June 2011.
24. Patrick Cockburn,  Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war, The Independent, 24 June 2011.
25. Mahmood Mamdani, Libya: Politics of humanitarian intervention, Al-Jazeera, 31 March 2011.
26. Uri Friedman, Meet the Libyan Rebels the West Is Supporting, The Atlantic Wire, 24 March 2011.
27. Charles Levinson, Rebel Leadership Casts a Wide Net, Wall Street Journal, 10 March 201.1
28. Daniel Schwartz, Mahmoud Jibril: the international face of Libya’s rebels, CBC News, 29 March 2011.
29. The interim national council, A vision of a democratic Libya, The Guardian, 29 March 2011.
30. NBC, CIA feelers in Libya; rebels lose lots of ground, MSNBC, 30 March 2011.
31. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid Airstrikes and Meet Rebels, New York Times, 30 March 2011.
32. Ken Dilanian, CIA officers working with Libya rebels, Los Angeles Times, 31 March 2011.
33. Ken Dilanian, CIA officers working with Libya rebels, Los Angeles Times, 31 March 2011.
34. Robert Fisk, America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels, The Independent, 7 March 2011.
35. Charles Levinson and Matthew Rosenberg, Egypt Said to Arm Libya Rebels, Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2011.
36. Chris Adams, Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia, McClatchy Newspapers, 26 March 2011.
37. 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.
38. Chris McGreal, Libyan rebel efforts frustrated by internal disputes over leadership, The Guardian, 3 April 2011.
39. Ian Black, Libya rebels rejects Gaddafi’s al-Qaida spin, The Guardian, 1 March 2011.
40. Gadhafi blames bin Laden, drugs for Libya unrest, MSNBC, 24 February 2011.
41. Richard Adams, Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway?, The Guardian, 1 March 2011.
42. Michael Solomon, Quiz: Charlie Sheen or Muammar Qaddafi?, Vanity Fair, 25 February 2011.
43. Matt Gurney, Muammar Gaddafi and Charlie Sheen, spot the difference, The National Post, 1 March 2011.
44. Robin Cook, The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means, The Guardian, 8 July 2005.
45. Charles Levinson, Ex-Mujahedeen Help Lead Libyan Rebels, Wall Street Journal, 2 April 2011.
46. Praveen Swami, Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links, The Telegraph, 25 March 2011.
47. Robert Winnett, Libya: al-Qaeda among Libya rebels, Nato chief fears, The Telegraph, 29 March 2011.
48. Terry Glavin, Ottawa’s Gaddafi fans find their world crumbling, The National Post, 23 August 2011.
49. Scott Taylor, Support for Gaddafi soars amid NATO bombing on civilians, Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 21 August 2011.
50. Up to 15,000 killed in Libya war: U.N. rights expert, Reuters, 9 June 2011
51. Media Advisory, Libyan Deaths, Media Silence, FAIR, 18 August 2011.
52. Libya civilian deaths ’sap NATO credibility’, Al-Jazeera, 20 June 2011.
53. Patrick Cockburn, Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war, The Independent, 24 June 2011.
54. Michele Norris, In Libya, African Migrants Say They Face Hostility, NPR, 25 February 2011
55. African migrants targeted in Libya, Al-Jazeera, 28 February 2011.
56. Peter Mietzner, Rebels target suspected mercenaries in Libya, iNamibia, 5 March 2011.
57. Simba Russeau, Uprising Revives Entrenched Racism Towards Black Africans, IPS, 21 March 2011.
58. News Desk Report, Massacre of Blacks in Libya, The Ghanaian Journal, 9 March 2011.
59. Jason Koutsoukis, Black men mistaken for mercenaries, The Sydney-Morning Herald, 6 March 2011.
60. David Zucchino, Libyan rebels accused of targeting blacks, The Los Angeles Times, 4 March 2011.
61. Onwuchekwa Jemie, Black Africans slaughtered in Libya, Business Day, 22 March 2011.
62. LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others, Somaliland Press, 4 March 2011.
63. Sam Dagher, Libya City Torn by Tribal Feud, The Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2011.
64. Michel Martin, Black Migrants Caught In Libya Unrest, NPR, 16 March 2011.
65. Rosebell Kagumire, Guest article: A mercenary and an immigrant; a story of black Africans and Libya, The Independent, 3 March 2011.
66. Italy Warns of a New Wave of Immigrants to Europe, Der Spiegel, 24 February 2011.
67. Stanley Pignal and Giulia Segreti, Italians fear African migration surge, Financial Times, 21 February 2011.
68. Libya: up to a million refugees could pour into Europe, The Telegraph, 21 February 2011.
69. Canada joins propaganda war aimed at Gadhafi forces, CBC News, 26 August 2011; William Maclean, Analysis: Seeking leverage, Libya foes in propaganda war, Reuters, 5 August 2011.
70. Kevin Bogardus, PR firm helps Libyan rebels to campaign for support from US, The Hill, 12 April 2011.
71. CNN wire staff, U.S. recognizes Libyan rebels’ authority, CNN, 15 July 2011.
72. Molly Hennessy-Fiske, LIBYA: Push to unfreeze Libyan assets, LA Times Blog, 25 August 2011.
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.

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

Though America is always engaged in several wars simultaneously, she really hates to make wars, so we’re told by each U.S. President. An American war is always humanitarian in aim and execution. We wage war not because we love to kick ass, then go home, not because we’re born to kill, murder ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out, etc, but because we love foreigners, actually, the browner the better. It doesn’t matter if they have petroleum or not, or if they’re scarfed with a keffiyeh (while eating a donut). America wages war out of compassion.

Thus, this week, we’re told by Obama that his attack on Libya is to prevent innocents from being massacred and chaos from spreading, “For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges.” Reluctant, yes, but not when it is America’s duty, again, to attack a sovereign nation, “To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Like Bush, Obama did not mention oil once, but surely, some of you are saying, this is not really about oil, again? Here are the facts: Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa. Sweeter and cheaper to extract than elsewhere, Libyan oil is also easier to bring to market, thanks to its proximity to Europe. About three-fourths of this is exported to NATO countries, primarily Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Greece and the U.K. With the exception of Germany, these are also the main European nations attacking Libya, along with the USA.

But why attack Gaddafi if he’s already selling you oil? Why upset the status quo? It’s because on January 25, 2009, Gaddafi declared:

The oil-exporting countries should opt for nationalization because of the rapid fall in oil prices. We must put the issue on the table and discuss it seriously. Oil should be owned by the State at this time, so we could better control prices by the increase or decrease in production.

The countries with oil concessions in Libya are Italy, France, Spain, the US, the UK, Norway, Russia and Germany. See a pattern here? Norway is also in the US-led coalition to attack Libya. It’s noteworthy that France is particularly belligerent this time. In 2003, by contrast, France was vehemently against invading Iraq, since it had much dealing with Hussein and would lose much should he be replaced.

To Francophobes, France’s stance on Iraq proved that it had no backbone, as suspected, that it would fight with its feet and, ahem, make love with its face, as the saying goes, that it wouldn’t stand up to terrorists. Two American congressmen, Robert Ney and Walter Jones, even started a campaign to rename french fries “freedom fries.” What a way to go down in history. To Francophiles, however, France was to be applauded for refusing to be cowed by America, but the truth is much simpler. France didn’t want to lose the billions Hussein already owed it, and the billions it would make if he stayed in power. It came down, as it always does in these situations, to money.

And so it is with Libya. Wanting to gain access to Libya’s oil, the United States is not just helping one side in a civil war, but directing the fight. The rebel’s military leader is a long time CIA asset, Khalifa Hifter. Before returning to Benghazi last week, Hifter spent two decades in Northern Virginia, a five minute drive from CIA headquarters.

The rebels are flying the old flag of the Kingdom of Libya. Some are carrying photos of King Idris. Even the French flag has been displayed, leading French Prime Minister Fillon to proclaim, “There is hope in Benghazi now, the French flag is being waved there, and also the flag of a different Libya which dreams of democracy and modernization.” I would not equate flying a monarchical flag and the flag of a country that colonized a good chunk of Northern Africa not that long ago with “dreams of democracy and modernization.” Under King Idris, Libya was also host to American and British military bases. With 4,600 Yanks, Wheelus air base was even dubbed “Little America by the Mediterranean.” Gaddafi ended all that.

Funny, but the same countries that now attack Gaddafi sold him lots of weapons, more than a billion’s worth since 2005. The British Special Air Service even trained Libyan Special Forces, and American war colleges instructed Libyan military officers “to fight terrorists.” From the Libyan government’s point of view, the rebels now supported by America and the rest sure fit that description.

To gain access to oil, all these countries armed a man they now call a mad dog, but Gaddafi didn’t just become a tyrant two weeks ago. He’s been embraced by Tony Blair, feted by Nicolas Sarkozy, visited by John McCain and even had his hand kissed by Silvio Berlusconi, so everything was manageable until he threatened to nationalize Libya’s oil in 2009. As he became perfectly sane, at least from the Libyan point of view, as he promised to distribute more oil revenues to his own people, the West decided he must be ousted.

We will see if Obama can stick to his promise of sending no ground troops, but for now, the alliance is fighting strictly from the air. This is macabrely appropriate as Tripoli, Libya was the site of the first air assault in world history. A century ago, during Italy’s invasion, Giulio Gavotti dropped four hand grenades onto an Ottoman Empire encampment. He had no idea how many he killed. Then, as now, it’s impossible to countenance anyone’s mortality from such a height. In any case, Gavotti landed a hero. Italy’s best known poet at the time, Gabriele D’Annunzio, lauded him, “From your wing you hurl your bomb / On an instant massacre; and it appears / Your live heart is warmed.”

Now, as foreign planes fly over Libya yet again, we are told that the people below are grateful. Thanks for the depleted uranium, Sirs! My children and my children’s children will also thank you. As least in the desert, there won’t be any agent orange raining down. An American pilot had to parachute because his plane malfunctioned. According to Obama, he was greeted by a young Libyan “who came to his aid [and] said, ‘We are your friends. We are so grateful to these men who are protecting the skies.’” Was this young Libyan speaking in English, or did the pilot understand Arabic? Can you spell CIA? Do you smell a fish?

And Covenants without the Sword are but Words, and of no strength to secure a Man at all.

— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 165

Seventy-five years ago, a head of state stood up before the world body to demand justice for his people, who had been terrorized and murdered by an imperial aggressor. All prior attempts to mediate the matter and appeal to the principles of collective security and equality of nations were deliberately ignored. The leader’s name was Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia; the world body was The League of Nations; the aggressor was Fascist Italy.

Selassie’s address, delivered in June 1936 in Geneva, is not some arcane tidbit of long-forgotten 20th-century history. It is a highly meaningful document that depicts how Great Powers quickly betray their principles under the cover of law. The criminals and victims may have changed in 75 years, but the polite rationalizations we offer up to appease international crime today are pretty much the same. What Italy did to Ethiopia in 1936, Israel now does to Palestine and Lebanon, and U.S.-led imperial forces do to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Now, as then, aggression has the tacit support of a world body designed to prevent such violence, yet any equation between the failed League of Nations and the United Nations likely does not register with most people. The lessons of history are lost because we are careful to compartmentalize them to the time they happened and treat them as museum pieces. Our governing myths of progress and the perfectibility of man instill in us the conceit that whatever happened “back then” could not have any meaning today because we know so much more and the world is so much different. Yet the world is not different. Time may march on, but man runs in erratic circles.

The League of Nations was established in 1920 to ensure the world would never again suffer the horrors of mustard gas, trench warfare and other manifestations of total war. It failed because it practised appeasement toward Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, thereby emboldening them to commit further aggressions. The United Nations was established in 1945 to prevent genocide, total war, acquisition of territory by force, and other noble goals. It has failed because it practices appeasement toward Israel and the U.S. (“Isramerica”), thereby emboldening them to commit further aggressions. Take, for example, the acquiescence or active participation of the UN in mass murders like:

• Israel’s 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” massacre of Palestine when it dropped banned white phosphorous bombs on civilians;
• the U.S.’s gratuitous carpet bombing of Afghanistan in November 2001; or
• the U.S.-led “no-fly zones” and economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s that caused the deaths of more than 500,000 children.

Now read Haile Selassie’s description of Italian terrorism:

Emperor Haile Selassie delivers his address to the League of Nations, June 1936

It is not only upon warriors that the Italian Government has made war. It has above all attacked populations far removed from hostilities, in order to terrorize and exterminate them.… Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of territory, a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of nine, fifteen, eighteen aircraft followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain. In order to kill off systematically all living creatures, in order to more surely to poison waters and pastures, the Italian command made its aircraft pass over and over again. That was its chief method of warfare.

There is no difference in the contempt for human life, or in the premeditated violation of the official morality of peace, yet how many of us see this connection and recognize the cruel fact that the very concept of collective security is untenable? To persist in a discredited behaviour despite evidence to the contrary is proof of irrationality, and it is only from such an irrational perspective that we can explain why the world has again degenerated into sociopathic hypocrisy. This is why Selassie’s address still resonates so powerfully.

First, it tells us we must re-evaluate our perception of time. We see it as an arrow moving from the past to the future, and life becoming technologically, materially and, ostensibly, intellectually stronger along the way. The myths of progress and the perfectibility of man are so hardwired into our arrogant, reptilian, Judeo-Christian brain, that we equate novelty with superiority, and look on past failures as products of an inferior, hence irrelevant, technological, material and intellectual time. We can acknowledge and understand these failures, but not learn from them.

The second, more important, reason concerns morality. The Second World War was more a Manichean battle between good and evil than it was a political battle between opposing armies. By demonizing the enemy, admittedly easy to do given the atrocities the Nazis committed, we perversely deified ourselves and associated the failures of the past with the enemy. Small wonder that the war redefined our moral and political frame of reference and created an even greater discontinuity with the past. After all, the period 1918-1939 gave us fascism, genocide and war — what lessons could we possibly learn from it?

To have acknowledged that the League of Nations was a philosophical failure would have forced the Allies to examine their own culpability for the rise of fascism and the redundant impotence of the United Nations. Instead, we tell ourselves that the League’s failure was a political matter and could be remedied by a better Covenant and the participation of the U.S.

The morality of the immediate post-war period is a ridiculous anachronism yet it is somehow still invoked to define for us who is good and bad, who is an aggressor and who is a victim. In fact, though, the Allies that defeated the fascists are the new fascists. Jews, the eternal victims of genocide, are inflicting a new holocaust on Palestinians. The U.S.—that great icon of justice that takes most of the credit for defeating Hitler—justifies torture, wages war on its own citizens, sabotages international law, and coerces other nations into betraying the UN Charter.

The moral degeneracy of the UN was entirely predictable, because it is no different from the League of Nations. Collective security denies the essential role of war as an instrument of politics and defines “peace” according to the interests of the powerful. Without an effective, objective means to uphold its principles, collective security merely legitimizes bullying and delegitimizes dissent. In other words, those ultimately responsible for genocide are not the perpetrators, but rather those who knew it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.

Instead of an arrow to describe time and human history, we should use Penrose stairs, an optical illusion in which a rising or descending staircase seems to double back on itself. Given its irrationality, the Penrose stairs is perfect for describing the lack of human progress despite the linear passage of time.

To free ourselves from the Penrose loop we have to disabuse ourselves of deeply ingrained delusions about war and peace, and good and evil. To do that, we need to study history actively. In that regard, Part II will focus on detailed comparisons between the attack on Ethiopia and present-day attacks on Palestine and Libya.

Over the last three weeks there have been confrontations between troops loyal to Colonel Gaddafi and opposition forces based in the east of the country. After Ben Ali and Mubarak, will Gaddafi be the next dictator to fall? Can what is happening in Libya be compared to the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt? What can be made of the antics and u-turns we have seen from the Colonel? Why is NATO preparing for war? How do you tell the difference between a good Arab and a bad Arab? Mohammed Hassan replies to questions from Investig’Action.

Grégoire Lalieu & Michel Collon: After Tunisia and Egypt, has the Arab revolution reached Libya?

Mohammed Hassan: What is happening at the moment in Libya is different. In Tunisia and Egypt, the lack of freedom was flagrant.However, it was the appalling social conditions which really drove young people to rebel.The Tunisians and Egyptians had no hope for the future.

In Libya, Muammar Gadaffi’s regime is corrupt, monopolises a large part of the country’s wealth and has always severely repressed any opposition. But the social conditions of Libyan people are better than in neighbouring countries. Life expectancy in Libya is higher than in the rest of Africa.The health and education systems are good.Libya, moreover, is one of the first African countries to have eradicated malaria.While there are major inequalities in the distribution of wealth, GDP per inhabitant is about $11,000 – one of the highest in the Arab world.You will not therefore find in Libya the same objective conditions that led to the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

GL&MC: How then do you explain what is happening in Libya?

MH: In order to understand current events properly, we should place them in their historic context. Libya was formerly an Ottoman province. In 1835 France took over Algeria. Meanwhile Mohamed Ali, the Egyptian governor under the Ottoman Empire, was implementing ever more independent policies. With the French installed in Algeria on the one hand, and Mohamed Ali in Egypt on the other hand, the Ottomans were fearful of losing control of the region. They sent their troops to Libya.

At the time the Senoussis Brotherhood was highly influential in the country. It had been founded by Sayid Mohammed Ibn Ali as Senoussi, an Algerian who, after studying in his own country and in Morocco, went to preach his version of Islam in Tunisia and Libya. At the start of the 19th century, Senoussie began to attract numerous followers, but he was not much appreciated by certain of the Ottoman religious authorities who criticised him in their sermons.After spending some time in Egypt and in Mecca, Sennoussi decided to exile himself permanently in Cyrenaica, in the east of Libya.

His Brotherhood grew there and organised life in the región, levying taxes, resolving disputes between tribes, etc. It even had its own army and offered its services escorting merchants’ caravans passing through the area. Finally his Senoussis Brotherhood became the de facto government of Cyrenaica, expanding its influence even as far as northern Chad. But then the European colonial powers installed themselves in Africa, dividing the sub-Saharan part of the continent. That had a negative impact on the Senoussis.Libya’s invasion by Italy also seriously undermined the Brotherhood’s regional hegemony.

GL&MC: In 2008 Italy paid compensation to Libya for the crimes of the colonialists.Was colonisation as terrible as all that?Or did Berlusconi want to be seen in a good light in order to be able to conclude commercial contracts with Gaddafi?

MH: The colonisation of Libya was dreadful. At the beginning of the 20th century, a fascist government began spreading propaganda claiming that Italy, which had been defeated by the Ethiopian army at the battle of Adoua in 1896, needed to re-establish the supremacy of the white man over the black continent. It was necessary to cleanse the great civilised nation of the affront inflicted on it by the barbarians. This propaganda claimed that Libya was a country of savages, inhabited by a few backward nomads and it would be good for Italians to install themselves in this pleasant region with its picture postcard beauty.

The invasion of Libya arose out of the Italian-Turkish war of 1911 – a particularly bloody conflict which ended in victory for Italy a year later. Nevertheless, the European power only gained control of the Tripoli region and met with fierce resistance in the rest of the country, especially in Cyrenaica.The Sennousi clan supported Omar al-Mokhtar who led a remarkable guerrilla struggle in the forests, caves and mountains. He inflicted serious losses on the Italian army, although the latter was much better equipped and numerically superior.

Finally, at the beginning of the 1930s, Mussolini took radical measures to wipe out the resistance.Repression became extremely brutal and one of the main butchers, General Rodolfo Graziani, worte:“Italian soldiers were convinced that hey had been entrusted with a noble and civilising mission … They owed it to themselves to fulfil this humane duty at whatever cost … If the Libyans cannot be convinced of the fundamental benefits of what has been proposed to them, then Italians must wage a continual struggle against them and can destroy the entire Libyan population in order to bring peace, the peace of the cemetery …”

In 2008, Silvio Berlusconi paid compensation to Libya for these colonial crimes. Of course it was based on ulterior motives. Berlusconi wanted to get himself into Gaddafi’s good books in order to facilitate economic partnerships. Nevertheless, one can say that the Libyan people suffered terribly under colonialism. It would be no exaggeration to speak in terms of genocide.

GL&MC: How did Libya win its Independence?

MH: While the Italian colonists were suppressing the resistance in Cyrenaica, the Senoussis leader, Idriss, exiled himself in Egypt in order to negotiate with the British.After the Second World War, the European colonial empire was gradually dismantled and Libya became independent in 1951.Supported by Britain, Idriss took power. However, part of the Libyan bourgeoisie, under the influence of Arab nationalism that was developing in Cairo, wanted Libya to become part of Egypt. But the imperialists did not want to see a great Arab nation formed.They therefore supported the independence of Libya by putting their puppet, Idriss into power.

GL&MC: Did King Idriss go along with all this?

MH: Absolutely. At independence, the three regions that made up Libya – Tripolitana, Fezzan and Cyrenaica – found themselves united in a federal system. But it should be borne in mind that Libya is three times larger than France.Because of a lack of infrastructure, the borders of this territory could not be clearly defined until after the aeroplane had been invented.And in 1951, the country only had 1 million inhabitants. Furthermore, the three regions that had just been united had a very different culture and history. Finally, the country lacked roads linking the regions to facilitate communication. Libya was in fact at a very backward stage, and it was not a true nation.

GL&MC: Can you explain this concept?

MH: The nation state is a concept linked to the appearance of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism. In Europe in the middle ages, the capitalist bourgeoisie desired to spread its business interests on as wide a scale as possible, but was impeded in by all the constraints of the feudal system.Territories were divided up into numerous tiny entities which imposed on merchants a large number of taxes if they wanted to transport merchandise from one place to another. And this is without taking into account the various obligations they had to perform for the feudal lords.All these obstacles were removed by the capitalist bourgeois revolutions which allowed them to create nation-states, and big national markets, without obstacles.

But the Libyan nation was created at a time when it was still at a pre-capitalist stage. It lacked the infrastructure; a large part of the population was nomadic and impossible to control; divisions within society were very strong; slavery was still practised. Furthermore King Idriss had no plan for developing the country. He was entirely dependent on US and British aid.

GL&MC: Why did he receive the support of the US and Britain? Was it to do with oil?

MH: In 1951 Libyan oil had not yet been discovered. But the Anglo-Saxons had military bases in the country because it occupies a strategic position from the point of view of control of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

It was only in 1954 that a rich Texan, Nelson Bunker Hunt, discovered Libyan oil. At the time Arab oil was being sold at around 90c a barrel. But Libyan oil was bought for 30c because the country was so backward. It was perhaps the poorest in Africa.

GL&MC: But money was nevertheless coming in thanks to oil.What was it used for?

MH: King Idriss and his Senoussis clan enriched themselves personally. They also distributed part of the oil revenues to the heads of other tribes in order to pacify tensions. A small élite developed thanks to the oil trade and some infrastructure was built, principally along the Mediterranean coast, the area of greatest importance for external trade.But the rural areas in the heart of the country remained very poor and large numbers of the poor began to flood into slums around the cities.This continued until 1969 when three officers overthrew the king, one of whom was Gaddafi.

GL&MC: How come the revolution was carried out by army officers?

MH: In a country deeply rent by tribal divisions, the army was in fact the only national institution. Libya as such did not exist except through its army. Alongside this, King Idriss’s Senoussis had their own militia. But in the national army, Libyans from the different regions could get to know each other.

Gaddafi had at first developed as part of a Nasserite group, but then came to understand that this organisation would not be able to overthrow the monarchy, so he joined the army. The three officers who overthrew King Idriss were very much influenced by Nasser. Gamal Abdel Nasser was himself an officer in the Egyptian army that overthrew King Farouk. Inspired by socialism, Nasser was opposed to the interference of foreign neo-colonialism and preached the unity of the Arab world.Moreover he nationalised the Suez Canal, which had until then been managed by France and the UK, which attracted the hostility of the West and bombing in 1956.

The revolutionary pan-Arabism of Nasser was a major influence in Libya, especially in the army and over Gaddafi.The Libyan officers who carried out the coup d’état in 1969 were following the same agenda as Nasser.

GL&MC: What were the effects of the revolution on Libya?

MH: Gaddafi had two options. Either he could leave Libyan oil in the hands of western companies, as King Idriss had done – with Libya becoming like one of the oil monarchies of the Gulf where slavery is still practised, women have no rights and European architects can indulge themselves in building all kinds of bizarre constructions with astronomical budgets supplied at the end of the day from the wealth of the Arab peoples. Or he could follow the road of independence from the neo-colonial powers. Gaddafi chose the second option. He nationalised Libyan oil, greatly angering the imperialists.

In the 1950s a joke went round the White House at the time of the Eisenhower administration, which under Reagan was turned into an actual political theory. How do you tell good Arabs from bad Arabs? A good Arab does was the US tells him. In return he gets aeroplanes, is permitted to deposit his money in Switzerland, is invited to Washington, etc. These are the people Eisenhower and Reagan called good Arabs – the Kinds of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the Sheikhs and Emirs of Kuwait and the Gulf, the Shah of Iran, the King of Morocco and, of course, King Idris of Libya. The bad Arabs? Those were the ones who did not obey Washington: Nasser, Gaddafi and later Saddam …

GL&MC: All the same, Gadaffi is not very …

MH: Gaddafi is not a bad Arab because he ordered the crowd to be fired on.The same thing was done in Saudi Arabia or in Bahrain and the leaders of those countries still receive all the honours the West can confer. Gaddafi is a bad Arab because he nationalised Libyan oil, which the western companies believed – until the 1969 revolution, to be their own. By doing this, Gaddafi brought about positive changes in Libya in what concerns infrastructure, education, health, the position of women, etc.

>GL&MC: Well, Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy, nationalised oil, opposed the imperial powers and brought about positive changes in Libya. Nevertheless, 40 years later, he is a corrupt dictator which suppresses all opposition and who is once again opening his country to western companies. How do you explain that change?

MH: From the start, Gaddafi was opposed to the great colonial powers and generously supported various liberation movements throughout the world. I think he was very good for that reason. But to give the full picture, it is also necessary to mention that the Colonel was an anti-communist. In 1971, for example, he sent back to Sudan an aeroplane which was carrying Sudanese communist dissidents who were immediately executed by President Nimeiri.

The truth is that Gaddafi has never been a great visionary. His revolution was a bourgeois national revolution and what he established in Libya was state capitalism. To understand how his regime lost its way, we must analyse the context – which has gone against it – and also the personal mistakes made by Gaddafi.

First of all, we have seen that Gaddafi had to start from scratch in Libya. The country was very backward.There were no educated people at his disposal or strong working class to support the revolution. Most of the people who had received education were members of the élite who had bartered Libya’s wealth to the neo-colonial powers. Obviously these people weren’t going to support the revolution and most of them left the country in order to organise opposition from abroad.

Besides, the Libyan officers who overthrew King Idriss were much influenced by Nasser. Egypt and Libya sought to tie up a strategic partnership. But when Nasser died in 1970, this project was dead in the water and Egypt became a counter-revolutionary country aligned with the West. The new Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, allied himself with the US, progressively liberalised the country’s economy and entered into an alliance with Israel. A brief conflict even broke out with Libya in 1977. Imagine the situation in which Gaddafi found himself: the country which had inspired him and with which he had been hoping to set up an important alliance had suddenly become an enemy!

Another element of the situation worked against the Libyan revolution: the major fall in oil revenues during the 1980s. In 1973, at the time of the Israeli-Arab war, the oil-producing countries decided to impose an embargo that caused the price of a barrel of oil to shoot up. This embargo brought about the first great transfer of wealth from the North in the direction of the South. But during the 1980s there also took place what one could call an oil counter-revolution orchestrated by Reagan and the Saudis. Saudi Arabia increased its production considerably and flooded the market, causing a massive drop in prices. The barrel went down from $35 to $8.

GL&MC: Wasn’t Saudi Arabia shooting itself in the foot?

MH: Of course this had a negative impact on the Saudi economy. But oil is not the most important thing for Saudi Arabia. Its relationship with the US matters most, because it is the support of Washington that allows the Saudi dynasty to stay in power.

This tidal wave affecting the oil price proved catastrophic for several petrol-producing countries who fell into debt. All this happened only 10 years after Gaddafi came to power. The Libyan leader, who came from nothing, was seeing the only means he had to build anything disappear like molten snow as the oil money dwindled.

It should also be borne in mind that this oil counter revolution also accelerated the collapse of the USSR which at the time was bogged down in Afghanistan. With the disappearance of the Soviet bloc, Libya lost its major source of political support and found itself isolated on the international scene, and moreover featured on the Reagan administration’s list of terrorist states and was subjected to a whole series of sanctions.

GL&MC: What were Gaddafi’s mistakes?

MH: As I have said, he wasn’t a great visionary.The theory developed in connection with his Green Book is a mix of anti-imperialism, Islamism, nationalism, state capitalism and other things. Besides his lack of political vision, Gaddafi made a serious mistake in attacking Chad in the 1970s. Chad is Africa’s 5th largest country and the Colonel, no doubt feeling Libya was too small to accommodate his megalomanic ambitions, annexed the Aozou Strip. It is true that historically the Senoussis Brotherhood had exercised its influence on this region. And in 1945 the French Foreign Minister, Pierre Laval, wanted to buy off Mussolini by offering him the Aozou Strip.¹ But in the end Mussolini drew close to Hitler and the deal remained a dead letter.

Gaddafi nevertheless wanted to annex this territory and engaged in a struggle against Paris for influence over this former French colony. In the end, the US, France, Egypt, Sudan and other reactionary forces in the region supported the Chadian army which defeated the Libyan troops. Thousands of soldiers and large quantities of arms were captured. The President of Chad, Hissène Habré, sold these soldiers on to the Reagan administration; and the CIA used them as mercenaries in Kenya and Latin America.

But the Libyan revolution’s biggest mistake was to have bet too heavily on its oil. It is human resources that are a country’s greatest wealth. You cannot succeed in a revolution if you do not develop national harmony, social justice and a fair distribution of wealth.

However, the Colonel never eliminated the discriminatory practices that had long been a tradition in Libya. How can you mobilise the population if you do not prove to the Libyans that whatever their ethnic or tribal backgrounds, all are equal and can work together for the good of the nation? The majority of the Libyan population is Arab, speaks the same language and shares the same religion. Ethnic diversity is not very important. It would have been possible to abolish all discrimination in order to mobilise the population.

Gadaffi was also incapable of educating the Libyan people in revolutionary matters. He did not raise the level of political consciousness of citizens and did not build a party to support the revolution.

GL&MC: Nevertheless, in accordance with his 1975 Green Book, he did set up people’s committees, a kind of direct democracy.

MH: This attempt at direct democracy was influenced by Marxist-Leninist concepts. But these people’s committees in Libya were not based on any political analysis, or any clear ideology.They failed. Neither did Gaddafi build a political party to support his revolution. In the end, he cut himself off from the people. The Libyan revolution became a one-man project. Everything revolved around this charismatic leader divorced from reality.And while a gulf opened up between the leader and his people, force and repression step in to fill the void. Excess began to follow excess, corruption expanded and tribal differences crystallised.

Today these divisions have come to the forefront in the Libyan crisis. There is of course a part of Libyan youth that is tired of the dictatorship and has been influenced by events in Tunisia and Egypt. But these popular sentiments are being taken advantage of by the opposition in the east of the country which is after its share of the cake, the distribution of wealth having been very unequal under the Gaddafi regime. It will not belong before the real contradictions see the light of day.

Moreover we don’t know a great deal about this opposition movement.Who are they? What is their programme? If they really wanted to wage a democratic revolution, why have they resorted to he flags of King Idriss, symbols of the time when Cyrenaica was the country’s dominant province? If you are part of a country’s opposition, and as a patriot you want to overthrow your government, you must try to do this correctly. You do not cause a civil war in your own country and you do not put it at risk of balkanisation.

GL&MC: In your view, it is no longer just a question of a civil war resulting from contradictions between different Libyan clans?

MH: It’s worse, I think.There have already been inter-tribal contradictions but they have never been so widespread. Here the US is fanning the flames of these tensions in order to be able to intervene militarily in Libya. From the very first days of the insurrection, the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was suggesting arming the opposition. From early on the opposition organised by the National Council refused all foreign interference on the part of foreign powers because they knew that any such interference would discredit their movement.But today some of the opposition are calling for armed intervention.

Since this conflict broke out, President Obama has called for all possible options to be considered and the US Senate is calling on the international community to impose a no-fly zone over Libyan territory, which would be a real act of war. Moreover the nuclear aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, which was stationed in the Gulf of Aden to counter piracy, has travelled up to the Libyan coast. Two amphibian ships, USS Kearsage and USS Ponce, with several thousands of marines and fleets of combat helicopters aboard, have also been stationed in the Mediterranean.

Last week, Louis Michel, former EU Development and Humanitarian Aid commissioner, forcefully raised the question in a TV studio as to which government would have courage to make the case to its parliament for the necessity of military intervention in Libya. But Louis Michel never demanded any such intervention in Egypt or Bahrain.Why was that?

GL&MC: Is the repression not more violent in Libya?

MH: The repression was very violent in Egypt but NATO never sent warships to the Egyptian coast to threaten Mubarak. There was merely an appeal to find a democratic solution.

In the case of Libya, it is necessary to be very careful with the information that reaches us. One day there is talk of 2,000 deaths, and the next day the count is revised to 300. It was also being said from the very start of the crisis that Gaddafi was bombing his own people, but the Russian army, which is observing the situation by satellite, has officially given lie to that information. If NATO is preparing to intervene militarily in Libya, we can be sure that the dominant information media are going to spread their usual war propaganda.

In fact the same thing happened in Romania with Ceausescu. On Christmas Eve, 1989, the Belgian prime minister, Wilfred Martiens, made a speech on television.He claimed that Ceaucescu’s security forces had just killed 12,000 people.It was untrue.The images of the famous Timosoara massacre also did the rounds all over the world.They were aimed at proving the mindless violence of the Romanian president.But it was proved later on that it was all staged. Bodies had been pulled out of morgues and placed in trenches in order to impress journalists. It was also said that the communists had poisoned the water, that Syrian and Palestinian mercenaries were present in Romania, or even that Ceaucescu had trained orphans as killing machines.It was all pure propaganda aimed at destabilising the regime.

In the end Ceaucescu and his wife were killed after a kangaroo court trial lasting 55 minutes. Of course, the Romanian president, like Gaddafi, was no choir boy. But what has happened since? Romania has become a European semi-colony. Its cheap labour power is exploited. Numerous services have been privatised for the benefit of western companies, and they are financially out of reach for a large part of the population. And now every year there is no shortage of Romanians who go to weep on Ceaucescu’s tomb. The dictatorship was a terrible thing, but after the country was destroyed economically, it’s even worse.

GL&MC: Why did the US want to overthrow Gaddafi? For the last ten years or so, the Colonel has been quite amenable to the West and privatised a large party of the Libyan economy, benefitting western companies in the process.

MH: One must analyse all these events in the light of the new balance of forces in the world. The imperialist powers are in decline, while other forces are on the rise. Recently China offered to buy the Portuguese debt! In Greece, the population is more and more hostile to this European Union that it perceives as a cover for German imperialism. Similar feelings are growing in the countries of the East. Furthermore, the US attacked Iraq in order to get control of its oil, but in the end only one US company is benefiting; the rest of the oil is being exploited by Malaysian and Chinese companies.In short, imperialism is in crisis.

In addition, the Tunisian revolution really took the West by surprise. The fall of Mubarak even more so. Washington is attempting to regain its influence over these popular movements but its control is slipping away. In Tunisia, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a straightforward product of the Ben Ali dictatorship, was meant to control the transition, creating the illusion of change. But the people’s determination forced him to resign. In Egypt, the US was relying on the army to keep an acceptable system in place. But I have received information confirming that in very many military barracks around the country, young officers are organising themselves in revolutionary committees in support of the Egyptian people. They have even arrested certain officers associated with the Mubarak regime.

The region could well escape US control. Intervention in Libya would allow Washington to smash this revolutionary movement and stop it spreading to the rest of the Arab world and to Africa. Since last week, the young have been rising in Burkina Faso but the media are quiet about this. As they are about the demonstrations taking place in Iraq.

Another danger for the US is the possible emergence of anti-imperialist governments in Tunisia and Egypt. Should this happen, Gaddafi would no longer be isolated and could renege on the agreements concluded with the West. Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia could unite to form an anti-imperialist bloc. With all the resources they have at their disposal, especially Gaddafi’s large foreign reserves, the three of them could become a major regional power – probably more important than Turkey.

GL&MC: Yet Gaddafi supported Ben Ali when the Tunisian people rebelled.

MH: That goes to show to what extent he is weak, isolated and out of touch with reality. But the changing balance of forces in the region could change matters. Gaddafi could shift his rifle to the other shoulder – it wouldn’t be for the first time.

GL&MC: How could the situation in Libya pan out?

MH: The western powers and the so-called opposition movement have rejected Chavez’s offer of mediation. This means that they are not interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict. But the effects of a NATO intervention would be disastrous.We have seen what that did to Kosovo or Afghanistan.

Moreover, military aggression could encourage Islamic groups to enter Libya who might be able to seize major arms caches there. Al Qaeda could infiltrate and turn Libya into a second Iraq. Besides, there are already armed groups in Niger that nobody has been able to control. Their influence could extend to Libya, Chad, Mali and Algeria.By preparing for military intervention, imperialism is in the process of opening the gates of Hell.

To conclude, the Libyan people deserve better than this opposition movement that is plunging the country into chaos. They need a real democratic movement to replace the Gaddafi regime and bring about social justice. In any case, the Libyans do not deserve military aggression. The retreating imperialist forces seem nevertheless to be preparing a counter-revolutionary offensive in the Arab World. Attacking Libya is their emergency solution. But they will be shooting themselves in the feet.

1. This area is rich in uranium.

An unflappable and defiant politician who has accumulated a collection of criminal charges for which he hasn’t been held accountable so far, Berlusconi is approaching the first stages of punishment for several crimes he committed during his three terms of premiership in Italy.

According to Forbes magazine, he is the 74th richest man in the world with a net worth of $9 billion. Being the third richest man in Italy, Berlusconi owns assets in the fields of television, newspapers, publishing, cinema, finance, banking, insurance and sports. His main business is Mediaset which comprises three national television channels that collectively cover a half of the national television sector. Italy’s largest publishing house, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, also belongs to him. Before entering the world of politics, he managed several successful business projects including Milano 2, a huge residential project of about 10,500 apartments. In 1978 he established his first media group, Fininvest, and earned up to €58.3 million through this enterprise.

But this prosperous and well-off man, who is considered to be the longest-serving head of the G8 group, has irrefutable criminal offenses which have blackened his performance sheet incorrigibly.

There are evidences which indicate that Berlusconi has had close relations with the Sicilian Mafia, known as Cosa Nostra, which is a criminal syndicate that emerged in mid 19th century in Sicily. According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, the allegations of Berlusconi’s connection with mafia intensified when he entered politics in the early 1990s and became Prime Minister for the first time in 1994. In an in-depth report which elaborately discussed Berlusconi’s underground relations with mafia, the Daily Telegraph wrote:

[In 1974] Mr. Berlusconi lays the foundations for what will become a multi-billion pound fortune by building a housing development called Milano II on the outskirts of Milan. [There were] claims that Sicily’s “Cosa Nostra” invested heavily in the project. The allegation was most recently repeated in a court in Sicily in February this year when Massimo Ciancimino, the son of a Mafia don, said the mob gave Mr Berlusconi the huge amount of capital he needed to build the complex, by laundering dirty money through a series of front companies.

Daily Telegraph’s report added that Berlusconi struck a financial deal with Cosa Nostra one year before entering politics and becoming Prime Minister.

The allegations were again aired in a maximum security court in Turin in Dec 2009, by Gaspare Spatuzza, a mafia pentito, or turncoat. He also made the incendiary claim that Mr. Berlusconi had provided support for a spate of deadly bombings by the mafia in 1993, in return for political support.

According to Daily Telegraph, in 2004, a founding member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party named Marcello Dell’Utri was convicted of complicity with mafia and condemned to nine years in prison. Although his imprisonment was later reduced to seven years, the court of appeal verified the assertions that Mr. Dell’Utri arranged for mafia protection for several companies run by Silvio Berlusconi.

However, cooperation with mafia and terrorist groups is a simple instance of Berlusconi’s scandals. His extensive record of false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges are almost known to everyone in Italy.

He was summoned to court hearings several times after the Constitutional Court of Italy ruled in October 2009 that a law, which Berlusconi had pushed through parliament after coming to power giving himself immunity from prosecution, was invalid and unacceptable.

According to a report published by The Sunday Times on October 27, 2009, Berlusconi was accused of tax fraud and false accounting over the acquisition of TV rights by Mediaset, the television company which he owns, and should have attended a trial over the allegations which were directed at him; however, he evaded the court hearings several times, claiming that he was busy with “constitutional duties”. As said by The Sunday Times, Berlusconi had offered $600,000 in bribes to an English tax lawyer named David Mills to give false testimony on his behalf in corruption trials in the 1990s. Following the revelation of this unprecedented debacle, David Mills was sentenced to four years and six months in prison while Berlusconi survived imprisonment thanks to the impunity law.

Berlusconi has declared himself “the most persecuted man in the world”. Who knows, maybe the more correct explanation could have been “the most prosecuted man in the world!”

Lo and behold, Mr. Berlusconi, who is turning into a man of scandals, was scolded last week as a number of Milan prosecutors submitted to the Italian parliament a dossier containing statements, reports and wiretap transcripts which depicted extravagantly sordid scenes of Berlusconi’s immoral affairs with Italian girls. The Economist reported on January 20th that the documents gathered by the Italian lawyers portrayed “orgiastic parties staged at the home of Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, involving more than 20 half-naked women, and a room for what are known to participants as ‘Bunga Bunga’ sessions, equipped for pole-dancing, with wardrobes full of skimpy nurses’ and policewomen’s uniforms.”

As the Italian parliament has recently abolished the law of immunity for the Prime Minister, it can be expected that Silvio Berlusconi may stand trial and be held responsible over his countless crimes and wrongdoings.

Berlusconi, who is known for his reckless and unfounded remarks about the internal affairs of other countries, is now at the verge of losing his political, social and international credibility and his recent sex scandals show that he lacks the proper prestige and decency to assume the office of a Prime Minister.

Ironically this sudden western awakening to the plight of Christian Arabs comes at a time when all Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, are crushed by U.S. and Israeli military occupation or foreign political hegemony, but worse still, when they are in the grip of a social upheaval in the very states that are by will or by coercion loyal to this alliance, where unbalanced development and an unemployment rate more than double the world average are pushing masses onto the streets to challenge the legitimacy of their own pro–west governments. Exactly at this time, when Arab masses need their “social” unity for national liberation, sovereignty, liberty and freedom, a European campaign is being waged to divide them along religious and sectarian lines.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy — who, on December 9, 2009, wrote in Le Monde defending a Switzerland vote banning Muslim mosques from building minarets and made a national fuss on banning less than two thousand French citizens from wearing Niqab — said on January 6 that he “cannot accept” what he described as “religious cleansing” of Arab Christians. His Foreign Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, wrote to the EU’s foreign affairs baroness, Catherine Ashton, asking for the union to draw up a plan of action in response. France took the initiative to call a meeting of the UN Security Council last November 9 to discuss international protection of Iraqi Christians. On December 22, Italy’s foreign Minister Franco Frattini said his country was presenting a resolution to the UN to condemn their “persecution.” Together with his French, Polish and Hungarian counterparts, Frattini wrote a joint letter to Ashton asking her to table the issue at the foreign ministers meeting on January 31 and to consider taking “concrete measures” to protect them. On December 17, the German Bundestag passed a resolution defending the freedom of religion around the world, but viewed with “great concern” the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council on March 25 last year against the “defamation of religions” because it “undermines the existing human rights understanding.”

The European political reaction sounds excessively selective in its concern over an allegedly missing right of the freedom of religion of the Christian minority in a region where civil and human rights for the Muslim majority are missing thanks in the first place for the support the regional governing regimes, which confiscate these same rights, receive from the U.S.–European alliance, and the European selectivity allegedly in defense of the “threatened” existence of the Christian Arab minorities speaks louder when it is compared with the deafening European silence over the threatened existence of the Arab and Islamic cultural identities of the majority, let alone the European incitement against both identities, a double standard that explicitly invokes suspicious questions about the credibility and sincerity of the European “rights” concerns and about the real political goals behind these pronounced concerns. For example, more than 300 mosques were attacked, some of them of a UNESCO World Heritage Center standards, hundreds of Muslim clerics were murdered, millions of Muslims were forced either to migrate internally or immigrate externally in the U.S.–occupied Iraq, and the plight of Iraqi Christians has been, and still is, merely a side show of the overall destruction of the whole state there, but the European rights consciousness did not, and still does not, find it worth a similar call for defense and protection.

Unfortunately, this traditional European divide–and–rule policy in the Arab world, as it was the case for centuries, is today finding ample papal blessing from the Vatican to justify itself, not in the eyes of Arabs, but in the eyes of its own audiences. President Sarkozy’s whistle blower cry this January 6 that Christians in the Arab–Islamic world are victims of a planned ‘religious cleansing,” came on the backdrop of the Vatican’s Pope Benedict XVI repeated call on the world leaders to rise up for the protection and “defense of the Christians in the Middle East.” It is a cry fraught with the connotations of the historical precedent of the Vatican–blessed Fourth Crusade, which consisted mainly of a crusading army originating from areas within France and which was diverted from invading Egypt by sea to the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the political and spiritual rival, the Orthodox Church, to which the overwhelming majority of Christians in the Arab–Muslim world belong, instead of “liberating” Jerusalem from Muslims.

Pope Benedict XVI’s wilful or careless indifference towards exploiting his church concerns by “secular” politicians like Sarkozy to serve their down to earth goals, or towards exacerbating Islamophobia, which, in turn, fuels Christianphobia, is reminiscent of how the older Sarkozy–type “Christ–abiding” and non–secular politicians concealed from the bulk of the crusading army a letter from Pope Innocent III, who made the new Fourth Crusade the goal of his pontificate, warning against the diversion of the crusade, forbidding any atrocities against “Christian neighbors” and threatening excommunication. In as much as the indifference of the crusader pope to carry out his threat had led to the demise of the Byzantine Empire, the fall of Constantinople in the hands of the Muslims less than three hundred years later and turning the crusades into a war against the rival church more than against the Muslims, the indifference of the present day Pope Benedict XVI is threatening to counterproductively achieve the demise of Christian existence in the “East,” which he has made, it seems, the goal of his pontificate.

Ever since the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, Arab Christians in the Muslim world have been wary of the messages and emissaries of Rome as a cultural spearhead of foreign invasion and hegemony. Even a Catholic loyal to the Vatican like the incumbent Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, had this to tell the Israeli Haaretz exclusively four days before Benedict XVI’s “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land in September 2009: “The thing that worries me most is the speech that the pope will deliver here. One word for the Muslims and I’m in trouble; one word for the Jews and I’m in trouble. At the end of the visit the pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences.” Patriarch Twal’s fears were vindicated last week when Egypt recalled its Vatican envoy for consultations over the Pope’s remarks on Egyptian Copts: The “new statements from the Vatican” are “unacceptable interference” in Egypt’s “internal affairs,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. Syrian analyst, Sami Moubayed, recently wrote that similar papal remarks were to the “fundamentalists .. a blessing in disguise.”

Pope Benedict XVI, since he occupied the papacy seat, seems totally insensitive to the worries of his representative in Jerusalem.  He  doesn’t seem short of words and seems careful not to miss an opportunity to utter provocative anti-Muslim pronouncements that place both his church clergy and followers on the defensive among both their Christian as well as Muslim compatriots. However, he places them in a more critical position by his helplessness to find any words or an opportunity in his latest torrential rhetoric about the protection of Christians and their plight in Holy Land itself, where they have been victims of actual ethnic and religious cleansing for more than sixty years now since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, when the state of Israel was declared independent on the ruins of their homes.

From a regional perspective, both Christian and Muslim, the very existence of Christians is threatened, besieged and gradually cleansed by the Israeli military occupation in the Palestinian cradle of Christianity – - where Christ was born, spread the word of God, love and peace and crucified. The papal silence on this simple fact of life is much louder in the region than the Pope’s pronounced appeals for the defense and protection of Christians on the peripheries of the birthplace of Christianity, in Iraq, Egypt or Lebanon, for example, because when the center of Christian gravity crumbles in Jerusalem, the periphery supports would not hold for long and even the important St, Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican would be a pale substitute, and the center of Christian gravity in Jerusalem is almost totally Judaized, and is off limits to the Christians both in the Palestinian cradle of Christianity as well as to their brethren on the Arab and Muslim periphery, unless they are granted an Israeli military permit to visit, which is rare and very tightly selective.

Viewed from Christian regional perspective, the papal appeals for their protection could hardly be described other than contradictory, if not hypocrite, particularly in view of a Vatican’s document in July 2007, approved by Benedict XVI, which declared Catholicism as “the only true church of Christ” and “other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches.”

So, “what” Christians is Pope Benedict appealing to defend and protect? A year earlier, Coptic Pope Shenouda III denied there was any dialogue or contacts with the Vatican although thirty three years before both sides agreed to form joint committees for bilateral dialogue. With the exception of Armenian church as a late newcomer, but nonetheless an independent church, the Coptic, Orthodox, Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac, Melkite and other Eastern communions have existed and coexisted among, and with, Arabs since the earliest days of Christianity, because they are Arabs either by ethnicity or by culture and they are the overwhelming majority of Christians in the Middle East and an integral part of the Arab society.

Islamophobia is warning that Muslims are “returning” to Islam, but is it not top on the agenda of Pope Benedict XVI to return Europe to Christianity? “We must reject both secularism and fundamentalism,” the Pope said in his annual address on Christmas Day, but is it not secularism that the Pope, Europe and the U.S. are preaching now to de-Arabise and de-Islamise Arabs? This double standard ironical western contradiction deprives their calls for the protection of Arab Christians of whatever credibility it might still have in the Arab eyes. Their “protection” will prove counterproductive sooner or later. Christianphobia that fuels anti– Christian blind terror is an already active byproduct.

The ‘Church of Islam’

Commenting on the Synod of Middle East Christian leaders that convened in the Vatican last October, the spiritual leader of the Melkite “Catholics,” Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, Gregorios III, had this to say, quoted by the Lebanese Daily Star last December: “The Synod for the Middle East is a Synod for Arab countries, for Arabs, a Synod for Arab Christians in symbiosis with their Arab society. It is a Synod for the ‘Church of the Arabs’ and ‘Church of Islam’.” The adviser to the Muslim Sunni Mufti of Lebanon, Dr. Mohammad Al–Sammak, who was invited to the Synod, recognized the Arab identity of Christians in the Middle East: “I cannot live my being Arabic without the Middle Eastern Christian Arab .. They are an integral part of the .. formation of Islamic civilization,” he told the Synod.

Politically and religiously these Christians have been on the other side of the Vatican – blessed old or modern western conquests, and politically and religiously they have been all along protected by Arabs and Muslims; otherwise, they would not have survived. Their existence is now under threat because the existence of their Arab–Islamic incubator is on the line, besieged either by direct military occupation in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan or by economic sanctions and political hegemony; their existence was not threatened when the Arab–Islamic state was an empire and a world power, nor was it threatened during the crusades despite the atrocities committed by their western co-religious crusaders, which would have invited a reprisal had it not been for the teachings of Islam, itself.

The U.S.–led world war on terror targeting mainly Arabs and Muslims is perplexing western pro–law, peace and human rights audiences by smoke–screening their governments’ military adventures and modern crusades, which is the real action that created terrorism as the only possible reaction expected by the overpowered nations. However, the invading creator and the created terrorists in their bloody divide are smoke–screening also any possible resurface of the forgotten Islamic covenants that protected the indigenous two thousand–year old Arab Christians since the advent of Islam in the seventh century. In the year 628 AD, a Christian delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery, in Egypt’s Sinai, met Prophet Mohammad and requested his protection. The Prophet granted them a protection charter.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan, Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, wrote this about the charter:

The document is not a modern human rights treaty but even though it was penned in 628 A.D., it clearly protects the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of the person. A remarkable aspect of the charter is that it imposes no conditions on Christians for enjoying its privileges. It is enough that they are Christians. They are not required to alter their beliefs, they do not have to make any payments and they do not have any obligations. This is a charter of rights without any duties! The first and the final sentence of the charter are critical. They make the promise eternal and universal. By ordering Muslims to obey it until the Day of Judgment the charter again undermines any future attempts to revoke the privileges. These rights are inalienable.

In the year 631, Prophet Muhammad received a delegation of sixty Christians from Najran in the Prophet’s mosque in Medinah, allowed them to pray in the mosque, and concluded the “covenant to the Christians of Najran” treaty which granted them religious and administrative autonomy as citizens of the Islamic State. In 637, Islamic Caliph Omar ibn al – Khattab granted the similar “Covenant of Omar” to the Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius.

However, neither Islamophobians nor their terrorist Islamists have any interest but to dump these Islamic ideological covenants for the protection of Arab Christians. No Arab Christian fears for his life from his Muslim neighbor or his government, but he or she definitely fears these two protagonists, who are both foreign to his history and culture. No foreign protection of Arab Christians could match the protection and solidarity they received from their Muslim compatriots both in Iraq and Egypt following the bombings of a church in Baghdad on October 31 and a church in Alexandria on New Year Eve. In the latter case there were reports of Muslim human shields to protect the Christmas religious celebrations of Egyptian Christians, let alone the solidarity statements by both outlawed Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya and the Muslim Brotherhood and the thousands of police deployed for the same purpose, in a remarkable show of national unity and historic coexistence.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), scheduled to meet in the UAE on January 19, will discuss the situation of Christians in member states, according to Lebanon parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri. On this background, there are also reports that Egypt will ask the Arab League economic summit this month to discuss foreign, and, in particular, western interference in Arab Affairs. European offers of protection are already backlashing.

The only real threat to the existence of Arab Christians showed for the first time when the European colonialism first, then the U.S. imperialism, self–appointed western powers as their protectors. It is noteworthy that in both the Iraqi and Egyptian cases the native Christian Arabs are now paying the heavy price of the U.S. anti–Pan–Arabism of both the late Jamal Abdul Nasser and Saddam Hussein. Their plight started with the forcing of pro–U.S. regimes in both countries.

To describe the latest attacks against Christians as a plan of “religious cleansing,” as President Sarkozy has done, suggests a persecution that doesn’t exist; this is “not the case in the Middle East at the moment,” it is “not supported by the wider community,” said Fiona McCallum of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who is a specialist on the Christian communities in the Middle East, adding: “It’s important to also note that immigration takes place from the region from both Christians and Muslims as well.”

During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General, Alfredo Bonet “noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports.”

It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that “The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number,” reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.

The unprecedented high in food prices in 2008 caused an additional 250 million people to go hungry, pushing the global number to over a billion.  2008 is also the first year “since such statistics have been kept, that the proportion of the world’s population without enough to eat ratcheted upward,” said Kaufman.

All to boost acceptance of GM foods, and done via a trading scheme on which Wall Street speculators profited enormously.

Mass food riots in several nations ensued, as did an investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, resulting in a finding that, yes, unrestricted speculation in food commodities caused soaring prices.

In a comment at the end of the cable, the diplomat also revealed a level of pessimism about Spain’s willingness to help force GM foods on Europe:

This was a very good substantive discussion. However, it is clear that while Spain will continue sometimes to vote in favor of biotechnology liberalization proposals, the Spaniards will tread warily on this issue given their own domestic sensitivities and other equities Spain has in the EU.

That pessimism was largely unfounded, as “Spain planted 80 percent of all the Bt maize in the EU in 2009 and maintained its record adoption rate of 22 percent from the previous year,” noted a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

The leaked cables, amounting to over 1,300 right now, reveal US obsession with expanding the biotech market:

• One leaked cable confirms US concern with promoting GM foods in Africa, which Richard Brenneman described as “a significant item on the State Department’s agenda.”

• In another leaked cable describing the potential to expand US interests in “isolationist” Austria, that nation’s ban on GM foods is highlighted.

• According to a leaked cable from 2007, of concern was French President Sarkozy’s desire to implement a ban on GM foods in line with populist sentiment. According to GM Free Regions, France maintains its opposition to GM foods today.

• In this leaked cable, the Pope openly blamed global hunger on commodity speculation and corrupt public officials, so far refusing to support the use of GM foods. (Also see my December 12 article, “Leaked cables confirm Pope’s distance from GMO debate and limited stance on bioethics.”)

More may be revealed in the remaining cables.

Profiteering Leaves World open to Future Price Manipulation

Food commodity speculation was enabled in 2000 by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.  Deregulation handyman Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) introduced the bill, coauthored by financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), the chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

Mother Jones describes the legislative climate when the bill passed:

As part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown….

Gramm’s most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

Not only did that Act enable the subprime meltdown that crashed the economy and put tens of millions into foreclosure, it also enabled Wall Street investors to artificially spike the price of food.

“Bankers had taken control of the world’s food, money chased money, and a billion people went hungry,” Kaufman clarified.

After a year long investigation, he confirmed that price hikes in food from 2005 through the peak in June 2008 had nothing to do with the supply chain, but instead occurred as a result of a Wall Street investment scheme known as Commodity Investment Funds. The first to develop the idea was Goldman Sachs, which took 18 different food sources, including cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs and wheat, and created an investment package. Kaufman explains:

They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.

(Kaufman summarizes his report in this June 2010 interview by Thom Hartmann, and in this July Democracy Now interview.)

Kaufman points out that also in 2008, ConAgra Foods was able to sell its trading arm to a hedge fund for $2.8 billion.  The world’s largest grain trader and GMO giant, Cargill, recorded an 86% jump in annual profits in the first quarter of 2008, attributed to commodity trading and an expanding biofuels market. The Star Tribune calculated that Cargill earned $471,611 an hour that quarter.

The investment bubble burst in June 2008 and “aggregate commodity prices fell about 60% by mid-November 2008,” notes Steve Suppan of the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy. Though the US House of Representatives introduced a regulatory bill, “legislative loopholes will exempt at least 40-45%” of such trades.  Supporting the loopholes is Cargill, among other multinational corporations. Suppan concludes:

The outlook for a sustainable and transparent financial system to underwrite trade dependent food security is not good… [T]he budget for the just launched congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, scheduled to report December 15, [2010] is just $8 million.  The Wall Street lobbying budget for defeating financial reform legislation is thus far $344 million…

The final bill was signed into law in July 2010 (summarized by the New York Times), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission continues to issue new rules purportedly aimed at regulating financial markets. “But big banks influence the rules governing derivatives through a variety of industry groups,” notes another New York Times piece.

Did the artificial price hike open EU doors to GM foods?

No, in fact, ISAAA noted that: “Six European countries planted 94,750 hectares of biotech crops in 2009, down from seven countries and 107,719 hectares in 2008, as Germany discontinued its planting.”

A closer look at EU member state actions on GM foods after June 2008 details some of the GM-free battle in Europe:

• In December 2008, after a ten-year hiatus, Italy agreed to open field tests of GM crops.

• The Czech Republic became the second largest grower of Bt corn in the EU in 2008, nearly doubling the acreage planted in 2007. The USDA characterized it as being an investment target not only in agriculture but also in vaccine development.

• At the EU level, “In an apparent U-turn in his attitude as one of EU executive’s most GM-wary commissioners, environment chief Stavros Dimas” wrote draft approvals for two more varieties of GM corn, reported Reuters in December 2008.

• However, by September 2008, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland had all become GM-free, and urged the UK to do likewise.

• Though pressured by the European Commission, in January 2009 Hungary refused to lift its ban on GM foods. Its sovereign right to reject GMOs, along with Austria’s, was later upheld by an EU vote with 20 member states supporting such bans.

• In March 2009, Luxembourg became the fifth EU nation to ban GM foods, following France, Hungary, Greece and Austria.

• In October 2009, Turkey banned the import of biotech products.

For updates and a more thorough history of EU actions on GM foods, see GMO-Free Europe. European states handle the issue differently than in the US, allowing regions within a nation to maintain GM-free zones. Each step a nation takes toward GM approval invariably draws regional resistance.

Biotech Crops Expand Globally in 2009

Though the strategy to hike food prices to spur European acceptance of GM foods failed, it worked elsewhere.  Globally, biotech crops expanded by 7% in 2009 over 2008 figures, according to this chart by ISAAA:

In fact, ISAAA asserted GM expansion was due to the 2008 price hikes, as noted by chairman and founder Clive James: “With last year’s food crisis, price spikes, and hunger and malnutrition afflicting more than 1 billion people for the first time ever, there has been a global shift from efforts for just food security to food self-sufficiency.”

Poorer nations hardest hit by hunger — in Africa and South America — are more vulnerable to price hikes.  But even after the geologically unusual earthquake in January, Haitian farmers rejected Monsanto’s “gift” of GM seeds.  However, the big push remains in Africa and China.

A Wary Future

Although it is now widely accepted that Wall Street speculation caused the food bubble, starving hundreds of millions, regulators have so far failed to curb the practices that allow international banksters to manipulate food prices.

Meanwhile, the biotech industry continues to repeat its mantra that GM food can cure world hunger.  This claim is not backed by the science and it seems to hold less sway in the GM food debate, especially with the Pope recognizing what many others assert: there is no shortage of food; hunger expanded because of price hikes.

The network included France, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Luxembourg, as well as politically neutral European countries – Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.

Named “Gladio” (Latin for double-edged sword), NATO’s armies remained secret until August 1990, when then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed Italy’s  participation in testimony before a Senate subcommittee investigating terrorism, General Vito Miceli, former Italian military secret service director, saying in protest:

I have gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization. And now Andreotti … tells … parliament!

According to a 1959 Italian military secret service document, “these armies had a two-fold strategic purpose: firstly, to operate as a so-called ‘stay-behind’ group in the case of a Soviet invasion and to carry out a guerrilla war in occupied territories; secondly, to carry out domestic operations in case of ‘emergency situations.”

In Italy, against both communist and socialist parties, it was claimed they wanted to weaken NATO “from within,” Italian judge, Felice Casson, learning that right-wing terrorists carried out bombings against civilians, blamed them on the left, neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explaining the scheme as follows:

The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.

In 2000, the Italian Senate was more explicit, saying:  ”Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as had been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence,” meaning CIA mainly.

Former director, William Colby, admitted in his memoirs that covert western armies were a major CIA initiative, begun post-WW II, and restricted “to the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington (and) NATO” to keep the initiative secret.

Yet once its existence was confirmed, the EU parliament drafted a sharply critical resolution saying: “These organisations (sic) operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control….call(ing) for a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organisations.”

Only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland did them, the GHW Bush administration not commenting when it was preparing for war against Iraq, fearing it might harm its alliance.

Gladio, however, was real, designed like Winston Churchill’s British Special Operations Executive (SOE) – to help anti-Nazi resistance forces carry out insurgencies in occupied territories. After NATO’s 1949 creation, the so-called Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU) was secretly integrated into its operations, by 1951 called the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC).

Then in 1957, a second secret army called Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) was established by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), giving America overall command and control. It relied heavily on dedicated anti-communists, largely from the political right, including former Nazis and like-minded terrorists, operatives to weaken the political left and neutralize and defeat Soviet Russia, ostensibly in case of invasion, the chance for which was practically nil.

Italy’s Secret Army

In researching right-wing terrorism, Judge Felice Casson discovered them, their link to the political right, and examples of their lawlessness. One instance was in 1972 when a car bomb killed three Carabinieri, Italy’s parliamentary police, wrongly blamed on the Red Brigades like for other attacks carried out by extremist anti-communist groups, blamed on the left.

Right wing terrorist, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was later charged with the Carabinieri killings, explaining at his 1984 trial that Italy’s security apparatus supported his crimes, saying: “There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity; that is, to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army.”

In fact, he revealed Gladio and its link to terrorism without naming it, calling it “a secret organization, a super-organization with a network of communications, arms, and explosives, and men trained to use them.”

A 2000 parliamentary investigation concluded that operatives “linked to the structures of United States intelligence” were involved in bombings, massacres, and other terrorist attacks as part of a campaign against the political left.

In 2001, General Giandelio Maletti, former Italian counterintelligence head, confirmed CIA’s involvement to “do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left.”

Turkey’s Secret Armies

During the Cold War, Turkey guarded a third of NATO’s borders with Warsaw Pact countries. Its “Counter-Guerrilla” secret army carried out some of the most sensitive missions, under the command of Turkish special forces to “organize resistance in case of a communist occupation.”

According to then Turkish army commander, General Semih Sancar, America financed it, committing terror attacks against the political left, one of many occurring in 1977 in Taskim Square, Istanbul. During a mass May 1 (May Day) trade union rally, snipers on surrounding buildings killed 38 attendees, injuring hundreds more during a 20 minute rampage. Several thousand police on hand did nothing to intervene.

“Counter-Guerrilla” also engaged in torture, survivors later explaining their ordeal. Some became outspoken critics, but never got authorities to investigate their ordeal or expose other crimes.

Spain’s Secret Armies

From his Spanish Civil War victory until his 1975 death, Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship ruled Spain, his government the embodiment of Gladio, according to early 1980s prime minister Calvo Sotelo.

In his book titled, “Gladio,” its 1971 – 74 Italian commander, Gerardo Serravalle, explained that Franco tried to establish contacts with NATO’s secret army long before Spain became an official NATO member in 1982. However, its secret service wasn’t interested in a stay-behind function, but wanted a tool for internal control to neutralizes leftist elements.

Portugal’s Secret Armies

Gladio was active in Portugal, the nation’s press telling a national audience in 1990 about “a secret network, erected at the bosom of NATO….financed by the CIA” in the 1960s and 1970s. It was called ‘Aginter Press,’ ” involved in assassinations and other terrorist acts, internally and in Portugal’s African colonies.

A later Italian Senate inquiry learned that Yves Guerin-Serac, a French secret warfare specialist, directed Aginter Press. In November 1990, Portuguese defense minister, Fernando Nogueira, insisted he knew nothing about it, saying no “information whatsoever (existed) concerning (any form of) Gladio structure in Portugal.”

Italians had to confirm it, including Judge Guido Salvini, saying it conducted secret military operations during the Cold War to defend “the Western world against a probable and imminent invasion of Europe by the troops of the Soviet Union and the other communist countries.”

In fact, like other Gladio operations, it waged global war against the political left, killing thousands to defend privilege against beneficial social change, what remains ongoing today, America its leading exponent.

Greece’s Secret Armies

In late 1944, Winston Churchill ordered a secret Greek army created to prevent leftists from gaining power, called by various names, including the Greek Mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or Lochos Oreinon Katadromon (LOK). Field Marshall Alexander Papagos excluded “almost all men with views ranging from moderately conservative to left wing,” assuring its members would be exclusively hard right anti-communists.

In 1952, Greece joined NATO and was fully integrated into its stay-behind network, the CIA and LOK reconfirming their mutual cooperation in a secret March 25, 1955 document, British journalist, Peter Murtagh, later learning that:

The Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerrilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled (in) Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee.” It was a stay-behind force against a possible “Soviet invasion of Europe. It would co-ordinate guerrilla activities between Soviet occupied countries and liaise with governments in exile.

According to former CIA agent Philip Agee, it also served as “a nucleus for rallying a citizen army against the threat of a leftist coup,” each of several groups “capable of mobilizing and carrying on guerrilla warfare with minimal or no outside direction.”

Agee also explained that “Paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in the sixties throughout Europe,” stressing that “perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion.”

Evidence points to LOK’s involvement in the Greek April 20, 1967 coup, one month before national elections likely to have overwhelmingly elected the left-leaning George and Andreas Papandreou’s Center Union. Under NATO’s Prometheus plan, LOK took over the Defense Ministry. Tanks rolled through Athens, and rightist forces took control of communications centers, parliament, and the royal palace, arresting over 10,000. Many were later tortured and killed.

In 1990, the socialist opposition wanted a parliamentary investigation, denied by public order minister, Yannis Vassiliadis, saying there was no need to examine such “fantasies,” meaning what happened was justified.

France’s Secret Armies

Fearing a communist takeover, it was established post-WW II.  Socialist interior minister, Edouard Depreux, explained in June 1947 that:

Toward the end of 1946, we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network (a secret army), made up of resistance fighters of the extreme right, Vichy collaborators and monarchists. They had a secret attack plan called ‘Plan Bleu,’ which should have come into action either towards the end of July or on August 6, (1947).

Though public outrage closed it down, the military secret service (Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionnage – SDECE) under Henri Alexis Ribiere set up another, again fearing a Soviet invasion, more likely to prevent leftists from gaining power.

In the early 1960s, it saw the de Gaulle government as a threat like the communists, inciting some in the stay-behind network to initiate “terrorist actions” against his Algerian peace plan, later confirmed in 1990 by then French military secret service, Admiral Pierre Lacoste.  Even so, he felt the stay-behind network was justified, no matter its hard right militancy.

During his presidency (from 1981 – 1995), President Francois Mitterrand distanced himself from the initiative, saying in 1990:

When I arrived, I didn’t have much left to dissolve. There only remained a few remnants, of which I learned the existence with some surprise because everyone had forgotten about them.

Italian Prime Minister Giulo Andreotti, however, wasn’t pleased by how Mitterrand dismissed France’s involvement, saying that far from being shut down, France’s secret army participated in a secret October 24, 1990 ACC meeting in Brussels. Mitterrand refused to comment.

Germany’s Secret Armies

In 1990, when learning about Germany’s secret army, socialist parliamentarian, Hermann Scheer, called for an investigation at the highest levels saying:

…. the existence of an armed military secret organization outside all governmental or parliamentary control is incompatible with the constitutional legality, and therefore must be prosecuted (under) criminal law.

Later he stepped back after learning that socialists knew and suppressed it. At the same time, press reports claimed right-wing extremists, including former Nazis, were part of a secret army called Organisation Gehlen (ORG, later changed to BND), named for WW II General, Reinhard Gehlen, head of Eastern Front intelligence. He was later recruited by America to establish an anti-Soviet spy ring, and by West Germany to head its intelligence.

According to a former NATO intelligence official, “Gehlen was the spiritual father of Stay Behind in Germany….his role known to the West German leader. Konrad Adenauer, from the outset.”

On September 9, 1952, former SS officer, Hans Otto, told Frankfort police that he “belong(ed) to a political resistance group, the task of which was to carry out sabotage activities and blow up bridges in case of a Soviet invasion,” adding that while “neo-fascist tendencies were not required, most members” had them. In addition, financing was “provided by an American citizen (named) Sterling Garwood.”

Otto said the initiative was code-named Technischer Dienst des Bundes Deutscher Jugend (TD BDJ), commanded by Erhard Peters, and financed by the CIA. It had a blacklist of leftists to be assassinated in case of an emergency, perhaps manufactured ones to do it anyway.

Though officials like August Zinn, Hessen state Prime Minister, were outraged and wanted members investigated, the highest Karlsruhe court, Bundesgerichshof (BGH), ordered all TD BDJ members released, Zinn believing “The only legal (reason was that) they acted (in response to) America(‘s) direction.”

Austria’s Secret Armies

In 1947, Austria’s first secret army became known when a right-wing stay-behind network was discovered. The so-called Soucek-Rossner conspiracy resulted in a number of arrests, Soucek and Rossner testifying that they had recruited and trained right-wing partisans to prepare for a Soviet invasion, insisting Washington and Britain had full knowledge and approved. Nonetheless, both men were convicted and sentenced to death in 1949, yet were mysteriously pardoned by Chancellor Theodor Korner, perhaps following CIA orders.

Thereafter, senior Austrian officials approved of a stay-behind army and began cooperating with the CIA and MI6. Franz Olah set one up, code-named Osterreichischer Wander-Sport-und Geselligkeitsverein (OWSGV), later saying “special units were trained in the use of weapons and plastic explosives.” His prime motive was to prevent a leftist takeover, explaining:

It wasn’t our intention to fight communism in the Soviet Union but to fight against” internal leftist elements. “We took weapons. We also had modern plastic explosives that were easy to handle. I had a small arsenal of weapons in my office. There must have been a couple of thousand people working for us….Only very, very highly positioned politicians and some members of the union knew about it.

In 1996, the Boston Globe revealed the existence of secret CIA arms caches in Austria, President Thomas Klestil and Chancellor Franz Vranistzky insisting they knew nothing about it or the existence of a secret army.

Clinton’s State Department spokesman, Nicholas Burns, called their aim “noble,” admitting that similar networks operated in other European countries.   In August 2001, GW Bush appointed Burns US Permanent Representative to NATO, where he headed the combined State-Defense Department US Mission and coordinated NATO’s response to the 9/11 attacks.

Switzerland’s Secret Armies

Despite its neutrality, a 1990 parliamentary investigation revealed a secret stay-behind army, code-named Special Service, then P26, operating within the Swiss military secret service Untergruppe Nachrichtendienst und Abwehr (UNA), during most of the Cold War.

Yet Switzerland experienced no terrorist attacks or coup threats throughout the period, so why the need for extremism?   Parliamentary commission Senator, Carlo Schmid, said he “was shocked that something like this” went on, calling it … “conspiratorial….like a black shadow.”

A judicial investigation, headed by Judge Pierre Cornu, was charged to learn if Swiss neutrality was violated. Evidence confirmed that P26 cooperated closely with Britain’s MI6 and other UK intelligence, concluding, however, that no Swiss laws were broken, whether or not true.

Belgium’s Secret Armies

On November 7, 1990, socialist defense minister, Guy Coeme, told a national TV audience that a NATO-linked secret army operated covertly throughout the Cold War, adding:

I want to know whether there exists a link between the activities of this secret network, and the wave of crime and terror which our country suffered from during the past years.

A parliamentary investigation followed, Belgium’s Senate confirming that its secret army consisted of two branches, called SDRA8 and STC/Mob, the former a military unit within Belgium’s military secret Service General du Renseignement (SGR) under the Defense Ministry. Its members were trained in unorthodox warfare, combat, sabotage, parachute jumping, and maritime operations.

STC/Mob was part of the civilian secret service – Surete de L’Etat (Surete), under the ministry of justice. Its members were technicians, trained in radio operations and intelligence gathering under enemy occupation conditions.

While senators obtained good information on the stay-behind armies’ structure, they learned little about their involvement in terrorist operations, including so-called Brabant massacres from 1983 – 85, killing 28 and injuring many more. Despite exerting enormous pressure, they never got names of key operatives or who carried out the Brabant terror.

Netherlands’ Secret Armies

Like Belgium, it had two branches, one called Operations (O for short), directed by Louis Einthoven, a staunch anti-communist, to carry out sabotage, guerrilla operations, and building a local resistance. The other was called Intelligence (or I), established post-WW II by JM Somer, but led by JJL Baron van Lynden, responsible for intelligence gathering and dissemination to those with a need to know.

Dutch parliamentarians weren’t happy about keeping them out of the loop, but never ordered investigations into what clearly was an abuse of power.

Luxembourg’s Secret Armies

On November 14, 1990, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jacaques Santer told his parliament:  ”all NATO countries in central Europe have taken part in these preparations, and Luxembourg could not have escaped this international solidarity,” explaining that the Service de Renseignements (its secret service) ran the network in peacetime, but wasn’t linked to terrorism or other abuses of power.

Denmark’s Secret Armies

Code-named Absalon, EJ Harder led it, an unnamed network member explaining:

There were twelve districts, structured according to the cell principle, but not as tightly organized as during the War.

Also, there were no alleged terrorist links, yet another member said its mission was to act in case of a Soviet invasion as well as prevent leftists from gaining power, both called “a clear and present danger.”

As in other countries, operations were secret. Its members were “ninety-five per cent….military, conservative, and staunchly anti-communist.

Norway’s Secret Armies

After European secret armies became known in 1990, journalists asked Norway’s Defense Ministry for an explanation, its spokesman, Erik Senstad, saying only that they were essential to the country’s security.

Code-named Rocambole (ROC), it was run by Norway’s secret service (NIS), its “philosophy….based on the lessons learned during the German occupation,” to prepare for a potential future one, and like elsewhere to prevent leftists from gaining power. “Cooperation with the CIA, MI6, and NATO was intense,” but not without controversy, one example being NATO ordering intelligence conducted on anti-NATO Norwegians with strong pacifist convictions.

Clearly, Norway’s sovereignty was breached, enough to get Brigadier Simon, chief of NATO’s Special Projects Branch, to apologize and promise to end to these type operations.

Sweden’s Secret Armies

Sweden’s Sakerhetspolis (SAPO), its security police, helped recruit it, working with Britain’s MI6 “to learn how to use dead letter box techniques to receive and send secret messages,” as well as intelligence gathering and ways to deal with emergency situations.

Swedish officials never provided details, denied any link to NATO or CIA, but the Agency’s operative, Paul Garbler, explained that Sweden was a “direct participant” in the network, adding: “I’m not able to talk about it without causing the Swedes a good deal of heartburn,” clearly suggesting disturbing abuses of power, possibly including the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, a staunch anti-nuclear proponent, wanting Scandinavia freed from nuclear weapons.

Finland’s Secret Armies

As the only Western European country invaded by the Soviet Union during the so-called Winter War (November 30, 1939 – March 13, 1940), Finland lost 20% of its forces and 16,000 square miles of territory. It’s why Finns sided with the Nazis, to regain its land and prevent this happening again.

During the Cold War, Finland’s border with Soviet Russia was guarded by fences, land mines, and regular patrols. Also, a secret Western-linked resistance organization existed, made up largely of retired Finnish army officers – armed, trained, CIA-funded and equipped, and ready to respond in case history repeated. “Secrecy was extremely tight,” no one talking about what they did or why. Even Finland’s government was kept out of the loop.

 A Final Comment

Until made public in 1990, Western Europe’s secret armies remained a closely held secret – to defend capitalism against communism and the political left, individual countries having discretion on their operations, some mainly or entirely stay-behind, others involved with terrorism.

The former group included Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands. In contrast, Italy, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Sweden actively engaged in terrorism, including against their own citizens to hype fear.

America, to this day, is the world’s leading state-sponsored terrorism exponent, at home and abroad. CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security operatives are in the lead, putting a myth to their abiding by the rule of law or a nation espousing democratic freedoms, human rights, civil liberties, and equal justice, what only an aroused public can stop if awakened to the danger and acts.

That was the heading on the leaflet distributed at the Iper Coop in Rome, Italy on July 9, 2010, marking the fifth anniversary of the launch campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. While the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes by Israel continues, the Italian hypermarket instead sells colorful and cheerful plastic toy houses, in addition to children’s chairs, tables and slides, produced by the Israeli company Keter and marketed in Italy by Giochi Preziosi and Grand Soleil.

The Keter Group, a leading worldwide producer of plastics, has some of its factories located in Israeli settlements built illegally in the occupied Palestinian territories, in particular, the infamous industrial zone of Barkan outside the Ariel settlement. Barkan, the second largest settlement industrial area, is home to some of the most environmentally unfriendly industries there are: plastics, aluminum, fiberglass, electroplating and weapons production. It is estimated that Barkan discharges 810,000 cubic meters of industrial waste water per year, which ends up in rivers and lands near the Palestinian village of Salfit.

The Israeli government provides strong incentives for industries that choose to locate their production facilities in the illegal settlements, such as tax breaks, grants and reductions of up to 69% in the rent of state owned lands. In addition, factories have access to a low-cost workforce, exploiting the Palestinians, including many minors, under constant threat of being fired and with no labor or health safeguards.

Activists of the Rome Palestinian Solidarity Network aimed to raise awareness among customers of the Iper Coop on the complicity of Keter in the Israeli occupation and called on the management to provide explanations on the sale of illegal products in the supermarket chain, already the object of campaign against Agrexco, another Israeli company which exploits the occupation for economic interests.

Hoisting the toy house on their shoulders, followed by a colorful procession of children’s chairs and tables, all labeled ‘Made in Israel’, the activists navigated the aisles of the supermarket making their way to the information desk where they asked for details on the origin of the products. Staging a debate between an “unaware customer” ready to purchase the Israeli products for her daughter and an “informed consumer” familiar with the BDS campaign, the activists called the attention of shoppers as they entered the supermarket.

The exaggerated reaction by the security guards– one wore a Celtic cross, a symbol adopted by neo-fascists in Italy, around his neck – and the management cut short the debate. The activists were “invited” to return the products to their place and the assistant manager agreed to a meeting, but far from interested customers who had gathered around. A delegation followed her back into a storage area where they delivered an open letter calling on COOP management to cease its complicity in the illegality and violations of the Israeli government, as documented by the Fourth Geneva Convention, numerous resolutions of the UN Security Council, the ruling of the International Court of Justice, European Parliament and the European Court of Justice.

Outside activists distributed over 300 flyers, inviting customers to defend the right of all children to play, and musicians from the mini-murga activist band entertained passersby.

The United Nations estimates that in 2009 more than 600 Palestinians – more than half of them children – were left homeless following house demolitions by Israeli forces. Over 4000 homes were destroyed in Gaza during the Israeli assault in 2008/2009. Since 1967, almost 25,000 Palestinian homes have been razed.

We cannot put our children under a roof that was taken from another child. Don’t buy products from Keter, complicit in Israel’s colonial system.

Grégoire Lalieu & Michel Collon: Is it true that Eritrea is the source of all the violence taking place in the Horn of Africa?  This is what the UN Security Council seems to think since it has recently voted to impose sanctions on that country.  Eritrea has been accused of providing arms to the Somali rebels.

Mohamed Hassan: These sanctions result from a campaign of lies aimed at destabilising the Eritrean government.   There has been an embargo on providing arms to Somalia since 1992; international experts are in place to control the situation, and every armament today has a serial number which allows its origin to be traced.  In spite of all these provisions, the Security Council has no more evidence of this alleged arms traffic that it had of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!  And once again it is Washington you find behind the campaign of lies.  As a matter of fact even the US joint Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnny Carson doesn’t believe it.  The truth, he has explained, is that Somalia has been at war for 20 years and is flooded with armaments.  Anybody can buy or sell them on the black market.  The Somalis don’t need to go to Eritrea to obtain their supplies.

Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Collon: Equally Eritrea is accused of causing tension with Djibouti over the question of its frontier.  On top of that, there was an encounter between their two armies in 2008.

MH: Eritrea has never had any territorial designs on Djibouti.  Like most of the frontiers in Africa, the one that separates the two countries was drawn by the colonial powers.  It was therefore laid down a long time ago and has never been disputed.

The 2008 ‘incident’ is a pure fabrication on the part of the Bush administration.  Everything began in the month of April when the Eritrean president, Isaiah Afwerki, received a telephone call from the Emir of Qatar.  The latter was relaying a complaint on the part of the president of Djibouti, Ismail Omar Guelleh, to the effect that Eritrea was massing troops on the frontier.  Yet President Afwerki had never ordered his army to do anything of the kind and was very surprised by this call.  Why was his counterpart from Djibouti acting through a third party?  Isaiah Afwerki nevertheless proposed a meeting with Guelleh in Djibouti, Eritrea or even in Qatar if that was what he wanted.  The President of Djibouti made no response to this invitation.
A few weeks later, on 11 June 2008, soldiers from the Djibouti army attacked the Eritrean troops on the frontier.  A brief battle took place, causing some 30 deaths and dozens of injuries on both sides.  The President of Djibouti immediately claimed that Eritrea had attacked his country.  With disconcerting speed, the US issued a communiqué condemning the “military aggression of Eritrea against Djibouti.”  The UN Security Council echoed this condemnation.  It was only later that it proposed sending a commission of experts to analyse the situation on the ground and establish the facts.  Why did the Security Council put the cart before the horse?  On what were its accusations based?  There are no matters of contention between Eritrea and Djibouti.  The people of the two countries have always enjoyed very good relations.  But yet again the US has been manipulating the international community and the Security Council in order to put pressure on Eritrea.

GL&MC: How is Djibouti’s attitude to be explained?

MH: President Ismail Omar Guelleh has hardly any social base.  He only remains in power thanks to the support of foreign powers.  As a result, he can’t refuse them anything.  It is this that explains why there are so many foreign troops in Djibouti.  For example, the US only has one military base in Africa – and it’s in Djibouti.  This little country also shelters contingents from other countries, including the largest French military base on the continent.

So Guelleh is entirely dependent on Washington.  If the US orders him to create a new regional crisis, then that is what he does.  This has become a US speciality: fomenting problems in order to propose resolving them.  Here the US is seeking to present Eritrea as a bellicose country that is the cause of all problems in the Horn of Africa.

GL&MC: Why should the US want to marginalise Eritrea?

MH: The Eritrean government has a vision for its country and for the region: it is possible to attain a good level of development and to resolve conflicts by dialogue provided one gets rid of interference on the part of foreign powers.  Take the crisis in Somalia: Eritrea has always advocated getting all the political participants of that country round a table for the purpose of dialogue.  In order to find a solution to the conflict and to rebuild Somalia, Eritrea has suggested involving civil society: women, the elderly, religious leaders, etc. Let everybody get together to overcome differences in order to rebuild a country that has not had a government for 20 years.  This method would certainly be an efficient way of restoring peace in the country.  The US, however, has deliberately fostered the chaos in Somalia. In 2007 it even got the Ethiopian army to attack Mogadishu at a time when peace had been restored.  And on top of that, it is Eritrea that gets subjected to UN sanctions!

In fact the US is afraid that the Eritrean vision will gain adherents in the Horn of Africa.  This would mean an end to US interference in this strategic region.  Washington is therefore seeking to put Eritrea in quarantine to prevent the “virus” of its influence spreading.  It is a technique that the US has always applied and which Noam Chomsky has studied.  He talks of the “rotten apple theory”: if you have a rotten apple in a basket you must remove it straight away to prevent the other apples becoming rotten as well.  This is the US’s perennial reason for seeking to overthrow governments – sometimes successfully and other times not : Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, Laos during the 1960’s … Chomsky notes that Washington in those days intervened on the pretext of defending world ‘stability’.  But this ‘stability’, he explains, means only the ‘security’ of multinationals and ruling classes.

GL&MC: As far as Washington is concerned, is Eritrea then the rotten apple in the Horn of Africa?

MH: Absolutely.  But the region’s real enemy is imperialism, especially US imperialism.  Eritrea therefore desires that the Horn of Africa get rid of interference on the part of neo-colonial powers and develop a common project.  The Horn of Africa has a very favourable geographic position: it is both connected to the countries of the Gulf and of the Indian Ocean, which is where the greater part of world maritime trade is effected.  Besides which it has considerable natural resources: minerals, gas, oil and biodiversity. If the countries of this region were to free themselves of neo-colonialism and unify their efforts, they would be able to escape from poverty.  This is what Eritrea wants for the Horn of Africa.  Of course, the US doesn’t want these proposals to see the light of day because they could lay to rest its own control over this strategic region and access to its raw materials.  Washington, therefore, is trying to put pressure on President Afwerki in order to force him to change his policies. At the end of the day, Eritrea, which had to fight so long for the independence it established in 1993, is still fighting today in defence of its national sovereignty.

GL&MC: Eritrea’s independence struggle is the longest in African history.  The country was first colonised by the Italians in 1869.  How did Italy, which was not a great colonial power, find itself in Eritrea?

MH: It is necessary to see this in the context of 19th century Europe.  At that time, the old continent was the theatre for a merciless struggle between the imperialist powers for the control of colonies and their raw materials.  There had already been strong rivalry between France and Great Britain. The unification of Italy in 1863 and that of Germany in 1871 brought to new sizeable competitors on to the scene.  In addition, the capitalist world suffered its first major crisis in 1873.  This crisis brought about the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire which added further to the colonial appetite of the rival European powers.  Germany, for instance, wanted to take advantage of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in order to acquire new colonies.  For their part, the British had their eye on Istanbul so that they would be able to block German expansion.

Chancellor Bismarck therefore decided to organise the Berlin conference of 1885.  This is a major event in the history of colonialism: until that very moment, the European powers had mainly been installed in African coastal areas to set up commercial trading posts, but after that conference, they undertook gradually to colonise the continent as a whole.  Therefore, to avoid new conflicts and to spur the recovery of the capitalist economy, Europe agreed on the sharing of the African cake.  The British strategy was to invite a less threatening colonial power, such as Italy, to install itself in the Horn of Africa in order to block the expansion of more serious competitors such as France and Germany.

GL&MC: Europe carved up Africa but at the beginning of the 20th century, Ethiopia was the only independent country left on the continent.  Why was that?

MH: This anomaly arose from a compromise between the French and the British.  The former intended to expand from Dakar to Djibouti, while the latter had the ambition of extending their empire from Cairo to the Cape in South Africa.  If you look at a map of Africa you will unfailingly notice that these colonial projects had to collide. In order to avoid a conflict that would have caused great losses on both sides, France and Britain decided not to colonise Ethiopia.  But the imperialists did not give up their claims on its territory.  They supported the army of Menelik II who ruled over one of the richest regions of Ethiopia. With the support of colonial powers Menelik II seized power over the whole of Ethiopia, which allowed the French and British to have access to the natural resources of his empire.

Finally, if Ethiopia was the only country not to be colonised, you still could not say that it was independent!  The man who called himself Menelik II, Negusse Negest of Ethiopia, the conqueror lion of the tribe of Judah, chosen by God, was nothing but an agent of imperialist powers, and was incapable of building a modern state. He was chosen precisely because he was an orthodox Christian and came from one of Ethiopia’s richest regions.  Menelik II therefore headed a minority regime within a feudal system where most of the nationalities were deprived of all rights.  Slavery was practised.  All this gave rise to numerous inequalities which even today persist in Ethiopia.

GL&MC: On the other hand, Eritrea was colonised by Italy.  Mussolini was even to say later that she would be the heart of a new Roman empire.  What were the effects of the Italian colonisation of Eritrea?

MH: When it colonised Eritrea, Italy’s population consisted of too many peasants.  Many of them emigrated to Switzerland or France.  But others left to set themselves up in Eritrea.  With its picture postcard landscapes and agreeable climate, the new Italian colony gave more than one of them dreams.  Colonists were implanted side by side with the peasants.  The Italian bourgeoisie then invested heavily in Eritrea.  It was particularly interested in the country’s geographic situation because the country has a long coastline along the Red Sea.  It is close to the Suez Canal in the north and of the strait of Bab el Mandeb in the south.  This is one of the busiest navigation routes in the world that joins the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

As a result the Italians invested in Eritrea and developed plantations, ports and infrastructure.  To give you an idea of the level of development of this colony, when the British invaded Eritrea during the Second World War, they were to dismantle factories in order to remove them!

GL&MC: This seems to be a far cry from the usual ransacking and hand chopping that characterised the Belgian Congo.  Was Eritrea somehow exceptional within the pitiless colonial world?

MH: There were positive aspects but there is no point in deluding ourselves.  Italian colonialism was still a discriminatory system in which black people had very few rights compared to the whites.  Why?  Because when Italy get hold of Eritrea and a part of what is today Somalia at the end of the 19th century, it tried to extend its expansion into Ethiopia.  But the Italian soldiers were defeated by Menalik II at the battle of Adoua in 1896.  In the following years, fascist ideology developed among the Italian intelligentsia who wanted to restore the honour of their country that had been defeated by blacks.  Therefore Italian colonialism was very racist as regards the black people. The Eritrean population within the colonial system was an inferior class.
Moreover, Italian fascism (which seized power in 1922) was based above all on anti-black racism.  It was not anti-semitic like German fascism.  Jews worked within fascist organisations in Italy! … It was only later, towards the end of the 1930’s that Italy began to persecute Jews.  This was because by then Hitler had a rapprochement with Hitler and then because the Italian fascist party needed something to give it a second wind.  It therefore used the Jewish community as a scapegoat to help it mobilise the Italian population.

GL&MC: Finally, the Italian fascists took their revenge on Italy.  In 1935 Mussolini’s troops invaded the only uncolonised country of Africa.

MH: Yes, even though the occupation of Ethiopia did not last very long.  In 1941, at the height of the world war, the British army chased the Italians out of the region and the Allies took control of the Horn of Africa.  Following the war, Ethiopia regained its ‘independence’.  The fate of Eritrea, on the other hand, was subject to debate.

The Soviet Union wanted this colony to obtain its independence.  The British on the other hand, rather as they had done almost everywhere, wanted to divide the country into two on the basis of religious affiliations: the Muslim areas should be annexed to Sudan and the orthodox Christians to Ethiopia.  It is interesting to note that the Ethiopian church supported this option and pressed the Eritrean Christians to accept it.  The church told them that if they refused they would not be buried and their souls would never reach paradise.  In spite of everything, the Eritrean Christians did refuse: they felt themselves above all to be Eritreans!  This feeling of belonging is explained above all by the fact that the Italians, unlike many other imperialist powers, had treated its colonial subjects without any distinction based on ethnicity.  But in the end it was the third option which won the day, that proposed by the US, namely that Eritrea should become part of a federal Ethiopia.

GL&MC: Why did the US favour this option?

MH: Its geographic situation meant that Eritrea was of great importance in Washington’s eyes both during and after the Second World War.  Since the 1940s, the Pentagon and the private armaments industry set up major enterprises in the country: an assembly line for aeroplanes, repair shops, a naval force… And above all, during the 1950s, the US intelligence services established in its capital, Asmara, their most important overseas telecommunications bases. At the time, the satellite surveillance systems of today did not exist and listening posts had a limited range.  But from Eritrea, you could listen in on what was happening in Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf and even certain parts of the Soviet Union.

The US therefore argued for Eritrea to be reattached to Ethiopia which was allied to Washington.  John Foster Dulles, an important figure in US politics, was in charge of Foreign Affairs.  He admitted in a debate of the Security Council that “From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people ought to be taken into account.  Nevertheless, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea area, and considerations of security and world peace, make it necessary for the country to be reattached to our ally, Ethiopia.”  That is how the fate of Eritrea was decided – with severe consequences: Africa’s longest struggle for independence was about to begin.

In the second and third parts of our interview about Eritrea.  With Mohammed Hassan’s help, we will examine the 30 years of the epic struggle waged by the resistance.  We will discover what was at stake in the Eritrean revolution, its similarities with Cuba.  And we will also deal with the question of human rights in Eritrea, and how they were attacked by the imperialist powers. Finally we will broach the famous African paradox: so much wealth for such poor people.

These racists are hounded and taunted by all these non-white faces, including of children on a mural in Prescott, AZ. City councilman, Steve Blair, griped:

I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families — who I have been very good friends with for years — to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ‘Why?’

The simple answer is, Why not? Why can’t a face of any color be in the middle of a mural? Moreover, Blair must not be familiar with murals, as they are most prominent in poorer neighborhoods. The worse the pigs, in fact, the better the lipstick. Reflecting the folks who live there, these walls often feature black and brown faces. Perhaps it’s precisely this ghetto or barrio effect that bummed out councilman Blair.

To incense these racists further, Rima Fakih, an Arab American, has just been crowned Miss USA. “Miss Hezbollah,” they promptly dubbed her, a reference to her Lebanese heritage, with the always subtle Debbie Schlussel asking if the pageant has been “rigged for Muslima”?

It is a sad, ugly fact that achievements by non-whites in this country are often tainted by imputations of affirmative action, political correctness or some other forms of appeasement or condescension. When Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize, she was deemed a “journeyman novelist” who won only because of her race and gender. Likewise, a racist cannot accept that Rima Fakih is Miss USA simply because she is most beautiful, or at least most winsome that evening. Much more than literary merits, beauty is subjective, moreover, and to a racist, someone of the wrong race can never seem quite right.

So much brouhaha over this edition of Miss USA, when we don’t really care about the contest. Ratings have been low for years. By contrast, the national pageant in Italy lasts an entire week, with nightly, prime time telecasts. In 1996, Denny Mendez, a black woman born in the Dominican Republic, won with a unanimous vote from the judges and the vast majority of TV viewers. I’m not citing this to imply that racism does not exist in Italy, of course not, only to note that most Italians obviously had no problem with a black woman representing Italian beauty to the rest of the world. More recently, Italy had a beauty contest for nuns, I kid you not, and it was not a backroom promotion in some stupid bar. Its creator, Father Antonio Rungi, explained, “Do you think that all nuns are old, shrunken and depressing? That’s no longer true, thanks to the foreign girls injecting youth and vitality into our country: there are nuns from Africa and Latin America who are really very, very pretty. The Brazilians above all…”

Mendez has gone on to become a successful actress and model, unlike Rana Raslan, a beauty queen who had to leave her country to find acceptance. In 1999, Raslan became the first Arabic Miss Israel. Upon winning, she declared, “It doesn’t matter whether I am an Arab or a Jew, we must prove to the world that we can live together.” A non-religious Muslim, Raslan lived in a mixed neighborhood and even attended Catholic school, “In my building alone there are Muslims, two Jewish families and an Arab Christian family. I’ve never had any problem here.” In short, Raslan seemed the perfect symbol of an open and just society, moving forward. Benjamin Netanyahu crowed that her victory was “a clear expression of equality and coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel.”

But symbolic victories don’t negate reams of injustice. Even with Raslan, things quickly soured. At the Miss Universe, she wore a Star of David dress, which triggered death threats from outraged Muslims. (She had already been threatened by racist Jews.) With typical innocence, Raslan said, “I thought that was the symbol of the country, and that in the State of Israel — there were Arabs and Jews.” Returning home, she found few opportunities. “My house turned into a cage, a fortress. Suddenly no one came. I would sit and wait for invitations, for shows, but nothing.” To find modeling jobs, Raslan had to go to Italy, and it was in Europe where she also met her future husband, a millionaire from the United Arab Emirates. They now live in Egypt. Returning to Israel, Raslan encounters the same ugliness, “I haven’t visited Israel for three months because of what I had gone through during security checks. I was asked questions in a vulgar manner, held for hours. They also searched me; I have no problem being treated like any other civilian, but there is a way to do so, with delicacy. I am a woman.”

Beauty contests may seem meaningless, but they are loaded with symbolism. That’s why the outsized reactions to Rima Fakih and Rana Raslan. As America demonizes and wages wars against Muslims, it crowns a Muslim beauty queen, and our most public face, Obama, also has a Muslim name. He is also personable, articulate and smart, unlike his predecessor. That’s why his victory was greeted with jubilation from vast segments of our society. Fixated by the symbolism, we glossed over the substance. Here, finally, is a black president. My president is black. To the racist, this was deeply alarming, but Obama has not been the wrong choice because he is different, but because he has been more of the same.

Consider the alternative.  We basically had no choice. Now that the honeymoon is over, who can deny that we’re still living in the same country, with the same, endless wars, the same ineptitude to each crisis, and the same wrecked economy manipulated by the same banksters? We don’t have leaders, only masks who are well trained to deliver their lines, whether in the fake, aw-shucks style of George Bush, or the suave yet slightly street mannerism of Barack Obama, but the realities on the ground, on Main Street and at the front lines, haven’t changed. Unless something dramatic happens, more Americans will jump for yet another head fake at the next well-staged election.

Does this mean that Turkey is a nuclear power?

Far from making Europe safer, and far from producing a less nuclear dependent Europe, [the policy] may well end up bringing more nuclear weapons into the European continent, and frustrating some of the attempts that are being made to get multilateral nuclear disarmament.

– former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson quoted in Global Security, February 10, 2010)

Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike?…

Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets?…

Germany’s air force couldn’t possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it?… 

Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — and planes from each of those countries are capable of delivering them.”²

The “Official” Nuclear Weapons States

Five countries, the US, UK, France, China and Russia are considered to be “nuclear weapons states” (NWS), “an internationally recognized status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”  Three other “Non NPT countries” (i.e., non-signatory states of the NPT), including India, Pakistan and North Korea, have recognized possessing nuclear weapons. 

Israel: “Undeclared Nuclear State”

Israel is identified as an “undeclared nuclear state”. It produces and deploys nuclear warheads directed against military and civilian targets in the Middle East including Tehran. 

Iran

There has been much hype, supported by scanty evidence, that Iran might at some future date become a nuclear weapons state. And, therefore, a pre-emptive defensive nuclear attack on Iran to annihilate its non-existent nuclear weapons program should be seriously contemplated “to make the World a safer place.” The mainstream media abounds with makeshift opinion on the Iran nuclear threat.

But what about the five European “undeclared nuclear states” including Belgium, Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands and Italy. Do they constitute a threat?

Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey: “Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States”

While Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities are unconfirmed, the nuclear weapons capabilities of these five countries including delivery procedures are formally acknowledged.

The US has supplied some 480 B61 thermonuclear bombs to five non-nuclear NATO countries including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Casually disregarded by the Vienna based UN Nuclear Watchdog (IAEA), the US has actively contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe.

As part of this European stockpiling, Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik nuclear air base.³

By the recognised definition, these five countries are “undeclared nuclear weapons states.”

The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 in these five “non-nuclear states” are intended for targets in the Middle East. Moreover, in accordance with  “NATO strike plans”, these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the “non-nuclear States”) could be launched  “against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran.”⁴

Does this mean that Iran or Russia, which are potential targets of a nuclear attack originating from one or other of these five so-called non-nuclear states should contemplate defensive preemptive nuclear attacks against Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey? The answer is no, by any stretch  of the imagination.

While these “undeclared nuclear states” casually accuse Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, without documentary evidence, they themselves have capabilities of delivering nuclear warheads, which are targeted at Iran.  To say that this is a clear case of “double standards” by the IAEA and the “international community” is an understatement. 

Click to See Details and Map of Nuclear Facilities located in 5 European Non-Nuclear States

The stockpiled weapons are B61 thermonuclear bombs.  All the weapons are gravity bombs of the B61-3, -4, and -10 types.