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This motion was passed unanimously at the recent CPGB-ML party congress
This congress recognises that the imperialist beasts of the USA, Britain and France planned, financed and played the major role, assisted by their various middle-eastern puppets, in the overthrow of the popular Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi.
This congress notes that they, through the trickery of a UN resolution to impose a ‘no-fly zone’, supposedly to ‘protect’ the Libyan people, used the combined air power of Nato member states to carpet-bomb and destroy Libyan airports, military bases, media stations, hospitals, schools, electricity and water supplies, general infrastructure and residential areas alike.
Congress further notes that, even with the great military advantage that this onslaught from outside gave the rats of the Transitional National Council (TNC), they were so numerically weak and lacking in any support within Libya that they could not make decisive use of this advantage. So it was that Libya was flooded with military ‘advisors’ from the imperialist regimes and elite troops from all the neighbouring states that were under the sway of imperialism.
This congress applauds the heroic struggle that the Libyan people and their army waged against Nato’s proxy forces on the ground, despite the horrendous effects of the imperialists’ all-out air war, noting that they held out for more than six months until the capture, torture and public murder of the leader of Libya’s green revolution, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Congress also sends a red salute to the brave green fighters in Libya, who are continuing to put up resistance to imperialism and its puppets today.
Closer to home, this congress condemns the disgusting role played during the war on Libya by the ‘left’ supporters of imperialism – the social democrats, revisionists and Trotskyists. In Britain, the worst of these enemies of the international proletariat once more proved themselves to be the Labour party, the SWP, Counterfire, the CPB, and the ‘anti-war’ umbrella group in which many of those parties’ spokespeople play a leading role: the Stop the War Coalition (StW). StW held a single nationally-organised demonstration over the issue of the overthrow of the sovereign state of Libya by imperialism – but they held it outside the Libyan embassy supporting the imperialist-backed TNC and opposing the anti-imperialist leadership of Colonel Gaddafi!
This congress affirms that imperialism is the main enemy of the international working class, and that US imperialism, as the biggest and most powerful imperialist state, is the biggest enemy to world peace.
Congress further affirms that in an imperialist war the duty of the working class in an imperialist country is to work for the defeat of its own government. And an essential part of that process must be exposing and leading workers away from the misleadership of social democracy and its revisionist and Trotskyist hand-maidens, who will try with all their guile to keep workers tied to the imperialist war machine through revolutionary-sounding phrases and lies.
This congress resolves to continue working to show our class that we do have the power to stop the imperialist war machine by starving it of all the necessary supplies for its wars of brigandage, whether those supplies be weapons, transport or soldiers!
Congress further resolves to use all means at the party’s disposal to disseminate information about the ongoing battle in Libya, in order that British workers should understand that there is a popular resistance movement fighting to rid the country of imperialist forces. Our party will continue to expose the vile and rapacious doings of the TNC rats who now hope to rule Libya (with imperialist troops stood at their shoulders). These villains have murdered, kidnapped, raped, looted and evicted from their homes those supporting or suspected of supporting the green resistance. From the earliest days, even before coming to power, it was well known that the TNC rats were lynching black Libyans, as well as other black Africans working in the country, and our party will continue to remind the world of this fact.
Finally, this congress resolves to continue pointing out that this bloody war was brought upon the Libyan people in order to grab the country’s oil, to remove its anti-imperialist leadership, and to kick open the door to the re-conquest of Africa. The freedom and protection of the Libyan people was never a real reason for waging the war – except, perhaps, in the minds of a few simple souls who simply cannot, or will not, see the jackboot an inch from their face, even when it is pointed out to them.
This congress remains confident that the Libyan masses will rise again to rid their land of the imperialist puppets and bring the imperialists’ dreams of world domination to nought.
Long live the memory of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, hero of the Libyan and African peoples!
Victory to the anti-imperialist peoples!
Death to imperialism!
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 4 March.
Following the French announcement last month that it is withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan earlier than had previously been envisaged, the US has now also announced its early departure, ie, the ending of its ‘combat role’ by the middle of next year.
Of 90,000 US troops in Afghanistan, 22,000 are to be withdrawn by this autumn, although no schedule for the departure of the remaining 68,000 has been given. US imperialism is also proposing to scale down the Afghan puppet troops, which are costing the US and other Nato countries some $6bn a year.
Meanwhile, attempts are still continuing to find ‘reasonable’ elements of the Taliban with whom to reach a peace agreement. However, Afghanistan remains very much a country at war. Increasingly, imperialism is “privatising the ultimate sacrifice”. Last year, for the first time since the start of the Afghan campaign, more civilian contractors working for the US were killed than were US soldiers. (‘Risks of Afghan war shift from soldiers to contractors’ by Rod Nordland, New York Times, 12 February 2012)
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 4 February
France has announced that it will be withdrawing its 3,900 troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year, a year earlier than planned; and this year it will be pulling out 1,000 troops rather than the 600 originally planned.
The announcement to that effect was made by Sarkozy as part of his presidential re-election campaign, in response to the killing of four French soldiers and the severe wounding of eight others by a member of the Afghan puppet forces. These deaths aggravated public anger at a war in which most French people believe the country should never have become involved.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 3 December
There is a real threat that the euro is going to collapse as a currency. This is because everybody is trying to get rid of their euro holdings. The reason this is happening is that it has become clear that Greece is not going to avoid defaulting on its debt, with the general consensus being that its lenders are going to have to take a 50 percent ‘haircut’.
At the same time, Portugal’s debt has been reduced to junk status by credit rating agencies, and borrowing costs for Italy and Spain have soared above the affordability mark, with even German bonds suffering increased borrowing costs. Now France is under threat as it is likely to need to bail out its banks as a result of their losses on their Greek debts, etc.
Attempts to put together a firewall that will enable European countries to continue to borrow at affordable rates of interest are floundering, and the Germans are resisting attempts to have the European Central Bank step in to perform this service, because they make the largest contribution to this bank and don’t want to throw good money after bad and then find themselves in financial trouble.
There is some suggestion that Germany would be willing to be more accommodating if the European countries would agree to greater fiscal integration, which of course implies a surrender of sovereignty to the EU which in turn is very much dominated by Germany and France. They of course can be expected to use that control for their national benefit at the expense of other EU countries.
In the meantime, the elected leaders of Greece and Italy have both been forced to resign, to be replaced by unelected ‘technocrats’ with close links to Goldman Sachs (which in turn was intimately involved with the repackaging of subprime debts as high quality by camouflaging them in complex ‘derivatives’). The new head of the ECB is also a former Goldman Sachs man.
The UK and the US are said to be making contingency plans for the chaos that will certainly ensue if the euro does in fact collapse. More detail in this month’s issue of Proletarian.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 5 November
There has been intense fighting along the Kenya-Somalia border. Kenya’s actions are intended to support Somalia’s US-backed puppet government to retain control of territory in southern Somalia, which is increasingly falling under the sway of al-Shabaab (Kenya’s security services get millions of dollars each year in training and support from the US and British governments).
On the pretext that al-Shabaab was threatening Kenya (!), hundreds of Kenyan soldiers and police officers, alongside forces from Uganda, have entered Somalia, with fighter planes and military helicopters overflying the Somali town of Dhobley and even bombing targets in the region. Essentially, they have invaded on behalf of imperialism to take the place of the Ethiopian troops who had previously been trying to subdue Somalia on imperialism’s behalf but who retired defeated. France is helping with ‘logistics’.
At the same time, western imperialism is using the drought that is is thought to be causing mass starvation in southern Somalia as an excuse to penetrate the area, supposedly to distribute aid, which it refuses to channel through the al-Shabaab authorities in control of the region. Al-Shabaab in the meantime has set up its own programme of support to people affected by the famine and is urging them to return to their homes to plant crops in readiness for the rainy season, which is expected soon.
Al-Shabaab has also warned Kenya that if its incursions continue, then reprisals would be taken. Nairobi was hit on 24 October by two grenade attacks in which one person was killed any some 23 injured, although it is claimed that these do not bear the hallmarks of an al-Shabaab attack, which would have been expected to be more sophisticated.
