Muammar Gaddafi: Recollections of my life

Muammar al Gaddafi

Via Information Clearing House. Translated by Professor Sam Hamod.

5 April 2011

For 40 years, or was it longer, I can’t remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert.

I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan. When he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me; instead he killed that poor innocent child.

Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union, did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people’s committees ran our country.

But that was never enough, as some told me. Even people who had 10-room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied. As selfish as they were they wanted more, and they told Americans and other visitors, they needed ‘democracy’, and ‘freedom’, never realising it was a cut-throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest.

They were enchanted with those words, never realising that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some. But for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and muslim leader we’ve had since Salah ad-Din. When Nasser claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya for my people, it was in his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination – from thieves who would steal from us …

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history. My little African son Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country: to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American-style thievery, called ‘capitalism’.

But all of us in the Third World know what that means. It means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer.

So there is no alternative for me; I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path – the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world: that I stood up to crusader attacks of Nato, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up the West and its colonialist ambitions. And that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and muslim brothers, as a beacon of light.

When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte. I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah ad-Din, our great muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself …

In the West, some have called me ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’. They know the truth but continue to lie. They know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip; that my vision, my path, is and has been clear and for my people, and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free. May Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

Libya : oil, banks, the United Nations and America’s holy crusade

By Felicity Arbuthnot, via Global Research

5 April 2011

“America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.” (President Barack Hussein Obama, Al-Azar University, Cairo, 4 June 2009)

George W Bush embarked on the casual snuffing out of uncounted, unique, human lives in majority muslim populations, chillingly called it a “crusade”. President Barack Hussein Nobel Obama did not go that far, he left that to the French Minister of the Interior, Claude Gueant who, on 21 March, praised President Nicholas Sarkozy for having: “headed the crusade”.

For the “change we can believe in” president, reducing another ancient land of eye-watering archeological gems, massive oil and water resources and a population of six million – little more than Scotland – it is, reportedly, a “turd sandwich”.

Humanity is not “at the crossroads”. It is on the Cross, scourged, nailed (in all senses) and utterly inconsequential, in face of murdering, marauding, looting Empire.

When President Obama “updated the American people on the international effort we have led in Libya” on 29 March, he stated that: “we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges” and referred to “our interests” being “at stake”. Reluctance would be a first. America’s bombing for “interests” would be an encylopaedia.

Colonel Gaddafi, had, of course, stated the president: “denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorised innocent people around the world”. Busy man. Heaven forbid ‘Nato’s’ blitzkrieg should send the occasional shiver down a spine.

However, interestingly, at the end of March, a report was due to be presented by the UN Human Rights Council leading to a resolution commending Libya’s progress in a wide aspect of human rights. Numerous quotes from UN diplomatic delegations of many countries commented. Citations included: “achieving a high school enrolment rate and improvements in the education of women“, Libya’s: “serious commitment to, and interaction with, the Human Rights Council … enhanced development of human rights … while respecting cultural and religious traditions“.

Also mentioned was: “ … establishment of the national independent institution entrusted with promoting human rights, which had many of the competencies set out in the Paris Principles“. The country had: “become party to many human rights conventions and had equipped itself with a number of institutions, national, governmental and non governmental tasked with promoting human rights …”

The country was commended: “for the progress made in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, namely universal primary education [and] firm commitment [to] health care“. There was praise for “cooperation with international organisations in combating human trafficking and corruption” and for cooperation with the International Organization for Migration.

“Progress in enjoyment of economic and social rights, including in the areas of education, health care, poverty reduction and social welfare” with “measures taken to promote transparency“, were also cited. Malaysia “Commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for being party to a significant number of international and regional human rights instruments.” Promotion “of the rights of persons with disabilities” and praise for “measures taken with regard to low income families” were cited.

In May 2010, Libya had also been voted on to the UN Human Rights Council by a veritable landslide, 155 of 192 UN General Assembly votes. As noted previously (i), Libya comes top in Africa on the Human Development Index, which measures longevity (the longest) infant mortality (the lowest) education, health services, well being. (ii)

All that said, before this publication is flooded with complaints about the writer’s naivety, ‘propagandist flights of fancy’ (an orchestrated old favourite) or whatever, some of the countries making positive recommendations regarding Libya did not have the most shining human rights records. But then the US, UK and Nato member countries pontificate from the high moral molehills of the mass graves of the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, overtly, and Yemen, Somalia and other countries, covertly. And of course there are Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, rendition flights and secret torture programmes and prisons across the globe for US/UK convenience. (iii)

Further, in a train wreck of factual inaccuracies in President Obama’s speech, a (possibly) Freudian slip crept in. “Benghazi”, he said, was “a city nearly the size of Charlotte” in danger of suffering “a massacre (staining) the conscience of the world”.

A quick check shows that Charlotte, North Carolina “has a major base of energy orientated organisations and has become known as ‘Charlotte, USA – The New Energy Capital’. In the region there are 240+ companies directly tied to the energy sector … Major players are AREVA, Babcock and Wilcox, Duke Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Fluor, Metso Power, Piedemont Natural Gas, Siemens Energy, Shaw Group, Toshiba, URS Corp and Westinghouse.The University of North Carolina at Charlotte has a reputation in energy education and research and its ‘Energy Production and Infrastructure Center’ trains energy engineers and conducts research.” (Wikipedia)

Whilst many respected oil experts have argued that since so many western energy companies operate in Libya, this is not about oil, there are some points worth pondering. All companies operating in Libya must have Libyan partners, entitled to 35 percent of profits. (iv) Trading is via the Libyan Central Bank, in the Libyan Dinar, not US$. The Libyan Central Bank is also independently outside the IMF and the World Bank.

There are only five nations without a Rothschild model central bank: North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Libya.

There were two others: Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were gobbled up by the international banking system within a heartbeat of the invasions.

“It has always been about gaining control of the central banking system in Libya. Oil is just a profitable side issue like every other state asset that is waiting in Libya to be privatised and sold off to multinational corporations like Bechtel, GE, and Goldman Sachs. Oil is important and it is certainly a target but it isn’t the driving force behind these global wars for profit. Banking is.” (v)

That said, as President Obama was busy being inaugurated, Colonel Gaddafi (January 2009) was mooting nationalising “US oil companies, as well of those of UK, Germany, Spain, Norway Canada and Italy”. “Oil should be owned by the state at this time, so we could better control prices by the increase or decrease in production”, stated the Colonel. (vi)

So how does the all tie together? Libya, in March, being praised by the majority of the UN for human rights progress across the board, to today being the latest, bombarded international pariah? A nation’s destruction enshrined in a UN resolution?

The answer lies in part with the Geneva based UN Watch. (vii) UN Watch is “a non-governmental organisation whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations“. With consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council, with ties to the UN Department of Public Information, “UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee” (AJC).

Among those involved in UN Watch are Co-Chair, AJC’s David A Harris. Core values: “AJC has long believed that the development of a comprehensive US energy programme is essential to the economic and social well-being of our country.” AJC’s website is an exceptionally instructive listen and read. (viii)

Ambassador Alfred Moses, former US Ambassador to Romania, heads UN Watch. His company, Secure Energy’s mission: “Improving US energy security“, “Securing America’s energy future“. (ix)

Board Member Ruth Wedgwood is “an international law expert … at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) a former member of Donald Rumsfeld’s Defence Policy Board (formerly headed by Richard Perle.)“, closely associated with “a number of neo-conservative and rightist pro-Israeli groups – including Freedom House, UN Watch and Benador Associates – a neo-con dominated public relations firm“. She “has been a vocal advocate of the war on terror … strong defender of the Patriot Act and decision to invade Iraq“. (x)

Executive Director Hillel Neuer has served as law clerk to the Supreme Court of Israel, is a Graduate Fellow at the Shalem Center think tank and holds a host of law degrees. In addition to extensive human rights legal advocacies and testimonies, as associate in the international law firm of Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison llp (New York), “He was associate in the legal team that successfully represented Raytheon Company in various claims against Hughes Electronics Corporation.” Neuer was also instrumental in achieving victory for the California Public Utilitites Commission in: “various disputes with Pacific Gas and Electric Company“. (xi)

Speakers at events hosted by the company have included Hillary “I met the rebel leader in Paris” Clinton (xii) and Vernon Jordan, former political advisor to Bill “I would be inclined to arm the rebels” Clinton. (xiii)

UN Watch’s relentless campaign “to remove Libya from the Human Rights Council” began in May 2010, “working closely with Libyan dissident Mohamed Eljahmi“. (vii) Mr Eljahmi is “a Libyan/American human rights activist. He is a co-founder and former Communication Officer of American Libyan Freedom Alliance. ALFA was founded 2003 to help educate and inform US government and media about Libya. Mr Eljahmi actively educates and informs US government, national and international media and NGOs about Libyan affairs.” (xiv)

An aspect of especial ire for UN Watch has been Libya’s place on the five-member investigation by the Human Rights Council into the use of mercenaries. Given their woeful excesses from Blackwater’s (now Xe) shoot-ups to CACI’s man-management at Abu Ghraib (then there’s Paravant, an Xe subsiduary at Bagram; Guantanamo and KBR), it is a supreme irony that UN Watch’s cry of “foul” over Libya has won out, while the US’s place on the council is unsullied. (Libya was suspended from the Human Rights Council on 25 February this year.) And did Libya employ ‘black African mercenaries’, to fight the rebels? In the fog of disinformation, certainties are scarce, but it is a story which would seem to be unravelling.

Then there is the water. Gaddafi’s project to make Libya’s vast desert bloom has been dubbed by some “The eighth wonder of the world.” A succinct overview cites: “the large quantities of water in Libya deep beneath the desert … Libya’s Great Man-Made River Project. A project worth 33 billion dollars. The value of the small reservoirs is about 70,000,000,000,000 dollars.” (xv) When the project was announced in September 1991, London and Washington were reported to be “ballistic“. At a ceremony attended by Arab and African heads of state, foreign diplomats and delegations, including President Mubarak of Egypt, King Hassan of Morocco, Gaddafi called it a gift to the Third World. He also said: “American threats against Libya will double.” (xvi)

Looking at the all, it is impossible not to think the truth of an attack of over thirty nations on a country of six million is buried deeper than Libya’s aquifers. ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’ was well named. An odyssey indeed. Odysseus’s tortured journey lasted ten years.

End Note:

Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council.

The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a 19 March meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.

The council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi“.

And of course, given Israel’s chronic water shortage, Libya’s abundant underground blessings, and the close geographical proximity of the two countries, there might be other regional advantages mooted in regime change.

Notes

i. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23660

ii. http://hdr.undp.org/en/

iii. http://www.statewatch.org/rendition/rendition.html

iv. http://www.benlawyers.com/law-of-libya/the-obligation-for-foreign-companies-which-execute-a-contract-in-libya-to-create-a-235.html

v. http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/un-resolution-in-libya-is-about-oil-and-their-central-banking-system-updated/#more-15364

vi. http://english.pravda.ru//hotspots/crimes/25-03-2011/117336-reason_for_war_oil-0/

vii. Full chronology of the Campaign against Libya: http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=9142899

See also: http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/category/libya/

viii. http://www.ajc.org/

ix. http://www.secureenergy.org/diplomatic-council-energy-security/ambassador-alfred-moses

x. http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Wedgwood_Ruth

xi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_Neuer

xii. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12741414

x111. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52466.html

See also: http://www.paulweiss.com/

xiv. http://www.genevasummit.org/speaker/71

ALFA, about which not a lot can be found: http://www.alfa-online.net/

xv. http://www.wearechange.org/?p=7359

xvi. http://american_almanac.tripod.com/libya.htm

See also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24096

Looking out for western business and investor rights: why the West approves military interventions to topple one Arab government and prop up another

Via What’s Left

By Stephen Gowans

In a previous article I pointed to three factors to explain the West’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya to prevent the government there from putting down an armed rebellion while it tacitly approves the Gulf Cooperation Council’s military intervention in Bahrain to put down a peaceful rebellion there. The double-standard, I argued, reflects dramatic differences between Libya and Bahrain in their relationship with the United States and its dominant investor and corporate class.

Bahrain is the home of the US Fifth Fleet, has long-standing warm relations with Washington, and strongly caters to western corporate and investor interests. Since the Khalifa regime supports US corporate profit-making and military interests, and a new regime might not do the same to the same degree, Washington is prepared to allow Saudi and other GCC troops and tanks to assist Bahraini authorities in violently quelling a peaceful rebellion.

Libya, I pointed out, doesn’t provide bases for the US or other western militaries, hasn’t had long-standing warm relations with Washington, and isn’t particularly accommodating of western corporate and investor interests. From a neo-colonialist standpoint, western powers could do better in Libya.

Some readers objected, arguing that in recent years Libya has sought to open itself to western corporations and investors and has struck a number of deals with western oil companies. It cannot be concluded, they continued, that the West’s decision to intervene military in Libya was motivated by western profit-making considerations, for Libya is already catering to western business interests.

To be sure, Libya has opened itself to the West, but doing deals with western corporations is not the same as engineering a wholesale subordination of domestic interests to those of foreign bankers and corporations — typically, what corporate-and investor-oriented western governments look for in third-world ‘partners’. For the wealthy scouring the globe for investment opportunities and corporations seeking export markets, an opening door in Libya doesn’t necessarily mean that Libya’s business climate is fully conducive to maximising profits.

That Libya allows some western corporations to operate in the country doesn’t guarantee that investments are safe from expropriation, that performance requirements aren’t imposed on foreign investments, that repatriation of profits isn’t controlled, that taxes aren’t high, or that there is a commitment to labor market ‘flexibility’. In short, the Gaddafi government may, in recent years, have sought to expand western access to investment opportunities in Libya, but that alone doesn’t mean that the conditions of access were regarded by corporations and investors as being as desirable as they could be, or as desirable, for example, as those provided by the government of Bahrain, or a desirable as those a future government might provide.

The Heritage Foundation provides a guide to how accommodating countries are to the profit-making interests of US corporations and investors. Every year the foundation publishes an Index of Economic Freedom, which ranks countries on how open they are to exports and foreign investment, how low their taxes are, how committed they are to protecting property rights, and so on; in short, how strongly a country favors foreign businesses and investors over its own people.

Significantly, governments that are perennially targets of US government regime change efforts rank at or near the bottom of the index. This year’s list identifies the following 10 countries as the least economically free (ie, least accommodating to foreign businesses), in order, from worst to slightly better:

• North Korea
• Zimbabwe
• Cuba
• Eritrea
• Venezuela
• Myanmar
• Libya
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Iran
• Timor-Leste

Seven of the bottom 10 (North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, Libya and Iran) are the targets of open regime change operations by the United States and its allies, carried out ostensibly because the targeted countries are not protecting human rights, threaten regional stability, or in the case of Libya, because the government is said to be attacking its own people.

That these countries happen to be considered the least accommodating of foreign business profit-making points to an ulterior motive on the part of western governments to bring about regime change, and to use human-rights and humanitarian rhetoric as a cover for pursuing the economic interests of western corporate and investor elites.

Significantly, not one country in the top 10 is a target of western regime change efforts. If regime change were linked to human-rights concerns and not unfavorable investment and export conditions, we might expect to find regime change targets scattered throughout the rankings, rather than bunched up at the bottom.

One counter-explanation is that economically free countries tend to respect human rights, which is why the worst offenders on both counts are found at the bottom of the list. However, this couldn’t possibly be true, for the United States, which has an atrocious human rights record (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture and rendition of prisoners, arrest and detention without charge, extrajudicial assassination, weakening of Miranda rights, spying on its own citizens, restrictions on travel to Cuba, and so on) ranks as the ninth freest country in the world in economic terms, and Saudi Arabia, the least free country in terms of political and civil liberties and perhaps the most contemptuous of human rights, ranks in the top half.

Bahrain, as it turns out, is ranked number 10 of 179 countries on the Heritage Foundation list, next to the United States. Regionally, Bahrain is top ranked in North Africa and West Asia, while Libya, ranked 173 over all countries, falls dead last in regional rankings.

Bahrain’s higher ranking is based on an array of government policies aimed to please foreign businesses. Property ownership is secure and expropriation is unlikely, whereas in Libya foreign companies are vulnerable to expropriation. Bahrain welcomes foreign investment and allows new businesses to be 100 percent foreign owned and controlled, while Libya screens foreign investment, imposes performance requirements on foreign investors that domestic investors are not required to meet, and demands that Libyans have a 35 percent stake in foreign companies that operate in the country. And while Bahrain imposes no restrictions on repatriation of profits, Libya does.

On trade, Bahrain imposes few restrictions on imports, while Libya maintains a variety of tariff and non-tariff barriers to help local firms develop. With the exception of oil companies, businesses that operate in Bahrain pay no corporate tax, while businesses in Libya are subject to a tax rate as high as 40 percent. Personal income tax is extremely low in Bahrain, but can reach as high as 90 percent in Libya. And while Bahrain provides businesses maximum flexibility in dealing with employees, even allowing them to pay desperation-level wages, Libya demands that businesses meet minimum standards on pay and working conditions.

In short, the Bahraini monarchy runs a foreign-investment- and import-friendly regime, while Libya’s economic policies favour local investors and businesses and provide a minimal standard of protection for labor. A government that was more like Bahrain’s, and less like Gaddafi’s, would unquestionably be congenial to foreign business interests.

Heritage Foundation's 2011 evaluation of economic freedom in Bahrain and Libya

Some readers contend that western military intervention in Libya is aimed at preventing the slaughter of Libyan civilians. But a stronger case can be made that western military intervention is aimed at regime change, and that, far from protecting civilians, Nato bombing is only setting the stage for a prolonged civil war by weakening loyalist forces and thereby allowing the rebels to contest for power.

There are a number of reasons why the Nato operation in Libya can be seen as a regime change effort, apart from the motivation of replacing the current government with one more congenial to western profit-making interests, as discussed above.

First, the decision of the French government to recognise the rebel opposition as the legitimate government was a declaration that France, at least, is manoeuvring to install a new government in Libya. (1) Indeed, both France and Britain have acknowledged that they are seeking the ouster of Gaddafi. (2)

Second, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton said “Gaddafi’s ouster was the ultimate goal of the UN resolution” (3), and while US president Barack Obama denied this, he did say that the military “campaign will likely continue as long as Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is in power”. (4) If the intervention’s goal is to protect civilians and not install a new government, how can the aims of France and Britain and the comments of Clinton and Obama be reconciled?

Third, Washington hopes that sanctions “combined with Nato air power, will be enough to turn the tide militarily”. While the UN Security Council resolution authorises the use of military means to protect civilians, it doesn’t authorise the use of military means to aid rebel forces. Yet newspapers on 23 March 2011 were full of stories on how fresh airstrikes were allowing rebel forces to recover lost ground. For example, the Wall Street Journal commented that,

“The hope for the West is that a continuation of military pressure on Col Gaddafi’s forces, even at somewhat lower levels in coming days, combined with continued forward movement by the rebels, will be enough to make the Libyan army either buckle or turn on the Libyan leader. That would produce the outcome the West hopes for – the removal of Col Gaddafi.” (5)

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that “the airstrikes have lifted the rebels back from the brink of defeat in the eastern city of Benghazi and enabled them to rush west along the coast past their farthest gains of the previous peak weeks ago”. (6)

It is clear that the intention of the military intervention, which was authorised when the rebels’ defeat by loyalist forces was imminent, was to weaken the government side to allow the rebels to rally and seize the momentum. This hardly favors a quick resolution of the conflict. The conflict could go on for some time, perhaps taking more lives than would have been lost had the UN sent a fact-finding mission in return for a cease-fire, or had loyalist forces successfully put down the uprising weeks ago.

The potential for the conflict to drag on, fuelled by the aid Nato provides the rebels through its airstrikes, was acknowledged by US secretary of defense Robert Gates. The Pentagon boss said “he couldn’t be sure Nato would have finished its mission by year-end”. (7)

The idea, then, that the UN Security Council authorised military intervention to protect civilians has no substance. Furthermore, the idea that the intervention is protecting civilians, whether that is the real intention of the intervention or not, seems unlikely, since the outcome so far has been to create the conditions for a protracted civil war – one moreover, that will be worsened by civilian deaths caused by Nato bombing on behalf of rebel forces.

If the rebel forces prevail and extend their control to all of Libya, or eventually settle for partition of the country, we can expect the economic policies of the future government to be closer to those of Bahrain, and therefore closer to the profit-making interests of western corporations and investors. In this sense, the UN Security Council, and the military operation it authorises, can be seen as investments in making Libya a more attractive place to do business in.

Finally, it might be pointed out, as Johnstone has, (8) that the Gaddafi government has invested a considerable part of its oil revenues in sub-Saharan Africa, contrary to the usual practice among Arab oil states of shipping the proceeds of their oil sales to New York investment banks, the London stock exchange, and US arms manufacturers. These practices are more conducive to western business interests than Gaddafi’s investments in Africa, and might be expected to become the standard practice in Libya if the rebel movement succeeds in ousting Gaddafi.

NOTES
1. ‘Why are they making war on Libya?’ by Diana Johnstone, Counterpunch, 24 March 2011
2. ‘Obama bets on limited engagement’ by Jay Solomon and Carol E Lee, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2011
3. ‘Allies rally against Gadhafi’ by Keith Johnson, Yaroslav Trofimov and Sam Dagher, Wall Street Journal, 19 March 2011
4. ‘Allies strain to mend split’ by Nathan Hodge, Sam Dagher, Stephen Fidler and Stacy Meichtry, Wall Street Journal, 23 March 2011
5. ‘Fresh airstrikes aid rebels’ by Sam Dagher and Stephen Fiddler, Wall Street Journal, 28 March 2011
6. ‘Libyan rebels march toward Qaddafi stronghold’ by David D Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim, New York Times, 27 March 2011
7. ‘Fresh airstrikes aid rebels’ by Sam Dagher and Stephen Fiddler, Wall Street Journal, 28 March 2011
8. ‘Why are they making war on Libya?’ by Diana Johnstone, Counterpunch, 24 March 2011

Hands off Libya; victory to the Al Fatah revolution

The following statement was issued by Dave Roberts of the SLP.

As the West gears up for intervention into Libya, the left in Britain, with a few exceptions, are like rabbits in the proverbial headlights, transfixed by the brilliant glare of western propaganda. Many are either completely ignorant of Gaddafi’s anti-imperialist revolutionary history or prefer that their self-opinionated pseudo-left intellectualism should not be disturbed by the very notion that the people of one of the previously poorest and most backward countries in the world, through their own efforts, can have thrown off imperialism.

Not only that but, within four decades, they have gone on to built an economy and a society which, to the horror of western reactionary circles, is the envy of the revolutionary class-conscious, downtrodden and poor of Africa and the Arab world.

If any had bothered to read even a basic historical text on Libya’s Green Revolution they would be amazed at its achievements, benefits of which include universal suffrage, free lifelong education for all up to post-graduate level, free medical and health care, a guaranteed home for every Libyan and the highest per capita income in the Arab and African world – a per capita income which is a real average income rather than one based on the massive disparities in wealth to be found in western economies.

Unlike their Arab brothers and sisters in Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi or Jordan, at the age of 16 all Libyans are entitled to join and attend their weekly held local people’s committee and participate practically week in week out in the framing and delivery of policies and the allocation of resources that affect their daily lives. No wonder that participation rates in the political process exceed anything the ‘democratic’ west can offer.

A point lost on the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen when he insisted that protesters were “thirsting for democracy”. Gaddafi correctly told him that he clearly knew nothing of the policy and practice of the authority of the people in Libya .

In setting off on the journey to bring Libya into the modern world, Gaddafi has been conciliatory to those elements in society who, for reasons of the privilege or power they had held over the people through the mosques or through their previous patronage by western oil companies, have continued to resist the struggle for democratic and economic development.

He guaranteed participation of the imams in the people’s committees and ensured that the previous comprador class was no worse off as the wealth, education and health of all Libyans was raised to the remarkable levels they enjoy today. It is clearly these restorationist elements who are forming the backbone of the opposition, eyeing a chance for themselves of a ‘better’ future under the local patronage of western oil companies, or of bringing Libya under the pan-islamist resistance and ‘rescuing’ it from what they fear as the westernising modernism and growing secularism of the Green revolution.

Unlike the opposition in Egypt or Tunisia, the Libyan opposition have raised the royalist emblem of the western oil company-imposed puppet King Idris, whilst increasingly calling for western imperialist intervention to secure their counter-revolution. It should therefore be glaringly obvious to all but the politically blind that the struggle in Libya is the complete opposite to the unfolding struggle across the rest of the Arab world.

An understanding that might explain why Hague sent the SAS and MI6 on a secret mission to start discussions to begin arming the opposition in Libya, whilst two weeks earlier Cameron was in Egypt gun running to the military junta.

No calls for western intervention in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt then? No calls for the Bahraini or Saudi royals to be referred to the War Crimes Tribunal for having invaded sovereign countries and killed unarmed civilians? Unlike most of the British left, British imperialism has a consistent class line: support the junta in Egypt to hold back generalised intifada and destroy the Libyan revolution. Why? Because it has embodied, to date, the best organised and most resilient resistance in the Arab and African world.

Which is why Gaddafi was referred to by Nelson Mandela as one of the “greatest freedom fighters of the century”. Why the first country Mandela visited upon his release from 27 years in an apartheid gaol was Libya, in order to thank Gaddafi for his consistent support for the ANC. Why he is supported by and has supported Cuba, the Sandinistas, Chavez, the Palestinian cause, the Irish national struggle, etc, etc.

It would be a disaster for western oil companies and imperialism generally if any of the Libyan lessons learnt in 40 years of anti-imperialist struggle began to infect the generalised Arab revolt. Which might explain why a country with a population the size of Wales, albeit with better health and wealth indices, is now facing the combined political muscle and potential military threat of the European Union, the United States etc.

It is clearly a bigger ideological than military threat. Particularly at this time, against the background of the continued worldwide economic collapse of capitalism, its drive towards generalised warmongering, and its scramble to secure oil supplies and arms deals.

That any of these truths should get in the way of western warmongering propaganda has led to an unprecedented campaign to put the frighteners on western middle-class intellectuals. For example, the enforced resignation of Sir Howard Davies at the London School of Economics for accepting a donation from Saif Gaddafi’s foundation after the university had awarded him a PhD.

There is hardly a university in the UK that has not taken money from the ‘Gaddafi regime’, but, as the Daily Telegraph pointed out, the real sin was not taking the money but engaging in academic dialogue with the Libyans on the practice of direct democracy in Libya. Saif Gaddafi had been asked to deliver the Ralph Miliband Lecture (the father of the Miliband brothers, who, according to the Daily Telegraph, was, like Gaddafi, seeking his own ‘third way’, which was neither Soviet socialism nor western capitalism).

It should be as clear as crystal who are the reactionaries and who are the anti-reactionaries; who are the imperialists and who are the anti-imperialists in this pivotal struggle.

Of course, all class-conscious, anti-imperialist and progressive movements should stand shoulder to shoulder with the unfolding Arab revolt, but they should also stand for the victory of the Libyan revolution against western counter-revolution; it’s one and the same struggle. Although one doubts that much of the British left will understand that.

———-
Dave Roberts has visited Libya numerous times over the last 15 years, leading European delegations, participating in international roundtable conferences in Tripoli and Benghazi, and facilitating British academics in studying the workings of Libyan direct democracy. He has toured the country extensively, meeting with students, academics, health workers, members of people’s committees and the Revolutionary Committees Movement.

Cuba rejects intervention in Libya

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil

Statement by Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, 1 March 2011, via Granma

Mr President:

Humanity’s conscience is repulsed by the deaths of innocent people under any circumstances, anyplace. Cuba fully shares the worldwide concern for the loss of civilian lives in Libya and hopes that its people are able to reach a peaceful and sovereign solution to the civil war occurring there, with no foreign interference, and can guarantee the integrity of that nation.

Most certainly the Libyan people oppose any foreign military intervention, which would delay an agreement even further and cause thousands of deaths, displacement and enormous injury to the population.

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil.

It is noteworthy that the voracity for oil, not peace or the protection of Libyan lives, is the motivation inciting the political forces, primarily conservative, which today, in the United States and some European countries, are calling for a Nato military intervention in Libyan territory. Nor does it appear that objectivity, accuracy or a commitment to the truth are prevailing in part of the press, where reports are being used by media giants to fan the flames.

Given the magnitude of what is taking place in Libya and the Arab world, in the context of a global economic crisis, responsibility and a long-term vision should prevail on the part of governments in the developed countries. Although the goodwill of some could be exploited, it is clear that a military intervention would lead to a war with serious consequences for human lives, especially the millions of poor who comprise four fifths of humanity.

Despite the paucity of some facts and information, the reality is that the origins of the situation in North Africa and the Middle East are to be found within the crisis of the rapacious policy imposed by the United States and its Nato allies in the region. The price of food has tripled, water is scarce, the desert is growing, poverty is on the rise and with it, repugnant social inequality and exclusion in the distribution of the opulent wealth garnered from oil in the region.

The fundamental human right is the right to life, which is not worth living without human dignity.

The way in which the right to life is being violated should arouse concern. According to various sources, more than 111 million people have perished in armed conflicts during modern wars. It cannot be forgotten in this room that, if in World War I civilian deaths amounted to 5 percent of total casualties, in the subsequent wars of conquest after 1990, basically in Iraq, with more than one million, and Afghanistan with more than 70,000, the deaths of innocents stand at 90 percent. The proportion of children in these figures is horrific and unprecedented.

The concept of ‘collateral damage’, an offense to human nature, has been accepted in the military doctrine of Nato and the very powerful nations.

In the last decade, humanitarian international law has been trampled, as is occurring on the US Guantánamo Naval Base, which usurps Cuban territory.

As a consequence of those wars, global refugee figures have increased by 34 percent, to more than 26 million people.

Military spending increased by 49 percent in the decade, to reach $1.5tr, more than half of that figure in the United States alone. The industrial-military complex continues producing wars.

Every year, 740,000 human beings die, not only on account of conflicts, but as victims of violent acts associated with organised crime.

In one European country, a woman dies every five days as a result of domestic violence. In the countries of the South, half a million mothers die in childbirth every year.

Every day, 29,000 children die of hunger and preventable diseases. In the minutes that I have been speaking, no less than 120 children have died. Four million perish in their first month of life. In total, 11 million children die every year.

There are 100,000 deaths a day from causes related to malnutrition, adding up to 35 million a year.

In Hurricane Katrina alone, in the most developed country in the world, 1,836 people died, almost all of them African Americans of few resources. In the last two years, 470,000 people died throughout the world as a result of natural disasters, 97 percent of them of low income.

In the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti alone, more than 250,000 people died, almost all of them resident in very poor homes. The same thing occurred with homes swept away by excessive rainfall in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

If the developing countries had infant and maternal mortality rates like those of Cuba, 8.4 million children and 500,000 mothers would be saved annually. In the cholera epidemic in Haiti, Cuban doctors are treating almost half of the patients, with a mortality rate five times lower than those being treated by physicians from other countries. Cuban international medical cooperation has made it possible to save more than 4.4 million lives in dozens of countries in four continents.

Human dignity is a human right. Today, 1.4 billion people are living in extreme poverty. There are 1.2 billion hungry people, and a further two billion are suffering from malnutrition. There are 759 million illiterate adults.

Mr President:

The Council has demonstrated its capacity for approaching human rights situations in the world, including those of an urgent nature which require attention and action on the part of the international community. The usefulness of the Universal Periodic Review, as a means of sustaining international cooperation, of evaluating the undertakings of all countries without distinction in this context has been confirmed.

The spirit which animated our actions during the review process of this body was to preserve, improve and strengthen this council in its function of effectively promoting and protecting all human rights for everyone.

The results of this exercise express a recognition of the Council’s important achievements in its short existence. While it is true that the agreements reached are insufficient in the light of the demands of developing countries, the body has been preserved from those whose aim was to reform it to their convenience in order to satisfy hegemonic appetites and to resuscitate the past of confrontation, double standards, selectivity and imposition.

It is to be hoped from the debates of the last few days that this human rights council will continue constructing and advancing its institutionalism toward the full exercise of its mandate.

It would be very negative if, on the pretext of reviewing the Council’s institutional construction and in abuse of the dramatic juncture which is being discussed, it should be manipulated and pressured in an opportunist way in order to establish precedents and modify agreements.

If the essential human right is the right to life, will the Council be ready to suspend the membership of states that unleash a war?

Is the Council proposing to make some substantial contribution to eliminating the principal threat to the life of the human species which is the existence of enormous arsenals of nuclear weapons, an infinitesimal part of which, or the explosion of 100 warheads, would provoke a nuclear winter, according to irrefutable scientific evidence?

Will it establish a thematic procedure on the impact of climate change in the exercise of human rights and proclaim the right to a healthy atmosphere?

Will it suspend states which finance and supply military aid utilised by recipient states for mass, flagrant and systematic violations of human rights and for attacks on the civilian population, like those taking place in Palestine?

Will it apply that measure against powerful countries which are perpetrating extra-judicial executions in the territory of other states with the use of high technology, such as smart bombs and drone aircraft?

What will happen to states which accept secret illegal prisons in their territories, facilitate the transit of secret flights with kidnapped persons aboard, or participate in acts of torture?

Can the Council adopt a declaration on the right of peoples to peace?

Will it adopt an action programme that includes concrete commitments guaranteeing the right to alimentation in a moment of food crisis, spiraling food prices and the utilisation of cereal crops to produce biofuels?

Mr President:

Distinguished ministers and delegates:

What measures will this Council adopt against a member state which is committing acts that are causing grave suffering and seriously endangering physical or mental integrity, such as the blockade of Cuba, typified as genocide in Article 2, Paragraphs B and C, of the 1948 Geneva Convention?

Thank you very much.

Translated by Granma International

Workers World editorial: Libya and imperialism

It is outside intervention that poses the greatest threat to Libya's people.

The excellent statement below was issued by Workers World newspaper on 23 February 2011.

********************

Of all the struggles going on in North Africa and the Middle East right now, the most difficult to unravel is the one in Libya.

What is the character of the opposition to the Gaddafi regime, which reportedly now controls the eastern city of Benghazi?

Is it just coincidence that the rebellion started in Benghazi, which is north of Libya’s richest oil fields as well as close to most of its oil and gas pipelines, refineries and its LNG port? Is there a plan to partition the country?

What is the risk of imperialist military intervention, which poses the gravest danger for the people of the entire region?

Libya is not like Egypt. Its leader, Moammar al-Gaddafi, has not been an imperialist puppet like Hosni Mubarak. For many years, Gaddafi was allied to countries and movements fighting imperialism. On taking power in 1969 through a military coup, he nationalised Libya’s oil and used much of that money to develop the Libyan economy. Conditions of life improved dramatically for the people.

For that, the imperialists were determined to grind Libya down. The US actually launched air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 that killed 60 people, including Gaddafi’s infant daughter – which is rarely mentioned by the corporate media. Devastating sanctions were imposed by
both the US and the UN to wreck the Libyan economy.

After the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and levelled much of Baghdad with a bombing campaign that the Pentagon exultantly called “shock and awe”, Gaddafi tried to ward off further threatened aggression on Libya by making big political and economic concessions to the imperialists. He
opened the economy to foreign banks and corporations; he agreed to IMF demands for “structural adjustment”, privatising many state-owned enterprises and cutting state
subsidies on necessities like food and fuel.

The Libyan people are suffering from the same high prices and unemployment that underlie the rebellions elsewhere and that flow from the worldwide capitalist economic crisis.

There can be no doubt that the struggle sweeping the Arab world for political freedom and economic justice has also struck a chord in Libya. There can be no doubt that discontent with the Gaddafi regime is motivating a significant section of the population.

However, it is important for progressives to know that many of the people being promoted in the West as leaders of the opposition are long-time agents of imperialism. The BBC on 22 February showed footage of crowds in Benghazi pulling down the green flag of the republic and replacing
it with the flag of the overthrown monarch King Idris – who had been a puppet of US and British imperialism.

The western media are basing a great deal of their reporting on supposed facts provided by the exile group National Front for the Salvation of Libya, which was trained and financed by the US CIA. Google the front’s name plus CIA and you will find hundreds of references.

The Wall Street Journal in a 23 February editorial wrote that “The US and Europe should help Libyans overthrow the Gaddafi regime.” There is no talk in the board rooms or the corridors of Washington about intervening to help the people of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain overthrow their dictatorial rulers. Even with all the lip service being paid to the mass struggles rocking the region right now, that would be unthinkable. As for Egypt and Tunisia,
the imperialists are pulling every string they can to get the masses off the streets.

There was no talk of US intervention to help the Palestinian people of Gaza when thousands died from being blockaded, bombed and invaded by Israel. Just the opposite. The US intervened to prevent condemnation of the zionist settler state.

Imperialism’s interest in Libya is not hard to find. Bloomberg.com wrote on 22 February that while Libya is Africa’s third-largest producer of oil, it has the continent’s largest proven reserves – 44.3bn barrels. It is a country with a relatively small population but the potential to produce huge profits for the giant oil companies. That’s how the super-rich look at
it, and that’s what underlies their professed concern for the people’s democratic rights in Libya.

Getting concessions out of Gaddafi is not enough for the imperialist oil barons. They want a government that they can own outright, lock, stock and barrel. They have never forgiven Gaddafi for overthrowing the monarchy and nationalising the oil. Fidel Castro of Cuba in his column
‘Reflections‘ takes note of imperialism’s hunger for oil and warns that the US is laying the basis for military
intervention in Libya.

In the US, some forces are trying to mobilise a street-level campaign promoting such US intervention. We should oppose this outright and remind any well-intentioned people of the millions killed and displaced by US intervention in Iraq.

Progressive people are in sympathy with what they see as a popular movement in Libya. We can help such a movement most by supporting its just demands while rejecting imperialist intervention, in whatever form it may take. It is the people of Libya who must decide their future.

What is the PSC executive afraid of?

(Post updated on 11 Feb 2011)

The following resolution was vociferously opposed by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at its AGM on 22 January. Since a resolution containing many of the same points had been passed virtually unanimously at the Stop the War conference last year, this came as rather a surprise to the comrade who moved the motion.

We will be writing in more detail about this soon, but in the meantime, a few of the arguments posed against the resolution went like this:

– The list of actions is ‘too prescriptive’; we can’t agree to it.

Rather strange given that most of the other resolutions also had lists of actions attached, which related to the specific spheres of action they were looking at (ie, boycott and divestment, trade-union work, student work etc). In fact, resolutions are by their nature prescriptive. That doesn’t mean the movers expect the actions suggested in it to be carried out exclusively.

Quite clearly, in this case, the idea here was to be complementary to other work being done by the PSC. Equally clearly, this argument is just a cover – perhaps for reasons that the opposers don’t feel comfortable sharing with the rest of us!

– We can’t put resources into campaigning/fundraising for the Gaza protestors; it’s a diversion from what we do.

Unbelievable, considering that it was PSC who called the demo at which these young people were arrested. And crazy, given that if we launched a big campaign to have the sentences overturned, we could really draw attention to the British state’s role in supporting Israel. Not to mention highlighting islamophobia, bringing many more young people and muslims towards the PSC and generally highlighting the issue that people have been criminalised for merely objecting to war crimes!

– We can’t promise to support all those arrested for opposing Israel’s war crimes (including the Gaza protestors); we don’t know who they might be.

The clear implication here was that some of the people being targetted for their principled stand, whether direct action activists or newly politicised young muslims, might somehow be ‘asking for it’!

– We can’t ask workers to refuse to cooperate with war crimes in the current climate, when they’re worried about losing their jobs.

Not sure we really need to comment on this, except to say that you could make the same argument about concentration camp guards! Either it’s a crime or it isn’t. Either we’re against the British state assisting in Israel’s crimes or we’re not. The fact is that we can’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to – but surely it’s our job to take the arguments to them and help them to make informed decisions? Why is it ok to campaign amongst union members as individuals around the boycott demands, but not to try to mobilise them collectively?

It’s also worth bearing the student example in mind. Two years ago, students were occupying their universities in support of the people of Gaza. The confidence and experience they gained in these actions no doubt contributed to the militancy we’re seeing today in the anti-fees movement and occupations. Far from making working people nervous, encouraging them to use their power to stop crimes against Palestinians might actually help them to get more militant in using their power against the current cuts in benefits, pensions, wages and public services!

It’s clear the above arguments don’t add up, so we have to ask ourselves, just what is it that the PSC national executive is really afraid of? If we want to build a MASS movement in support of Palestine, why are we afraid to try to mobilise broad sections of the working class or muslim communities? And why are we avoiding the question of REAL, CONCRETE solidarity with Palestine?

Jeremy Corbyn’s closing statement blethering on about Early Day Motions in Parliament was a joke. Anyone who knows anything about how the House of Commons works can tell you that EDMs aren’t even relevant within its walls, never mind outside of them. They don’t even get debated!

We were sad to see that not only Betty Hunter, but also PSC deputy chair Kamel Hawwash spoke most shamefully against the resolution, causing much confusion amongst those present as to what could be the reason for so much opposition to something so seemingly innocuous, and so obviously fundamental to our work as actively opposing Israel’s war crimes.

We were also sad at the way the whole debate was handled. It was clear from the inconsistency and illogicality of the opposing arguments that the reasons being put forward in such a hysterial fashion weren’t the actual reasons for the executive opposing the resolution. Several speakers said that ‘while there were many good things in the motion, it was impossible to support it all because of [insert spurious objection to half a sentence here]’.

But if that was truly the case, why not contact the movers of the resolution about changing it, so as to let the good stuff through? Why not put forward amendments that we would all have had time to read and think about before the conference? Why wait and hijack everybody with an unexpected and baffling ‘controversy’ that many present were simply unable to unravel in the time available?

One possible answer is that the executive is afraid of attracting too much negative attention from the state if it openly supports either the Gaza protestors or the various direct-action anti-war-crimes activists, despite the fact that well publicised campaigns along these lines could do much to broaden the appeal of PSC and to extend the reach of our solidarity message (all of which could make a direct difference to Palestinians).

Another possibility is that the executive is afraid to upset the cosy relationship it has built with various Labour party and trade-union officials by raising the question of direct participation in war crimes by British workers – and their power to withhold that participation – within the unions, many of which spend their time trying to squash the notion of collective power, substituting instead the idea of individual pleas to the better judgement of managers and employers.

This fits with the current PSC strategy of spending much time and resource on ‘lobbying’ to ‘change the minds’ of MPs and MEPs, who are then allocated ‘good’ or ‘bad’ status according to whether they’re happy to sign up to one of the aforementioned Early Day Motions or similar. Instead of mobilising the real power of the British people from the street and demanding that the British state withdraw its support from Israel, many in the PSC leadership would like us to confine ourselves to going cap in hand to parliamentarians and asking them to be nicer.

And if nasty MPs, like those unreasonable employers who say no to trade unionists, decline to sign up to a ‘please be nicer to the poor Palestinians’ request? Well, we tried. Come back next year!

On a more optimistic note, despite the bullocking from the Executive Committee and their trade-union and Labour party friends, around a third of those present voted in favour of the resolution, and many members went away determined to discuss the issue in their branches. We hope they will make the arguments in favour there and come back determined to change the organisation’s policy next year.

Full text of the resolution follows.

No cooperation with war crimes: step up the campaign

In the last year, many important developments have taken place, which on the one hand make the work of actively opposing Israel’s war crimes more urgent, and on the other have created an atmosphere that is more receptive to our message.

In this context, conference notes the passing at the Stop the War conference of a motion calling on the coalition to “take the line of non-cooperation into as many arenas as possible”. This resolution included a detailed programme of activities that could take this work forward, some of which the PSC has already been taking the lead in.

Conference notes the attack on those condemning war crimes that was embodied in the draconian sentences handed down to the Gaza protestors. Congress further notes that these sentences were aimed not only at discouraging muslim youth from political activism, but also at dividing the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements along racial lines, and branding Palestine solidarity as a ‘muslim’, rather than a human rights or anti-imperialist issue.

Conference condemns the murder by Israeli commandos of ten solidarity activists (nine at the time and one who died later) aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May, despite the fact that the UN had called for the ships to be allowed to pass. Conference notes the UN’s recent findings that these murders were illegal – another war crime to add to the many being committed daily against the Palestinian people.

Conference commends the excellent work done by PSC in getting an enhanced boycott motion passed at the TUC following the flotilla attack, and notes that the acceptance of much stronger language than previously used reflects the sea change in the attitude of many ordinary British workers towards Israel.

Conference further notes that in the atmosphere of international outrage that followed the flotilla murders, even Israeli-friendly politicians such as Cameron and Hague were forced to make statements condemning both the murders and the siege on Gaza.

Conference reaffirms its support for all those who have taken the lead in active non-cooperation over the past year, in particular for the EDO Decommissioners, for the Gaza protestors, and for the many British participants in siege-busting missions by land and sea to Gaza.

Conference notes that the landmark acquittal in the case of the Decommissioners can only facilitate more actions of this kind, since it not only sets a legal precedent, but is a reflection of the general sense of disgust against Israeli war crimes.

Conference reaffirms its belief that the majority of people in Britain are opposed to British imperialism’s support for the criminal Israeli state, and considers that the time is ripe to make active non-cooperation a central theme of our work. Conference therefore calls on the incoming steering committee to work with Stop the War and any other organisations that are willing in taking the line of non-cooperation into as many arenas as possible, including:

1. Putting on a fundraising concert to draw attention to the Gaza prisoners’ plight and to raise money towards a campaign to overturn their convictions.
2. Giving full backing, including maximum possible publicity, to all those groups or individuals, whether affiliated to PSC or not, who, like the EDO Decommissioners and the Raytheon activists, are targeted by the state for refusing to cooperate with, or for actively attempting to prevent the many crimes of the occupation, including: the frequent bombings and shootings of civilians; the destruction of Palestinian homes, farms, schools, hospitals, mosques and churches; the crippling siege of Gaza; the building of the apartheid wall, and the seizure of ever more land in Jerusalem and the West Bank for jewish-only settlement construction.
3. Building on our existing campaign inside the unions to draw attention to Israeli war crimes, and the complicity of the British government and corporations in those crimes, with the aim of passing in each of them, and then at the TUC, motions condemning those crimes and calling on workers to refuse to cooperate in their commission, whether it be by making or moving munitions or other equipment, writing or broadcasting propaganda, or helping in any other way to smooth the path of Israel’s war machine.
4. Building on the excellent PSC campaign to draw attention to pro-Israeli propaganda in Panorama and working with such groups as Media Lens (see, for example, their recent alert drawing attention to the media’s total bypassing of evidence revealing Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza) and others to draw in as many members and supporters as possible to an ongoing campaign to hold the media to account for their pivotal role in apologising for, covering up and normalising Israeli war crimes.
5. Continuing and increasing the work already done to make Britain a place where Israeli war criminals can get no peace, through the campaign on universal jurisdiction, through holding protests, through citizens’ arrests and through all other available channels, including using local, national and international courts to file charges and draw attention to the crimes of Israeli military, government and corporate leaders – and those in Britain who back them politically or financially.

North Korea attacks South Korea … or is it the other way around?

South Korean war games that fired shells across the border and simulated an invasion of the North provoked a response from the DPRK.

By Steve Gowans, via what’s left

If you read Mark McDonald’s article in The New York Times, ‘”Crisis status” in South Korea after North shells island’, the answer depends on whether you paid attention to the headline, the expert commentary, and the tone of the article, or whether you paid attention to the facts.

If you paid attention to the former then North Korea attacked South Korea.

If you paid attention to the latter, the opposite is true.

Here are the facts McDonald reported.

• 70,000 South Korean troops were beginning a military drill … sharply criticised by Pyongyang as “simulating an invasion of the North” and “a means to provoke a war”.
• ROK [South Korean] artillery units fired toward the DPRK [North Korea] from a battery close to the North Korean coast. The South acknowledges firing the shots.
• The DPRK replied.

Shouldn’t the headline read: ‘”Crisis status” in North Korea after South Korea mobilises 70,000 troops and shells the North’?

Chilean miners: what was the TV show hiding?

Relatives of the miners trapped in the San Jose mine wait in a camp near the mine in Copiapo, Chile, 11 October 2010.

Deeply moved, nearly a billion of us looked on. A whole nation – managers and workers, rich and poor – united in a common effort to save 33 Chilean miners, with their president leading from the front. Emotion, suspense, ratings, huge advertising revenues. But what did this TV extravaganza conceal?

By Michel Colon, via michelcollon.info

That the ‘saviours’ were in fact the culprits. Three hours before the landslide, the San José miners had requested permission to leave after hearing suspect noises. Their bosses’ refusal imprisoned them under several tons of earth. Is this surprising? No. On 30 July, a Ministry of Labour report had already flagged up important safety problems at the San José mine, but no action was taken, and the Ministry kept silent.

Of course, everyone was overjoyed at the happy ending. But the rescue show masked the extent of the problem: 400 Chilean miners have died in the last decade. And more importantly, it masked the causes.

“Poor investment and safety standards” said Marco-Enriquez-Ominami, Sebastián Piñera’s opponent in the last presidential elections. In fact, in 2009 alone, 191,000 work accidents were recorded in Chile, in which 443 workers died. And the Chilean government is directly responsible, as, it has refused for the last 12 years to ratify the International Labour Organisation Convention C176 on health and safety in mines. Business enjoys unrestricted freedom, while the workers have no rights.

Behind the saviour hides a billionaire

His face appeared constantly on every screen: the head of state – smiling, focused, concerned for his fellow citizens. But was this idealised image perhaps a little too smooth? Who is the real Sebastián Piñera, elected President in 2009 with 51.61 percent of the vote?

At 61, he is worth $1.2bn, which according to Forbes magazine makes him the 701st richest man in the world – a fortune he amassed thanks to measures implemented during the blood-soaked Pinochet dictatorship years (1973-1990). At the time, Chile was the testing ground for the neoliberalism of the extremist economists who came to be known as the Chicago Boys. Piñera was able to profit from these privatisations by helping himself to the credit-card sector.

Nicknamed the ‘Silvio Berlusconi of Latin America’, Piñera now owns Chilevision, one of the country’s largest TV networks, and Colo Colo, one of the biggest football teams and is also involved in distribution, the mining industry and pharmaceuticals. On becoming president, he was obliged to sell his shares in the Lan Chile airline (where he was the majority shareholder). He therefore wears two hats : head of state and powerful businessman. When asked by the Argentinean newspaper Clarín about this ambiguous status, he responded: “Only the dead and saints have no conflicts of interest.”

Piñera is certainly no saint. Monica Madariaga, Minister of Justice during the military dictatorship, has admitted to putting pressure on judges, at the time when Piñera was a bank manager. The level of fraud rose to nearly $240m. In 2007, Piñera was also condemned for insider dealing by the financial markets authority following his acquisition of shares in Lan Chile. As the great French writer Honoré de Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune hides a crime.” That of Piñera is the colour of the blood of the dictatorship’s victims.

By hiding his past, and presenting him as a friend of the people, the TV spectacle at the San José mine handed the yellow-helmeted Piñera a real political opportunity. As a result, he rose in the opinion polls. The Chilean right, which dared not show its face after the dictatorship, has regained its prestige.

Piñera, the posthumous victory of Pinochet and the USA

Despite the scandals, Sebastián Piñera knows how to present himself to best advantage. His electoral campaign stressed his ‘love of democracy’ and the fact that he voted against Pinochet remaining in power during the 1988 referendum. His election thus owes much to his image as ‘the success man’ – as if making a personal fortune implied the ability to govern a country. Quite the contrary, his fortune was built precisely on undermining the community.

And he’s getting ready to carry on doing so. This admirer of Nicholas Sarkozy intends to privatise state assets, under the pretext of covering the losses incurred as a result of the great earthquake of February 2010. It would mean selling 40 percent of Codelco (the number one copper company) as well as another mining company – Cimm T&S – into private hands. This makes perfect sense, given that Chile is the world’s biggest exporter of copper. Remember that certain US multinationals committed the most heinous crimes in order to keep control of this wealth.

In 1970, a progressive government led by Salvador Allende undertook to develop Chile and free its people from poverty. To do this, it had to regain control of the primary source of national wealth – copper – obtaining a fairer price and allocating the revenues to the pressing needs of the population. The United States let fly immediately: a financial embargo, destabilisation by the CIA, terrorist activities, every kind of blackmail … until the military coup d’état and the installation of the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. There were thousands of victims, and a whole progressive generation was massacred or exiled.

In his speech to the UN in December 1972, a few months before his assassination, President Allende described the looting of his country by the US copper multinationals, the Anaconda Company and Kennecott Copper Corporation:

“The same corporations which have exploited Chilean copper for so many years have made over $4bn in profits in the course of the last 42 years, although their initial investments amounted to less than $30m. Take a simple, painful example and a flagrant contrast: in my country, there are 600,000 children who will never be able to experience normal human lives because, in their first eight months, they were deprived of essential quantities of protein. My country, Chile, would have been totally transformed by these four billion dollars. A tiny fraction of this amount would have provided all these children from my country with enough protein once and for all.”

Piñera’s electoral victory is essentially a posthumous victory for the dictator, the return to power of the United States.

Besides, Piñera is planning to borrow from the Inter-American Development Bank, dominated by the USA – a loan which will also result in new anti-social cutbacks. This general offensive of the private against the public is hardly surprising now that there is a billionaire at the country’s helm. All semblance of independence between the two spheres has vanished: the Minister of Foreign Affairs used to run the Falabella department store chain, while his counterpart at the Ministry of Health was head of Las Condes private clinic, the country’s biggest. Even though they have temporarily abandoned these posts, they continue to take decisions which have a major bearing on their companies’ futures.

With such billionaires in power, it’s hardly surprising that business tax is ridiculously low – 3 percent in 2011 and 1.5 percent in 2012 – all still under the pretext of the earthquake! In fact, Chile occupies 21st place worldwide in terms of countries which tax capital the least – and first place in Latin America (source: Pricewaterhouse Coopers). The TV said nothing about the links between the dictatorship and Piñera, or about these anti-social projects.

Also covered up was the miners’ anger

In the country where the CEO is King, Piñera was still nevertheless obliged to set up a commission on work safety following the drama of San José – due to deliver its findings on 22 November. He also set up a Mines Control Authority and ordered a review of mining safety regulations.

This is no gift from a big-hearted billionaire, merely a retreat in the face of popular discontent. Just after the miners were rescued, their colleagues demonstrated for their unpaid salary and bonuses, the continuous training of the young workers, the approval of their benefits, retirement for the elderly and redundancy money. Then, on 7 September, Chilean unions demanded the ratification of health and safety agreements not only in mines, but also in the construction and agricultural sectors.

But what the TV failed to point out was that these violations of workers’ rights are the result of the reforms implemented during the dictatorship. The Pinochet years turned health, education and social security into mere commodities – jobs became much more vulnerable and flexible. And these neoliberal reforms have remained virtually intact, as they remained unchallenged by the coalition governments (alliances of Christian Democrats and Socialists) which followed one another in the 20 years after Pinochet. Flouting workers’ rights – even human rights – is still legal in Chile.

Piñera is implicated in this too – his brother José was Minister of Labour in the 1980s, during the dictatorship. It was he who applied the no-holds-barred neoliberalism of the Chicago Boys, insisting that pensions should be ‘capitalised’, ie, privatised. This disaster brings us back to CampEsperanza. One of the 33, Mario Gomez, began working in the mines aged 12 and is still there today, aged 63! Why? Because his pension amounts to a pittance – thanks to José Piñera! Nothing of this was said on TV.

One of the world’s most unjust countries

Although ‘an economic miracle’ in Washington’s eyes, Chile is in fact one of the world’s most unjust countries. CASEN (Centre for Research on the National Socio-Economic Situation) statistics show that poverty is rising at the same speed as GDP (the country’s overall production). GDP is indeed on the up, but only benefits a sector of the population, thereby further exacerbating inequalities. Poverty rose by 15 percent in 2009, affecting the under-3s in particular. One in four of the population is poor according to CASEN.

But these official figures underestimate the reality, based as they are on 1988 calculations, labelling the poor as those earning under 2,000 pesos a day – in a country where a single bus ticket costs 500 pesos! The cost of living is not therefore factored in. A more realistic estimate would list 8 million poor, ie, half the population. Faced with this, UN Human Rights organisations remain silent.

Meanwhile, the United States – grand defender of democracy – considers the country an ally and even an example. Is it purely by chance that Chile is moving closer to Columbia, considered a US agent in Latin America?

In short, Chilean society has been divided, stripped of its rights, misinformed and reduced to submission by the uniformity of the media. The aim of the right, and even of the coalition, has been the continuation of the military regime. The country is increasingly becoming a business paradise, repressing workers and unions alike. Sebastián Piñera ensures the model of the constitution put in place by Pinochet in 1980 is preserved and is likely to take things even further. TV said nothing of this.

What is a TV show for?

To summarise (and learn some lessons, as we will be treated to more such shows in future). For days and days, the major international media kept trotting out the same fairy tale: the big-hearted billionaire so concerned about the poor! For days and days, the TV ignored the misdeeds and selfish plans of this same billionaire – his links to the heinous dictatorship, his servility towards the United States.

Chilean and international cameras were all trained on this spectacle. Nothing, for example, on the impressive hunger strike of the Mapuche aborigines. Harshly repressed, treated like terrorists, their struggle was wiped out.

On the other hand, the TV spared no detail about the miners, down to their most intimate secrets. We learned of the double lives led by some, the hidden children and the mistresses. You’d think you’d switched on to pure reality TV. No information, just buckets of emotion. Producers and publishers are already talking about a film, a TV film and a book – the perfect opportunity to make a killing! In a quest for the poignant details, the log book of one of the survivors is coveted by all and sundry. It is estimated that potential buyers are ready to pay out up to $50,000. These 33 stories will thus be exploited to the maximum, totally exposing the private lives of the protagonists.

The whole TV ‘show’ was designed to pre-empt reflection, working the emotional angles with carefully honed techniques, transfixing viewers and bumping up advertising revenues. The emotional side has been systematically exploited so as to hide the absence of any real inquiry into the causes of the problems. Work accidents, for example, are almost always the result of a conflict of opposing interests: profits versus safety.

No enquiry therefore into the responsibility of the ‘saviours’ and the Chilean government. No inquest into our western governments which acted as Pinochet’s accomplices and refused to bring this criminal to judgement. No enquiry into fundamental topical questions – why it is that one Latin American in two is poor while the continent abounds in riches and multinationals make enormous profits? Why do our western governments oppose all those who attempt to fight against poverty? Why did these governments do nothing when the CIA attempted coups d’état to eliminate Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa? Why did they do nothing to counter the successful military coup d’état in Honduras ? Journalists, union members and human rights workers are systematically killed and this provokes no international media campaign?

Instead of genuine enquiries, TV brainwashes us with messages along the lines of “billionaires and workers, all in the same boat”. For real information, look elsewhere.

Translated from french by Andrew Morris

Reflections by Comrade Fidel: The Empire and the Right to Life of Human Beings

That’s terrific! So I exclaimed when I read down to the last line about the revelations of the famous journalist Seymour Hersh, printed in Democracy Now! and collected as one of the 25 most censored news items in the United States.

The material is entitled “The War Crimes of Stanley McChrystal, U.S. General” and it was included in Project Censored, put together by a university in California, including the essential paragraphs from those revelations.

Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, named the commander responsible for the war in Afghanistan by Obama in May of 2009, had earlier been the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) reporting to Dick Cheney [Bush’s vice president]. Most of Gen. McChrystal’s 33-year military career is being kept classified [in other words, secret], including his services between 2003 and 2008 as commander of JSOC, the highly secret elite unit that for years the Pentagon refused to acknowledge its existence. JSOC is a special unit, of ‘black’ operations of the Navy Seals (Marines Special Forces) and Delta Force [secret army soldiers for special operations, formally called ‘Special Forces Operational Division-Delta (SFOD-D), while the Pentagon calls it the Combat Applications Group].

“Pulitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hersh said the Bush administration ran an “executive assassination ring” that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney and that Congress never felt any concern to investigate. JSOC teams used to travel to different countries, without even speaking to the ambassador or the CIA Station Head, with a list of people they were looking for, finding them, killing them and leaving. There was a current list of people marked as targets, drawn up by Vice President Cheney’s office […] There were assassinations in dozens of countries in the Middle East and in Latin America, Hersh stated : ‘There’s an executive order, signed by Jerry Ford, President Ford, in the ’70s, forbidding such action. It’s not only contrary—it’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s counterproductive.’

JSOC was also implicated in war crimes, including the torture of prisoners in secret ‘ghost’ detention centres. Camp Nama in Iraq, operated by JSOC under McChrystal, was one of such `ghost` facilities hidden from the Red Cross International Committee (CICR) and accused of some of the worst acts of torture.”

They officially installed the Major General at Fort Braga, North Carolina, but he was “a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and at other special forces bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where the forces under his command were based”.

Next we deal with a point of special interest, when such facts came into conflict with officials who, in fulfilling their functions, were obliged to commit deeds that put them in open violation of the law and implied serious crimes.

“An interrogator at Camp Nama known as Jeff described locking prisoners in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat; exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water; bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and severe beatings.”

Immediately we are dealing with flagrant violations of international principles and covenants signed by the United States. Cuban readers will remember the story told in the two pieces where I wrote about our relations with the International Red Cross, to which we returned a great number of prisoners from the enemy army that had fallen into our hands during our defence of the Sierra Maestra and the later strategic counter-offensive against the Cuban army, trained and supplied by the U.S. Never was any prisoner mistreated and none of the wounded was ever denied immediate care. That very same institution, headquartered in Switzerland, could testify to those facts.

“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and it, therefore, has the right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country that is at war or under military occupation.”

“In the explanation why no other press had covered this story, Hersh stated: ‘My colleagues at the press corps often don’t follow up, not because they don’t want to but because they don’t know who to call. If I’m writing something on the Joint Special Operations Command, which is an ostensibly classified unit, how do they find it out? The government will tell them everything I write is wrong or that they can’t comment. It’s easy for those stories to be dismissed. I do think the relationship with JSOC is changing under Obama. It’s more under control now.’.”

…the decision of the Obama Administration to appoint Gen. McChrystal as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan and the prolongation of military jurisdiction for U.S. prisoners in its war on terrorism, held in the Guantanamo Bay prison, are unfortunately examples of how the Obama Administration continues walking in Bush`s footsteps.

Rock Creek Free Press revealed in June 2010 that Seymour Hersh, taking part in the Global Research Journalism Conference in Geneva, criticized President Obama in April of 2010 and denounced that US forces were carrying out executions on the battlefield.

“Those captured in Afghanistan are being executed on the battlefield”, Hersh stated

By this point, the story comes in contact with highly current reality: the continuity of a policy by the president that succeeded the delirious W. Bush, inventor of the war waged to get power over the most important gas and oil resources in the world in a region inhabited by more than 2.5 billion people, by virtue of acts committed against the people of the United States by an organization of men who were recruited and armed by the CIA to fight in Afghanistan against Soviet soldiers and who continue to enjoy the backing of the closest U.S. allies.

The complex and unpredictable area whose resources are being disputed goes from Iraq and the Middle East right up to the remote limits of the Chinese region of Xinjiang, going through Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazajstan, Kirguistan and Tayikistan, capable of supplying the gas and oil for the growing economy of the Peoples` Republic of China and industrialized Europe. The population of Afghanistan, as well as a part of Pakistan, a country with 170 million inhabitants and possessing nuclear weapons, is the victim of the unmanned Yankee airplane attacks that are massacring the civilian population.

Among the 25 most censured news items by the great media, selected by Sonoma State University of California, as it has been doing for 34 years, one of them, corresponding to the 2009-2010 period, was “The War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal”; and another two are related with our island: “The Media Ignores Cuban Medical Aid in Haitian Earthquake” and “Prisoners in Guantanamo are Still Being Brutalized”. A fourth state: “Obama Reduces Social Spending and Increases the Military”.

Our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, was politically responsible for the Cuban Medical Mission sent to Pakistan when the destructive earthquake battered the simple nature of that country`s north-eastern region where extensive areas inhabited by the same ethnic group, with the same culture and traditions were arbitrarily split up by English colonialism into countries that later fell under the aegis of the Yankees.

In his speech yesterday, on October 26th, at UN headquarters, he demonstrated how excellently well-informed he is about the international situation of our complicated world.

His brilliant speech and the Resolution approved by that body, because of its great importance, require a Reflection that I propose to write.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 27, 2010
9:16 p.m.