Notice
how vast the extent of the Gadhafi tribe in Libya compared with
other,
much smaller tribes. Most Americans are unaware of facts
everyone knows in
North Africa: Gadhafi [Bani Walid’s favorite
son!] ruled because an overwhelming majority of Gadhafis 9like
most tribal members anywhere) always vote for their tribal ruler and
not a person from another tribe [e.g., any candidate from the
Zuwaya]. Map
of
Libya See also:
http://worldtraining.net/GreatGame.htm
See also: http://worldtraining.net/Libya4.htm and http://worldtraining.net/Libya3.htm http://worldtraining.net/Libya5.htm http://worldtraining.net/Libya9.htm See also these series: http://worldtraining.net/GreatGame.htm /GreatGame1.htm etc. For More: http://worldtraining.net/Libya14.html
UPDATE: Nov. 2014: Why Libya? November 5, 2014 by Robert Barsocchini Following the standard US playbook, the Obama regime and its accomplices made up crimes to propagandize their populations into accepting illegal aggression and terrorism against Libya in 2011, and now ignore the actual crimes being committed in the Libya shoved, by the West, into “the abyss”. Journalist Patrick Cockburn yesterday noted the fabrications “that were used to fuel popular support for the air war in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere”: Human rights organisations … discovered that there was no evidence for several highly publicised atrocities supposedly carried out by Gaddafi’s forces…These included the story of the mass rape of women by Gaddafi’s troops that Amnesty International exposed as being without foundation. The uniformed bodies of government soldiers were described by rebel spokesmen as being men shot because they were about to defect to the opposition. Video film showed the soldiers still alive as rebel prisoners so it must have been the rebels who had executed them and put the blame on the government. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/ten-reasons-libya-under-gaddafi-was-a-great-place-to-live-2746
Before
the USNATO military invasion, Libya was pumping one million 800
thousand barrels a day of excellent quality light oil, along with
abundant deposits of natural gas. Such riches—because shared with
the Libyan people–allowed
Libya to reach life expectancy that is almost at 75 years of age and
the highest per capita income in Africa.
In December 1951, Libya became the first African country to attain
its independence after WWII.
Its
harsh desert is located over an enormous lake of fossil waters,
equivalent to more than three times the land area of Cuba; this has
made it possible to construct a broad network of pipelines of fresh
water that stretch from
one end of the country to the other.
In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources. For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights. When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.[Libya is now] clamping down on women’s rights.... all this, gone with the wind...
Cockburn continues: The majority of Libyans are demonstrably worse off today than they were under Gaddafi, despite media claims --- ask Libyans! … Foreign governments and media alike have good reason to forget what they said and did in Libya in 2011, because the aftermath of the overthrow of Gaddafi has been so appalling. The extent of the calamity is made clear by two reports on the present state of the country, one by Amnesty International called “Libya: Rule of the gun – abductions, torture and other militia abuses in western Libya” and a second by Human Rights Watch, focusing on the east of the country, called “Libya: Assassinations May Be Crimes Against Humanity”. Amnesty says that torture has become commonplace with victims being “beaten with plastic tubes, sticks, metal bars or cables, given electric shocks, suspended in stress positions for hours, kept blindfolded and shackled for days.” It is well known that the Obama regime simply continued the leaked Bush Jr. agenda to “take out” Libya and six other countries.
But the Bush agenda was also a continuation of longstanding US policy. The US, immediately after World War II, made internal plans to try to dominate the resources of the Middle East. Specifically, for a few examples, the US commenced terrorist operations to try to overthrow and install a puppet in Syria in 1948, Iran in 1953 (which it did successfully until 1979), and since the 1930s has been closely partnered with the terrorist organization ruling Saudi Arabia.
The US has been engaged in terrorist operations against Libya since at least 1986, when the US carried out “the major single terrorist act” of the year when it planted and detonated explosives there, attempting to assassinate Gaddafi but succeeding only in killing his daughter and many others. With the “leading terrorist state“, the US, caging more women than any other country, cracking down on speech, supporting the mass rapist Mubarak of Egypt for thirty years, through 2011, then transitioning to supporting the new mass rapist Sisi in Egypt now, along with scores of other terrorist regimes, one must look beyond official propaganda to determine why the US overthrew Gaddafi.
Taking into account that the US decided long ago to try to dominate the largely Mid East-based and global oil economy (as it earlier had decided to dominate cotton), US actions can be understood by using Syria’s Assad as an analogy. In trying to control Syria, what would Assad prefer: for any existing opposition to be strong and united against him, or for it to consist of disparate, disorganized, weak factions mostly battling and killing each other, if anyone?
The answer is obvious. We can then extend the analogy to the US (while remembering that the US formerly used Assad as an ally in the US global torture network). In trying to dominate the world’s oil market – and the world in general – what would the “leading terrorist state” prefer: unified, strong opposition or weak, small, disparate, warring factions killing and wiping each other out?
Again, the answer is obvious, so we can move on to asking: since “Gaddafi’s overthrow was very much Nato’s doing” (Cockburn), what was Libya before 2011 when it was destroyed by the US-led NATO terrorist network? Harvard research scholar Garikai Chengu, on October 19, published a report called “Libya: From Africa’s Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Intervention”.
Chengu:In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. Libya is now plagued by] widespread rape, assassinations and torture… America… is now backing… long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator.[Hifter] has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.
Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.
Libya, it appears, was, indeed, an outstandingly strong source of opposition to Western domination of the region, as well as a “threat of a good example” for successfully carrying out policies hated by the USA, such as free healthcare, electricity, and education.
In one particularly egregious move, Gaddafi had even allied with Nelson Mandela in the fight against Apartheid, while the US, particularly Ronald Reagan, strongly supported and fought hard to maintain Apartheid, including by imprisoning Mandela and putting him on the US “terrorist” list (while taking Saddam Hussein off) until Bush Jr. finally changed Mandela’s classification in 2008. Reagan and US efforts to topple Gaddafi were thus integral to the US white supremacist jihad to maintain Apartheid. Indeed, to ask “Why Libya?” is to ask “Why anywhere?” Chengu notes of “Western intervention in … Libya, Iraq, and Syria”: …prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women’s rights and standards of living. As confirmation, the 2014 UN Development Report also found, as Patrick Martin notes:
The steepest decline in living conditions during 2013 occurred in Central African Republic, Libya and Syria—three countries targeted by US and French imperialism for military intervention and political subversion. When we mute Western government and integrated corporate propaganda (what they say) and look at what they actually do, what is left? The bare reality of a brutal Western terror axis butchering, as it always has, any group of people that could potentially deter Western domination and thus cut into the percentage of global wealth captured by Western predators. Depressing, but Carl Herman nicely expresses how we can deal with this. Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics. He also writes professionally for the film industry. Here is his blog. Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities. Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.
UPDATE as of JULY 2014 ON LIBYA
Libya has also descended into absolute chaos. We reported in 2012:Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya. Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. (This is – again – in contrast to toleration of Christians under Gadaffi.) The Guardian noted in March: According to Amnesty International, the “mounting curbs on freedom of expression are threatening the rights Libyans sought to gain“. A repressive Gaddafi-era law has been amended to criminalise any insults to officials or the general national congress (the interim parliament). One journalist, Amara al-Khattabi, was put on trial for alleging corruption among judges. Satellite television stations deemed critical of the authorities have been banned, one station has been attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, and journalists have been assassinated.
Ever since the fall of [Gadaffi's] dictatorship, there have been stories of black Libyans being treated en masse as Gaddafi loyalists and attacked. In a savage act of collective punishment, 35,000 people were driven out of Tawergha in retaliation for the brutal siege of the anti-Gaddafi stronghold of Misrata. The town was trashed and its inhabitants have been left in what human rights organisations are calling “deplorable conditions” in a Tripoli refugee camp. Such forced removals continue elsewhere. Thousands have been arbitrarily detained without any pretence of due process; and judges, prosecutors, lawyers and witnesses have been attacked or even killed. Libya’s first post-Gaddafi prosecutor general, Abdulaziz Al-Hassadi, was assassinated in the town of Derna last month. When residents of Benghazi – the heartland of the revolution – protested against militia rule in June last year, 32 people were killed in what became known as “Black Saturday”. In another protest in Tripoli last November, 46 died and 500 were injured.
Under militia rule, Libya is beginning to disintegrate. Last summer forces under the command of the warlord Ibrahim Jadran took control of eastern oil terminals …. These forces which hijacked a oil tanker this month, prompting threats from Libya’s prime minister that it would be bombed until US forces captured it this weekend. Clashes have broken out in Jadran’s home town of Ajdabiya. In painful echoes of Iraq’s nightmare, a car bomb exploded at a Benghazi military base last week and killed at least eight soldiers, and Libya’s main airport was shut on Friday after a bomb exploded on its runway.
One of the great perversities of the so-called war on terror is that fundamentalist Islamist forces have flourished as a direct consequence of it. Libya is no exception, even though such movements often have little popular support. The Muslim Brotherhood and other elements are better organised than many of their rivals, helping to remove the prime minister, push through legislation, and establish alliances with opportunistic militias. Ominously, Libya’s chaos is spilling across the region. The country is awash with up to 15 million rifles and other weapons, and a report by the UN panel of experts this month found that “Libya has become a primary source of illicit weapons“. These arms are fuelling chaos in 14 countries, including Somalia, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Niger. There is a real prospect of the country collapsing into civil war or even breaking up. Unless there are negotiated settlements to its multiple problems, Libya will surely continue its descent into mayhem, and the region could be dragged into the mire with it. No wonder western governments and journalists who hailed the success of this intervention are so silent. But here are the consequences of their war, and they must take responsibility for them.
28-year CIA veteran Paul Pillar – who rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts – wrote in May:Just when one might have thought the mess in Libya could not have gotten worse, it has. Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states have evacuated their diplomats from Libya, the United States is preparing for possible evacuation of U.S. personnel, and the country appears on the brink of a larger civil war. Those in Libya closest to being called secular liberals seem to be associated with military officers of the old regime. The intervention already has negatively affected U.S. interests, particularly in providing a disincentive to other regimes to do what Gaddafi did in negotiating an end to involvement in terrorism and an end to production of unconventional weapons. And things have only gotten worse since then. (It should be remembered that the U.S. helped sow the seeds of chaos in several ways. Not only did we engage in direct military intervention against Gadafi, but also – as confirmed by a group of CIA officers – armed Al Qaeda so that they would help topple Gaddafi.) Another perspective on the “news” product coming from Libya, similar to the media event of the phoney “Russian invasion” of Georgia during the 2008 Presidential election.
Libyan Gold: http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-about-libya-watch-this-video-and.html One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is [WAS] 100% State Owned [It’s now “missing.”] ... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations. On cue, the enforcers of the Rothschild PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK of “England” flood into Tripoli to do what the Rothschild-financed “rebels” could not do after MONTHS of intensive NATO TERROR-BOMBING (Click here
DESTROY DEBT-FREE LIBYA’S PUBLIC CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM! (Click here)
Proof that this “uprising” was fabricated and was a NATO operation all along: Will NATO troops now occupy Libya to “help” the “rebels” “administer” the Rothschilds’ Recolonization? Since the DIRECT DEMOCRACY of Libyan public overwhelmingly supports Gaddafi, the Rothschild scum offer a MILLION POUND BRIBE to Murder Gaddafi. (Click here) Freedom of Speech under attack – Independent journalists in Tripoli threatened with death if the don’t report the Mass Media’s version of Busted! FAKE Fox News Broadcast about Libya!
More FAKE Mass Media “REPORTS”: (Click here)
Look at the faces, the hats, and the clothing! — They’re not even using the right props — Look carefully at the flags— & the picture that is held up by some one in the “Libyan” crowd! What were these Indians, waving Indian flags, really demonstrating about?
In the meantime, Independent Journalists reporting the TRUTH about Libya HAVE BEEN TARGETED FOR MURDER: (Click here)
and – NATO is MASS-MURDERING CIVILIANS IN TRIPOLI: (Click here) & (Click here)
while the U.S.-Supported DICTATOR OF QATAR sends more Quatari DEATH-SQUADS to murder loyalist Libyan civilians — just as pro-democracy civilians were gassed or shot by troops of the U.S.-Supported DICTATORSHIP OF SAUDI ARABIA in Bahrain: (Click here) and (Click here)
The Mouse That Roared: A Message From Libya To The Lying Mass Media, International Banksters And The NWO. Posted on August 24, 2011 by Editor
As NATO intensifies attacks on civilians in Tripoli, Debt-Free Libya is The Mouse That Roared: (Click here) and (Click here) and (Click here)
NATO INCREASES ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS IN TRIPOLI, WHILE AL JAZEERA CONTINUES TO MAKE FAKE “NEWS” REPORTS Posted on August 24, 2011 by Editor By George W. Berry Rebels losing in Tripoli: (Click here) and (Click here)
NATO increases terror-bombing of Libyan civilians: (Click here) Al Jazeera (Click here), like the rest of the Mass Media (Click here) and (Click here), keeps fabricating events. The Mendacious Mass Media is becoming more asinine & self-contradictory from one “report” to the next. NATO has been bombing & bombing Gaddafi’s residence (they call it a “compound”) FOR MONTHS. THAT residence is the LAST PLACE he would be. We are treated to yet another ASININE Mass Media broadcast of “rebels” shooting at, “storming” and “taking over” an empty building! There’s NO business like SHOW BUSINESS: (Click here)
Reports JUST YESTERDAY said Gaddafi would be “arrested” (Notice the Mass Media’s sleazy use of the term “arrested” instead of “captured”) “within hours”. Gaddafi was surrounded “inside the (empty) “compound” , but yet somehow he just left to roam the streets of Tripoli? Rebels control Tripoli EXCEPT THE RIXOS HOTEL where the Mass Media Lying “journalists” are? ASININE! (Click here ) As the anti-democratic “rebel” Monarchists lose, will NATO invade to Recolonize Libya? Will 540 Million NATO Debt-Slaves doing the bidding of their PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK Money Masters, along with their allies, Al Qaeda, and the BRUTAL U.S.-SUPPORTED DICTATORSHIPS of Qatar & Saudi Arabia, triumph over Libya’s PUBLIC CENTRAL BANK and her 6.4 Million DEBT-FREE CITIZENS in the WAR FOR GLOBAL DEBT-SLAVERY? Will Libya’s DIRECT DEMOCRACY by replaced by a “government” of NEOCOLONIAL STOOGES? Can 6.4 Million defend their freedom against 540 Million brainwashed zombies in the lying MASS MEDIA MATRIX? (Click here) & (Click here)
Neocolonial Reoccupation update: Is NATO ALREADY inside Tripoli killing people in the streets? (Click here) Another 2 Videos Of “Fallen Tripoli Under Rebel Control” Posted by Editor “This is our country. These are our people—and we live here and die here—and we are going to win.” Notice that Gaddafi’s son is NOT wearing any protective body armor, nor a helmet, and there are civilians all around him with guns. He came in an ordinary, unprotected car. Would Bush or Obama do this in Washington, DC? Cameron in London? Sarkozy in Paris? (Click here) and (Click here) More Video Of Tripoli “Under Rebel Control” Posted by Editor Don’t they know they’re supposed to be waving the flag of the old Libyan Monarchy? (Click here)
Before US-NATO Invasion, Libya Had The Highest Human Development Index, The Lowest Infant Mortality & The Highest Life Expectancy in All of Africa! by MARY LYNN CRAMER May 7, 2011 • http://bravenewworld.in/before-us-nato-invasion-libya-had-the-highest-human-development-index-the-lowest-infant-mortality-the-highest-life-expectancy-in-all-of-africa/
See also: http://pakistancyberforce.blogspot.com/2011/08/qatari-hollywood-and-mercenary-invasion.html
The following Is in response to a reader who wrote me noting that I should have said that Libya had the highest Human Development Index in Africa, not “the highest standard of living in the Arab world,” in my previous essay “Three Question Quiz for Leftist Liberals.” He is, of course, correct. Below is what I neglected to say, what I should have said: Before the USNATO and “rebels” began their murderous and destructive military attacks, people in Libya had the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa. The government took care to ensure that everyone in the country shared in the wealth. Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent. In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in The Netherlands….Libya ranked 61st, with a lower incarceration rate than Czech republic. It had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa, less than 5% of the population was undernourished, In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished all taxes on food. (Taken from “World Cheers as the CIA Plunges Libya into Chaos” by David Rothscum, Axis of Logic, 2/27/11)
(Taken from “Does NATO Plan To Occupy Libya?” by Fidel Castro, 2/22/11)
The HDI (Human Development Index) is measured by UN officials. These data indicate, for example, that Libya had in 1970, a situation a little worse than Brazil (HDI of 0.541, against 0.551 of Brazil.) The Libyan index surpassed the Brazilian years later, and in 2008 was well ahead: 0.810 (ranked 43rd), compared to 0.764 for Brazil (ranking 59th). All three sub-indices that comprise the HDI are higher in Libya: income, longevity and education. Libya is the country with the highest HDI in Africa. Therefore, the best distribution of income and health care and public education—the last two are free. And almost 10% of Libyan students receive scholarships to study in foreign countries. In his “Green Book” Gadhafi wrote that workers should be politically involved and self-employed, and that the land belongs to those who work it and the house to those who reside there. And power shall be exercised by the people directly, without intermediaries, without politicians, through popular congresses and committees, where the whole population decides the fundamental issues of the district, city and country…real democracy, not capitalist “representative” democracy that works for those who have the most and ignores those who have little. (Taken from “Who Is Muammar Gaddafi?” by Antonio Cesar Oliveira)
The 2010 UN Human Development Index, a composite measure of health, education and income ranked Libya first in Africa. None of the other countries in Africa has a more secular government than Libya. None of the others has a human-rights record better than that of Libya, however imperfect that may be — in Egypt a government fact-finding mission has announced that during the recent uprising at least 846 protesters were killed as police forces shot them in the head and chest with live ammunition. Fifteen days before the NATO No-Fly Zone resolution was approved, the UN Human Rights Council had been readying a report praising Libya for its human rights record, citing improved educational opportunities, a revised consititutional framework, making human rights a priority, and increasing legal protections for citizens. (Taken from “The Anti-Empire Report,” William Blum, May 2, 2011)
My original essay can be found in English and Spanish at the following sites: Dissident Voice | Counter Currents | Noticias de abajo
About the author: Mary Lynn Cramer (MA, MSW, LICSW) holds degrees in the history of economic thought and clinical social work. She has over two decades of experience as a bilingual child and family psychotherapist. For the past five years, she has been deeply involved in economic field research among elderly women and men who live in subsidized housing projects and are dependent upon social security, Medicare and food stamps.
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The Truth About the Situation in Libya: Cutting through Government Propaganda and Media Lies By Brian Becker URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26150
Global Research, August 23, 2011
ANSWER Libya is a small country of just over 6 million people but it possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is especially coveted because of its particularly high quality [termed “sweet crude” as it is less expensive to refine into gasoline]. The Air Force of the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459 bombing attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States sent special operation ground forces and commando units to direct the military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led army in the field.
The troops may be disaffected Libyans but the operation is under the control and direction of NATO commanders and western commando units who serve as “advisors.” Their new weapons and billions in funds come from the U.S. and other NATO powers that froze and seized Libya’s assets in Western banks. Their only military successes outside of Benghazi, in the far east of the country, have been exclusively based on the coordinated air and ground operations of the imperialist NATO military forces. In military terms, Libya’s resistance to NATO is of David and Goliath proportions.
U.S. military spending alone is more than ten times greater than Libya’s entire annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which was $74.2 billion in 2010, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book. In recent weeks, the NATO military operations used surveillance-collecting drones, satellites, mounting aerial attacks and covert commando units to decapitate Libya’s military and political leadership and its command and control capabilities. Global economic sanctions meant that the country was suddenly deprived of income and secure access to goods and services needed to sustain a civilian economy over a long period. “The cumulative effect [of NATO’s coordinated air and ground operation] not only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly diminished Colonel Gaddafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations,“ reports the New York Times in a celebratory article on August 22.
A False Pretext
The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy targeted the Libyan government for overthrow or “regime change” not because these governments were worried about protecting civilians or to bring about a more democratic form of governance in Libya. [18 of the 24 0-11hijackers held Saudi passports; none were from Iraq or Libya.]
If that were the real motivation of the NATO powers, they could start the bombing of Saudi Arabia right away. There are no elections in Saudi Arabia. The monarchy does not even allow women to drive cars. By law, women must be fully covered in public or they will go to prison. Protests are rare in Saudi Arabia because any dissent is met with imprisonment, torture and execution. The Saudi monarchy is protected by U.S. imperialism because it is part of an undeclared but real U.S. sphere of influence and it is the largest producer of oil in the world. The U.S. attitude toward the Saudi monarchy was put succinctly by Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he said that the U.S. government “will not permit” revolution in Saudi Arabia such as the 1979 Iranian revolution that removed the U.S. client regime of the Shah. Reagan’s message was clear: the Pentagon and CIA’s military forces would be used decisively to destroy any democratic movement against the rule of the Saudi royal family. Reagan’s explicit statement in 1981 has in fact been the policy of every successive U.S. administration, including the current one.
Libya and Imperialism
Libya, unlike Saudi Arabia, did have a revolution against its monarchy. As a result of the 1969 revolution led by Muammar Gaddafi, Libya was no longer in the sphere of influence of any imperialist country. Libya had once been an impoverished colony of Italy living under the boot heel of the fascist Mussolini. After the Allied victory in World War II, control of the country was formally transferred to the United Nations and Libya became independent in 1951 with authority vested in the monarch King Idris. But in actuality, Libya was controlled by the United States and Britain until the 1969 revolution. One of the first acts of the 1969 revolution was to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism and foreign control. Not only were oil fields nationalized but Gaddafi eliminated foreign military bases inside the country. In March of 1970, the Gaddafi government shut down two important British military bases in Tobruk and El Adem. He then became the Pentagon’s enemy when he evicted the U.S. Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli that had been operated by the United States since 1945. Before the British military took control in 1943, the facility was a base operated by the Italians under Mussolini. Wheelus had been an important Strategic Air Command (SAC) base during the Cold War, housing B-52 bombers and other front-line Pentagon aircrafts that targeted the Soviet Union. Once under Libyan control, the Gaddafi government allowed Soviet military planes to access the airfield. In 1986, the Pentagon heavily bombed the base at the same time it bombed downtown Tripoli in an effort to assassinate Gaddafi. That effort failed but his 2-year-old daughter died along with scores of other civilians.
The Character of the Gaddafi Regime
The political, social and class orientation of the Libyan regime has gone through several stages in the last four decades. The government and ruling establishment reflected contradictory class, social, religious and regional antagonisms. The fact that the leadership of the NATO-led National Transition Council is comprised of top officials of the Gaddafi government, who broke with the regime and allied themselves with NATO, is emblematic of the decades-long instability within the Libyan establishment. These inherent contradictions were exacerbated by pressures applied to Libya from the outside. The U.S. imposed far-reaching economic sanctions on Libya in the 1980s. The largest western corporations were barred from doing business with Libya and the country was denied access to credit from western banks. In its foreign policy, Libya gave significant financial and military support to national liberation struggles, including in Palestine, Southern Africa, Ireland and elsewhere. Because of Libya's economic policies, living standards for the population had jumped dramatically after 1969.
Having a small population and substantial income from its oil production, augmented with the Gaddafi regime’s far-reaching policy of social benefits, created a huge advance in the social and economic status for the population. Libya was still a class society with rich and poor, and gaps between urban and rural living standards, but illiteracy was basically wiped out, while education and health care were free and extensively accessible. By 2010, the per capita income in Libya was near the highest in Africa at $14,000 and life expectancy rose to over 77 years, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book.
Gaddafi’s political orientation explicitly rejected communism and capitalism.
He created an ideology called the “Third International Theory,” which was an eclectic mix of Islamic, Arab nationalist and socialist ideas and programs.
In 1977, Libya was renamed the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
A great deal of industry, including oil, was nationalized and the government provided an expansive social insurance program or what is called a welfare state policy akin to some features prevalent in the Soviet Union and some West European capitalist countries.
But Libya was not a workers’ state or a “socialist government” to use the popular if not scientific use of the term “socialist.” The revolution was not a workers and peasant rebellion against the capitalist class per se. Libya remained a class society although class differentiation may have been somewhat obscured beneath the existence of revolutionary committees and the radical, populist rhetoric that emanated from the regime. As in many developing, formerly colonized countries, state ownership of property was not “socialist” but rather a necessary fortification of an under-developed capitalist class. State property in Iraq, Libya and other such post-colonial regimes was designed to facilitate the social and economic growth of a new capitalist ruling class that was initially too weak, too deprived of capital and too cut off from international credit to compete on its own terms with the dominant sectors of world monopoly capitalism.
The nascent capitalist classes in such developing economies promoted state-owned property, under their control, in order to intersect with Western banks and transnational corporations and create more favorable terms for global trade and investment. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the “socialist bloc” governments of central and Eastern Europe in 1989-91 deprived Libya of an economic and military counter-weight to the United States, and the Libyan government’s domestic economic and foreign policy shifted towards accommodation with the West.
In the 1990s some sectors of the Libyan economic establishment and the Gaddafi-led government favored privatization, cutting back on social programs and subsidies and integration into western European markets. The earlier populism of the regime incrementally gave way to the adoption of neo-liberal policies. This was, however, a long process.
In 2004, the George W. Bush administration ended sanctions on Libya. Western oil companies and banks and other corporations initiated huge direct investments in Libya and trade with Libyan enterprises. There was also a growth of unemployment in Libya and in cutbacks in social spending, leading to further inequality between rich and poor and class polarization. But Gaddafi himself was still considered a thorn in the side of the imperialist powers. They want absolute puppets, not simply partners, in their plans for exploitation. The Wikileaks release of State Department cables between 2007 and 2010 show that the United states and western oil companies were condemning Gaddafi for what they called “resource nationalism.”
Gaddafi even threatened to re-nationalize western oil companies’ property unless Libya was granted a larger share of the revenue for their projects. As an article in today’s New York Times Business section said honestly: “"Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for the international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with."
Even the most recent CIA Fact Book publication on Libya, written before the armed revolt championed by NATO, complained of the measured tempo of pro-market reforms in Libya: “Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps— including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization—are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy.” (CIA World Fact Book)
The beginning of the armed revolt on February 23 by disaffected members of the Libyan military and political establishment provided the opportunity for the U.S. imperialists, in league with their French and British counterparts, to militarily overthrow the Libyan government and replace it with a client or stooge regime. Of course, in the revolt were workers and young people who had many legitimate grievances against the Libyan government. But what is critical in an armed struggle for state power is not the composition of the rank-and-file soldiers, but the class character and political orientation of the leadership.
Character of the National Transition Council
The National Transitional Council (NTC) constituted itself as the leadership of the uprising in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. The central leader is Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who was Libya’s Minister of Justice until his defection at the start of the uprising. He was one of a significant number of Western-oriented and neoliberal officials from Libya’s government, diplomatic corps and military ranks who joined the opposition in the days immediately after the start of the revolt. As soon as it was established, the NTC began issuing calls for imperialist intervention. These appeals became increasing panicky as it became clear that, contrary to early predictions that the Gaddafi-led government would collapse in a matter of days, it was the “rebels” who faced imminent defeat in the civil war. In fact, it was only due to the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, initiated with great hurry on March 19 that the rebellion did not collapse. The last five months of war have erased any doubt about the pro-imperialist character of the NTC.
One striking episode took place on April 22, when Senator John McCain made a “surprise” trip to Benghazi. A huge banner was unveiled to greet him with an American flag printed on it and the words: “United States of America – You have a new ally in North Africa.” Similar to the military relationship between the NATO and Libyan “rebel” armed forces, the NTC is entirely dependent on and subordinated to the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialist governments. If the Pentagon, CIA, and Wall Street succeed in installing a client regime in Tripoli it will accelerate and embolden the imperialist threats and intervention against other independent governments such as Syria and Venezuela. In each case we will see a similar process unfold, including the demonization of the leadership of the targeted countries so as to silence or mute a militant anti-war response to the aggression of the war-makers. We in the ANSWER Coalition invite all those who share this perspective to join with us, to mobilize, and to unmask the colonial agenda that hides under the slogan of “humanitarian intervention.”
Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition
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Join this important march to demand the United States end its illegal wars and sanctions on African countries. While the government tells us there is no money for jobs, education or social security, they find limitless funding for their wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.
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