Apparently not, if the populace of Libya has anything to say about it. Contradictions within the NATO assisted rebellion are rising to the surface pretty quickly. For a similar written account, consider the following:

The first cracks in Libya's rebel coalition have opened, with protests erupting in Misrata against the reported decision of the National Transitional Council (NTC) to appoint a former Gaddafi henchman as security boss of Tripoli.

Media reports said the NTC prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, is poised to appoint Albarrani Shkal, a former army general, as the capital's head of security.

Protests erupted in the early hours of the morning in Misrata's Martyr's Square, with about 500 protesters shouting that the blood of the martyrs would be betrayed by the appointment.

Misrata's ruling council lodged a formal protest with the NTC, saying that if the appointment were confirmed Misratan rebel units deployed on security duties in Tripoli would refuse to follow NTC orders.

Misratans blame Shkal for commanding units that battered their way into this city in the spring, terrorising and murdering civilians.

Such stories are important, because they remind us that the people of Libya have their own historical agency. They cannot be reduced to marionettes of the US, NATO and Saudi Arabia, as some on the left would have us believe. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that they will successfully resist the predation of the US and Europe. But they do possess an indigenous culture and resources that provide them with an opportunity to do so.

A truly left internationalist engagement with the situation in Libya would seek to understand and support those institutions of collective social organization capable of facilitating opposition to the reimposition of repressive social controls for the benefit of transnationals. Given that Gaddafi was perfectly willing to continue to provide such assistance, if a bit querulously, I still remain perplexed as to why NATO intervened. Was Gaddafi really demanding that big a slice of the pie? And, after all, he was reinvesting a lot of the proceeds from his hydrocarbon deals within Europe. But it did, and the question now is whether the Libyans will be allowed to chart their own destiny or have the State Department do it for them. Meanwhile, here is a profile of the CIA's favorite for leadership.

Hat tip to Hossam el-Hamalawy and Louis Proyect.

Labels: American Empire, Europe, Libya, NATO, Neoliberalism, YouTube

UPDATE: In case you've forgotten, the post-9/11 reaction:

At a community meeting Saturday in Mountain View, civil rights leaders and local residents who described being targeted expressed fear that upcoming events could trigger another flare-up of backlash attacks.

They spoke from experience -- schoolchildren taunted for wearing religious head scarves, workers discriminated against because of beards and turbans. And rights advocates warned that more incidents could soon be added to the growing tallies of post 9/11 hate crimes.

Sarah O'Neal, a Muslim who attends Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, told the packed audience in a senior center auditorium that she'd been called towel head. Fellow students often asked if she had relatives in al-Qaida. And once she was lured by a schoolmate into the bathroom, where Sarah O'Neal is a terrorist was written in graffiti on the wall.

INITIAL POST: By the end of the day on September 11, 2011, there will be little doubt that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will have served the purpose of celebrating perpetual war in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Consider, for example, this event in Sacramento:

This year marks the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Come and join us in remembering not only the nearly 3000 Americans who did not return home to their families after the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, but also those members of our Armed Forces who have given their lives defending our country. In doing so, you will be honoring those who were lost while helping to establish a support system for the families of local public servants, should they make the ultimate sacrifice.

In Downtown Sacramento, the 9/11 Memorial 5K Run/Walk will take place to give those who vowed to Never Forget the opportunity to exercise that vow. The 5K will start at 9:11 on 9/11, and wind through Downtown Sacramento. At the finish of the 5K, American flags will be handed to runners as they cross the line. Each flag will represent an American who lost their life on 9/11/2001. Runners will carry the flag they are given and will place it in the grass in the Tribute in the Park. Each American Flag will be placed next to a name plate engraved with the name of an American who did not return home. When the 9/11 5K Memorial Run/Walk is complete, nearly 3000 flags will stand united in the grass as a tribute to those that were lost.

Needless to say, there is something really offensive about this. To presume that the victims of 9/11 would have wanted to be remembered by reference to US militarism is, at best, presumptuous, especially when you realize that over 500 of the estimated 2700 victims were born outside the US.

Furthermore, as explained in a 2006 La Oferta article, an unknown number of undocumented people died in the attacks, and, naturally, they go unacknowledged during the Sacramento event:

Like Nora Elsa Molinar, scores of Hispanic families mourn family members thought to have died in the World Trade Center attacks five years ago Monday, but of whom no record remains because they were undocumented

Although Molinar lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has never been in New York, the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 changed her life forever, as happened to thousands who suffered the same kind of loss.

Every Friday for six years Nora would receive a call from her son Fernando, but for the last five years she has heard nothing of him.

Fernando, who emigrated to New York when he was 15, worked as a delivery boy for a pizzeria near the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks that cost the lives of 2,749 people.

Nonetheless, he is not on any list of victims or missing persons, EFE was told by Joel Magallan, director of the Tepeyac organization that serves New York’s Mexican community.

Beyond this, there is also something offensive about the sanctification of the victims of 9/11, a sanctification that elevates them above the ongoing victims of US military attacks post-9/11. While the enormous numbers of deaths associated with the Iraqi conflict cannot be definitely calculated, even though we know that the number is exponentially greater than the number who died on 9/11, attacks that Iraqis had nothing to do with, of course, the US military continues to kill people on a nearly daily basis in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. A sincerely motivated 9/11 event would acknowledge all of these deaths, as well as those killed in the past through American covert operations, such as Operation Condor, among others. A sincerely motivated 9/11 rememberance would emphasize all the victims of political violence, instead of transforming it into yet another rationalization of the military expansion of the American Empire.

And, finally, a historically honest 9/11 event would condemn the leadership of the US for its coldhearted exploitation of those who died, as CBS News reported a year after the attacks:

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. – meaning Saddam Hussein – at same time. Not only UBL – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

Go massive, the notes quote him as saying. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.

By the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had already turned his attention away from the victims, and focused upon how he could exploit the tragedy to kill even more people. Not surprisingly, he'll be one of the attendees at the 9/11 anniversary in New York City.

Labels: 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Libya, Pakistan, Rumsfeld, Sacramento, US Military

The leadership of the United States is bent upon proving that the truth of the old anarchist maxims about the relationship of the state to violence, as concisely articulated by Randolph Borne: War is essentially the health of the state. One cannot access any news source in the US without being confronted with stories about US military actions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya, with articles about the prospects for an attack upon Iran appearing periodically. Curiously, the occupation of Iraq is downplayed, probably because of an interest in falsely persuading the public that this conflict has been brought to an end.

I am just over 50 years old, old enough to recall the latter stages of the Vietnam War, and I have never lived through a period in which US military operations were so ubiquitious, a period in which political figures and the media emphasize recourse to the violence of the US military as the primary, most effective means of imposing docility among those opposed to the US. In most instances, the possibility of resolving disputes through negotiation is derided, usually by villifying the leaders that we would have to speak with, Chavez, Ahmanijedad, Gaddafi, Hussein, the Taliban, among others. Anyone who refuses to play along with this polarizing binary opposition finds themselves subject to villification to varying degrees as well, as indicated by the surly treatment of Putin, Schroeder, Erdogan and Lula.

It is superficially tempting to ascribe this intolerance to the Israelification of US foreign policy, a process by which the global objectives of Israel and the US and the means by which they should be attained, appear more and more congruent. Superficially tempting, but false. First of all, as reflected by the most important, most enduring utterance of George W. Bush, it was the US that summarized its policies post-9/11 as You are either with us or against us. Bush's concise expression of policy had many influences with roots in American culture and politics, especially in regard to the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans on the frontier and imperial expansion in the Caribbean and East Asia. Bush's response echoed the jingoism that erupted after a border fight in disputed territory in Texas in 1845 and the explosion upon the Maine in Cuba in 1898. The objectives of his war on terror are remarkably similar to those of the US military during the Spanish American War. Just as the peoples of the Phillippines were initially described as victims of oppression, only to be subsequently maligned as ungrateful primitives when they sought independence from the US upon the defeat of Spain, the people of Iraq were subjected to the same perverse media manipulation.

Hence, Israel fits into this narrative as a projected colonial outpost, one that, as explained by the Retort collective, serves as an example of something more American than the US, a purer representation of our past ideals and willingness to put those ideals into practice through action. It is, in essence, the frontier transposed, from the prairies, the Rockies and the deserts of the western US to Palestine. If John Ford and John Wayne were alive and filmed The Searchers today, Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, would be searching for his niece in either Palestine or the greater Arab and Muslim world beyond it. For it is the wilds of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan that are desperately in need of pacification, and thus, full incorporation into the modern world of capitalist production and commodification. From a psychological perpective, a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians would be devastating blow to the American political psyche, as it would contradict one of the essential aspects of American exceptionalism, the necessity of forcibly imposing order and rationality to the frontier.

Bourne correctly observed that the state perpetuates itself and its control over its citizens through violence, but did not recognize that it frequently requires the permanent urgency of bringing order to a chaotic, elastic frontier to justify it. Of course, the US is not the only example of this phenomenon. One need only look to the Han Chinese empire, the British empire, the creation and expansion of the German state in the 19th and 20th centuries and the suppression of indigenous peoples in Central and South America for other ones. Within this context, there is a perverse logic to the recent public statements of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Last week, he was interviewed on National Public Radio:

And the Pentagon chief, who retires later this month, says that even as the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan hopefully wind down, there will be no shortage of threats for the U.S. military to be preparing for.

There are Iran and North Korea, he notes. Also, you have a very aggressive weapons building program in China and revolutions throughout the Middle East.

The U.S. military has never been at a loss in being told to find things to do," he says. They've always had a full menu.

Leaving aside Gates' oversimplification of American history in regard to the military, there's always an ever-shifting frontier of threat, of non-conformity, that must be addressed through military force. Interestingly, the paradox here is that the frontier must never be eliminated, it must instead evolve and transform, there must always be an us and a them, otherwise the US military would have no reason to exist.

Gates pursued this logic earlier today in a speech before representatives of the NATO countries in Brussels:

Three weeks before standing down as Pentagon head and retiring from decades at the heart of the US security establishment, Gates used a 20-minute valedictory speech in Brussels to read the riot act to a stunned elite audience of European officers, diplomats, and officials.

Nato had degenerated into a two-tiered alliance of those willing to wage war and those only interested in talking and peacekeeping, he fumed in his bluntest warning to the Europeans in nearly five years as the Pentagon head.

Washington's waning commitment to European security could spell the death of the alliance, he said. The speech was laced with exasperation with and contempt for European defence spending cuts, inefficiencies, and botched planning.

The Libya mission was a case in point, Gates said, pointing out that the Anglo-French-led campaign was running out of munitions just weeks into operations against an insubstantial foe. The US had again had to come to the rescue of the Europeans in a campaign on Europe's shores and deemed to be of vital interest to the Europeans, he complained.

As reported, Gates' remarks are striking. His condemnation of countries only interested in talking echoes back to the colonization of English colonies of North America. Talking is, at best, time wasting, at worst, a refusal to take action against obvious enemies, back then, usually Native Americans, now Arabs, Muslims and other dark-skinned people. Talking never gets you anywhere, but your fists and your guns, do. His comments about the Libyan campaign are a reflection of historic American arrogance. No one can calm the frontier like the US, and when others try to do so, they need the Americans to bail them out.

Beyond this, Gates is frustrated that the Europeans don't understand that permanence of the frontier of threat and the importance of allocating resources to address it. Perhaps, this is because the countries of Europe face a more immediate peril from people unwilling to accept the evisceration of social welfare programs to pay for the speculative losses of bankers and increased defense spending in support of endless American military operations. In Europe, unlike the US, the preservation of state authority is coming into question.

Labels: American Empire, Anarchism, Europe, Israel, Libya, Palestine, US Military

UPDATE 1: As contemplated in paragraph 1 of the original post:

A Texas school district says a teacher won't return to work after being accused of mocking an American-born Muslim student by asking if she was grieving because her uncle had died, a reference to Osama bin Laden.

The teacher was put on leave after making the alleged remark May 2, hours after bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military raid.

INITIAL POST: The death of Bin Laden brings an old question to the forefront: why is it that people are willing to accept state violence, no matter how extreme and indiscriminate, while responding angrily to acts of individual or group violence that are minor by comparison? In the United States, it appears that many have a vicarious relationship with the violence of the government, exulting in a sense of collective superiority associated with its use against others, particularly those with whom they have developed a pre-existing bias. Socialists have always struggled to overcome this nationalistic sensibility, partially because of the gratification connected to such violence. Not surprisingly, to the extent that the people of another culture are different from the still predominately European, Christian one of the US, the use of violence against them is frequently considered an unavoidable necessity.

There are many examples: the near extermination of Native Americans, the continued support for the use of nuclear weapons upon the civilian populace of Japan to end World War II, the bombing of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and, of course, more recently, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a larger war on terror. During the 19th Century, European Americans believed that it was impossible for them to coexist with Native Americans on the North American continent unless Native Americans were violently suppressed and, thereafter, socially controlled, and such a perspective is central to the current approach to the peoples of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, an approach that is an extension of prior European imperial practice. The US military made the connection explicit when it selected Geronimo as the code name for Bin Laden prior to the raid on his compound. Both constitute modernization projects based upon the principles of the Enlightenment, one in which the peoples of non-Eurocentric cultures must be forcibly incorporated into a neoliberal, nation state system that had its origins in, first, Western Europe, and then, in North America. Significantly, most people on the left supported this effort in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, and some still do, with people like Christopher Hitchens and Fred Halliday being prominent examples.

Of course, this is one of those binary oppositions that has little basis in social reality. The peoples of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are not monolithic, and they do not live in inferior, debased societies that evolved as a result of a separation from the peoples of other parts of the world, such as Africa, Europe, South Asia and East Asia. In other words, this effort is based upon a mythology of social superiority that has no basis in fact. There were, and remain, less violent, more collaborative alternatives of transformation, ones that the proponents of the purist Eurocentric imperialist vision cannot accept. But, beyond such an academized, abstract discussion, there is a more immediate, direct problem. Why is it that so many people that otherwise have no connection to it so strongly support this violent enterprise? An enterprise, that, if Libya is an indication, is now gaining more and more European participation? If there is any possibility for Osama Bin Laden to be embraced as a martyr, despite his heinous qualities, it resides in his symbolic opposition to American and European imperial domination. To the extent that this domination becomes even more remorseless, the greater the prospect that Bin Laden's perverse failings will become less and less prominent in future representations of him.

Labels: "War on Terror", Africa, American Empire, Eurocentrism, Europe, France, Imperialism, Italy, Libya, Neoliberalism, Osama Bin Laden

UPDATE 1: Oh, by the way, if you are a woman, and show silent support for a woman wearing a niqab, you'll get arrested, too:

Halima, a 53-year-old mother from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, who wears a normal headscarf, was detained by police for standing silently with the niqab-wearers at Notre Dame. She said: This is the first time I've ever protested over anything. I'm not in favour of the niqab, I don't wear it myself. But it's wrong for the government to ban women from dressing how they want. Islamophobia is on the rise in France. First it's the niqab, then they'll ban the jilbab, then it will be plain headscarves outlawed.

She was, you see, participating in an unauthorized protest.

And, then, there's the Saudi exception:

Shop-owners said luxury fashion boutiques near the Champs Elysées were unlikely to call the police to detain female tourists in niqabs from the Gulf. This would create a two-tier system between rich tourists and poor French people, one trader complained. Emmanuel Roux from the police union, Syndicat des Commissaires de la Police Nationale, said the law would be infinitely difficult to apply and infinitely little applied.

Roux no doubt understands that the poor Muslim women of France are the precisely the intended targets of this measure. After all, Hugo would have appreciated the care with with which the authorities drafted it:

The law is worded to trip safely through legal minefields: The words women, Muslim and veil are not even mentioned. The law says it is illegal to hide the face in the public space.

While Italy also has a law against concealing the face for security reasons, France's law was the first conceived to target veil-wearers. Sarkozy said he wanted a ban, and that the veils are not welcome in France.

INITIAL POST: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The French Communist Party, the PCF, supported the war in Algeria in the 1950s, and, now, if media reports are reliable, the French left supported the ban on the niqab as well. The level of police harassment associated with enforcement of the ban is ludicrous, consider, for example, the following:

The guide sent out last week to police notes that the burqa ban does not apply inside private cars, but it reminds officers that such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules.

The police presence in front of Notre Dame today, where 12 women participated in a protest against the ban, was predictably over the top:

Scores of plain clothes police, a riot van, several police vans and long police buses drivn in to take away 2 small women in a niqab

Sarkozy certainly spares no expense when it comes to street theatre for the purpose of entertaining the racist, sectarian part of his base. Women who wear the niqab now attract more cops than anarchists! The use of plain clothes police is particularly interesting. Will we soon be hearing of an effort to infiltrate the niqab movement by female undercover officers wearing the niqab themselves? All of this effort because of between 350 and 2,000 women in France who wear it. As Chuck D. of Public Enemy rapped decades ago, it takes a nation of millions to hold us back.

More seriously, though, there is a subtext here. And, you've probably already figured it out. In France, people like Sarkozy put forward the sinister notion that liberty, fraternity and equality are uniquely French, uniquely the creations of the European enlightenment. So much so, that, if necessary, they can be imposed upon balky people from purportedly feudal cultures, like those in the Islamic world, for example, by the police. Or, on a more international scale, they can used to justify the subjection of civilian populations in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to military violence. No wonder that Sarkozy took the lead in launching airstrikes in Libya.

Labels: Eurocentrism, Europe, France, Islam, Libya, Police, Religion, Sarkozy

UPDATE 4: Sarkozy and Erdogan are still going at it:

Nicolas Sarkozy has belittled Nato's role in the military operations against Muammar Gaddafi, re-igniting the row over who replaces the Americans in charge of the campaign in Libya.

Senior Nato officials said the alliance would decide within days whether to take over the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces and David Cameron announced that Nato would "shortly be providing the command and control and the machinery" for the attacks on ground targets in Libya.

The Nato decision is expected by Monday, before foreign ministers meet in London on Tuesday to discuss Libya. Senior officials were confident that the alliance would agree to assume command of all three elements of the campaign against Gaddafi – the air assaults, as well as the no-fly zone and arms embargo already under Nato command.

Turkey and France have been embroiled in a bitter row all week, with Ankara demanding that the Nato alliance, of which it is the member with the second biggest army after the US, takes over and Sarkozy opposed.

Sarkocy wants NATO to provide the force, while leaving the decisions as to the deployment of it to the eleven countries taking part in operations, thus excluding Turkey. Is this an indication that ground troops may soon be necessary? What are the consequences for the future of NATO if Sarkozy prevails? Germany is already on the sidelines, and Turkey may soon find itself there.

UPDATE 3: Libyan airstrikes have brought the economic ambitions of competitors, such as Turkey's Recip Tayyip Erdogan and France's Nicholas Sarkozy to the surface:

The clash between Turkey and France over Libya is underpinned by acute frictions between Erdogan and Sarkozy, both impetuous and mercurial leaders who revel in the limelight, by fundamental disputes over Ankara's EU ambitions, and by economic interests in north Africa.

The confrontation is shaping up to be decisive in determining the outcome of the bitter infighting over who should inherit command of the Libyan air campaign from the Americans and could come to a head at a major conference in London next week of the parties involved.

Using incendiary language directed at France in a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said: I wish that those who only see oil, gold mines and underground treasures when they look in [Libya's] direction, would see the region through glasses of conscience from now on.

President Gül reinforced the Turkish view that France and others were being driven primarily by economic interests. The aim [of the air campaign] is not the liberation of the Libyan people, he said. There are hidden agendas and different interests.

France is, of course, adamantly oppposed to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

UPDATE 2: Oh, by the way, could someone just tell Dennis the Menace to shut up and go away? He seems to have forgotten that he further embarasses himself every time he purports to represent an ethical liberal position in public. He'll stick with his assertion that the President should be impeached over bombing Libya until . . well, you know, until the President takes him for a ride on Air Force One again. And, then, there are sell outs like Juan Cole and David Corn.

Cole has always been phony. Years ago, in 2006, I posted a comment on his blog in response to his post about his sadness over the fact that the son of the Israeli novelist David Grossman had been killed during the Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon, emphasizing Grossman's opposition to it. I responded with a comment to the effect that Grossman did not oppose the Israeli attacks upon Lebanon until he was afraid that his son was going to be ordered to participate in the pending invasion. I also observed that, according to press reports, Grossman expressed no remorse over the loss of Lebanese lives as a result of the Israeli air strikes and ground assault. Cole deleted it, of course, and I thereafter stopped paying attention to anything he had to say.

UPDATE 1: A provocative commentary by Vijay Prashad:

Such options are no longer central, or even on the table. Qaddafi’s rule might fall in a week or a month. In the interim, he is a caged animal, and his loyalists will not dissolve easily. In the short term, he may conduct some kind of spectacular attack on a tanker in the Mediterranean, or else, as he himself warned, inside Europe. This is precisely the kind of pretext that the warmongers seek. The Gulf of Sidra will stand in for the Gulf of Tonkin. Ships of war will dock at Benghazi, and the ground troops will slide along the road that was once the graveyard of Field Marshall Montgomery and Rommel (their half tracks and tanks still litter the road outside Tobruk). Such an assault, which might be inevitable, will revive the debacle in Iraq that lasted from 2003 to 2007, with loyalists now underground in a brutal insurgency against the foreign troops and the people of the east, a defense of their realm and a sectarian conflict at the same time. If this were the scenario, then, as Michael Walzer put it, it would extend, not stop, the bloodshed.

The forces of counter-revolution line up with the West. The Gulf Cooperation Council hastened to pledge its unequivocal support. The United Arab Emirates is sending twenty-four aircraft and Qatar will send as many as six. They will also help fund the between $1-2 billion/month cost of the enforcing the no-fly zone. Saudi Arabia’s troops remain in Bahrain. Their air force is geared up, and it too might fly alongside the French over Libyan skies. No Tunisian and Egyptian planes are on the offer. It is a telling sign that only the counter-revolutionary regimes are excited at the prospect of this battle. They know that it is precisely the best opportunity to stop the tide of the Arab Revolt of 2011.

Meanwhile, Germany is staying out of it as arguments over the mission erupt within NATO. And, not surprisingly, Steven Erlanger and Judy Dempsey of The New York Times are hysterical over this continuing newfound German assertion of independence from the US and France.

INITIAL POST: No doubt you've noticed that I haven't posted anything about the US, French and British airstrikes against Gaddafi's forces in Libya. There is a good reason for it. I don't understand it, so maybe some of you out there can help.

I've heard a number of explanations as to the objectives of the participants, but I've yet to be fully convinced of any of them. Let's go through them. First, there is the claim that the US, France and the British want to assist the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi so as to increase their influence in the country, a country with the largest known oil reserves in Africa, with much of it being easily refineable, high quality crude. There is a superficial logic to this, except that the US and Europe had a good working relationship with Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was playing by the rules of the game by kleptocratically investing his oil profits in Europe, so much so that he counted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi among his friends. He also provided assistance to Berlusconi in regard to preventing African immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean through Libya. As for the US, he was a staunch supporter of the so-called war on terror.

Perhaps, the US, the French and the British believe that they can cut a better deal on the sharing of profits from future oil exploration and sales than they had with Gaddafi. Much of the oil is supposedly in the eastern regions of Libya under rebel control, and, by this line of reasoning, a line in favor among some on the British left, they would be satisfied with a de facto partition of Libya that resulted in the rebels taking control of much of the country's oil reserves. Possibly. But there are some obvious problems with this, most importantly the fact that the rebels remain more unpredictable in their future dealings with the US and Europe than Gaddafi would have been. So, there is no certainty that the rebels would supply oil on terms more favorable than Gaddafi. Furthermore, there is also no certainty as to how the rebels would put their oil profits to use. There is still a possibility that they would put them to the sort of mischievous use for which Gaddafi and the Iranians have been known. One wonders if the US and Europe expect the rebels to conduct themselves in a manner similar to the mafiosos of Kosovo, with whom they have a good relationship.

Second, there is the belief that the Libyan airstrikes are a sort of camouflage, an intentional effort to distract attention from the US/Saudi efforts to suppress democratic movements in Yemen and Bahrain. Here, again, there is a superficial logic, but it assumes that there is a necessity for the effort, a necessity that I fail to perceive. In the US, there is no significant outcry about the violence inflicted upon protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, indeed, few Americans are even aware of it. To the extent that they are aware, they have, at least in regard to Bahrain, accepted the new propaganda line that the protesters must be suppressed to contain Iran. Apparently, even the Europeans have accepted it, with a European Union foreign policy advisor, Robert Cooper, recycling US fears of the Iranians by expressing alarm over the prospect of a Shia government there. As for the crackdown itself, he concluded accidents happen. His boss, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, is impressed by the offer of talks by the Crown Prince. No one has been willing to touch the most taboo subject of all, the question as to whether the Iranian social model, as seriously flawed as it is, would constitute a significant improvement in the lives of everyone in Bahrain with the exception of the wealthy elite that runs the country. In any event, there is no indication that a Libyan distraction is required.

Third, there is the possibility of another, potentially more compelling distraction. Both Europe and the US are imposing harsh austerity programs after having channeled trillions of dollars of through transnational finacial institutions to preserve them and the investments of the people who purchased their financial instruments. Clearly unable to resist the cuts of a Republican House of Representatives, President Obama shows that he can stand up to that evil African Gaddafi. Similarly, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is implementing a harsh austerity program that will inflict the most punishment upon the poorest people in society. Reminscent of Thatcher'as response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he has also been the most strident advocate for military action. Meanwhile, the last member of the intervention triumvirate, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, finds himself extremely unpopular, so he may believe that the airstrikes will improve his domestic political prospects. French pilots flew the first missions over Libya. It is, however, a doubled edged sword. In addition to the possibility that the intervention will fail, people are beginning to notice, at least in the US, that the military operation is substantially eroding the proposed savings from domestic budget cuts proposed by Republicans, placing the credibility of the austerity effort at risk. For now, though, it is merely an indication that the accumulation of capital through the military industrial complex still works as it has done since the beginning of World War II. After all, governments have to purchase those weapons somewhere.

Labels: American Empire, David Grossman, Europe, France, Germany, Gulf States, Libya, NATO, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe, United Kingdom

As Louis Proyect states with precision, you can't simply put a minus where the ruling class puts a plus:

The struggle in the Arab world is for democratic rights. That trumps any diplomatic deal struck between Venezuela and Libya. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels first came into prominence as activists in the revolutionary upsurge of 1848 that sought to abolish feudal despotism. The ground had to be cleared for battles between the working class and the bourgeoisie. To hasten that showdown it was necessary to fight for a democratic republic with full rights for working people, including the right to form trade unions, to vote and to assemble peacefully. That is exactly the same kinds of battles taking place in the Arab world today and those on the left who oppose it through malicious propaganda are serving the counter-revolution.

In regard to Chavez, Proyect states that the more he obfuscates, the worse it will get for him. I'm more pessimistic, and believe that the damage may already be irreversible.

Or, to put it more bluntly, as As'ad Abukhalil did last Thursday:

I just can't stomach those leftists who stood with Saddam, and who are standing today with Qadhdhafi. There is nothing leftist about those two reprehensible tyrants. Those two tyrants are very similar, as I argue in my Al-Akhbar article for this coming Saturday. They both were unpopular and charismatic and suffering from an acute case of Nasser's syndrome. They both wanted to be intellectuals and novelists. Tariq Aziz tells that Saddam was sending him his last novel manuscript a day before the US invaded his country. There are tyrants with talents and neither of the two were. At least Stalin was really well-tread and wrote very well (he wrote his own books too), while Mao was really smart and wrote good poetry. You can't even compare the aphorisms of Mao to the drivel of the two lousy tyrants. Oh, and I never treated the clown, Chavez as a leftist. I view him more as a clown in the same league with Sa'ib `Urayqat but with different momentary politics.

Personally, I don't consider Chavez a clown, as a close reading of my post on this subject last week indicates, as well as others about him and Venezuela that I have presented here over the years. There is much about him that is praiseworthy, with his speech in opposition to the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 being one of the bravest acts by a political figure in recent memory, but he is displaying a dogged refusal to recognize that world events no longer confirm to his Manichean, post 9/11, post April 2002 coup perspective about the perils of US imperialism. He is revealing himself as an example of precisely what Proyect deplores, putting a minus where the ruling class puts a plus. As one of the most important creations of a left culture that developed over several decades in South America, he is risking the future maginalization of it through his support for Gaddafi, which is more important than whether he reveals himself to be a clown or not.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Hugo Chavez, Libya, Neoliberalism, Venezuela

Predictably, the Libyan rebels have rejected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's offer to negotiate a truce between them and Muammar Gaddafi. After all, he refuses to condemn Gaddafi for his use of violence against the Libyan people, providing him with qualified suppport.

Instead, Chavez emphasizes the prospect of a US invasion to seize control of Libyan oil reserves. It is not a ludicrous notion, that the US and the EU want to establish a military presence in the country so as to exert influence over a post-Gaddafi regime in regard to the exploitation of Libyan oil reserves. But if that is his real concern, shouldn't he advise Gaddafi to depart as quickly as possible so as to enable the rebels to take power without any purported US assistance? Furthermore, the US did invade Iraq for this purpose, and it hasn't worked out nearly as well as planned.

More generally, Chavez has personalized the situation, resulting in a political debacle that may permanently reduce his authority within and without Venezuela. Instead of recognizing similarities between the aspirations of the Arab masses, and those in South America who put people like him, Morales, Lula and Kirchner, among others, into power, he has decided to give priority to his personal relationship with Gaddafi, saying that he would be a coward if he condemned his friend. Protests throughout North Africa and the Middle East have highlighted themes that should be familiar to Chavez and South American leftists, such as demands for greater inclusion within existing political and economic structures and dismay at the impoverishment that has resulted from the implementation of neoliberal economic policies, even if they are not as prominent a feature as they have been in South America. Yet Chavez implies that Gaddafi is closer in spirit to the South American left than the rebels.

This was always the peril of Chavez's realpolitik foreign policy, a policy that sought allies to resist US threats to the sovereignty of Venezuela in the most unsavory of places, in Iran, in Libya, even in Belarus and Zimbabwe. While I personally question to effectiveness of such a policy, even on its own terms, I don't criticize Chavez for undertaking measures that he felt necessary to preserve the power of the left in Venezuela. The problem is rather different, as explained by Louis Proyect:

Now it should be clearly understood that there is nothing wrong with forming alliances with Zimbabwe, Iran or Libya. Countries that are trying to develop a foreign policy independent of imperialism will by necessity adopt a kind of socialist realpolitik. When the government of Mexico made the streets run red with the blood of student protesters in 1968, it was understandable why Cuba remained silent. When Cuba had few friends in Latin America, Mexico’s PRI had a shred enough of remaining nationalism to stand up to the OAS and trade with Cuba. Furthermore, Cuba was in its rights to maintain diplomatic relations with Spain when Franco was dictator. Beggars cannot be choosers.

What is not acceptable is elevating despots like Mugabe, Qaddafi and Ahmadinejad into revolutionaries even though they have had confrontations with imperialism. We are not trying to build an anti-imperialist movement. Our goal instead is to build a socialist movement, which is alone capable of ridding the world of capitalism. In the final analysis, imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism and not some new economic system.

Of course, the consequence of Chavez's support for Gaddafi is that it will discredit him and the Bolivarian Revolution with many people around the world who have been sympathetic to it. It legitimizes rightist claims that Chavez will, if necessary, use whatever force is necessary to preserve his power. Never mind that Chavez is noteworthy for his refusal to order the mass suppression of the opposition in Venezuela after the 2002 coup and the 2002-2003 strike at the state run PDVSA oil company, a strike instigated by the opposition to bring about the sort of economic chaos that lead to the coup against Allende in 1973. Never mind that he thereafter proceeded to defend himself politically in an August 2004 referendum on the question of his removal from office. Now, the methods of Gaddafi are associated with the methods of Chavez. Beyond that, it discredits the internationalism of anti-imperialism and socialism through the association of them with kleptocratic dictators like Gaddafi.

Sadly, Chavez, as well as President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, have created a fissure between leftists in South America and Arabs in North Africa and Middle East, people who, as already noted, find themselves struggling against similar forms of oppression. Superficially, there appears to be a different social context in the current protests, one in which the middle class, people within the military, concerned about their economic privileges, and even heretofore longtime supporters of the regimes participate, but it does not justify a dismissive attitude towards them. Upon closer examination, such a process, marked by the specific conditions of the Arab countries in question, is actually somewhat similar to the ones that resulted in the elections of Chavez and Lula. Even if the composition and conduct of these movements can be described as objectionable in some way from a left perspective, it does not necessarily invalidate them as ones that faciliate the eventual defeat of imperialism and capitalism, as Proyect observes by reference to Lenin's positive response to the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland.

Lenin understood that if one insists upon a properly constituted revolutionary movement before proceeding to participate, then one would be waiting a very long time indeed, perhaps forever. Back in the 1990s, Chavez had a similar understanding, when he distanced himself from the more radical leftist groups in Venezuela because of what he considered their unrealistic expectations as to how Venezuela could be transformed. Chavez recognized that, in such a situation, the left must seek to present a plausible, persuasive critique of the existing social order and offer a credible alternative, which he did, quite effectively. With his support for Gaddafi, he has drifted away from his past history of left pragmatism. We can only hope that it has not already created an irreparable separation between the leftists of South America and the revolutionaries of the Arab world, a separation that can only serve to perpetuate US global influence and capitalism.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Hugo Chavez, Libya, Neoliberalism, Venezuela

No wonder Richard Perle, Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi considered it important to establish a connection to Muammar Gaddafi:

Libya has proven oil reserves of 44 billion barrels, the largest in Africa, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country has used this burgeoning oil wealth to invest close to $100bn (£61.6bn) around the world since economic sanctions were lifted in 2004.

Libya's overseas investments include a portfolio of UK properties as well as a 3% stake in Pearson Group, which makes it one of the biggest shareholders in the owner of the Financial Times.

The Libyan Investment Authority is the country's main financial vehicle, with an estimated $70bn of assets, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. In June 2009 it paid £155m for Portman House, a 146,550 square foot shopping complex on Oxford Street which houses retailers including Boots and New Look. Five months later the LIA spent £120m on an office at 14 Cornhill – opposite the Bank of England – and in September 2010 Libya set up a joint venture to develop a hotel and retail complex in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire.

The LIA, set up in 2006, has also made a series of investments in Italy, where prime minister Silvio Berlusconi enjoys a close relationship with Gaddafi. Libya owns about 2% of Fiat, 7.5% of Juventus Football Club and has a 2% stake in – and joint venture with – Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica. It owns 7.5% of UniCredit, one of Italy's largest banks, and is a shareholder in Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch bank.

Libya has also made investments through other state vehicles, such as the Libyan African Investment Portfolio, which was set up in 2006 and is worth an estimated $8bn, according to the Sovereign Wealth Institute. This entity is behind FM Capital Partners, a hedge fund set up last year in Knightsbridge to execute a range of investments.

Another Libyan fund, known as the Long Term Asset Portfolio, was set up in 1982 and has an estimated $10bn, which is mainly invested in property and investment funds operated by other banks.

In addition, Libya's ruling elite – led by Gaddafi – has untold billions of dollars of funds around the world, according to Alistair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura, the Japanese bank. This is a country that is so un-transparent I couldn't even begin to guess just how much money the ruling elite has [but] I would be very surprised if it didn't run into billions, Newton said.

Given that Libya has, by and large, been ignored by both the commercial and alternative media in the US, the scope of the activities of the kleptocracy are truly amazing. It provides us with an insight as to the exponentially greater investment activities of Sunni kingdoms in the Gulf, and the fear that will envelop global financial markests if substantial protests erupt there. Meanwhile, as for Libya, if the populace prevails, then, perhaps, the country's tremendous oil wealth can be used to benefit them.

Labels: American Empire, Italy, Libya, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Tony Blair

UPDATE 2: Richard Perle and the many neoconservative friends of Muammar Gaddafi:

Perle traveled to Libya as a paid adviser to the Monitor Group, a prestigious Boston-based consulting firm with close ties to leading professors at the Harvard Business School. The firm named Perle a senior adviser in 2006.

The Monitor Group described Perle’s travel to Libya and the recruitment of several other prominent thinkers and former officials to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s image in a series of documents obtained and released by a Libyan opposition group, the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition, in 2009.

The Monitor Group did not return phone calls left at its Boston offices Monday. But Monitor describes, in a series of documents published by the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition in 2009, an action plan to introduce and bring to Libya a meticulously selected group of independent and objective experts who would be invited to Libya, meet senior officials, hold lectures, attend workshops, and write articles that would more positively portray Libya and its controversial ruler.

A 2007 Monitor memo named among the prominent figures it had recruited to travel to Libya and meet with Qadhafi as part of the Project to Enhance the Profile of Libya and Muammar Qadhafi Perle, historian Francis Fukuyama, Princeton Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, famous Nixon interviewer David Frost, and MIT media lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, the brother of former deputy secretary of state and director of national intelligence John Negroponte.

Hat tip to Louis Proyect

UPDATE 1: Meanwhile, in Bahrain:

More than 100,000 protesters poured into the central Pearl Square here on Tuesday in an unbroken stream stretching back for miles along a central highway in the biggest antigovernment demonstration yet in this tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.

The protesters, mostly members of the Shiite majority, marched along the eastbound side of Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Highway in a wide, unbroken column of red and white, the country’s colors. Men of all ages walked with women and children waving flags and calling for an end to the authoritarian government of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

In a nation of only a half a million citizens, the sheer size of the gathering was astonishing. The protest, organized by the Shiite opposition parties, began in the central Bahrain Mall, two miles from the square and seemed to fill the entire length of the highway between the two points.

INITIAL POST:

lenin explains:

Even at this late hour, it would be foolish to underestimate Gadaffi's ability to just hang on, to clench Libya in a rigor mortis grip. As crazed as he manifestly is, he has demonstrated considerable shrewdness in his time. For example, as soon as the Islamist opposition started become a real threat to his regime in the late 1990s, he started to look for ways to be accepted by the US-led caste of 'good guys'. The collapse of the USSR as a supplier of military hardware, trade, and ideological and moral leadership for Third Worldist states, would also have had something to do with this. The transition was made easier after 2001, and completed in 2004 partially at the best of Anglo-American oil. Gadaffi went so far, in his attempts to win over his erstwhile opponents, as to participate in anti-Islamist counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines with international support, lavish intelligence on US agencies and even compensate the victims of Lockerbie for a crime that Libya had not committed. The Bush administration might still have resisted such serenading were it not for the eager rush of European capital into Tripoli. So, Bush and Blair turned it into a story of Gadaffi seeing the light and giving up his non-existent WMD programmes, which charade Gadaffi duly participated in. This whole sequence of events was bizarre and improbable, but it worked: the subsequent oil contracts, amid a global oil price spike produced by Bush's wars, made him and his regime very wealthy. He was also able to hang opponents in public under the pretext of a fight against 'radical Islamists'. Joining the camp of American client dictatorships enabled Gadaffi to survive until this moment.

lenin further asserts that the US and the UK find Gaddafi preferable to the revolutinary alternative. If so, that might explain these live updates today from Al Jazeera:

8.34pm: Al Jazeera's White House correspondent Patty Culhane noted that Barack Obama has himself been silent about Libya for a few days, even though he had made public statements during Egypt's similar unrest.

8.32pm: John Kerry, a US politician, called the Libyan government's use of force beyond dispicable. He called on Barack Obama to reconsider sanctions against Libya, and said he hoped these were Gaddafi's last hours in power. Kerry said the international community must send a message to Gaddafi that his cowardly actions will have consequences.

8:29pm: PJ Crowley, US department of state spokesman, calls on Libya to respect rights of the thousands of US citizens in the country. He said the White House has grave concerns over the Libyan government's response to protests.

Grave concerns. Now, that's a strong condemnation. And, what precisely are these concerns? Concerns over the brutalities inflicted upon the protesters, or concerns about the extent to which the Libyan government's response increases the prospect of a successor regime more independent of the US? Note that, as in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain, the US has failed to call upon leadership of the country to step down, sticking with the political line of reform to be administered by them. Policymakers can't seem to grasp the the notion that Gaddafi, like Mubarak, no longer has the legitimacy to carry out reforms because of his recourse to violence.

There is also the possibility that Libya is perceived by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia as a test as to whether protests in Bahrain and, potentially, even on the peninsula itself, can be effectively suppressed through violence, if necessary. For now, the jury is still out as to whether the alternative strategy of draining the energy of the revolutionaries through negotiation and the implementation of innocuous reforms, as is currently being attempted in Egypt and Bahrain will ultimately succeed. Hence, the importance of the uprising in Libya. In Libya, unlike elsewhere, Gaddafi and his apparatus have nowhere to go, they must stand and fight or die. So, Libya becomes an example of what the ruling families of the Gulf can anticipate if they believe that they can only retain power through the ruthless suppression of the populace. Gaddafi's reliance upon mercernaries is particularly significant in this context. So far, the results from Libya are not encouraging, even if the outcome is far from clear.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Gulf States, Libya, Neoconservatives, Political Violence