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Is military force needed in Libya?Editorial,DECCAN CHRONICLE,Chennai

Edition,March20.2011.

WITH THE US, France and Britain getting ready for military action against the regime of

Col. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the prospect of stability in West Asia, which had been

thrown into uncertainty for the past three months on account of anti-regime popularupheavals in several Arab countries, has nose-dived.

Thursday's vote in the UN Security Council to sanction the imposing of a no-fly zone againstLibya was worded broadly at the instance of the Americans to allow for "all necessary measures"against the Gaddafi regime, which is euphemism for military attack. The 10-5 vote in theCouncil largely came about when it became clear that the Arab League was in favour of a no-flyzone.

However, the Arab League is not gung-ho about military action.

India did well to abstain on the vote along with Russia, China, Brazil and Germany. The way the politics of key Western bloc countries were moving, it was apparent that the authorisation of ano-fly limitation would, in effect, mean military assault. Germany considered this dangerous andimbued with risks. This is a fair assessment.

The other countries that chose to abstain too are likely to have thought along similar lines. India,in particular, also gave due consideration to the mixed record of no-fly zones, whoseenforcement often ends up hurting the populace, rather than the regime being targeted. The US

President, Mr Barack Obama, has gone on r ecord to say that American ground troops

would not take part in any action against Libya. Direct combat responsibilities are likely todevolve on the British and the French who have avidly stepped forward to do war.

Even so, there is no getting away from the fact that America would be seen as being at war inthree Islamic countries simultaneously -earlier Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Libya, when led by a President who is Nobel peace laureate.

The Air Force of the UAEs is also expected to come into play, and material help is anticipatedfrom others in the Gulf, besides Jordan.

Saudi Arabia is also against the Libyan regime. Nevertheless, there appears to be a division inthe Arab world. Egypt, although it itself witnessed the ouster of an authoritarian ruler, hadreportedly been lukewarm even toward the idea of a no-fly zone. In order to retain the right torule, Col. Gaddafi has unconscionably unleashed air power and artillery against his own people.Should the outside world respond with the use of military force to oust such a ruler?

In America, the opinion appears to be sharply divided. The defence secretary, the national

security adviser, and the counter-terrorism chief are reportedly not enthusiastic about the

course of action the President has green-lighted after being persuaded by the secretary of

state, Ms Hillary Clinton, among others. An important consideration for the pragmatists

was that Libya is not vital to American security and its core interests. Few would



recommend committing military power in such circumstances. Besides, it is not clear what

the political objectives of armed intervention are in the circumstances. The extent of the

opposition to the Gaddafi regime, and its nature, are apparently not clear even to those

who have called for military confrontation. All things considered, the advisability of the

action of the US and its allies will confound many.

Press Release: from Kaukab Siddique, Ameer of Jamaat al-Muslimeen

In Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Pakistan, Islamic Rights of the People are the

Issue.

The western assault on Libya began on March 19. The attacks were begun by France. Then at 4.46PM EST, the US and Britain fired 110 Tomahawk missiles at Libyan installations. Libya haddeclared cease fire but the western powers claimed that it was not real and started attackingLibya. These attacks are not meant to help the Muslim masses.

Let us put it in context.

Gaddafi of Libya, Khalifa of Bahrain, Salah of Yemen have one thing in common: They want todeny the people their Islamic rights at the point of the gun. Gaddafi sent jet fighters and tanks tocrush the people of Libya. In every city, including Tripoli, the people rose up but were attacked byGaddafi's military. This is tyranny beyond all limits.

The western powers waited till they thought Gaddafi had crushed the people in almost every city.Now the West sees it opportune to emerge as the savior of Libya. The Libyan Islamic communitiescan be crushed in conventional battles but in the long run, the mujahedin will win, inshallah. Themedia propaganda about tyhe imminent collapse of the Libyan opposition has been used by theWest to give it a chance to intervene.

In Yemen, 52 Muslims were killed in Sana'a alone by the tyrant Salah's snipers on Friday, March18. President Obama and the Europeans have shown no desire to end the slaughter of innocentcivilians in Yemen. In fact, USA is working closely with the Yemeni tyrant. Why this doublestandard [a polite name for hypocrisy]? Is it because segments of Yemen have passed into thehands of the dreaded al-Qaida Islamic movement? Yemenis have no right to establish Islam?

In Bahrain, the Saudi army carried out an invasion and helped the local tyrant to assault thepeople gathered in their mass rallies in Manama's central square. Again no high moral tone fromObama and the crusaders. The Saudis are reported to have attacked a hospital where Bahrainisinjured by the police were being treated. Does the Saudi army have any Islamic values, or is it anAmerican army with Muslim names?

In all these uprisings, the real issue is the emergence of Islamic power. Don't be fooled by thehype.

In Pakistan, the latest US drone attacks have killed 40 people in North Waziristan, most of them tribal supporters of the government. The CIA man who killed 2 Pakistanis has been releasedand flown rapidly out of Pakistan. Reports indicate that the relatives of the dead were coerced into"forgiving" the CIA man, were promised $2 million and then put into a hiding place. Pakistanis feelbetrayed and see the involvement of the army chief and the ISI chief in this drama. Pakistanis



don't know whom to trust among their leaders. See that Dr. Afia is in a US prison cell while the CIAagent is free.

On March 17 and 18, Pakistanis rallied in many cities to condemn the release of CIA's RaymondDavis and the drone attacks. No reports in the US media and trivialization in the secular, Englishlanguage, Pakistani media, which Americans read.

[For an Islamic commentary on the "release" of Raymond Davis, see an important article byShamim Siddiqui, a distinguished US Muslim.Scroll to end.]

Also scroll down to a factual report on the response in Pakistan to the Davis drama.

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Spotlight on Libya: We Condemn French Intervention

by Imam Badi Ali [Jamaat al-Muslimeen National Shoora] North Carolina

Through New Trend, we have always opposed the tyranny of Mu'ammar Gaddafi. We are againstall oppressors [known in the Qur'an as taghoot], The Prophet, pbuh, opposed his own uncle'styranny. We are the followers of Muhammad, pbuh.

However, we must say NO to French intervention, and all anglo-european intervention, in Libya.We urge Muslims not only to look at what is happening right now [March 19] but also at the pastrecord of France and consider what might happen in the future.

France has had an ugly past in its interventions all over Africa. For 80 years France has carriedout its secret and deadly games in Africa, setting up and removing one dictator after another.What has remained constant is the focus on French interests and French material gains. Francecontrols uranium and oil and other products in Africa and is now making a big move in Libya.

France has been involved in genocide against Muslims and Africans in general. It was supposedlythe friend of Saddam Hussain but then betrayed him. During the war of independence in Algeria, itcarried out serious mass killings. Later it supported the Algerian generals in their slaughter of Islamic activists and their families.

There are indications of a French role in the genocide in Rwanda, turning Hutus against Tutsis.

Few people know that France has its own secularized group in Eastern Libya. These areintellectuals who have studied in France. They are "French Libyans" They have become vocalduring the anti-Gaddafi rallies, exploiting the anger of the masses, and have been displaying theFrench flag along with the old Libyan flag. An effort is underway to bring up a secular Libyanleadership to benefit from the sacrifices of the Islamic masses.

France has been in Africa all this time, under various guises and hidden behind people withAfrican faces and names. It had a role in the break up of Sudan and in the disturbances in Darfur.France is certainly not a friend of Africa or of Muslims. Within France itself, a police state hasdeveloped which has been persecuting Muslims and forcing Muslim women to give up the hijab.

Using the Arab League as a facade to intervene in Libya, won't fool anyone. These Arab "leaders"have no credibility and have been the tools of the western powers in the issues of Iraq andPalestine.



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Libya Hit on the anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq

by Nadrat Siddique

This weekend is the anniversary of the imperialist invasion of Iraq. Please pray for all the war victims andtheir families, amputees, innocents rendered to secret prisons, political prisoners, poor and black cannonfodder on the U.S. side and U.S. soldiers who dare speak up against the war.

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The bombing of Gaddafi’s compound

22 March 2011

The bombing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s personal compound in Tripoli Sunday night

epitomizes the criminal character of the war launched by the US and its allies and exposes thehumanitarian pretenses of a supposedly “limited action” to protect civilians.

The cruise missile reportedly fired by a British submarine reduced a three-story building at thecompound to rubble. Earlier on Sunday, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox had said thatGaddafi was a legitimate target in the massive air assault being waged by the United States,Britain and France against the virtually defenseless former colonial country.

Speaking from Germany on Monday, US Gen. Carter Ham, head of America’s Africa Commandand overall commander of the forces attacking Libya, denied that Gaddafi was being targeted. Atthe same time he defended the missile strike as part of efforts to degrade the regime’s “command

and control capability.”

The British Daily Mail ’s web site reported Monday that MI6 spies were telephoning Gaddafi’sgenerals, warning them that they would be targeted by missiles unless they defected.

The bombing of Gaddafi’s residence highlights the brazenness with which the US-led war coalition is using the legal fig leaf of a UN Security Council resolution ostensibly authorizing ano-fly zone to indiscriminately attack both military and civilian targets. The purpose of the UN-sanctioned aggression is not to protect civilians, but to destroy Gaddafi’s military infrastructureand, if possible, murder the head of state himself in order to replace his dictatorial regime withan even more pliant tool of the US, France and Britain and the Western oil conglomerates.

Once again, the United Nations has revealed itself to be nothing other than a tool of the great powers, vindicating Lenin’s apt designation of its predecessor, the League of Nations, as a“thieves’ kitchen.”

Media dispatches say some 300 Gaddafi supporters were in the compound at the time of theattack, although the Libyan government has not reported any casualties in the explosion.



It appears that President Barack Obama is going out of his way to claim the barbaric mantle of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, launching the war on the eighth anniversary of theinvasion of Iraq and bombing Gaddafi’s compound just shy of 25 years since Reagan bombedthe same facility, killing 60 Libyans, including Gaddafi’s adopted daughter.

For all the talk of a limited and narrowly defined intervention, the US pushed for language in theUN resolution passed last Thursday authorizing “all necessary measures” against Gaddafi’sforces. This provided a green light for an all-out war.

The supposed prohibition of “occupation troops” is another fraud. British cabinet ministers andPrime Minister David Cameron are already saying that British troops could be introduced for thesupposed purpose of policing the arms embargo without violating the UN resolution.

For the past decade Gaddafi has enjoyed the warmest of relations with Washington and theEuropean capitals, having agreed to close down his nuclear facilities, collaborate in the US “war on terror” and grant lucrative oil concessions to Western firms. But he now joins a long list of

one-time US imperialist assets who, despite their best efforts, fell afoul of the geostrategic aimsof the American ruling elite. The list includes Panama’s Noriega, Somalia’s Aidid, Serbia’sMilosevic and Saddam Hussein.

In the broader struggle of the US to contain and ultimately crush the revolutionary waveengulfing much of North Africa and the Middle East, Gaddafi became expendable. Washingtonseized on the uprising against Gaddafi based in the east of Libya, and may have had a hand in itseruption, to remove Gaddafi and fashion a new colonial-style regime from which the US can actmilitarily and politically against the threat of socialist revolution, particularly in Egypt and SaudiArabia, and protect its key ally, Israel.

Even as the bombs continued to fall Monday in Tripoli and other cities and the smoking ruins of tanks and charred bodies of retreating Gaddafi troops littered the roads outside Benghazi andother towns, Obama reiterated that the goal of the bloodbath was the removal of Gaddafi. It is“still US policy that Gaddafi needs to go,” he said at a press conference in Santiago, Chile.

With typical double-talk, Obama and his counterparts in Europe seek to combine the demand for regime change with pledges to allow the Libyan people to decide their own fate. In fact, theaggression against Libya is aimed precisely at preventing the working class in the lead of theoppressed masses of Libya and the entire region from settling scores with the various bourgeoisstooge regimes and breaking the stranglehold of imperialism by taking power into their ownhands.

There is an additional motive behind the savagery of the attack on Libya. Washington cannot permit any leader to defy its dictates with impunity. Former Democratic vice presidentialcandidate Joseph Lieberman alluded to this on a Sunday talk show, declaring that once the USdemanded his resignation Gaddafi had to go because the international prestige of the UnitedStates was on the line.



Libya is to be made an object lesson for all oppressed countries. The display of the ability of theimperialist powers to rain down death and destruction by unleashing immense firepower is aimedat intimidating the revolutionary aspirations of workers and youth throughout the region.

The violence of imperialism is fueled by the deepening economic, social and political

contradictions and sharpening inter-imperialist conflicts arising from the breakdown of theglobal financial system three-and-a-half years ago. The aggressive role of France and Britain inthe current war, the belated and hurried efforts of the US to take the lead, the opposition of Russia and Germany to the military intervention reflect the intensifying scramble among thegreat powers for spheres of influence and control of resources and markets in Africa, the MiddleEast and beyond.

Under these conditions, the entire post-World War II framework of international law hascollapsed. It has been supplanted by the reassertion of war as a legitimate tool of foreign policy,along with such practices as torture and targeted assassinations.

Contained in the new eruption of lawlessness and barbarity in Libya is the drift of capitalismtoward world war. Trotsky’s words from 1938 in the founding program of the FourthInternational resonate with immense relevance today: “Under the increasing tension of capitalistdisintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashesand bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitablycoalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions.”

Now, as then, the only way to end war and prevent a global conflagration is to disarm theimperialists by means of the world socialist revolution.

Barry Grey

US escalates military onslaught against Libya

By Patrick Martin

23 March 2011

Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, the operations commander of the US and European forces attackingLibya, said Tuesday afternoon that he was “considering all options” in expanding the war againstthe regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

The United States and Britain launched another two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against

targets along the Libyan coast, including several in Tripoli, the capital city. France said itsaircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was joining the operation Tuesday, the first such vessel to bedeployed in the war zone. Belgian and Spanish warplanes have begun air patrols over Libya, joining the US, Britain, France and the Netherlands.

Locklear, who directs all US naval forces in Europe and Africa, cited the March 18 speech byPresident Obama, which demanded that “the forces of Gaddafi have to stop advancing onBenghazi, they have to pull back from Zawiyah, Ajdabiya, Misurata.”



“They have not done that,” the admiral said. “We basically have forced him out of Benghazi. Inthe other three places, they have not complied with the direction from our president. So when Itake a look at … my mission here, I apply that type of standard to operations that are occurring.”

“My intelligence tells me that there are Gaddafi forces in Misurata,” Locklear continued. “They

are conducting attacks against civilians in Misurata and in violation of the Security Councilresolution. I’m not going to talk about future operations, but I am aware of it, and we areconsidering all options.”

“As the capabilities of the coalition grow,” Locklear explained, “we’ll be able to provide moresupport, more missions to what you would call ground forces [and] what I would call time-sensitive targeting, where we’re looking at the battle space as it changes, looking at thedisposition of Gaddafi’s forces that are not complying with the UN Security Council resolution,and we’ll be able to have more of an effect. … That’s how I would characterize the cominghours and days.”

These remarks strongly suggest that the focus of the bombing campaign by the US, Britain,France and other powers will shift from targeting air defense systems and command and controlfacilities to the annihilation of large numbers of ground troops loyal to the Gaddafi regime.

The reference to “time-sensitive targeting” is particularly revealing, since it inevitably requiresthe closest collaboration with forces on the ground, either rebel troops, with the US and alliedwarplanes used for tactical support, or US, British and French special ops and intelligence agentssent into the country to serve as spotters.

A report in the New York Times Tuesday indicated that this tactical collaboration is already ineffect. “United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not

communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh,asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their air strikes,”the newspaper reported. “We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location thatneeds to be bombed,” Sayeh told the Times.

This tactical shift will mean an enormous increase in casualties among both Libyan soldiers andcivilians, who are closely intermingled in all the cities being contested between the Gaddafiregime and the rebel forces.

The first phase of the aerial assault is largely completed, the US admiral said, as he describedwhat remains of Libya’s air force and anti-aircraft systems as “largely ineffective.” The US,

Britain and France are extending the no-fly zone steadily westward from Benghazi towards thecapital.

Locklear’s superior, General Carter Ham, head of the US Africa Command, said total air strikesagainst Libya rose from 60 on Sunday to 80 on Monday, and of these, “well over half” wereflown by non-US aircraft, principally British and French.



Locklear said that a US F-15 fighter that crashed Monday night had not been shot down, butsuffered a mechanical failure. He confirmed that the two airmen had been retrieved, one by USforces and one by Libyan rebels—an indication of the close coordination of the US andEuropean operations with the anti-Gaddafi forces.

At the same time, he refused to comment on a British press report that a Marine Osprey aircraftengaged in the rescue effort had opened fire on villagers approaching one of the downed pilots,killing five of them.

This is the first reported massacre of Libyan civilians by the imperialist forces supposedlycoming to save them from death at the hands of Gaddafi. It will not be the last.

Heavy fighting was reported Tuesday in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city, 200 kilometers (125miles) east of Tripoli, the only major city in the western half of the country still in rebel hands.Libyan army tanks moved into the city last week but neither side appears to be in effectivecontrol. At least 40 people were killed in the city Monday, according to press reports.

There was also an attempt by pro-Gaddafi forces to seize the rebel-held town of Zintan, near theTunisian border.

Rebel forces remain largely on the defensive. They did not resume their effort to recaptureAjdabiyah, taken by Gaddafi’s troops during their offensive last week. Press reports Mondaydescribed rebel fighters rushing pell mell into the city, expecting little resistance, only to faceheavy tank and missile fire. The rebels retreated in considerable disorder and remain campedwell outside the city. Three nights of air strikes on the city have failed to dislodge the pro-government forces.

In an indication of a possible next stage in the imperialist intervention in Libya, NBC News broadcast a remarkable report from Benghazi, the rebel capital, in which correspondent RichardEngel said that the rebels were appealing for outside military advisers to help remedy the defectsin organization, discipline and logistics that were revealed during last week’s near-collapse.

In what amounted to a public service announcement summoning Western mercenaries toBenghazi, Engel reported that the rebels, who control a significant portion of Libya’s oilresources, were willing to “pay commercial rates” for the services of private military experts.

The aims of the imperialist intervention—the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime and the seizure of Libya’s oil resources—cannot be achieved without a direct, on-the-ground military presence.

George Friedman of the political risk consultancy Stratfor, which has close ties to the USintelligence establishment, wrote in a particularly blunt analysis: “The long-term goal, unspoken but well understood, is regime change.”

“The early days will go extremely well but will not define whether or not the war is successful,”he maintained. “The test will come if a war designed to stop human suffering begins to inflicthuman suffering.”



There is no doubt that Washington, London and Paris are resolved to kill as many thousands asrequired to accomplish their reactionary aims.

The scale of the air and missile strikes on Libya gives the lie to the “protecting civilians” mantraof the Obama administration and its allies. Press reports cited attacks on warehouses at the port

of Tripoli as well as a naval facility east of the city, where Reuters quoted eyewitness accounts of “a massive explosion.”

An Al Jazeera correspondent reported: “We could see an area of the port on fire, substantially onfire, two big blazes. We saw fire engines racing along the coastal road. This evening seems tohave been about targeting seaborne military assets of Gaddafi's army…”

The targeting of the Libyan navy has nothing to do with protecting civilians, but is a key focus inthe effort to revive the flagging military fortunes of the US-backed rebel forces. Gaddafi’s smallnavy played an important tactical role in last week’s offensive along the coast, allowing histroops to bypass rebel strongpoints and attack them from the rear.

While escalating the violence in Libya, the imperialist powers are engaged in an increasingly bitter struggle among themselves over control and direction of the anti-Gaddafi campaign. It wasreported late Tuesday that the United States and France have reached agreement on the commandstructure for the war.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy appears to have prevailed in his insistence that NATO not bethe forum for giving overall direction to the campaign. Instead, an ad hoc committee will beestablished representing only those countries contributing military forces.

This would include several non-NATO Arab countries, like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,

if they send warplanes as promised, and it would exclude Germany, which abstained in lastThursday’s vote on the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the attack on Libya.

Both Germany and Turkey, which has publicly criticized the conduct of the war, would have hadan effective veto in the NATO command structure, which requires unanimity among themembers of the US-led alliance.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé argued strenuously against making the war a NATOoperation on the grounds that this would risk losing the support of the Arab League as well asmany African countries.

The controversy dominated and largely overshadowed President Obama’s trip to Latin America,in the course of which he was compelled to phone the Emir of Qatar to lobby for his support, aswell as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

There was increasing criticism of the scale of the attack on Libya from countries in Asia andAfrica. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a speech to parliament that “noexternal powers” should interfere in Libya. “Nobody, not a couple of countries, can take thatdecision to change a particular regime,” he said.



The UN Security Council rejected a request from Libya for an emergency meeting on themilitary aggression by the US-led coalition. The council will hold a session Thursday to receivea briefing on the war by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

British Parliament overwhelmingly endorses war

By Robert Stevens

23 March 2011

The entire British political establishment has endorsed the air war against Libya. On Mondayevening, Parliament voted almost unanimously for a motion supporting the use of UK militaryforces and welcoming the United Nations Security Council resolution that provided the legal figleaf for the neo-colonial war of aggression led by the US, Britain and France.

MPs from the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government were supported by the oppositionLabour Party. The motion passed by a majority of 544, with only 15 MPs voting against. The 15

who voted no include nine Labour Party MPs, two members of the Northern Ireland-based SocialDemocratic Labour Party, one Conservative MP, and Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party MP.Two “tellers,” Labour MPs, also voted against.

Constitutionally, the authorisation of military action requires only a decision by the primeminister. Parliament has no formal role in the deployment of UK forces. Nevertheless, PrimeMinister David Cameron agreed to hold the vote, knowing that his decision to launch militaryaction would receive overwhelming support, including from the Labour Party.

Nearly all the 50 MPs who spoke in the debate did so to endorse the military assault. The vote infavour was far higher than the parliamentary endorsement of the invasion of Iraq. No vote was

held in Parliament on the invasion of Afghanistan.

The lopsided yes vote came despite an opinion poll showing that 53 percent of British peoplesurveyed opposed the military intervention. Only one third approved.

The motion declared its support for the “taking of all necessary measures to protect civilians andcivilian populated areas under threat of attack in Libya and to enforce the no-fly zone, includingthe use of UK armed forces and military assets in accordance with United Nations SecurityCouncil Resolution 1973.”

Even as cruise missiles and bombs rained down on the Libyan people on the third day of the

onslaught, the motion stated that Parliament “deplores the ongoing use of violence by the Libyanregime.”

The Liberal Democrats fought both the 2005 and 2010 general elections on the basis that theyhad voted against the war in Iraq in 2003. At the 2 million-strong London demonstration againstthe Iraq war in 2003, the Liberal Democrats were given pride of place on the platform by theSocialist Workers Party-led Stop the War Coalition, with then-leader Charles Kennedy speaking.



The Liberal Democrats did not oppose the war on a principled basis. Rather, they made supportfor the invasion contingent on the passage of a second UN Security Council resolutionspecifically authorising military action. The attempt by the US and Britain to secure such aresolution was blocked by France. As soon as the war began, the Liberal Democrats declaredtheir support for the British armed forces.

Some in Monday’s parliamentary debate felt obliged to reference the previous close relations between the British government and the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Since former PrimeMinister Tony Blair’s 2004 “deal in the desert,” government ministers, oil and other corporateexecutives, leading university officials and academics, and even members of the royal familylined up to ingratiate themselves with Gaddafi. In return, British corporations secured lucrativecontracts and universities received generous Libyan grants.

The repression by the Libyan government against the recent protests was carried out with armssold to Gaddafi by the British government. Last year, the UK issued more than £200 millionworth of arms exports licences to Libya.

Labour leader Ed Miliband noted in passing his concerns over the fact that no action was beingtaken by the UK against state repression in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and thendeclared his agreement with Cameron, arguing that the inability to do everything does not meanyou should do nothing. Government is a mixture of “principle and pragmatism,” he said.

The vote demonstrated the virtual disappearance of the Labour Party “anti-war left.” The pro-forma “no” vote by a handful of MPs was registered not on the basis of any principledopposition, but rather in the form of a polite note of caution to the political and militaryestablishment.

Two Labour “lefts”—Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell—proposed an amendment to thegovernment’s motion stating that “every peaceful attempt must be made at conflict resolutionunder the auspices of the United Nations, and directly involving other Arab nations, before andduring any deployment of armed force; commits the government to ensuring that, if conflicttakes place, every effort is also made to protect civilians from harm, including the avoidance of the use of depleted uranium ordnance and cluster munitions.”

This piece of sophistry, which did not actually oppose the use of military force, was put forwardunder conditions where the war had already been under way for three days with the full supportof the United Nations and “other Arab nations.”

Such was the timidity and deference of the nominal opponents that Cameron was able to state,“There is much in the amendment that I welcome.”

One of the Labour MPs voting against was Barry Gardiner. He supported the invasion of Iraq in2003. Three days earlier, he had stated, “I welcome the UN resolution but I oppose Britain’smilitary involvement in implementing it.”



He voted no on the grounds that the war was not in the British national interest. “ North Africa isnot on our borders,” he declared. “It is not in our direct sphere of influence. Libya poses nodirect threat to the UK, and we have no historical responsibility as the former colonial power, sowhy are we spending millions of pounds on cruise missiles and endangering the lives of Britishsoldiers to implement the resolution?”

Gardiner merely exposed his ignorance of history. From 1943 to 1951, the provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were, in fact, under British administration, while the Frenchcontrolled Fezzan. By his twisted logic, moreover, if Italy had led the bombing and taken up thelegacy of Mussolini by slaughtering Libya’s people, he could have happily signed off on the war.

The “no” vote by Green MP Lucas was just as duplicitous. In a March 11 statement, the Greenscalled for Parliament to be granted powers to “make a democratic decision on any military moveagainst Colonel Gaddafi’s forces in Libya.” At the same time, the statement all but openly linedup with the government, declaring, “We are not ruling out support for a no-fly zone, but it wouldneed to be very carefully handled and would need the support of countries in the region.”

In her statement to Parliament, Lucas did not oppose the military onslaught in Libya, stating onlythat she hoped Cameron “would agree that any military action needs to be principled andconsistent.” She added, “Does he not agree that our position would be a lot more consistent and alot more principled if we stopped selling arms to repressive regimes anywhere in that region?”

In his obsequious pledge of support to Cameron, Labour leader Miliband concluded with his oft-repeated reference to his “two Jewish parents whose lives were changed forever by the darknessof the holocaust, yet who found security in Britain.” He said his parents survived, “but many of my parents’ relatives were out of the reach of the international community and perished as aresult.”

Miliband’s attempt to equate an imperialist war against a virtually defenceless former colonywith opposition to Nazism and the holocaust represents a grotesque falsification of history. Thetrue parallels with the actions of Hitler are not those of Gaddafi, but Cameron.

In a Reichstag speech in February 1938, Hitler declared himself the protector of “oppressedGermans” on the Third Reich’s borders. It was under the guise of securing “self-determination”for the German populations that the Nazis implemented their plan for Lebensraum— ”living roomin the east.” Czechoslovakia was invaded on the pretext of defending the Sudeten Germans, justas much of Tripoli and the rest of Libya are being ravaged on the pretext of defending Libyancivilians.

The implications of Labour’s enthusiastic support for the war against Libya go beyond the fate of one country. Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary and accomplice in war crimes inIraq, stated that the UN resolution against Libya was “historically significant not just on its ownterms.” He noted that “this is first occasion on which the Security Council has acted decisivelyupon the words relating to the responsibility to protect, which were agreed in the UN GeneralAssembly in 2005 and in Security Council resolution 1674 in 2006.”



This so-called “responsibility to protect” amounts to a carte blanche for the imperialist powers toinvade and plunder in any part of the world.

Every MP in the House of Commons knew that the pretext for military action in Libya was a lie,yet not a single voice was raised to directly challenge its criminal character.

On Sunday, Defence Secretary Liam Fox stated publicly that Libyan leader Gaddafi was a“legitimate target” of the bombings. Gaddafi’s targeted assassination would “potentially be a possibility,” he said. Foreign Secretary William Hague also suggested that Gaddafi could betargeted.

Philippe Sands, professor of law at University College London and a supporter of the UNresolution, said, “The authorisation of ‘all necessary measures’ is broad and appears to allow thetargeting of Gaddafi and others who act to put civilians ‘under threat of attack,’ words that go beyond the need to establish a connection with actual attacks.”

On Sunday night, a missile was fired from a British submarine at Gaddafi’s personal compound.

Following Fox’s comments, chief of the UK defence staff General Sir David Richards saidGaddafi was “absolutely not” a target, adding, “It is not allowed under the UN resolution, and itis not something I want to discuss any further.”

Yet in the Commons debate, Fox’s declaration that Gaddafi could be assassinated wentunopposed. Instead, Labour’s Jim Murphy stated that Fox’s comments had been merely“counterproductive at a time when we are trying to maintain a broad coalition including Arabopinion.”

Former Labour defence secretary Bob Ainsworth complained that Fox’s “loose talk” had let thecat out of the bag. “Even if it were sensible for Colonel Gaddafi to be targeted as part of thisoperation, it cannot possibly be sensible for the defence secretary to give the impression that it isOK,” he said.

US, Europe intensify Libya onslaught

By Tom Eley

22 March 2011

The US, France and the United Kingdom on Monday intensified their bombardment of largely

defenseless Libyan security forces, military installations and some civilian sites, including a portion of Muammar Gaddafi’s Bab al Azizia compound in the capital, Tripoli.

Hundreds of Libyans have died in the onslaught. The death toll from a hospital destroyed inTripoli on Saturday was reported by Libyan state television to be 48, with over 150 wounded.Most of the casualties were said to be children.



The highway linking rebel-held Benghazi and Ajdabiya, a city that remains under Gaddafi’scontrol, was littered with the “burnt out wreckage of what was Gaddafi’s armour and tanks,” Aljazeera correspondent Tony Birtley reported Monday. These soldiers were massacred by US jets as they retreated from Benghazi under a unilateral ceasefire decreed by Gaddafi but rejected by the US and its allies. It was Gaddafi’s second appeal for a ceasefire in three days.

The cruise missile attack on Bab al Azizia, reportedly carried out by the British, came almost 25years after the Reagan administration’s April 1986 air strikes on the same compound, carried outin the name of fighting terrorism. In that bombing, dozens were killed, including Gaddafi’sadopted daughter.

In spite of efforts to portray the US role as secondary in the attack on Libya, Washington hasassumed command over the operation. The US military has carried out the vast majority of cruisemissile bombings, and on Sunday it conducted the majority of all sorties.

Three US B-2 stealth bombers have by themselves delivered 45 2,000-pound bombs, 90,000

pounds of ordinance in all, making the round-trip flight from their base in Missouri. The long-distance bombers have reportedly destroyed an airfield in Misrata, west of Tripoli. The US hasso far fired 124 Tomahawk cruise missiles from naval vessels.

Italy, Spain, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Greece and Qatar have also participated in themilitary operations.

The White House and British Prime Minister David Cameron claim that the bombing campaign,“Odyssey Dawn,” has already crippled the Libyan air defense system, which was based largelyon antiquated Soviet technology. “We essentially have a no-fly zone,” a White House spokesmantold ABC News.

Yet even though a no-fly zone has already effectively been established, the Western powers haveaccelerated their missile strikes, exposing the lie that the operation’s sole purpose is to protectcivilians.

In a state visit to Chile on Monday, Obama declared “it is US policy that Gaddafi has to go.” UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in an interview over the weekend that Gaddafi was a“legitimate target” of US and allied missiles and bombs.

The Western coalition has intervened in a civil war on the side of a rival faction of the Libyanelite based in Benghazi, whose forces are reportedly being armed by the Egyptian military. After

facing imminent defeat three days ago, rebel forces on Monday left Benghazi to attack neighboring cities controlled by Gaddafi’s troops. They advanced close to the city of Ajdabiya,Al Jazeera reported, but “retreated in disarray when they came under heavy fire from Gaddafiforces.”

Should the rebel forces march on Tripoli under Western air cover, the stage would very likely beset for a bloody confrontation. The commander of the operation, US Army Gen. Carter F. Ham,on Monday said that the coalition will now increase the size of the no-fly zone to target other



cities, including Tripoli itself, where much of Libya’s air defenses are located. “It is likely wewill encounter the regime’s mobile air defense systems… and will certainly attack them,” Hamdeclared.

International condemnation of the attacks mounted on Monday. The US, France and Britain,

while operating under cover of the UN resolution, are acting outside of the official structures of NATO. Formal NATO participation has been blocked by Turkey, which opposes military actionagainst the Gaddafi regime.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday condemned the operation as a “medieval callto crusade” and called the UN Security Council resolution allowing the attacks “defective andflawed.” Russia, along with China, Brazil, India and Germany, abstained from voting on theresolution, thus allowing the US, France and Britain a veneer of diplomatic legitimacy for thewar of aggression.

Speaking at a meeting of the African Union, South African President Jacob Zuma said Monday

his government opposed “the regime change doctrine and… the foreign occupation of Libya.”

Zuma was part of a high-profile African Union committee that had intended to travel to Tripolito broker a peace deal between Gaddafi and the rebel forces. The US-led coalition refused toallow them to land, however.

India has called for an immediate cessation of air strikes, and China convened a United NationsSecurity Council meeting Monday to discuss Libya.

In Cairo, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was mobbed by dozens of people protesting the bombing campaign against Libya. Ban had intended to visit Tahrir Square on Monday, but the

demonstration forced him back into the offices of the Arab League.

The coalition itself showed signs of fracture on Monday. Italy and Norway both protested the adhoc character of the war, which has been dictated by the US, Britain and France. Norway said its jets will not participate until a NATO-controlled command structure is established.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini suggested that Italy may revoke the use of its military bases for action against Libya if NATO does not control the operation. Italy is Libya’s closestEuropean neighbor and its bases are important for the military operation, although the UK,France and the US have launched air strikes from their own territories and from aircraft carriersoff Libyan waters.

Italy, the former colonial power whose effort to pacify the region between 1913 and 1934 coststhe lives of tens of thousands of Libyans, originally joined Germany in opposing militaryintervention, but fell in line after the Obama administration shifted to a war footing. Under PrimeMinister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy forged close ties with Gaddafi and has the most extensiveinterests of the Western powers in Libya.



According to La Repubblica, Berlusconi said that Italy “could not risk to stand aside and onlysuffer the consequences of the decisions taken by others.” Italy is also requesting “a resolutiondemanding respect for commercial accords related to gas and oil,” according to the newspaper.

While Britain is also arguing that the operations should be placed under NATO command,

France has opposed such a development. Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Monday said at ameeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels that “within a few days NATO could come into support” the bombing campaign.

Among the European powers, Germany has been the most critical of the bombing campaign.Foreign Secretary Guido Westerwelle reiterated this stance at the EU meeting in Brussels.“German soldiers will not be sent to Libya because we think this war carries real risks not onlyfor Libya itself but for the region as a whole,” he said, while reiterating his government’s supportfor sanctions.

France ranks behind Italy and Germany among Libya’s trading partners. Britain places seventh

after Turkey, and the US accounts for less than 6 percent of Libyan trade, roughly the same shareas China.

In the US, the White House has faced tepid criticism from a handful of Republican andDemocratic lawmakers for the unilateral use of the military force without congressionaldiscussion, much less approval.

Obama administration officials have responded by insisting that they “consulted” with Congress prior to launching the attacks. “We take the consultative role very seriously,” a senior WhiteHouse official said.

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Canada joins imperialist assault on Libya

By Keith Jones

22 March 2011

Canada’s entire political establishment—from the official opposition Liberals through theostensibly left Bloc Quebecois and trade union-sponsored New Democratic Party—has ralliedaround the Conservative government’s decision to order the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) towage war on Libya, alongside US, French, and British forces.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper had already received assurances of support from the threeopposition party leaders, when he announced last Friday that Canada is deploying 6 F-18 fightersand about 150 CAF support personnel to the Libyan war theater. But in a further demonstrationof opposition support, parliament unanimously adopted a resolution Monday affirming itswholehearted endorsement of the imperialist assault on Libya

Earlier Monday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced that Canadian planes have alreadyseen action over the North African country.

Canada has also deployed a naval frigate off Libya’s coast, the HMCS Charlottetown, and,according to press reports, has had CAF special forces active in the region for at least threeweeks. When the Charlottetown left for the Mediterranean March 2 with the purported aim of bringing humanitarian aid to Libya, Canadian government spokesmen said they were preparingfor all eventualities and that the frigate’s mission could change. That change is apparently nowunderway, with Harper announcing last Saturday that the Charlottetown will join a NATO naval blockade of Libya.

Leading off Monday’s parliamentary debate on Canada’s support for the imperialist attack onLibya, Defence Minister MacKay said Canada has a “moral duty” to intervene to assist theLibyan people and uphold the United Nations and international law.

All of the opposition parties have repeated and amplified these lies.

Canada’s participation in the military attack on Libya, alongside US imperialism and the region’sold dominant colonial powers, France and Great Britain, has nothing to do with aiding theLibyan people. Rather it is aimed at securing control over the country’s oil resources andreasserting the hegemony of the US and it allies over a region that has been convulsed by

popular uprisings against a reactionary and autocratic US-imposed social and political order.

While Canada’s ruling elite now claims to be outraged by the bloody repression meted out byGaddafi’s regime, the Canadian government and premier Canadian companies like Suncor andSNC-Lavalin were more than happy to do business with the dictator.

For decades Canada has joined with the US and the European great powers in sustaining a stringof autocratic regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, whilesupporting Israel in its dispossession and repression of the Palestinian people.

Insofar as the opposition parties have criticized the Conservative government’s position on

Libya, it is has been from the standpoint that Canada should have been more public andaggressive in promoting military action.

Canada’s social democratic party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) issued a statement onFebruary 22 calling for the UN Security Council, that is for the great powers, to establish a no-fly zone over Libya and continued to repeat this demand even as top US officials spelled outclearly that a no-fly zone was commensurate with war. The NDP’s demand has now beenrealized and with the social democrats’ blessing in the only form that it could have ever been



realized by the UN, which is an imperialist-dominated nest of geopolitical intrigue or, as Leninsaid in speaking of its predecessor the League of Nations, “a thieves kitchen.”

In welcoming Canada’s participation in the war on Libya, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae brushed aside suggestions that the Liberals’ support for the CAF deployment could undermine

their oppositional stance in the run-up to a series of parliamentary non-confidence votes thisweek and next. “We don’t see this as a partisan issue between Liberals and Conservatives,” saidRae. “The fact that Mr. Harper has finally agreed to participate [in military action] doesn’tchange the way we will be proceeding over the next week.”

In reality Harper—in keeping with his frequent statements of concern over the past two monthsat the threat the popular uprising in Egypt represents to “stability”—did, from all reports, throwCanada’s limited weight behind the calls from France’s Nikolas Sarkozy and Britain’s DavidCameron for military intervention. But he chose to do so only behind closed doors so as not todamage the Canadian ruling class’ most important bilateral relationship—its partnership with USimperialism.

As underscored by the Harper government’s recent offer to forge an even closer strategicrelationship with Washington in the form of a “continental security perimeter,” Canada’s rulingelite calculates that under conditions of world economic crisis and a fluid geopolitical order characterized by the rise of new powers, its partnership with the US is more vital than ever.

Once the Obama administration decided for war, fashioning a UN resolution that in factauthorized military action far beyond a simple no-fly zone, Harper lost no time in flying his war colors. He hastened to Paris to participate in the summit meeting that Sarkozy convenedSaturday to support and plot the military campaign. While there Harper had bilateral meetingswith both the French president and the British prime minister.

At the summit’s conclusion, Harper made a series of bellicose statements, promising that Canadawill be in the thick of the military action.

While Obama and some other leaders, in an attempt to maintain a cloak of UN legality for themilitary offensive, have tried to claim that the object of the war is not “regime change,” Harper has made no such distinction. Gaddafi, said Harper, “will not last very long.” He then added, “Ithink that is the basis on which we’re moving forward. If I am being frank here, that is probablymore understood than spoken aloud. But I just said it aloud .”

Harper, like other leaders of the anti-Libya war coalition, has to this point been careful to say

that the Canadian intervention in Libya will not involve the deployment of combat troops, for fear of provoking an international outcry.

But Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon went on record last Friday as saying that Canadais “open to all options” for pacifying Libya, including “boots on the ground.” He pointedlyobserved that under the UN Security Council resolution drafted by Washington, Paris andLondon, troops could be sent into Libya if they were deployed “to protect citizens,” and notdesignated an occupation force. “That’s what the resolution calls for,” said Cannon.



The unanimity in parliament is mirrored by the full-throated support for the war voiced by theeditorial boards of the country’s major corporate dailies.

The Globe and Mail , Canada’s so-called newspaper of record, has been campaigning for theimposition of a “no-fly zone” for weeks, urging, if necessary, the establishment of a George W.

Bush-style “coalition of the willing” in defiance of the UN.

In an editorial entitled, “‘Free Libya’ gets a lifeline,” the liberal Toronto Star said Harper “hadmade the right call” in ordering the CAF into action in Libya.

The National Post , a neoconservative paper with privileged links to the Harper government,made clear that it conceives of the attack on Libya as a stepping-stone to a larger war—militaryaction against Iran. “If we cannot even rouse ourselves to confront a tinpot dictator such asGaddafi,” asked the Post , “what credibility do we have in regards to an emerging regional power such as Iran?”

The Canadian bourgeoisie, no less than its rivals, is turning toward imperialist war as a means of staking its claim to natural resources, markets and strategic influence under conditions where the post-World War II capitalist order founded on the unchallenged economic domination of the USand its dollar has collapsed.

With but one exception, Canada has played a major part in every major military action launched by Washington since the end of the Cold War—including the 1991 Gulf War, the 1993 incursioninto Somalia, the 1999 NATO war on Yugoslavia and the ongoing invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

The one exception is the 2003 invasion of Iraq. What is little known is that up to the eleventh

hour Canada was actively involved in the US-British war preparations and, as the then-USAmbassador to Canada Paul Cellucci conceded, Canada subsequently provided much moresupport to the war than did many of the members of “the coalition of the willing.”

And as a consequence of these wars and a massive rearmament campaign, Canada’s militaryspending has dramatically increased since the end of the 1990s under Liberal and Conservativegovernments alike. Indeed, according to a report published at the beginning of this month by theCanadian Center for Policy Alternatives, the Canadian government will spend at least $22.3 billion on the military in the 2010-11 fiscal year. This is more in real, i.e. inflation-adjusteddollars, than Ottawa has spent on the military in any year since the end of World War II.

Obama and Libya21 March 2011

The Obama administration has launched another barbaric war against a largely defenselesscountry in the Middle East. It has ordered cruise missiles and bombs to be dropped on cities andinstallations across Libya, already leaving scores dead and hundreds wounded.



Few in the corporate-controlled media, which once again is lending its services as a propagandaarm of the Pentagon, have bothered to note that this new war has begun on the eighth anniversaryof the “shock and awe” campaign that inaugurated the war in Iraq. Having claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, that war continues to this day, with nearly 50,000 US troopsstill deployed on Iraqi soil.

President Barack Obama, who owed his November 2008 election largely to a cynical appeal tomass antiwar sentiment, has continued the Iraq war, escalated the war in Afghanistan and spreadit into Pakistan, and carried out expanded military interventions in Somalia and Yemen. Now, hehas begun his own shock and awe campaign, and there is every reason to believe that the resultswill be just as catastrophic.

Obama’s claim that the US is merely assisting other nations in enforcing a United Nationsresolution and carrying out a “limited military action” only underscores the cowardice,recklessness and hypocrisy of the Democratic administration in its headlong plunge into a newwar of aggression. His repeated vows that Washington “will not deploy any US troops on the

ground” are worthless, as is his reported statement to aides and promise to US legislators that theUS attack on Libya will be over in “a matter of days, not weeks.”

In such irresponsible rhetoric one finds an echo of the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, who on the eveof the Iraq war assured the media: “I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would lastfive days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”

The so-called “Pottery Barn” rule—you break it, you own it—invoked by then-Secretary of StateColin Powell in warning George W. Bush of the consequences of a war on Iraq still apply. Thelogic of waging a war aimed at crippling and removing an existing regime is inexorable. Theimperialist power carrying out such an attack is driven to fashion a new regime more to its liking.

The results in Afghanistan and Iraq are plain to see: the revival of colonialism, endless war aimed at crushing the resistance of the occupied population, the elevation of politicalFrankenstein monsters like Karzai and Maliki.

Apologists for the Obama administration, many of them part of the pseudo-left, insist that the present war cannot be compared to those launched under Bush. In this case, we are told, the aimsare purely humanitarian, to protect the Libyan people. Moreover, it is war sanctioned by theUnited Nations and even requested by the Arab League. Here we supposedly have themultilateralist “Obama doctrine” in contrast to the unilateralist “Bush doctrine.”

All of this is so much eyewash. The scale and savagery of the bombing—attacking tanks, troops

and urban targets as well as far-flung military installations—have already belied the assurancesthat military action would be limited to protecting civilian populations.

Every act of military aggression by the United States is routinely justified as a humanitarianeffort to rescue a population under duress. Such was the case in the 1993 incursion into Somaliaand the Bosnia intervention and air war against Serbia later in the decade. The invasion of Afghanistan was promoted in part as a crusade to protect the Afghan people against the Talibanand Al Qaeda, and the US government and media packaged the Iraq war as a mission to remove



a leader who gassed and killed his own people and bring the blessings of democracy to the Iraqimasses.

Obama Saturday justified the war on Libya by proclaiming that “we cannot stand idly by when atyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy, and his forces step up their assaults…”

Indeed, in Bahrain, where the ruling dynasty has gunned down unarmed protesters in the streetsand unleashed sectarian terror against the oppressed Shia majority, Washington hasn’t stood idly by. It has supported the repression and the intervention of Saudi Arabia and the other dictatorialmonarchies and emirates to crush the popular uprising.

Similarly, after the regime in Yemen massacred at least 52 peaceful demonstrators Friday andimposed a state of emergency, the Obama administration merely “regretted” the violence, urged“dialogue,” and reiterated its commitment to the “stability” of the US-backed dictatorship of AliAbdullah Saleh.

The criteria used by the Obama administration to determine what acts of repression demand USintervention are not universal moral principles, but naked imperialist interests.

Libya, like Iraq before it, becomes a target, in the first instance, because of its oil reserves— estimated at more than 40 billion barrels—and the implications of this oil wealth for bothcorporate profits and US strategic interests.

The immediate impulse for US military action was not, as reports in the Wall Street Journal andelsewhere have made clear, escalating repression by the Gaddafi regime in Libya or the supposedlegitimacy lent by the statement of the Arab League.

Washington has shown unconcealed contempt for that body in the past when it has issued proforma statements condemning Israeli aggression. Only when it demanded what the imperialist powers wanted to do anyway did it become an authoritative voice.

Once the bombs and missiles begin striking Libya, the League’s chief, Amr Musa, condemnedthe action, declaring: “What we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.” Musa, who plans to run for president in Egypt, is trying to cover his tracks. Heknows that the US-led attack is opposed by the vast majority of the population in Egypt andthroughout the Arab world.

The Obama administration felt compelled to act, the Journal reports, out of fear that it would be

“outmaneuvered by the UK and especially France, both more aggressive advocates of intervention.” Washington was not about to accept the region’s two former colonial powersacting on their own, an implicit challenge to the hegemony that US imperialism has asserted over the region since it pulled the rug out from under the last Anglo-French military intervention inthe Suez Crisis of 1956.

At the heart of the Libyan war lie not democratic altruism, but rather imperialist interests andescalating inter-imperialist conflicts. More and more the global situation resembles the series of



increasingly malignant crises that gripped world capitalism on the eves of World War I andWorld War II.

In 1937, as World War II loomed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a speech calling for a“quarantine” of fascist aggression. He told the American people:

“Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civilians,including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs fromthe air. In times of so-called peace, ships are being attacked and sunk by submarines withoutcause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil warfare in nations that havenever done them any harm. Nations claiming freedom for themselves deny it to others. Innocent peoples, innocent nations, are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy whichis devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations.”

Roosevelt was preparing for the implementation of his own imperialist aims, but his remarksnevertheless reflected an awareness of democratic principles that is wholly absent today. His

indictment of the crimes of the Nazi and fascist regimes could be applied virtually withoutalteration to the crimes of the Obama administration as it launches a war of aggression withoutcongressional approval, much less the consent of the American people, “murders with bombsfrom the air” and takes sides in a civil war in a country that has done nothing to the US.

American working people will pay the price for this aggression through redoubled attacks ontheir living standards, social conditions and basic rights. The cost of the 112 Tomahawk cruisemissiles fired in a matter of hours is well over $100 million. The amount of wealth beingsquandered on the massive deployment of US warplanes and warships is far greater. Not a wordis raised about the costs of this operation, under conditions where politicians and the mediaendlessly declare that the government has no money and schools must be shut down, teachers

fired, vital social programs drastically curtailed and the wages, pensions and health coverage of public employees slashed.

The struggle against war, smothered by the official “antiwar” movement dominated by ex-left protest groups that back Obama, can be revived only on the basis of an independent movementof the working class against both the Democrats and Republicans and the capitalist system that isthe source of militarism.

We urge all those who want to take up a struggle against imperialist war in Libya, Afghanistanand Iraq to attend the series of conferences being held across the US in April by the SocialistEquality Party, World Socialist Web Site, and International Students for Social Equality on “The

Fight for Socialism Today.”

UN vote clears way for US-NATO attack on Libya

By Bill Van Auken

18 March 2011



The United Nations Security Council Thursday night approved a resolution that paves the wayfor the United States and other major imperialist powers to conduct a direct military interventionin Libya under the pretense of a “humanitarian” mission to protect civilian lives.

The resolution, sponsored by the US, France, Britain and Lebanon, goes far beyond earlier

proposals for a no-fly zone, authorizing the use of military force including “all necessarymeasures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These“areas” include Benghazi, the city of one million which remains the sole stronghold of the revoltthat began against the Gaddafi dictatorship one month ago. The sole limitation placed by theresolution is its exclusion of “a foreign occupation force on any part of Libyan territory.”

The vote sets the stage for a bombardment of Libya by US, French and British warplanes. FrenchPrime Minister Francois Fillon told France-2 Television that military action could begin withinhours of the resolution’s approval. And the Associated Press cited an unnamed member of theBritish Parliament as saying, “British forces were on stand by for air strikes and could bemobilized as soon as Thursday night.”

American military officials have already warned that even the imposition of a no-fly zone entailsthe prior destruction of Libya’s air defense capabilities, meaning a major bombing campaignagainst Libya that will undoubtedly entail “collateral damage” measured in the killing andmaiming of Libyan civilians.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Pentagon officials as saying, “Options included using cruisemissiles to take out fixed Libyan military sites and air-defense systems … Manned andunmanned aircraft could also be used against Col. Gaddafi’s tanks, personnel carriers andinfantry positions, with sorties being flown out of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization bases in the southern Mediterranean.”

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, Gen. Norton Schwartz, thechief of the US Air Force, said that a no-fly zone would take “upwards of a week” to prepare,signaling a sustained bombing campaign. He also warned that in addition to US warplanes basedin the US and Europe, aircraft would also have to be diverted from the wars in Afghanistan andIraq.

Like other military officials, Schwartz said that the imposition of the no-fly zone would “not besufficient” to halt the advance of forces loyal to the dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi,which have swept steadily eastward toward Benghazi over the past 10 days. Clearly, what is being prepared are air strikes against Gaddafi’s ground forces. The prospect of carrying out a

bombing raid aimed at assassinating Gaddafi has also been broached.

These plans for war are motivated not by any desire to protect the Libyan people or further thecause of democracy, as its proponents within the UN Security Council proclaimed. Theimpending intervention in the oil-rich North African country is driven by profit interests andgeopolitical imperatives that have nothing to do with the “humanitarian” pretenses of the major powers. The aim is to exploit the civil war in Libya to impose a regime that is even more



subordinate to these powers and to the major Western oil conglomerates intent on exploiting thecountry’s resources.

The gross hypocrisy and cynicism of the imperialist powers backing the intervention wasunderscored by the choice of French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé to motivate the UN

resolution. Juppé, who invoked the “Arab spring” as one of the “great revolutions that change thecourse of history,” recently assumed his post after his predecessor, Michèle Alliot-Marie, wasforced to resign over a scandal involving her close political and private relations with the oustedTunisian dictator Ben Ali. Juppé’s government was in the process of shipping anti-riot gear to itsformer colony when the mass protest forced the dictator to flee.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who had worked to insert the “all necessarymeasures” language allowing for an open-ended military assault on Libya, praised the passage of the resolution, declaring, “The future of Libya should be decided by the people of Libya.”

This is unquestionably the case. The task of overthrowing the right-wing dictatorship of the

Gaddafi clique is that of the workers and oppressed of Libya, who had begun to carry it out. Theaim of the US-backed intervention, however, is precisely to abort any genuine revolution andensure that any regime that replaces Gaddafi serves not the interests of the Libyan people, butrather the demands of Washington and Big Oil. The US hopes to use Libya, moreover, as a baseof operations for suppressing revolutionary movements of workers throughout the region.

The Security Council vote was 10 in favor and five abstentions. The countries abstainingincluded Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India. While, as permanent members of thecouncil, both Russia and China had the power to defeat the resolution by casting “no” votes, theychose not to do so, ensuring that the UN continued to fulfill its function as a rubber stamp for thedemands of the major imperialist powers.

In their statements explaining their abstentions, however, the ambassadors of the five countriesmade clear that the impending attack on Libya has nothing to do with any consensus by the“world community” to protect the Libyan people, but rather is the outcome of a conspiracyworked out in secret between Washington, London and Paris.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that the measure “opens the door to large scalemilitary intervention” and stressed that questions had been raised in the prior discussions of theresolution as to how it would be enforced, by what military forces and under what rules of engagement, but there had been “no answers.”

India’s ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri noted that while the UN Security Council had appointeda special envoy on the situation in Libya, it had received “no report on the situation on theground” and was acting despite having “little credible information.” He said that there had beenno explanation as to how the resolution was to be enforced, “by whom and with what measures.”He expressed concern over the fate of Libya’s “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”



Singh also voiced reservations about a range of new economic sanctions, which target, amongother entities, Libya’s national oil company. He said that the measures could disrupt trade andinvestment by member states.

Germany’s ambassador, Peter Wittig, warned that the authorization of the use of military force

increased the “the likelihood of large-scale loss of life” and said that Germany’s armed forceswould take no part in the intervention.

China’s ambassador Li Baodong, the acting president of the Security Council, also voicedreservations, but then justified Beijing’s failure to veto the measure by invoking the vote lastweekend of the Arab League calling on the UN to implement a no-fly zone.

NATO has also claimed this vote as somehow legitimizing intervention by demonstrating“regional support.” The reality is that the Arab League is itself composed of a collection of dictatorships, monarchies and emirates that in no way represent the desires or interests of theArab people. Many of them are actively engaged in the violent suppression of popular upheavals.

While Washington has stressed that any intervention against Libya should include direct participation by the Arab countries, it appears that their involvement will be minimal. Followingthe visit to Cairo by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman for the EgyptianForeign Ministry told Reuters: “Egypt will not be among those Arab states. We will not beinvolved in any military intervention. No intervention, period.”

On Thursday, the Arab League could name only two countries prepared to join the US-NATOassault: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Both ruled by royal dynasties, the two emirates aredirect participants in Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain to suppress the mass movementagainst the ruling monarchy. While security forces have shot protesters dead in the streets,

invaded hospitals and carried out a reign of terror in Shia villages, none of the supposedchampions of democracy in Libya are proposing any UN intervention in Bahrain, theheadquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.

The Gaddafi government warned that any attack on Libya “will expose all air and maritimetraffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger and civilian and military facilities will become targetsof Libya’s counter-attack.”

US Secretary of State Clinton set the new strident US tone towards Libya in a statement made inTunisia denouncing Gaddafi as “a man who has no conscience and will threaten anyone in hisway. … It’s just his nature. There are some creatures that are like that.”

As recently as April 2009, the same Hillary Clinton warmly welcomed Gaddafi’s son andminister of national security to the US State Department, declaring, “We deeply value therelationship between the United States and Libya. We have many opportunities to deepen and broaden our cooperation and I am very much looking forward to building on this relationship.”



Like her European counterparts, only months ago Clinton was currying favor with the Gaddafiregime in pursuit of oil profits and the collaboration of his secret police apparatus in prosecutingWashington’s “global war on terrorism.”

Now, under the cover of a crescendo of human rights propaganda, with sections of the media

claiming that the repressive actions of the Gaddafi regime amount to “genocide”, Washingtontogether with French and British imperialism are intervening in a civil war in Libya which theythemselves had no small part in provoking.

No amount of rhetoric about “saving lives” can mask the fact that what is being carried out is anact of out and out imperialist banditry, comparable to the attempts to partition the Congo and Nigeria during the second half of the 20th century. In those cases, as in Libya, behind theinterventions was the drive for control of strategic resources.

The justifications given for the Libyan intervention are full of grotesque contradictions.Washington, which professes to be outraged over the killing of Libyan civilians and bent on

saving lives, is itself responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq andAfghanistan and, on the very eve of the UN vote, carried out the cold-blooded murder of some40 civilians in a drone attack in Pakistan.

The US and its allies have shown no inclination to seek a resolution authorizing the use of military force in the Ivory Coast, where a conflict comparable to that in Libya is unfolding. Theobvious explanation is that cacao is not considered to have the same strategic importance as oil.

And, while claiming that the intervention in Libya is needed to ensure the triumph of democracyin the Middle East, Washington continues to back the regimes in Bahrain and Yemen as theymow down protesters demanding democratic rights.

There is an element of extreme recklessness in the US-NATO intervention. What will it produce? One likely variant would be Libya’s partition and the resurrection of Cyrenaica, thecolonial territory set up by Italy in Benghazi in the 1920s. Any elements coming to power under such a regime would be right-wing puppets of imperialism, comparable to Karzai in Afghanistanor Maliki in Iraq, and would inevitably carry out an even bloodier slaughter of the Libyan people.

G8 fails to back proposed Libyan no-fly zone

By Bill Van Auken

16 March 2011

Divisions between the major imperialist powers have stymied proposals spearheaded by Britainand France for direct military intervention in Libya. A statement issued from a meeting of theforeign ministers of the Group of Eight—United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy,Canada and Russia—failed to even mention the proposal to use military force to groundwarplanes backing troops loyal to Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi in their drive to crusha month-old revolt.



Speaking at the EU summit in Brussels, Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted the French action.“We cannot recognize the transitional council,” she told the assembled European heads of state.“The former justice minister is a member of this body and look at the role he played in the caseof the Bulgarian nurses,” she added, referring to the frame-up of a Palestinian doctor and fiveBulgarian nurses on false charges of deliberately infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus.

She also rejected the proposed no-fly zone. “What is our plan if we create a no-fly zone and itdoesn’t work? Do we send in ground troops?” she asked. “We have to think this through. Whyshould we intervene in Libya when we don’t intervene elsewhere?”

The Der Spiegel article said that European leaders were clear that Sarkozy’s promotion of military action stemmed from concern within the French ruling elite that it “could lose itstraditional leadership role” in Northern Africa as a result of the popular upheavals that havetoppled its close ally and client, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in Tunisia and are spreadingthroughout the region.

The article adds, “Until recently, France and Germany have had their separate areas of responsibility: While Paris looked after the Mediterranean area, Berlin was more oriented towardEastern Europe. But in internal discussions, Westerwelle has already made it clear that this willno longer be the case. Much to the annoyance of the French, Berlin now also wants to have agreater say in the Mediterranean region.”

For her part, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made no statement following the G8 ministers’meeting. She did hold a 45-minute meeting with Mahmoud Jibril, a representative of the National Transitional Council, at a luxury hotel in Paris Monday night. Jibril reportedly askedClinton for US military aid in toppling the Gaddafi regime. US officials reported that Clintonresponded by raising the possibility of US economic and political assistance.

While Sarkozy had met with the same Libyan opposition figure last week, appearing before themedia with him, Clinton’s meeting was a largely clandestine affair. The location and identity of the participants were concealed until after it was over, and she made no public appearance withJibril and no statements on the content of their discussion.

Washington’s attitude may well be driven by its skepticism that the Libyan opposition,dominated by former Gaddafi officials and emigres, will prove capable of toppling the regimeand its doubts over whether a successful revolt will produce more favorable conditions for USimperialism and the American-based oil conglomerates in the region. Clinton and others withinthe Washington establishment have expressed concerns that radical Islamists could gain from the

rebellion, while US national intelligence director James Clapper told the Senate Armed ServicesCommittee last week that, in his opinion, the Gaddafi “regime will prevail.”

Over the past week, a counter-offensive by military forces loyal to Gaddafi has advancedsteadily. On Tuesday, rebel forces surrendered control of the strategic city of Ajdabiya, the lastmajor population center west of Benghazi. The city is a critical highway junction, controlling thecoastal road to Benghazi as well a road through the desert to Tobruk on the Egyptian border. Its



fall raises the threat that Benghazi, the last major stronghold of the revolt, could soon beencircled.

Also involved in Washington’s calculations is the primary US goal of quelling the uprisings inthe Middle East and preventing their spread throughout the US-backed dictatorial emirates and

monarchies in the Persian Gulf and, above all, Saudi Arabia. The hypocrisy of Washington’sverbal denunciations of the violence unleashed by Gaddafi’s regime against the people of Libyais exposed by its support for the violence being carried out against unarmed protesters inBahrain.

Clinton left the G8 summit on a mission to Egypt and Tunisia. She headed Tuesday to Cairo,where she held a series of meetings with Egyptian civilian officials as well as the militarycommand in the effort to shore up US interests in the wake of last month’s ouster of Washington’s long-time closest ally in the region, the dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Announcing her planned visit to Egypt and Tunisia in Washington last week, Clinton told US

lawmakers that Washington has “an enormous stake in ensuring that Egypt and Tunisia providemodels for the kind of democracy that we want to see.” She went on to warn against “ideologueswho use violence or deception to seize power or advance an undemocratic agenda.”

What Washington wants are regimes that will continue to uphold the interests of the US andIsrael in the region, subordinate their economies to the profit drive of US-based transnational banks and corporations and systematically repress any threat of social revolution.

The January 25 Revolution Youth Coalition, composed of six youth groups that participated inthe mass demonstrations that forced out Mubarak, has refused to meet with Clinton and declaredher visit to Egypt unwelcome.

In a statement, the coalition charged that “the US administration took Egypt’s revolution lightlyand supported the old regime while Egyptian blood was being spilled.” It demanded thatWashington issue a formal apology for its decade of backing for the Mubarak dictatorship. Thestatement added, “The Egyptian people are the masters of their own land and destiny and willonly accept equal relations of friendship and respect between the people of Egypt and the peopleof America.”

The mass uprising in Tunisia and the perspective of

permanent revolution

17 January 2011

The events in Tunisia mark a turning point in world affairs. After decades of triumphant reactionand suppression of the class struggle, the eruption of mass protests and the end to 23 years of repressive rule by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali signal the emergence of a new era of revolutionaryupheavals.



The Tunisian masses, however, are at only the initial stages of their struggle. As is already clear from the continuation of military violence under the new interim president, the working classfaces immense dangers. The crucial question of revolutionary program and leadership remainsunresolved. Without the development of a revolutionary leadership, another authoritarian regimewill inevitably be installed to replace that of Ben Ali.

Of great objective significance is the sudden and rapid unfolding of the mass movement that brought down Ben Ali. What the West routinely hailed as among the most stable of Arabregimes, a bulwark in Northern Africa and the Middle East of capitalism and the interests of USand European imperialism, was revealed within a matter of weeks to be isolated, weak and rottento the core.

The match that ignited the social tinderbox long building beneath the surface of political life wasthe self-immolation of a college graduate who could not find a regular job and was deprived bythe authorities of his meager livelihood selling vegetables. This tragic event focused the anger of millions of youth and workers over pervasive unemployment, poverty, social inequality and the

despotism and corruption of the ruling elite.

The social conditions that led to the eruption in Tunisia predominate throughout the Maghreband the Middle East, and are increasingly confronting the working class in the advancedcapitalist countries under conditions of a global economic crisis and a brutal offensive by the banks and corporations.

It is significant that Islamist forces played virtually no role in the mass protests. What is comingto the fore all over the world are the basic social and class issues that dominate economic and political life, superseding secondary and tertiary questions of religion, race and nationality.

The fall of Ben Ali came as a shock to the bourgeoisie of Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world,as well as to American and world imperialism. All the more worrying for them was the eruptionof mass protests in neighboring Algeria and further to the east in Jordan.

No doubt the scenes of tens of thousands of workers and youth defying the military and police to pack downtown Tunis and demand an end to the dictatorship sent shivers down the spines of the bankers and speculators in New York, Paris, Frankfurt and the other centers of imperialistfinance. When it comes to corruption and the contemptuous flaunting of wealth, no ruling elitetakes a back seat to that of the United States.

The response of both the United States and Europe to the events in Tunisia has been utterly

cynical and hypocritical. All of the imperialist capitals were well aware of the gross corruption of the Ben Ali regime.

One of the factors that contributed to the spread of the protests was the publication by WikiLeaksof cables from the US embassy in Tunis describing the Tunisian regime in scathing terms as akleptocracy and dictatorship. The role of these cables in the eruption of social protest in Tunisiahelps explain the hysterical response of the American ruling class to WikiLeaks’ exposures.



Both the US and Europe chose to subordinate the predations of the Tunisian regime to their economic and geo-strategic interests. The European Union, and particularly the former colonial power France, have established extensive economic ties to Tunisia. The US has stepped upmilitary and political aid to the dictatorship in return for its lining up behind Washington’s “war on terror.”

These political and military relations expose the hollowness of American and European pretensions to defending human rights and promoting democracy.

As late as last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was telling an Arab satellite televisionaudience that the United States was “not taking sides” in the Tunisian crisis. Only when it wasclear that Washington’s decades-long ally was on his way out did the US government change itstune, claiming to support the demonstrators and chastising the regime for excessive violence.

The real attitude of the American ruling class to the mass movement in Tunisia is one of implacable hostility, as indicated in a commentary by Jackson Diehl, a member of the editorial

board of the Washington Post . Diehl wrote on Friday, “The most imminent threat to US interestsin the Middle East, however, is not war; it is revolution.”

He added: “The violence has already migrated to Algeria, and Arab media are full of speculationof where the ‘Tunisia scenario’ will appear next: Egypt? Jordan? Libya? All those countries arethreatened by rapidly rising global prices for food and fuel; the United Nations warned last week of a ‘food price shock.’”

The events of the past week in Tunisia have once again revealed the immense social power andrevolutionary potential of the working class. But the central weakness of the mass movement isthe absence of a clear revolutionary perspective, program and leadership.

This enables the native bourgeoisie and its imperialist backers to regroup and forge new meansfor crushing popular opposition and defending Tunisian capitalism. With Ben Ali’s departurehaving removed the most direct target of popular hatred, the Tunisian regime is already waging acounteroffensive. Under the cover of a “unity government” and promised elections, the state of emergency and curfew remain in place and police and soldiers continue to shoot down and arrestopponents of the regime.

The emergence of revolutionary struggle makes all the more critical the question of politicalconsciousness, perspective and program. The history of Tunisia and the entire Middle East provides an emphatic confirmation of the world revolutionary strategy elaborated by Trotsky and

the Fourth International on the basis of the perspective of permanent revolution.

As Trotsky explained, in opposition to Stalinism, social democracy and bourgeois nationalism, inthe epoch of imperialism, the bourgeoisie in countries with a belated capitalist development areincapable of carrying out any of the basic tasks of the democratic revolution. Weak anddependent, tied by innumerable threads to foreign imperialism and native feudalist forces, the bourgeoisie of countries such as Tunisia is a thousand times more fearful of and hostile to therevolutionary force of the working class than it is to imperialism.



The history of Tunisia since independence in 1957 is a textbook example of the correctness of this historical prognosis. The national bourgeoisie has ruled with an iron hand, imposing povertyon the masses while opening up the Tunisian economy to the unfettered exploitation of theimperialist banks and corporations. The same is true in Algeria, where the National LiberationFront, which led the anti-colonial struggle in the 1960s, today attacks protesting workers and

imposes “free market” policies for the benefit of the corrupt ruling elite and foreign banks andcorporations.

All of the various nationalist movements, including those that formerly presented themselves asquasi-socialist, today collaborate with imperialism in the oppression of their own people. Neither Ba’athism, Nasserism, the Palestine Liberation Organization nor the Libyan variant has beenable to address the issues of genuine independence from imperialism, unemployment, povertyand economic backwardness.

The response of the Arab League to the events in Tunisia has been to urge “calm” and“stability”—i.e., the suppression of the mass movement. Libya’s Gaddafi openly defended Ben

Ali against the demonstrators and warned of a new Bolshevik revolution.

Calls for a so-called “democratic revolution”—advanced in various forms by European pseudo-left groups—are a dead end. They want workers to press the regime to give more influence toofficial opposition parties and trade unions. However, none of these organizations have sought tomount a struggle against the regime or its right-wing policies. The General Union of TunisianLabor (UGTT), which supported Ben Ali in the last two presidential elections, officiallyendorsed his free-market “reforms.”

The only viable program for the working class and oppressed masses of Tunisia and the entireMaghreb and Middle East is the program advanced by the International Committee of the Fourth

International of socialist revolution. Only through the independent struggle of the working class,leading all of the oppressed sections of society against both the native bourgeoisie andimperialism, can democratic and social rights be won and social equality established as thefoundation of political life.

This struggle cannot be conducted simply on a national scale. Trotskyist parties must be builtthroughout Northern Africa and the Middle East to unite the working masses under the banner of the United Socialist States of the Middle East and the Maghreb, as part of the world socialistrevolution.

This struggle must be consciously linked up with the mounting struggles of workers in the

advanced capitalist countries, many of which have large populations of Arab workers from Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Only on this internationalist basis can the divisions of religion, nationality and race—ceaselesslystoked up by imperialism and the bourgeoisie—be overcome and the social power of the workingclass mobilized to put an end to imperialist domination.



The ICFI has created the World Socialist Web Site as its daily organ to report and analyze political developments all over the world and provide the necessary perspective for the strugglesof the working class internationally. We call on readers of the WSWS in Tunisia and throughoutthe Middle East to contact our web site. We call on all those who seek to put an end todictatorship and exploitation in Tunisia and the entire region to take up the fight to build sections

of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

World Socialist Web Site editorial board

WikiLeaks and Tunisia

19 January 2011

American foreign policy specialists have described the events in Tunisia over the past week asthe “first WikiLeaks revolution.” This amounts to a grudging tribute from Washington to theimpact of the courageous work of Julian Assange and his co-thinkers, who have made public

thousands of documents that reveal the predations and crimes of American imperialism and thevenality of its client regimes throughout the world.

WikiLeaks has made public ten cables from the US Embassy in Tunis, all signed by USAmbassador Robert Godec. Their content rebuts the lie, regularly circulated by the USgovernment and the American media, that the documents released by WikiLeaks areinconsequential and reveal “nothing new,” or even put US diplomacy in a favorable light. Far from it: the cables contain significant exposures of the corruption of the Tunisian regime and theUS “nod and a wink” approach towards torture in the country’s prisons.

They expose the fraud of Washington’s pretense of support for democracy and human rights

around the world.

Seven of the cables make evaluations of the regime, commenting on the health of President ZineEl Abadine Ben Ali, the corruption of his family, particularly his in-laws, the Trabelsis, and USoptions for shaping a post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Some highlights include:

June 23, 2008: The now-notorious dispatch headlined “Corruption in Tunisia: What’s Yours IsMine.” It gives details of the doings, particularly of the Trabelsis—including at least ten knownsiblings of the first lady and their children—as well as seven siblings of Ben Ali and the president’s children through his first wife. Nearly every significant business in Tunisia involves amember of this extended family, the dispatch reports, adding, “Whether it’s cash, services, land,

property, or yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali’s family is rumored to covet it andreportedly gets what it wants.”

The yacht was owned by the head of the Paris office of the investment bank Lazard Frères andwas seized by two Trabelsis and repainted. One of the two, Imed Trabelsi, a nephew of Ben Ali,was stabbed to death at the airport in Tunis over the weekend as he attempted to flee the country,when a crowd of anti-regime demonstrators recognized him as a member of the hated “firstfamily.”



July 17, 2009: A dispatch headlined “A Troubled Tunisia: What Should We Do?” describes theregime as “sclerotic” and with no clear successor to Ben Ali. “Many Tunisians are frustrated bythe lack of political freedom and angered by First Family corruption, high unemployment andregional inequities,” the US ambassador reports. With 2009 an election year, “Ben Ali is certainto be reelected by a wide margin in a process that will be neither free nor fair.”

July 27, 2009: The cable gives an account of the private dinner for Ambassador Godec and hiswife at the home of Mohammed Saker El Materi, Ben Ali’s son-in-law, and his wife Nesrine, the president’s daughter. Godec describes the luxurious conditions in which the family lives,including fountains (in a desert country) and a caged tiger. He calls El Materi “demanding, vainand difficult,” his wife “naïve and clueless,” concluding: “The opulence with which El Materiand Nesrine live and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali’s familyare disliked and even hated by some Tunisians.”

The American media has reported the corruption cables, but has kept silent on three other cablesreleased by WikiLeaks which document the direct collaboration of the US government, under

both Bush and Obama, with torture in Tunisian prisons.

March 3, 2008: The cable reports the results of a three-day visit to Tunis by assistant secretaryof state David Welch for talks with Ben Ali on terrorism and other regional issues. Ben Ali promised “to cooperate with the United States without inhibitions.” This language has grislyimplications, given the widespread use of torture by both Tunisian and American interrogators.

June 18, 2009: The dispatch gives an account of a discussion by the ambassador with an officialof the International Committee of the Red Cross who, while bound by a confidentialityagreement after visiting Tunisian prisons, said he “would not like to be in the ambassador’s place” when it came to making a recommendation on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to

Tunisian custody.

June 23, 2009: A cable five days later reports that the government of Tunisia is pressuringEuropean countries not to take Tunisian detainees from Guantanamo—in order to insure they aredelivered to Tunisian custody—and cites comments by the British and Canadian ambassadorsthat Tunisia routinely tortures prisoners.

The content of the cables demonstrates why the US government was so furious about the leaksand why it is seeking to prosecute Assange and halt WikiLeaks’ exposures. The revelations havehad a definite political impact in undermining the Ben Ali regime and contributing to the massdemonstrations that ousted the dictator.

Far from the exposure of US diplomatic secrets representing no real threat to US imperialistinterests, the events in Tunisia show that it can, under conditions of mounting social and politicalcrisis and explosive class tensions in every part of the world, seriously damage Washington’sgeo-strategic position.

The Internet played a major role not only in creating the political climate, but also in theorganization and mobilization of the mass movement in Tunisia. Thousands of home-made



videos of police repression and popular resistance have been posted on the web. The Tunisian people have used Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to organize and direct themobilizations against the regime.

It can be certain that the US government will react to the role of the Internet in the events in

Tunisia by stepping up its efforts to censor and control the web’s political content.

This underscores the necessity for all those who defend democratic rights and oppose the crimesof imperialism to come to the defense of Assange and WikiLeaks.

Patrick Martin

Tunisia prime minister resigns amid mass demonstrations

By Patrick Martin

28 February 2011

The prime minister of Tunisia, Mohammed Ghannouchi, a holdover from the hated dictatorshipof ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, announced his resignation Sunday in an address onnational television. He stepped down after more than a week of mass demonstrations against hisgovernment, culminating in two days of rioting in which police killed five protesters.

A few hours later, the interim president, Fouad Mebazaa, named a former minister, Beji Caid-Essebsi, as the new prime minister, and the government reiterated a promise to hold elections toreplace the caretaker regime by July 15.

Both the appointment and the election pledge were aimed at mollifying the Tunisian masses,

who have correctly identified the government as a continuation of the Ben Ali regime withoutBen Ali. Ghannouchi had been Ben Ali’s prime minister for 11 years before the Tunisian dictator fled the country on January 14, amid mass anti-government demonstrations.

Mebazaa was also a functionary of the regime, serving as the speaker of its rubber-stamp parliament. In order to find a successor to Ghannouchi without direct ties to Ben Ali, Mebazaawas forced to bring the elderly Caid-Essebsi out of retirement. The 84-year-old was a long-timefunctionary during the presidency of Habib Bourguiba, whom Ben Ali replaced in 1987.

In his television statement announcing his resignation, Ghannouchi cited the violence of the preceding days, which included an armed attack on the Interior Ministry building, and pitched

battles between police and rock-throwing youth in downtown Tunis. “I am not ready to be theman of repression, and I will never be,” he said, although he showed no qualms about repressionduring more than a decade as Ben Ali’s chief administrator.

Popular opposition to the government has swelled over the past two weeks, as nothing has beendone to provide the Tunisian masses with jobs or improvements in their living standards. Instead,the government has concentrated on reestablishing the security forces and negotiating with the



representatives of various imperialist powers, particularly over security assistance, helping theTunisian ruling elite rebuild its armed forces for use against the people.

On Sunday, February 20, more than 40,000 marched through Tunis demanding the ouster of thegovernment. (See “ New protests rock Tunisian government”) Groups of protesters then set up a

tent camp in the central square of the capital city, modeled on the Tahrir Square protests inEgypt.

Friday, February 25 was designated as a “Day of Rage” throughout the Middle East and NorthAfrica. In Tunis, an estimated 100,000 people marched down the main avenue of the capital city,shouting slogans against the government and demanding Ghannouchi’s ouster.

The march—an enormous turnout in a small country—went almost unreported in theinternational media, which has focused its attention entirely on the civil war developing in Libyanext door.

Police fired in the air in an unsuccessful attempt to disperse the huge crowd, who chanted“Leave!”—the slogan of previous Tunisian protests against Ben Ali and the Egyptian movementagainst Mubarak—as well as “We don’t want the friends of Ben Ali!”

They denounced Ghannouchi and other cronies of Ben Ali for “usurping” and “confiscating” theTunisian revolution.

Ghannouchi’s cabinet issued a statement seeking to appease the population, declaring that thegovernment “has decided that consultations with different political parties should not exceedmid-March … Elections will be organized at the latest in mid-July 2011.” The statement alsonoted that the government has seized the assets of another 110 cronies of Ben Ali, following

earlier action against 46 associates and family members.

This was combined with intensified repression. The Interior Minister banned further protests,threatening mass arrests, the first such decree since the ouster of Ben Ali. On Saturday, policeand troops equipped with tanks used tear gas to disperse crowds of youth who sought to continuethe protests. This provoked an armed attack on the ministry headquarters the following day. Over 200 people have been arrested in the capital since Friday.

After the speech announcing Ghannouchi’s resignation, cheering crowds gathered in the streetsof the capital. One man, who identified himself to Reuters only as Ahmed, said, “We’re veryhappy, but it is not enough. We want to see nothing more of this government.”

The web site Stratfor Global Consulting, which has close ties to the US intelligence apparatus,cautioned, “The hope is that, with this concession, street protests will calm down and this willallow the government to get to the task of preparing elections. But the risk is that it willembolden the opposition forces to demand more concessions.”

Both the official state-run trade union organization UGTT and the Islamist group Ennahda hailedthe resignation of Ghannouchi. The UGTT had initially agreed to serve in Ghannouchi’s cabinet,

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/mide-f22.shtml

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/mide-f22.shtml



but was forced to pull out its three ministers in the face of mass hostility to a “new” regime led by the same faces as the old.

The nomination of a prime minister who is not directly implicated in the crimes of Ben Ali couldserve as a pretext for both the unions and the Islamists to take their place in a government whose

purpose is to guarantee the interests of the Tunisian bourgeois elite and the multinationalcorporations.

Last Monday, February 21, Ghannouchi met with two high-level US visitors, senators JohnMcCain and Joseph Lieberman. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008,declared, “The revolution in Tunisia has been very successful and it has become a model for theregion,” adding, speaking for the Obama administration, “We stand ready to provide training tohelp Tunisia’s military to provide security.”

What McCain was hailing as a “model” was a “revolution” that left the existing prime minister inoffice and the entire state machinery intact, and merely sent the president packing. He was

expressing the hope, on the part of US imperialism, that similar cosmetic shifts can be passed off as revolutions in the other US-dominated dictatorships and sheikdoms throughout the MiddleEast and North Africa.

Only six days later, however, McCain’s “model” has resigned—albeit to be replaced by another proven servant of the imperialist powers and enemy of the Tunisian working people.

Two weeks of protests in Tunisia

By Brian Smith

14 April 2000

Recent disturbances in Tunisia have been described by the French newspaper Le Monde as "thefirst warning shots aimed at President Ben Ali".

The first popular protests since the “bread riots” of 1984 began when the professional drivers(taxi-drivers and long-distance cab and lorry drivers) staged a three-day strike in the capitalTunis, against the introduction of new, stricter licences, which they fear will give the police evengreater reason to stop, search and intimidate them.

Most worrying for the government is the combination of forces that have been drawn into the protests. The drivers strike was followed by demonstrations of high school and college students,

supported by unemployed youth and other sections of the population. They have taken place inthe disadvantaged areas in the outskirts of some large cities and in many surrounding smalltowns—Zarzis, Gabes, El Hamma, Chenini, Medenine, Jerba, Ben Gardane, Kebili, Douz,Medhila, Moulares, Gafsa, Jebeniana, Sfax, Kasserine and Beja.

A news blackout by the Tunisian media has made it difficult to assess the full extent and detailsof the protests. But they are believed to have been mounted by students in opposition to theintroduction of stricter rules on examinations, and rumours of impending price rises by as much



as 50 percent in the cost of bread and other essential items. This caused unemployed youths andother workers to join the demonstrations, which continued for up to 10 days.

Protesters attacked many symbols of government, including public institution buildings. Workersemployed by British Gas, which is treating natural gas in the city of Sfax, joined the

demonstrations following the announcement of job cuts.

The protests were only halted by a massive clampdown by the police, who arrested hundreds of youth, many of them at night. Most were later released, though there are thought to be around 70who have been charged with public order offences.

Le Monde comments: “As long as the challenge to power came from an isolated group of intellectuals, human rights organisations or the foreign press, those in power could keep controlover those social forces which could more seriously challenge their hegemony: political parties,unions, the press and legal system. But this is no longer the case.”

The Tunisian middle class has until now accepted the government's economic austerity programmes, in return for promises of higher standards of living in the future. This partly restson a belief that the economy will benefit from the free trade agreement recently signed with theEuropean Union. Confidence in the government is fast disappearing, however, as many of the previously better-off find themselves deeply in debt or even bankrupt owing to rises in the costof essentials like gas, water, electricity and transport above the official government inflation rateof 2.7 percent.

Worrying also for the government was that some of the demonstrators chanted sloganssympathetic to neighbouring Libya and its head of state, Colonel Gadaffi. Much of thedisturbances were focused in the southern region of Tunisia, which borders Libya. For seven

years this region had enjoyed a considerable amount of trade (both legal and extra legal) withLibya.

The Tunisian government is carrying out a privatisation programme, but until now the majorityof the companies sold off have been small enterprises and hotels and the government has beencriticised by a number of international financial institutions. In May 1998 European aid wasagreed in return for the speedup of privatisation. Fethi Mardassi, the international cooperationminister, last year announced the sale of around 50 major companies including several largetextile and cement factories.

The Mahgreb Weekly Monitor reports that “as the sale of these companies is imminent, their

privatisation is the subject of resistance among the companies' employees who fear an inevitabledownsizing during the companies' restructuring phase prior to the sale and during a second phase, once new owners are selected.” The official employment rate of 17 percent is widely believed to be an underestimate, following years of austerity measures imposed by the regime.

Tunisia and the Western powers



The increased exploitation of oil by the Western powers in the Caucasus region of the former USSR has led to plans for a new pipeline to transport the oil. The US in particular sees theMediterranean as the "safest" route out for the oil, making it an evermore strategically importantregion. The North African countries bordering the Mediterranean have in consequence becomemore politically important for the West.

Tunisia has long been seen as one of the more stable countries of North Africa and amenable toWestern demands. France, Germany and Italy are major trading partners of Tunisia. TheEuropean Union signed an association agreement with Tunisia in March 1998, ushering in a newindustrial free-trade area between the two parties. It is President Ben Ali's hope that Tunisia willeventually be allowed to join the EU. President Jacques Chirac of France (the former colonial power) has stated, “France will stand by the new Tunisia. This nation is well on its way todemocratisation and a market economy. We can be counted on as a partner in that process.”

For its part, the US sees Tunisia as an important mediator in its relations with the Arab world.Tunisia has cordial relations with Syria and Lebanon and most importantly, it has never broken

off relations with Iraq and Libya. This allows the US to maintain some sort of contact with theseembargoed nations, until sanctions are lifted. There are unconfirmed reports of secret talkshaving taken place in Tunis between US officials and those of Libya and Iraq.

Tunisia has also recently developed its ties with Israel, and since 1982 it has been seen as a homefor the Palestine Liberation Organisation. It is therefore potentially important in the resolution of the hostilities in the Middle East. The US has been impressed with the way Tunisia has handledthe threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which it has suppressed within its borders. The US seesfundamentalism as a major destabilising problem within the region, threatening the prospect of a pro-Western oriented Mahgreb Union—comprising Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania andLibya—which it is keen to resurrect.

The anti-socialist politics of Tunisia’s official “opposition”

By Kumaran Ira

1 February 2011

On January 28, the Ettajdid (“Renewal”) movement held a public debate in Paris on the recentmass uprising in Tunisia that forced out the former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ettajdid,the former Stalinist Tunisian Communist Party, is one of the official “opposition” parties inTunisia. Its leader, Ahmed Brahim, serves as the interim regime’s minister of higher education.

Since the mass uprisings, which began after the December 17 self-immolation of a youngTunisian worker in protest against desperate social conditions, the “opposition” has pretended to be in solidarity with the masses. In fact, they have served as an instrument of the Tunisian rulingelite and the provisional government dominated by Ben Ali’s old cronies. They have tried to bring mass protests against the interim government to an end and to stabilise the state in theinterests of the Tunisian bourgeoisie and the major imperialist powers, including the UnitedStates and France.



The speakers at the Paris meeting expressed their support for the interim government, citing arecent cabinet reshuffle. They declared that the interim government will be able to establishdemocracy in the country.

In concealing their position of support for the remnants of Ben Ali’s regime, the speakers at the

meeting declared: “[Ettajdid] supports a political process that will ensure the democratictransition based on conditions formulated by Ahmed Brahim during his participation in theJanuary 16 interim government and his exercise of ministerial functions.”

They unabashedly declared their loyalty to the global financial aristocracy, calling for measuresto calm the political situation and reassure the banks. They explained that broader participation by political parties in government would “reassure the people and investors” to “ensure thereturn of economic activity at a sustained rhythm to guarantee the stability and security of thecountry.” Such language could be used by any US government operative.

The Tunisian uprising has spread across the North Africa and the Middle East, with hundreds of

thousands of workers and students protesting against dictatorships and appalling socialconditions. Over the past few days, Egypt has been rocked by a social uprising against US- backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

From the beginning to the end of the meeting, the speakers made no mention of or reference tothe events in Egypt or any appeal for solidarity action with Egyptian workers. The subject of Egypt only came up once, when the chairperson complained that there were fewer participantsthan in a previous meeting, “due to a pro-Egypt demonstration. It’s an unfortunate coincidence.”

Their debate was exclusively focused on stabilising the existing Tunisian state, discussing howthe interim government should handle the situation. They declared that Ettajdid’s role is to

propose solutions and actions for “democratic transition.”

They explicitly opposed the perspective that the mass working class uprising in Tunisia shouldfight for socialist policies. One speaker bluntly declared: “In Tunisia we are not dealing with a proletarian revolution. We cannot demand the nationalisation of the banks and of industries. Butit is a transition for democracy. We are going in the right direction. Things must continue as is.”

They insisted that the only perspective for the movement was “to reform the constitution as itexists.”

The speakers were clearly straining to hide the gulf separating their counter-revolutionary

policies from revolutionary socialism. They absurdly falsified the character of the October 1917revolution in Russia, claiming that the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky,had established power based on the remnants of the bourgeois Provisional Government.

They also defended Tunisia’s trade union, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT). It iswidely acknowledged that the UGTT had long been an ally of Ben Ali and supported his free-market reforms. In fact, the UGTT opposed the mass uprising at its outset and is now backing theinterim government as it seeks to repress continuing protests.



The speakers of the Ettajdid made a few references to the UGTT’s previous collaboration withthe Ben Ali’s regime, as they cannot ignore this fact. However, they claimed that the UGTT hadnow changed its mind and would support the masses, adding that it was “an important player” inTunisian politics.

The bankrupt policies of Ettajdid are rooted in their history as a Stalinist, anti-Marxist party. TheEttajdid movement evolved from the Tunisian Communist Party, founded in 1934 as an offshootof the French Communist Party—which was by then politically controlled by Joseph Stalin andthe Kremlin bureaucracy.

The regime of Habib Bourguiba, Ben Ali’s predecessor, illegalised the party in 1962 butlegalised it in 1981. In line with the Stalinist “two-stage” theory of defending the national bourgeoisie in developing countries, the Tunisian Communist Party identified itself as a national-democratic organisation that sought unity between all “patriotic classes.” In 1988, it signed BenAli’s National Pact.

After the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, it repudiated any association withcommunism. In 1993, it became the Ettajdid movement. Under Ben Ali, Ettajdid won two seatsin the legislative elections of 2009. After the popular uprising ousted Ben Ali, who fled thecountry on January 14, Ettajdid joined the interim government formed on January 17.

Since the uprising against Ben Ali, Ettajdid has proclaimed its full support for the interimgovernment, while cynically issuing occasional criticisms in an attempt to preserve a limited“oppositional” coloration. Shortly after Ben Ali fled and the interim government was established,Ettajdid’s France coordinator Rabeh Arfaoui told Le Monde that he had full confidence in it:“We are against the politics of the empty chair. We trust the integrity of the current government,which will know how to react if there is a danger to democracy. Its mission is to prepare

elections in six or seven months. So now, let’s go forward!”

As the mass protests escalated against the interim government, Ettajdid retreated, cynicallythreatening to pull its leader, Ibrahim, out of the interim government unless it removed RCDministers from the cabinet. This was only phrase-mongering, however. Though the RCDministers did not leave the cabinet, Ibrahim decided to stay on.

On January 28, Ettajdid issued a statement praising the interim government for including“national figures known for their great competence and integrity.” It added that it was confidentthe interim government would fight to “prevent any regressive attempts to turn the situation back.”

Tunisia forms unity government dominated by ruling party

By Chris Marsden

18 January 2011



The National Unity Government announced by Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi is acoming together of all factions of Tunisia’s ruling elite against the working class, students andsmall farmers.

The government has been hastily assembled by Ghannouchi, a key ally of deposed President

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, under a supposed mandate given him by another Ben Ali loyalist,interim President Fouad Mebazaa, the former parliamentary speaker.

The government is dominated by the top leadership of Ben Ali’s Constitutional DemocraticRally (RDC). The former defence, foreign, interior and finance ministers all keep their posts.Ghannouchi stays on as prime minister—a post he has held since 1999.

These are only the most prominent faces. A Guardian editorial noted: “Other familiar faces werestill around, too. One of them stood to the left of the prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, ashe announced he was taking over as temporary ruler (only to be overruled later by theconstitutional court). He was Abdallah Kallel, a former interior minister wanted by a Swiss court

on charges of torture and human rights violations. He is currently president of the chamber of councillors.”

Ghanouchi made a few reform pledges to distance his unity government from Ben Ali, promisingthat all political parties would be allowed to operate freely, political prisoners would be released,and media censorship would be ended with the abolition of Tunisia's information ministry.

He is relying above all on the bourgeois opposition parties to paint the RDC-dominatedexecutive in democratic hues.

Three prominent opposition figures were named as low-ranking ministers. Najib Chebbie,

founder of the Progressive Democratic Party, was named development minister. Ahmed Ibrahimof the former Stalinist Ettajdid party is to become minister of higher education. Mustafa BenJaafar of the Union of Freedom and Labour was chosen as the new health minister.

Immediately after the announcement, Ahmed Bouazzi of the Progressive Democratic Partyinsisted to the BBC, “It's not realistic to dissolve the ruling party… We can go forward with thisgovernment, and can even go again into the streets if it is not working.”

As a further demonstration of loyalty to the old order, the Maoist Workers Communist Party of Tunisia and the Islamist al-Nahdhar were both excluded from the new government.

Al-Nadhar’s leader, Sheik Rashid al-Ghannouchi, nevertheless commented, “If we were invitedin the future to take part in the government, we would consider the offer.”

The shape of the government is an insult to all those who took to the streets to see Ben Alideposed. Even as the haggling and horse-trading was taking place behind closed doors, protestersdemanding an end to the RDC’s dictatorship were being attacked.



In Tunis, demonstrators gathered around the RDC headquarters to protest the formation of aninterim government including RDC ministers. “With our blood and our soul we are ready tosacrifice ourselves for the martyrs,” they chanted. “Out with the RCD! Out with the party of thedictatorship!”

When they moved on the Interior Ministry building, riot police fired shots into the air and usedwater cannon and tear gas against the crowd. Rallies were also staged in Sidi Bouzid, centralTunisia, and the nearby town of Regueb.

The police and security forces are under the direct control of the RDC leadership. The militaryreportedly stood by while the attack in Tunis was mounted. The previous night, the police wereinvolved in gun battles with the military, which had already sworn its loyalty to the newgovernment.

Time magazine reported that the army was “attempting to root out thousands of well-armedmilitia loyal to the ousted dictator.” The magazine cited reports that “3,000 of the 6,200 of Ben

Ali’s well-armed Presidential Guard [were] still not arrested.”

Tensions were high Sunday night, particularly after the arrest of the former head of the presidential security force, Ali Seriati. But on Monday, following the announcement of the newgovernment, the military gave the security forces carte blanche to deal with opposition protests.This was in line with Ghannouchi’s declaration that for the new government, “Our priority issecurity.”

Al Ahram, a newspaper funded by the Egyptian government, commented that the inclusion of theopposition was a necessary rectification of a political error by Ben Ali. It wrote that Ali's“biggest mistake” was “neutralising the opposition in Tunisia to the extent that when riots

began… there was no head to talk to or with whom to make a deal to end the demonstrations.”

Ending the demonstrations is the task to which the Progressive Democratic Party, Ettajdid andthe Union of Freedom and Labour have been assigned. The Tunisian ruling elite can count uponthe support of all the imperialist powers, whose words of support for democratic protest areworthless.

The above-cited Guardian editorial noted of Tunisia’s former colonial rulers: “The prize for brazen hypocrisy goes to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who declared, through clenched teeth, thatFrance stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tunisian people. Do, please, forget the speech hisforeign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, made in the National Assembly, shortly after the

authorities in Tunis announced the deaths of 21 civilians killed by police bullets. The one inwhich she offered Tunisia the help of the French riot police.”

The rest of the European Union and the US are just as culpable. A significant factor in catalyzingsimmering anger against the Ben Ali regime was the exposure by WikiLeaks of US cablessupporting the rule of the “First Family” despite acknowledgments of the extent of its corruption.



Faced with the fall of Washington’s former ally, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton onSunday urged the new government to quickly re-establish order and praised its “willingness towork with Tunisians across the political spectrum.” The US would “stand with Tunisia,” she pledged.

There is little chance that the democratic platitudes of Ghannouchi and Mebazaa will placateanyone and even less that the dominant position of the RDC will go unopposed.

The Independent cited Habib Jerjir of the Regional Workers' Union of Tunis, who indicated howthe new government will be viewed on the street. “It [the RCD] left by the back door and iscoming back through the window,” he said. “We can't have militias in the streets and in thegovernment.”

Tunisia remains as politically unstable and socially polarized as before. The same is true of therest of the Maghreb and the broader Middle East.

The potential fallout from the Tunisian events continues to exercise the Arab regimes, which preside over countries where poverty and unemployment are equally endemic. A man set himself on fire outside the Egyptian parliament building in Cairo on Monday, in an echo of the action by26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi that became the focus of popular anger in Tunisia. There have been at last four such incidents in Algeria and one in Mauritania.

The central issue posed before workers and youth is the need to adopt the revolutionary strategyof permanent revolution, first elaborated by Leon Trotsky. The bourgeois regimes in Africa, theMiddle East and throughout the so-called “developing” world are inextricably tied to the major imperialist powers. They function as both direct exploiters and local gendarme for the major global corporations and investors, whose predatory demands mean the impoverishment of the

workers and poor peasants. There can be no “democratic renewal” under any faction of thenational bourgeoisie.

Only an independent political struggle by the working class for socialism, rallying all of theoppressed sections of society, offers a way forward.

With their constant invocation of the danger of revolutionary “contagion,” the ruling elitesthemselves acknowledge that the popular movement in Tunisia is part of the broader struggle of the working class in the Middle East and around the world. The working class cannot confineitself to a national perspective. The struggle in Tunisia must be consciously linked to thestruggles of workers and oppressed people in the advanced capitalist countries as well as the

former colonial countries. The critical question in forging an international revolutionarymovement against globally organised capital is the construction of sections of the InternationalCommittee of the Fourth International.

NPA meeting in Paris backs imperialist policy on Egypt,

Tunisia



By Kumaran Ira and Alex Lantier

11 February 2011

WSWS reporters attended a February 9 meeting of France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) inParis, titled “Tunisia-Egypt, from revolt to revolution.” The meeting highlighted thecounterrevolutionary politics of the official French “far left,” whose reaction to these strugglesechoes that of the foreign offices of the imperialist powers.

The speakers included Wassim Azreg, who apparently accompanied Olivier Besancenot in hisrecent trip to Tunisia (See “An errand-boy for French imperialism: NPA’s Olivier Besancenotvisits Tunisia”), and Vanina Giudicelli, a member of the NPA national leadership billed as anexpert on Middle Eastern affairs.

The organizers set a completely unserious tone at the meeting, announcing they would try tofinish it in roughly one hour, so that those attending did not miss the televised France-Brazilfootball game.

On Tunisia—where the NPA hopes the state machine of the old Ben Ali dictatorship will survivethe ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali—Azreg defended the interim regime led by BenAli’s crony, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi.

He spoke briefly on “freedom of expression” that “one could really see … since the revolution”and popular demands for control over price increases, particularly in food prices, caused by the privatization policy long pursued by the Ben Ali regime. He concluded by calling the situation inTunisia a “process of revolution” that “remains to be built.”

Azreg’s amorphous comments notwithstanding, the problems of revolution in Tunisia are not soeasily solved. The Tunisian regime has managed to survive Ben Ali’s departure by relying on

Ghannouchi and the police force to suppress ongoing popular protests and keep the regime in power. Though the working class has showed its strength in Tunisia, it still must build arevolutionary political leadership and forms of independent organization before it can overthrowthe regime.

The NPA, however, is hostile to the perspective of socialist revolution. In response to a questionfrom a WSWS reporter, Azreg said: “In the new world of globalization and financial markets,revolution on a Marxist perspective … is out of the question and does not correspond to today’srealities.”

Azreg implied that the Tunisian revolution was over—even as Tunisian police continue to gun

down working class protesters. He said: “What’s happened in Tunisia is a revolution, becausenow there is freedom of expression.…The real revolution, in fact, is that the people managed tomake the regime collapse.”

Giudicelli later advanced the same absurd and reactionary view that the Tunisian revolution hasessentially accomplished its goals, saying: “Tunisia succeeded in making the revolution, but inEgypt it’s still occurring.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/tuni-j31.shtml






In Egypt, the NPA is unsure about what forces Washington, Paris and other powers can rely onto disorient and crush working class struggles. As a result, it praises all the official “opposition”groups—both “left” and right-wing Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood—so that it canwork with any conceivable coalition that would emerge from a defeat of the Egyptian revolution.

Giudicelli said that the Mubarak regime was supported by the United States, but that “opposition parties including the Muslim Brotherhood constitute the alternative in which many people are participating.” Evaluating the Muslim Brotherhood’s membership at over 500,000 people, sheadded: “Some of their members are participating in the strike.”

This is, in fact, a travesty of what is taking place. While Washington is supporting the Egyptianmilitary dictatorship against mass popular struggles, it would have no objection to working withthe Brotherhood, various trade union groups, or other “opposition” parties. Its main concern is toavert a social revolution, save capitalist rule, and to build up a regime that will continueMubarak’s pro-imperialist policies in the Middle East.

By publicly promoting the Brotherhood, an Islamist group with a long history of anticommunismand strike-breaking in Egypt, the NPA confirms that it has decisively broken with socialism andany orientation to the working class.

Giudicelli also encouraged the most dangerous illusions about the role of the army, which she praised for “fraternizing with the people.” In fact, the absence of a political party that wages asystematic campaign in the army—to win the soldiers over to the side of the workers and break them away from the officers and the regime—poses immense dangers to the Egyptian revolution.

Giudicelli closed her remarks calling for demonstrations to “pressure the French government tosupport the peoples in Egypt.”

This proposal is completely bankrupt. The French government has marched in lockstep with itsother NATO allies, including the United States, who aim to preserve Egyptian capitalism andWestern imperialism’s strategic control of the Middle East. If there were demonstrations calledon the NPA’s perspective of promoting the official Egyptian “opposition,” they would play intothe strategy of the major powers: cobbling together a new political elite to stave off arevolutionary challenge from the working class.

Tunisia’s “unity” government fractures as protests continue

By Chris Marsden

19 January 2011

At least five ministers and probably more have been forced to quit Tunisia’s National Unitygovernment, less than a day after it was formed, in the face of mass hostility to its domination bythe party of deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.



Several opposition party members assumed junior ministerial positions, but no one was fooledthat the new government was anything other than a front for the continued rule of Ben Ali’sConstitutional Democratic Rally (RDC).

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi was one of eight ministers from the previous

government, including interim President Foued Mebazaa, Interior Minister Ahmed Friaa,Foreign Minister Kamal Morjane and the defence and finance ministers. RDC people occupiedall key posts, with oppositionists serving as window dressing in minor, sometimes purposelycreated, ministries.

But with protests continuing and focusing on the role of the RDC in the new government, threeministers from the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT)—Junior Transport Minister Anouar Ben Gueddour, minister without portfolio Abdeljelil Bedoui and Junior Labour Minister Houssine Dimassi—quit. They were followed by Health Minister Mustafa Ben Jaafar of theDemocratic Forum for Labour and Liberty (FDLT).

Culture Minister Moufida Tlatl was “considering resigning”.

Ghannouchi was already facing mounting difficulties justifying his government. Proclaiming thedemocratic bona fides of the former cronies of Ben Ali, he said in a radio interview, “We need toavoid a witch hunt and encourage national reconciliation… Many ministers, who were already part of the previous government under the former president, did all they could to fight for thegeneral interest.”

They have “clean hands and great competence,” he added, “Thanks to their dedication theymanaged to reduce certain people's capacity to do harm.”

A meeting of the largest opposition party, the Progressive Democratic Party led by Ahmed NajibChebbi, the new secretary of regional economic development, was explosive. As Chebbi sat headin hands, one party member asked, “How can the murderer be our leader today?”

By the evening, the prime minister and the interim president had both announced their belatedresignation from the RDC.

These manoeuvres were made necessary by the angry protests in the capital, Tunis, as well asSfax, Regueb, Kasserine and Sidi Bouzid.

For hour after hour demonstrators defied increasing police brutality in order to register their

hostility to the attempt to reconstitute the Ben Ali dictatorship without Ben Ali. The protest had begun with a few hundred people marching on the UGTT headquarters to protest its participationin the government. “No leftovers from the old regime!” demonstrators chanted. “Citizens andmartyrs, the government is still the same. We will protest, we will protest, until the governmentcollapses!”

The riot police responded with batons, shields and teargas. One protester was seen being pummelled to the ground and then kicked repeatedly. Another had his arm broken. Those trying



to flee were batoned. A video has been released showing snipers repeatedly firing at protesters inthe northern city of Bizerte.

The new interior minister, Ahmed Friaa of the RDC, made a public statement: “We will thank the people who fought for freedom and helped the country during the crisis, but we will also

punish all the criminals who have terrorized us… Yes to democracy, yes to freedom and no tochaos.”

Public commentary shows the well of anger that Ghannouchi’s bogus government is attemptingto quell.

“The new government is a sham. It's an insult to the revolution that claimed lives and blood,”said one demonstrator.

“Nothing has changed,” said teacher Mohamed Cherni, who was tortured by Ben Ali’s police. “Itis still the same regime as before, and so we are going to keep fighting.”

“I am afraid that our revolution will be stolen from me and my people… They are the ones whooppressed the people for 22 years,” said Ines Mawdud, a 22-year-old student.

A Tunisian Facebook page reads, “The RCD, the party of dictatorship and the symbol of totalitarianism and tyranny, is still in business.”

Another Facebook page read, “The dictator has fallen but the dictatorship not yet. Tunisians haveto continue their mission.”

The trade union bureaucrats and oppositionists were forced to resign, but offered neither an

explanation, nor an apology for their having joined the government in the first place. The fact isthat their participation had become untenable.

Earlier that day, an extraordinary meeting of the UGTT had decided not to recognise the newgovernment. “This is in response to the demands of people on the streets,” union organiser Abidal-Briki said.

However, departure from office does not change the essential aim of these elements—to beheadopposition in the working class and rescue Tunisian capitalism.

With each day that passes, the underlying social contradictions within the so-called “Jasmine

Revolution” become more apparent. One of the most important observations on the mass protestsin Tunisia was made by David D. Kirkpatrick in the New York Times. He wrote, “In the streets,the Tunisian revolution continued to evolve. It began in the hard-pressed provinces withdemands for more jobs, especially for Tunisia’s soaring number of young college graduates,nearly a third of whom are estimated to be unemployed or seriously underemployed. It spread tothe workers, small business owners and the coastal professional class as a revolt mainly againstthe flagrant corruption associated with Mr. Ben Ali’s family.



“But on Monday, the protesters in the streets appeared more working class, including somehardened, veteran dissenters abused by Mr. Ben Ali’s government.”

In contrast, he wrote, “Off the streets, some Tunisian professionals who last week had railedagainst Mr. Ben Ali’s government said they were excited by the new government’s prudent first

steps.”

Another important feature of the protests is their readiness to defend the democratic right of theIslamist al-Nahdhar movement to operate legally, while remaining generally hostile to politicalIslam, which had very little influence in the largely secular opposition movement.

The government has said that Al-Nadhar’s leader, Sheik Rashid al-Ghannouchi, would not beable to return to Tunisia until an amnesty law had been approved negating a 1991 exclusionorder.

The danger that such a genuinely popular insurgency might spread beyond Tunisia is the central

concern of the imperialist powers and the Arab regimes alike.

So far, this has not materialised. But protesters in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania have emulatedthe self-immolation protest that initially spurred on the mass protests in Tunisia.

In Egypt yesterday, a man set fire to himself in Cairo—the third in just two days, and the secondthat day.

One day earlier, protesters in Mauritania and Algeria set themselves alight. Four people haveattempted self-immolation in Algeria since the Tunisian revolt began.

The Arab League meets today in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, with the stated purpose of discussingtrade and development. Its real agenda has been set in Tunisia. Yesterday, Kuwait’s Mohammadal-Sabah told a preparatory meeting of foreign ministers, “The Arab world is witnessing todayunprecedented political developments and real challenges in the sphere of Arab nationalsecurity… Countries disintegrate, people conduct uprisings... and the Arab citizen asks: Can thecurrent Arab regime meet these challenges dynamically?”

Present at the meeting was the newly appointed Tunisian Foreign Minister, Kamel Morjane. Hewill have made clear to his counterparts just how precarious their position has become.

To underline the scale of the crisis facing the Arab regimes, Egypt’s benchmark stock index

yesterday suffered its largest fall since last May, due to an exit of foreign investors. According toBloomberg, “Foreigners, not including Arab investors, were net sellers of 226.5 million Egyptian pounds ($38.9 million)… ‘Overseas investors are reducing their positions because of theincreased political risk stemming from what we saw in Tunisia,’ said Ahmed Alseesi, head of sales trading for Middle East and North Africa institutions at Cairo-based Acumen Securities.”

Tunisia’s bourse is no longer operational.



Thousands march against Tunisia’s “unity” government

By Bill Van Auken

20 January 2011

Thousands marched again Wednesday in the center of Tunis and in other Tunisian citiesdemanding the ouster of ministers who had served in the regime of deposed dictator Zine ElAbidine Ben Ali and the dissolution of his ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party.

Five days after Ben Ali fled for Saudi Arabia in fear for his life, the Tunisian regime he left behind remains paralyzed and efforts to forge a “national unity” government have been stymied by mass opposition in the streets.

“We want a new parliament, a new constitution, a new republic!” demonstrators chanted as theymarched down Bourguiba Avenue in the center of Tunis, defying a ban on public assemblies andsecurity forces who lined the route and fired tear gas at the protest.

“This will continue every day until we get rid of the ruling party,” Faydi Boni, a teacher, told theReuters news agency. “We got rid of the dictator but not the dictatorship. We want rid of thisgovernment that shut us up for 30 years.”

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, a Ben Ali loyalist who has attempted to take the reinsof government in the wake of the dictator’s flight from Tunisia, was compelled to postpone thefirst scheduled cabinet meeting of the so-called unity government.

In the face of the continued mass resistance, four newly appointed ministers were compelled towithdraw from the government Tuesday after first agreeing to join it.

The popular hostility to the new government was immediate and intense, given that it failed tochange either the prime minister or those in charge of all the other key posts, including theministers of defense, foreign affairs, interior and finance.

Mustapha Ben Jaafar, the leader and former presidential candidate of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberty (FDLT), a bourgeois opposition party, announced that he would not assumea post as minister of health even before he could be sworn in.

Three other opposition figures who had joined the government—Anouar Ben Gueddour, junior minister for transportation and equipment; Houssine Dimassi, minister of labor; and Abdeljelil

Bedoui, installed in a newly created post as “minister to the prime minister”—announced their resignations.

All three were representatives of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), the sole unionfederation recognized under the Ben Ali regime, which used its bureaucracy to police and helprepress the Tunisian working class.



UGTT secretary general Abdessalem Jerad, who in 2009 mobilized the union federation tosupport Ben Ali in a rigged election, said on Wednesday that the organization would not participate in a new government with “old regime” figures.

“We cannot take part in a government that includes symbols of the old regime,” said Jerad after a

meeting with Prime Minister Ghannouchi.

That the UGTT leader is himself just such a “symbol” will not be lost on many Tunisianworkers. Clearly, the old union apparatus is carefully calibrating its actions with the aim of suffocating the mass movement and stabilizing the regime. It concluded, based on the massmobilizations in the street, that the attempt to erect the unity government was not viable.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the UGTT said that this government “does not comply withthe aspirations of the workers and the public in terms of having the forces of actual innovationaway from the past practices, and in terms of the equilibriums of the number of members of former governments and the ruling party; in addition to the marginalization of the role of the

UGTT representatives.”

Neither Jerad nor the UGTT statement offered any explanation as to why the union apparatustried to join the unity government in the first place.

A spokesman for the UGTT also clarified that while it was calling for the removal of all of theholdovers from the cabinet of the ousted dictator, it would make an exception in the case of Prime Minister Ghannouchi.

In a hollow attempt to dissipate mass opposition, Ghannouchi and the interim president,Mebazaa, announced on Tuesday that they were quitting Ben Ali’s RCD party, which has ruled

the country for decades.

While such a gesture will likely have no effect on the mass protests, the opposition leader BenJaffar told Reuters Wednesday that it might be enough for him to reconsider his leaving thegovernment. A spokesman for his party said that it had “officially” pulled out of the government, but was seeking negotiations for forming an alternative administration.

Growing unease over the unfolding revolutionary events in Tunisia were expressed in the US,Europe and throughout the Arab world.

Al Jazeera Wednesday quoted Gordon Gray, the US ambassador to Tunisia, in what it said were

his “first public remarks since a month of protests ended” in Ben Ali’s overthrow.

Gray expressed himself with extreme caution, calling for all sides to exercise “responsibility.”

“I think what we have in Tunisia is a situation where … this democratic expression is a work in progress,” Gray told the Arab news network. “And it’s a new phenomenon and it’s somethingthat people are doing without very much experience.”



The non-committal character of the ambassador’s remarks reflect Washington’s uncertainty over whether it can salvage the remnants of a regime that it had backed virtually until the momentBen Ali boarded his plane for Saudi Arabia.

In Europe, meanwhile, the head of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats at the

European Parliament announced on Tuesday that Ben Ali’s RCD party had been expelled fromthe Socialist International under “exceptional conditions.”

The RCD had been a member since the 1970s. The international body includes the British andAustralian Labor Parties, the Social Democratic Party in Germany, the French Socialist Partyalong with social democratic parties as well as bourgeois nationalist parties around the world.

Like the Obama administration in Washington, these parties maintained fraternal ties to anorganization that systematically plundered Tunisia as it was gunning down hundreds of protesters in the streets. The social-democratic grouping waited until it was clear that Ben Alihad lost power before severing relations.

In Washington, the White House reported that President Obama phoned Egyptian PresidentHosni Mubarak on Tuesday.

“The president raised the latest developments in Tunisia, and shared with President Mubarak thatthe United States is calling for calm and an end to violence, and for the interim government of Tunisia to uphold universal human rights and hold free and fair elections in order to meet theaspirations of the Tunisian people,” the White House reported in a statement.

The phone call came as Mubarak was hosting the Arab League at a summit on socioeconomicdevelopment in Sharm El-Sheikh.

In his speech to the summit, the Egyptian autocrat made no mention of the Tunisian events,stressing only that employment and economic development were issues of “Arab nationalsecurity.”

The attention of the officials attending the summit was riveted on the upheavals, reflecting well-founded fears that their own repressive regimes could be next.

Kuwait’s ruling emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, confined himself to urging Tunisia to“overcome this particular stage and achieve stability and security.”

One of the few voices to give direct expression to these fears within the Arab ruling elites wasthat of Arab League secretary Amr Moussa, who said, “What is happening in Tunisia in terms of the revolution is not an issue far from the issues of this summit which is economic and socialdevelopment.”

Moussa warned that “the Arab citizen has entered a stage of anger that is unprecedented” andcharacterized Arab societies as “broken by poverty, unemployment and a general slide inindicators” and confronting “political problems that have not been resolved.”



Tunisia, he said, was a warning of “big social shocks” that would emerge in many Arabcountries.

The threat that the Tunisian events may spread throughout the region have been tragicallyunderscored by a series of incidents in which working people in neighboring countries have

emulated the actions of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian who was fatally burnedafter setting himself on fire last month to protest abuse by the police and the seizure of hisvegetable cart, which he used to make a living.

The action of the young worker, who like countless others in Tunisia and throughout the Arabworld was unable to find regular employment, touched off the protests that spiraled into themassive uprising that brought down Ben Ali.

In Algeria, which has also seen protests over rising prices and unemployment over the pastmonth, another three people attempted to commit suicide by self-immolation on Wednesday, theAgence France Presse news agency reported.

In a virtual repeat of the events that led to Mohammed Bouazizi’s actions, Afif Hadri, a 37-year-old Algerian worker and father of six, doused himself with gasoline in the main market of theeastern city of Oued and tried to set himself on fire before local people stopped him. Hadri had just had a confrontation with the police, who charged him with the illegal vending of food.

In a town outside of Algiers, a woman in her fifties poured gas on herself and tried to set fire toherself after being denied housing assistance. She was also stopped before committing the act.

A 35-year-old Algerian man succeeded in setting himself ablaze outside of a town hall in Dellys,outside of Algiers. Hospital officials told AFP that he was in critical condition with burns over

95 percent of his body.

And on Tuesday, an unemployed worker and father of six was hospitalized after torching himself to protest his lack of a job and housing.

In Egypt, meanwhile, an employee of the state water company tried to set himself on fire in frontof the governor’s office in Cairo. It was the fourth case of attempted self-immolation in Egypt just this week. One person died from his burns on Tuesday. An unemployed father of sixdemanding a job and housing was also hospitalized Tuesday after setting himself on fire.

France: Continental offers €137-a-month jobs in Tunisia

By Kumaran Ira and Alex Lantier

14 April 2010

Laid-off workers at the Clairoix plant, shut down early this year by tire maker Continental, wereoutraged after Continental proposed they take jobs in its plants in Tunisia. They would receive amonthly wage of €137, or the equivalent of three days at the minimum wage in France.



NPA could gather representatives of 15 or more enterprises in France that today are hit by layoff plans and pull an ‘NPA appeal’ out of a hat. But this is not how it operates.”

There could be no clearer statement of the difference between the ex-left and a party that wouldaim to mobilise the working class in its own defence.

10 Reasons to say no to western intervention in LibyaBy Andrew Murray

National Chair, Stop the War Coalition14 March 2011

The political campaign to launch a military intervention in Libya – ostensibly on humanitariangrounds but with patently political ends in sight – is gathering steam among the NATO powers.A “no-fly zone” has now been urged by the Arab League – for the most part a collection of frightened despots desperate to get the US military still more deeply involved in the region. Thatwould be the start of a journey down slippery slope.

Here are ten reasons to resist the siren calls for intervention:

1. Intervention will violate Libya’s sovereignty. This is not just a legalistic point – althoughthe importance of observing international law should not be discounted if the big powersin the world are not to be given the green light run amok. As soon as NATO starts tointervene, the Libyan people will start to lose control of their own country and future.

2. Intervention can only prolong, not end the civil war. “No-fly zones” will not be able tohalt the conflict and will lead to more bloodshed, not less.

3. Intervention will lead to escalation. Because the measures being advocated today cannot bring an end to the civil war, the next demand will be for a full-scale armed presence inLibya, as in Iraq – and meeting the same continuing resistance. That way lies decades of conflict.

4. This is not Spain in 1936, when non-intervention meant helping the fascist side which, if victorious in the conflict, would only encourage the instigators of a wider war – as it did.Here, the powers clamouring for military action are the ones already fighting a wider war



across the Middle East and looking to preserve their power even as they lose their autocratic allies. Respecting Libya’s sovereignty is the cause of peace, not is enemy.

5. It is more like Iraq in the 1990s, after the First Gulf War. Then, the US, Britain andFrance imposed no-fly zones which did not lead to peace – the two parties in protectedIraqi Kurdistan fought a bitter civil war under the protection of the no-fly zone – and did

prepare the ground for the invasion of 2003. Intervention may partition Libya andinstitutionalise conflict for decades.6. Or it is more like the situation in Kosovo and Bosnia. NATO interference has not lead to

peace, reconciliation or genuine freedom in the Balkans, just to endless corruptoccupations.

7. Yes, it is about oil. Why the talk of intervening in Libya, but not the Congo, for example? Ask BP.

8. It is also about pressure on Egyptian revolution – the biggest threat to imperial interestsin the region. A NATO garrison next door would be a base for pressure at least, andintervention at worst, if Egyptian freedom flowers to the point where it challengeswestern interests in the region.

9. The hypocrisy gives the game away. When the people of Bahrain rose against their US- backed monarchy and were cut down in the streets, there was no talk of action, eventhough the US sixth fleet is based there and could doubtless have imposed a solution inshort order. As top US republican Senator Lindsey Graham observed last month “thereare regimes we want to change, and those we don’t”. NATO will only ever intervene tostrangle genuine social revolution, never to support it.

10. Military aggression in Libya – to give it the righty name – will be used to revive the blood-soaked policy of ‘liberal interventionism’. That beast cannot be allowed to risefrom the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The “friends” of the Tunisian masses: the example of the

French Independent Workers Party

By Olivier Laurent

12 February 2011

While revolutionary struggles forced Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee, theformer president’s regime, led by the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), has continued tostay in power. Thanks to its collaboration with official “opposition” groups, the trade unions andmagistrates’ organisations, Ben Ali’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, still controls thegovernment.

A multitude of “left” organizations in Tunisia and other countries are trying to restore thecredibility of this so-called “opposition”, in particular the General Union of Tunisian Workers(UGTT). The official trade union, which campaigned for Ben Ali in the last elections, continuesto play a counter-revolutionary role in the country, serving as one of the forces securing thedomination of the RCD.

In France, the former colonial power in Tunisia, the Independent Workers Party (POI), acoalition led by the former International Communist Organization (OCI), an ex-Trotskyist group,



is playing a central role in the efforts to rehabilitate the UGTT. The POI has considerableinfluence in the trade union bureaucracy and claims mayors in several rural districts.

The POI combines hypocritical praise of the spontaneous action of the masses and denunciationsof representatives of the Ben Ali regime with illusions as to the nature of other “left”

organizations in Tunisia. It is, however, precisely these organizations which are helping keepPrime Minister Ghannouchi in office.

In recent statements, the POI points out that the UGTT is calling for “the resignation of the present government, for the calling into question of all the dictatorial and anti-democraticinstitutions of the former regime and for a constituent Assembly”. It adds approvingly that “thisis a position that corresponds to democracy”.

Nothing is said about the contents of this new constitution, apart from asserting that it should“break” with the former regime. The constituent assembly proposed by the “January 14th”opposition movement is conceived as an institution that would only be keeping an eye on the

interim government. The army and the police, pillars of the former regime, would continue toexist, under the control of Ghannouchi.

This call for a new bourgeois “democratic” constitution is a leitmotif of the POI and theCommunist Party of Tunisian Workers (PCOT). The PCOT was legalized by the interimgovernment, that is to say by Ghannouchi, on January 20. It is a Maoist group that still glorifiesdictators such as Enver Hoxha (ex-leader of Albania), Mao and Stalin. It is closely linked to theex-Stalinists of the Ettahjid Party (See: The anti-socialist politics of Tunisia’s official“opposition”).

The PCOT’s current statements are an attempt to dull the consciousness of the masses. They

present the UGTT, and even the army, as popular forces that the masses should trust. They dressup in completely empty “left” verbiage the plans for “democratic transition” proposed by theimperialist strategists in Washington and Paris.

Similarly, all of the POI statements amount to declaring their full support for the UGTT.However, given that the rotten record of this organization is well known, they argue that it is possible to change the organization’s policies by “putting pressure” on the leadership.

In a January 26 press release following attacks on the UGTT premises by Ben Ali supporters, thePOI declared its “solidarity with the UGTT, with its leaders and with its activists.” Thisstatement fails to point out that it is the wait-and-see attitude of the UGTT that fuels the

audaciousness of the supporters of the deposed dictator.

A recent editorial in the POI’s newspaper, Informations Ouvrières, that was written at the time of the resignation of three UGTT ministers from the post-Ben Ali government on January 18 praises “the role which, in spite of its leadership, the UGTT came to play in this, called upon atall levels by the workers to support their demands and to accommodate the defense committeesin their premises”.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/etta-f01.shtml






In fact, by leaving the government the UGTT was merely trying to prevent the discrediting of allthat remained of the old regime’s institutions. Indeed, ten days later, the UGTT cancelled a strikeagainst Ghannouchi that it had called and dropped its opposition to the prime minister remainingin power.

On January 26, a UGTT leader, Hacine El Abassi, declared, “If it is apparent that there is notother means to make the Ghannouchi government see reason and go, then we shall call a generalstrike”. But the very next day, another UGTT leader, Abid Briki, told the AFP, “We agree on the principle of maintaining three names, Ghannouchi, Jouini and Chelbi”.

These three ministers supervised the imposition of IMF policies that impoverished the populationduring Ben Ali’s rule. Jouini, today the minister of planning, was on the Board of Directors of the country’s central bank from 1996 to 2001. After this, he served as secretary of state for privatizations for two years, then assuming the post of minister of development. Chelbi, former manager of the Maghreb International Merchant Bank, has been minister of industry since 2004.The uprising that overthrew Ben Ali was directed against the policies implemented by these

officials.

The entire Tunisian “official opposition” is ready to collaborate with these allies of highinternational finance and the country’s overthrown president. For these people, the “revolution”comes down to transferring the Ben Ali-Trabelsi family’s right to pillage the population to asomewhat broader circle of looters. Contrary to what the POI and other parties of its ilk want tohave people believe, there is a vast gulf that separates these organizations from the workers andthe impoverished rural masses.

Egyptian constitutional referendum passes amid low turnout

By Stefan Steinberg22 March 2011

Official results for the referendum on reforms to the Egyptian constitution held on Saturdayreveal that 77 percent of voters voted in favour of changes to the country’s constitution, thoughturnout was low at 41 percent. Official sources had originally indicated on Sunday that theturnout had been as high as 60 percent.

In fact, just over 18-and-a-half million Egyptians voted, out of around 45 million eligible voters,and early figures indicate that in certain Cairo suburbs and in the city of Alexandria, a majorityvoted no to the proposed constitutional changes.

The referendum—sponsored by the Egyptian military government—is regarded as a way toensure a smooth transition from the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak, who resigned amidmass demonstrations on February 11, to a regime that continues to uphold the interests of thecountry’s ruling elite and its imperialist backers.

The initiative for changes to the Egyptian constitution was made by the country’s ruling militarycouncil, which appointed a panel of jurists and political appointees to draw up the amendments.



The amended constitution was finalised on February 26, leaving just two weeks for the preparation and organisation of a national referendum.

The thoroughly fraudulent and undemocratic nature of the process was underlined by thedeclaration from the Supreme Military Council: in the event of a no vote, it would impose its

own constitution, until a new one can be drafted.

This farce had the full backing of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party and the MuslimBrotherhood. Both parties sent representatives to take part in discussion on the proposed changesto the constitution, alongside military and judicial experts.

In a bid to get out the vote, the military council decreed that voters would be allowed to cast ballots at any polling center in the country with their national ID cards as the only necessary proof of identity. During the short campaign for the referendum, the state television ran repeated broadcasts calling for a yes vote.

In order to put pressure on the electorate to vote yes, establishment figures and the partiessupporting the amendments declared that a failure to vote yes would involve a delay in fresh parliamentary and presidential elections planned for later this year. In fact, the changes to thecountry’s constitution put forward in the referendum were entirely cosmetic. One of the maindemands of those participating in protests against Mubarak was a complete scrapping of thecountry’s constitution, which had awarded the dictator emergency powers to rule Egypt for the past 30 years.

The proposed changes to the constitution left the all-embracing powers of the president largelyuntouched. The most controversial amendment in the revised constitution scrapped the unlimited power of the president to rule by emergency decree only to replace it with a clause that permits

the head of state to impose a state of emergency for a period of up to six months before puttinghis decision to a public vote.

Other amendments permit a future president to serve a possible two terms in office—i.e., a totalof eight years—and forbid anyone from standing for the presidency if they are not Egyptian or if they are married to a foreigner.

The phony nature of the proposed amendments led many Egyptian commentators in blogs or interviews to dismiss the military’s referendum as “old wine in new bottles” and an attempt “to patch up the old discredited system”.

The most enthusiastic supporter of the referendum alongside the former ruling NationalDemocratic Party was the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been officially banned from politicalactivity under the Mubarak regime.

The Muslim Brotherhood campaigned heavily in favour of the referendum and called upon all of its followers to vote yes. According to the Associated Press, “Many were drawn to the polls in amassive, last-minute effort by the Muslim Brotherhood.”



Following the announcement of the result, a leading spokesman for the Brotherhood, Essam al-Aryan, called the result a “victory for the Egyptian people”, which would allow the country to“turn a page and enter a new phase”.

Al-Aryan also indicated prior to the vote that the growing wave of popular revolt in

neighbouring Arab countries was also an important factor in the Brotherhood’s decision to closeranks with the Military Council and support the constitutional amendments. “We are facingserious threats on our borders and the longer the transitional period lasts, the more the burden isfor the military,” he said “but we will heartily accept whatever the majority sees as best for thefuture of Egypt”.

Commenting on the referendum and the role of the Brotherhood, Nasser Amin, head of the ArabCenter for Independent Justice in Cairo told Deutsche Welle: “I have the impression that themethods of the past are being used again to an extent. That means: rushing through things, notallowing a general debate about the constitution, not allowing an interim constitution andinsufficiently changing the old charter on certain points. And the use of religious groups such as

the Muslim Brotherhood to push through the constitutional changes.”

Following the result of the referendum, the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution, which participated in the protests and demonstrations of the past weeks and months, issued a statementon Facebook urging its supporters to accept the result of the referendum. “We call on membersof this Facebook page to respect the will and choice of the people after this democratic exercisewhich we regard as an historic departure in Egyptian political life,” the message said.

At the same time, media reports make clear that there was widespread opposition to thereferendum, particularly in the country’s major metropolises and among youth. After rthe esultof the referendum was announced, youth gathered in Tahrir Square, and shouted “illegitimate”

and “We need a new constitution”. They also criticised the role of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Opposition to the referendum also came from Egypt’s estimated 8 million Coptic Christians,whose leaders instructed their followers to vote no. In recent months, Coptic Christians have been subject to a series of murderous assaults at the hands of Muslim extremists collaboratingwith state forces.

Future presidential candidates Mohamed ElBaradei and Arab League chief Amr Moussa had both declared their opposition to the referendum, but their objections did not reflect opposition tothe dictatorial powers contained in the constitution. Rather, both men were worried that theamended constitution would interfere with their respective presidential candidacies.

Both figures are increasingly discredited. ElBaradei and a group of his supporters were peltedwith rocks, bottles and cans by youth when he turned up to vote at a polling centre in Cairo. Thecrowd of youth chanted: “We don’t want you, we don’t want you,”

As the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa has just pledged his support for the Western bombardment of Libya and is increasingly assuming the role of a pariah among the Arab masses.



In an indication of the continuing close relations between the US administration and the Egyptianmilitary, US Senate Foreign Relations head John Kerry praised the referendum on Egyptianconstitutional reform held last Saturday. Kerry told the AFP wire service, “the referendum wasvery exciting…. The numbers of people who voted, the enthusiasm, the way they conductedthemselves…there was a lot of energy.”

Kerry arrived in Cairo on Sunday for talks with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, and Amr Moussa. Kerry also discussed the ongoing attack by theUS and its allies against Libya.

Top Yemeni general calls for ouster of president

By Andre Damon

22 March 2011

Five high-level generals in Yemen, including Ali Mohsen, one of the country’s top military

figures, announced their support for the country’s opposition movement Monday, calling for theouster of president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The announcement came after plainclothes government snipers killed at least 52 unarmed protesters on Friday in Sanaa, the capital, and Saleh declared a 30-day state of emergency that broadly expanded the government’s power.

The massacre drew public outrage both in Yemen and around the world, prompting a flood of resignations by government figures, including the country’s ambassador to the United Nations,the head of the state news agency, the minister of human rights, and the ambassador to Lebanon.The state news agency announced Sunday that Saleh had fired his entire cabinet in response.

Major General Ali Mohsen, a powerful figure in Yemen and commander of the country’snorthwest military forces, publicly threw his support behind the opposition movement Monday,telling Aljazeera, “I declare on their behalf our peaceful support for the youth revolution and thatwe are going to fulfill our complete duty in keeping the security and stability in the capital.”

Mohsen, who a 2005 US diplomatic cable called “Saleh’s iron fist,” is said by the cable tocontrol over 50 percent of the Yemeni military’s “resources and assets.”

The general moved tanks under his control into the city to “support” the demonstrators, and histroops screened protesters entering and exiting the square. Both Western news sources and

Aljazeera reported that the protesters were on good terms with Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen’s soldiers,with Aljazeera showing footage of protesters handing flowers to soldiers and posing with them in photographs.

Friday’s massacre did not stop the immense demonstrations in the country’s capital, and over theweekend it became clear that the tide of popular opinion was shifting against the regime.Thousands attended a funeral over the weekend for those killed in the demonstration.



The Yemeni government, meanwhile, has stuck to its absurd story that the massacre wasconducted not by the government, but by residents of the neighborhood in which thedemonstrations were taking place. Even the United States government, the close ally of Saleh,refused to accept the story, in its statement on the events backhandedly attributing responsibilityfor the massacre to Saleh.

It is as yet unclear how much of the military leadership has joined the opposition. YemeniDefense Minister Mohammad Nasser Ali said on television Monday that most officers stillsupported the regime. “The armed forces will stay faithful to the oath they gave before God, thenation and political leadership under the brother president Ali Abdullah Saleh,” he said.

The US White House made public gestures to distance itself from Friday’s massacre, whileshoring up its support for the Saleh regime. Barrack Obama called Friday on Saleh to “adhere tohis public pledge to allow demonstrations to take place peacefully.”

John Brennan, the Obama administration’s head counterterrorism adviser, called the Yemeni

president Sunday, urging him to “support the right of the people of Yemen to engage in peacefulassembly,” according to an official who spoke to the New York Times.

These statements were rendered hypocritical by the United States’ subsequent actions in Libya,where it participated in a hellish offensive against the country’s military on the pretext of “protecting civilians.” Yet when the White House’s ally massacred dozens of unarmed civilians,it offered nothing but a terse four-sentence reproach.

In fact, Saleh and Ali Mohsen have both long been accomplices of the US military’s crimes. InDecember of last year, WikiLeaks published documents showing that Saleh’s regime gave theUnited States an “open door” to carry out missile attacks in the country. Saleh told US General

David Petraeus that the regime would take responsibility for US airstrikes, saying, “We’llcontinue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

Moreover, the Yemeni regime served as a willing accomplice in the US government’s“extraordinary rendition” program, opening the country to serve as a site for the CIA’s torturechambers.

The US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks paint Ali Mohsen as a keydictatorial ally of Saleh. A cable sent in 2005 by the US ambassador to Yemen, titled, “WillSaleh’s Successor Please Stand up?” notes that Ali Mohsen is “generally perceived to be thesecond most powerful man in Yemen.”

“Ali Mohsen’s name is mentioned in hushed tones among most Yemenis, and he rarely appearsin public,” the cable continues.

The action by Gen. Ali Mohsen is not a conscientious turn to the side of the democratic andegalitarian aspirations driving the workers and students into the streets. Rather, it is an attempt by part of the Yemeni dictatorship to defuse popular opposition with a change of figurehead



What's Next in the Arab World? 3/22/2011

By: Dr. Habib Siddiqui Iviews* -

As the uprising in Libya turned into a full-scale civil war with the Libyan pro-regime forcesregaining control of most of the towns lost earlier to the rebels, the UN has imposed a 'no-

fly zone' over the Libyan airspace to protect civilians. To the anti-regime rebels and theirsupporters - home and abroad - the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is a much desired

one although it seemed to have come so late.

From the very start it was a foregone conclusion that the Libyan revolutionaries demandingthe ouster of the strongman Gaddafi won't be able to cakewalk -- slogans and the Internet

won't do what it had achieved for two of their neighboring states; it would require lots of sacrifice to topple the brutal regime. They also needed international support to neutralize

the overwhelming lethal superiority of the regime. This resolution is, thus, a serious moralbooster for them. As part of the phase 1 of the Operation Odyssey Dawn towards the

implementation of the UNSC resolution, hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles have already

been launched from the Mediterranean to

knockout Libya's Air Defense sites.

The permanent members of the UNSC needed lots of soul-searching before passing theresolution. After all, the UN was previously duped and misused by the Bush regime for

invasion of Iraq, deemed illegal by its own Secretary General. Its reluctance to stop the

http://www.iviews.com/Articles/action.lasso.asp?-Search=search&-database=Services&-Table=Magazine&-noresultserror=error.asp&-Response=search.asp&-MaxRecords=10&-SortField=Pdate&-SortOrder=Descending&-op=eq&PFlag=X&-op=cn&S=V&-op=cn&search=Dr.%20Habib%20Siddiqui






Rwanda genocide and prolonged foot-dragging in Bosnia and Kosovo that saw the genocideof hundreds of thousands of unarmed Muslims, let alone the selective amnesia with all

crimes committed by the Zionist regime in Israel and the overzealous attitude to punishIran, the old boys' club has lost the credibility within the Muslim world.

Not to be forgotten in this context is the fact that not too long ago many of these UNSC

members had a very gainful relationship with the Gaddafi regime, in spite of the latter's not-so-secret crimes against its own people. Some members were not sure how to react to thechanges happening across the Arab world. Some bigotedly questioned as to how mature the

Arabs were to handle democracy? Their experts have warned against regime changes saying

that the opposition groups are led by the so-called Islamists, the West's mortal enemies.What if Libya becomes another Congo, if Bahrain becomes an Iranian satellite, if Egypt,

Jordan and Syria become controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood? It was not the people'sinterest in those affected places that mattered prime to these western leaders. It was their

self-interest that governed their decision. Thus, President Sarkozy of France wanted tobolster the falling Mubarak regime in its dying days. Even the USA had opted for a peaceful

regime change there. And they have been rather muted when it came to pro-democracyprotests in friendly countries like Yemen, Jordan, Oman and Bahrain. Interestingly, while

the Obama administration has frozen Libyan assets inside the USA, it has failed to take

similar measures against hidden treasures of Mubarak and Zine ben Ali. It has no problemwith the Saudi and UAE forces now deployed to protecting the unpopular, autocratic regimesin Bahrain and Yemen, respectively.

Revolution is contagious. And the Saudis are genuinely worried and so are the other

monarchs in the region whose reliance has always been to foreign masters like the USA,France and the UK - rather than God and their own people. Thanks to their billions and

propaganda machines, they were successful before in the post-Shah era to stem the flood of Islamic revolution sweeping from Iran. They are now gravely serious to stop this Tsunami,

all happening in the Sunni-ruled Arab world. As Tariq Ali has pointed out in the Guardian theArab Revolution of 2011 is like 1848 of Europe when revolution first erupted in France, then

hit the Italian states and German principalities, and eventually reached the remote outposts

of the Austrian empire - engulfing some 50 local and national uprisings, all in the name of liberty.



Syria is the latest country to join the Arab revolution wagon. Syrians have long lived with aconstant fear that they are being monitored, and will be punished for behavior regarded as

dissenting or unpatriotic. Public discussion of domestic politics remains taboo. Maintainingthat fear is helped by a heavily censored media and 50-year-old emergency laws that allow

activists and dissidents to be routinely rounded up and imprisoned on vague charges suchas "weakening national sentiment."

A few days ago some school children in Deraa, south of Damascus - influenced by theprotests in Tunisia and Egypt - wrote the popular revolutionary slogan on the wall: "The

people want the fall of the regime". Fifteen school children were arrested. Several families

later gathered to demand their release. A 'day of rage' has now been held in several cities -Damascus, Homs, Banyas, and Deraa. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the

southern city of Deraa after Friday prayers on March 18 chanting 'God, Syria and freedom --that's enough!' The security forces opened fire on the protesters and have killed five people

and injured hundreds of others since March 18. Fears of the regime and its pervasiveleather-jacket-clad mukhabarat are still helping to quell any revolutionary aspirations.

In Yemen, three senior army commanders have recently defected to a movement calling for

the ouster of U.S.-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh, leaving him with virtually no support

among the country's most powerful institutions. They all belong to Saleh's Hashid tribe. Maj.Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, commander of the army's powerful 1st Armored Division, whohas defected, told reporters that he "will order his troops to protect protesters

demonstrating against the country's longtime president." Meanwhile, Yemen's ambassadorto Saudi Arabia has sided with the protesters and Yemen's ambassador to Syria has

resigned. More members of the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) have resigned in thelast few days in condemnation of the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters outside

Sana'a University last Friday, including Yemen's ambassador to the UN, Abdullah Al-Saidi.

In Syria, like Yemen, it is not the Facebook or Twitter generation that is taking to the

streets. It is the ordinary people who are tired of poverty and decades of repression. Like

Libya, here, too, the struggle won't be an easy one. The armed forces, drawn almostexclusively from the minority Nusayri sect that has been ruling the country for more than

four decades, will not hesitate to repeat the crimes of 1982 in Hama when some 40,000Syrians were massacred there by the murderous Assad regime. No Arab leader in our time

has been as brutal as Hafez al-Assad was to his own countrymen! As clearly evident fromthe latest heavy-handed tactics, when threatened by unrest, his son Bashar who now rules

Syria, will not be any less evil.

We won't be surprised either if President Bashar al-Assad, like Gaddafi and many Arableaders, would use the bogeyman of Islam - the threat of a Muslim takeover by extremists -

to win sympathy from a United States that is prone to seeing Islamic revolutions, al-Qaedaand the so-called Islamists at every corner. Will he be able to arrest the tide of revolution

now knocking on his door? That would depend how serious the Syrians are for liberty.

Liberty, like revolution, is, however, exhilarating. Massimo d'Azeglio, a Piedmontesearistocrat, wrote what are probably the most profound words about liberty's promise and its

perils: "The gift of liberty is like that of a horse, handsome, strong and high-spirited. Insome it arouses a wish to ride; in many others, on the contrary, it increases the urge to

walk." For decades, the Arabs -- brutalized and maimed by their leaders -- were afraid towalk, let alone wishing to ride or run. Now that fear is gone. They are willing to take

liberty's ride and die for it. No false propaganda is going to derail their genuine movement.



Soon after the missile attack on Libya, Gaddafi and his spokesman, while condemning thestrike from western governments as a crusading act, still tried to shift the blame of current

internal unrest on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, formed by the veterans who foughtthe Soviets in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the network's North

African affiliate, which has endorsed the Libyan uprising. As, however, noted by Mr. Abudal-Jeleil, a former minister with Gaddafi who defected to the rebel side, in an interview with

Al Jazeera: "We want one country - there is no Islamic emirate or Al Qaeda anywhere. Ouronly goal is to liberate Libya from this regime and to allow the people to choose thegovernment that they want."

Very few autocrats, unless threatened by more menacing powers, would let go of theirpower. Years of unopposed dictatorship had made them behave like demigods. Thus,

revolutions against such dictators are seldom won without sacrifice. If a brutal regime hasno bite of conscience from its own brutality, very little could an unarmed resistance do to

bring about the desired change! No MLK singing: 'we shall overcome' - would change thestatus quo. It is here that the notion of 'the best revolutions are completely organic' falls flat

on its face. As much as the American Revolution had foreign help, so did the Maoists inChina before coming to power. It is sometimes absolutely necessary to have that outside

help when the vast majority inside have no other way to save themselves from a brute.

The events in Libya over the last few weeks have shown that the vast majority of the peopleare against the Gaddafi regime and they want a change. With the newly passed UN

Resolution and the air strikes inside Libya now they know that they have friends outsidewho would not allow them to die like the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. While appreciative of such

moral and material support, they nevertheless ought to guard their own revolution in such away that when, and if, victory knocks on their doors, it is not hijacked or dictated by foreign

masters who came in sheepskins to rob it altogether.

*****

Dr Habib Siddiqui has authored nine books. His book: " Democracy, Politics and

Terrorism - America's Quest for Security in the Age of Insecurity" is available at Amazon.com.

What are indication that the upheaval is Islamic.

the upheavel in middle east

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