IRON FILE OCTOBER 25 2011/ THE RAPE OF LIBYA/ A PALESTINE SONG/OWS IN OAKLAND/THE CUBAN 5
Enrique Ferro
Dear friends,
The last weeks have been increasingly full with trepidation. Since the fall of Tripoli in the hands of NATO invaders and their stooges, the plight of the Libyan people has deteriorated tragically, but also its fierce defense against the occupation. Bani Walid and especially Sirte have written amazing pages of heroism and resilience, fighting to death to show the world that it is better to die standing up than to live on the knees. The tragic end of this beautiful and modern Mediterranean city, which now has been reduced to ruins and rabble, with corpses of murdered POW defenders littering the sand, is the ruthless testimony which lays bare the barbarity and savageness of imperialism, even more so as allied to the most reactionary and fanatic madmen of religious Fundamentalism... As we all know the final act of such a historic example of love for the freedom of their country, the leader of a defiant albeit desperate resistance against the greed and plunder of imperialism and its minions, Muammar Gaddafi, was callously murdered by a combination of Misrata fanatics and foreign mercenaries, while the cynical assassins leading the West and their Arab autocratic allies found it a laughing matter, to begin with the Murderess Clinton, and the hypocritical Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron, the Three Rascals, or the sanctimonious Berlusconi.
Apart from the consummated Rape of Libya (for the moment, as the resistance has never stopped, and after the most recent murders and massacres and the proclamation of a misogynous "Islamic" Republic it is bound to strengthen its resolve), we have lived also amazing historic moments, as the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them having spent decades in the Israeli jails, and worldwide the thrilling Occupy Wall Street movement, which is being suppressed brutally by the capitalist police.
I wasn't idle this latest weeks. But I switched to the more dynamic and quick media such as FB and Twitter, as the speed of the changing news didn't allow me to prepare a typically comprehensive Iron File. Now I'll send a reduced version. A comprehensive presentation of articles, op-eds, and videos is to be found on my FB Wall, where you can track the work of the past weeks.
I shall not be very regular. The present moments continue to be too fast moving. Most of my share on FB.
Meet you also there.
Enrique
- Murder of Gadhafi is next step to wider U.S. wars in Africa
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER STATEMENT ON LIBYA:
Lynching in Libya – Made in U$A
The brutal lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, the leader of Libya, is the latest criminal act in NATO's seven-month war of regime change and conquest.
Gadhafi died resisting to the very end U.S.-NATO war, as he said he would. He refused to negotiate with NATO an ignominious departure for himself or to surrender. He chose a martyr's death for Libya’s independence and sovereignty. Despite ridicule in the West, in Africa Gadhafi will be remembered as an anti-imperialist fighter.
The gross and disrespectful behavior of the National Transitional Council (TNC) in the display of Moammar Gadhafi's body confirms to the world in the most graphic way that these elements, who the imperialist powers have given official recognition, are in fact crude, low-life gangsters.
Instead of burying Gadhafi within a day as required under Islamic law, they chose to display Gadhafi’s battered, half naked body -- bloody, unwashed and uncovered -- on a soiled mattress in a meat locker at a shopping center.
This affront to religious and national custom will further deepen outrage and resistance.
TNC militias did no real fighting. These divided, competing military bands operate as scavengers or vultures, calling in air strikes and lying in wait to pick over the death that NATO bombers have blasted in front of them. In seven months of NATO bombing they have shown themselves capable of firing endless weapons in front of cameras and brutalizing Black Libyans, yet incapable of conducting any independent military action.
U.S. and NATO forces bear responsibility for this latest crime and the way it was carried out. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded like a gunslinger in a Hollywood western in Tripoli the day before Gadhafi’s murder, demanding his capture – dead or alive.
Loyalist forces in the city of Sirte, Bani Walid and several other cities have held out heroically two months after NATO seizure of Tripoli.
NATO bombers targeted Sirte and Bani Walid's electrical grid, communications, food storage, the city water supply, the water towers on apartment buildings and even the water tower on the roof of the hospital. Again and again the TNC has announced that all resistance in these small cities have has been destroyed, only to be driven out each time.
The imperialist war in Libya is reminiscent of past colonial wars in Africa and Asia. Targeting of any civilian necessities, such as water, food, medicine, and communication is specifically prohibited under international law and considered a war crime under the Nuremburg and Geneva Conventions. Yet during seven months of war those are exactly the civilian targets that NATO planners focused on again and again.
The bombing of lines of cars fleeing the NATO besieged city of Sirte that led to Gadhafi’s capture is an example of systematic targeting of civilians.
U.S. British, French and Italian imperialist forces claimed to be protecting civilians and implementing a United Nations Security Council No-fly zone. But the Libyan government used no aircraft at all. U.S. and other NATO jets ruled the skies and civilians were their targets. This is an expanding war. Today U.S. drones strike with impunity at defenseless peoples around the world.
Gadhafi's greatest threat to the imperialist countries was promoting a development plan for an African Federation and a stable African currency backed by Libya's $90 billion reserves to help Africans free themselves from the IMF and World Bank's onerous dictates.
Forty-two years ago Libya was one of the poorest, least developed countries of Africa. Gadhafi and other young military officers overthrew the Western-supported Libyan monarchy of King Idris in 1969, then held the imperialist's off as the Libyans built with nationalized oil revenues a series of modern cities and infrastructure. Before the NATO bombing this year, the Libyan people had achieved the highest educational and health standards in Africa, according to UN development statistics.
In the same week that Secretary of State Clinton traveled to Tripoli and that Gadhafi was murdered, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. Special Forces and military advisors to Uganda, South Sudan, Central Africa Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo. These are countries that hold a vast reservoir of strategic minerals, including cobalt, coltan, industrial diamonds, copper in Congo and newly discovered oil in Uganda and South Sudan.
Anyone who expects that U.S./NATO forces or their corrupt collaborators will rebuild the schools, hospitals, modern housing, sports complexes, vast underground water system, electricity, advanced communications, reorganize free health care or reconstruct essential infrastructure that they have laid waste to in months of bombing need only look at their ignominious record in Iraq after eight years or in Afghanistan after ten years. The promised peace, national reconciliation, democracy and development were empty words.
Today, the vast majority of Iraqi people, even in the capital city of Baghdad, still struggle with a few hours of electricity a day. Potable water is a memory of a past, pre-occupation epoch, so is free education and health care. NATO is a war machine for corporate profit, not a social service agency. It has shown itself as incapable of reorganizing a decent life.
In Afghanistan after a decade of occupation, the rubble of U.S. bombs and rusting tanks still litter the roads. None of the promised social progress has reached beyond Pentagon press releases and politicians visits.
In Iraq the indignities and humiliations were so numerous and such an affront that even the government of compliant collaborators established by the U.S. has been forced by mass sentiment to refuse immunity to U.S. troops scheduled to remain in Iraq as relabeled trainers and advisors.
As in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen the resistance in Libya to U.S. NATO domination will continue and take on new forms.
The imperialists never expected mass mobilized resistance to their plans. They predicted a war that would be over within a week. Instead a small population of six million, spread across a largely desert country, managed through mass mobilizations of millions of people, military resistance and emergency measures to withstand more than 200 days of non-stop bombardment, more than 9,000 air strikes.
U.S., British and French corporate looters are planning a new assault on Africa, but they are finding that this is not the world of 100 years ago.
The tens of thousands of youth occupying sites in cities across the U.S. and Europe need to stand in solidarity with resistance to corporate domination at home and to imperialist wars abroad.
Occupy Wall Street!
NOT Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan.
For over eight months, they bested NATO's might, delaying or preventing further aggression. Rest assured it's coming because the business of America is war.
by Stephen Lendman
NATO is a lawless killing machine, not a liberator.
NATO's sole new millennium accomplishment consists of endless unwinnable wars. Coalition partners eventually tire and pull out.
America may end up isolated against raging street anger to end imperial wars and address vital neglected homeland needs. It's already happening.
The battle for Iraq continues. Afghanistan's war was lost years ago. Libya's also though political Washington, coalition partners, media scoundrels, and NATO won't admit it.
At its October 24 press briefing, NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said:
"....(W)e all have seen the celebrations in Benghazi and across Libya as the National Transitional Council declared the full liberation of Libya. A momentous day for Libyans and for the whole region."
Fact check
Fighting rages in Benghazi, Bani Walid, Sirte, Tripoli and other cities across Libya. Jamahiriya loyalists control most territory though portions shift back and forth. Terror bombings continue daily.
Tribal leaders swear revenge for Gaddafi's assassination. Lungescu's rhetoric belies the spirit of millions of Libyans to resist until free. Alleged celebrations were staged. Official accounts of conditions are surreal, bearing no relation to reality.
Major media scoundrels regurgitate official lies. On October 23, New York Times writers Adam Nossiter and Kareem Fahim headlined, "Revolution Won, Top Libyan Official Vows a New and More Pious State," saying:
TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel-Jalil "declared to thousands of revelers in a sunlit square (in Benghazi) on Sunday that Libya's revolution had ended, setting the country on the path to elections, and he vowed that the new government would be based on Islamic tenets."
Fact check
NATO waged lawless imperial aggression against a nonbelligerent country. Daily terror bombings massacred tens of thousands. Rebel rat assassins committed shocking atrocities. Libya's revolutionary struggle just began and won't end until victorious.
Gaddafi's murder investigation will be whitewashed. Killers don't judge their own innocence or guilt. So-called elections will install powerless puppets subservient to Washington, Britain and France. Free Libya won't again exist until loyalists regain it.
On October 24, DEBKAfile discussed Gaddafi's assassination, saying Pentagon sources claim drones pinpointed his Sirte location. US and UK Special Forces surrounded it after days of surveillance. They directed rebel rats to kill him.
A LETTER FROM THE INDEPENDENT
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-doubts-over-europe-after-the-tory-revolt-2375799.htmlThe Libyan people, again like the Iraqis, will now be at one another's throats, leaving the field clear for the US Africa Command to get a foothold for its HQ and get down to the serious business of countering Chinese inroads in Africa.
Gaddafi's end is a boost for al-Qa'ida in the Maghreb and we all in the West must understand that Libya is just across from Italy.
M A Qavi
London SE3
October 25, 2011
Lynching Black Africans in Libya
Black Libyans by the racist para-militaries who now rule Libya.
Bodies of black men hanging from highways. Bound and tortured bodies of Africans dumped along the roadsides. Am I talking about Libya or Louisiana?
And all under the approving eye of the first Black President of the USA.
The lynching of Africans in Libya has been so bad that African leaders across the continent have been forced to raise their voices in protest. When the President of Nigeria, the USA’s unofficial enforcer in West Africa leads an African wide outcry against the lynching of his citizens in Libya one would assume that it was heard in the Obama White House.
With the murder or expulsion of most of Libya’s African migrant population well on its way came the massacre and ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Black Libyans.
And all the while Barack Obama and his band of criminal cohorts in the western capitals and television news channels strung together words like “pro-democracy”, “freedom fighters” and “liberation” to describe the orgy of looting and lynching being carried out.
When Black Libyans took up arms to defend their families and homes from the Libyan lynch mobs they found themselves the beneficiaries of “pro-democracy” high explosives, delivered from on high by a freedom loving NATO air force.
Bombed from on high, lynched on the ground, the only choice is flee for your lives and that is what hundreds of thousands of Black Libyan have been forced to do.
And all under the approving eye of the first Black President in the White House.
Should we be surprised at such serpentine behavior by the first Black President? Isn’t this the guy who raised over $500 million to help him buy the White House, with $300 million of that from Wall Street?
Isn’t this the guy who surrounded himself before his election with the very worst criminals from the Clinton White house such as Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith and Eric Holder?
But isn’t Barack Obama supposed to know what it’s like to be a black man in America? Didn’t he used to attend a militant black church where the minister preached the Lord’s damnation upon the racist and genocidal rulers of the USA?
The brutal truth is that, like the shepherd’s dog taken as a pup from its mother to suckle at the tit of a sheep, Barack Hussein Obama spent those most critical teenage years being the only black kid in a school of thousands (Note; this writer attended the same school as Barack Obama, Punahou, some half a dozen years before him).
Punahou is one of the most elite schools in the USA, founded in Hawaii by Yankee missionaries who so famously brought the bible and took the Hawaiians land.
Today Punahou’s alumni include names that adorn the headquarters of multinational corporations like Dole Foods.
Barack Obama discovered what the white man wanted to hear from a black boy at an early age and apparently never forgot it.
From Punahou eventually to Harvard, Obama learned what the elite needed to hear if you wanted to get ahead even if it meant black is white, up is down and wrong is right.
So today we have the spectacle of a son of an African, the first Black President in the White house, broadcasting his approval for all the world to see that Libya or Louisiana, if lynching Africans is what it takes, God Bless the USA…and no where else.
Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be contacted at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/25/lynching-black-africans-in-libya/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6dEfuNhL0&feature=player_embedded#%21
LIBYA: The Real Deal
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/libya-and-the-world-we-live-in/
The Holy Triumvirate
Libya and the World We Live In
by WILLIAM BLUM
“Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?”
– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011
A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi’s grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.
In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.
Well, let’s see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like “humanitarian”.
If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn’t want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.
If the Triumvirate decides that it wants to overthrow the government of Libya, though that government is secular and has used its oil wealth for the benefit of the people of Libya and Africa perhaps more than any government in all of Africa and the Middle East, but keeps insisting over the years on challenging the Triumvirate’s imperial ambitions in Africa and raising its demands on the Triumvirate’s oil companies, then the Triumvirate will simply overthrow the government of Libya.
If the Triumvirate wants to punish Gaddafi and his sons it will arrange with the Triumvirate’s friends at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for them.
If the Triumvirate doesn’t want to punish the leaders of Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan it will simply not ask the ICC to issue arrest warrants for them. Ever since the Court first formed in 1998, the United States has refused to ratify it and has done its best to denigrate it and throw barriers in its way because Washington is concerned that American officials might one day be indicted for their many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, said to the world in 1998 that the United States should be exempt from the court’s prosecution because it has “special global responsibilities”. But this doesn’t stop the United States from using the Court when it suits the purposes of American foreign policy.
If the Triumvirate wants to support a rebel military force to overthrow the government of Libya then it does not matter how fanatically religious, al-Qaeda-related, executing-beheading-torturing, monarchist, or factionally split various groups of that rebel force are at times, the Triumvirate will support it, as it did certain forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hope that after victory the Libyan force will not turn out as jihadist as it did in Afghanistan, or as fratricidal as in Iraq. One potential source of conflict within the rebels, and within the country if ruled by them, is that a constitutional declaration made by the rebel council states that, while guaranteeing democracy and the rights of non-Muslims, “Islam is the religion of the state and the principle source of legislation in Islamic Jurisprudence.”
Adding to the list of the rebels’ charming qualities we have the Amnesty International report that the rebels have been conducting mass arrests of black people across the nation, terming all of them “foreign mercenaries” but with growing evidence that a large number were simply migrant workers.
Reported Reuters (August 29): “On Saturday, reporters saw the putrefying bodies of 22 men of African origin on a Tripoli beach. Volunteers who had come to bury them said they were mercenaries whom rebels had shot dead.” To complete this portrait of the West’s newest darlings we have this report from The Independent of London (August 27): “The killings were pitiless. They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came.”
If the Triumvirate’s propaganda is clever enough and deceptive enough and paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi-initiated high tragedy in Libya, many American and European progressives will insist that though they never, ever support imperialism they’re making an exception this time because …
- The Libyan people are being saved from a “massacre”, both actual and potential. This massacre, however, seems to have been grossly exaggerated by the Triumvirate, al Jazeera TV, and that station’s owner, the government of Qatar; and nothing approaching reputable evidence of a massacre has been offered, neither a mass grave or anything else; the massacre stories appear to be on a par with the Viagra-rape stories spread by al Jazeera (the Fox News of the Libyan uprising). Qatar, it should be noted, has played an active military role in the civil war on the side of NATO. It should be further noted that the main massacre in Libya has been six months of daily Triumvirate bombing, killing an unknown number of people and ruining much of the infrastructure. Michigan U. Prof. Juan Cole, the quintessential true-believer in the good intentions of American foreign policy who nevertheless manages to have a regular voice in progressive media, recently wrote that “Qaddafi was not a man to compromise … his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to.” Is that clear, class? We all know of course that Sarkozy, Obama, and Cameron made compromises without end in their devastation of Libya; they didn’t, for example, use any nuclear weapons.
- The United Nations gave its approval for military intervention; i.e., the leading members of the Triumvirate gave their approval, after Russia and China cowardly abstained instead of exercising their veto power; (perhaps hoping to receive the same courtesy from the US, UK and France when Russia or China is the aggressor nation).
- The people of Libya are being “liberated”, whatever in the world that means, now or in the future. Gaddafi is a “dictator” they insist. That may indeed be the proper term to use for the man, but it must still be asked: Is he a relatively benevolent dictator or is he the other kind so favored by Washington? It must also be asked: Since the United States has habitually supported dictators for the entire past century, why not this one?
The Triumvirate, and its fawning media, would have the world believe that what’s happened in Libya is just another example of the Arab Spring, a popular uprising by non-violent protestors against a dictator for the proverbial freedom and democracy, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia and Egypt, which sandwich Libya. But there are several reasons to question this analysis in favor of seeing the Libyan rebels’ uprising as a planned and violent attempt to take power in behalf of their own political movement, however heterogeneous that movement might appear to be in its early stage. For example:
- They soon began flying the flag of the monarchy that Gaddafi had overthrown
- They were an armed and violent rebellion almost from the beginning; within a few days, we could read of “citizens armed with weapons seized from army bases” and of “the policemen who had participated in the clash were caught and hanged by protesters”
- Their revolt took place not in the capital but in the heart of the country’s oil region; they then began oil production and declared that foreign countries would be rewarded oil-wise in relation to how much each country aided their cause
- They soon set up a Central Bank, a rather bizarre thing for a protest movement
- International support came quickly, even beforehand, from Qatar and al Jazeera to the CIA and French intelligence
The notion that a leader does not have the right to put down an armed rebellion against the state is too absurd to discuss.
Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. As to Why? Take your pick of the following:
- Gaddafi’s plans to conduct Libya’s trading in Africa in raw materials and oil in a new currency — the gold African dinar, a change that could have delivered a serious blow to the US’s dominant position in the world economy. (In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not dollars; sanctions and an invasion followed.) For further discussion see here.
- A host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: “We’ve got a big image problem down there. … Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don’t trust the US.”
- An American military base to replace the one closed down by Gaddafi after he took power in 1969. There’s only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It’ll perhaps be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.
- Another example of NATO desperate to find a raison d’être for its existence since the end of the Cold War and the Warsaw Pact.
- Gaddafi’s role in creating the African Union. The corporate bosses never like it when their wage slaves set up a union. The Libyan leader has also supported a United States of Africa for he knows that an Africa of 54 independent states will continue to be picked off one by one and abused and exploited by the members of the Triumvirate. Gaddafi has moreover demanded greater power for smaller countries in the United Nations.
- The claim by Gaddafi’s son, Saif el Islam, that Libya had helped to fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign could have humiliated the French president and explain his obsessiveness and haste in wanting to be seen as playing the major role in implementing the “no fly zone” and other measures against Gaddafi. A contributing factor may have been the fact that France has been weakened in its former colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and the Middle East, due in part to Gaddafi’s influence.
- Gaddafi has been an outstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause and critic of Israeli policies; and on occasion has taken other African and Arab countries, as well as the West, to task for their not matching his policies or rhetoric; one more reason for his lack of popularity amongst world leaders of all stripes.
- In January, 2009, Gaddafi made known that he was considering nationalizing the foreign oil companies in Libya. He also has another bargaining chip: the prospect of utilizing Russian, Chinese and Indian oil companies. During the current period of hostilities, he invited these countries to make up for lost production. But such scenarios will now not take place. The Triumvirate will instead seek to privatize the National Oil Corporation, transferring Libya’s oil wealth into foreign hands.
- The American Empire is troubled by any threat to its hegemony. In the present historical period the empire is concerned mainly with Russia and China. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. The average American neither knows nor cares about this. The average American imperialist cares greatly, if for no other reason than in this time of rising demands for cuts to the military budget it’s vital that powerful “enemies” be named and maintained.
- For yet more reasons, see the article “Why Regime Change in Libya?” by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, and the US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — Wikileaks reference 07TRIPOLI967 11-15-07 (includes a complaint about Libyan “resource nationalism”)
How the West won Libya
By Pepe Escobar ,
Asia Times, October 22, 2011, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MJ22Ak03.html
They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.
Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.
The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".
It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"
To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.
Let me bomb you to protection
As for how R2P ("responsibility to protect" civilians), any doubters should cling to the explanation by NATO's secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen; "NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya." Anyone who wants to check NATO's protection of civilians just needs to jump on a pick-up truck and go to Sirte - the new Fallujah.
Reactions have been quite instructive. TNC bureaucrat Abdel Ghoga went Colosseum in the Roman Empire, saying, "The revolutionaries have got the head of the tyrant."
United States President Barack Obama said the death of Gaddafi means "we are seeing the strength of American leadership across the world". That's as "we got him" as one can possibly expect, also considering that Washington paid no less than 80% of the operating costs of those dimwits at NATO (over $1 billion - which Occupy Wall Street could well denounce would be more helpful creating jobs in the US). Strange, now, to say "we did it", because the White House always said this was not a war; it was a "kinetic" something. And they were not in charge.
It was up to that majestic foreign policy strategist, US Vice President Joe Biden, to be starkly more enlightening than Obama; "In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."
World, you have been warned; this is how the empire will deal with you from now on.
Feel my humanitarian love
So congratulations to the "international community" - which as everyone knows is composed of Washington, a few washed-up NATO members, and the democratic Persian Gulf powerhouses of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This community, at least, loved the outcome. The European Union (EU) hailed "the end of an era of despotism" - when up to virtually Thursday they were caressing the helm of Gaddafi's gowns; now they are falling over themselves in editorials about the 42-year reign of a "buffoon".
Gaddafi would have been a most inconvenient guest of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as he would have relished recalling all the hand-kissing, the warm embraces and the juicy deals the West was begging to clinch after he was promoted from "Mad Dog" (Ronald Reagan) to "our bastard". He would also relish detailing all the shady backgrounds of those opportunists now posing as "revolutionaries" and "democrats".
As for the concept of international law, it lies in a drain as filthy as the one Gaddafi was holed up in. Iraqi dictator Saddam at least got a fake trial in a kangaroo court before meeting the executioner. Osama bin Laden was simply snuffed out, assassination-style, after a territorial invasion of Pakistan. Gaddafi went one up, snuffed out with a mix of air war and assassination.
Power vultures are congesting the skies. London-based Mohammed El Senussi, the heir to the Libyan throne (King Idris was overthrown in 1969) is ready for his close-up, having already established that he "is a servant to Libyan people, and they decide what they want". Translation; I want the throne. He's obviously the favorite candidate of the counter-revolutionary House of Saud.
And what about those Washington think-tank donkeys mumbling that this was the Arab Spring's "Ceausescu moment"? If only the Romanian dictator had improved his country's standard of living - in terms of free healthcare, free education, incentives for the newlywed, etc - by a fraction of what Gaddafi did in Libya. Plus the fact that Nicolae Ceausescu was not deposed by NATO "humanitarian" bombing. v Only the brain dead may have swallowed the propaganda of NATO's "humanitarian" 40,000-plus bombing - which devastated Libya's infrastructure back to the Stone Age (Shock and Awe in slow motion, anyone?). This never had anything to do with R2P - the relentless bombing of civilians in Sirte proves it.
As the top four BRIC members knew it even before the voting of UN Resolution 1973, it was about NATO ruling the Mediterranean as a NATO lake, it was about Africom's war against China and setting up a key strategic base, it was about the French and the Brits getting juicy contracts to exploit Libya's natural resources to their benefit, it was about the West setting the narrative of the Arab Spring after they had been caught napping in Tunisia and Egypt.
Listen to the barbaric whimpers
Welcome to the new Libya. Intolerant Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans - those who could not escape - will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya's natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the "war on terror" in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood - civil war blood, because Tripolitania will refuse to be ruled by backward Cyrenaica.
As for remaining dictators everywhere, get a life insurance policy from NATO Inc; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh were clever enough to do it. We all know there will never be R2P to liberate the Tibetans and Uyghurs, or the people in that monster gulag Myanmar, or the people in Uzbekistan, or the Kurds in Turkey, or the Pashtuns on both sides of the imperially drawn Durand Line.
We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes.
It won't happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.
______________________________
Human rights investigations Ethnic cleansing, genocide and the Tawergha
Posted by alfatah69
Human rights investigations
Ethnic cleansing, genocide and the Tawergha
Posted on September 26, 2011 by HRI Mark
Human Rights Investigations has been following the situation of the Tawergha closely and here we draw the information together and find, based on the reports of witnesses, journalists and human rights workers, the situation of the Tawergha is not just one of ethnic cleansing but, according to the legal definition, genocide.
Captive of the rebels in Sabha
HRI has grave concerns, not only for dark-skinned people in Libya generally, but also for pro-Gaddafi tribes including the Gaddafa and al-Meshashyas. We also have particular concern for the Tuareg of southern Libya who are being accused of being ‘mercenaries’ and under attack from NATO and rebel forces. But the greatest concern is perhaps for the Tawergha.
The Genocide Convention
Article 2 of the United Nations issued Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states:
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Article 4 states:
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
The Tawargha have been ethnically cleansed
The main town of the Tawergha region, Tawergha itself (aka Tawargha, Tawurgha. Arabic: تاورغاء), was a town of an estimated 31,250 people (United Nations Environment Program, 2005). It has been emptied of its entire population: its people having either been killed or fled, amidst reports the remaining population in the area are being picked off as they try to find water and food. The town of Tawergha lies about 30-40 miles south of Misrata/Misurata, along the western coast of the Gulf of Sirte. Areas of Misrata occupied by the Tawargha have also been ethnically cleansed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Amnesty has reported on the allegations ‘that members of the Tawargha tribe’ have fled their homes and:
Tens of thousands are now living in different parts of Libya – unable to return home as relations between the people of Misratah and Tawargha remain particularly tense. Residents of makeshift camps near Tripoli, where displaced people from Tawargha are sheltering, told Amnesty they would not go outside for fear of arrest. They told how relatives and others from the Tawargha tribe had been arrested from checkpoints and even hospitals in Tripoli.
On 29 August, Amnesty delegates saw a Tawargha patient at the Tripoli Central Hospital being taken by three men, one of them armed, for “questioning in Misratah”. The men had no arrest warrant. Amnesty was also told that at least two other Tawargha men had vanished after being taken for questioning from Tripoli hospitals…
Even in the camps, the Tawarghas are not safe. Towards the end of last month, a group of armed men drove into the camp and arrested about 14 men. Amnesty spoke to some of their relatives; none knew of their fate or whereabouts. Another woman at the camp said her husband has been missing since he left the camp to run an errand in central Tripoli, about a week ago. She fears he might be have been detained.
Tawergha who fled to refugee camps have been chased down by rebel groups, taken away and disappeared. There are credible reports of Tawerghans being raped, disappearing and being killed. Tawerghans have even been witnessed being dragged out of hospitals in Tripoli to unknown fates.
The early genocidal threats to Tawergha
In a June 21 article in the Wall Street Journal, Sam Dagher described Tawergha as a town inhabited mostly by black Libyans, a legacy of its 19th-century origins as a transit town in the slave trade. He quoted one of the rebel commanders from the rebel Misrata brigade:
Ibrahim al-Halbous, a rebel commander leading the fight near Tawergha, says all remaining residents should leave once if his fighters capture the town. “They should pack up,” Mr. Halbous said. “Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata.”
Other rebel leaders are reported as:
“calling for drastic measures like banning Tawergha natives from ever working, living or sending their children to schools in Misrata.”
In addition, according to the article, as a result of the battle for Misrata:
nearly four-fifths of residents of Misrata’s Ghoushi neighborhood were Tawergha natives. Now they are gone or in hiding, fearing revenge attacks by Misratans, amid reports of bounties for their capture.
The demonization of the Tawergha
An important part of any genocide is the demonisation and dehumanisation of the victims and this continues to be the case for the Tawergha. As part of the information war NATO and the rebels have described all loyalist black fighters, guest workers from sub-Saharan Africa and even black skinned inhabitants of Libya as ‘mercenaries’ [Arabic: مرتزقة Romanisation:mertezqh or 'murtazaka'].
The Tawerghans have been accused of mass rape, of being collectively responsible for the battle of Misrata and are invariably described in racist terms. As Sam Dagher reported:
Some of the hatred of Tawergha has racist overtones that were mostly latent before the current conflict. On the road between Misrata and Tawergha, rebel slogans like “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” have supplanted pro-Gadhafi scrawl.
It is worth noting that this demonisation of black people has led to widespread atrocities including lynchings and beheadings in which the highest echelons of the National Transitional Council have been complicit.
Tawergha is captured by the rebels
As we reported at the time, the town of Tawergha was taken by the rebels on 13 August in an assault which was closely coordinated with NATO and featured the use of aerial bombing and of heavy weaponry against the town.
Here is video of the battle from the rebel side:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8NhiYAcDwbI
A report of the fall by Andrew Simmons for Al Jazeera, unfortunately lacking context, shows at least one of the large residential blocks in Tawergha alight, prisoners packed inside a freight container (who the rebels didn’t want filmed), an injured man in civilian clothes and the rebel fighters evicting an Egyptian woman who has lost her 9 children under 12 who ran away during the attack from her home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5Y_wwghEN0E
At this stage the last remaining civilians and defenders of the town were reportedly surrounded.
The attack on Tawergha was also reported by Orla Guerin of the BBC who also, disgracefully, failed to give the ethnic cleansing context despite actually interviewing Ibrahim al-Halbous, the very commander who had earlier threatened to wipe the town off the map.
NATO air support for the assault on Tawergha
The NATO bombing in support of the attack is recorded in the NATO press releases from the time:
10 August: In the vicinity of Tawurgha: 3 Command and Control Nodes, 2 Military Storage Facilities.
12 August: In the vicinity of Misratha: 1 Military Facility, 1 Ammo Storage Facility.
13 August: In the vicinity of Misratah: 4 Anti-Aircraft Guns.
13 August: In the vicinity of Tawurgah: 2 Military Vehicles, 1 Anti-Aircraft Guns.
The actual assault was from 10-13 August so we can see NATO played an important role in the ethnic cleansing of this town, an ethnic cleansing of which they had been forewarned and in which they decided, nonetheless, to participate.
Reports indicate the rebels were ordered by NATO to paint their vehicles red and yellow just prior to the assault.
The ethnic cleansing of Tawargha
It is highly likely many black refugees from Misrata fled to the town of Tawergha. Many of them and the original residents may have moved on prior to the actual assault, especially as the Misrata brigades were firing Grad rockets at the town. It also seems likely some of the fighters may have escaped to Sabha, Sirte or Bani Walid, where they are currently making a last stand, sure in the knowledge that they are unlikely to survive capture.
However, a report by David Enders, reporting from an empty Tawergha, indicates ethnic cleansing occurred after the rebels took full control:
According to Tawergha residents, rebel soldiers from Misrata forced them from their homes on Aug. 15 when they took control of the town. (Our emphasis)
This would have been 2 days after the fall of the town and after Orla Guerin and Andrew Simmons had left. The fate of the prisoners loaded into the shipping containers, as well as the population as a whole remains unknown.
Following the trail of the last of the Tawerghans
To his great credit David Enders follows up on the story of the Tawerghans, (17th September) trying to trace their current location:
The residents were then apparently driven out of a pair of refugee camps in Tripoli over this past weekend.
“The Misrata people are still looking for black people,” said Hassan, a Tawergha resident who’s now sheltering in a third camp in Janzour, six miles east of Tripoli. “One of the men who came to this camp told me my brother was killed yesterday by the revolutionaries.”
The evidence that the rebels’ pursuit of the Tawerghis did not end with the collapse of the Gadhafi regime is visible, both in the emptiness of this village and that of the camps to which the residents fled.
At one, in a Turkish-owned industrial complex in the Salah al Deen neighborhood of southern Tripoli, a man looting metal from the complex simply said that the Tawerghis had “gone to Niger,” the country that borders Libya on the south where some Gadhafi supporters, including the deposed dictator’s son Saadi, have fled.
It is worth noting that to get to Niger, any refugees would have had to make an extremely hazardous journey to Sabha first. From there it would have been a further weeks journey by bus into Niger, across the Sahara: another very dangerous journey which it is highly unlikely any of the refugees would have even attempted let alone survived.
David Enders report continues:
Lafy Mohammed, whose house is across the road from the complex, said that on Saturday a group of revolutionary militiamen from Misrata, 120 miles east of Tripoli, had come to the camp and evicted its tenants.
“They arrested about 25 of the men,” Mohammed said. “They were shooting in the air and hitting them with their rifle butts.”
“They took the women, old men and children out in trucks,” he said.
Mohammed said that it was not the first time the revolutionaries from Misrata had come after the people in the camp.
“A week ago they were here, but (the people in the neighborhood) begged them to leave them alone,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed said some of the Tawerghis may have been taken to another nearby camp, in a Brazilian-owned industrial complex. On Tuesday, that camp was empty as well, with the gate locked.
Reached by phone at the camp in Janzour, Hassan, who did not want his last name used, said he had escaped from the Brazilian company camp on Saturday, when it, too, was raided. He said about 1,000 Tawerghis were now at the Janzour camp.
“They arrested 35 men, but they let me go because I was with my family,” Hassan said. He blamed a brigade of fighters from Misrata.
In Tawergha, the rebel commander said his men had orders not to allow any of the residents back in. He also said that unexploded ordnance remained in the area, though none was readily apparent.
Most homes and buildings in the area appeared to have been damaged in the fighting, and a half-dozen appeared to have been ransacked. The main road into the village was blocked with earthen berms. Signs marking the way to the village appeared to have been destroyed.
On the only sign remaining “Tawergha” had been painted over with the words “New Misrata.”
On one wall in Tawergha, graffiti referred to the town’s residents as “abeed,” a slur for blacks.
Mass graves abound
A bulldozer filling a mass grave with bodies
Since the collapse of the Gaddafi government in western Libya in late August 2011, mass graves containing the bodies of people killed during the conflict have been reported on a weekly basis in Tripoli and other areas, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A communications intercept between a rebel commander from Misrata and Colonel Ahmed Bani suggests the mass graves of “pro-Gaddafi soldiers” which ”are not to be talked about.” Relatives have testified to the murder and dissappearances of their menfolk and in one instance the suicide of a young woman who wished to avoid being raped.
Human Rights Watch have expressed their concern about the rebels interfering with mass graves which will make forensic work to discover the perpetrators of massacres difficult.
According to Amnesty International the Libyan soldiers “executed for refusing to kill protesters” in Al-Baida were in fact murdered and filmed for the world’s media by the rebels, which only came to light because amateur video of the victims whilst in rebel custody surfaced.
So we can have no faith in the rebel authorities investigating their own crimes.
Mahmoud Jibril’s complicity in the crime of genocide
Sam Dagher of the Wall Street Journal reported September 18th that Mahmoud Jibril, the National Transtional Council Prime Minister, rubber-stamped the wiping of the town off the map in a public meeting at the Misrata town hall:
“Regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misrata.”
“This matter can’t be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe,” he added as the crowd cheered with chants of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is greatest.”
The WSJ goes on to report:
Now, rebels have been torching homes in the abandoned city 25 miles to the south. Since Thursday, The Wall Street Journal has witnessed the burning of more than a dozen homes in the city Col. Gadhafi once lavished with money and investment. On the gates of many vandalized homes in the country’s only coastal city dominated by dark-skinned people, light-skinned rebels scrawled the words “slaves” and “negroes.”
“We are setting it on fire to prevent anyone from living here again,” said one rebel fighter as flames engulfed several loyalist homes.
People to contact
This is of course a highly politically inconvenient genocide, and it is therefore of great importance that our readers attempt to bring the attention of the world to this issue.
Here are some suggestions and we welcome others:
Tweet this article using the button below!
UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/contactform.asp?address=1
The International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court
Office of the Prosecutor
Communications
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands.
Email to: otp.infor...@icc-cpi.int,
Facsimile to: +31 70 515 8555
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 917 9220
Email: Info...@ohchr.org
The US Department of State
http://contact-us.state.gov/app/ask
Other organisations: The ICRC, Amnesty International, members of the UN (see the stop bombing email campaign for emails)
We would also ask our readers to keep us informed
1) Of responses to the genocide as we are tracking those who are attempting to deny, justify and minimise these crimes and those in positions of authority who remain silent or give moral and political support to the guilty parties.
2) Further developments in the position of the Tawerghans.
3) The movements of;
a) Mahmoud Jibril,
b) rebel commanders Ali Ahmed al Sheh, Ibrahim al-Halbous, Abdul Hassan of the Al Horia Brigade and
c) NATO commander Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard.
4) the stipulations of the relevant national laws implementing the Genocide Convention.
There should be no impunity for war criminals.
(PS – It is worth noting that Ibrahim al-Halbous, one of the rebel commanders involved, was paralyzed after being injured during fighting on Sunday 18 September according to a spokesman for the Misurata media committee.)
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/09/26/libya-ethnic-cleansing-tawargha-genocide/
http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2011/10/revulsion-resistance-angry-words-from.html Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Revulsion, resistance & angry words from Tripoli University
Libya Dispatch Franklin Lamb
 |
| "Someone whispered in his ear that he would become famous and rich if he did NATO’s dirty job by killing Colonel Gadhafi." |
Tripoli University
The people I had hoped most to be able to find on returning to Libya were eight students from Fatah University (now renamed Tripoli University) who became my friends during three months in Libya this summer.
 |
| Al-Fatah University was partially destroyed in a June 17 bombing, the next day student life resumed. The war has not broken the spirits of Liya’s youth. – Photo: Moises Saman, New York Times |
“I
know Sanad al-Ureibi”, Ahmad said disgustedly about the 22 year old who
is claiming he fired two bullets at close range into Muammar Gadhafi on
October 22nd. Amal, Ahmad’s fiancée interrupted him: “We are very angry but not really surprised by what Sanad did. He’s a stupid guy and I am sure someone whispered in his ear that he would become famous and rich if he did NATO’s dirty job by killing Colonel Gadhafi. NATO did more than 1000 bombing attacks “to protect Libyan civilians” but killed thousands of us instead. For sure NATO and their puppets want as many of our leader’s dead as possible in order to avoid years of a court trial that would expose NATO’s many crimes and those of certain western leaders.”
Ahmad: “Sanad told my cousin the day after he assassinated Colonel Gadhafi that he is promised protection and that the TNC will not arrest him despite their, for western ears only, announcement of a planned “investigation” of how Muammar and Mutassim died. Everyone in Libya knows that the investigation of the assassination of the
rebel military commander Abdel Fattah Younes last July has gone nowhere
because the Islamist faction who committed the Younes murder is close
to Jalil.”Ahmad continued,
“Like some of his friends, Sanad did fight for a while with the rebels and he sometimes changed units because it was fun and now he plans to form a gang to protect rich Libyans and foreigners as they continue to arrive here to help, as they claim, to rebuild our destroyed country and make democracy. Now we all so exhausted from all the needless killing I am not sure what kind of democracy we will have or even want. American democracy? It’s very great? Sometimes it seems you have more problems than we do. At least we have free education, free medical care, and homes and are not living on the streets without jobs."
One Israeli-American Company has offered Sanad and other young men who refuse to give up their guns a job recruiting former fighters for proper training as Libyan police. There are some Blackwater (XE) people here are also trying to do business with NATO agents for private police forces around Libya. Anyone who thinks NATO is going to leave us in peace is mistaken. More of them arrive every day.”
Hind added,
“Please tell me who are these TNC Sheiks to say who is are and who is not a Muslim. In Islam it’s between each of us and Allah and nobody else’s business. If these Sheiks were better Muslims they would have opposed what has been done to his body and that of his son and friend in Sirte and Misrata. It is haram. I am very angry and disgusted.”
Suha complained about “the views of NTC leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil toward women and that with the already announced repeal of the marriage law, Libyan women have lost the right to keep the family home if they divorce. It is a disaster for Libyan women. Under Gadhafi leadership women in Libya had more rights than in any other country in the Middle East.”
Ahmad explained:
"I am ashamed of what some Muslims are doing. Our religion does not allow for this mutilation and the freak show the TNC put on in that refrigerator. I was in Misrata with friends to pay our respects and was surprised how many others were doing the same as our group and for the same reasons. When the bodies were first exhibited curious people came and some said bad insults. But by the next day the atmosphere has completely changed. People came to honor Colonel Gadhafi for his courage in dying for what he believed was best for Libya and that was to keep Libya free from colonialism. I don’t believe the media is accurately reporting this. Our leader died a hero like Omar Muktar in my opinion and history will prove this someday.”
“As Colonel Gadhafi revealed in his Will, NATO made him several offers if he would abandon his country to them. Foolish and criminal NATO established our leader forever as a great resister to colonialism and a patriot for Libya, for all of Africa and for the Middle East. I believe that Colonel Gadhafi died a far more honorable death than the leaders of NATO will. He has more dignity in death than Hilary Clinton and her absence of dignity shown by her stupid comments about his death.”
“I became ill when I left him. His skin was almost black and his body was rotting quickly with fluids leaking on the floor. They must give him immediately to his family and ask Allah to forgive themselves for their haram. One of the guards told me Colonel Gadhafi was sodomized with a rifle by NTC fighters. He showed the video on his mobile but I would not look. ”
Masks handed outto people because of the
stench of rotting flesh filling the room.
Suha spoke:
“We also visited the Mahari Hotel in Sirte where we saw more than 50 bodies of Gadaffi supporters. Some had their hands behind them bound by plastic handcuffs and were executed at close range. Others had been taken from hospital beds and murdered. This crime is just one more example of the lies of the NTC and NATO. NATO forces commanded and controlled their rebels and knew what they have been doing. NATO is responsible for destroying much of our country and for what will surely happen in the coming days.”
Burnt out cars and
bodies of Gadaffi bodyguards
I first met Ahmad what now seems like a couple of years ago, but in actuality it was only last June. We sat at an outdoor cafe on Green Square (now renamed Martyrs’ Square) and talked about NATO’s obvious plans for Libya. Since August 23rd and the precipitous collapse of the loyalist resistance in Tripoli, which Ahmad had been organizing some of the neighborhoods to participate in, he has been on the lam as friends got word to him that NTC death squads were on his trail even staking out the Radisson Hotel lobby where he used to meet with journalists and western friends. Ahmad blames the lack of a real defense of Tripoli, that took us all by surprise, as “our incompetence and some high ranking traitors” for the non-implementation of plans to defend Tripoli from NATO’s rebels.
His first words after we hugged were: “Now the real resistance will begin! The Libyan people are now even surer than they were during this summer that the NTC sold our country to the NATO colonial countries. As
NATO continues to hunt down Saif al Islam, many around our country are
making Saif the new leader of the resistance to colonialism in Libya and
in Africa. I personally pledge my support for him and pray that Allah
will protect him. Watch what the Gadhafi tribe and my Waffala tribe do together in the coming weeks—but also starting today. Maybe NATO can be said in some ways to have won round one. But let’s see what happens in the many rounds to come.”
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya. He is reachable c\o fpl...@gmail.comHe is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.He contribute to Uprooted Palestinians Blog
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http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2011/10/revulsion-resistance-angry-words-from.html
by Justin Raimondo<http://original.antiwar.com/author/justin/>, October 21, 2011, http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/10/20/moammar-gadhafi-r-i-p/
The grisly scenes<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIkck02qao&feature=player_embedded&skipcontrinter=1> of Gadhafi's body being dragged through the streets of Sirte, and the unseemly celebrations<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27559165/ns/msnbc_tv/t/watch-msnbc-tv-live/> of the Libyan dictator's death in the Western media, are enough to make any decent person wince. Yes, he was a brutal dictator<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412_pf.html>, and I hold no brief for him or his works, but is this kind of savagery really what we want to see in the "new<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/world/africa/clinton-in-libya-to-meet-leaders-and-offer-aid-package.html>" Libya?
Whether or not we want it, it is coming: the crew in charge of that unfortunate nation is no better, and perhaps worse, than Gadhafi. The fate of the rebels' former commander-in-chief, Abdul Fatah Younis<http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/killing-abdul-fattah-younes.html>, prefigures a revolution that eats its own, and the ferocity<http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/07/2395359/african-women-say-rebels-raped.html> of that revolutionary fervor is hardly abated.
Gadhafi loyalists<http://news.yahoo.com/libyans-closing-gaddafi-bastions-004138825.html> include the largest tribe<http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/09/01/164993.html> in the country, and after the smoke clears and the new regime extends its grip over dissident pockets of resistance, nostalgia for the relatively<http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/313447_307536315930438_100000222150596_1478708_53384476_n.jpg> peaceful days of Gadhafi's reign is more than likely to set in. Worse, the arsenals of the Libyan military have been systematically looted<http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/nightmare-libya-20000-surface-air-missiles-missing/story?id=14610199>, with missiles and other sophisticated weaponry falling into the hands of radical Islamist militias. These militias are not fringe elements in the Libyan revolution, but rather they are in charge<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html>, with one of their number<http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH30Ak01.html> taking the place of the slain Younis as head of the rebel "armed forces."
Indeed, the rebels' military leadership consists largely of members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/05/libyan-islamic-fighting-group-leaders> (LIFG), which is still prominently featured<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fLS9YMsZ9cYJ:www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm+%22Libyan+Islamic+Fighting+Group%22+2011+site:state.gov&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us> on our official list of designated terrorist organizations. Now we are allied with them - under a new name, the "National Transitional Council<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/16/libya-national-transitional-council-un_n_966339.html>" - and US taxpayer dollars are pouring into their coffers. That money will be used to consolidate the rebels' rule, a regime that promises to be every bit as repressive as the one that preceded it - albeit friendly, at least at first<http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/28/v-fullstory/2429520/a-reporter-in-libya-wonders-about.html>, to its Western sponsors.
There are several lessons to be learned from this episode. The first is directed at those anti-American despots still left standing in the region, and it is this: make no concessions. Gadhafi, it will be recalled, had his Great Reconciliation<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1220-08.htm> with the Western powers, earning Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's imprimatur in the process - and look where it landed him. This lesson is not lost on Bashar al-Assad<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jJbh4mpdOgOOgSHRUDtwqAeNszvQ?docId=CNG.cc5f76b56ab63ced6a0bd74dc8327e47.61>, the beleaguered Syrian dictator, nor is it lost on pro-American despots, like the King of Bahrain<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-dooley/activists-continue-to-tak_b_1020702.html>, the Saudis<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/troops-open-fire-as-saudis-brace-for-day-of-rage/story-e6frg6so-1226020026442>, and any of the other<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/anwar-al-awlaki-death-yemen_n_989741.html> pro-Western crowned thugs<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/kuwait-holds-biggest-protest-demanding-premier-s-ouster-1-.html> who lord it over their long-oppressed peoples. What these royals have learned from the example of Gadhafi's - and Mubarak's<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06egypt.html?pagewanted=all> - fall is not to expect any help from Washington if they suddenly find themselves hiding in a drain pipe. Quite the contrary: they can fully expect to feel the wrath of the West, as it sides with the rebels and calls in its drones<http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/10/16/mapping-americas-shadowy-drone-wars/> to rain death from the skies.
As the rulers of Bahrain, Jordan<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/world/middleeast/20jordan.html?pagewanted=all>, Morocco<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14011212>, Saudi Arabia, and the sheikdoms of the Gulf contemplate the full meaning of the events in Libya and Egypt, one can easily imagine them making arrangements for a quick escape.
To our cynical and ruthless policymakers, however, such considerations are merely a side issue. The real significance of our foray into Libya is that it signals the advent of anew African initiative<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/africa/three-terrorist-groups-in-africa-pose-threat-to-us-general-ham-says.html>, the thrusting of American power into the heart<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ18Dj06.html> of the dark continent. With military bases in Djibouti<http://www.esquire.com/features/africacommand0707>, and now Ethiopia<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/20/wapo/main20109195.shtml>, Africa is the latest addition to several new fronts<http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/08/04/a-secret-war-in-120-countries/> in our endless "war on terrorism."
Ambition, ideology, and opportunity are taking us ever-deeper into a region that has been inexplicably neglected by US policy planners: the Obama administration apparently seeks to rectify that, and rather quickly, with a contingent of US special forces being sent to Uganda<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/obama-sends-100-us-troops-to-uganda-to-combat-lords-resistance-army/>, purportedly in order to rescue the country from the grip of a crazed "Christian" guerrilla army<http://kabiza.com/Lira-Children-Kony-Rebels.htm>. It's just a coincidence that this intervention - and the subsequent flow of "foreign aid" dollars - will prop up the increasingly unpopular rule of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=58146>, in power since 1986.
Museveni is a "former<http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2010/aug/the_long_march_of_museveni_the_war_president.aspx>" Marxist revolutionary, who received military training from the Soviet-backed Frelimo guerrilla army: he wrote his student thesis on Franz Fanon'stheory of revolutionary violence<http://www.amazon.com/Wretched-Earth-Frantz-Fanon/dp/0802141323/antiwarbookstore>. A political survivor, he rose to the top of the anti-Amin "liberation" front, and after a series of coups and counter-coups, became president in 1986. In the 2006 elections, Museveni's main opponent was arrested and charged<http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/24641/-besigye-in-court-on-rape-charges.html> with treason and rape. The brazen manner in which Museveni routinely steals elections has come under heavy criticism from the European Union<http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/110221/uganda-elections-victory-musenveni-now>, as well as from those members of the Ugandan opposition not sitting in jail. His rule has been pockmarked by various<http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/uni/uganda/fuganda1986.htm> regional insurgencies, with the "Lord's Resistance Army" the least of them. Under the pretext of fighting these "Christian" cultists, Museveni's security forces will be strengthened and aid money will pour in.
Somalia has long been a focus<http://www.thenation.com/print/article/163210/blowback-somalia> of US "anti-terrorism" efforts, and the latest development on that front is the establishment of several military bases in the region, including in Ethiopia, where our ally is yet another "former" Marxist-Leninist despot and election thief who rules the country with an iron fist. Like Museveni's Uganda, President Meles Zenawi<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4545711.stm>'s Ethiopia is riven<http://www.mongabay.com/history/ethiopia/ethiopia-eritrean_and_tigrayan_insurgencies.html> with dozens of regional insurgencies<http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch-Archive/Detail/?lng=en&id=110663>, as religious and tribal minorities try to assert some measure of independence against a distant and tyrannical central government in Addis Ababa. US aid<http://gadaa.com/oduu/654/2009/06/02/us-military-assistance-to-ethiopia-and-ethiopias-gross-human-rights-abuses/> and political support<http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2009/12/11/u_s_military_assistance_to_ethiopia_up_2> is essential to maintaining Zenawi's power, which has faced several serious challenges. Ominously, Zenawi's expansionist dreams of a "Greater Ethiopia" extend into Somalia, where the regional Ethiopian-supported "government<http://abbaymedia.com/News/?p=1096>" of Puntland provides a base for further military incursions.
The historic rivalry<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/107332.stm> between Ethiopia and Eritrea - a dirt-poor desolate strip of land between Ethiopia and the Red Sea - will come into play as the US military is thrust into Africa, and "Africom<http://www.africom.mil/>" - the US military's African command - assumes an increasingly important role in the Empire's war plans. Eritrea occupies a strategically important location: across the narrowest part of the Red Sea lies Yemen, the latest target of our stepped-up<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-yemen-awlaki-idUSTRE79H71E20111018> drone war.
America's renewed interest in the region bodes ill<http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/17/us-threatens-to-invade-eritrea/> for the Eritreans. Eritrea fought a long war series of wars against Ethiopian invaders, and in spite of support for the Ethiopians from both the US and<http://www.royalafricansociety.org/country-profiles/133-eritrea.html> the Soviet Union, the feisty Eritreans beat back every attempt by Addis Ababa to absorb the region. They finally won their independence in the 1980s, when a UN plebiscite installed the present government - a neo-Marxist one-party dictatorship. If Africom isn't already looking at Eritrea the way a vulture looks down on a lion stalking a gazelle, then somebody isn't doing their job.
Gadhafi comes from the same generation<http://abesha.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/top-12-africas-worst-dictators/> of "Third World" despots who came to power in the post-colonial period and played footsie with the Soviet Union in part to offset a long history of Western domination. Most of these were military men<http://africanhistory.about.com/od/biography/a/bio_amin.htm>, and avowed "socialists<http://countrystudies.us/somalia/28.htm>," although their versions of Marxist theology often differed from orthodoxy the way Mormonism deviates from Protestantism. These bonapartist regimes eventually entered a period of sclerosis, and reified into tools of tribal dominance and outright kleptocracy<http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/08/19/zimbabwe.inflation/>, with some monarchist flourishes thrown in for good measure. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, those who survived made their peace with the West, as did Gadhafi. Spoon fed by Western "aid" and "development" programs, the corrupto-crats grew fat while the people starved - and seethed.
You could almost hear the sigh of relief coming from Western capitals as news of Gadhafi's unceremonious death spread around the world. Apparently captured alive, as this video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVIkck02qao&feature=share&skipcontrinter=1> shows, he was almost immediately killed by his captors, who then dragged his body through the streets of Sirte, which had been the last loyalist holdout. That a US drone first<http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/al-arabiya-libyan-tv-reports-gadhafi-arrested/1?csp=hf> attacked Gadhafi's convoy, and so gave the rebels the opportunity to make short work of him, is a telling detail. Odds are that NATO was tracking him, and in communication with rebels on the ground: whether they gave the direct order to off the Libyan leader matters little. What matters is that only God will judge him, and the trial will be private. The idea of Gadhafi in the dock at the International Tribunal in the Hague, testifying to his dealings with Western bigwigs<http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/24/302759/mccain-lieberman-graham-qaddafi/>over the years, is not something our leaders looked forward to.
Now the NATO-crats can turn their attention to the problem of how to hold the country together<http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/559804f8-cc7f-11e0-b923-00144feabdc0.html> in the post-Gadhafi era, while maintaining tight control over whatever gang rises to the top. Libya, like the "countries" in the rest of Africa, is anartificial construct<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/03/13/libya-does-not-exist/>, the creation of Western colonial powers as they carved up the continent. It actually consists of at least three separate entities - Tripolitania<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/605842/Tripolitania> to the west, Cyrenaica<http://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrene/cyrenaica.html> to the east, and an interior province peopled by nomads and black Tuaregs<http://allafrica.com/stories/201109071329.html> - each with its own distinct history and character. Uniting these regions by fiat ensures the future of Libya under the heel of yet another strongman, albeit one less eccentric and more reliably pro-Western than his predecessor. It seems a near certainty Libya will be deemed as yet unready for national elections, and one should expect the National Transitional Council will drop the "transitional" and simply declare itself to be the one and only legitimate government.
That this proclamation will be met with widespread resistance is also a near certainty, because Libya is afflicted with the same problem that besets the entire African continent<http://www.africafederation.net/Natural_Borders.htm> - the illegitimacy of present-day national borders.
These borders are the outcome of decades of intra-mural battles between the European colonial powers, and bear little relationship to tribal and ethnic realities on the ground. As such, Africa is a tinderbox of inter-state rivalries and political and cultural tensions, which the spark of US intervention could very well set aflame. As we wade into the Africa savannahs, and inject Special Forces into the Ugandan jungles, we will seek allies where we can find them - and create them where none exist. Like our British forebears, we'll "take up the White man's burden," and fool ourselves<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-obamas-war-room-20111013?print=true> into believing it's all in the name of a vague "humanitarianism." How long before the arbiters of Political Correctness deem opposition to US imperialism in Africa to be "racist"? Not long, I assure you.
As this administration tries to pick winners and losers in a place we know nothing about - and cannot know enough to do anything but harm - they're bound to wind up with the African equivalent of Solyndra<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-20/solar-panel-maker-solyndra-lobbied-as-its-cash-was-about-out.html>. From Libya to Uganda, the story is sure to be the same: all our efforts will amount to creating more chaos than order, fostering dependency instead of development. In short, like all government programs, the Obama administration's plans for Africa are inevitably doomed to achieve the exact opposite of their intended result.
In Libya, where we are supporting and succoring an Islamist gang, we are seeing the first fruits of this seriously misguided policy. Gadhafi himself warned against the Islamist element in the rebel hierarchy: as we barbarically "celebrate" the bloody death of a ruthless and slightly wacky dictator, we would do well to wonder if he might one day have the last laugh.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27967.htm
While many of the rationalizations describe resources, especially oil, as the reasons why we should be Libya, an increasing number of people think these reasons revolve around financial reasons and protecting the value of the American dollar.
According to the IMF, Libya's Central Bank is 100% state owned. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.
The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy.
Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.
So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a "rogue" country threatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to its knees? What happens to an "empire" when it can no longer effectively be overtly imperialistic?
According to Perkins one definition of Empire states that an empire is a nation that dominates other nations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. The empire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect the currency and the entire economic system that depends on it through extreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did the Spanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the US or, more to the point, the transnational corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined to punish anyone who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example.
[The Obama administration and its NATO allies were not interested in the Right to Protect residents of Sirte...they were not "our kind of humans"]
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Fidel Castro commented on NATO's genocidal role
THIS brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious tool of repression known in the history of humanity.
________________________________________________________________
أغاني فلسطينية قديمة رائعة*
Immigration Tribunal rejects Sheikh's appeal on a sad day for human rights and democracy
- Wednesday, 26 October 2011 17:52
23 22 Digg0 Email5 Share48
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Immigration and Asylum First-Tier Tribunal has rejected the appeal of Sheikh Raed Salah against the decision of the Home Secretary to exclude him from the UK. Yesterday's judgement (Tuesday 25 October), a court statement said, came down to a balancing act between the public interest and the interests of Sheikh Salah.
The tribunal determined that Theresa May had acted within her powers to deport the leading Palestinian political activist on the grounds of his alleged "unacceptable behaviour". However, it also determined that "it is not necessary to satisfy the criteria of unacceptable behaviour for words and actions to be racist as such..." and that this criteria "might be achieved by words and actions which are not necessarily racist". One assumes that by this strangulated double-speak the tribunal means statements which are critical of Israel and its illegal and inhumane policies against the people of Palestine.
It is unfortunate that the tone of yesterday's judgement suggests that Sheikh Raed Salah is being excluding from Britain for being a vocal critic of the state of Israel (of which he is a citizen). If Israel is indeed "a democracy" as the tribunal claims, then such criticism has a noble place in the public domain and, given Israel's human rights abuses, should be encouraged.
The tribunal acknowledged that "the Appellant is supported by anti-Zionist and Jewish organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestine" and that a poem written by him that was alleged to be racist was in fact clearly not "directed at the Jewish people as a whole but only at those among them who aim at Israeli territorial expansion and control at the expense of Palestinians". Nevertheless, the tribunal still saw fit to uphold May's banning order.
Israel is not and should not be above the law and beyond criticism. It is unacceptable by any standards for the findings of a British legal hearing to suggest that Israeli plans to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque should not be discussed because it is "a particularly sensitive issue". It is also a sad day for British justice when a tribunal of such importance can concede that "it is of concern that apparently the Secretary of State did not consult with any Muslim or Palestinian organisations" on this "particularly sensitive issue"; acknowledge that the evidence against Sheikh Salah was provided primarily by the Community Security Trust and Board of Deputies of British Jews which "failed to distinguish between anti-Semitism and criticism of the actions of the Israeli state and therefore gives an unbalanced perspective"; and still rule in favour of the Home Secretary.
The tribunal accepts that Sheikh Salah "has behaved lawfully throughout this matter, and that he has been the victim of unfairness and procedural irregularity... [and] was detained unlawfully for a period of time", and that his visits to other EU countries have not led to civil disorder.
This is a staggeringly unjust judgement. It is hard to conclude anything other than that Sheikh Raed Salah is being condemned not for anything that he has done, but for something that the pro-Israel Lobby in the United Kingdom has convinced the Home Secretary he might do in the future. The once much-admired principles of British justice have been laid to rest by this tribunal's judgement, alongside the right to free speech, in order to satisfy the supporters of a country which treats justice and freedom with contempt. This is truly a sad day for human rights and democracy.
[ENDS]
For more information please contact Dr. Hanan Chehata on +44 (0)20 8838 0231
The Middle East Monitor is an independent media research institute founded in the United Kingdom in 2009 to foster a fair and accurate coverage of Middle Eastern issues and in particular the Palestine Question in the Western Media.
Middle East Monitor
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8838 0231
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8838 0705
Email:
in...@memonitor.org.uk
in...@memonitor.org.uk
Website: http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk
Respect Palestinians' Right to Self-determination in Development. Reform the International Aid System
Kindly consider adding your name to this campaign calling for reform of the international aid system:
Aid for progress, not dependency,
Sam Bahour
Reminder - tomorrow: Jerusalem calling film screening
Dear Enrique, This is just a gentle reminder! Thursday evening is fast approaching us, and I thought you would appreciate my reminder of the special screening for "Jerusalem Calling", the story of Palestine Broadcasting Service 1936-1948. At this unique event, we are honored to have the director available to answer your question. The event starts at 6:30, in Al-Hambra Palace, few meters away from the bookshop at Salah Eddin Street 34. The film is informative, awesome and entertaining to say the least, so you are more than welcome to bring your friends and beloved ones. The more the merrier. Imad Muna |
 |
Date and Time: Thursday 27 October 2011 at 6:30 pm Venue: Al-Hambra Palace - Jerusalem Address: # 34 Salah Eddin Street / Jerusalem - Palestine Free Entry, everyone is welcome More information: 02-6275858 |
Enrique,
A bit of an emergency: The rumor all over Capitol Hill is that the House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill will be introduced this week, probably on Wednesday.
Please click here to urge your Congressmember to NOT COSPONSOR the legislation.
Our allies on the Hill say the bill's so bad that it could effectively destroy Youtube, Twitter, and other sites that rely on user-generated content by making the sites' owners legally responsible for everything their users post.
Nobody will want to take that risk, so sites like Youtube and Twitter could be forced to shut down.
And all of this is being driven by a few major corporations who are trying to protect their private profits.
Thanks,
The Demand Progress team
PS: We need to completely overwhelm the social networking sites with info about this legislation so we can bombard Congress with constituent contacts:
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The Fight for Autonomy in Oakland
Oakland.
In a pre-dawn raid Tuesday involving hundreds of officers drafted
from seventeen departments across northern California, the notoriously
aggressive Oakland Police violently raided
and wiped out that city’s Occupy encampment. By sunrise most of the
protesters had fled beyond a cordon that stretched for several blocks
back of Frank Ogawa Plaza, so far back that reportedly no media or
bystanders could watch the scene unfold within. A communique from Occupy
Oakland described the military-style eradication mission:
“Tear gas and flash bangs were fired into the camp where children were sleeping, people were beaten and shot with rubber bullets. The assault was also levied against our property in the camp, and the cops tried their best to completely destroy everything we had there. Almost every tent has been destroyed, many slashed with boxcutters, structures smashed, basically this was not an eviction, they came in to destroy everything we had.”
Upwards of 85 persons were arrested and dragged away with their arms zip-tied behind their backs, and charged with unlawful assembly and illegal lodging. Many Oaklanders close to those arrested report that the charges also include failure to disperse and crossing a police line, and that bail is set at $10,000. A smaller satellite camp just blocks away at Snow Park was also raided and torn asunder. Numerous first hand accounts circulating on the Internet tell of rampant acts of police violence during the blitz against mostly slumbering occupiers.
“Police used sound weapons and tear gas on the people there,” says one Oaklander.
“They kept the media and legal observers out, surrounded the camp and destroyed everything, including the kitchen, a free school/library, a childcare center, an arts center, and diverse cultural monuments to peace. People were brutalized and injured and many will spend the day in jail for attempting to envision a different society.”
From Washington D.C. (away on a lobbying trip) Oakland Mayor Jean Quan issued a statement after the police raid, recycling the city’s talking points that had been circulated days earlier in an eviction order, with no deadline, posted on the city’s web site: “over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the City could maintain safe or sanitary conditions, or control the ongoing vandalism.”
On Quan’s orders the police attempted to patrol the encampment from its beginning, but had been rebuffed by the occupiers who are serious about establishing their independence from the state and political parties in order to critique these corrupt institutions.
Reports of a sexual assault and then physical violence from within the encampment surfaced days ago from city officials. Speaking for city hall, spokeswoman Karen Boyd said a mentally ill homeless man attacked others within the camp and was forcefully expelled as a result. Whatever happened it’s clear that occupiers chose not to involve the police, for reasons that are clear to those familiar with the OPD’s violent reputation, but also because the encampment’s participants appear to be taking the challenges posed by state violence and austerity seriously, responding with efforts to autonomously care for and govern themselves.
The encampment therefore not only set up its own security system by which volunteers help one another keep the peace, but a major part of Occupy Oakland has included attempts to set up, albeit on a micro-scale, the very services the city government has been destroying in recent years: a free school, library, food kitchen, clothing distribution, child care, health care, and much more. The occupiers’ general assemblies (organized as facilitated consensus meetings) is its own autonomous version of hyper-egalitarian politics, contrasted against the extremely anti-democratic City Hall and Congressional processes dominated by corporate capital and the wealthy.
The mayor and several city council members initially praised the Occupy protests, specifically hailing the massive Occupy Oakland convergence and general assembly on October 10th because they misunderstood it as a critique solely aimed at Washington D.C. and distant centers of economic power. But from the very beginning Occupy Oakland took a radical stance and localized the terms of struggle. At the first rally cries of “fuck the police” peppered comments equally critical of local government and powerful Bay Area corporations which have pressed harmful budget cuts upon Oaklanders.
When the encampment sprang up that night and then so suddenly filled with hundreds of tents covering the entirety of the city’s proverbial Tahrir Square, Oakland’s liberal leaders began formulating their law-and-order position based on “concerns” over “safety” and “public health.” These same justifications have been echoed in the ultimatums of city establishments across America attempting to evict the occupations, some with violent police attacks equal to that just visited upon Oakland.
The irony, and perhaps a strategic victory of the Occupy Moment, is that these justifications and the subsequent police attacks, have exposed the hypocrisy of “main street” city regimes across the nation. They claim to stand for security, health, and order, when in fact they have facilitated a ghastly attack on the ever-expanding ranks of the poor, the foreclosed upon, the homeless and unemployed through the imposition of fiscal austerity and police militarization. The spread of occupation’s encampments from Wall Street to dozens of major cities has effectively broadened the terms of struggle to include longstanding human rights abuses of local governments and police forces against communities of color, the poor, houseless, youth and women.
In Oakland, as in all of the occupy encampments, the terms of struggle have become sharply defined not just by national political issues like imperial wars and brutal income inequalities, but also by locally specific struggles over urban space, homelessness, gentrification, struggles against police brutality, and efforts to save schools, libraries, parks, and health services from the agents of austerity. The budget slashers implicitly criticized by the encampments and the social services they provide, and explicitly criticized during rallies, sit in Oakland’s City Hall, just as as they reside in distant seats of federal power. Their economic benefactors reside in the posh gentrified condos of Jack London Square or exclusive enclaves like Piedmont, just as often as they live and work in the world’s financial centers on Manhattan Island and Connecticut’s Gold Coast. The occupiers in Oakland and every other city understand this and have expressed the ugly truths of these injustices through municipal budget cuts and police militarization.
Over the last year Oakland has grappled with a budget deficit of $58 million (quite large in a city of just under half a million with a half-billion annual budget). Compounding the pain of budget gaps in prior years, Oakland’s most recent spending plan has required deep cuts to city services, including public safety and sanitation. Schools, parks, libraries, and nearly all other branches of government have been starved since 2008, and all this came atop several decades of post-Civil Rights Movement divestment by capital and the middle class from the inner city.
The twisted irony then is that the same public officials who pulverized the Occupy encampment over concerns for public safety and health haven’t been able to provide these rights to Oaklanders for lack of resources on the one hand, and an unprecedented, several decades long build-up of the police and prisons on the other. In one moment the nakedness of the emperor has been revealed for all by a spontaneous commune of tent dwellers whose brilliant weapon was to claim their own right of autonomous self-government and self-care in the absence of a welfare state.
Oakland’s immediate fiscal pains are primarily due to a collapse in property tax revenues and flattened sales tax receipts resulting from the economic depression beginning in 2007. Unable or unwilling to turn against the masters of local and state government —among them some of the same uber-wealth elites and corporate monsters who have colonized politics so thoroughly at the national level— city leaders like those in Oakland have been forced to watch neighborhoods literally fall to pieces. They wring their hands while families suffer the further deprivations of impoverishment, and bicker among one another about how to allocate increasingly dwindling funds and workers, while the city endures the desperate and hopeless violence of alienated and criminalized young men who see no future for themselves.
Few cities in California have been struck harder by foreclosures than Oakland. The predatory sortie of home seizures led by banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America have included 28,000 Oakland residences in just three years. Most of these stolen homes are concentrated in the city’s vast eastern neighborhoods populated by Black and immigrant communities. Many of these displaced families have been pushed into slummed rental housing, while some have become homeless. Their plight is the Oakland’s for the decline in real estate values which has accompanied foreclosures, and in many ways caused the dispossession of the masses, has erased $12 billion in real estate values across the city, 1% of which previously filled municipal coffers.
Many of these families have been struck equally hard by the state’s unemployment crisis, causing a cyclical decline in consumer spending, leading to fewer sales tax revenues. With no recovery in sight Oaklanders have turned to their local government in a time of need only to find schools closing, libraries cutting hours, infrastructure crumbling, and all other aspects of the public sphere and the safety net being pulled out from under them. And yet the city’s leaders have issued statements condemning the protesters of this austerity campaign of being unable to shelter and care for one another?
Just this year the city underwent a wrenching public debate about whether to shutter most of its library branches and lay off staff, while massively reducing hours at the main library. The proposal brought hundreds of Oaklanders to City Council meetings to plead for libraries. Money was ultimately found in the budget, but Oakland’s library system remains a woefully under-funded resource suffering from decades of divestment. Many low-income residents use the libraries to hunt for jobs, search the Internet, educate themselves and their children, and even just to get off the streets.
Last month a coalition of hundreds of angry parents occupied an Oakland Unified Schools Board Meeting demanding that they withdraw plans to close five Oakland schools. Predictably the schools on the closure list serve predominantly working class Black and Latino students. The closures, say board members, would save $2 million annually for a school system hard pressed for resources. For the city’s majority, schools are not just places of learning for their children, they are part of the safety net. Thousands of children are fed through free or reduced cost school meal programs daily. Schools provide health services to children and act as a day care for busy parents. Many schools are social anchors of working class neighborhoods that are enduring extreme job losses, foreclosures, crime and police violence, and other symptoms of growing economic inequality.
When Occupy Oakland organized its own free school, child care center, lending library, and food services, it wasn’t just looking after the logistics of a large encampment. The occupiers were critiquing the failure of the City of Oakland and State of California to create a just and humane society. In no area has Occupy Oakland’s efforts to exist autonomously from City Hall proved more difficult, but also more revealing than security.
Police have never been associated with public safety by the nearly half of Oaklanders in whose communities the cops patrol more as an occupying force than as public servants. But even for the city’s middle class the police have proven a continual source of problems. White and middle class Oaklanders have variously bemoaned the police force as understaffed, and incompetent among other things. Due to the city’s fiscal contraction the force had been reduced to 640 officers from a previous high of about 800. The lack of manpower and money for the OPD has led Oakland’s middle class neighborhoods to worry that the violence which daily afflicts working class Oaklanders in the flatlands will begin to spread into their privileged enclaves in the hills. The unfortunate response of the middle class to this dynamic has been to spend money on private security forces, or to support the now decades long political shift away from the welfare of schools, health care, and high wages, to the warfare of draconian laws and prison building.
In the largely Black, immigrant and working class expanses of West and East Oakland the cops are widely despised because of their itchy trigger fingers and rough methods. The Riders scandal of 2000 exposed the Department’s brutality and corruption to a national audience when a clique of officers was accused of routinely fabricating and planting evidence and wantonly beating citizens. But it didn’t take a scandal and civil suit to set much of Oakland’s Black and immigrant communities at odds with the cops. Remember that the Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland, was organized in part to police the police. The Riders scandal only set in motion the latest official turmoil, leading to a federal consent decree with 51 reforms required of the OPD by the US Justice Department.
The day after Occupy Oakland’s encampment began OPD Chief Anthony Batts suddenly quit as result of an ongoing feud with the Mayor and Council. Batts claimed the city’s political leaders had hamstrung his efforts to curtail crime, but in reality the Mayor and Council have been torn over controversial policing methods such as gang injunctions and curfews —more of the warfare approach to dealing with social strife borne of gross inequality— and the obvious need to build social justice through humane city services. The OPD’s consent decree has been extended because of the department’s inability to comply and reform itself, and now the threat of federal receivership has been floated. Oakland’s police have proven incapable of protecting and serving the people.
And yet it was the claim of Oakland officials that the Occupy Oakland Encampment could not police itself that partially led to Tuesday’s police raid. “We’ve had three days now where we’ve had incidents where people have been hurt,” Mayor Quan told the press days before the raid. “We really can’t let the encampment keep going.”
In a way it’s like saying “we can’t let Oakland keep going.” Oakland suffered 95 murders in 2010. The city is awash in threats to public health stemming from a desperate poverty and inequality that is as much the result of local political decisions as national laws and economic forces. Oakland’s people need help. In the very least they need the space and peace to help themselves. Occupy Oakland’s organizers were attempting to create this kind of political space. Their mere presence, and the mere phenomenon of people helping to feed, educate, care for, and protect one another, autonomous from the state, and in the shadow of City Hall, was apparently enough of a front to City Hall’s increasingly bankrupt authority to warrant an attack by the police.
Last night Oaklanders responded to their eviction by attempting to retake Frank Ogawa Plaza (which they have renamed Oscar Grant Plaza after the young man murdered by BART Police in 2009). The Oakland Police repelled the occupiers by rioting with their armaments of tear gas, sound weapons, and rubber bullets. For now the ideals of autonomy and mutual aid in the shadow of the warfare state have been expelled from Oakland’s central square, roaming about the city’s streets.
Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist who splits his time between New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Navarro, CA. He can be reached at:dar...@riseup.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/26/the-fight-for-autonomy-in-oakland/
The Project is asking all of our friends and allies to support the following 2 Cuba related events taking place in the city! Together we can free the Cuban 5, end the travel ban and bring down the blockade.
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Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González are five Cuban patriots who were arrested and framed by the FBI 13 years ago. They are fighting for their freedom—with growing international support. The Cuban Five were on a dangerous mission of infiltrating and monitoring right-wing Cuban-American groups in South Florida with a long history of bombings and other murderous assaults against Cuba. Over 3,000 Cubans have been killed in US-backed attacks by these groups since the 1959 victory of the Cuban Revolution. The Cuban Five were railroaded to prison on “espionage conspiracy” and other trumped-up charges. They were convicted -- without a shred of evidence of any act of espionage against the U.S. government -- in an atmosphere of bias and intimidation in a Miami federal court. They were given sentences of up to life in prison. On October 7, 2011, René González was released from prison—unbroken and unbowed. He is being forced to stay in Florida for 3 years of probation, but is fighting for his right to return to Cuba and his family. By courageously standing up for themselves and for others, the Five set an example to all those fighting for justice. Washington’s frame-up of the Cuban Five is an assault on the rights of all of us. It has sparked calls by thousands worldwide for their release. These include 10 Nobel Prize Laureates, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, trade unions, student organizations, and prominent U.S. artists and writers. Join us in an Evening of Solidarity. Learn the facts about these five courageous fighters and the blatant injustice against them. Join thousands around the world demanding: Free the Cuban Five! |
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To all my people, to the thousands of people who have been with us all these
years around the world, through whom we have been able to break this
information blockade little by little and break the silence that the big media
corporations have over the case, I extend on behalf of The Five, my deepest
gratitude, my commitment to continue representing you how you deserve, which is
ultimately what we The Five are doing, because we’re not only five, we are a
whole people that has stood for 50 years. And thanks to that we are still
standing, because we are inspired by you, because we know that we represent you
and will never fail you and will always be at the level that you deserve.
Read the full transcript and watch Rene's message here:
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news.asp?ItemID=2105
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“They have succeeded in dominating us more
through ignorance, than through force”.
Simon Bolivar
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" - Steve Biko