Racism in Libya

Twitter Summary: Some see in Libyan racism an opportunity to attack the revolution. Others see in the revolution an opportunity to attack racism.


Arab prejudice against blacks has a long and ignoble history. Racism against Africans has been a problem of long standing in Libya. Whereas progressives see the current revolutionary situation in Libya as an opportunity to combat this disease and built a new unity between Africans and Arabs free at last from Qaddafi's meddling, some pro-Qaddafi "left" groups are attempting to use Libyan racism, both real and exaggerated, to attack the revolution. They do this by denying that racism was ever a problem under Qaddafi and "discovering" it among those they still insist on calling the "rebels."

To hear them tell it, you'd think the Klu Klux Klan just took over in Libya. This alarmist piece from the Party for Socialism and Liberation is typical of this line. FYI, PSL is the leading member of the ANSWER Coalition:

NATO’s rebels are lynching black people in Libya [30/08/2011]

It is now beyond doubt, and being reported widely: While NATO has been pounding Libyan cities and massacring civilians with thousands of air strikes, the NATO-led “rebels” have been rounding up, targeting, beating and lynching darker skinned Libyans and immigrant workers from other African countries.

No one should be surprised. Imperialism, racism and attacks on immigrant workers go hand in hand.

In the battle for the working-class neighborhood of Abu Salim in Tripoli, where resistance to NATO was strong, NATO warplanes bombed indiscriminately and the “rebels” swept through the wreckage, kicking down doors and slaughtering civilians, many of whom were trapped in the neighborhood precisely because of the saturation bombing.

This is a very warped view of reality. Take, for example, the claim of "saturation bombing." Does PSL even have a clue what they are talking about? Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam was an example of saturation bombing. It involved 306,183 strike sorties that dropped 864,000 tons of bombs and probably killed over a million Vietnamese. Nothing like that has happened in Libya.

While the PSL says "NATO warplanes bombed indiscriminately and the “rebels” swept through the wreckage," Reuters tells it somewhat differently,

Libyan rebels stormed Tripoli's Abu Salim district, one of the main holdouts of forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in the capital, on Thursday after a NATO airstrike on a building in the area, a Reuters correspondent said.

Rebel fighters were sweeping through houses to flush out snipers and were emerging with dozens of prisoners, the correspondent said, adding that gunfights were ongoing.

So "saturation bombing" turns out to be "a NATO airstrike on a building." NATO hit a grand total of 3 targets in Tripoli on the day Abu Salim fell in some of the hardest fighting of the whole Tripoli campaign. They hit that building in Abu Salim and, for their own safety, two surface-to-air missile launchers somewhere around the city. A lot of brave freedom fighters gave their lives to liberate Abu Salim that day but these "anti-imperialists" will give all the credit for the victory to NATO and it's 3 strike "saturation bombing."

They lack a similar sense of proportion when it comes to their charges of racism among the revolutionary forces. The purpose of these exaggerations is to warn off anyone who might be inclined to rethink their opposition to intervention and support the revolution:

The racist crimes of the rebels, however, should clear up illusions by those in the anti-war movement that the rebels are progressive in any way.

While many of these "anti-interventionists" claim only to be anti-NATO and 'neutral' with regards to Libya's civil war, the truth is that they long ago threw their lot in with Qaddafi. Now that their predictions that NATO boots on the ground would be required to beat Qaddafi have fallen flat, and the popular support they claimed for Qaddafi in Tripoli and western Libya has been shown to be an illusion, and especially now that the truth about the Qaddafi regime's horrific crimes against humanity are coming to light, they have turned to the most cynical forms of demonization of the revolution as their last defense.

After all, if some unknown Arab painted a racist slogan on a wall between Misrata and Tawergha, why not reprinted it a thousand times and condemn the whole movement for it. If some unprofessional citizen soldiers commit errors in the heat of battle, why not use that to smear the whole revolution in a effort to turn the clock back to Qaddafi's systematic and state sponsored racist violence.

So before we can address the real history of racism in Libya or the very real problems of the present, we must deal with these damning charges of "lynching of black people" and "racist demonization campaigns and pogroms."

On September 4th, Human Rights Watch issued a report in which they called on the new Libyan authorities to stop the arbitrary arrest of black Africans, and while they made that critique, and many others with which I agree, they also said:

Human Rights Watch has not found evidence of killings of Africans in Tripoli or systematic abuse of detainees, but the widespread arbitrary arrests and frequent abuse have created a grave sense of fear among the city’s African population.

So no "lynchings," no "pogroms," although there is some evidence for lynchings six months ago in Benghazi the first time protesters seized a fort and captured some snipers.

And the truth is that Africans in Libya have every reason to fear that they are in grave danger. For example, Nubianem wrote of "events [that] occurred a few months ago when thousands of Nigerians, Ghanians and other West Africans were lynched, attacked and killed in the streets of Libya," but he was not talking about Libya after the fall of Qaddafi, he is writing in December 2001 about events that took place under Qaddafi's watch almost ten years ago.

The US state department had a lower body count:

In October Libyan mobs killed an estimated 150 Africans, including a Chadian diplomat, in the worst outbreak of antiforeigner violence since Qadhafi took power in 1969. Government security forces reportedly intervened to stop the violence, but then deported hundreds of thousands of African migrant workers by driving them in convoys to the southern border and leaving them stranded in the desert (see Section 6.e.).

Arab Racism

The core problem here is Arab racism towards black Africans and that wasn't created by the freedom fighters, many of whom are black Libyans, BTW. Some of the army officers that came over to the revolution the earliest were black. And it wasn't even created by the self-styled "King of all African Tribes" Mummar Qaddafi, although he is one of the relative few that has managed to reap a handsome profit from it. It goes back over a thousand years and is closely associated with the slave trade.

Writing about modern day Arab racism in the Nigerian Village Square Moses Ebe Ochonu says in 2005:

The case of the Sudan is perhaps the most vivid, poignant, and irrefutable example of Arab racism against black Africans. Let it be noted that until the Janjaweed and their racist and murderous Sudanese government backers gave a bad name to the art of hating, marginalizing, and murdering blacks, Arabs never quite saw the raiding of black villages for slaves and cattle, especially in Southern and Western Sudan, as a crime. The racism which propels these practices was increasingly authorized (and rationalized) by the discourse of the distinction, within Islam, between dar-al Islam (the abode of Islam) and dar-al-harb (the abode of war and unbelief). For many Arabs, the historical description of blacks as slaves and servile presences in the Arab world is hard to unlearn. Descriptive categories etched in received grand-narratives and myths can only be dismantled through a self-conscious (and self-critical) denunciation of prejudices constructed in a historical time and place as a function of power.

Arabs still generally regard the Darfur genocide as a public relations disaster rather than as a barbaric racist war against black people. We have yet to hear unequivocal condemnation of the Sudanese government's racist practices from Arab states. To do that would be hypocritical because some of these states themselves condone the racist practices of mavericks or practice anti-black racism in their own official policies. For instance, black African immigrants are routinely killed, maimed, and their houses and properties destroyed in Ghadaffi's Libya--- the same Ghadaffi who wants to be the leader of a politically united African super-state. Africans have become jaded about Ghadaffi's feeble condemnations of anti-black riots in his country and the ad-hoc and sterile apologies he offers after each tragic episode.

Arab racism is itself but a poor relative of white racism, which was also developed to justify the very profitable African slavery and from which the Arabs also suffer, so it is at the same time both a tragedy and a comedy that in many Arab countries we see things like this:

Fair & Lovely, a popular whitening cream, advertises itself on Arabic TV when a model is rejected for being too dark, only to be ecstatically accepted after a few weeks of applying the magic cream.

Among the Arabs as among the black Africans, there is a kind of racism within racism that exists in which you are judged by how light your skin is. Meanwhile, all the white people are out buying creams to make their skins darker, but such is the human condition we are dealing with.

Qaddafi's use of racism

Qaddafi's method of rule was classic divide and conquer. First he pitted Arabs against Africans and then within those two large groups, he pitted tribe against tribe. The Berbers he put in a class by themselves. They weren't even allowed to speak their native tongue even though they have inhabited these lands for more than three thousand years.

One method he used was to spend a lot of talk and a little money to insure the support and loyalty of some black Libyans and well as other selected black Africans.

While PSL would have you see Abu Slim as a simple, patriotic working class Libyan neighborhood. Other more detailed descriptions tell us what was unique about it and why the people there fought for Qaddafi like no place else in Tripoli:

The Abu Slim neighborhood near Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound has long been a regime stronghold manipulated carefully by the ruling family. "Saif al-Islam used to come here and give kids 200 dinars and a Kalashnikov. Khamis would come too," says Ramadan Ali Osman, whose apartment was destroyed in the recent fighting. A poor neighborhood, populated lightly with regime officials and a large number of African migrants, Abu Slim proved a ripe recruiting ground for cheap government fighters. "They would drive in — the brigades — and recruit kids for their forces," says Osman. Just days before the rebels captured Tripoli, residents say Gaddafi's son Saadi was the last one to make an appeal. "Saadi came here to form a brigade out of the youth," says Adil Masoud Moussa, a resident. "He gave money to a big boss in the neighborhood to give to the youth to fight against anyone who hated his father."

So in a desperate ploy that had no chance of saving the regime, Qaddafi's son was in this poor black Tripoli neighborhood handing out guns and money to African youth and imploring them to fight to the death for Qaddafi, and now certain pro-Qaddafi "leftists" want to lay the resulting deaths at the feet of the revolution with charges of racism. That is how matters really stand.

Writing in the Cedi Post last September, Kwame E. Bidi tells us of another way Qaddafi profited from racism:

Addressing the European Union (EU) in Rome, Gaddafi warned that “Europe runs the risk of turning “black” unless the EU pays Libya at least €5 billion (£4.1 billion) a year to block the arrival of illegal immigrants from Africa”. He continued, “Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European and even black as there are millions (of Africans) who want to come in. He described the migration pattern as something “very dangerous”.

If one analysis Gaddafi’s statements critically, it comes out clear that he is essentially saying, “Europe, you need to protect your prestigious white identity and prevent it from being blackened by the influx of black African people”.

He is actually playing the race card quite subtly, by appealing to the racial prejudice of the European people. Thus, he not only referred to the potential risks posed by illegal immigrants as undesirable consequences, but also that, black faces in Europe, whether legal or otherwise in itself, constitutes a danger to white European identity.

Gaddafi bolstered his dislike for black people and then projected his own racial bias on white European Christians when he further remarked, “We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans”.
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After his speech, one Italian MP, Luigi de Magistris, criticized the Libyan leader of keeping tens of thousands of African migrants in “concentration camps” in the desert, reported Telegraph, UK.

Gaddafi’s blunt disrespect for black people in general, calls to question the intention behind his call for African unity. Many scholars believe Gaddafi has a hidden agenda against black Africans and that the African Union (AU) was simply a means for him to further his religious and political ambitions in sub-Saharan Africa. One such scholars, Prof. Kwesi Kwa Prah, alleged in 2004 that, Gaddafi’s true objective in AU is to create a space for Arabism and Arab expansionism.

My earlier dairy Helter Skelter: Qaddafi's African Adventure has a lot more about his history with the African Union, his interventions in Africa's wars and his African immigrant policy, however it was written before he was forced out.

Since the liberation of Tripoli, we have also been able to learn more about the plight of immigrants under Qaddafi's rule. For example, there is one group of homeless black African immigrants that have been living under tarps strung between boats in a small Tripoli fishing port. The war has been especially disruptive for them. Time reports:

Since the rebel takeover of Tripoli last week, a few philanthropists have ventured into the camp with gifts of food and water, they say. But for months, men with guns used to come to loot and beat people up, the camp's inhabitants say. "They came in here robbing our gas, stealing our property," says Margaret Asanti, a Nigerian who has been at the camp for almost two months with her two young children. She lived a relatively stable existence in Tripoli for 12 years. But she says, "If you take me to my country, I'd be very happy. I'm tired of being in this place."

Also since the fall of Tripoli, indisputable proof of Qaddafi's use of black African mercenaries in his bloody bid to extend his 42 year dictatorship has been pouring in:

In Tripoli Human Rights Watch has found evidence that the Gaddafi government recruited and used African mercenaries from Chad, Sudan, and other countries. Human Rights Watch researchers located a large base used by hundreds of mercenaries from other African countries since February 2011, who were recruited and commanded by the 32nd Brigade of Khamis Gaddafi.

I would add that there is also ample evidence that Qaddafi has employed mercenaries from other Arab and Europeans countries as well and not all black Africans fighting for Qaddafi were mercenaries or even foreigners. As with the Abu Slim district in Tripoli, Qaddafi had curried favors and built loyalties in certain strategic communities.

The black township of Tawergha outside of Misrata is one such community and for four brutal months Tawergha was the staging area for the siege of of Misrata that took thousands of lives. Needless to say there were some hard feelings expressed. The WSJ reported:

The hatred of Tawergha stems from witnesses who say loyalist soldiers were accompanied by hundreds of volunteer fighters from Tawergha when they ransacked and burned dozens of properties in an assault against Misrata and surrounding areas on March 16 to 18.

There are also accounts of rape, with one rebel commander putting the number at more than 150, but they are harder to prove given the stigma attached to the crime in the conservative Muslim nation and the lack of testimony.

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.

The racial tensions have been fueled by the regime's alleged use of African mercenaries to violently suppress demonstrators at the start of the Libyan uprising in February, and the sense that the south of the country, which is predominantly black, mainly backs Col. Gadhafi.

That sign, presumably in Arabic, that WSJ reported as "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin" has been so widely quoted to prove "the rebels" aren't "progressive in any way" that I wish I could find a picture or at least the orginal Arabic for a second opinion because translation can be a tricky thing. As Moses Ebe Ochonu pointed out:

Arab racism is so deep it is inscribed in the fundamental semantic structure of the Arabic language. Till this day, the generic word or for a black person is the preface "abd," which translates as "slave," as in "Abd"-allah (slave or servant of God). This linguistic norm, among many other racially-charged ones, is an expressive constant which holds true for the entire Arab-speaking world regardless of dialect and orthography.

So indicting the revolution for this sign may be an indictment based on a bad translation of a language that itself has racist roots. You know, like "angel food cake" and "devil's food cake" or the "darker elements" phrase I use below.

The revolution's shortcomings and its immediate tasks.


In their investigation Human Rights Watch didn't find a systematic racist pogrom organized from the top, as the Qaddafi supporters make out. However they did find that black men were being arbitrarily arrested and they did find discrimination in their treatment. Clearly this is wrong and must change.

The widespread neighborhood arrests seem to be a decentralized process, Human Rights Watch said, with no apparent oversight by the NTC. Two Tripoli members of the NTC defended the arrests, saying they were necessary to ensure security and, in the words of NTC member Abdulrzag Elaradi, to “secure the revolution.” But both said that detainees must be treated humanely and the NTC would not tolerate maltreatment or indefinite detention.

At another facility, the Maftuah prison in the Fernaj neighborhood, Human Rights Watch saw about 300 detainees on September 1, including some who had been wounded in fighting. About 50 of the detainees were Libyan and the rest were sub-Saharan Africans. Most of the Africans whom Human Rights Watch interviewed in groups in their crowded cells said that armed men had picked them up for no reason after NTC forces took control of Tripoli.

The conditions for the Libyan detainees were acceptable, but the sub-Saharan Africans were in overcrowded cells with a putrid stench; one cell had 26 people and six mattresses. The African men Human Rights Watch interviewed complained of inadequate water, poor sanitation, and not being allowed to make phone calls to ask family members to bring their documents.

While the NTC faces the most immediate task of putting down all remaining military resistance and rooting out and killing or capturing the leading elements of the Qaddafi regime still at-large, before the freedom fighters can start laying down their weapons and picking up the tools of their former trade, extraordinary care must be taken that the darker elements of Arab racism don't haunt the revolution.

Certainly mercenaries and Libyans who fought for Qaddafi must be rounded up and accessed. Their weapons must be located and seized. This is a military necessity. Some of them should be held for a while. This is also a military necessity. The worst of them should stand trial and face penalties. This is necessary for justice.

But skin color provides little intelligence as to who should be rounded up. The vast majority of the black Africans in Libya are black Libyans or immigrant laborers and asylum seekers. They number in the millions as compared to a few thousand Qaddafi loyalists and mercenaries.

As Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch put it:

“The NTC has legitimate concerns about unlawful mercenaries and violent activity, but it can’t simply arrest dark-skinned men just in case they think they might be mercenaries,” said Whitson. “African migrants have worked in Libya for many years, often carrying out the most unpleasant jobs, and this is no way to treat those who stayed put during the uprising.”
...
“The NTC should stop arresting African migrants and black Libyans unless it has concrete evidence of criminal activity. It should also take immediate steps to protect them from violence and abuse.”

Not only is using the necessity of capturing a few thousand Qaddafi loyalist as a pretext for "throwing a net" over that much larger community of black men of fighting age wrong on a moral and ethical basis, it is a very dangerous military practice for the revolutionary at this time.

First, because in trying to scoop up so many innocent people, they will inevitably allow many important fish to escape their grasp.

Second, because any error on the part of the revolution that even smells of Arab racism, any impropriety whatsoever, will sow doubts about the revolution in the hearts of the people of southern Libya and sub-Saharan Africa and create fertile ground from which the pro-Qaddafi forces can continue their resistance.

This is exactly why PSL and other Qaddafi supporters are giving this story so much play now, but they will never be able to sell it unless the freedom fighters themselves give it some currency. These are questions of immediate tasks.

Future tasks of the revolution

In the long run, the revolution can only be completely successful when all of the supports that represent the foundation for a totalitarian regime like Qaddafi's have been cut away. As long as they exist, the people can never really be united and the sewers of the soul that allow dictatorship to take root and flourish in Libyan society will continue to exist. One of these is inequality between men and women but that is beyond the scope of this piece.

Another is the division between Arabs and Africans, and it must be said frankly that Arab racism is largely the cause and it has resulted in discriminatory treatment of both black Libyans and African immigrants, both legal and illegal.

Under Qaddafi's 42 year reign, not only was this encouraged, it became a matter of state policy. This is the first thing the NTC and the new Libyan government must do. They must overthrow this state policy and the laws and traditions that go with it. Racial, ethnic and tribal equality must rule the day, and not just in the preaching, we've all heard that before, but most importantly, in the practice.

The NTC views, as expressed in A vision of a democratic Libya, provide a good starting point for racial and ethnic equality and justice in the new Libya:

The state to which we aspire will denounce violence, terrorism, intolerance and cultural isolation; while respecting human rights, rules and principles of citizenship and the rights of minorities and those most vulnerable. Every individual will enjoy the full rights of citizenship, regardless of colour, gender, ethnicity or social status.
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We recognise without reservation our obligation to:
...
8. Build a democratic Libya whose international and regional relationships will be based upon:

a. The embodiment of democratic values and institutions which respects its neighbours, builds partnerships and recognises the independence and sovereignty of other nations. The state will also seek to enhance regional integration and international co-operation through its participation with members of the international community in achieving international peace and security.

b. A state which will uphold the values of international justice, citizenship, the respect of international humanitarian law and human rights declarations, as well as condemning authoritarian and despotic regimes. The interests and rights of foreign nationals and companies will be protected. Immigration, residency and citizenship will be managed by government institutions, respecting the principles and rights of political asylum and public liberties.

c. A state which will join the international community in rejecting and denouncing racism, discrimination and terrorism while strongly supporting peace, democracy and freedom.

But more than that will be needed. Prejudices and attitudes that took centuries to develop won't go away over night but the struggle against Arab racism is one that the Libyan people and their government must undertake robustly now and must sustain until it is no longer a hindrance to the people's development and freedom.

LibyaSteadfast Freedom Fighter paralyzed after surviving torture. Reunites with family & cries for forgiveness from his Mom :)

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Abdul Rahman Gave his Eyes to See the End of Qaddafi

Meet Abdul Rahman Zawawi. He is a freedom fighter from Misrata that has lost both his eyes in the revolution. He was able to get the emergency surgery he needed at a hospital in Tunis.

Misrata endured months of shelling by Qaddafi's forces, including with cluster munitions. Then there was heavy fighting to end the siege. Many of the most seriously wounded have been sent to Tunis for care. As a result the situation in the Tunis hospitals is desperate and of the ICU units are packed. Only last week almost 300 new patients arrived and there was no room for them in the hospitals or clinics. Doctors are stressed out and overwhelmed with the kind of surgeries they are being asked to performed; far beyond their training.

Carol Viana and Omar AlMuktar met on Twitter during the early weeks of the Libyan Revolution and saw the needs in the hospitals early on. In July they started a project called "Postcards for Libya" where they encourage people to send get well cards and letters to Libya patients in Tunisia, mostly Tunis. Carol wrote me:

Money is an issue too. People are being discharged way too early. NTC needs to get involved. We've been trying for months to bring awareness to this but everyone was so focused on the war, it's hard to have "hospital stories."

A couple weeks ago Omar AlMuktar's own cousin from Misrata arrived in Tunis and the team for "Postcards for Libya" has been trying to get the word out on his story. Adbu, who is only 21, lost both eyes and also had his nose completely burned off. They are trying to get plastic surgery outside of Tunis.

Please visit Postcards for Libya if you can help.

Abdulrahman Zawawi, Freedom fighter from Misurata, has lost both of his eyes
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In the video ..., Abdu is waking up from surgery. He holds his brother's hand and asks God to give his parents strength and patience, says he was blessed with his wounds and he is glad he gave his eyes to Libya. He says he would gladly give more if asked. He asks his brother to work hard, be successful in life and asks him always to have faith in God.

More from Postcards from Libya:

Meet Ali, Misrata freedom fighter hit by Gaddafi Grad. Both legs amputated. Ali said the Grad exploded at his feet and the blast threw him 10 meters away. One of his comrades was literally cut in half. Ali was hit by that Grad on May 13. Then, due to the siege, he waited 27 days to get out of Misrata. In Ali’s group of 30 Freedom Fighters, 3 died & 7 injured from that Grad. He said their weapons range was only 5km max vs 40 for Gaddafi forces. Ali came from Misrata on a small fishing boat. It was fast but bounced a lot. During his 1st 5 days in Tunisia, Ali was treated for further damage suffered in the voyage from Misrata, not for direct injuries from the Grad. Misrata was out of anesthetics when a chunk of flesh was removed near his waist. Ali showed me how he bit a towel & clenched. On the parts of Ali’s body that remain, it looks like he was hit by a meteor shower. 100 pieces of shrapnel from the Grad. Ali said he’d been quiet & introspective before I came by. But as you can see, he became energized as we visited. July 14. Ali said he’d gladly give the rest of his body for Libya and his beloved city, Misrata. He radiates a noble passion. Visiting with Ali was a joy, but I couldn’t help weeping. He took my head in his hands, kissed it, and told me not to cry.” Via James Wheeler (@wheelertweets)

This is Aymen in Tunis, Tunisia. Aymen is a 14 year-old child who picked up a cluster bomb outside of his house in Misrata. Upon picking it up, it exploded, ripping off both his hands, tearing off the flesh of his legs, and sending shrapnel into his eye. He was so happy when he received his postcard from Australia, he asked his cousin to put the card around his neck so he could show everyone.

These are the true heroes of the Libyan revolution, not some imagery NATO spooks as the anti-interventionists would have you believe.

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya 7:05 AM PT: @OmarAlMuktar' real name is Suleiman A. Tawil

Libyans have spilled their blood for all of us!

I first published this diary under the title Libyans are spilling their blood for all of us on February 25th. There has been a lot of blood spilled since then but my conclusions remain the same. So this would seem like a good time to republish it and to thank the Libyan people. Their blood sacrifice will ultimately mean less death and destruction for the rest of us. Now that Qaddafi has been put out of power, expect changes for the better in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Also look for positive develops all over Africa in coming years now that Qaddafi's heel has been removed from her neck. You can count on it.

The brute force approach to popular uprisings is now being tried in earnest in Libya. In using artillery, aircraft and navy on peaceful protesters Colonel Gaddafi is attempting to break the protest movements with massive violence.

If he is successful, this type of violent response to popular uprising will almost certainly be used elsewhere with all the terrible consequences for humanity. If he fails and is hopefully executed for his war crimes, the reigning powers around the world will favor more peaceful methods of resolving contradictions.

Colonel Gaddafi is not the only head of state that counts human life cheap. What he has been doing this week using large caliber military weapons against unarmed civilians, US Presidents do as a matter of course, week in and week out. This week US air assaults on the Afghan village of Heelgal killed 64 civilians including many children according to Afghan President Karzai. It was hardly noticed because the spot light is on the innocent blood being spilled by Gaddafi this week and because, with an estimated 8 million civilians killed by the US military since the Korean War, US presidents using military power on civilians isn't exactly news.

When Secretary of State Clinton made the rounds on the TV talk shows Sunday morning talking about events in Libya and complaining that it is wrong to turn to violence to solve political problems, most of the world knew they were listening to a hypocrite. The United States has led the world in using massive violence to resolve political problems.

Nor am I implying that the other world leaders are any less squeamish in applying massive violence if it will resolve their political problems. What I am saying is that the abhorrence for Gaddafi's violence that has been displayed by most world leaders, including our own, is mostly for public consumption.

They know that we are facing a world economic crisis of historic proportions. It's root cause is a world economy that has been organized to benefit a select handful at the expense of the majority. This system has insurmountable internal contradiction that cannot be solved unless the rich and powerful are dispossessed and the world economy is re-organized to benefit the world.

They are having none of that. They will fight that with their last dying breath. The other day an Indiana Official suggested that peaceful protesters in Wisconsin be shot. They are like Gaddafi on a world scale in that they would sooner bring disaster and suffering for all rather than give up their privilege.

In Tunisia the general of the army refused to use massive violence on the protesters and the revolution succeeded in ousting the dictator. In Egypt the junior officers refused to open fire with their tanks and the revolution succeeded in ousting the dictator. And while all the leaders of the US, UK and EU are now claiming to welcome and even champion these popular democratic movements, it is a sham. That's not why they have supported these dictators all these years.

If massive violence can contain the wave of mass rebellions that now has reached even the state house in Wisconsin, they won't mind the bloodshed. They just haven't had the opportunity yet. Gaddafi gives them that opportunity.

That is why they have so far been so anemic in their response to Gaddafi. They secretly want him to succeed. They are hoping he will succeed and they won't act until it is clear to all [as is quickly becoming the case] that he has failed. You can count on it. {and we now know, they allowed another 3 weeks of this horrific violence, and took action only after the protesters had taken up arms, and they were faced with a humanitarian crisis in Benghazi.} If he can put a lid on things, restore the status quo and with it, the oil flow, they may put him back on the pariah list but they will allow him to stand and continue to do business with him.

This is a test and fate or history has selected the Libyan people to take it. But all of us will be drastically affected by the outcome. The unarmed Libyan protesters that have braved machine gun, anti-aircraft and artillery fire to take many of Gaddafi's fortresses around the country are giving their all, their very lives in many cases, to show that even massive violence won't stop the people's movement forward.

If Gaddafi's violence fails Governor Scott will negotiate with the demonstrators in the Wisconsin state house, if it succeeds he will send in the police. If Gaddafi's violence succeeds, many more will die in Yemen and Bahrain and everywhere else that people resist tyranny. If he fails, the powers that be everywhere on the planet will be less likely to follow his lead and try a massive violence approach.

Those brave Libyans who fate chose to brave machine gun fire to win their freedom are braving that machine gun fire for all of us.

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

The True Story Behind the WikiLeaks Cable Dump

Last year, as both legal and extra-legal threats against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange grew, they took out an what they called an "insurance policy" to insure that the full dump of state department cables would get out. That took the form of an encrypted, compressed file of all the cables. This was before WikiLeaks or it's media partners had time to go through them so these were un-redacted cables. They made this file widely available on the Internet. As a matter of fact, I publicized the link in one of my earlier DailyKos diaries.

Since the file would be useless without the pass key, that alone did not release the cables but it did assure that should something drastic happen, say Julian should meet with a mysterious accident, by simply releasing the key, the cables could be made public.

I'll let Bernice Keane take it from there:

The problem was, the password was made available, by none other than The Guardian’s David Leigh, in his book released in February this year co-written with Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. An extract from the book, which was published after the encrypted material had gone online:

Eventually, Assange capitulated. Late at night, after a two-hour debate, he started the process on one of his little netbooks that would enable Leigh to download the entire tranche of cables. The Guardian journalist had to set up the PGP encryption system on his laptop at home across the other side of London. Then he could feed in a password. Assange wrote down on a scrap of paper:

CollectionOfHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#

“That’s the password,” he said. “But you have to add one extra word when you type it in. You have to put in the word ‘Diplomatic’ before the word ‘History’ Can you remember that?” “I can remember that.” Leigh set off home, and successfully installed the PGP software.

Leigh thus, as part of his effort to cash in on his once-intense but by then-soured relationship with Assange, had revealed the key to decrypting the entire set of cables that had been available online.

The book was published last February but it took a while for someone to put one and two together and make three. When they did the cat was out of the bang.

The Guardian for it's part claims they had been told that the pass phase would expire and be deleted. The Guardian's solution was for WikiLeaks to "remove the files" that they had put up for download. Somebody needs to keep them away from computers. They simply don't understand these things.

For WikiLeaks, it then became a question of attempting to control this process or not. They decided to get ahead of the imminent hostile or uncontrolled release and attempt to control it.

This accounts for the sudden release of over 100,000 cables in recent weeks and the setting up of #wlfind and the final release of the full quarter million unredacted cables yesterday.

Keane again:

Shortly before deadline, Wikileaks was conducting a global consultation to determine if it should release the unredacted cables itself, with nearly all opinion favouring release.

I'll leave the parsing of blame to the comment section. I've read WikiLeaks Exposes Thousands Of Informants and heard a lot of confusing news reports. So I thought you deserved a simple telling of what happened.

From there you'll have to make up your own mind.

Film Premiere of "We Win Or We Die"

Director Matthew Milan traveled to Benghazi, Libya and collected some great material about the beginning of the Libyan Revolution from February 18th - 22nd. The title of this excellent documentary in "We Win Or We Die." He has it slated for a Sundance premiere but on August 20, 2011 I was lucky enough to attend a work-in-progress screening and discussion at Venice Arts. This is the video they produced about that event. I can be heard but not seen talking during the Q&A. Be warned. This is a 50 minute video but well worth your time.
Below is a 1 minute trailer for We Win or We Die He needs your help to finish this film, which had the working title "West of Tobruk: The Libya Uprising." Here's his pitch:

Our Story Follow Matthew Millan, a documentary filmmaker who is going into the lion's den to capture the very heart of the Libyan uprising. From the revolution's onset reflected in the heroic actions of a 49 year old suicide bomber to the current lingering stalemate, Mr Millan will travel to Benghazi to discover the true tipping point that caused an entire region to shed its yoke of 42 years of oppression. And from the interviews of the average people caught up in this war, we will see what caused them, in essence, to cross the Rubicon, the intangible point of no return. From the eastern city of Tobruk to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Mr. Millan journeyed into the heart of a nebula coalescing from the dust of war...and into a nation reborn. Amidst the brutality and devastation wrought under 42 years of Gaddafi’s rule, a civil society par excellence is emerging from the ashes. And for the first time in their lives, the eastern Libyans feel a strong sense of citizenship, finding themselves gravitating toward certain roles, roles they would never consider five months before. Medical students turned news anchors. Civil engineers turned newspaper editors. And taxi drivers turned soldiers. Neighborhoods have banded together to pick up the pieces of a shattered infrastructure. Children sweep the streets after the witching hour, alongside men who paint the roadside curbs. Looting is non-existent, and the crime rate has dropped by a factor of 20… and this in the absence of strong government. The Impact 'West of Tobruk' is very much a human story, and will reveal to the audience just who these rebels who chose to stand against tyranny are. We in the West will benefit in seeing those with the same hopes and aspirations...to shed the manacles of brutal, merciless oppression...and forge their own destiny. This film will remind us that no matter the borders, the boundaries, nor the beliefs, we are all human and should decry injustice wherever we may see it. But this is a much bigger story. Much bigger than any one person...much bigger than any one country...and even much bigger than any one region. 'West of Tobruk' shall paint for the audience a greater context, and ring the echoes of a century. Paradigms are shifting with tectonic force, and with that new ideologies are emerging. The borders drawn by post-war colonialism are being dissolved, and an Arab nation is emerging from the ashes. 'West of Tobruk' will elucidate on how the Libyan uprising, and its kindred rebellions throughout the region, spell the real conclusion to the First World War, and a final closing of the 20th century. Please view all of the Libya reports that I made between April and May of 2011. You will get an idea of the extraordinary events occurring in the East right now. Visit us at: http://www.youtube.com/user/180filmsnetwork?fea... What We Need & What You Get In order to finish the film, I will need at least $12,000. This includes going back to Libya to investigate further into formation of a nation amidst the dust of war. Further, some of the funds will go to the task of finishing the film. This includes the rest of the production, and the post-production stages.. I will spend a further 8 weeks in Libya, where I will travel deep into the desert, journey to historic sites of the region, and interview a wide variety of people. $12,000 is a very low estimate, but will be a good catalyst to finsih the project, and give to you one of the most riveting stories of our time. Other Ways You Can Help Please let everybody know about this amazing project. The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa are much closer to home than you may believe, and will have a colossal impact on the geopolitical climate for decades to come. These stories shall ring throughout history...and it is no coincidence that they are occurring near the heart of where civilization began. So tweet about it, post it on Facebook, email, or use carrier pigeons if you have to. Just please ge the word out, and make this film possible. Thank you for all of your support.

Here is his website. Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya