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The white-Left Part 1: The two meanings of white

Friday, August 19, 2011

Helter Skelter: Qaddafi's African Adventure

BLACK PEOPLE WILL PREVAIL IN THE WORLD

The latest age of slavery has been the enslavement of Blacks by White people. The memory of this age will persist in the thinking of Black people until they have vindicated themselves.

This tragic and historic event, the resulting bitter feeling, and the yearning for the vindication of a whole race, constitute a psychological motivation of Black people to vengeance and triumph that cannot be disregarded.
from Qaddafi's Green Book, p 29. And how does Qaddafi expect that black people will achieve that vindication?
Black people are now in a very backward social situation, but such backwardness works to bring about their numerical superiority because their low standard of living has shielded them from methods of birth control and family planning. Also, their old social traditions place no limit on marriages, leading to their accelerated growth. The population of other races has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage, and constant occupation in work, unlike the Blacks, who tend to be less obsessive about work in a climate which is continuously hot.
from Qaddafi's Green Book, p 30. So we will do it through shear forces of numbers, by the explosive population growth of "starving and ignorant Africans."

From his 33 page 'book' that even today, he hands out wherever he goes, it's easy to see that Mummar Qaddafi promotes a lot of the standard racist mythology that black people are lazy and promiscuous. He also uses the spectra of increasing hordes of blacks looking for vengeance to create a climate of fear, another standard racist ploy. As we will see, racism and the creation of discord between Africans and Arabs has been one of the keys to his 42 year rule. Another is his cynical and self-serving manipulation of contradictions among the people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mummar Qaddafi represents that most virulent type of racist that combines parentalism with false adulation and then schemes to used racism and the fear of blacks by lighter skinned people to further his own plans. We have seen these racist fantasies play out before. Most notably with Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and most recently with Anders Behring Breivik who took large parts of the Unabomber Manifesto, updated it by replacing the word "black people" with "Muslims" and republished it as the manifesto for his killing spree that left 93 Norwegians dead three weeks ago. Here's a sample from the Unabomber Manifesto:
In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the over socialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle- class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers"responsible," they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system...
Mummar Qaddafi and Charles Manson

While Mummar Qaddafi was building his influence in the Libyan army and plotting his coup d'état against King Idris, Charley Manson was developing his racist philosophy and raising a Family. Manson's "philosophy" or more accurately, scheme, was that beginning in the summer of 1969, black people would rise up in vengeance for all the years of abuse and overthrow "whitey" while performing hideous acts of retribution. Manson and his Family would hide out in the dessert until the violence was all over. Soon the blacks would realize that they are too stupid to rule themselves and they would ask Charles Manson, as the only white man left, to rule them. He called this, his vision of revolution, an apocalyptic war between black and white that would put him on top, "Helter Skelter." I know this sounds unbelievable but it did cost a number of people their lives.

When events failed to develop as Manson expected. He decided to help them out. He claimed that black people were too dumb to figure it out for themselves so he would have to get the ball rolling. On August 8, 1969 Manson told the Family "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." That night, after midnight, he had his followers slaughter five adults including Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant, at Terry Melcher's Hollywood home. The next night they murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their Los Feliz home. They left "clues" at the crime scene that were intended to make it look like black militants had done it, like writing "Death to Pigs" in the victim's own blood and carving the word "war" in the stomach of their victims.

By August 16, Manson and 25 Family members were safely behind bars. Two weeks later, on September 1, 1969, Mummar Qaddafi came to power in an African country that put tremendous oil wealth at his disposal. So while Charles Manson has been safely behind bars for the past 42 years, Mummar Qaddafi has been given billions of dollars in oil money and the weapons they can buy, and the whole continent of Africa in which to play out his racist fantasies. This has meant four decades of Qaddafi manipulation and war mongering in Africa that has been one of the major factors that has held the African continent, it's nations and it's people, down for so long. When Qaddafi finally falls, which should be soon, it will be a liberating experience for the whole continent of Africa.

Racist politics and a tumultuous summer of '69 aren't the only things Charles Manson and Mummar Qaddafi have in common. Phil Mershon has noted other similarities:
Both men consider themselves revolutionaries. Both men love to make speeches more than to engage in simple conversation. Both men have a small group of supporters and a humongous group of people who hate them. Both men prefer to live in the desert. Both men impersonated hippies. Both men employed female bodyguards. Both men have indicated that they believe themselves to possess supernatural powers. And both men give every indication of endorsing serial killings.
Both men also play chess and both men have the same attorney, the world’s most infamous lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano, aka The Devil’s Advocate. Or rather, Manson now has Qaddafi's attorney, since Stefano was Qaddafi's attorney first. Stefano just took on Manson as a client this past January whereas we know he worked for Qaddafi as early as 2007. Then he represented Qaddafi's promise not to execute the Bulgarian nurses accused of starting a HIV epidemic in Libya. Qaddafi's son's girl friend made him promise to get them off the hook before she would date him, but that's another story.

Possibly even Stefano doesn't know who really put him on the Manson case. His contact is "an attorney from Sacramento, California." That's how they do it when they don't want to leave a trail, so we are free to speculate about who might be eccentric enough to want to give Manson a second trial and has the money to pay an extremely expensive mouthpiece to pursue it or who might want to communicate with Manson because his lawyer would have access.

Qaddafi and African Immigrants

Last August, Qaddafi attempted to use European fear of unchecked waves of African immigrants to extort money from the Europe, telling them the EU should pay Libya at least 5bn euros (£4bn; $6.3bn) a year to stop illegal African immigration and avoid a "black Europe".
"Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in," said Col Gaddafi, quoted by the AFP news agency

"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," Col Gaddafi said.

"We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions."
When it comes to immigrant policy, Qaddafi is on the same page as Anders Behring Breivik and other violent neo-fascists that are troubling Europe. For much of the past decade, Qaddafi has been working with well known racist, Silvio Berelusoni, the Italian PM, to turn Libya into the cork that keeps African immigrants bottled up. In September 2004 Human Rights Watch wrote:
Libya’s recent immigration “reforms,” introduced by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi apparently after overtures from Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, resemble a catalogue of human rights abuses against migrants and asylum-seekers. African internees and migrants in Libya are being detained in what one MEP has described as “catastrophic conditions.” And Libya continues forcibly to deport Eritrean refugees to Eritrea, where they face arrest, illegal detention and torture. If Libya is called on to run EU processing camps, we can surely expect more of the same.
Last December, HRW wrote about Libya in their world report on abuse and detentions at borders:
Since May 2009, Italy has joined forces with Libya to patrol the waters from the coast of Libya to Italy’s Mediterranean territories, principally the island of Lampedusa. Libya in 2010 operated patrol boats provided by Italy with Italian personnel on board to interdict boat migrants on the high seas and in Libyan waters and return them summarily to Libya with no screening to identify refugees, the sick or injured, pregnant women, unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking, or victims of violence against women. All interdicted boat migrants are detained upon arrival in Libya in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Libya is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no asylum law or procedure. In April, Libyan Foreign Secretary Moussa Koussa said his country “does not have any refugees but only illegal migrants who break the laws.” In July the government said that there were 3 million irregular migrants in Libya. A new law on “Illegal Migration” criminalizes trafficking of migrants but does not mention protections for refugees.

In June, Libya closed the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tripoli and expelled its representative. It later allowed the office nominally to reopen but only with highly restricted permission to work on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers whom it had registered prior to closing, and without access to newly detained migrants and asylum seekers.

On June 28, a group of detained Eritrean migrants tried to escape from a migrant detention center after Libyan officials allowed Eritrean embassy officials to take their photos and forced them to complete forms raising fear of deportation. In response, Libyan authorities transported 245 Eritrean detainees from the Misrata detention on Libya’s northern coast to another detention center at al-Biraq, north of Sabha, in an apparent attempt to deport them. Some of these Eritreans were among those whom Italy had forcibly returned to Libya without giving them an opportunity to claim asylum. After an international outcry, Libya released this group but did not provide them with any support or protection. They remain in Libya.
But perhaps most disturbing are some of the individual stories contained in the HRW 92-page report "Pushed Back, Pushed Around: Italy's Forced Return of Boat Migrants and Asylum Seekers, Libya's Mistreatment of Migrants and Asylum Seekers."

"Daniel," a 26-year-old Eritrean interviewed in Sicily, told Human Rights Watch what happened after Maltese authorities interdicted the boat he was on and towed it to a Libyan vessel, which brought his group back to Libya (to read Daniel's complete account, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/en/node/85530 ):

"We were really tired and dehydrated when we arrived in Libya. I thought, ‘If they beat me, I won't feel a thing.' When we arrived, there were no doctors, nothing to help, just military police. They started punching us. They said, ‘You think you want to go to Italy.' They were mocking us. We were thirsty, and they were hitting us with sticks and kicking us. For about one hour they beat everyone who was on the boat."

They were taken to Misrata prison in a crowded, airless truck and beaten again when they arrived:

"We were treated badly at Misrata. We were Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, and a few Somalis. The rooms were not clean. We were only given a half-hour a day to take air outside, and the only reason they let us out at all was to count us. We sat in the sun. Anyone who spoke would be hit. I was beaten with a black plastic hose."
and
Many of the worst abuses reported to Human Rights Watch occurred after failed attempts to leave Libya. One of the migrants, "Pastor Paul" (all names have been changed), a 32-year-old Nigerian, told Human Rights Watch how Libyan authorities brutally treated him when the Libyans stopped his boat shortly after it left Libya on October 20, 2008:

"We were in a wooden boat, and Libyans in a [motorized inflatable] Zodiac started shooting at us. They told us to return to shore. They kept shooting until they hit our engine. One person was shot and killed. I don't know the men who did the shooting, but they were civilians, not in uniforms. Then a Libyan navy boat came and got us and started beating us. They collected our money and cell phones. I think the Zodiac boat was working with the Libyan navy. The Libyan navy took us back in their big ship and sent us to Bin Gashir deportation camp. When we arrived there, they immediately started beating me and the others. They beat some of the boys until they could not walk."
These brutal methods had the intended effect according to the BBC:
European Commission figures show that in 2009 the number of people caught trying to enter Italy illegally fell to 7,300, from 32,052 in 2008. The data was collected under the EU's Eurodac fingerprinting system.

Col Gaddafi has forged close ties with Italy since a friendship treaty was signed two years ago.
"Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Mu`ammar al-Gaddafi are building their friendship agreement at the expense of people from other countries whom both regard as expendable,"
was the response from Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at HRW.

Ali Muslin, noting that the problem of Arab racism towards Africans goes back more than a thousand years, said:
For all his claims to the contrary, Gaddafi has no respect for Africa or Africans. This is not just manifested by how very inhumanely he treats African workers and asylum seekers, nor by his self declaration as the King of All African tribes, but mainly by his deeply ingrained chauvinism and pretension to be an African Messiah. No wonder he refers to Africans as starved and ignorant and violates the rights of Black Africans in Libya.
Qaddafi's Meddling in Africa
Gaddafi the racist has for long been also Gaddafi the dictator, killing off his opponents both inside and outside his country, financing the likes of Fode Sankoh in Sierra Leone and meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, etc.
Two aspects of Qaddafi's Green Book philosophy have combined help keep Africa roaming around in the wilderness for 40 years. First, Qaddafi believes all governments should be the subject of violent revolution by the few:
If the instrument of government is dictatorial, as is the case in the world's political systems today, society's awareness of deviation from its laws is expressed only through violence to redirect its course, i.e., revolution against the instrument of government. Violence and revolution, even though they reflect the sentiments of society regarding deviation, do not constitute an exercise in which the whole of society takes part. Rather, violence and revolution are carried out by those who have the capability and courage to take the initiative and proclaim the will of society.
The Green Book p.10 , and before you protest that he was only referring to "dictatorial governments," I would ask you to consult the Green Book on what he means by that. For example:
51 per cent of the votes leads to a dictatorial governing body in the guise of a false democracy, since 49 per cent of the electorate is ruled by an instrument of government they did not vote for, but which has been imposed upon them. Such is dictatorship... This is the reality of the political systems prevailing in the world today. They are dictatorial systems and it is evident that they falsify genuine democracy.
The Green Book p.1 Secondly, every group, no matter how small, deserves it's own national liberation movement:
Contemporary national liberation movements are themselves social movements; they will not come to an end before every group is liberated from the domination of another group.
That's a perfect formula for endless wars.

If some of these quotes makes Mummar Qaddafi sound as crazy as Charles Manson, remember he's not the one that is behind bars with a swastika tattooed on his forehead. He's the one with a country to run and billions of dollars to spend. That means he's not crazy, he's eccentric.

And he has billions to spend any way that suits him including favoring whoever he regards as "revolutionary" around the world. The Economist tells us how he gets his money:
Libya is earning over $10 billion a year from its 1.4m barrels of oil a day. But Libyans see little of it. This year’s budget amounts to far less than its oil receipts; the colonel threw away an earlier budget, prepared by the General People’s Congress, saying oil should not be used for ordinary expenses, like salaries. In this hyper-rich state, a teacher’s salary is about $1,200 a year. Libyans have to go to Tunisia for health care. “Wealth, weapons and power lie with the people,” says the Green Book, the colonel’s revelation to the world. But one man decides which people.
One American group that he has favored has been Louis Farrakhan's Nation on Islam. In fact, support for the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, as they were often called in the '60's, is something else that unites Mummar Qaddafi and Charles Manson. Manson even talked about the NOI in court:
"'The Black Muslims' they know the way, they’re ahead of us. Fifty years ahead. They are way ahead of the Black Panthers, dig. They know what’s happening. And I turn them on because I’m the only white guy in here that knows Mohammed.”
While Charles Manson had big plans for the Nation of Islam, and clearly supported them spiritually, he was never able to support them financially, not like Mummar Qaddafi. While we can only guess at the amount of money Qaddafi has given to the NOI over the years, clearly it has been in the millions. Louis Farrakhan built the Chicago Maryam Mosque 40 years ago with a $3 million loan from Qaddafi. That much is documented. We also know that he tried to give Farrakhan a $250,000 Qaddafi Human Rights Award in 1996 in violation of U.S. sanctions, and after Farrakhan's Million Man March in October 1995, Qaddafi promised the group a billion dollars.

And then there is this: In 1987, a Federal jury convicted five members of El Rukins, described as an urban street gang close to Farrakhan, of conspiring to commit terrorist acts against the U.S:
The plotters, prosecutors said, expected to receive $2.5 million from Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for bombing buildings and airplanes and assassinating American politicians. The verdict marked the first time American citizens had been found guilty of planning terrorist acts for a foreign government in return for money.
Obviously, by funneling millions in Libyan oil money to Farrakhan's group over the years, Qaddafi has given it an influence that exceeds its support among African-Americans, but his meddling in the affairs of the United States is nothing when compared to his meddling in the affairs of African countries. The dictator fancies himself the Che Guevara of Africa and the continent is his playground. From Anna Mahjar-Barducci we have this survey of Qaddafi's plague upon African affairs:

Chad

Gaddafi has a long and complicated relation with its neighbor, Chad. Gaddafi brought Chadian President Deby to power in 1990 by supporting him financially and militarily. Deby was a rival to former Chadian President Hissene Habré, Gaddafi's enemy. In 1980, Libya invaded Chad in an attempt to remove Habré from power. Libya occupied and annexed the Aozou Strip, a region of 44.00 square miles in the North of Chad, bordering Libya's entire 500 mile frontier.

At the time, the United States and France helped Chad in order to contain Libya's regional ambitions. The state of warfare between Chad and Libya lasted from 1978 to 1988. Gaddafi was defeated and had to put aside his hegemonic dreams in Chad. In retaliation to US and France's support to Chad, however, Gaddafi's government sponsored the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and French Airline UTA Flight 772 in 1989.

Habré's government, however, did not last long. He was opposed by the Zaghawa ethnic group. In November 1990, a rebel offensive against Habré was led by Idriss Deby, the Zaghawa former army commander, supported by Gaddafi.


Darfur Region


Darfur, a region in western Sudan, is where war erupted in 2003, when the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) emerged to fight the government in a battle over power, resources and land allocation. Gaddafi was deeply involved in the Darfur crisis. Libya openly supported the Darfur rebel group, JEM, led by Khalil Ibrahim. Ibrahim was born in Darfur and belongs to the African tribe of Zaghawa, spread between Darfur and Chad. Even though Khalil claimed he was leading a battle against the discrimination practiced by African tribes in Darfur, he declared in an interview with Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper on May 3, 2005, that his goal was "one state that includes Egypt, Libya and Chad." Khalil has been supported by the president of Chad, Idriss Deby. Deby, himself is a Zaghawa.

Gaddafi's support to the JEM, which is fighting the central government in Khartoum, can be explained through his controversial relations with Sudan. In the 70s, the former Sudanese President Jaffar Nimeiry was getting closer to the US. Gaddafi, being a fighter against "Imperialism," severed diplomatic relations with Khartoum and allegedly plotted three failed coups. Relations between the two countries did not completely normalize until now.

Gaddafi is paying a pivotal role in keeping alive the conflict in Darfur. Recently, Khalil Ibrahim has been residing in Tripoli since May 2010, after being barred entry to Chad, while the Chadian government was trying to pursue a rapprochement with Sudan.

Central Africa Republic (CRA)

Gaddafi also intervened militarily in the CRA; he supported coups and violence there. Gaddafi was a supporter of former CRA President, Ange-Félix Patassé, accused of war crimes, and of Jean Pierre Bemba (former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo), who intervened with his militias in CRA following Patassé's request, and with Gaddafi's support. Bemba was arrested in Belgium in 2008 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Congo Brazzaville

The President of Congo Brazzaville, Sassou Nguesso, openly supports Gaddafi. The Libyan leader has supported him both financially and militarily during a civil war in Congo that brought Nguesso back to power in 1997. Nguesso, with other African leaders, wanted to visit Tripoli on March 20th supposedly in support of Gaddafi, but did not receive international permission.

Gabon

Gabon supported the council's resolution on Libya authorizing the no-fly zone over Libya and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. The vote comes as a surprise as Gabon President, Ali Bongo, is considered a good friend of Gaddafi, and Libya has invested hugely in Gabon. Ali Bongo succeeded his father, Omar Bongo, as President of Gabon. Omar Bongo, who stayed in power for 42 years, converted to Islam under Gaddafi's influence. Gabon's vote should therefore be understood in light of its internal political crisis. Bongo is accused of supporting dictators and of being one himself. Massive protests have been waged against Bongo, but were soon repressed by the use of force.

The Polisario

Gaddafi has supported the Polisario against Morocco financially and logistically, since the mid-1970s by providing equipment for an entire army.

Mauritania

[Some] popular committees [are] linked to Gaddafi in Mauritania. Since Gaddafi came to power, Libya has intervened in Mauritania's internal affairs. Gaddafi is even accused of having plotted several coups in Mauritania.
Wikipedia talks about the role Colonel Qaddafi played in the Sudanese conflict.
Under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi Libya continued to pursue foreign policy directed along ideological and pragmatic lines.[2]This resulted in several instances of conflict between the two nations between 1972 and 1976. In 1976 Sudan charged that Libya was involved in a terrorist plot against its government. This led to a severance of relations between the nations. In the late 1970s and 1980s Sudanese and Libyan foreign policy clashed over several regional conflicts. These included the Chadian-Libyan conflict, the Libya-Egypt conflict and Libyan support for Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.[3]

In these cases Libya’s conflict with Sudan resulted from Gaddafi’s regional goals of pan-Arabism and was heavily influenced by relations with Egypt.[4]The Chad-Libyan conflict in particular influenced the foreign policy of several African countries towards Libya. Pro-Libyan supporters were set against an anti-Libyan side which included Sudan and Egypt.[5]Some sub-Saharan countries, such as Zaire, supported the anti-Libyan forces in Chad out of fear of a Libyan expansion.[6]In 1986 Libya assisted the Mahdi government under Omar al-Bashir to assume power in Sudan, resuming relations between the two nations.[7]

In August 1971, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi helped reverse a communist coup against Sudanese President Nimeiry by diverting a British airliner carrying one of the coup’s leaders and handing him over to Nimeiry to be hanged.[9]Libya turned over two of the top communist plotters to the Sudanese authorities, who executed them shortly afterward. However, a year later Sudan accused Libya of involvement in three successive coup attempts and severed diplomatic relations.[10]
Eric Ham of the XII Project summed-up Mummar Qaddafi's international role as follows:
During much of his reign he was seen as a pariah and a cold-blooded killer who financed an odd assortment of guerilla movements and wreaked havoc in surrounding states and internationally. He attacked Chad and Egypt, fomented trouble in Sudan, sent Libyan soldiers to defend Idi Amin in Uganda, tried to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons, provided training and support for Liberia’s Charles Taylor, bank rolled the Black September Movement, sent arms to the Provisional IRA, and liquidated opponents by the hundreds at home and overseas.
This is one way Qaddafi has spent the billions he has looted from Libyan oil. He spent it keeping sub-Saharan Africa in turmoil by pouring in money and guns to support first one side and then the other.
“Libya could have been as luxurious as a Gulf state,” said a Nation of Islam representative at a recent international gathering. “Instead Qaddafi has taken the oil wealth to use as a liberating force for the struggling oppressed peoples of the world.”
I'm sure that the Libyan people take a different view of that question and so too do the "struggling oppressed peoples of the world" IMHO.

The Arabs have a historic problem with racism, as the Europeans do, and it stems from the same place. It is a legacy of African slavery. I have already outlined two ways Qaddafi has aggravated the problem in Libya: 1.) He has fanned turmoil and instability on the continent and enforced immigration policies that have forced increasing numbers of Africans to 'hold up' in Libya, and 2.) He has squandered much of Libya's wealth on foreign adventures in Africa that didn't do anybody any good. Except for war profiteers that is. To these two, I must now add a third, the use of African mercenaries against the Libyan people.

Qaddafi's African Mercenaries

Qaddafi has long employed a great variety of armed forces in his various African adventures so it should not surprise anyone that he is making full use of them in his last desperate bid to stay in power. After all, mercenaries fight for money and that is the one thing Mummar Qaddafi still has a lot of. Anna Mahjar-Barducci gives us the breakdown once more:
The mercenaries reportedly come from different countries of North- and Sub-Saharan Africa: Chad, Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Liberia. And these mercenaries come in different categories: some are pure mercenaries, moved by money; others are soldiers sent directly by their central governments, and others are members of guerrilla movements supported by Gaddafi in the past. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) claims that Gaddafi is also using child soldiers to face the Libyan uprising.

The International Federation of Human Rights numbers the mercenaries to be 6,000 whereas Human Rights Solidarity gives an estimate of 30,000[1]. According to the Qatari satellite channel, Al-Jazeera, Gaddafi's regime has brought approximately 50,000 mercenaries to Tripoli, and about 150,000 mercenaries throughout Libya[2].

Chad

Libyan revolutionaries claim that the government of Chad is playing a vital role in providing "mercenaries" to Gaddafi through the overland route to the Libyan town of Sabha, just across the Chad border. Ali Zeidan, spokesman of the exiled Libyan Human Rights League (LHRL), claims that two Chadian generals are commanding the mercenaries, under the orders of the Chad's ambassador to Libya, Daoussa Deby, the brother of Chadian President Idriss Deby.

The Government of Chad denies providing mercenaries to Gaddafi. Chadian FM Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement. "These are outrageous and malicious reports. […] Chad has never sent or authorized the recruitment of its nationals to fight in Libya. Chad cannot afford such a gesture, as we are concerned about the situation in our neighboring country."[3]

Darfur Region

Sudan's foreign ministry says it has evidence that JEM members are among the mercenaries supporting Gaddafi. The JEM has denied these allegations.[4]

Central Africa Republic (CRA)

News items report the presence of mercenaries from Central Africa Republic among Gaddafi's forces. UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told the Associated Press that there is "a serious concern" that child soldiers are among the mercenaries that Gaddafi is hiring to attack rebel forces. The spokeswoman for the UN children's agency said the mercenaries come from the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, and Sudan's Darfur region, which are all places "with known child soldiers."[6]

French news items suggest that Bemba's militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, is among the mercenaries fighting with Gaddafi against the uprising.[7]

DR Congo (Former Zaire)

According to news items, Congolese mercenaries in Libya are members of rebels' groups[8]. Allegedly among them, as mentioned above, there is also former Congo VP Jean Pierre Bemba Bemba's militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo.

Equatorial Guinea

[12] According to news items ... President Obiang sent troops to help Gaddafi[13]. The estimated number is of 650 Guinean soldiers[14]. Another news item reported that the government of Equatorial Guinea had prepared a group of 120 policemen and gendarmes to send to fight in Libya. The Guinean government told them that in Libya they would have received a 60-day training course as "border police." However while the 120 men were waiting to fly to Libya, they were apparently told that there was no safe way or possibility of landing in any Libyan airport[15].

The Polisario

The Moroccan Press Agency reports members of the Polisario, Western Sahara Separatist Group, left Mali's capital Bamako on board a Libyan aircraft heading to Algiers, intending to enter Libya by land to support Gaddafi's forces against rebels[17].

The Polisario is a politico-military organization fighting Morocco in order to take control of the former Western Sahara, currently under Morocco's sovereignty, and win independence for that region. The Polisario's headquarters are now based in Algeria, in the town of Tindouf. According to news items, Gaddafi spoke directly to Muhammad Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front, to ask for help.

According to sources, over two hundred well trained Polisario's fighters trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare have been selected and armed with Kalashnikovs, grenades and rocket launchers, and sent on their way on board 4X4 at the end of last week, and headed for Libya. The mercenaries took the path leading to the Libyan border town of Atchane Al, where they had to be escorted by the Libyan military to Tripoli, passing by the city of Sabha[18].

The Moroccan American Center for Policy, reported that Libya's former Minister of State for Immigration & Expatriates, Ali Errishi, condemned members of the Polisario for their "hypocrisy" in claiming to fight for freedom and progressive ideals, but joining the Gaddafi's mercenary army. [19]Errishi confirmed that well-armed members of the Polisario are among Gaddafi's mercenaries.

Algeria

The African Press Agency claimed that the Algerian government is supporting Gaddafi in recruiting mercenaries, especially from the Polisario, as Algeria is supporting this separatist group against Morocco. "The Algerian government spares no effort to facilitate the arrival of new reinforcements for Gaddafi to shield his regime from falling and avoid the repercussions on Algeria's stability that may arise from such a collapse".[20]

The Algerian government denied being involved in fighting the uprising against Gaddafi. The foreign ministry said in a statement, that these "false lies" which were reported by internet websites and TV satellite channels are "baseless," and Algeria was committed to non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, said the statement.

Tunisia

The Algerian paper Echorouk reports that after the Tunisian revolution, militias loyal to former Tunisian President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali escaped from Tunisia and found refuge in Libya[22]. According to news items, these militias are now fighting to protect Gaddafi's regime.

Mauritania


Mauritanians mercenaries are reported to be fighting for Gaddafi in Libya. A Libyan political opponent living in Washington DC, Mahmoud Chemam, stated that popular committees linked to Gaddafi in Mauritania are trying to recruit mercenaries to send to Libya[23]. Pro-Gaddafi's parties and movements in Mauritania are part of the fundamentalist Islamic Front Action. Mauritanian leader of the opposition, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, called for investigation of Mauritanian mercenaries in Libya[24].
Human Rights Watch has called upon Qaddafi to stop using foreign mercenaries against the Libyan people. When arguing the UN should suspend Libya's Human Rights Council membership they said:
The League of Arab States on February 22 denounced the acts of violence being committed against civilians as severe violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, in particular the hiring of foreign mercenaries and the use of live ammunition and heavy artillery against protestors, and banned Libyan delegations from participating in all bodies affiliated with the Arab League until the Libyan authorities met the League's demands to guarantee the security of its people.
And Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch told Qaddafi "He should call his forces including mercenaries off immediately."

But mercenaries are just about all he has left.

Racism has also been a problem among the freedom fighters as they are a product of Libyan society and they cannot entirely escape it's faults. Qaddafi's use of African mercenaries against the uprising has exacerbated this problem, as he knew it would. Just as he has always recruited security forces from the west to serve in the east and vice versa, he is using the old tactic of divide-and-conquer once again.

He knew that using African mercenaries would further divide the forces of the revolution. He knew that it would encourage the Arab distrust of the African immigrant and give the most backwards element in Libyan society a crutch. As a result, there have been some crimes committed against innocent Africans by some associated with the opposition. This must not be tolerated! Those creating the future of Libya must not fall for Qaddafi's provocation. Fighting racism must become one of the tasks of the revolution if it is to succeed in building a free Libya in Africa.

The King of Kings

Another way that Qaddafi spends Libya's billions is on a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family that is second to none. A girl friend of Mummar's son Saadi Qaddafi for six years, Dafinka Mircheva, gives us a window into their royal lifestyle:

His aides told her he spent £170 million a year on private jets, five-star hotels, supercars, lap-dancers, jewels and designer clothes.

‘Money was no object,’ she says. ‘He would always have a black suitcase stuffed with thousands of banknotes.

‘If he ran out, he would call the embassy and they would have more delivered to his hotel.’


She says he began a prolonged pursuit of her after that first meeting in 2004 – lavishing her with gifts and proposals of marriage – despite having a wife, the daughter of a commander in the Libyan military.

After she finally agreed to date him, Dafinka says Saadi paid £500,000 for her favourite pop group, The Pussycat Dolls, to perform for her at his birthday party in Cannes in the South of France
‘In his room were black leather suitcases full of cash. He would have £150,000 at any one time.’

She says he bought her £25,000 designer dresses and spent £10,000 on dinner at Raspoutine, a Russian restaurant in Paris. He is said to have owned a purple Bugatti Veyron road car worth £1million.

‘Saadi will never look at the price. He doesn’t care. Someone else always pays the bill.'
He acted like a little spoiled prince and he treated everyone else like peons. She added, ‘His entourage were mainly Libyans. He would call them all his servants. I told him many times not to tell people that. He told me, “I do what I want. I want to call them servants.”

And why not? Daddy has a special exemption for servants in his Green Book [p.19]:
Since the new socialist society is based on partnership and not on a wage system, natural socialist rules do not apply to domestic servants because they render services rather than production. Services have no tangible material product and cannot be divided into shares according to the natural socialist rule.
The ex-girl friend's tale continues:
Two years later, Dafinka and Saadi visited Tanzania for a week-long safari, staying in £600-a-night lodges. She says: ‘He killed an impala. I remember him asking, “What other gaming do you have for royalty?” He saw himself as the son of a king.’
The first monarch of united Libya was King Idris. He ruled for 17 years from 1951 to 1969. He was King but he shared power with a Constitution. In 1969 he was overthrown by Mummar Qaddafi who declared a socialist republic but in point of fact, he has treated Libya as his personal property, controlled it with armed violence and ruled it as though he were King. And this absolute monarch makes life and death decisions without a Constitution or a Parliament.

Cynthia McKinney will tell you that "Libyans govern themselves by The Green Book, a form of direct democracy based on the African Constitution concept that the people are the first and final source of all power," but that is pure rubbish. For the past forty-two years Libya has been ruled as a tribal kingdom and Mummar Qaddafi has held as much dictatorial power as has ever been held by any king. This is how Qaddafi does it:
The supreme leader would be King, ruling through tribal elders who would report to the Kgotla, also fetching advice for the central committee based in Tripoli. The King of All Kings, like the Great Cock, Mobutu Sese Seko, of the Congo, would open the national radio or television station in the morning as the national anthem blared in the background.

The Cock would then tour the hinterlands on the back of a covered land rover in full army regalia, waving at the subjects as he headed for the party headquarters which were invariably housed near or inside a luxurious hotel, followed by a coterie of sycophants who posed as heads of the civil service.

It was understood that the serfs would gather at the Kgotla to see the King of Kings in the flesh, and to reward him with their only chickens and goats which he would enjoy with them at the fireside after they were duly cooked to standard by the chief chef brought along with the presidential entourage from Tripoli, Gaborone or Lusaka.

The chef, of course, travelled as part of the National Guard that looks after the safety of the country and the Great Cock.

This business progresses from a presidential tour, to custom, to tradition until, after 42 years, it becomes a national ritual at which the King of Kings arrives at Kgotla to listen to the village gossip about the performance of the tribal or provincial leaders. The Great Leader, points out the ministers and civil servants who will put things right when he returns to Tripoli, having also handed out a gift or two to the lowliest of the poor in each strategic village.

Soon, a culture develops where the well-being of the nation is identical with that of the Great Leader and the King of Kings seeks deification on earth, demonstrating his powers by extending generous assistance to poor nations like The Sudan, at the same time providing the budget for the Organisation of African Unity, AU, OPEC and others.
Tribal sectarianism and conflicts are remnants from Libya's feudal past which is not yet history and that's what the Qaddafi regime has been based on. For all the "revolutionary" talk about "socialism" and "people's direct democracy", it has really been a throw back to an earlier period and Qaddafi has ruled as a king without a crown. That he is prepping a son to succeed him is your first clue, kings build dynasties.

The current uprising in Libya is in large part a revolution against these feudal remnants and the "king" that perpetuates them.

But Qaddafi doesn't see his kingdom as limited to Libya. In 2008, Gaddafi invited 200 kings and traditional rulers from sub-Saharan, mainly non-Arab Africa to witness his crowning of as Africa's "King of Kings."

The African Union

Qaddafi isn't the only African leader to rule his country like a king. It's a tradition which he has helped to perpetuate across the continent. Just look at the age of these African leaders:
Abdulai Wade (Senegal), age 83, HosniMubarak (Egypt), 82, Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), 86, HifikepunyePohamba (Namibia), 74, Rupiah Banda (Zambia), 73, Mwai Kibaki(Kenya), 71, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia), 75, Colonel Gaddafi(Libya), 68, Jacob Zuma (South Africa), 68, Bingu Wa Mtalika(Malawi), 76, Paul Biya (Cameroon), 77, Yoweri Museveni (Uganda),66. Average Age: 72 yrs.
Did they all take some sort of "till death do us part" vow when they were sworn in?

By the mid 1990's the old OAU [Organization of African Unity] had been pretty much discredited as a "Dictators' Club" that didn't do much for the African people. Mummar Qaddafi revived his idea of the African Union as a way of promoting his vision of a United States of Africa. In September 1999, Qaddafi and the other OAU heads of state issued the Sirte Declaration (named after Qaddafi's hometown) calling for the establishment of an African Union. It was established at Lusaka in 2001, it was bank-rolled from the beginning by Qaddafi.

The African Union has a number of objectives, including developing the political and socio-economic integration of the continent, defending interests common to all Africans, achieving peace and security on the continent and promoting human rights and good governance. For Mummar Qaddafi it is a vehicle for implementing his vision of a United States of Africa in which he would be made King of Kings.

With Qaddafi in charge, we can imagine how the meetings go. Wait, we don't have to imagine. South Africa's Jacob Zuma tells us:
"He has his own ways of holding meetings." said Zuma jokingly at a two-day ANC provincial general council at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Westville Campus.
Describing how the African Union (AU) chairman conducted the conference in his country this week, Zuma said "quarter of the speeches during the meeting was done by him...He forgets that there is lunch time and he forgets that people have to sleep."
Commenting on the election of Qaddafi as chairman of the AU in 2009, Henry Owuor wrote:
This is the perfect time for Col Gaddafi to take the reins of leadership. He can push his agenda. There are actually very few leaders who can challenge him.

In the past, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki could challenge Gaddafi at AU meetings but he is no longer in office and his replacement, Kgalema Motlanthe is an acting president who is due to hand over to his mentor Jacob Zuma at elections set for mid this year.

On the other hand, Africa’s most populous state, Nigeria, has a president who is perennially sick and who was on holiday as the AU met in Addis. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua instead sent his vice-president Mr Goodluck Jonathan, a man who cannot challenge Gaddafi. In the past, retired general Olusegun Obasanjo was a man Gaddafi could not ignore but his presidency ended in 2007.

What happened in Addis is that many heads of state simply did not show up because they did not want to commit to Gaddafi’s grand project of a single government for Africa.
...

Ask Zambia’s Rupiah Banda, in office since October 2008 or Ghana’s John Attar Mills in office since January and who did not even bother to show up in Addis or Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma who took power in 2007 if they are planning to take on Gaddafi at the next AU summit in July and what you will get is “no comment.’’

Qaddafi stormed out of an AU meeting in Qatar, March 2009, saying:
"I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level."
So Mummar Qaddafi's vision of Africa is for the whole continent to be a United States of Africa with himself named "King of All African Tribes", a non-black, ruling over all the African people. That is also pretty much where Charley Manson's fantasy ended up, one white guy ruling over all the blacks in the world. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why one of these men hasn't been able to make parole in 42 years. The question is why has the other one been allowed to run a muck for 42 years?

QADDAFI MUST GO!

Mummar Manson
original graphics by me, both images "PhotoShop till I crop"

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Qaddafi's Long Arm

One of least reported aspects of Mummar Qaddafi's struggle to continue his 42 year totalitarian rule has been the way he has used Libyan security personnel to extend his dictatorship to Libyans even when they are out of the country. In many cases this has been done through the mis-use of embassy staff to harass and intimidate Libyan students studying aboard and other Libyans who support the freedom fighters. In many countries, the ambassador and staff have come over to side of revolution and the Transitional National Council but in others they are still loyal to Qaddafi. Many of those have been involved in what is regarded in diplomatic terms "inappropriate behavior," been named "persona non gratis" and thrown out of the country.

Here is a round-up of news from the worlds media about this front in the Libyan freedom fight.

Libyan Embassy in Jordan harasses student supports of freedom fighters.

In Jordan this July, the Libyan embassy cut off grant and health insurance to students in "retaliation" for their support of wounded freedom fighters from Benghazi. When they arrived at Jordan's Marka Military Airport on board a Royal Air Force transport, a number of students staged a symbolic sit-in and thanked the Jordanian king and government and people for receiving the wounded. "Libya and unity .. not Eastern nor Western," was their slogan.

In response, Fri Almoudi from the Libyan embassy told the student supervisor to cut off the aid to the students. The students take the position that "Grant funds and health insurance funds are from the Libyan people and not from the funds of Gaddafi and the student supervisor."

The students said that they would not be intimidated by the threats from regime officials and said "we stand with our people struggling to defend their freedom and dignity." This cut off of promised aid is especially difficult for the students at this time because the situation in Libya makes it hard for their families to remit funds to them. There are between 300-400 Libyan students in various universities in Jordan and they are demanding that the Jordanian government intervene to stop "the harm inflicted upon them Qaddafi and his gang in Jordan."

The Libyan embassy in Jordan has divided loyalties because Ambassador Mohamed Barghathi and other dissidents have joined the freedom fighters, with Barghathi becoming the representative of the Transitional National Council in Amman, but the embassy staff is still loyal to Qaddafi.

Libyan student president in Italy arrested for intimidating other students.

On June 9 the Italian police arrested the president of the Libyan Students' League in Italy. The pro-Qaddafi president, Ahusain Nuri, 41, has lived in Italy for ten years. He was arrested in Perugia. Investigators said the Nuri was he head of an organization responsible for violence and threats against other Libyan students who supported the TNC. The Libyan Students' League is thought to have the backing of senior members of the Qaddafi regime.

The investigation and arrest were carried out by the Digos anti-terrorism police. The chief of police in Perugia, Sandro Federico called student harassment a problem of national security.

Five Libyan diplomats expelled from Canada

In May, five Libyan diplomats working at the Libyan Embassy in Ottawa were expelled for activities "considered inappropriate and inconsistent with normal diplomatic functions," according to a statement by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Lisa Monette, a spokeswoman with Foreign Affairs said she could not comment on state-to-state communications and refused to detail the reasons the diplomats were being expelled.

However in March, the CBC reported some Libyan students in Canada who had spoken out against the Qaddafi regime received threatening phone calls believed to have come from embassy staff.

Earlier in May, pro- and anti-Gadhafi protesters faced off in downtown Ottawa only two blocks from Parliament Hill and the anti-Gadhafi side outnumbered the pro-Gadhafi, anti-NATO side of fewer than 20 people by about three to one.

Men, women and children chanted songs and carried Libyan rebel flags and posters calling Qaddafi a war criminal. The larger group drowned out the chants from the pro-Qaddafi side, which carried the green flags that have symbolized Libya in the era and two large pictures of the leader himself. One RCMP officer was injured in a skirmish when the demonstrations first started.

Police did their best to keep both sides apart, but one RCMP officer was hurt during a skirmish when the demonstration first got under way.

Finally on august 9, Canada ordered all remaining Libyan diplomats to leave the country within five days. Forign Affars Minister John Baird said the Libyan diplomats had become "persona non grata."

France also sent 14 Libyan diplomats home in May, accusing them of "activities incompatible with the relevant UN resolutions . . . and contrary to the protection of Libyan civilians." "Many of these people were using their status as diplomats as a cover," the diplomat said.

Britain also expelled several Libyan diplomats for behavior that had become "unacceptable."

While the activities of the Qaddafi regime has been mostly limited to various forms of harassment and intimidated while the Libyan opposition is out of the country, many will be in grave danger if they are forced to return to Libya while Qaddafi is still in power.

Libyan student murdered by Qaddafi marksman after returning from Australian.

A Libyan student studying in Perth, Australia was murdered by soldiers loyal to Mummar Qaddafi's regime after returning home to Libya. Qmar Swyeb, 27, was an English language student at the University of West Australia and he return to Libya because he was worried about his family. His murder raises grave concerns among the several hundred Libyan students in WA about what may happen to them once there visas run out and they are forced to return home.

An investigation by The Weekend West has uncovered a small contingent of students loyal to Qaddafi that were spies for the regime in Perth and they have been taking names and photographs of rebel sympathizers to add to the Libyan secret police blacklist. In light of these problems. the Greens plan to move in the Senate to have the Libyan student visas extended until the crisis in the war torn country is resolved.
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Mon Aug 15, 2011 at 8:12 AM PT: If you know of other examples of Qaddafi's harassment and worst of opposition supporters outside of Libya, please send me the details and I will include them here. @clayclai on twitter or clayclai@gmail.com

Friday, August 12, 2011

SCOOP: My Lai or Qaddafi Lie? More on the 85 Civilians presumed killed by NATO

Salwa Jawoo in Ziltan Hospital
Meet 15 year-old Salwa Jawoo. She is said to be one of the victims of a NATO airstrike near Zlitan, Libya that the Qaddafi regime claims killed 85 civilians in an area with no military presence. Matthew Price of the BBC found her lying in a Ziltan hospital bed, bruised and with a bandaged hand. She says that her mother and two sisters were among the 85 children, women and men murdered by NATO, and from the look of her, she is lucky to have escaped with her own life. Earlier Matthew Price and other international journalists were taken on a tour of the bombing scene with Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi. He was shown Salwa's name in some school books at the scene. Of the visit with Salwa in the hospital, Price wrote:
Her face was scarred - she had a broken shoulder.

She said she was sitting outside her home when the first missile struck. It was the second one that injured her.

"There was no military camp. We were just living there. Why did they attack us?" she asked.

"My mother died, and my two sisters," she added, with a sigh. A tear ran down her cheek as she spoke. Her grief was genuine.

Salwa Jawoo in Libyan State TV video
And here is Salwa Jawoo again, at least it certainly looks like her. This still is a screen shot from this video produced by Libyan State TV about the murder of 85 civilians near Ziltan. She speaks in this YouTube video between 3:45 - 4:24, the screenshot is @ 04:07:24, and she appears to have made quite a recovery. The bandage is gone and so are the bruises as far as I can tell. If you watch the video clip of her I put up you'll see her broken shoulder is much better. But her anger is as genuine as her grief was earlier.

A twittermate, N_Benghazi has translated what she said for me:
"I want to say that I'm a civillian from Zliten, And my little brother, all praise is due to God, died a martyr and he's but a child. And I, with God's help, with God's help I'll pick up weapons and go to the frontline, with Khamis, fight as a soldier alongside Khamis [Gaddafi]. And I want to tell Muammar, I want to thank him for the Honor and Dignity he's allowed us to live in. We want you, we want you Muammar and we're silent, we're silent here in Libya. Either we live, or we die. Omar Mukhtar said it himself -- We will not surrender, we live or we die. "
So what's the real story here? Did her anger take away the memory of the loss of her two sisters, and mom as well as the bandage and bruises? And why didn't she mention "little brother" before? Also please note that Qaddafi PM Baghdadi Mahmudi that took the international journalist on the tour is the same person that has been report to have been recorded talking [youtube] with an unknown person "in which they plot to take three dead children from a hospital, plant them at a known site, and have the government spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, report from there using the children as casualties to further their propaganda," as I reported in my last diary. NATO, for it's part, still says the Qaddafi claims are highly unlikely but without people on the ground, how can they really know? NATO spokesman Bouchard said at a recent press conference:
“I can assure you that the target was a legitimate one that contained mercenaries, a command centre and 4×4 vehicles modified with automatic weapons, rocket launchers or mortars,” Bouchard said. “I cannot believe that 85 civilians were present when we struck in the wee hours of the morning and given our intelligence” on the target, he added. “I can assure you that there wasn’t 85 civilians present, but I cannot assure you that there were none at all.” “Frankly, I cannot say if there were any civilian deaths or how many,” said the general, who accused Gaddafi’s forces of often leaving already dead corpses at military sites after they have been levelled by NATO airstrikes to make the bombings appear like blunders.
I found another Qaddafi video on YouTibe that also featured Salwa Jawoo and was clearly shot at the same time if not the exact same footage but it has the advantage of a wider view: Libya: NATO blamed for Libyan massacre [10.08.0211.] This is screenshot @ 02:45:16 Salwa Jawoo in another Libyan State TV video And here is another @ 03:06:12. scared kids in video Who is that unseen person off-screen to the left side that appears to be coaching the kids on because they look scared to death of him? That's not a very nice way to treat a bunch of kids that are suppose to have just survived a massacre.
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Did NATO kill 85 Libyan Villagers As Qaddafi Regime Contends?

This news report from Haaretz 09/08/11 is typical:
The Libyan government said Tuesday that a NATO airstrike near the western city of Zlitan had killed 85 villagers, including children, state television reported - a claim swiftly called into question by the military alliance.

Footage showed what the broadcaster said were the burned bodies of at least three children under the age of 9 in a hospital. It also showed women and children being treated for injuries. The country is to hold a three-day mourning for the deaths, the channel reported.

The report said the victims were from the village of Majar, which is near Zlitan, to the east of the capital Tripoli, where NATO forces have been intensifying their strikes on government troops.
However this report was quickly disputed by NATO:
NATO spokesman Col. Roland Lavoie said the Libyan claim of civilian casualties in an airstrike near the western front-line town of Zlitan "was not corroborated by available factual information at the site."

NATO aircraft hit a staging base and military accommodation 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Zlitan, Lavoie said from the operational command in Naples, Italy. Four buildings and nine vehicles within the compound were struck with precision-guided munitions, he said.

"With our surveillance capabilities, we monitored this military compound very carefully before striking it," Lavoie said. "A number of military or mercenary casualties were expected due to the nature of the activity we monitored."

"Our assessment, based on the level of destruction of the buildings, confirms the likelihood of military and mercenary casualties," he said.

AP reported:
State television also showed funerals for dozens of civilians it said were killed in the NATO airstrike near Zlitan, about 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli.

The channel has been airing images in black and white to honor a three-day mourning period for the 85 people the government said lost their lives in Zlitan.

A day earlier, state television ran images of Libyans rummaging through the rubble of buildings the government said were destroyed by the airstrike. They were shown digging out body parts and piling dead babies in sacks in the back of ambulances. It said 33 children and 32 women were among those killed.
The Telegraph had a reporter on the scene and filed this report:
Despite discrepancies at the bomb sites, regime spokesmen said that 20 families in Majar, a remote village on a ridge overlooking the rebel enclave of Misurata, had been killed in airstrikes.

While up to seven homes were destroyed by large scale explosions, there was no evidence of the scale of slaughter suggested by officials.

Ten miles away at Zlitan hospital officials put bodies said to have been recovered from the site on display. One woman and two infant corpses lay alongside men of military age.

At least one ruined home bore the hallmarks of family life but debris from the destruction contained relatively few clues to the lives of the occupants.

Only a few traces of blood were smeared the rubble of the houses and there was no sign that bodies had been dragged through the dust.

With Nato's rules of engagement imposing strict safeguards to protect civilian life, Col Gaddafi's forces have an incentive operate from compounds occupied by families.

A green army belt that one official quickly removed from the side of a teddy bear indicated that the army had established a presence in the area.
BBC World News reported:
The BBC's Matthew Price says he saw about 30 white body bags at the hospital, while on a guided government tour.

Half the bags were opened to the media, he says, with the majority revealing men of fighting age, and also two children and two women.The BBC's Matthew Price says he saw about 30 white body bags at the hospital, while on a guided government tour.

Half the bags were opened to the media, he says, with the majority revealing men of fighting age, and also two children and two women.

Libyan State TV ran this report [warning very disturbing content]:
While these claims and counter-claims have been battling each other in cyberspace, the Libyan Youth Movement website published this report, together with a video:
Gaddafi PM Baghdadi Mahmudi’s phone call to use dead children for propaganda (English Subtitles) Posted on August 10, 2011 This recorded telephone call is allegedly between the Gaddafi regime’s Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi and another man in which they plot to take three dead children from a hospital, plant them at a known site, and have the government spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, report from there using the children as casualties to further their propaganda. We cannot independently verify the identity of the callers in this recording.
If true, it shows just how far the Qaddafi regime is willing to go to fabricated charges that NATO is killing Libyan civilians and calls into question Tuesday's claim that NATO killed 85 civilians and all such claims. It certainly doesn't mean that NATO isn't killing some civilians in Libya, but it doe means that all such claims by the Qaddafi regime that have not been independently verified can not be believed. Did NATO really kill 85 civilians as the Qaddafi regime claims? You'll have to make up your own mind but look for updates here as this story develops.
Click here for a list of my other dairies on Libya

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

CCDS Statement on Libya - a Critique

From CCDS website 01/08/11 - (CCDS omitted the first 3 paragraphs of my critique in their publication of it.)

This Sunday I am told that 142 Syrians in Hama were slaughtered by Assad's tanks. It is estimated that as many as 1700 peaceful protesters have been massacred by Assad since the Syrian people welcomed the Arab Spring. I find it absolutely shameful that much of the left, including CCDS remain silent in the face of the Syrian people's cries for international support. I think we can do a lot better than that.

When the internationalist history of the Arab Spring is finally written it will be embarrassing to some that these revolutionary people's uprisings have received more practical support and solidarity from US computer hackers than from the US left.

CCDS was similarly silent as Qaddafi's "yellow hat" thugs shot unarmed protesters in Benghazi (18/02/11), waiting to make its official statement on Libya 72 days after Libyan protests started with the housing sit-ins on January 14, 2011 and more than a month after it had become a revolutionary armed struggle. As I will show below, this statement, which has as it's focus opposition to our own imperialists is self-centered and in the context of concrete conditions of the Libyan revolution, counter-revolutionary. In summation, the I agree with rima_misrata who tweeted July 30:
Hey anti-interventioners - Were you enraged when Gaddafi was massacring Libyans? No? So you don't really have a moral leg to stand on?

CCDS Statement on Libya - a Critique

By The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism
March 27, 2011

In war, the first casualty is truth. Nowhere is this maxim more relevant than the current air and naval bombing campaign against Libya initiated by the U.S., France and Great Britain, and involving other NATO countries.
IMHO this is already taking a position that equates the Qaddafi regime with "Libya." NATO would argue that their military activities are against the forces of the Qaddafi regime not Libya, and frankly the revolutionaries would agree. As a matter of fact there is very little evidence that NATO has attacked Libyan population centers or infrastructure in the way they did in Iraq. [see my How Many Libyans has NATO Killed? for details and background]

Furthermore, the statement "the current air and naval bombing campaign against Libya initiated by the U.S...." reinforces the view that Qaddafi=Libya. The Libyan opposition would say that the "current air and naval bombing campaign against Libya" was initialed by Qaddafi with his naval bombardment of the people of Misrata and his aerial bombing of the people of Benghazi and Tripoli, which preceded the NATO intervention and which was stopped by that intervention.

What is more important, behind all the anti-imperialist rhetoric, the practical application of CCDS's basic demand under the concrete conditions currently existing is that Qaddafi would be allowed to continue his naval and aerial bombardment of any population centers in Libya where the people have forced him out on the ground.

So far I don't see anything in the CCDS statement that Qaddafi would object to.

The air and missile strikes on Libya are acts of war.
No argument there. Of course I would also argue that Qaddafi's air and missile strikes on Libya are also acts of war, and contrary to the wishful thinking of pacifists, sometimes violence must be put down with violence. Sometimes you can only put an end to "acts of war" is by countering them with "acts of war" to stop the initial perpetrator of the violence.

Is it the position of the CCDS that it would oppose intervention by any outside force to prevent say, another Rwanda, if the interventionists were allowed to use "acts of war?"

All the talk of ‘no fly zones,’ ‘protecting civilians from massacre,’ ‘humanitarian intervention’ and so on are diversions if not falsehoods.
This sounds like the CCDS doesn't believe the threat to Benghazi was real. This statement would also lead me to believe it is discounting all the stories about cluster munitions, Grad rockets, and land mines being used by Qaddafi forces on population centers. Well they can stick their collective heads in the sand and Qaddafi will applaud them for it, but I don't know of any serious close observers outside of the Qaddafi camp that doubt, with 200+ tanks just outside of Benghazi on March 17th, and Qaddafi saying they there going to "go house to house" and "clean out the rats", a million people were in grave danger when the UN passed resolution 1973. If CCDS could have its way, Qaddafi would have been allowed to move forward with his plans for Benghazi. As far as the Benghazi threat goes, and the other stuff about Grad rockets, cluster munitions and land mines. I'm here to tell you there is overwhelming evidence. I mean overwhelming.

A ‘no fly zone’ means more than preventing military aircraft from taking off as we have already seen. It means destroying aircraft and their hangars. It means destroying any airports and airfields. It means destroying refineries and fuel supplies. And most important, it means destroying ‘command and control centers,’ which means bombing any structure or location where the military planners think Gaddafi or his loyalists might be.
I'm not sure what a "no fly zone" means but I am sure that UN resolution 1973 authorized much more than a "no fly zone." Like it or not, it authorized just about anything short of ground troops. The falsehood that the UN only authorized a "no fly zone" and that therefore NATO is in violation of the UN resolution is another Qaddafi talking point that just isn't true.
We’ve seen this movie before in Iraq.
To me, this is the most embarrassing statement in the whole document for anyone trying to practice dialectical materialism. It's saying that there is nothing new to see here, that it's basically like Iraq. So what do I think is different? The "Arab Spring" wasn't in the movie last time I saw it. The "Arab Spring" as it is being called, is so far the greatest people's revolt of the 21st century and the Libyan uprising is part and partial of the Arab uprising in MENA. The Libyan revolt is the first place the Arab uprising was forced to go over to armed struggle and this is what precipitated the international intervention.

The sad thing is that it wasn't the people's revolt that really got CCDS's and many others on the lefts attention, it was the NATO intervention. Not only have they not seen this movie before, they came into this movie in the middle and they think they know what's going on without first finding out about the parts they missed. That is why you hear so many US left commentators parrot the Qaddafi line that the rebels were armed from the start. Nobody that was observing this struggle from the start will even give such an person a penny for his thoughts.

France has taken the lead in NATO intervention, this is new. They didn't want to have anything to do with the war in Iraq - remember "freedom fries?"

What else is new? Well, the role of the Internet is absolutely new and deserving of deep study and developing practice by revolutionaries. The hacker group Anonymous started #OpTunisia on Jan 2, #OpLibya and #OpEgypt soon followed. Internet activists were able to work together to insure that the revolutionaries always had Internet access in spite of regime attempts to shut it down, while at the same time impeding the regime's use of the Internet. You know, I once played courier for a vital message from Alexandria to the Egyptian opposition in Tahrir Sq and I never left Venice Beach to do it. As a revolutionary this role was very new to me.

IMHO revolutionaries today should be studying the Arab uprising, and especially where it has developed to the point of armed struggle in Libya, in the spirit with which Marx studied the Paris Commune. The masses are teaching us many important lessons about making revolution in the 21st Century. It is our job to refine them and return them to the masses but if we think we've been through this movie before then we think we already know it all.

It means the usual ‘collateral damage’ of widespread civilian death and destruction
I absolutely challenge this. That the NATO campaign has caused "widespread civilian death and destruction" is another Qaddafi talking point that has been backed up with fraudulent claims by the Qaddafi regime. In the war on Iraq the US dropped 29,199 munitions in the first 30 days, in Libya the US claims to have dropped munitions on 132 targets in the first 100 days. Qaddafi would like the world to think that he is being bombed the way that Iraq was during shock and awe so I'm sure he would be happy with the way CCDS portrays things. Again see How Many Libyans has NATO Killed? for details.

—all done in the name of preventing civilian deaths.
Which doesn't exactly address the question of whether on not they have actually prevented civilians deaths, but would seem to imply that they haven't. Well IMHO, more Libyans were killed in the 4 weeks before NATO intervened than in the 4 months since and I challenge anyone in CCDS to make a creditable argument to the contrary.

And as in Iraq,

Same movie, different country, nothing new here.

the US is dropping bombs containing depleted uranium, which will destroy Libyan lives for generations.
NATO DU use in Libya is another Qaddafi talking point that is a little short on proof. Without going into details, there are good reasons to believe they are not using DU in Libya for the same reason they eventually stopped using Agent Orange in Vietnam. The bad PR eventually trumped the military advantages of the stuff. Besides they have developed other substitutes for DU, even more toxic substitutes, and there is reason to believe that is what they are using in Libya. I asked a leading CCDS member about the basics for the claim that NATO is using DU and I was referred to a pro-Qaddafi "expert" that said his tests indicated NATO may be using DU. But "may" is not "is" and why is this "expert" qualifying his opinion with "may", isn't DU radioactive? Didn't this expert have a Geiger counter? How come none of the reports I've seen reporting DU in Libya include tests for radioactivity?

It’s one reason why the African Union refused to support the UN measure and why the Arab League began criticizing it as soon as they saw the reality of what they had put their name too.
Opinions vary.
We in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism join with many others around the world to oppose this aggression and call for its immediate and unconditional cessation. Cease Fire!
Since nothing in this statement so far indicated that the Qaddafi regime is attacking the Libyan people, it sounds like this cease fire demand does not include Qaddafi's forces. I don't see any opposition to Qaddafi's aggression anywhere in the CCDS statement.

We urge that Libyans resolve their differences without resort to arms.
It would have been good of CCDS to have urged this before Qaddafi attacked protesters with military aircraft and tanks. [Note: It's interesting how more proof on this continues to come out. Just this evening on BBC World News I saw an interview with an immigrant from Libyan that had made it safely home to Bangladesh. He said the greatest threat they faced in Misrata was from bombs dropped from helicopters - this was before NATO, only Qaddafi had helicopters.] To demand this now but not before is also a position that Qaddafi would support. To demand peace, once the the revolution has been forced over to armed struggle and while the people are winning that armed struggle is counter-revolutionary. And make no mistake about it, all defeatist talk of "stalemate" aside, the rebel army has been making slow but sure progress on three military fronts with important victories near Brega and Ziltan as I write this.
We support international diplomatic efforts aimed at assisting Libya to resolve their conflict politically – a path that was ignored in the lead up to the intervention by the U.S. and others.
This is turning the recent history of the Libyan uprising on it's head! It blames "the U.S. and others" and not Qaddafi for turning this conflict into an armed struggle and not choosing to resolve the people's protests politically. And to suggest that at the time the French started air strikes near Benghazi on Qaddafi forces that were already starting to enter the city, that instead they should have limited themselves to "diplomatic efforts" is to wish the people of Benghazi a very bad day. Qaddafi has got to love these guys.
At bottom – ‘kinetic military activity’ – the new Pentagon euphemism for imperialist war is simply a grab for power and oil in a third world country temporarily weakened by an internal crisis.
Which we definitely won't take sides on. The struggle between a dictator and the people is an internal struggle. After the US, EU, and UK have armed the dictator they should stay out of it and let the people and dictator fight it out.
Libya has huge oil reserves that are state owned—
Which in Libya pretty much means Qaddafi owned.
including much oil that is easily accessible. Libya has a huge territory where oil exploration has yet to be completed, due to former disputes between the government and foreign oil explorers. Due to past Western boycotts of Libya, China and India have joined its prime customers, and there is now competition and rivalry for future oil deals with the Libyan government.

With the escalating confrontation between Israel and the Arab states, and the mass movements arising in the Arab states for economic and political democracy, the US and its allies are focused on controlling events on the ground. A key means to this end is the establishment of a U.S. military command center in Africa – AFRICOM. AFRICOM is spearheading the military intervention in Libya for the U.S. But it is located in Germany because African countries have refused to host the command center.

According to Wikipedia "of all the African nations, only Liberia has publicly expressed a willingness to host AFRICOM's headquarters."
The war on Libya offers the justification for placing this new imperial command center in an African nation.
Again "The war on Libya" by which CCDS means the combined attack by the Libyan opposition and NATO air support on the Qaddafi regime is the same as a war on Libya.. Justifications are a dime a dozen. If they find the place that will accept a base and they want it there, the justification will take care of itself.
Unjust wars abroad always extract a price at home. This one has a high price in White House hypocrisy. While claiming to advance democracy abroad, these acts of war have been carried out with complete disregard of the US Constitution and the War Powers Act. These laws place war making powers in the hands of the American people through Congress.

On the first night of the attack on Libya, the US rained $240 million of cruise missiles on Libya. The total costs for the US deployment will exceed $1 billion per month. Yet, the American people are told to tighten their belts because there is no money for healthcare, education, transportation, law enforcement, job safety, pensions, social security. The empire can no longer provide guns and butter. The attack on Libya and the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are inextricably bound to the attacks on the rights of American workers to organize and bargain collectively for a decent living.
This argument seems to work only because they fail to acknowledge the threat to Libyan's from Qaddafi. If they do, it becomes more like "We'd really like to do something about Rwanda or the Jews being persecuted by the Nazis but we have our own problems and just can't afford to get involved."

This is why Kucinich was able to forge such a broad coalition, including many normally pro-war and isolationist Republicans in his effort to strip whatever protection he could from the people of Benghazi and Misrata.
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and a few other Members of Congress are standing up and speaking against this threat to our Constitution, the inevitable loss of our livelihood, the lives of our soldiers and the people of Libya. We strongly urge others in Congress to open debate on this matter, and cut off the funds supplying it.

Many mass actions are scheduled in the coming days and weeks against the efforts to impose austerity measures and against the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We urge the formation of ‘Jobs Not Wars’ contingents to join them, raising the banner of ‘Hands off Libya, Stop the Bombing Now!’, ‘Let Libyans Shape Their Own Future!’ and ‘Bring ALL Our Troops Home Now!’
So they wish to refocus the anti-war movement to put opposition to the "War in Libya" in 1st place, while depreciating the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [no banners called for] even though NATO has boots on the ground in both those countries and are carrying out much more vigorous war policies in them as compared to Libya.

And on the question of this revolutionary struggle CCDS is "neutral", meaning not one word of criticism of Qaddafi and not one word of support for the rebellion. The CCDS will raise high the banner ‘Let Libyans Shape Their Own Future!’ which I assume means, remove UN backed military involvement, continue to recognize the Qaddafi government as the legit gov't of Libya, continue to pay Qaddafi for Libya oil and probably even, continue to sell Qaddafi EU, UK & US military hardware, and then let Qaddafi and his thugs on the one hand and the unarmed popular opposition on the other "Shape Their Own Future!" Splendid!

For my opinion on what NATO should and shouldn't be doing in Libya, please see:
2011-07-04 NATO's Game Plan in Libya
For more background on the Libyan Revolution and links to lots of information see my other writings at the DailyKos and WikiLeaks Central:
The Assassination of General Abdul Fattah Younis
NATO over Tripoli - Air Strikes in the Age of Twitter
How Many Libyans has NATO Killed?
Qaddafi Terror Files Start to Trickle Out!
Have Libyan Rebels Committed Human Rights Abuses?
Tripoli Green Square Reality Check
Behind the Green Curtain: Libya Today
Gilbert Achcar on the Libyan situation and the Left
NATO slammed for Libya civilian deaths NOT!
2011-07-01 Qaddafi's Million Man March
NATO's Game Plan in Libya
February 21st - Tripoli's Long Night
Did Qaddafi Bomb Peaceful Protesters?
Tripoli Burn Notice
Libyans, Palestinians & Israelis
'Brother' Qaddafi Indicted plus Libya & Syria: Dueling Rally Photofinishs
An Open Letter to ANSWER
ANSWER answers me
2011-06-22 No Libyans allowed at ANSWER Libya Forum
Are they throwing babies out of incubators yet?
Continuing Discussion with a Gaddafi Supporter
Boston Globe oped supports Gaddafi with fraudulent journalism
2011-04-13 Doha summit supports Libyan rebels
Current Events in Libya
Amonpour Plays Softball with Gaddafi
Arming Gaddfi
North African Revolution Continues
Is Libya Next? Anonymous Debates New Operation

In Solidarity,

Clay Claiborne

Note on the recent ANSWER and IAC Pro-Qaddafi Rallies
[this was not in the CCDS submission]

ANSWER has wrapped up their pro-Qaddafi Cynthia McKinney 'Eyewitness Libya' tour. I reported on the Los Angeles event here. After they excluded the Libyans, they had less than 200 people in attendance. Now the International Action Center [IAC] is having their pro-Qaddafi Cynthia McKinney 'Eyewitness Report on U.S./NATO Bombing & Terror' tour. Mercifully, I was unable to attend that L.A. event last Sunday but i have been told that about 100 people showed up and the Libyans didn't even bother this time.

Clearly both of these groups have similar positions on events in Libya and those familiar with their history know that they share a common root. But they both are the result of a sectarian divide that runs so deep that IAC didn't lift a finger to support or promote the ANSWER tour and now ANSWER is doing nothing to tell it's supporters about the IAC events.

You would think that if these two groups were serious about helping the Libyan people and they really believed that NATO was causing "widespread civilian death and destruction" in Libya, that they would bury the hatchet, and not in each others heads, for the greater cause of helping the Libyan people.

Just an observation.