By Jane West
Despite claims it was supporting the ‘Arab Spring’, NATO bombed Libya for its own time-honoured reasons – to depose a regime that was unreliable for Western interests, a frequent nuisance in OPEC, and sometime supporter of various anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles.
By Andrew Williams
The immense firepower of imperialism, aided by Russia’s capitulation to Western demands that it call for Gaddafi to go, is beginning to drive back the Libyan government. After eleven weeks of bombardment and ten thousand sorties opposition forces have made some advances into the areas held by the Libyan government. Although not currently advancing on the capital Tripoli, the opposition have managed to shift the front line. Their progress has been slow so NATO last week prepared public opinion for a long war, announcing a 90 day extension to its campaign and then sent in attack helicopters to participate more directly in the combat on the ground.
By Andrew Williams
The uprisings that have spread across the Middle East have alarmed the US and its regional allies as a series of autocratic pro-Western regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen, have become vulnerable. As the pro-democracy mobilisations have continued their momentum, the US is determined that the ground it has already had to cede in Egypt and Tunisia will not spread further – and is, of course, working hard behind the scenes to limit the extent of the reforms in Egypt and Tunisia.
By Jennifer Nash
The new rise in the revolution in the colonial world that began in Latin America with Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution and ‘21st century socialism’, and which is now – on a higher level of mass struggle – sweeping through the Middle East, is of a scale to create a radicalisation in the imperialist countries.
The fundamental lesson of the struggle in Egypt is that when millions of people rise even the most well-armed dictatorship can be forced to give way. This lesson is not lost on young people in the imperialist countries.
By Brian Clark
Socialist Action has constantly pointed out that US administration claims that its policy is to support democracy in the Middle East is a straightforward lie and characteristic of imperialist hypocrisy. Of interest, therefore, is that the Wall Street Journal, the most authoritative journal of US business, has now carried a long detailed front page analysis of US attempts to suppress democracy when confronted with the uprisings in the Arab countries.
A deceit currently being promoted by the US and British governments is that any western intervention into Libya is in order to defend human rights. As Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out in his statement to the UN Human Rights Council, these are not imperialism’s real concerns. The principle human right – the right to life – is denied by these same powers, whose invasions of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan have left hundreds of thousands dead. Alongside that there is the well-established use by the US of torture at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, plus Britain’s involvement in the US abduction programme. That indicates the real view these states take on human rights.
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