Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism

‘Activism’ and ‘human rights’ foundation Avaaz blames the Houla massacre on Assad and calls for foreign intervention. A peek into the background of Avaaz explains its pro-empire position, and who is really behind it.

A mere three days after the Houla Massacre in Syria, while all parties were clamouring to figure out what had happened and who was responsible, Avaaz took the opportunity to speculatively blame the Assad regime as part of an online petition campaign. What is even more disconcerting is that this ‘human rights’ organisation also made a thinly-veiled call for foreign intervention – something which would undoubtedly result in astronomical human suffering.

Using emotive and crafty language,⁽²⁾ Alice Jay (Avaaz’s Campaign Director) blames Assad for the Houla massacre indirectly, by alluding to the decision of several Western governments to expel Syrian diplomats:

Dozens of children lie covered with blood, their faces show the fear they felt before death, and their innocent lifeless bodies reveal an unspeakable massacre. These children were slaughtered by men under strict orders to sow terror. Yet all the diplomats have come up with so far is a few UN monitors ‘observing’ the violence. Now, governments across the world are expelling Syrian ambassadors, but unless we demand strong action on the ground, they will settle for these diplomatic half-measures.

This is immediately followed by a thinly-veiled call for an invasion of Syria by foreign powers:

The UN is discussing what to do right now. If there were a large international presence across Syria with a mandate to protect civilians, we could prevent the massacres while leaders engage in political efforts to resolve the conflict. I cannot see more images like these without shouting from the rooftops. But to stop the violence, it is going to take all of us, with one voice, demanding protection for these kids and their families. Sign the urgent petition on the right to call for UN action now and share this campaign with everyone.

The background of Avaaz sheds light on its unequivocal pro-war and anti-Syrian position.

Avaaz – Shadowy Beyond Belief

Avaaz’s latest 990 form,⁽³⁾ from 2010, raises a number of questions. Avaaz has only 16 employees, and is listed as a ‘corporation’ for the purposes of the 990 submission. Oddly, for an organisation that receives no governmental or corporate funding,⁽¹⁾ Avaaz received over $6.7 million in 2010, and paid its President over $180,000 as a salary (still feel good about donating?). On top of this, in 2010 Avaaz gave Res Publica (more on them later) a $100,000 grant. Avaaz is doing extremely well considering this and the fact that it was established relatively recently, in 2006. Where is all of this money coming from?

Avaaz is “incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)4 organization in the state of Delaware, USA“.⁽⁴⁾ The foundation’s office is based in Manhattan, at 857 Broadway – the same address as Res Publica⁽⁵⁾ – an entity which co-founded Avaaz along with Ricken Patel.

The background of Res Publica offers a glimpse into the nature of Avaaz. 24 Hours for Darfur and Darfurian Voices (using the same etymology of “Avaaz”, which means “voice” in Farsi and several middle eastern dialects) are two projects of Res Publica. These projects⁽⁵⁾ are aimed at drawing international attention to Darfur – with a view to demonising and vilifying the Arab government of Sudan:

This is part and parcel of a long-standing Israeli policy to split Sudan along ethnic, racial, and religious lines.

The Israelis have been dug into Sudan like ticks ever since the 1950?s,⁽⁶⁾ fomenting conflict and orchestrating the secession of South Sudan – effecting the policy of separation of all sovereign (especially Arab) states along ethnic lines.

The funders and partners of Darfurian Voices, 24 Hours for Darfur, and Res Publica are incredibly revealing, and constitute a who’s who of Zionist, globalist, pro-empire organisations and bodies, even including the US State Department.⁽⁵⁾

One such partner, Genocide Intervention, boasts amongst its Board Rabbi Steve Gutow, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs who insists that the government should “support Israel”.⁽⁷⁾ Gutow was also the founding regional director of AIPAC’s Southwest Region, and was the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Another Board member is Ruth Messinger – president of American Jewish World Service, and member of Barack Obama’s Task Force on Global Poverty and Development.

Sitting alongside Gutow and Messinger is Joan Platt, who also serves on the board of Human Rights Watch – a prolific propaganda mill that has underpinned the NATO narrative of the wars on Libya and Syria. Human Rights Watch was also funded by Zionist heavyweight George Soros who contributed $100 million in 2010.⁽⁸⁾

Needless to say, George Soros’ Open Society Institute is also listed as one of Res Publica’s partners.

The Zionist ‘democracy promotion’ outfit known as the National Endowment for Democracy – which has been linked to the fraudulent atrocity reports disseminated against Muammar Gaddafi⁽⁹⁾ – is also listed as a partner, as is the US State Deparment. No further comment should be necessary.

Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, has consulted for the International Crisis Group⁽¹⁰⁾ – another pro-war ‘think tank’. The ICG boasts Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres and former Saudi ambassador to the US as senior advisers,⁽¹¹⁾ and George Soros as an Executive.⁽¹²⁾ The ICG is peppered with such names at the highest levels such as: Shlomo Ben-Ami – Former Foreign Minister of Israel, Zbigniew Brzezinski – Former U.S. National Security Advisor, Stanley Fischer – Governor of The Bank of Israel, Matthew McHugh – Former U.S. Congressman and Counselor to the World Bank President, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen – Former Secretary General of NATO, Morton Abramowitz – Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador to Turkey, and Wesley Clark – Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (Europe).

The Chair of the ICG, Thomas R Pickering, is Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, El Salvador and Nigeria, and Vice Chairman of Hills & Company.

The President & CEO of the ICG is Louise Arbour – Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

What do these people have to do with the prevention of crises? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. The ICG is a body that exists to further the aims of its benefactors, which notably include NATO, the United States Government, and Israel.

Res Publica’s ‘About Us’ page also reveals⁽¹⁰⁾ that Patel has consulted for the Rockefeller Foundation and the UN.

Akin to the ICG, Res Publica’s advisory board⁽¹³⁾ features financiers, economists, and a former Clinton Chief of Staff.

The fraudulent ‘humanitarian intervention’ concept is built upon atrocious lies and emotive propaganda peddled by these networks of closely interconnected ‘human rights’, ‘democracy promotion’, and ‘crisis prevention’ groups. Before having an emotional knee-jerk reaction to these issues, we must inspect the people behind these voices. Avaaz’s recent petition feverishly entitled “Protect Syria’s Children Now!” currently has over 780,000 signatures. Orwellian ‘human rights’ outfits such as Avaaz have become adept at manipulating well-meaning activists and liberals into supporting the very agenda they purport to oppose – placing them firmly in the same camp as the most virulent Zionists, Neoconservatives, and war hawks one can imagine. This makes the illusory nature of the left-right dichotomy clearer than ever before, but even more worryingly it expedites the march of the NATO-GCC-Israeli war machine that now has Syria in its crosshairs.

Notes

(1) Avaaz.org – ‘About Us’

(2) Avaaz Petition: ‘Protect Syria’s Children Now!’

(3) Avaaz Foundation – Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax, 2010

(4) Avaaz.org – ‘Avaaz Expenses and Financial Information’

(5) DarfurianVoices.org – ‘About Us’

(6) ‘Israelis can tell the whole story of Sudan’s division – they wrote the script and trained the actors’ by Fahmi Howeidi

(7) Genocideintervention.net – ‘Board’

(8) HRW.org – ‘George Soros to Give $100 million to Human Rights Watch’

(9) ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Wikipedia’ by Martin Iqbal

(10) Therespublica.org – ‘About Us’

(11) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group Senior Advisers’

(12) Crisisgroup.org – ‘Crisis Group’s Board of Trustees’

(13) Therespublica.org – ‘Advisory Board’

Total War

Intercontinental Cry

Editorial

By Jay Taber

Jun 21, 2012

Amnesty’s Shilling for US-NATO Wars

For decades, Amnesty International has been a respected name in the cause of human rights, but its recent hiring of Suzanne Nossel, a longtime U.S. “humanitarian interventionist,” has swung the organization more behind the Afghan War and the use of U.S. military force, Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley write.

June 19, 2012

Consortiumnews.com

By Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley

Ann Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserve Colonel and a 16-year U.S. diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She returned to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2010 on fact-finding missions.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She wrote a “whistleblower” memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She retired at the end of 2004, and now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA — Suzanne Nossel — is a recent U.S. government insider. So it’s a safe bet that AI’s decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, “women’s rights in Afghanistan,” at the NATO Conference last month in Chicago came directly from her.

Nossel was hired by AI in January 2012. In her early career, Nossel worked for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke under the Clinton Administration at the United Nations. Most recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women’s issues, public diplomacy, press and congressional relations.

She also played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council (where her views about the original Goldstone Report on behalf of Palestinian women did not quite rise to the same level of concerns for the women in countries that U.S.-NATO has attacked militarily).

Nossel would have worked for and with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and undoubtedly helped them successfully implement their “Right to Protect (R2P)” — otherwise known as “humanitarian intervention” — as well as the newly created “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

This cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy (which has served mainly to rationalize the launching of war on Libya) is now being hauled out to call for U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

“Smart Power” = smart wars?

In fact, Nossel is herself credited as having coined the term “Smart Power,” which embraces the United States’ use of military power as well as other forms of “soft power,” an approach which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at her confirmation as the new basis of State Department policy.

An excerpt from Nossel’s 2004 paper on “Smart Power,” published in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs magazine, sounds a lot like Samantha Power’s (and also traces back to Madeleine Albright’s) theories:

To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war.

Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military [our emphasis] — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Following the CIA Red Cell

Perhaps the AI’s hiring of a State Department shill as executive director of its U.S. affiliate was merely coincidental to how/why its “NATO Shadow Summit ” so closely mimicked the CIA’s latest suggested propaganda device, but….

The “CIA Red Cell,” a group of analysts assigned to think “outside the box” to anticipate emerging challenges, was right to worry in March 2010 when the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) found that 80 percent of French and German citizens were opposed to continued deployment of their countries’ militaries in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.

Even though public apathy had, up to that point, enabled French and German politicians to “ignore their voters” and steadily increase their governments’ troop contributions to Afghanistan, the CIA’s newly-created think tank was concerned that a forecasted increase in NATO casualties in the upcoming “bloody summer … could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.”

In a confidential memo, the “Red Cell” wrote:

The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.

Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters …

Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified ‘Afghanistan’ as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked ‘stabilizing Afghanistan’ as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.

According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and ‘not our problem’ was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the ‘not our problem’ sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’ radar.

But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash

If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal.

The CIA “Special Memorandum” went a step further, inviting “a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion” to suggest “information campaigns” that State Department polls showed likely to sway Western Europeans.

The “Red Cell” memo was quickly leaked, however, furnishing a remarkable window into how U.S. government propaganda is designed to work upon NATO citizenry to maintain public support for the euphemistically titled “International Security Assistance Force” (ISAF) waging war on Afghans. Here are some of the CIA propaganda expert’s suggestions:

…messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France ‘s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and necessary cause despite casualties… Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission…Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.

Amnesty International struck similar themes in announcements posted online as well as billboard advertisements on Chicago bus stops (like the one above). Telling “NATO: Keep the Progress Going!”, the ads beckoned us to find out more on Sunday, May 20, 2012, the day thousands of activists marched in Chicago in protest of NATO’s wars.

The billboard seemed to answer a recent Huffington Post blog post, “Afghanistan: The First Feminist War?“

The feminist victory may be complete in America, but on the international stage it’s not doing so well with three quarters of the world’s women still under often-severe male domination. Afghanistan is an extreme case in point in what might be termed the first feminist war … a war that now may not be won even if Hillary Clinton dons a flack jacket and shoulders an M16 on the front lines. Still, since the Bush Administration to the present America ‘s top foreign policy office has been held by women … women who have promised not to desert their Afghan sisters.

Our curiosity was further piqued because we consider ourselves to be women’s rights and human rights proponents and also due to our own prior federal careers in intelligence and military. (Colonel Wright is retired from the State Department/US military and Rowley is from the FBI.)

So along with a few other anti-war activists, we packed into a taxi to head to the Chicago hotel where Amnesty International’s “Shadow Summit” featuring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other female foreign relations officials was being held. We happened to carry our “NATO bombs are not humanitarian”; “NATO Kills Girls” and anti-drone bombing posters that we had with us for the march later that day.

As we arrived, an official-looking black car dropped off Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, who was to be a main speaker (on the first panel, along with former Secretary Albright; U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois; and Afifa Azim, General Director and Co-Founder, Afghan Women’s Network; along with Moderator Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program).

Verveer cast a cold glance at us and would not answer Ann Wright’s questions as she scurried into the hotel with her aides surrounding her and us following behind. At first the hotel security guards tried to turn us away but we reminded the registration desk the Summit was advertised as “Free Admissions” and that some of us were members of Amnesty International.

So they let us register and attend as long as we promised to leave our signs outside and not disrupt the speakers. The hotel conference room was about half full. We stayed long enough to hear the opening remarks and the moderator’s first questions of Albright and the other speakers on the first panel.

All generally linked the protection and participation of Afghan women in government as well as the progress made in educating Afghan women to the eventual peace and security of the country as envisioned by the new strategic “partnership” agreement that Obama had just signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Ms. Verveer said Afghan women do not want to be seen as “victims” but are now rightfully nervous about their future. When we saw that audience participation was going to be limited to questions selected from the small note cards being collected, we departed, missing the second panel as well as kite-flying for women’s rights.

We noted, even in that short time, however, how easy it was for these U.S. government officials to use the “good and necessary cause” of women’s rights to get the audience into the palm of their collective hand — just as the CIA’s “strategic communication” expert predicted!

But Why Ms. Albright?

Not everyone was hoodwinked however. Even before the “Summit” was held, Amnesty realized it had a PR problem as a result of its billboard advertisement touting progress in Afghanistan. An Amnesty official tried to put forth a rather lame defense blaming an accidental poor choice of wording.

But many readers (and AI members) posted critical comments and questions, including concerns about Albright’s involvement given her infamous defense of Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, which were estimated to have caused the deaths of a half million Iraqi children, with the comment “we think the price is worth it.”

Under the blogger’s explanation: “We Get It / Human Rights Now,” there were comments like these:

…Could someone from AI please explain why Madeleine Albright was invited to participate in this event? We (and especially those of us who are familiar with AI) should all be able to understand that the wording on the poster was a genuine, albeit damaging, mistake. But why Ms. Albright? The posters are pro-NATO and play into prevailing tropes about so called “humanitarian intervention” via “think of the women & children” imagery. The posters & the forum that includes Albright are neither slight slips nor without context. AI is coping heat because they have miss-stepped dramatically. There is NOTHING subtle about either the imagery nor the message! It is not a case of “oh sorry we didn’t realize it it could be interpreted that way! They used pro Nato imagery & slogans ahead of & during a controversial summit that has thousands protesting in the streets. Tell me again how that is not taking sides? They asked a notorious apologist for mass murder of children to speak on the right of women and children…tell me again: how is that not taking sides. So it is absolutely reasonable for past supporters (and board members like myself) to be asking how it is that Amnesty USA so lost its bearings they could make a critical SERIES of errors like this?

Of course the defensive AI blog author never answered the numerous questions asking why Amnesty had chosen Madeleine Albright as their main speaker. So we will venture an answer that probably lies in the fact that all of the powerful feminist-war hawks who have risen to become Secretary of State (or are waiting in the wings) are now taking their lead from the ruthless Grand Dame who paved the way for them, Madeleine Albright — (see Coleen Rowley’s recent blogs: “Obama’s New ‘Atrocity Prevention Board’: Reasons for Skepticism” and “Militarization of the Mothers: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother’s Day for Peace“).

It’s also possible the highest ranks of the feminist wing of military interventionism (i.e. Madeleine Albright, Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, et al.) are so passionate and hubristic about the nobility of their goal and “Amercan exceptionalism” that some have simply succumbed to a kind of almost religious (blind faith) type fervor.

The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

Nossel’s and Albright’s theories are flawed in many ways but suffice it to say that democracies are actually not less prone to war. A long list of “democracies” — including Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, the United Kingdom, France and the United States itself — disprove this assertion.

In any event, the U.S. has been terribly hypocritical in its support of “democracies” in foreign countries, often toppling or attempting to topple them (i.e. Iran’s Mossadeqh, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende) in order to gain easier control of a foreign country through an allied dictatorship.

No one is going to argue that the goals of humanitarianism, preventing atrocities and furthering women’s rights around the world are not “good and necessary” (in the words of the CIA strategic communications expert). We would go so far as to say these ARE truly noble causes!

Testimonials about human rights’ abuse are often true and fundamentalist regimes’ treatment of women seems to vary only in degrees of horrible. But while it’s true that many women lack rights in Afghanistan, some would argue that it’s conveniently true. And that the best lies are always based on a certain amount of truth.

The devil, however, lies in the details of promoting equality and accomplishing humanitarianism. Most importantly the ends, even noble ends, never justify wrongful means. In fact, when people such as Samantha Power decide to bomb the village (Libya) to save it, it will backfire on a pragmatic level.

It must be realized that it is the nobility of the U.S.-NATO’s motivation that — as CIA propaganda department has advised — should be relied upon to convince otherwise good-hearted people (especially women) to support (or at least tolerate) war and military occupation (now known to encompass the worst of war crimes, massacres of women and children, torture, cutting off body parts of those killed, as well as increasing mental illness, self-destructive behavior and suicides among U.S. soldiers and the corresponding cover-ups of all such horrible means).

In the decades after Vietnam, a number of military scholars identified declining American public support for that war as the main factor responsible for the U.S. “losing” Vietnam. One lesson learned and quickly implemented was to get rid of the military draft and put the wars on a credit card so fewer citizens would pay attention.

Some control also had to be gained over the type of free media (that led to trusted TV anchor Walter Cronkite broadcasting his public souring on the Vietnam War). A whole series of war propaganda systems, from planting retired generals as “talking heads” on TV to the assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld deciding to “embed the media,” have worked pretty well to maintain the necessary level of war momentum in mainstream media and amongst public opinion.

But now, with American polls approaching the same problematic levels as those in Europe cited by the “CIA Red Cell,” we suddenly see major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (as well as others) applauding Obama’s (and the feminist war-hawks’) “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

Such sleight of hand seems to work even better amongst political partisans. By the way, it should be noted that Congress may allow these Pentagon propagandists to target American citizens through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. Should we connect the dots?

There are some clear lines where the laudable need to further human rights should not be twisted into justifying harsh economic sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of children or, even worse, “shock and awe” aerial bombing that takes the lives of the women and children the “humanitarian” propagandists say they want to help.

Madeleine Albright’s response about the deaths of a half million children on 60 Minutes, that “the price was worth it,” illustrates the quintessential falsity of what ethicists call “act utilitarianism” or concocting fictional happy outcomes to justify the terrible wrongful means.

It also seems that a human rights NGO, in this case Amnesty International, which had gained a solid reputation and hence the trust of those it has helped through the years, will be jeopardized in aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO.

This is exactly how the Nobel Peace Prize got corrupted, aligning itself with the U.S. Secretary of State and NATO, which is why Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire withdrew from the Nobel Peace forum held in Chicago during NATO.

Good NGOS and non-profits that want to maintain the trust in their humanitarian work tend to be very careful to maintain their independence from any government, let alone any war-making government. When NGOs, even good ones, become entwined with the U.S./NATO war machine, don’t they risk losing their independent credibility?

Using NGOs to Coerce Nations

by Sandhya Jain

Source: The Pioneer

May 8, 2012

Western nations fund NGOs operating in developing countries to influence policy and subvert institutions. India does not need foreign-funded NGOs.

NATO’s Slow Genocide in Libya: Syria is Next

What the world has to look forward to if NATO and the UN gets its way in Syria

April 19, 2012

by Tony Cartalucci| Land Destroyer

Global Civilians For Peace In Libya

Image: The people of Tawargha are Libyans and have been Libyan for generations, settling there from sub-Saharan Africa. They have been brutally persecuted by the NATO-armed terrorists now running Libya. In Syria, expect these to be Alawite, Christian, and secular faces.

….

One group of Libyans hit hardest are the people of Tawargha – who were either exterminated or exiled from their city of 10,000-30,000 during the NATO-led destruction of Libya last year. Since then, their refugee camps have been raided, and survivors who have not yet fled Libya are being systematically imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.

Now, the very network of corporate-funded and directed NGOs charged with “human rights advocacy,” who assisted the Libyan rebels in willfully lying to the world over violations of “human rights” in the lead up to NATO’s military intervention, are finally reporting the widespread atrocities being carried out by the rebels themselves. In fact, organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, both funded by convicted criminal and Wall Street speculator, George Soros, began reporting such atrocities back in 2011, but only long after NATO bombs were already falling on Libya and the process of “regime change” was already irreversible. And, at critical junctures, such as the sieges of Bani Walid and Sirte, where NATO itself was committing systematic war crimes by air in tandem with terrorist forces on the ground – organizations like HRW and Amnesty International were altogether mute. →

NGOs Promote Wars for Profit

Well-known NGO’s are profiteers earning big money

opednews.com

by Stephen Lendman 

CSI challenges interventionist notions. Exponents believe “military violence” should enforce international law.

“These claims stand in contrast to” non-interventionist principles. UN Charter provisions and other international law enunciate them. CSI challenges current practice. Its new report discussed Libya.

It explains how lies promote war. It asked if “the case for R2P (responsibility to protect was) based on fraud.” It wasn’t on truth and international law. Its rage to fight spurned them.

The UN Charter’s Chapter VI calls for resolving conflicts peacefully. Humanitarian intervention prohibits military force or other hostile acts.

Chapter VII permits justifiable boycotts, embargoes, blockades, and severed diplomatic ties. It prohibits war, except in self-defense until the Security Council acts. It has final say.

Libyan interventionists claimed doing so protected civilian areas from attack. In 2005, the General Assembly World Summit Outcome Document adopted the responsibility to protect (R2P).

Paragraph 138 states each nation must “protect (its) population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.”Paragraph 139 grants the UN responsibility “to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from” these crimes.

Military force is excluded. UN Charter provisions prohibit it for humanitarian intervention. Justifying it under R2P is illegal. War crimes follow. So does profiteering. War is big business. NGOs like corporate predators cash in.

The web site ngo.org defines them as follows:

“A non-governmental organization (NGO) is any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national or international level.”

“Task-oriented and driven by people with a common interest, NGOs perform a variety of service and humanitarian policies and encourage political participation through provision of information.”

“Some are organized around specific issues, such as human rights, environment or health. They provide analysis and expertise, serve as early warning mechanisms and help monitor and implement international agreements.”

“Their relationship with offices and agencies of the United Nations system differs depending on their goals, their venue and the mandate of a particular institution.”

Other definitions call them non-political groups, advancing social/humanitarian objectives. In fact, most profiteer largely for themselves. They’re ideologically biased predators, not humanitarians.

Nearly all have entrenched bureaucracies. Their officials are highly paid. Their operating rules are secret. Their financing sources and amounts are undisclosed. They mostly come from domestic or foreign nations whose interests they serve. As agents, they perform PR, intelligence, and population control. Most don’t provide humanitarian services.

They all claim non-profit status, yet operate unethically. They collude with governments or business interests. Their profiteer handsomely, own unrelated businesses, and exploit people they claim to serve.

In many countries, they’re the preferred choice for Western aid and emergency relief. They provide cover for imperial intervention. They cash in handsomely from wars, floods, famines, earthquakes, and other disasters. “Non-profiteering” is big business.

Universal Periodic Review (UPR)

In 2006, General Assembly Resolution 60-251 established the Human Rights Council (HRC) and authorized UPR. Three adopted “mechanisms” were decisive for Libya:

(1) Paragraph 1 established HRC.

(2) Paragraph 8 opened HRC membership to all UN Member States based on their contribution to promoting and protecting human rights. The General Assembly, by a two-thirds vote, may suspend member rights based on gross, systematic violations.

(3) Paragraph 10 authorized regular HRC annual sessions, including special ones when needed on request from one member supported by one-third of the Council.

UPR periodically examines the human rights record of all Member States. In 2009, the Non-Aligned Movement stated:

HRC “should not be used as a tool to interfere in the internal affairs of States or to question their political, economic, and social systems, their sovereign rights, and their national, religious and cultural particularities.”

In October 2005, the General Assembly adopted the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle. On February 26 and March 17, 2011, the Security Council adopted two Libya resolutions.

Even though Tripoli wasn’t an International Criminal Court (ICC) member, the first gave the body jurisdiction over ongoing events. The second authorized “all necessary measures” to “protect civilians,” as well as no-fly zone cover. Doing so was an act of war. It followed almost immediately.

“The Libyan case is a very good example of (lawlessly) interfer(ing) in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

Armed insurgents were supported and legitimized. Libya had no say. Claims made before HRC about massacres and other atrocities were falsified. Nonetheless, UN resolutions followed. So did war, mass slaughter and vast destruction.

“NGOs and others invoke (R2P). But what responsibility do these bodies, and the states which use military force, have for the consequences of their acts?”

In May 2010, the NGOs Freedom House and UN Watch campaigned against electing Libya but lost. Both organizations serve Western and Israeli interests. Former American Jewish Committee (AJC) honorary president, Morris Abram, founded UN Watch. AJC is a pro-Israeli front group

UN Watch wanted Libya expelled from HRC. On March 1, 2011, the General Assembly supported its campaign based on lies. HRC’s January 4, 2011 UPR was ignored.

It praised Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya governance. It said it protected “not only political rights, but also economic, educational, social and cultural rights.” It also lauded his treatment of religious minorities, and “human rights training” given his security forces.

On February 21, 2011, the Libyan League for Human Rights got 70 other NGOs to petition Obama, E.U. High Representative Catherine Ashton, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

They demanded international action against Libya. They cited R2P. Of the 71 petitioners, only 25 were human right groups. Others included UN Watch, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), B’nai B’rith, and other anti-democratic organizations.

They demanded an emergency HRC Special Session “to address situations of gross and systematic violations of human rights.” They called for the General Assembly to suspend Libya’s Council membership.

On February 25, 2011, a Special Session was held. Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) head Sliman Bouchuiguir called for international community action against Gaddafi. LLHR is a member of the French-based International Federal of Human Rights (FIDH). It’s closely tied to NED.

Its claims later proved to be false. No documentation existed. The puppet National Transitional Council (NTC) provided them. They said Gaddafi slaughtered thousands, and mercenaries comprised 80% of his military.

Nonetheless, based on falsified NGO claims, Libya was expelled from HRC. At the same time, other nations supported its Jamahiriya government. Brazil cited its economic and social progress.

It acknowledged its promotion of rights for disabled persons, free health care, and high primary education enrollment. It also noted its cooperation with international organizations in areas of migrant rights, judicial reform, and curbing corruption.

Malta and Tunisia also expressed support. They acknowledged Jamahiriya Green Charter freedoms and achievements.

On March 14, 2012, when it was too late to matter, HRC adopted its report praising Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya government. UN Watch protested. It demanded it be rescinded. It said “Libya’s long-suffering victims deserve no less.” It ignored generous benefits NATO destroyed.

Amnesty International (AI) also called HRC’s decision “abhorrent.” Its head, Suzanne Nossel, served as Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations. She’s also a former Human Rights Watch (HRW) CEO.

Like AI, HRW’s record is notoriously tainted. Both supported NATO’s Libya’s campaign. It turned peace and stability into charnel house disaster. These organizations and others like them often back oppressors, not victims.

Media Complicity with Political and NGO Lies

On February 21, 2011, the government controlled French International News Network (France 24) broadcast a Libya special. It falsely claimed Gaddafi’s planes bombed civilian areas. At a later French parliament session, Sarkozy’s Tripoli ambassador refuted the account.

At the same time, falsified claims about “African mercenaries” comprising 80% of Gaddafi’s military were made. AI’s Genevieve Garrigos supported what she later said was based solely on unsubstantiated rumors.

Ashur Shamis is a National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) founding member. He was wanted by Interpol and Libyan police for years. He also was an NED Libyan Human and Political Development Forum director. He actively participated in regime change conferences.

Aly Abuzaakouk is another NFSL member with close NED ties. Like Shamis, he’s a wanted man. Among other anti-Gaddafi guests, Al Jazeera featured him during NATO’s campaign. Broadcasting falsified managed news, it shamelessly serves imperial interests.

In 2011, London-based Chatham House, a pro-corporate think tank, discussed NATO plans for attacking Libya.

A Final Comment

Libya was targeted based on falsified, undocumented NGO claims, as well as similar ones by NED and other pro-Western organizations.

“The lack of investigation, and the non-existence of any process to question (NGO assertions) inside the Council (became) one of the main causes for the events which cost the lives of thousands of Libyans” killed during NATO’s campaign.”Non-interventionism….is a way to guarantee Peace, Democracy and Freedom.”

“The Libyan case shows the reality behind” R2P.  The doctrine destroyed peace. Thousands died. Vast destruction was caused. Libyan sovereignty was lost.

NATO committed war crimes. HRC betrayed its mandate. So did the Security Council, General Assembly and ICC. R2P is “an instrument of domination.” International bodies are imperial tools.

Stronger states crush weaker ones. International law’s a non-starter. “Russia’s recent position on Syria is a step in the right direction.” It bought “breathing space” to slow another march to war. Stopping it’s another matter.

The same NGOs behind Libya’s war want another on Syria. Their earlier pattern’s repeated. It features undocumented allegations, spurning dialogue, and enlisting UN support.

“How can such interference and lack of rigor bring peace to international relations? How can these ideas claim to” support humanitarianism? How can UN bodies go along? How can they contemptuously dismiss their inviolable mandate to support peace?

These and other questions deserve answers. Complicit Member States and NGOs provide none. One war leads to another. Syria’s turn is next. Like Gaddafi, Saddam, and other Washington targets, vilifying Assad’s based on lies.

How long before bombs away repeats? How many more deaths will follow? How much more can be tolerated? When will most Member States say no more? When will peacemakers triumph? Humanity wants to know. Time’s running out for answers.

NGO crackdown: Egypt Denies Licenses to 8 U.S.-based Non-profits

By Anne Sewell

Libya & the Left | NATO, Rebels & ‘Revolutionary’ Apologists

The International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT)

Feb 17,2012

“In a line aimed at the region’s other despots, the president said, ‘Today’s events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end.’

“Asked if that sends a message to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who has mounted a brutal crackdown on protesters, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney simply restated existing policy that Assad ‘has lost his legitimacy to rule.’”
—New York Post, 21 October 2011

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden compared the outcome in Libya to earlier, less successful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“In this case, America spent $2 billion total and didn’t lose a single life. This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.”
—Ibid.

Israeli journalist Orly Azoulay praised Obama’s “new war doctrine,” pointing to the integration of “massive air power” and “local rebel forces”:

“General Gaddafi’s death is yet another victory for the new war doctrine adopted by United States President Barack Obama: No ground forces in enemy countries, but rather, utilizing massive air power—including drones—in order to pulverize enemy strongholds. In Libya’s case at least, this doctrine also included cooperation with local rebel forces.”
—Ynetnews.com, 21 October 2011

This is a fair summary of events in Libya—“massive air power” destroyed the armed bodies loyal to Qaddafi and opened the door for local quislings to scramble to fill the vacuum. Yet things do not always go according to plan, and it is sometimes easier to depose an existing regime than to impose a viable successor, as NATO discovered in Afghanistan a decade ago.

In both Libya and Afghanistan, the immediate result of “regime change” was the installation of new puppet leaders with strong American connections. Afghan President Hamid Karzai—who was appointed leader at a conference in Bonn, Germany in December 2001—had worked with the CIA as a fundraiser for the anti-Soviet mujahedin 20 years earlier. Libya’s new prime minister, Abdurraheem el-Keib, who holds American citizenship, attended school in the U.S. and taught at the University of Alabama before moving to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to chair the Electrical Engineering Department at the Petroleum Institute, where his research was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. With this background, he seems well qualified to oversee the return of Libya’s oil and gas fields (which had been nationalized under Qaddafi in the early 1970s) to Western control.

For Military Defense of Neocolonies Against Imperialist Attack!

Marxists, unlike social democrats, unconditionally defend the right of subjugated nations to resist the predations of the “advanced capitalist” global powers. In 1956, revolutionaries backed Egypt against a joint British/French/Israeli intervention aimed at reversing the nationalization of the Suez Canal. When the U.S./UK and others attacked Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later, Marxists took sides—despite the reactionary character of the regimes headed by Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein.

The attack on Libya, like the earlier interventions in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq, was preceded by a barrage of lies—in this case focused on claims of a wholesale slaughter of civilians by the Qaddafi regime following the 17 February 2011 “Day of Rage” protest. The chief source for these reports was Al Jazeera, the news agency operated by the rulers of Qatar, who supplied weapons and hundreds of soldiers to the insurgents. The lurid tales of “massacres” of civilians by the Libyan air force turned out to be grossly exaggerated.

On 2 March 2011, two weeks before the bombs began to fall, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional subcommittee “that the Pentagon has no confirmation that Libyan strongman Muammar al Qaddafi is using his air force to kill civilians” (CBS News, 2 March 2011). On 22 March 2011, after the bombing had commenced, USA Today carried an article by Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas noting that, “Despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence, a claim that smacks of rebel propaganda.” Two weeks later Richard Haass, president of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, wrote that the “evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent” in Libya (Huffington Post, 6 April 2011).

It is now clear that there was no more “genocide” in Libya than “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq in 2003. Justifying military aggression with lies is a time-honored practice, as Adolf Hitler reminded his top commanders on 22 August 1939, as final preparations were underway for attacking Poland:

“I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war, whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth. When starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.”
—quoted in Hitler and Stalin, Alan Bullock

This has certainly been the case in Libya. No one in the bourgeois media has shown much concern about following up on stories of civilian massacres by the regime, which had been so important in legitimizing military intervention. The fact that much of the international “revolutionary” left eagerly swallowed and regurgitated this imperialist propaganda—and has yet to admit they were hoodwinked—testifies to their political adaptation to the capitalist social order.

The UN Security Council, professing profound concerns about the well-being of ordinary Libyans, used these tales to justify the imposition of sanctions, the freezing of Libyan assets abroad and the creation of a “no-fly zone.” The latter resulted in the insertion of NATO airpower into what had previously been a civil war between the Qaddafi regime and imperialist-linked dissidents centered in Benghazi.

Estimates of total casualties inflicted by the 9,600 “humanitarian” bombing sorties carried out by British, French and other NATO aircraft from April to October 2011 vary considerably, but it is generally agreed that thousands of Libyans were killed (many of them civilians) and many thousands more seriously wounded. NATO bombs massively damaged Libya’s infrastructure and displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes. The pretence that this destruction was motivated by a desire to “protect” civilians is belied by the casual indifference with which victims of NATO’s air war have been treated.

After months of bitter conflict, the cumulative effect of the imperialist bombardment (supplemented by opposition militias aided by hundreds of foreign special forces) succeeded in decimating Qaddafi’s military. According to many accounts, the most effective indigenous forces fighting the regime were Islamists, some of them linked to Al Qaeda. For the most part, however, the “rebels” were not a major factor, apart from their value in drawing fire from Qaddafi’s forces, who thereby made it easier for NATO airstrikes to target them. The role of the ragtag anti-Qaddafi fighters, like the politicians of the Transitional National Council (TNC—aka National Transitional Council), who enjoyed the backing of the imperialists from the start, was to put a Libyan face on “regime change.”

In a 1915 pamphlet entitled, “Socialism and War,” the great Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin declared that in cases of imperialist military attacks (“humanitarian” or otherwise) on neocolonial countries, “every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slaveowning, predatory ‘great’ powers.” There is no ambiguity: revolutionaries militarily side with oppressed countries against imperialist attack regardless of the crimes (real or imagined) of the ruling regime. When Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935, Leon Trotsky immediately responded: “Of course, we are for the defeat of Italy and the victory of Ethiopia” (“The Italo-Ethiopian Conflict,” 17 July 1935). The fact that chattel slavery persisted under the regime of Haile Selassie was irrelevant:

“If Mussolini triumphs, it means the reinforcement of fascism, the strengthening of imperialism, and the discouragement of the colonial peoples in Africa and elsewhere. The victory of the Negus, however, would mean a mighty blow not only at Italian imperialism but at imperialism as a whole, and would lend a powerful impulsion to the rebellious forces of the oppressed peoples. One must really be completely blind not to see this.”
—”On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo,” 22 April 1936

NATO’s victory over Qaddafi, by vindicating Obama’s supposed “new war doctrine” for U.S. imperialism, helps pave the way for future aggression in Africa and the Middle East. The eagerness with which the overwhelming majority of the world’s self-proclaimed “Trotskyist” organizations accepted the imperialist narrative graphically illustrates their distance from the political heritage they claim to represent. Instead of forthrightly standing for the military victory of Qaddafi’s forces over NATO and its proxies, these revisionists supported the latter as representing a “revolutionary” movement or, at best, adopted a position of effective neutrality. In doing so, they turn their backs on the anti-imperialism of the Communist International under Lenin and Trotsky.

Rationalizing Support for Imperialist Auxiliaries

Probably the most overtly pro-imperialist position was taken by the British Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), which blandly observed:

“The most far-reaching of the [North African] uprisings so far has been in Libya. Of course it is unusual in that its ultimate success was dependent on military intervention by NATO.”

•     •     •

“Successful campaigning by the Western left to prevent NATO intervention would have flown in the face of the express wishes of the revolutionary movement itself, and resulted in a massacre in Benghazi which would have been a tragedy in itself but also an enormous defeat for the ‘Arab Spring’ as a whole.

“Workers’ Liberty didn’t oppose the [NATO] intervention.”
—5 October 2011

The AWL’s characterization of the motley collection of long-time imperialist assets, Islamic reactionaries and defectors from the Qaddafi regime in Benghazi as the leaders of a “revolutionary” movement whose wishes had to be respected was widely shared by many supposedly Trotskyist groups, although most were less candid about NATO’s central role in the conflict and less willing to spell out the ultimate logic of their position. Instead, they employed varying combinations of factual misrepresentation, non sequiturs and special pleading in awkward attempts to maintain some pretence of “anti-imperialist” orthodoxy while supporting NATO’s “rebel” proxies (who were falsely equated with the courageous youth who had earlier brought down the hated pro-imperialist dictators in Tunisia and Egypt).

Alan Woods, a leading figure in the ultra-opportunist International Marxist Tendency (IMT), was among those offering the most unqualified endorsement of NATO’s Benghazi allies:

“[Frederick] Engels explained that the state is armed bodies of men. In Benghazi and other cities controlled by the rebels, the old state has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by the armed people, revolutionary militias, which Lenin said were the embryo of a new state power.”
—“Uprising in Libya: Tremble, tyrants!,” 23 February 2011

An essentially similar, if slightly more restrained, assessment was advanced by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI—from which the IMT split in 1992), which also characterized the Benghazi uprising as a “revolution” while warning that it might be “hijacked by remnants of the Qaddafi regime, pro-bourgeois opposition ‘leaders’, reactionary tribal leaders and imperialist interests” (“Gaddafi must go! It’s a fight to the finish,” 28 February 2011). A few weeks later the CWI was denouncing the UN “no-fly” zone as an imperialist military intervention:

“The UN Security Council’s majority decision to enact a militarily-imposed ‘no-fly-zone’ against Libya, while greeted with joy on the streets of Benghazi and Tobruk, is in no way intended to defend the Libyan revolution. Revolutionaries in Libya may think that this decision will help them, but they are mistaken. Naked economic and political calculations lay behind the imperialist powers’ decision.”
—“No to Western Military Intervention—Victory to the Libyan Revolution—Build an Independent Movement of Workers and Youth!,” 19 March 2011

While recognizing that “The largely self-appointed ‘National Council’ that emerged in Benghazi is a combination of elements from the old regime and more pro-imperialist elements” (Ibid.), the CWI continued to hail the supposed “Libyan revolution” spearheaded by the TNC.

The CWI’s competitors in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) took an essentially similar approach—touting the “revolution” while warning that appeals to the West for funds and NATO air support invited imperialist “blackmail”:

“Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC), the body that grew out of the revolution, made a series of simple demands in the first crucial days of the uprising. It asked for the recognition of the TNC, access to the billions in sequestrated regime funds in order to buy weapons and other crucial supplies, and an immediate halt to the ‘mercenary flights’ that provided Gaddafi’s regime with its foot soldiers.”

•     •     •

“The West, in effect, blackmailed the revolution.”
—Socialist Worker, 26 March 2011

Like the IMT and CWI, the SWP treated the 17 February 2011 protests that kicked off the revolt as largely spontaneous in origin:

“Inspired by the events in Egypt and Tunisia, a loose network of young activists joined by notables, among them judges and respected lawyers, called for peaceful protests on 17 February. These protests, despite the modest demands, turned into the first public displays of opposition to the regime.”
—Socialist Review, April 2011

In fact, it was not “a loose network of young activists” but rather the imperialist-linked National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO—subsequently subsumed by the TNC) that initiated the 17 February demonstrations, as the SWP subsequently admitted. While not explicitly repudiating its previous claim that the protests had originated with “a loose network of young activists,” the May 2011 issue of Socialist Review stated that: “Exiles in the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition coordinated with dissidents to plan a ‘Day of Rage’ for 17 February.” There was no need to “blackmail” the NCLO, an organization whose founders included people with a long-standing connection with the CIA, as documented in our 1 April 2011 statement (see “Defeat the Imperialists!” reprinted on 37).

The “Trotskyist” publicists for the Benghazi rebels initially brushed off reports of support for the imposition of a “no-fly” zone and played up expressions by the TNC of formal opposition to foreign military intervention. For example, on 1 March 2011, the IMT wrote:

“According to Al Jazeera, Abdel Fattah Younes, Libya’s former interior minister who defected to the opposition, has stated that the idea that the people would welcome foreign troops was ‘out of the question.’

“This has been confirmed by Hafiz Ghoga, spokesperson of the newly formed ‘National Libyan Council’ [i.e., TNC] that has been set up in Benghazi. Ghoga is quoted as saying: ‘We are completely against foreign intervention. The rest of Libya will be liberated by the people…and Gaddafi’s security forces will be eliminated by the people of Libya.’”
—”No to imperialist intervention in Libya”

The TNC’s initial posture of opposition to Western intervention may have been motivated by a desire to consolidate popular support and rebut the regime’s (essentially correct) claim that the leaders of the revolt were in league with foreign interests whose chief objective was to re-appropriate Libya’s fossil fuel resources. During the first few weeks, several prominent figures (including both the justice and interior ministers) defected, and the Benghazi rebels, along with their backers, may well have hoped that the regime would simply implode. As Qaddafi’s loyalists regained their balance and moved to recapture Benghazi, the TNC began desperately demanding NATO air cover. The fact that this shift apparently failed to produce any sort of rift within the rebel camp refutes the narrative of a hijacked revolution.

There was, in fact, no “Libyan revolution”—the Benghazi revolt was, at its core, an expression of a long-standing division among the traditional ruling elites in which an unstable amalgam of monarchists and former Qaddafi loyalists (joined by cadres of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) made a bid for power. Their revolt tapped a deep well of popular anger and resentment, and most of the TNC’s supporters doubtless imagined that they were involved in another chapter of the “Arab Spring” which had already toppled dictators in the region. But the revolt in Libya had a different character right from the outset, which explains the enthusiastic support from Washington, Paris and other NATO capitals.

By mid-March 2011, as the bombing was about to commence, even the IMT expressed some uneasiness about the character of the “rebel” leaders they had been promoting:

“These people successfully stepped into the vacuum of leadership that emerged in Benghazi when the state collapsed in the face of the revolution, but rather than strengthening the revolution, they weaken it. There are also Islamists, who can be of no appeal to working people in the cities. There are human rights activists and pro-democracy groups, whose main objective is some kind of bourgeois democracy, but who do not take into account the social and economic demands of ordinary working people. Side by side with all these there is the revolutionary youth and the working class and poor.”
—”Why has the revolution stalled in Libya?,” 17 March 2011

A few weeks later the IMT downgraded its assessment of the “rebel leaders” even further, comparing them to “the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the Maliki regime in Iraq”:

“This brings us to the role played by the Interim Council that was established in Benghazi. This Council was thrown up by a situation in which the masses had brought down state power, but did not know what to replace it with. There was a de facto power vacuum created. In this situation accidental elements came to the fore, who are now clearly playing a counter-revolutionary role.”
—”Libyan Interim Government—agents of imperialism,” 1 April 2011

The TNC leadership was indeed counterrevolutionary, but it was hardly “accidental”—it was made up of representatives of most opposition formations, including the initiators of the 17 February “Day of Rage.”

In October 2011, as the imperialists celebrated Qaddafi‘s murder, Alan Woods was still blathering about a continuing “Libyan Revolution”:

“It is a confused and contradictory situation, the outcome of which is as yet unclear. On the one hand, the mass movement, including the working class, is pushing for its own demands. On the other hand, the bourgeois elements are manoeuvring with the imperialists to take control of the situation. The main motor force of the Revolution is the young rebel fighters who are honest and courageous but also confused and disoriented and can be manipulated by the fundamentalists and other demagogues.”
—”After the death of Gaddafi: Revolution and counterrevolution in Libya,” 21 October 2011

The essential elements of the situation were clear enough—NATO had orchestrated a low-overhead “regime change” in Libya, designed to reopen its oil and gas fields for foreign exploitation. However “confused and disoriented” young Libyans may have been, it is hard to imagine that they were more befuddled than those IMT members who took Woods’s brainless objectivism seriously.

Unlike the IMT, many former boosters of the TNC-led “Libyan revolution” had some inkling that when Tripoli fell, it was the imperialists, not the Libyan masses, who had come out on top. The British SWP, for example, schizophrenically “celebrated” Qaddafi’s fall while acknowledging that the main beneficiaries were likely to be Western oil corporations:

“The end of Gaddafi’s regime is a cause for celebration. He will be the third Arab dictator to fall this year.

“But the nature of the struggle in Libya is now fundamentally different from the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that originally inspired it. It became so once Western forces decided to appropriate it.”

•     •     •

“The imperialist powers hijacked the Libyan revolt and bent it to their own needs. They forced the new rebel authority in Benghazi to reaffirm trade contracts and international oil deals.”
—Socialist Worker, 20 August 2011

Other groups also pushed the notion of a “hijacked” revolution. The French Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA), which in March 2011 had co-signed a declaration with the Stalinist Communist Party and others demanding that French imperialism recognize the TNC, issued a 21 August 2011 statement insisting that while events in Libya had paralleled the “revolutionary processes underway in Tunisia and in Egypt,” somehow “under cover of a resolution from the UN, the member countries of NATO attempted to hijack the process underway by an aerial military intervention.”

Socialist Action (SA), an American group historically linked to the NPA, also hailed the Libyan “revolution,” but attempted to give its backing of the TNC a leftist spin by offering “political support in their fight against the quislings who would turn over Libya to imperialist intervention” (Socialist Action, March 2011). The fact that the TNC quislings were soon actively demanding imperialist intervention presumably contributed to SA’s eventual decision to rethink its position. But as NATO was preparing to go in, Socialist Action (along with the rest of what remains of the late Ernest Mandel’s “United Secretariat of the Fourth International” [USec]), was critical of “the role of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro in their one-sided, if correct, denunciation of imperialism’s interests and intentions in this affair, while denying or ignoring Qaddafi’s repression and murders” (Ibid.). It is hardly surprising that such left-nationalist or Stalinist bonapartists (whom SA and the USec have fawned over for years) were not particularly concerned by Qaddafi’s anti-democratic transgressions. But at least they understood what the imperialists were up to and did not ascribe a transcendent “revolutionary” dynamic to the TNC.

Socialist Action‘s line change (which they have yet to acknowledge as such) was not made public until after Tripoli had fallen to the TNC/NATO alliance in August. In a 2 September 2011 statement entitled, “Imperialist Victory Is No Gain For Libyan People,” Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action’s leading figure, wrote:

“In the early days of these mass protests, there were unmistakable but only modest indications of the independent character of at least a portion of the anti-Gadhafi leadership, as when anti-government protesters unfurled massive banners from rooftops, declaring, ‘No Foreign Intervention: The Libyan People Can Manage It Alone.’ Even then, it was not always clear whether opposition to foreign intervention referred to troops on the ground only, since major elements of the opposition had announced early on, and even demanded, support by U.S./NATO forces and a ‘no-fly zone.’”

At a point when it appeared that the Qaddafi regime might melt down, it made sense for the leaders of the TNC lash-up to assert their preference for rearranging Libyan society without foreign supervision. However, as soon as Qaddafi’s supporters proved capable of organizing a serious counter-offensive, the TNC’s tune changed. In his statement, Mackler acknowledged the abrupt shift in attitude:

“Whatever self-organization was evidenced in the earliest days of the mass protest was essentially spontaneous and created to organize the distribution of food and the coordination of vital services as Gadhafi’s forces bombarded Benghazi. We have yet to see any indication that these organizational forms gave rise to or were based on independent political forces aiming at developing a program to advance the interests of the masses. Nor is there evidence that they took on the task of consolidating an alternative to the leading bourgeois and pro-imperialist forces, which fully understood the need to rush to the ‘leadership’ of the mass movement.

“Given the political void among the anti-Gadhafi forces, the TNC was quickly recognized as the nation’s ‘legal’ government….The Europeans’ and Americans’ public pretensions of ‘protecting civilians’ from Gadhafi’s forces rapidly gave way to their real objectives—‘regime change’ pure and simple.”

Characterizing the conflict after NATO’s intervention as an “imperialist-led conquest of Libya,” the SA statement continues:

“The right of self-determination of all oppressed nations, even those led by heinous dictators, must be supported as against imperialist interventions. Imperialism’s defeat in any confrontation with oppressed nations weakens its capacity for future interventions and opens the door wider for others to follow suit. While revolutionary socialists have every right and obligation to criticize and oppose dictatorships everywhere, these criticisms are subordinate to the defeat of imperialist intervention and war. Revolutionaries are not neutral in such confrontations. We are always for the defeat of the imperialist intervener and would-be colonizer.”

This implies, but stops short of explicitly stating, that socialists should have taken a position of militarily supporting Qaddafi’s forces against the imperialists and their TNC proxies (rather than pretending that a revolution was unfolding as Socialist Action and its co-thinkers did). Mackler’s statement also fails to acknowledge the role of the CIA-connected NCLO in organizing the original “Day of Rage,” and instead treats the Benghazi events as essentially spontaneous in origin. He does, however, note that with the TNC’s ascension to power, “we are compelled to recognize the tragic truth that a severe defeat has been inflicted on the Libyan people”:

“Today the imperialist boot is on the ground in Libya and deeply implanted. The Libyan masses have not been liberated. Thousands have been killed. Imperialism’s sights are now focused on doing the same in Syria and eventually in Iran.”

While belated and inadequate, SA’s line change does at least recognize that the overthrow of Qaddafi was a victory for imperialism and a defeat for working people and the oppressed. This represents a clear shift to the left, the origins and ultimate implications of which remain unclear.

Ken Hiebert, a long-time USec supporter in Canada who is critical of Socialist Action’s change of position, inquired why—if March 2011 marked the beginning of “a six-month imperialist-led onslaught that wrought death and destruction on the Libyan people”—SA was “still calling for Victory to the Uprising! as late as April 28, 2011[?] Why is it that only in the September issue of their paper does SA revise its view?” Hiebert suggests that the logic of SA’s new position means that those groups that wanted to see a victory by Qaddafi’s forces against NATO were “more far-sighted than the leadership of SA.” He also wonders, if “the only force that could oppose the imperialist intervention was the Libyan army, shouldn’t we have been supporting the army and it [sic] leadership?” But thus far, to our knowledge, Socialist Action has not chosen to respond.

To avoid promoting politics that lead to “severe defeats” in future, Socialist Action needs to answer Hiebert’s questions and make an honest accounting of the roots of their original mistake and the process through which they came to reject it. They should also explicitly state that in hindsight they recognize the necessity to side militarily with Qaddafi’s forces against NATO.

WSWS: NATO Defeatist, but not Libyan Defensist

The policy that Socialist Action retrospectively adopted parallels the one arrived at by David North’s World Socialist Web Site (WSWS—aka Socialist Equality Party [SEP]). Initially the WSWS (18 February 2011) observed:

“The events in Libya are part of the uprising that is engulfing the Middle East and North Africa. The protesters themselves draw a parallel between what is happening in Libya and what has already taken place in Egypt and Tunisia.”

There is no question that the mass mobilizations in Tunisia and Egypt resonated in Libya, and doubtless most of those who demonstrated against Qaddafi saw themselves as participating in a revolt inspired by the overturn of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. But it is also indisputable that the 17 February 2011 “Day of Rage” which kicked off the Benghazi uprising was initiated by the NCLO, which was founded by Libyan “dissidents” with long-standing CIA connections.

Unlike the left groups which began by identifying the Benghazi revolt with those in Tunis and Cairo and then proceeded to claim that a good revolt had been “hijacked” by bad elements, the WSWS did not shrink from the unpleasant truth about the pro-imperialist character of its leadership. While still characterizing the rebellion as a “legitimate popular uprising,” the SEP leadership quickly decided that it was morphing into something else:

“What began as a popular revolt against the repressive Gaddafi regime is increasingly being channelled, with the help of an interim administration in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, into the pretext for an imperialist intervention. Such an operation would seek to establish a de facto client state in Libya. It would help imperialist forces assert control over the country’s large oil and gas fields and serve as a bastion of reaction against the working-class uprisings sweeping the entire region, from Morocco to Iraq.”

•     •     •

“Inside Libya, Gaddafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who now heads the opposition National Libyan Council in Benghazi, called for foreign air strikes and a no-fly zone. Citing sources within the council, the New York Times reported that this stance was adopted at a heated council meeting where ‘others strongly disagreed’. There has been deep opposition to such a call within popular protests against Gaddafi, because of fears of a return to neo-colonial rule—fears that Gaddafi is exploiting to posture as a defender of Libyan sovereignty.”
—5 March 2011

When NATO bombing commenced, the question of Libyan sovereignty was indeed clearly posed, and the nature of the conflict changed from being an intra-elite struggle to a fight between a neocolonial regime and a coalition of imperialists and their lackeys. The attitude of Marxists changed accordingly—from defeatism on both sides to military support for Qaddafi and his supporters against the imperialists and their TNC auxiliaries. The WSWS correctly assessed NATO’s intervention as intended:

“to ensure that any regime that replaces Gaddafi serves not the interests of the Libyan people, but rather the demands of Washington and Big Oil. The US hopes to use Libya, moreover, as a base of operations for suppressing revolutionary movements of workers throughout the region.”
—18 March 2011

The next day the WSWS issued the following appeal:

“The World Socialist Web Site calls on workers and young people to reject the war propaganda under a humanitarian guise with the disgust it deserves. The fight against political oppression, social exploitation and war is inseparable from the building of a socialist movement that unites the international working class in a struggle against capitalism and imperialism.”
—19 March 2011

What was missing was a call for military support to Qaddafi’s forces attempting to resist the imperialist assault. This was not an accident—the unwillingness to adopt a Libyan defensist position derives from the SEP’s contention that Lenin’s policy of recognizing the right of all nations to self-determination is no longer applicable. This position was spelled out in a 1994 document entitled, “Marxism, Opportunism and the Balkan Crisis”:

“In politics, terms which had a definite social and class content in one period often come to represent something quite different in the next. This is the case with the slogan of ‘self-determination.’

“Vast changes in world economic and political relations have created corresponding changes in the character of the national movements….

“Can one speak today of the national bourgeoisie of Bosnia, or Kazakhstan or Kashmir seeking to ‘capture the home market,’ thereby creating conditions for the ‘victory of commodity production’ and hence a fuller development of the class struggle?

“On the contrary, these new ethnocentric movements seek the Balkanization of existing states. Rather than proposing to create a home market, they desire more direct economic ties with imperialism and globally-mobile capital. The ‘right to self-determination’ is invoked as a means of advancing the interests of small sections of the local bourgeoisie.”

The political conclusion drawn by the SEP is that “there is no answer to the problems of national divisions” short of socialist revolution. The political logic of such sterile ultimatism was evident in the WSWS treatment of events in Libya. While denouncing the imperialist assault (and accurately describing the TNC as “dominated by recent defectors from the regime, along with CIA assets and other reactionary forces” [24 March 2011]) the SEP’s response was profoundly flawed by its refusal to takes sides in what boiled down to an attempt to re-impose neocolonial rule.

Workers Power—Centrist Confusionism & Imperialist Lackeys

While failing to defend Qaddafi’s forces, the SEP at least pointed out the predatory intent of the NATO powers and their Libyan auxiliaries in the TNC. The same cannot be said for the British Workers Power group (flagship of the League for the Fifth International [L5I]), well known for incongruously combining leftist rhetoric with grossly opportunist positions. It was no surprise to find that Workers Power’s initial take on what it termed the Libyan “revolution” was virtually identical to that of the IMT, CWI, SWP and assorted other revisionists. When NATO started bombing, the L5I loudly denounced the UN-mandated imperialist intervention, while continuing to “unconditionally support” the imperialist quislings of the TNC:

“The rebellion against Gadaffi’s dictatorship deserves unconditional support and that is not altered by the UN decision….

“Those who oppose powerful states have the right to get hold of arms wherever they can and to take advantage of any weaknesses in their oppressors’ situation. That remains true even where the weaknesses are the result of imperialist action. If, under cover of the no-fly zone, Libyan insurgents and revolutionaries can retake positions, undermine the morale or the loyalty of Gadaffi’s troops and even advance on the capital, Tripoli, that is a step forward for the Libyan revolution and should be welcomed.

“At the same time we must oppose the US, British and French attack.”
—“Victory to the Libyan Revolution!,” 19 March 2011

A week later Workers Power sought to explain why, if indeed it opposed the imperialist attack, it refused to side with Qaddafi:

“Others on the left decided to support Gaddafi when the bombs started falling, calling on all the Libyans to form an anti-imperialist united front. This position assumes that the working class should automatically side with those targeted by imperialism, irrespective of political context or the war aims of either side….Are the workers and the poor of Libya supposed to make common cause with Gaddafi so that he can continue his repression of their revolution?”
—“Nato over Libya—the tide begins to turn,” 26 March 2011

Workers Power viewed NATO’s military intervention into what had been a nascent civil war as an opportunity “the forces of the democratic revolution” (i.e., the TNC and its followers) should take advantage of: “It would be bizarre, indeed, to refuse to continue the campaign against Gaddafi’s repressive apparatus because it had been weakened by imperialist action!” (Ibid.). As the months went on, the L5I leadership was compelled to offer a series of shifting rationalizations for supporting NATO’s proxies. In June 2011, the L5I asked: “Are the rebels fighting on the ground simply tools of imperialism? No. First as we have said the NATO powers did not give weapons or munitions to the rebels—i.e. they did not enhance the latter’s independent capacity to overthrow Gaddafi” (“Libya and the struggle against imperialism,” 15 June 2011).

How then to explain the widely-publicized presence of hundreds of NATO and other special forces sent in to stiffen the TNC militias? The article continues:

“Despite having military operations in Libya for three months a direct command structure to liaise between the NATO air force and naval actions and the Benghazi ground forces was only established in early June.”

The existence of a “direct command structure” linking the rebel militias and NATO controllers might seem to most people to be pretty good evidence that the former were being wielded as “tools of imperialism.” Workers Power admitted that the “rebels” not only had a “pro-imperialist counterrevolutionary leadership,” but had been involved in “racist pogroms against sub-Saharan Africans.” Yet none of this made any difference:

“Socialists will always support a genuine mass movement that is fighting for democratic rights against a dictatorship, no matter how ‘anti-imperialist’ their credentials….

“In Poland in the 1980s it was right for socialists to support Solidarnosc as a mass trade-union movement—again despite the pro-capitalist, pro-catholic, policies of its leadership. In France in the Second World War Paris was liberated by a Communist Party led resistance movement that was certainly not anti-imperialist in any sense.

“The crucial perspective within all these social movements is to fight for a revolution within the revolution. Every revolutionary movement carries within it the seeds of a counter-revolution, whether it is the threat of co-option or bureaucratisation. The threat for the Libyan resistance is very real—the TNC is staffed with ex Gaddafi men, pro-privatisation, pro-imperialism and anti-working class.”
—Ibid.

Revolutionary movements are not, as a rule, led by those with “pro-imperialist and anti-working class” programs. In Russia in 1921 there was a “genuine mass movement…fighting for democratic rights against a [Bolshevik] dictatorship” that extended from the confused Kronstadt mutineers to the hardened counterrevolutionary officers of the White Army. The “socialists” who supported this movement (like Workers Power and other leftists who backed Lech Walesa and the rest of the capitalist-restorationist leaders of Poland’s Solidarnosc in 1981) were acting as shills for imperialism. In a polemic aimed at Workers Power written a few years prior to the triumph of counterrevolution in the Soviet bloc, we observed:

“The duty of revolutionists is to tell the truth—not to ascribe ‘revolutionary’ dynamics to reactionary political movements. In following the leadership of Solidarnosc, the bulk of the Polish workers were acting against their own historic class interests.”
—”Solidarnosc: Acid Test for Trotskyists,” 1988

The same could be said of those workers in Libya who identified with the TNC. In a statement marking the triumphant entry of NATO’s proxies into Tripoli, Dave Stockton, one of Workers Power’s founding cadres, wrote:

“Those imperialists who once supported him [Gaddafi] have gone over to opposing him and are trying to bring him down—to them we say: get out of the way, this has nothing to do with you, the people of Libya alone will defeat Gaddafi and his wretched cronies….”
—”Should socialists support the Libyan revolution?,” 22 August 2011

Who was Stockton hoping to fool? The “people of Libya” did not bring down Qaddafi—NATO did, as even the newest recruit to Workers Power must be aware. Stockton neatly encapsulates the rightist thrust of the L5I’s crystallized confusionism by observing: “In conclusion, socialists always oppose imperialism but they do not always support those who are fighting imperialism.”

Contrary to Workers Power, revolutionaries always, and without exception, militarily side with those neocolonial forces resisting imperialist aggression. It is impossible to “always oppose imperialism” without also militarily supporting those who resist attempts to reimpose neocolonial rule, however unpalatable their leaders may be. This policy, which originated with the Third (Communist) International under Lenin, and was upheld by the Fourth International of the 1930s and 1940s, retains all its validity today for reasons Trotsky spelled out over 70 years ago:

“The struggle of the oppressed peoples for national unification and national independence is doubly progressive because, on the one side, this prepares more favorable conditions for their own development, while, on the other side, this deals blows to imperialism. That, in particular, is the reason why, in the struggle between a civilized, imperialist, democratic republic and a backward, barbaric monarchy in a colonial country, the socialists are completely on the side of the oppressed country notwithstanding its monarchy and against the oppressor country notwithstanding its ‘democracy.’

“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims—seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence—with such ideas as ‘safeguarding peace against the aggressors,’ ‘defense of the fatherland,’ ‘defense of democracy,’ etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people.”
—“Lenin and Imperialist War,” 30 December 1938

Did NGOs Help Overthrow Gaddafi? (The Answer Is Yes)

http://youtu.be/WrWC7KDpM5E

LESSONS OF LIBYA FOR THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

AGENT OF CHANGE

The following article is based on a speech I gave at Brunel University at the invitation of the Brunel Socialist and Progressive Society.

With that question in mind, we need to review the recent history of an African nation that goes by the name of Libya – until quite recently known as the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In March last year, the United Nations Security Council established a “no fly zone” – which it turns out is ruling class slang for “brutal war of aggression” – ostensibly to prevent the Libyan government from killing unarmed protestors. A year later, I believe it is fair to say that the results of that war have been nothing short of tragic. →