Arab Spring's first election

“Whatever happens next, I feel like now I exist”, said one man in Tunisia, just after voting. And, indeed, Sunday’s elections in the small country that sparked off the Arab awakening of 2011 have seen an amazing enthusiasm from people, young and old.

Voter turnout exceeded all expectations as over 90% of those who had registered cast their votes. Out of Tunisia’s 10.6 million population, 4.4 have the right to vote. Over the summer 95% of them registered.

A Facebook campaign “Je me suis inscrit – Je vote” was enthusiastically supported and circular red bumper stickers with the motto “ana qayyadtu" – the same message in Arabic – are still decorating walls and cars.

For Tunisians this is an historic moment as the election for a constituent assembly is their first chance to voice their political desires since the overthrow of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, last January. The new assembly has the task of designing a new political system and how the state will relate to its citizens.

The Tunisian political revolution was sparked by the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in the poor south of the country. Mohammed Bouazizi’s sacrifice became the signal for Tunisians to rise up against their oppressive rulers in a revolution which captured the imagination of millions of young Arabs, notably in Egypt where the dictator Mubarak was ousted within weeks.

The movement soon spread from North Africa to Spain and countless other countries which have seen democracy movements rise up.

The prejudice that Arab countries are incapable of embracing a wide range of views and holding truly democratic elections is being well and truly squashed by the seemingly endless and amazingly patient queues outside polling stations around the country.

They have voted for 11,000 candidates from nearly 100 parties for a 217 member constituent assembly in 33 districts of the country in a day which, according to thousands of international and local observers, saw few if any infringements of electoral procedures.

Dr Amor Boubakri, professor of law at the university of Sousse and a member of the Electoral Observatory , said he believed Tunisians have, have succeeded in making the Arab Spring's first election a resounding success.

Boubakri, who was interviewed by Al Jazeera, is confident that election will be a democratic transition, highlighting pluralism, power-sharing, organised opposition and gender inclusiveness as never before.

It is undoubtedly a new phenomenon, “something happening for the first time in Arab culture, as linguist and historian, Hammadi Sammoud has noted. “It is a rite of passage from accepting the things were decided for us to participating. We are creating ourselves.”

Huge problems beset the country, which has 700,000 out of work, a zero growth rate and near-junk status of its bond ratings. There is also a deep north-south divide. The northern coast benefits from tourism, cosmopolitanism and fertile land, while the south – where Bouazizi lived, remains dogged by poverty and under-development.

The people of the south and centre of the country are seen as a silent majority who have hitherto seen themselves as excluded from the entire political system.

Of the political parties, it is likely that al-Nahda (Renaissance), the moderate Turkish-style Islamic party will pick up voters in the coastal cities. But this will be countered by support for the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties and the Progressive Democratic Party.

The large number of political parties and diversity of views is an expression of Tunisia’s unique culture which has seen a synthesis of Ottoman, Arab and Islamic heritages with European influences.

The election is now re-shaping the relations of the citizens with the state. Tunisians know they are being closely watched by their neighbours in Morocco and Libya and more widely around the world. The huge enthusiasm shows a clear desire to take forward the democratic gains of the Tunisia’s January revolution into the social improvements that still elude ordinary people.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Spare us the hypocrisy over Gaddafi

The brutal and sorry end of the Gaddafi era in Libya has brought the expected, sickening outpouring of faked concern in Washington, London and Paris for building democracy in that country and a rewriting of history to suit Nato. Spare us the hypocrisy.

Nato has now bombed the National Transitional Council (NTC) into power. Even yesterday, although Gaddafi was reduced to a handful of supporters in Sirte, French warplanes attacked isolated vehicles trying to flee the area, in clear breach of the UN resolution limited to “protecting civilians”.

The strategic aim was not just access to oil, which Western powers have always had, but to corral the uprising against Gaddafi’s dictatorship and to gain a new foothold in the region in the wake of the Egyptian revolution.

The lynch-mob manner of Gaddafi’s death after his capture, the plans for a secret burial, show that the NTC regime has a great deal to hide, that it scorns any rule of law and has no intentions of ruling in a democratic way.

Gaddafi’s attempt at holding on to power after the uprising began in Benghazi, and the undoubted corruption of his extended family, coupled with authoritarian rule in recent decades, led to his downfall.

But for the West to crow about the end of a dictatorship stretching back to when he came to power in 1969 is nonsense. In the early period, oil revenue was directed towards education, healthcare and housing. Per capita income rose seven fold to one of the highest in Africa.

His regime became a target for the West because of his support for liberation struggles by Palestinians, Irish republicans and Saharan Africans. Tripoli was bombed by the US in 1986, killing one of his children. Gaddafi fought hard to implement the ideals of Pan-Arabism championed by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt.

With his concept of Jamahiriya – “state of the masses” or “republic of the masses”, he sought to foster a direct democracy in which the people would rule through local councils and communes.

Political and economic pressure on Libya increased after the downing of the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie in December 1988 for which Libya was framed. Libya’s political and economic isolation produced a reactionary political turn.

The 1990s saw increased inequalities and loss of political freedom for ordinary Libyans. A nepotistic dynastic elite grew up in which the rich enjoyed freedoms denied to ordinary Libyans. Rights for opponents became non-existent, with political prisoners being shot down at the Abu Salim jail in 1996.

The sight of Gaddafi making deals over oil and immigration with oil-hungry authoritarians like Blair and Italian leader Berlusconi was particularly shocking. Gaddafi almost certainly became clinically depressed at the failure of his political aims and fell into the arms of world leaders who endorsed him until the uprising earlier this year.

If Gaddafi deserved his summary execution, as some say, where does that leave war criminals like Blair and Bush, whose 2003 invasion of Iraq was unlawful and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and Obama, whose administration uses drones to kill people illegally in Pakistan, and other Nato leaders, including Cameron, who conduct a murderous war in Afghanistan?

TNC leaders are not exactly the rabid pro-Western alliance Nato dreamt would emerge, containing discredited regime defectors, monarchists, militant Islamists and not a few opportunists. That's the new government of Libya. The people are going to have to overthrow them if they are to achieve any benefit from their revolution.

Now the struggle for democratic and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa merges with a global crisis of capitalism. The new Arab revolution has only just started and it will have to go beyond fair and free elections to find solutions to the pressing problems of soaring food prices, mass unemployment, poverty and inequality.

A World to Win editors

Torture exposes West's hollow claims about democracy

The indictment gets longer. Still wanted over the illegal invasion of Iraq, former prime minister Blair could be open to prosecution over New Labour’s secret collaboration with the Gaddafi regime, leading international lawyer Philippe Sands has suggested.

Ironically, in the wake of the Nato-backed regime change in Libya, it has become crystal clear that British intelligence agency MI6 collaborated in the “rendering” of alleged terror suspects by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and were complicit in their torture.

Under New Labour, M16 tipped off the CIA to help ensnare and transport two leaders of the anti-Gaddafi opposition back to Tripoli where they were promptly imprisoned and tortured. MI6 also told Libyan intelligence about opposition figures who lived in Britain, supplying it with emails and telephone numbers.

As early as 2003 Mark Allen, head of counter-terrorism at MI6, wrote to former Libyan foreign intelligence and then foreign minister, Moussa Koussa on the friendliest of first-name terms.

US human rights campaigners found letters in Koussa’s home showing how pleased Allen was about the “delivery” of Abedelhakim Belhadj then known by his nom de guerre Abu Abdallah Sadiq. Belhadj says that British intelligence officers were among the first to interrogate him when he arrived in Libya and was promptly imprisoned and tortured.

The CIA paid for Belhadj and his deputy, Abu Munthir and their families’

air trips from Malayasia and Hong Kong. But Allen played a double-game, telling Koussa that he would not share information obtained by torture with the CIA – and how he found this “amusing”.

“I have no intention of doing any such thing [sharing information]. The intelligence about Abu Abdallah was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful to you for the help you are giving us,” he wrote.

Mark Allen has since been knighted and is an advisor to BP.

UK Special Forces helped to train the Khamis Brigade run by one of Gaddafi’s sons. The elite SAS forces assisted Libyans in counter-terrorism techniques and surveillance between 2004 and 2009.

M16 also held counter-terrorism courses for them in 2006 to help them fight the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then headed by Belhadj. The US had added this group to its list of banned terror groups in 2003. Ironically, Belhadj was one of the chief leaders in the overthrow of Gaddafi and is now head of the Tripoli Military Council which currently heads 8,000 troops. He has called for a full apology from Britain.

Although British diplomats tried to shred compromising documents before they fled Libya, they have been discovered in the residence of the British ambassador. They show how Labour PMs Blair and Brown wooed the Gaddafi family in terms of sycophantic flattery.

Using craven religious phraseology, Blair wrote in December 2006: “At this sacred time of harmony and reconciliation, recalling how our passionate God has mercy on mankind, I would like to express my personal wishes to you, to your family and to the Libyan people.”

But working with torturers in Libya was not enough for M16. While the British government made hypocritical noises about human rights in China, MI6 was cooperating with the notorious Chinese State Security Bureau: “We agreed that we would look at how we might engage the Chinese Services on the Islamic extremist target in China”, one letter says chillingly. It is well-known that the Chinese authorities have long been brutally repressing anyone campaigning for Uighur ethnic rights, denouncing them as Islamic terrorists.

Of course, when anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya were inspired by the Arab Spring to revolt, the Cameron-Clegg coalition changed the tune sung by Britain. But the same thinking lies behind this government: flatter the leaders, repress the opposition and above all - get the oil.

But as the evidence found in the ashes of the old regime prove, no amount of flattery or the torture of opponents can possibly guarantee this. Finally, what the revelations show is what we have always known – that fine words about “democracy” from the mouths of British governments are the height of hypocrisy – both at home and abroad.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Nato-sponsored regime change

The jubilation of the anti-Gaddafi dictatorship fighters who have entered Tripoli is tempered by the fact that what is taking place is effectively a Nato-facilitated regime change in Libya.

In Tunisia and then Egypt, the mass of the people rose up and accomplished their own revolution (which is now confronted by unfinished business in relation to the economy and the old state machine).

These revolutions inspired some sections of Libya’s population, notably in the east of the country, to take to the streets in a bid to overthrow a Gaddafi regime that degenerated into brutal rule from the 1990s onwards.

Nato, which we should never forget is the military arm of the major capitalist states, was summonsed into action by Britain and France when the uprising quickly reached a stalemate.

Behind the fig-leaf of a United Nations security council resolution – how many wars has this discredited organisation now facilitated? – military power was used to advance the cause of the Benghazi-based forces in clear breach of the terms of the UN mandate.

As rebel fighter Hisham, speaking to the BBC's World Service, said today: "Nato is the master - it is something we admit. If Nato had not been bombing and shooting them, they would have killed us, this is a fact."

Nato never acts for “humanitarian reasons”, however its leaders dress up bombing and missile attacks with honeyed words about “democracy” etc. Other interests – political and economic – lay behind the intervention.

The Arab Spring caught out the political elites in Washington, London and Paris who had spent decades courting and propping up dictatorships from Cairo to Tunis, from Riyadh to Damascus.

As Egypt’s attitude towards Israel began to turn away from joint policing of the Palestinians in Gaza, it was clear that the West needed a new foothold in the region. And Libya appeared to give them that opportunity.

Nato’s intervention had the effect of corralling the Libya uprising and preventing its potential evolution into a truly revolutionary movement. Instead, the Transitional National Council (TNC) was given total support. The TNC is a self-appointed mixed bag of former opportunists who switched sides, careerists, Washington stooges and Islamists who are divided amongst themselves.

Attempts by the Arab Union and others to broker a ceasefire and a compromise settlement were scuttled by the US State Department on the orders of the White House, which had bypassed Congress to take part in attacks on Libya.

As in Iraq, the military intervention in Libya is designed to create a regime that is favourable to the West and one will open up its oil resources to capitalist corporations without hindrance and that will introduce “market reforms” in place of state subsidies.

Undoubtedly, the “planning” for a post-Gaddafi Libya includes an air base and possible ground forces. Richard Haass, president of the US council on foreign relations, has told the Financial Times that an international force is "likely to be needed to restore and maintain order".

The scenario planners at Nato HQ and the Pentagon don’t exactly have a great track record, however. In Iraq, China and not the US secured the first major oil deal after the fall of Saddam Hussein and has just started crude production in the Al Ahdab field in the centre of the country. Ten years of occupation of Afghanistan have only served to inspire an ongoing insurgency.

With their own economies falling apart as a new financial meltdown takes hold, Washington, London and Paris are in no position to give advice about “nation-building”. Destruction of resources and a resort to force characterises the period we are living in. That’s the real story about Nato’s intervention in Libya.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Colonialism is alive and well

Today’s international conference in London “on the future of Libya” has an unmistakeable colonial ring about it. Put plainly, Britain, France and America are openly plotting the destiny of someone else’s country, which is in the midst of a civil war.

Two things: nothing gives them the right to do this and, as per usual, the objectives are shrouded in a tissue of downright lies from Cameron, Obama and other Western leaders. While the stated aim is not regime change in Libya, in practice that is what is occurring before our very eyes.

Western planes are effectively bombing the opposition into power in Tripoli. Under the cover of a dubious UN resolution, they have openly flouted and exceeded the Security Council’s remit of protecting civilians from government forces and rendering humanitarian assistance through a no-fly zone.

For example, over the weekend RAF Tornados hit 22 tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces which were stationary targets. In the early hours of Monday, they struck ammunition bunkers near Subha in southern Libya, where there is no conflict. These and other attacks have enabled forces fighting Colonel Gaddafi’s regime to make substantial progress without hardly firing a shot.

The hope – and it’s no more than that – is that a less unpredictable and pro-Western regime will replace Gaddafi’s Whether it is more democratic than the present dictatorship is besides the point. Oil and stability are what counts in the short and long term (although did not exactly work out in Iraq where China, apparently, has picked up the oil contracts).

Another dimension is the rush to try and exert some sort of influence and control in the ongoing revolutionary process in North Africa and the Middle East. The US has sanctioned a crackdown in Bahrain with the help of Saudi forces and is promoting Ali Muhsin as a replacement leader in Yemen.

And next door to Libya, the Egyptian revolution has reached a key moment. New laws against protests and strikes, which carry heavy fines and jail terms, are being introduced with the blessing of the armed forces command under Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi. Opposition to the law is growing from organisations like the April 6 Youth Movement.

US defence secretary was in Cairo at the weekend to promise continuing aid to Egypt. In return, Tantawi told Gates he had no objection to the operations in Libya against Gaddafi. Tantawi and his generals represent a counter-revolutionary force in Egypt which has clear US backing. Cries of “Down with Tantawi” are being heard for the first time since the January revolution that overthrew Mubarak. This is not what Gates and Obama want to read and military action in Libya is a shot across the bows of the Egyptian revolution too.

A reluctance to believe anything that the Cameron-Clegg government says is clearly a factor in a new poll showing that seven out of ten people are concerned that the action in Libya could result in Britain being "dragged into a prolonged conflict like the Iraq war". By a margin of 47% to 43%, people do not believe the government was right to commit British forces to action in Libya.

Whatever the solution in Libya is, it cannot be one determined by the likes of Britain, France and America. These countries have not changed their spots suddenly to become agents of humanitarian concern. Turkey has called for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement between Gaddafi and the uprising in the east of Libya, which would facilitate a transition to a new government. That appeal is likely to be drowned out, however, as sponsored regime change continues to drive the mlitary intervention.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Regime change is the real war aim

So Liam Fox, the Coalition’s defence secretary, has let the cat out of the bag. The aim of the air strikes on Libya is to kill Colonel Gaddafi and bring about regime change, whatever the UN Security Council resolution says.

Asked if Gaddafi might be considered a target, Fox told BBC Radio 5: "That would potentially be a possibility." Then today a senior UK military source told Sky News: “As head of Libyan armed forces, Colonel Gaddafi is a 'legitimate military target'.”

And it is already obvious that the ferocious bombardment of Tripoli and the Libyan coast by hundreds of missiles fired from submarines and destroyers is devastating large swathes of Libya and killing untold numbers of civilians.

The gung-ho Fox and prime minister David Cameron have, of course, the slavish support of Labour leader Ed Miliband in Parliament. He and the rest of Parliament, with a few honourable exceptions, have backed military action against oil-rich Libya.

All the rhetoric of standing by the civilians who rebelled against Gaddafi’s rule is a prime example of the use of weapons of mass hypocrisy, as many have pointed out. No one at the UN is talking about a no-fly zone over Israel, in particular, which has defied UN resolutions on Palestine for many decades.

Just as “weapons of mass destruction” were the excuse for invading Iraq so “humanitarian concern for the rebels” is the excuse for attacking Libya – and it as phony as last time. Regime change to take control of large areas of the Arab oil field is the real reason.

Whether Gaddafi stays or goes, the military intervention could have disastrous consequences for the people on the ground and could easily lead to a non-functioning state of warring tribes as in Somalia and elsewhere.

Whilst services around Britain are being slashed on the grounds that money must be saved, no expense is being spared in the assault on Libya. Tornado pilots are flying 3,000-mile round trips from Norfolk, refueling several times in mid-air. The fuel bill alone must be staggering. But there is always money for a war. This squandering of resources is doubly striking when you think the reason they want to control whoever leads Libya is because the country’s so-called “sweet” oil is particularly good for production of jet fuel on which the military relies.

The very same regimes, who as part of the Arab League backed the UN resolution to enforce a no-fly zone, are now furiously backpedaling as the scale and real intention of the attack on Libya emerges and with it the anger of their own people against them grows.

But it is clear they see that the attack on Libya potentially benefits autocracy and undermines the revolutionaries. The King of Bahrain today confidently predicted that the uprising there is over, and that a “foreign plot” to overthrow him has been foiled. And three top Yemeni generals claim to have defected to the opposition, clearly seeing an opportunity to form a profitable military junta.

The war on Libya has another and even more crucial aim – co-opting and undermining the wave of revolutions against pro-Western autocracies throughout Africa and the Middle East. The Libyan uprising was inspired by the mass revolt that began in neighbouring Tunisia in December has, as we know, been spreading to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and deep into the Middle East.

As one British resident in Tobruk told the BBC, the major powers are desperate to compromise not only the uprising against Gaddafi but the revolutions in the eyes of the Arab people. Yes, the rebels in Benghazi called for Western intervention and the no-fly zone. Many sympathetic to their struggle have supported this call.

But as some in Benghazi are now admitting, this was a serious mistake. Self-determination, democracy and human rights cannot be imposed by naked force at the end of a bayonet – or in this case by Cruise missile bombardment. Any such regime that comes to power in Libya will be tainted from the outset.

A World to Win editors

No to military intervention in Libya

Let’s be clear from the outset. Whatever the leaders of Britain, France and the US say, taking military action against Libya is not primarily aimed at protecting civilians. Human rights have never been top of their agenda, as victims of Western foreign policy around the world will testify.

There are more strategic interests involved here. What wasn’t spelled out at the United Nations Security Council is that the objective is regime change in Tripoli that produces a pro-Western government in place of the unpredictable Colonel Gaddafi. A government that will permit the unhindered exploitation of the country’s oil resources and move towards a market economy.

Far from supporting the new Arab revolution, the no-fly zone and other military action is aimed at limiting and distorting its evolution. It opens up opportunities for the West to launch a whole new set of conspiracies in the Middle East and well as putting Libyan civilians at risk of death from air strikes.

Pressure is being exerted on Egypt to involve its air force in attacks on Libya. The Egyptian armed forces, which are deeply split, will be compromised if they agree. Collaborating with former colonial powers Britain and France, which invaded the country in 1956, will be a blow to the Egyptian people and their history.

Support from the Arab League is no basis for military action either. This decrepit organisation is stuffed full of dictators and sheikdoms like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia who are jointly gunning down unarmed civilians. US defence secretary Robert Gates was in Saudi last weekend and undoubtedly gave them the green light to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations. More like a free fire zone in this case.

So the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. Robert Mugabe can murder trade unionists and opposition forces in Zimbabwe, Israel can bomb defenceless Gaza on an almost daily basis and the Burmese junta can continue its brutal rule. The major powers either stand by or, in the case of the Israeli government, furnish it with money and weapons. They deny the legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza because they didn’t like the result of the elections there.

There are, naturally, other aspects to the posturing of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy. Both lead governments that are deeply despised in their own countries for imposing cuts and austerity measures on their people in desperate attempts to revive an increasingly distressed capitalist system. There’s nothing like a little war somewhere to subdue opposition and divert attention with doses of patriotism and jingoism.

Venezuela and Turkey have offered to mediate between Gaddafi and the revolutionary forces ranged against his troops. But Britain, France and the US rejected these overtures although Tripoli did not rule out talks. Where was the UN when negotiation was still a possibility? As usual, the UN is no guarantor of rights either.

Those who proposed action against Gaddafi collaborated with his murderous regime for many years, bringing him back into the “international community” (whatever that is). They could as just easily go back to supporting him on the basis of some deal tomorrow

The Arab revolution is entering a new phase, when it is urgent that the masses form alliances across the borders. In Egypt, in particular, the task is to remove the corrupt general staff – who control 25% of the country’s economy – and create a revolutionary armed forces who will be able to support the Libyan revolt.

There are reports of Egyptians who took part in the revolution that overthrew Mubarak arriving in Benghazi in solidarity with the Libyan uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship. That could be made into the start of direct help from Egypt so that the people of Libya can settle their accounts with Gaddafi by way of self-determination.

In Britain, we should campaign against military intervention in Libya and redouble our efforts to remove the Coalition government from power. Labour, which jointly led the invasion of Iraq, is fully backing Cameron. No surprises there. The political class in Parliament is reactionary and bankrupt. Our own revolutionary movement can’t come soon enough.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Miliband also in denial

If Colonel Gaddafi is said to be “delusional”, believing that all Libyans love him when clearly they do not, where does that leave Ed Miliband? At best he is in denial about 13 years of New Labour. At worst he takes no responsibility for his actions and ought to seek help.

In a somewhat astonishing – for the wrong reasons – speech yesterday, he reeled off statistics that confirmed the growth of inequality in the period 1997 to 2010. Can any of us forget that this was the period of massive Labour majorities under Blair and Brown, and where Miliband was in the cabinet?

Yet, ultimately, Miliband, apparently Labour’s present leader, could only tell his audience: “The task is to create a more prosperous capitalism but also one that is fairer than we had before the financial crisis.” Excuse me?

In the period we are talking about, capitalism was indeed “prosperous”. It was just that it was at the expense of working people’s wages and conditions. Bankers and CEOs of transnational corporations did not go hungry or homeless in this period, in which inequality grew apace.

As the power of globalised capital to dictate to governments and trade unions grew, so the share of wealth going to those actually working fell. The wage share of annual national income (GDP) rose to a high of 64.5% in 1975, falling to a record post-war low of 51.7% in 1996. From then it recovered slightly to reach 55.2% in 2001 before slipping back to 53.2 per cent in 2008 – close to where it was more than a decade before. In the United States, by the end of 2006, the share of national income going to wages and salaries in 2006 was at its lowest level on record, with data going back to 1929.

As the 2009 TUC report Unfair to Middling explained: “The declining wage share has been driven by the introduction of flexible labour markets since the 1980s (with the paring back of employment protection rules); economic liberalisation (including privatisation); the increasing constraints on collective bargaining; a reduction in the demand for unskilled labour resulting from technical change; and the global transfer of jobs triggered by globalisation.”

This is the new world order that New Labour embraced with enthusiasm. Instead of wages, workers could get easy credit in a modern version of living on tick. The whole growth system of capitalist production and finance became driven by debt until it went down in flames in 2008. Of this, Miliband had nothing to say. No apology for giving the financial sector carte blanche, for restricting union rights, for allowing inequality to grow. Just platitudes about how “our economy has become progressively less fair and the losers have been those on middle and low incomes”.

He warned, however, of an impending cost-of-living crisis as a result of rising food and fuel prices. These will further erode the wage share of GDP, which accelerated in the last two years of the previous government. This is how capitalism “solves” its crisis. It destroys jobs and living standards because that’s all it knows. With the global debt crisis still reverberating, the attack on living standards will intensify because that’s how the system functions.

Miliband did not contemplate how the soaring cost of living in Britain, alongside mass unemployment and short-time working, could easily turn into a movement for social change, much as it did in Tunisia and Egypt. Just as well, because Labour is a party of big business, making the cuts at town hall level, and will be just as much in the firing line as the ConDem coalition when the working people of Britain decide that enough is enough.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Revolution renews itself

The people’s revolution sweeping north Africa and the Middle East has entered a second phase, gathering a momentum of its own in country after country.

In Tunisia, where it all began with the suicide of a stall holder, workers battled in the streets over the weekend and finally ousted prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi. Some died in the streets of Tunis, as police and troops - backed by tanks - use tear gas to disperse hundreds of youths protesting against the caretaker government. The protesters who brought down dictator Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali only weeks ago rightly saw Ghannouchi as part of the dictatorial regime and demanded his removal.

In Egypt hundreds of thousands occupied Tahrir Square once again last Friday as they demanded the resignation of interim prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a cabinet member under Hosni Mubarak. Military police used stun guns and batons to attack those rallying in the capital. Yesterday, after “apologising” for the violence the ruling generals announced a number of constitutional changes.

In oil-producing sultanate of Oman six protesters were killed over the weekend as they demanded political reforms and better pay. Around 1,000 had blocked the road leading to the main export port and refinery area in a state where strikes are banned.

In nearby Bahrain, crowds today have been chanting “down with the King” and waving flags outside the Ministry of Information in Manama. Others gathered outside the Bahrain Ministry of Education, shouting: “Let the palaces hear, we fear not your prisons." With youth unemployment standing at nearly 20%, Bahrainis have caught the revolutionary fever.

Most dramatic of all, in Libya the anti-Gaddafi movement that began in the east of the country and saw the fall of Benghazi, threatens to become a civil war as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, his family and his followers continue to hold out in Tripoli and Sirte. In Benghazi, local committees have taken over the running of the city after the collapse of Gaddafi’s state structures.

As we have noted, events in Libya have a particular significance in the light of Gaddafi’s earlier role as a supporter of anti-imperialist people’s movements world wide. Until only a few weeks ago, the Gaddafi regime was obsequiously courted by pillars of the “world community”.

Now Gaddafi and his supporters are out-of-control forces standing in the way of the big power exploitation of Libya’s oil and gas. The British government (Blair and Mandelson in particular) and Italian PM Berlusconi, followed closely by Sarkozy of France, the US, Brazil and Germany suddenly forgot their dislike of Gaddafi. The very same world leaders who are now denouncing him and baying for his blood were only too thrilled to welcome him back into the fold of the “world community”.

It makes your hackles rise to hear Hague and Cameron’s oily tones pontificating that "of course, it is time for Gaddafi to go, that is the best hope for Libya”. US secretary of state Clinton has the astonishing arrogance to condemn the murder of innocent civilians in Libya while the US supports Israel’s state terror against Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. The US, Britain and the EU continue to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The degeneration of the Gaddafi regime over the last 20 years, from anti-imperialist to brutal dictatorship, marks the close of a period of post-colonial history. Now the struggle for democratic and human rights merges with a global crisis of capitalism. The new Arab revolution has only just started and it will have to go beyond fair and free elections to find solutions to the pressing problems of soaring food prices, mass unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Revolt heading your way sometime soon

When the wave of revolutions and resistance reaches Europe from North Africa and the Middle East, as it surely will, what happens in Britain depends on how we prepare for the eventuality.

The Coalition government is clearly in some disarray and its longevity is unpredictable. A crisis government from the off, and one without a mandate for most of its policies, it is even incapable of organising the repatriation of its citizens from Libya in a timely fashion.

Prime minister Cameron was too busy boosting arms sales to sheikdoms while foreign secretary Hague was preening himself for his trip to Washington (now cancelled). They are self-evidently political lightweights in an increasingly heavy situation, with Nick Clegg more like a tailor’s dummy than a deputy prime minister.

Now the economic crisis has taken a turn for the worse, with the release of figures today showing that the contraction in the economy in the fourth quarter of 2010 was sharper than at first thought.

It can only get worse as public spending cuts made in a desperate attempt deal with the gargantuan budget deficit take their toll. Councils all over Britain are reducing their workforces and services, led in the cities by Labour-controlled authorities.

Households are on living on a knife edge. Families' disposable income dived by a record £9 a week during January as inflation continued to outstrip wage growth, research by supermarket giant Asda shows.

The average family had £174 a week left to spend after meeting all of their essential outgoings, down from £183 a week in January last year. It was the 13th consecutive month during which people suffered a year-on-year fall in their disposable income, well before the last election.

Rising prices outstripped wage increases and it’s only the start. The research does not take account of last month’s VAT rise, while gas, electricity and petrol prices will continue to rise, driven in part by the revolts in the Middle East. The Bank of England is considering interest rate rises that could prove the final straw for people with mortgages.

With a million young people are out of work, record numbers of people working part-time and, according to the TUC, doing unpaid overtime to keep their jobs – 5.26 million workers are missing out on almost £5,500 a year – the conditions for a social explosion are rapidly maturing.

At that point, the obvious political options are extremely limited (and even dangerous).

Labour is committed to the same market capitalism that led to the present crisis, while its own policies on tuition fees, business involvement in the NHS and academy schools led to a Cameron-Clegg government. Green MP Caroline Lucas today described Coalition policies are the “logical conclusion” of Labour’s. It’s hard to disagree with her.

Add in a parliamentary system which is a sham and a façade behind which corporate power is exercised, you can see there is a problem. It’s not free speech or the right to vote that is the issue, either in Britain (and now not in countries like Egypt either). It’s about who owns and controls the country’s resources and for what purpose.

The global economic crisis is so deep that one-off taxes on the banks and attacks on corporate tax-dodgers, the TUC’s policies for the March 26 anti-government demonstration, come nowhere near a solution.

Capitalism isn’t working and it isn’t sustainable. Trying to fix it or make the banks and corporations change their spots is futile. The preparation we need to make can be not limited to simply challenging existing economic and political power but directed towards actually taking it out of their hands altogether. And that will require leadership, organisation and a revolutionary strategy.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

'Devil's excrement' has its revenge

The revolutionary upsurge in North Africa and the Middle East is having a direct impact on the global crisis of capitalism.

Oil prices have surged as much as 6% since Monday, rising to their highest since the collapse of demand in the global crash of 2008. If this rise is maintained, it is certain to trigger a renewed slowdown in global production.

Oil companies in Libya are in the process of shutting down the 2% of the world’s production that come from the country. Western oil companies have suspended oil production and BP has started evacuating workers from Libya.

The Libyan mission to the UN is in disarray, the country’s generals are resigning along with many ministers. As in Egypt, the army is going over to the side of the revolution

Every part of the transnational capitalist class – global corporations, capitalist governments, unaccountable global agencies - is watching events with a mounting horror. They were horrified by the revolution that brought Gadaffi to power in 1969, now they are horrified by the revolution that will end his rule.

Mostly they are desperate to find a way of halting the contagion of revolt against autocratic governments which have provided safe haven for the global oil corporations and built their family fortunes from the proceeds. Nervously they assess the risk of the infection spreading to Saudi Arabia, which is the source of close to 10% of current oil supplies.

Interviewed on Al Jazeera, a former UN official spoke for the capitalists. Now they don’t mind people having rights, they’re even in favour of them having the same “democratic”, “human” rights enjoyed by people in the West. But above all they want stability, they want to see investment, they want people to keep their jobs, they want to see economic growth. They fear a revolution that could end the for-profit system. They are wondering what they can do to stop it.

Any disruption in oil supplies increases the power of the Organisation of Petrol Exporting Countries (OPEC) consisting of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. As of November 2010, OPEC members collectively hold 79% of world crude oil reserves and 44% of the world’s crude oil production, giving them major influence over the global market.

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso was a prominent Venezuelan diplomat, politician and lawyer primarily responsible for the inception and creation of OPEC. In 1975 he warned that “oil will bring us ruin… Oil is the Devil's excrement” – “the devil’s. He wasn’t far off.

In the 1970s, the inflationary printing of dollars to buy its way out of a historic economic crisis forced the US to abandon the relationship between the paper currency and gold established in 1944. The value of the dollar crashed from $42 for an ounce of gold in 1971 to $800 in 1979. OPEC acted to defend the value of its commodity which was emerging as the essential, cheap and plentiful foundation of the post-war economy. The price of oil quadrupled by 1973.

Four decades later, the situation is very different.

Exponential growth – the global success story of credit-funded huge corporations pouring previously unimaginable torrents of products into the hands of debt-burdened consumers has ensured that the world’s oil is half gone.

Much of it has been used to transform agriculture from a system of food production by millions of small farmers to a global business controlled by small number of corporations whose hunger for profit puts food prices beyond the reach of billions.

Industrialised agribusiness like the rest of capitalist manufacturing is addicted to oil. The burning of oil to fuel the capitalist growth mania has brought the planet to the limits of its ability to sustain life. The revolutionary upheaval now under way brings the possibility of a different future. We have to grasp it.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

The point of no return

The anti-government demonstrations sweeping Libya mark a stunning turn of events in the revolutionary upsurge sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. With diplomats defecting and the army split, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is rocking.

A bizarre appearance by Saif Gaddafi on state television last night only adds to the sense that Libya’s leaders will soon suffer the fate of those in Egypt and Tunisia.

Gaddafi’s eldest son, while saying that “untrained” soldiers had made mistakes, claimed the “seditious” demonstrators were under the influence of foreign powers or even drugs and claimed that only a few people had died. He warned of civil war and a fight to the finish.

But with an estimated 200 plus deaths and many more wounded, events in the Libya – and the Arab world as a whole - have reached a point of no return. Those who are being gunned down in the streets of Libya’s second city Benghazi share the grievances affecting all of the Arab states from the largest (Egypt) to the smallest (Bahrain) – the lack of democratic rights, growing inequality and economic want.

The crackdown by the Libyan regime has been particularly brutal, much of it hidden as internet services are closed down and foreign reporters banned. One CNN report said that helicopter gunships have been used to fire at protesters.

The turning of the Gaddafi regime against its own people in this way is a turning point in the fortunes of the Arab people. Libya, despite its small population of 6.5 million, has played a special role on the world stage. After taking power in September 1970 in a military coup that overthrew the monarchy, Gaddafi fought hard to implement the ideals of Pan-Arabism championed by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt.

With his concept of jamahiriya – “state of the masses” or “republic of the masses”, he sought to foster a direct democracy in which the people would rule through local councils and communes. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Libya became a anti-imperialist force which supported liberation movements throughout the world, especially the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Libya became subject to US oil and export sanctions from 1982. The UN trade embargo was to last until 2004.

Not only did Libya face punishment by the major imperialist powers. Gaddafi’s campaign for Arab unity was undermined and betrayed by Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s and Hafez al-Hassad in Syria. He was denounced by his neighbour, Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. He was punished further for opposing the Iraqi invasion of Iran during the genocidal Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s.

In April 1986, the US ir force bombed the Libyan capital Tripoli in revenge for a bombing at a Berlin discotheque frequented by US troops and Gaddafi’s family was targeted, with his daughter being killed. Political and economic pressure on Libya increased after the downing of the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie in December 1988 for which Libya was framed.

Libya’s political and economic isolation produced a reactionary political turn. The 1990s saw increased inequalities and loss of political freedom for ordinary Libyans. A nepotistic dynastic elite grew up in which the rich enjoying freedoms denied to ordinary Libyans. Rights for opponents became non-existent, with political prisoners being shot down at the Abu Salim jail in 1996.

The sight of Gaddafi making deals over oil and immigration with oil-hungry authoritarians like Blair and Italian leader Berlusconi has been particularly shocking. The possible collapse of his regime is sending shock waves down those in the British establishment and corporate world, who have been supplying many of the weapons used against the demonstrators

Events in Libya sound not only the death-knell of liberation leaders turned autocrats. It also creates a crisis for those who conspired against them while they were revolutionaries but embraced them when they turned against their own people. With both eyes on Libya’s oil, the major capitalist powers do not give a damn for democratic rights, which is why their remarks are not worth listening to.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary