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

As dole queues grow, so does case for regime change

As the exam period ends in the UK, young people surging through the gates of schools and colleges will be looking for jobs. But with jobs disappearing and unemployment predicted to surge for months to come as a result of the crisis of capitalism, they’ll mostly be disappointed.

The number of people in work fell by 271,000 over the three months to April to 29.11 million, the biggest quarterly drop since comparable records began in 1971. Unemployment rose to 2.261 million in the same period, the highest since November 1996. A third of a million jobs are forecast to go in the public sector in the next period as mass unemployment becomes a reality.

Those still with jobs are just beginning to discover the real meaning of the global economic meltdown following decades of credit-led growth. For capitalist society, the inescapable elimination of productive capacity means millions of people become surplus to requirements and those in work must face an unprecedented ratcheting-up in the levels of exploitation. Wages must fall, working hours must increase, and benefits must be slashed.

Having announced a £401 million loss for 2008, British Airways this week intensified its assault on its employees. As well as eliminating 6,500 jobs since last summer, last month it invited staff to shift to part-time working or take up to a year’s unpaid leave. Now it wants them to volunteer to work without pay for up to a month as their contribution to the airline’s survival. The deadline for volunteering ends next Wednesday. No doubt BA has a plan for something more brutal if too few line up to cut their own throats.

It was just this kind of brutality – and far worse is to come - that was implied when the Bank of England, trying to slow the economic disintegration, was forced to resort to the occult art of “quantitative easing” at the beginning of March. It reached behind the ear of a mesmerised audience and found not just one golden egg – but £125 billion of new money which it poured into the already troubled economy, lending much of it to the government in the form of new debt. In the US, the Federal Reserve has similarly increased the amount of money in circulation by a huge 16.5% in the last year.

But debt, and its opposite credit of all kinds – of which currency is just one – comes with a heavy cost. All credit is a promise to pay, and the value needed to make the payments comes from only one place – people with jobs. When central banks around the world turned to quantitative easing, apparently detaching money from its role as a measure of value, they set off a chain reaction. In reality it meant that the state took on the responsibility of ensuring that the repayment of the debt and its interest will be forcibly extracted from the remnants of the working population for decades to come as the cost of rescuing the system from collapse.

If the capitalist system is to survive, it means that rights to object will also have to be eliminated. And it is these objective forces that destabilise the political process, strip away the democratic mask of parliamentary government, push the BNP forward, encourage racist attacks on Romanians in Belfast, and bring the threat of nuclear exchanges back on to the agenda.

In Iran, a new generation without jobs have led the spectacular upsurge against a reactionary regime. We need to mobilise young jobless in Britain to inspire a revolutionary transformation of a regime led by New Labour that throws people on to the scrapheap straight from school and replace it with a society that puts people’s needs ahead of profits.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor