Former colonial or neocolonial powers swear that they have changed. After having financed, armed, advised and protected Ben Ali, now the United States, France and other countries are flooding us with moving statements. For instance, Hillary Clinton said : « We support Arab peoples’ desire for democracy .
This is an utter lie. Certainly the United States and its allies certainly do not want democracy in the Arab world, nor does they want the Arabs to be able to decide on their oil or on any other wealth of theirs. So they did whatever they could to slow down the democracy process and keep the former leaders in power. And, when this plan fails, they impose their own chosen leaders whose task will be to crush peoples’ resistance. For instance, the Egyptian government has recently took tough anti-strike actions.
Justifying the war against Libya with the idea that after the events that happened in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington and Paris supposedly have « understood » and want to ease their conscience or at least restore their reputation, is thus just a big lie.
Actually, the western policy with regard to the Arab world forms a whole that applies under three various forms :
1.Keeping repressive dictatorships in power.
2.Replacing Ben Ali and Mubarak with pawns under the control of the West.
3.Overthrowing the regimes in Tripoli, Damascus and Tehran in order to colonize again those « lost » countries.
Three approaches to achieve a unique goal : keeping the Arab world under western domination to continue exploiting it.
Democracy becomes a threat when only the interests of a tiny social minority are represented. What frightens the United States, is the fact that social discontent practically broke out in all the dictatorships in the Arab world. In Iraq - the Western media did not mention it by the way - many strikes broke up in several industries. Among them : the oil, textile and electricity supply industries, and other ones. In Kut, U.S. troops even surrounded a textile plant on strike. People demonstrated in sixteen of the eighteen provinces, irrespective of which community they belong to, against the corrupt government which abandons its people in poverty. In Bahrain, under the people’s pressure, the king finally promised a financial aid to the value of $2,650 for every family. In Oman, sultan Qaboos bin Said replaced half of the government members and increased the minimum salary by 40%, and ordered that fifty thousand jobs be created. Even Saudi king Fahd released thirty six million dollars to help low and medium income families !
Obviously one question immediately arises to all the simple people : but if they had all that money, why were they hiding it in their coffers ? The following question be : how many other billions have they stolen from their peoples in complicity with the United States ? And the last one : how can we put an end to this theft ?
« Facebook revolutions », a huge American plot or real revolutions ?
A misinterpretation spread on the internet : revolutions in the Arab world would have been triggered and manipulated by the United States. It would have pulled the strings in order to carry out well-controlled changes and be able to attack Libya, Syria and Iran. Everything would have been « made-up ». The argument which supports this being : more or less official organizations had invited to the U.S.A. and formed Arab « cyber activists » who were instrumental in the spreading of the news and who symbolized a brand new type of revolution, the « Facebook revolution ».
The argument of the huge plot does not hold together. Actually, the United States did anything they could to keep Mubarak - a very useful dictator - in power as long as possible. However, it knew that he was suffering from poor health and « finished ». Of course it always draws up a plan b, and even a plan c. Plan b consisted in replacing Mubarak with one of his deputies. But, given the deep anger of the Egyptian people, there was little chance that it would work.
So, it had also prepared one, even several plan c’ s, as it does by the way for basically every country it wants to control. What does it consist of ? It bribes beforehand a few rebels and intellectuals - with them realizing it or not - and thus « invest » in the future. When the time comes, they are brought into the forefront. How long this will work is another issue, so long as people are mobilized and that a government, be it a face-lifted one, cannot resolve the demands of the people, if its objective is to keep these people in a state of exploitation.
Talking about the Arab revolution movement as being a « Facebook revolution » is a myth that is convenient for the U.S.A. We have pointed since a long time the crucial importance of new means of information and mobilization on the internet, however it would be absurd to think that Facebook would replace social struggles and revolutions. This idea is convenient for big capitalists - whose representative was Mubarak - but in fact, what they fear most, is a workers’ opposition movement, because it directly endangers their source of profit.
The workers’ role
Facebook is a means of struggle, not the essence of revolution. Presenting things in this way is a means to hide the role of the laboring class - in a broad sense - which would be replaced with internet. Actually, a revolution is an act through which those at the bottom dismiss those at the top, through a radical change not only of the members of the government but particularly of social exploitation relations.
Oops ! According to our official great thinkers, we cannot use the phrase « class struggle » any longer, which is supposedly out of date and even improper. Too bad for you, stockbroker Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, said some time ago : « There is class warfare in the U.S., all right, but it is my class, the rich class that is making war, and we are winning. » (4) Well, Mr. Buffet, you should never swear to it before the end of the show ! He who laughs last…
But the events in Tunisia and Egypt strengthen the idea of « class struggle », in agreement with Mr. Buffet…When did Ben Ali pack up his bags and left ? On January 14, when Tunisian workers were involved in a general strike. When did Mubarak leave the throne ? When a great strike of Egyptian workers halted textile firms, post offices, and even official media. Joel Beinin, professor in Stanford university and former head of the American university in Cairo, explains to us : « These last ten years, a big wave of social revolts had touched more than two million workers who participated in more than three thousand strikes, sit-ins, and other forms of protest. This was the background of the revolutionary uprising of the last few weeks…However, these past few days we saw dozens of thousands of workers link their economic demands to the demand that Mubarak’ s regime be abolished… » (5)
The Arab revolution has just begun. After the first victories of the people, the ruling class, which is still in power, tries to appease the people by making tiny concessions. Obama wanted the people to calm down as quickly as possible, and everything to go back to square one. It can work for a while, but the Arab revolution is under way.
It may take years, but it will be difficult to stop.
Fourth goal : hindering the African unity
The richest continent on Earth, with a profusion of natural resources, Africa is also the poorest one. 57% of the population live below the poverty line, that is with less than $1,25 per day.The key to this mystery ? Multinationals do not actually pay for these raw materials, they steal them.
In Africa, they plunder resources, impose low salaries, unfavorable agreements and detrimental privatizations, blackmail and put any form of pressure to the weak states and cripple them with an unjust Debt, put subservient dictators in power, trigger civil wars in the coveted regions.
Africa is strategically important for multinationals, because their prosperity depends on the plundering of these resources. If gold, copper, platinum, coltan, phosphate, diamonds and agricultural produce were paid a fair price , multinationals would be much less richer yet the local populations would be done with poverty. For American and European multinationals, it is absolutely vital to prevent Africa from uniting and being free. It must remain dependent. Here is a well stated example showed by Jean-Paul Pougala, an African author : « The story begins in 1992, when forty five African countries created RASCOM in order to have an African satellite and drop the call costs on the continent. The calling rate from and to Africa was then the highest one in the world, because each year Europe collected a five hundred million dollars tax on phone conversations, even on those within the same African country, for voice transit on European satellites such as Intelsat.
An African satellite cost only 400 million dollars payable for in one go, so there would be no need to pay 500 million dollars per year anymore. Would any banker not finance such a project ? The most difficult equation to solve was : how can a slave free himself from the servile exploitation by his master if he is asking for the latter’s help in order to achieve this goal ? So, the World Bank, the IMF, the U.S.A., and the European Union needlessly dangled these countries for fourteen years. In 2006, Gaddafi had put an end to the needless begging from so-called Western benefactors who practice usurious loans ; so the Libyan guide put 300 million dollars on the table . The African Development Bank offered 50 millions, and the West African Development Bank gave 27 millions. As a result of this, for the first time in its history, Africa has its very first communication satellite since December 26, 2007. Following on from it, China and Russia followed suit, this time selling their technology and so new satellites were launched : a South African one, a Nigerian one, an Angolan one, an Algerian one, and even a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. And now, we are expecting in 2020 the very first satellite 100% technologically African and built on the African soil, particularly in Algeria. This satellite has been made to compete with the best ones in the world, but costing ten times less, a real challenge.
This is how a simple token gesture of a measly 300 million dollars can change the life of a whole continent. Gaddafi’s Libya made the West lose not only 500 million dollars per year but also billions of dollars of debts and interests that the debt itself could generate indefinitely and exponentially, thus contributing to the maintaining of the secret system which goal is to despoil Africa…It is Gaddafi’s Libya which offers Africa its first true modern-day revolution : providing universal coverage of the whole continent for telephony, television, broadcasting and many other uses such as telemedicine and distance learning ; for the first time, a low-cost connection becomes available on the whole continent, even in rural areas thanks to the radio bridge system called WMAX." (6)
Well, here is something we have not been told about nasty Gaddafi ! That he was helping African people to free themselves from the stifling tutelage of the West. Might there still be other secrets of this kind that remain unmentioned ?
Gaddafi challenged the I.M.F. and Obama plays the pickpocket
Yes he did. By supporting the development of the « African Monetary Fund » (AMF), Gaddafi committed the crime of challenging the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We know that the FMI, which is controlled by the United States and Europe and whose president is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, purely and simply blackmails the developing countries. It lends them only if those countries accept to get rid of their companies in favor of multinationals, place unprofitable orders, or cut their budgets on health and education. In short, the IMF is very harmful. Well, just as the Latinos launched their « Banco Sur » in order to counter the IMF and its arrogant blackmail and decide on the financing of projects that are truly beneficial for them, now the AMF might start offering a freer path for the Africans. What are the countries which finance the AMF ? Algeria gave 16 billion, and Libya gave 10 billion. Together they supplied 62% of its capital.
But, Obama just robbed the Libyans of thirty billion, an act that went unnoticed to the media. How did that happen ? On March 1, - long before the U.N. resolution was passed - he ordered the U.S. Department of the Treasury to freeze Libyan deposits to the U.S.A. Then, on March 17, he managed to insert into the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 a little sentence which would allow the freeze of the deposits of the Libyan central bank but also of the Libyan National Oil Corporation.
We know Gaddafi amassed riches that allowed him to invest in big European companies, in big development plans in Africa - and maybe in some European election campaigns too, but this does not seem to constitute any efficient form of life assurance ! -…
In brief, Libya is quite rich (with its cash reserves of 200 billion dollars) and it attracted the covetousness of one superpower which is heavily in debt : the United States. So, to embezzle the dozens of billions of dollars of the Libyan national bank, in other words to go through the pockets of the Libyan people, Obama simply called all this a « potential financing source for Gaddafi’s regime. » and there you had it ! A real pickpocket.
However hard he tried to coax the West by multiplying concessions to neoliberalism, Gaddafi still worried the leaders of the United States. The American embassy in Tripoli deplored the resistance movements in a wire dating back to November 2007 : « Those who run Libya politically and economically are more and more pursuing nationalist policies as regards power industry. » Does anybody refusing privatization all over the place deserve bombings ? War is definitely the continuation of economy with different means.
Fifth goal : Settling NATO as the watchdog of Africa.
At first, NATO was supposed to protect Europe from the « soviet military threat ». So, once the USSR collapsed, NATO should have disappeared too. But it was the very opposite that happened…
After having bombed Bosnia in 1995, Javier Solana, NATO’s general secretary, said : « The experience acquired in Bosnia may act as a model for NATO’s operations in the future. » At that time, I wrote : « Actually, NATO is asking for a limitless sphere of action. Yugoslavia was the testing ground for the preparation of the next wars. Where will they take place ? » (7) Then I suggested this answer : First axis : Eastern Europe. Second axis : The Mediterranean and the Middle East. Third axis : The third world in general. » Here we are, this very program is happening now.
As soon as 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia. A war to subject the country to neoliberalism, as we saw it. As I was studying the comments of American strategists, I pointed out a sentence from one of them, whose name is Stephen Blank : « NATO’s operations will increasingly take place ‘out of area’. Its main function would consist of being the vehicle for the integration of a steadily increasing number of regions into the western economic, security, political, cultural community. » (8)
Subjecting an ever more increasing number of regions to the West ! Then I wrote : « NATO is an army which serves globalization, it is the multinationals’ army. Step by step, NATO is definitely turning into a watchdog of the world. » (9) And I named the countries that would probably be the next targets of NATO forces : Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and a return to Iraq… just to begin with.
Now that all of this really did happen, some people are asking me : « Did you have a crystal ball ? ».
There is no need to have a crystal ball, you only have to analyze the documents - which are not even classified - from the Pentagon and from the big offices where plans of action are elaborated and understand their logic.
In fact, this logic of Empire is very simple :
1. The world is a source of profits.
2.If you want to win an economic war, you have to be the leading superpower.
3. And for that, you have to control raw materials and also be in control of the strategic regions and routes.
4. Any opposition to that control must be crushed : through corruption, blackmail, or war, whatever the means are.
5. In order to remain the leading superpower, it is absolutely necessary to prevent the rivals from allying themselves against the master.
No comments:
Post a Comment