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REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL ON NATO’S GENOCIDAL ROLE IN LIBYA & THE US BLOCKADE OF CUBA

October 30th, 2011
REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL ON NATO’S
GENOCIDAL ROLE IN LIBYA & THE US BLOCKADE OF
CUBA
Dear Friends
Many have spoken out about the NATO involvement in Libya, which has led to massive losses of innocent civilians and the murder of its leader, who should have had the opportunity to have his day in court.
Fidel Castro, though in his 80s, is still a passionate internationalist and has expressed some thoughts on Libya and on the US blockade of his country.
Barak Obama had the opportunity to end George Bush’s wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only did he not do that, he started another one in Libya. Now, there is international concern that there have been massive human rights abuses and Libyans could suffer even further if a civil war starts.
While many may say that he should keep his ideas to himself. it must be said that his leadership in Cuba built a small nation that has taken some amazing actions to help those in distress.
Currently, Cuba has 300 doctors and nurses working in East Timor and place for 300 young East Timorese medical students in Cuban medical schools. Cuba also trains doctors from many other countries including a number of US citizens who cannot pay the exorbitant fees charges by US universities.
There has been something like 10,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela and the Cuban government was quick off the mark to assist the people of Haiti following the earthquake they suffered last year.
And how many saw Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”, which looked at the terrible state of the US health system. Moore took some US rescue workers with him to Canada, Britain, France and Cuba to compare the health systems in those countries compared with the US one.
All the rescue workers had severe health problems due to the fact that they were assisting people after the demolition of Twin Towers in New York in 2001. All had health insurance, but it would not cover all the costs of all aspects of their
treatment.
Despite the unwarranted behaviour of the US and its blockade against Cuba, Cuban health workers provided free medical treatment to these citizens of the US. When the news of the free treatment was announced, a nurse in the group burst into tears.”At home, they say that I am an American hero,” she said, “But they will not cover my health costs. I have been told by my government that Cuba is an enemy of the US and yet, Cuba is prepared to give me free health care.”
Cuba is a developing country, which is not wealthy, but it does play the role of a responsible international citizen.
Let’s support the NO BLOQUEO movement to stop the US blockade of Cuba
Anyway, some interesting thoughts from Fidel.
En solidaridad
Andy Alcock

FIDEL CASTRO: NATO’s
Genocidal Role (Part III, English)

Posted by: “walterlx” walterlx@earthlink.net   walterlx

Thu Oct 27, 2011 11:19 am (PDT)


GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana.
October 27, 2011

Reflections of Fidel
NATO’s genocidal role Part
III
(Taken from CubaDebate)

ON February 23, under the title
“Cynicism’s danse macabre,” I stated:

“The politics of plunder imposed by
the United States and its NATO allies in the
Middle East is in
crisis.”

“Thanks to Sadat’s betrayal at Camp David, the Palestinian Arab State has not come into existence, despite the United Nations agreements of November 1947, and Israel has become a powerful nuclear force allied with the United States and NATO.

“The U.S. military-industrial complex supplies tens of billions of dollars every year to Israel and to the very Arab states
that it subjugates and humiliates.

“The genie is out of the bottle and NATO doesn’t know how to control it.

“They are going to try and take maximum advantage of the lamentable events in Libya. No one is capable of knowing at this time what is happening there. All of the figures and
versions, even the most improbable, have been disseminated by the empire through the mass media, sowing chaos and misinformation.

“It is evident that a civil war is developing in Libya. Why and how was this unleashed? Who will suffer the consequences? The Reuters news agency, repeating the opinion of the well-known Nomura Japanese bank, said that the price of oil could
surpass all limits.”

“…What will be the consequences for the food crisis?

“The principal NATO leaders are exalted. British Prime
Minister David Cameron, informed ANSA, `…admitted in a speech in Kuwait that the Western countries made a mistake in supporting non-democratic governments in the Arab World.’”

“His French colleague Nicolas Sarkozy declared, `The prolonged brutal and bloody repression of the Libyan civilian population is repugnant.’”

“Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini declared `believable’ the figure of one thousand dead in Tripoli […] `the tragic figure will be a bloodbath.’”

“Hillary Clinton declared, `…the bloodbath is completely unacceptable and has to stop…’”

“Ban Ki-moon added, `The use of violence in the country is absolutely unacceptable.’”

“…’the Security Council will act in accordance with what
the international community decides.’”

“‘We are considering a number of options.’”

“What Ban Ki-moon is really waiting for is that Obama give
the final word.

“The President of the United States spoke Wednesday
afternoon and stated that the Secretary of State would leave for Europe in order to reach an agreement with the NATO European allies as to what measures to take. Noticeable on his
face was his readiness to take on the right-wing Republican John McCain; Joseph Lieberman, the pro-Israel Senator from
Connecticut; and Tea Party leaders, in order to guarantee his nomination by the Democratic Party.

“The empire’s mass media have prepared the ground for action. There would be nothing strange about a military intervention in Libya, which would, additionally, guarantee Europe almost two million barrels of light oil a day, if events do not occur beforehand to put an end to the presidency or life of Gaddafi.

“In any event, Obama’s role is complicated enough. What would the Arab and Islamic world’s reaction be if much blood is spilt in this country in such an adventure? Would the revolutionary wave unleashed in Egypt stop a NATO
intervention?

“In Iraq the innocent blood of more than a million Arab citizens was shed when this country was invaded on false pretences. Mission accomplished, George W. Bush proclaimed.

“No one in the world will ever be in favor of the deaths of
defenseless civilians in Libya or anywhere else. I ask myself, would the United States and NATO apply that principle to the defenseless civilians killed every day by yankee drones and this organization’s soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

“It is a danse macabre of cynicism.”

While I was meditating on these events, the United Nations
debate scheduled for yesterday, Tuesday, October 25 on the “Necessity of ending the commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba began. This is omething
which has been demanded by the vast majority of this institution’s member countries for 20 years.

This time the numerous elemental and just arguments – which for United States governments were no more than rhetorical exercises – revealed, like never before, the political and moral weakness of the most powerful empire ever to have existed, and to whose oligarchical interests and insatiable thirst for
power and riches all the planet’s inhabitants have been subjected, including the very people of that country.

The United States is tyrannizing and plundering the globalized world with its political, economic, technological and military might.

That truth is becoming more and more obvious in the wake of the honest and courageous debates which have taken place in the United Nations during the last 20 years, with the support of states which one would imagine are expressing the will of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants.

Before [Cuban Foreign Minister] Bruno’s speech, many country
organizations expressed their points of view through one of their members. The first was Argentina, in the name of the Group of 77 plus China; followed by Egypt, in the name of the Non-Aligned Movement; Kenya, in the name of the African Union; Belize, in the name of CARICOM; Kazakhstan, in the name of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; and Uruguay, in the name of MERCOSUR.

Independently of these expressions of a collective nature,
China, a country of growing political and economic weight in the world, India and Indonesia strongly supported the resolution via their ambassadors; between the three of them they represent 2.7 billion inhabitants. The ambassadors of the Russian Federation, Belarus, South Africa, Algeria,
Venezuela and Mexico did likewise. The impassioned words of solidarity expressed by the ambassador of Belize, speaking
on behalf of the Caribbean community, and those of St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Bolivia, resonated among the poorest countries of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Their arguments in the context of the solidarity of our people –
despite a blockade which has already lasted 50 years – will be a constant stimulus for our doctors, educators and scientists.

Nicaragua spoke before the vote, to bravely explain why it would vote against this perfidious measure.

The United States representative also spoke before the vote, in
order to explain the inexplicable. I felt sorry for him. It is the role that they assigned to him.

At the hour of voting, two countries were absent: Libya and Sweden; three abstained: Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau; two voted against: the United  States and Israel. Adding together those who voted against, abstained or were absent: the United States, with 313 million inhabitants; Israel, with 7.4
million; Sweden, with 9.1 million; Libya, with 6.5 million; Marshall Islands, with 67,100; Micronesia, 106,800; Palau, with
20,900, the total amounts to 336.948 million, equivalent to 4.8% of the world population, which has already risen to seven billion this month.

After the vote, speaking in the name of the European Union, Poland explained the votes of members of this bloc which, in spite of its close alliance with the United States and its obligatory participation in the blockade, is against this
criminal measure.

Subsequently, 17 countries addressed the Assembly to explain, resolutely and decisively, why they voted for the resolution against the blockade.

I will continue Friday the 28th.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 26, 2011  9:45 p.m.

Translated
by Granma International

 


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THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SITUATION IN LIBYA

August 24th, 2011
The Truth About the Situation in Libya
By Brian Becker, National Coordinator,
     ANSWER Coalition
(http://www.ANSWERCoalition.org)

Aug 13 - Stop Bombing LibyaLibya is a small country of just over 6 million people but it
possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is
especially coveted because of its particularly high quality.
The Air Force of
the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459 bombing
attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States sent special
operation ground forces and commando units to direct the military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led army in the field.
The troops may be disaffected Libyans but the operation is under the control and direction of NATO commanders and western commando units who serve as “advisors.” Their new weapons and billions in funds come from the U.S. and other NATO powers that froze and seized Libya’s assets in
Western banks. Their only military successes outside of Benghazi, in the far
east of the country, have been exclusively based on the coordinated air and
ground operations of the imperialist NATO military forces.
In military terms, Libya’s resistance to NATO is of David and Goliath proportions. U.S. military spending alone is more than ten times greater than Libya’s entire annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which was $74.2 billion in 2010, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book.
In recent weeks, the NATO military operations used surveillance-collecting drones, satellites, mounting aerial attacks and covert commando units to decapitate Libya’s military and political leadership and its command and control capabilities. Global economic sanctions meant that the country was suddenly deprived of income and secure access to goods and services needed to sustain a civilian economy over a long period.
“The cumulative effect [of NATO’s coordinated air and ground operation] not only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly diminished Colonel Gaddafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations,“ reports the New York Times in a celebratory article on August 22.

A False Pretext
The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy targeted the Libyan government for overthrow or “regime change” not because these governments were worried about protecting civilians or to bring about a more democratic form of governance in Libya.

If that were the real motivation of the NATO powers, they could start the bombing of Saudi Arabia right away. There are no elections in Saudi Arabia. The monarchy does not even allow women to drive cars. By law, women must be fully covered in public or they will go to prison. Protests are rare in Saudi Arabia because any dissent is met with imprisonment, torture and
execution.

The Saudi monarchy is protected by U.S. imperialism because it is part of an undeclared but real U.S. sphere of influence and it is the largest producer of oil in the world. The U.S. attitude toward the Saudi monarchy was put succinctly by Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he said that the U.S. government “will not permit” revolution in Saudi Arabia such as the 1979 Iranian revolution that removed the U.S. client regime of the Shah.
Reagan’s message was clear: the Pentagon and CIA’s military forces would be used decisively to destroy any democratic movement against the rule of the Saudi royal family.
Reagan’s explicit statement in 1981 has in fact been the policy of every successive U.S. administration, including the current one.

Libya and Imperialism
Libya, unlike Saudi Arabia, did have a revolution against its monarchy. As a result of the 1969 revolution led by Muammar Gaddafi, Libya was no longer in the sphere of influence of any imperialist country.


Libya had once been an impoverished colony of Italy living under the
boot heel of the fascist Mussolini. After the Allied victory in World War II,
control of the country was formally transferred to the United Nations and Libya became independent in 1951 with authority vested in the monarch King Idris.

But in actuality, Libya was controlled by the United States and Britain until the 1969 revolution. One of the first acts of the 1969 revolution was to
eliminate the vestiges of colonialism and foreign control. Not only were oil
fields nationalized but Gaddafi eliminated foreign military bases inside the
country.
In March of 1970, the Gaddafi government shut down two important
British military bases in Tobruk and El Adem. He then became the Pentagon’s enemy when he evicted the U.S. Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli that had been operated by the United States since 1945. Before the British military took control in 1943, the facility was a base operated by the Italians under Mussolini.

Wheelus had been an important Strategic Air Command (SAC) base
during the Cold War, housing B-52 bombers and other front-line Pentagon
aircrafts that targeted the Soviet Union.

Once under Libyan control, the Gaddafi government allowed Soviet military planes to access the airfield. In 1986, the Pentagon heavily bombed the base at the same time it bombed downtown Tripoli in an effort to assassinate Gaddafi. That effort failed but his 2-year-old daughter died along with scores of other civilians.

 

The Character of the Gaddafi Regime
The political, social and class orientation of the Libyan regime has gone through several stages in the last four decades. The government and ruling establishment reflected contradictory class, social, religious and regional antagonisms. The fact that the leadership of the NATO-led National Transition Council is comprised of top officials of the Gaddafi government, who broke with the regime and allied themselves with NATO, is emblematic of the decades-long instability within the Libyan establishment.

These inherent contradictions were exacerbated by pressures applied to Libya from the outside. The U.S. imposed far-reaching economic sanctions on Libya in the 1980s. The largest western corporations were barred from doing business with Libya and the country was denied access to credit from western banks.

In its foreign policy, Libya gave significant financial and military support to national liberation struggles, including in Palestine, Southern Africa, Ireland and elsewhere.
Because of Libya’s economic policies, living standards for the population had jumped dramatically after 1969. Having a small population and substantial income from its oil production, augmented with the Gaddafi regime’s far-reaching policy of social benefits, created a huge advance in the social and economic status for the population. Libya was still a class society with rich and poor, and gaps between urban and rural living standards, but illiteracy was basically wiped out, while education and health care were free and extensively accessible.
By 2010, the per capita income in Libya was near the highest in Africa at $14,000 and life expectancy rose to over 77 years, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book. Gaddafi’s political orientation explicitly rejected communism and capitalism. He created an ideology called the “Third
International Theory,” which was an eclectic mix of Islamic, Arab nationalist
and socialist ideas and programs.
In 1977, Libya was renamed the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. A great deal of industry, including oil, was nationalized and the government provided an expansive social insurance program or what is called a welfare state policy akin to some features prevalent in the Soviet Union and some West European capitalist countries.
But Libya was not a workers’ state or a “socialist government” to use the popular if not scientific use of the term “socialist.” The revolution was not a workers and peasant rebellion against the capitalist class per se. Libya remained a class society although class differentiation may have been somewhat obscured beneath the existence of revolutionary committees
and the radical, populist rhetoric that emanated from the regime.

As in many developing, formerly colonized countries, state ownership of property was not “socialist” but rather a necessary fortification of an under-developed capitalist class. State property in Iraq, Libya and other such post-colonial regimes was designed to facilitate the social and economic growth of a new capitalist ruling class that was initially too weak, too deprived of capital and too cut off from international credit to compete on its own terms with the dominant sectors of world monopoly capitalism. The nascent capitalist classes in such developing economies promoted state-owned property, under their control, in order to intersect with Western banks and transnational corporations and create more favorable terms for global
trade and investment.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the “socialist bloc” governments of central and Eastern Europe in 1989-91 deprived Libya of an economic and military counter-weight to the United States, and the Libyan
government’s domestic economic and foreign policy shifted towards accommodation with the West.

In the 1990s some sectors of the Libyan economic establishment and the Gaddafi-led government favored privatization, cutting back on social
programs and subsidies and integration into western European markets.
The earlier populism of the regime incrementally gave way to the adoption of neo-liberal policies. This was, however, a long process. In 2004, the George W. Bush administration ended sanctions on Libya. Western oil companies and banks and other corporations initiated huge direct investments in Libya and trade with Libyan enterprises. There was also a growth of unemployment in Libya and in cutbacks in social spending, leading to
further inequality between rich and poor and class polarization.
But Gaddafi himself was still considered a thorn in the side of the imperialist powers. They want absolute puppets, not simply partners, in their plans for exploitation. The Wikileaks release of State Department cables between 2007 and 2010 show that the United states and western oil companies were condemning Gaddafi for what they called “resource nationalism.” Gaddafi even threatened to re-nationalize western oil companies’ property unless Libya was granted a larger share of the revenue for their projects.
As an article in today’s New York Times Business section said honestly: “”Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for the international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with.”
Even the most recent CIA Fact Book publication on Libya, written before the armed revolt championed by NATO, complained of the measured tempo of pro-market reforms in Libya: “Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps— including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization—are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy.” (CIA World Fact Book)
The beginning of the armed revolt on February 23 by disaffected members of the Libyan military and political establishment provided the opportunity for the U.S. imperialists, in league with their French and British counterparts, to militarily overthrow the Libyan government and replace it with a client or stooge regime.
Of course, in the revolt were workers and young people who had many legitimate grievances against the Libyan government. But what is critical in an armed struggle for state power is not the composition of the rank-and-file soldiers, but the class character and political orientation of the leadership.

Character of the National Transition Council
The National Transitional Council (NTC) constituted itself as the leadership of the uprising in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. The central leader is Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who was Libya’s Minister of Justice until his defection at the start of the uprising. He was one of a significant number of Western-oriented and neoliberal officials from Libya’s government, diplomatic
corps and military ranks who joined the opposition in the days immediately after the start of the revolt.

As soon as it was established, the NTC began issuing calls for imperialist intervention. These appeals became increasing panicky as it became clear that, contrary to early predictions that the Gaddafi-led government would collapse in a matter of days, it was the “rebels” who faced imminent defeat in the civil war. In fact, it was only due to the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, initiated with great hurry on March 19 that the rebellion did not collapse.
The last five months of war have erased any doubt about the pro-imperialist character of the NTC. One striking episode took place on April 22, when Senator John McCain made a “surprise” trip to Benghazi. A huge banner was unveiled to greet him with an American flag printed on it and the
words: “United States of America – You have a new ally in North Africa.”

Similar to the military relationship between the NATO and Libyan “rebel”
armed forces, the NTC is entirely dependent on and subordinated to the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialist governments.

If the Pentagon, CIA, and Wall Street succeed in installing a client regime in Tripoli it will accelerate and embolden the imperialist threats and intervention against other independent governments such as Syria and Venezuela.
In each case we will see a similar process unfold, including the demonization of the leadership of the targeted countries so as to silence or mute a militant anti-war response to the aggression of the war-makers.
We in the ANSWER Coalition invite all those who share this perspective to join with us, to mobilize, and to unmask the colonial agenda that hides under the slogan of “humanitarian intervention.”


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