Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned about the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which produces a large portion of the oil sustaining the consumer economies of the rich, developed countries – could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya's internal conflict to promote a military intervention. The statements formulated by the United States government from early on were clearly in this vein.
Cuba's former president Fidel Castro Ruz
AS opposed to the situation in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies first place in the Human Development Index within Africa and has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention. The cultural level of the population is without a doubt higher. Its problems are of another nature. The population is not in need of food or basic social services. The country requires many foreign workers to implement its ambitious production and social development plans
Therefore it offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations. It has an enormous income and hard currency reserves deposited in the banks of rich countries, with which it acquires consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons, supplied by the very countries which now want to invade in the name of human rights.
The colossal campaign of lies unleashed by the mass media has created much confusion in world public opinion. Some time will pass before what really has happened in Libya is reconstructed, and real events are separated from the falsified ones which have been disseminated.
Serious and prestigious broadcasters such as Telesur have been obliged to send reporters and photographers to one group's activities and then to the opposite side's, in order to report what was really occurring.
Communications were blocked; honest diplomatic officials risked their lives touring neighborhoods, observing activities day and night to report what was transpiring. The empire and its principal allies employed the most sophisticated media to disseminate falsified information about the events, requiring one to infer traces of the truth.
No doubt, the faces of young people protesting in Benghazi, men and women, with veils and without, expressed real indignation.
The tribal component of this Arab country is noticeable, despite the Islamic faith sincerely shared by 95% of the population.
Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned about the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which produces a large portion of the oil sustaining the consumer economies of the rich, developed countries – could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya's internal conflict to promote a military intervention. The statements formulated by the United States government from early on were clearly in this vein.
The circumstances could hardly be more propitious. The Republican right wing dealt President Obama, an expert in rhetoric, a severe blow during the November elections.
The fascist "mission accomplished" group, ideologically supported by the extremist Tea Party, has reduced the current president's options to a merely decorative role, with even his health program and the doubtful recuperation of the economy in danger, as a result of the budget deficit and the uncontrollable increase in the public debt, which has broken all historical records.
Despite the torrent of lies and the confusion created, the United States was unable to drag China or the Russian Federation into the UN Security Council's approval of military intervention in Libya, although it did achieve its current objectives within the Human Rights Council. As for a military intervention, the Secretary of State declared in words which did not leave the slightest doubt, "No option is off the table."
The fact is that Libya is involved in a civil war, as we had foreseen, and there is nothing the United Nations could have done to prevent it, except that its own Secretary General sprinkled a hefty dose of fuel on the fire.
The problem which these actors perhaps never imagined is that the very leaders of the rebellion have burst upon the complicated scene, declaring that they reject any foreign military intervention.
Various news agencies reported that Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, spokesperson for the Libyan National Council, stated on Monday 28th that "The rest of Libya will be liberated by the Libyan people."
"We can count on the army to liberate Tripoli," Ghoga assured, announcing the formation of a "National Council" to represent the country’s cities in the hands of the insurrection.
"What we want is intelligence information, but in no case that our air, land or sea sovereignty is affected," he added during a meeting with journalists in this city 1,000km east of Tripoli.
"The intransigence of opposition leaders over national sovereignty reflected opinions spontaneously expressed by many Libyan citizens to the international press in Benghazi," according to an AFP cable this past Monday.
That same day, Abeir Imneina, a professor of political sciences at the University of Benghazi, stated, "There is a very strong feeling of nationalism in Libya."
"Moreover, the Iraqi example scares everyone in the Arab world," she stressed, in reference to the 2003 U.S. invasion which was to have brought democracy to that country and then, by contagion, to the region as a whole, a hypothesis totally refuted by the facts.
The professor continues, "We know very well what happened in Iraq, which is in the throes of instability. Following in those footsteps is not appealing at all. We don't want the Americans to come and then to have to regret (the end of the rule of) Gaddafi." But according to Abeir Imneina, "There is also the feeling that this is our revolution and that it is up to us forge ahead."
Just a few hours after this cable was published, two of the major U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, hastened to provide new versions on the subject, as reported by the DPA news agency the following day, March 1, "The Libyan opposition could ask the West to undertake air strikes on the strategic positions of forces loyal to Muammar al Gaddafi, the U.S. press states today."
The issue is being discussed within the Libyan National Council, according to online editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The New York Times notes that these discussions reveal the growing frustration of the rebel leaders at the possibility of Gaddafi retaking power.
"In the case of air strikes being executed within the framework of the United Nations, they would not imply international intervention," explained the Council spokesperson, quoted by The New York Times.
"The Council is composed of lawyers, academics, judges and prominent members of Libyan society."
The cable states:
"The Washington Post quoted rebels who recognize that, without Western support, battles with forces loyal to Gaddafi could last a long time and cost a large number of human lives."
It is striking that the cable does not mention one single industrial, agricultural or construction worker, anyone linked to material production or the young students or combatants who can be seen in the demonstrations.
Why the effort to present the rebels as prominent members of society demanding U.S. and NATO air strikes to kill Libyans?
Some day the truth will be known, through people like the professor of political sciences at the University of Benghazi, who narrated with such eloquence the terrible experience which killed, destroyed homes and left millions of people in Iraq jobless or forced to emigrate.
Today, Wednesday, March 2, the EFE news agency presents the known rebel spokesperson making statements that, in my view, simultaneously affirm and contradict those of Monday: "Benghazi (Libya) March 2. The Libyan rebel leadership today asked the UN Security Council to launch an air strike ‘on mercenaries’ from the Muammar al-Gaddafi regime."
"Our army cannot launch attacks on the mercenaries, given its defensive role," stated rebel spokesperson Abdel Hafiz Ghoga at a press conference in Benghazi.
"A strategic air strike is not the same as an international intervention, which we reject," emphasized the spokesperson for the opposition forces, which have consistently expressed opposition to any foreign military intervention in the Libyan conflict.
Which of the many imperialist wars would this one resemble?
That of Spain in 1936, that of Mussolini against Ethiopia in 1935, that of George W. Bush against Iraq in 2003 or any one of the dozens of wars promoted by the United States against the peoples of the Americas, from the invasion of Mexico in 1846 to that of the Malvinas in 1982?
Without excluding, of course, the mercenary invasion of Girón, the dirty war and the blockade of our homeland during 50 years, the anniversary of which is next April 16.
In all of those wars, such as that of Vietnam, which cost millions of lives, justifications and the most cynical measures reigned supreme.
For those harboring any doubt as to the inevitable military intervention which is to take place in Libya, the AP news agency, which I consider well informed, led with a cable published today affirming, "Some NATO countries are drawing up contingency plans modeled on the no-fly zones over the Balkans in the 1990s in case the international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya, diplomats said."
It goes on to conclude, "The diplomats, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the options being looked into are modeled on the no-fly zone which the Western military alliance imposed over Bosnia in 1993 that had a U.N. mandate… and NATO's aerial offensive against Yugoslavia [via Kosovo] in 1999, WHICH DID NOT HAVE IT."
WHEN Gaddafi, aged just 28 and a colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he implemented important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil. The growing income was dedicated to economic and social development, particularly educational and health services for the small Libyan population located in a vast desert territory with very little arable land.
An extensive and deep sea of "fossil water" existed beneath that desert. When I heard about an experimental cultivation area I had the impression that, in the future, those aquifers would be more valuable than oil.
Religious faith, preached with the fervor that characterizes Muslim nations, in part helped to compensate for the strong tribal tendency which still survives in that Arab country.
Libyan revolutionaries devised and implemented their own ideas in relation to legal and political institutions, which Cuba, as a principle, respected.
We totally abstained from expressing any opinions concerning the concepts of the Libyan leadership.
We can clearly see that the fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.
It is an irrefutable fact that relations between the United States and its NATO allies in recent years were excellent until the rebellion in Egypt and in Tunisia arose.
In high-level meetings between Libya and NATO leaders, none of the latter had any problems with Gaddafi. The country was a secure source of high-quality oil, gas and even potassium supplies. The problems which arose between them in the early decades had been overcome.
Strategic sectors such as oil pumping and transportation were opened up to foreign investment.
Privatizations were extended to many public enterprises. The International Monetary Fund exercised its beatific role in the implementation of those operations.
Logically, Aznar was fulsome in his praise of Gaddafi and after him, Blair, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Zapatero and even my friend the King of Spain, paraded past the sardonic regard of the Libyan leader. They were happy.
Although it might seem that I am mocking that is not the case; I am simply asking myself why they now want to take Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
They are accusing him 24 hours a day of firing on unarmed citizens who were protesting. Why did they not explain to the world that the weapons and, above all, the sophisticated machinery of repression possessed by Libya, was supplied by the United States, Britain and other illustrious hosts of Gaddafi?
I strongly oppose the cynicism and lies currently being used to justify the invasion and occupation of Libya.
The last time that I visited Gaddafi was in May 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his very modest residence, where he took me to see what was left of it. It received a direct hit from the aircraft and was considerably destroyed; his little daughter three years of age died in the attack: she was murdered by Ronald Reagan. There was no prior agreement on the part of NATO, the Human Rights Committee, or the Security Council.
My previous visit had taken place in 1977, eight years after the beginning of the revolutionary process in Libya. I visited Tripoli; I took part in the General People’s Congress in Sebha; I toured the first agricultural experiments with water pumped from the vast sea of fossil waters; I visited Benghazi, I was the object of a warm reception. It was a legendary country which had been the scenario of historic battles in World War II. It did not as yet have six million inhabitants, nor were its enormous volumes of oil and fossil waters known. The former Portuguese colonies in Africa had already been liberated.
We had fought for 15 years in Angola against mercenary armies organized along tribal lines by the United States, the Mobutu government, and the well-equipped and trained racist apartheid army. This army, following U.S. instructions, as is now known, invaded Angola in 1975 in order to prevent its independence, reaching the outskirts of Luanda with its motorized forces. A number of Cuban instructors died in that brutal invasion. Resources were sent with all urgency.
Expelled from that country by Cuban internationalists and Angolan troops to the border of South African occupied Namibia, the racists were given the mission of eliminating the revolutionary process in Angola.
With the support of the United States and Israel they developed nuclear weapons. They already possessed them when the Cuban and Angolan troops defeated their land and air forces in Cuito Cuanavale and, defying the risk – using conventional tactics and means – advanced toward the border with Namibia, where the apartheid troops were attempting to resist. Twice in their history our forces have been at risk of attack by those kinds of weapons: in October of 1962 and in southern Angola, but on that second occasion, not even deploying those nuclear weapons that South Africa possessed could they have prevented the defeat which marked the end of the odious system. Those events took place under the government of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Piet Botha in South Africa.
There is no talk of that and the hundreds of thousands of lives which the imperialist adventure cost.
I regret having to recall those events when another great risk is hovering over the Arab peoples, because they are not resigned to continue being the victims of plunder and oppression.
The Revolution in the Arab world so much feared by the United States and NATO is that of those who lack all rights in the face of those who flaunt all privileges, and thus is destined to be more profound than the one unleashed in Europe in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille.
Not even Louis XIV, when he proclaimed that he was the state, possessed the privileges of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia and far less the vast wealth that lies below the surface of that almost desert country, where yankee transnationals determine the pumping and thus the price of oil in the world.
When the Libyan crisis began, extraction in Saudi Arabia rose to one million barrels a day at minimum cost and, in consequence, by that concept alone, the income of that country and those who control it has risen to one billon dollars a day.
No one should imagine that the Saudi people are swimming in money. There are moving accounts of the living conditions of many construction workers and those in other sectors obliged to work 13 to 14 hours a day for paltry wages.
Shocked by the revolutionary wave which is shaking the prevalent system of plunder, in the wake of what took place with workers in Egypt and Tunisia, but also unemployed youth in Jordan, the occupied territories of Palestine, Yemen and even Bahrain and the Arab Emirates with higher per capita income, the upper echelons of the Saudi hierarchy has been impacted by the events.
As opposed to other times, today the Arab peoples receive almost instantaneous information on events, albeit exceptionally manipulated.
The worst thing for the status quo of the privileged sectors is that those persistent events are coinciding with a considerable increase in food prices and the devastating impact of climate change, while the United States, the largest producer of corn in the world, is wasting 40% of that product and a significant part of soy production on biofuels to feed automobiles. Lester Brown, the best informed American ecologist in the world on agricultural products, can surely give us an idea of the current food situation.
The Bolivarian president, Hugo Chávez, is making a valiant effort to find a solution without NATO intervention in Libya. The chances of his attaining that objective would improve if he can achieve the feat of creating a broad movement of opinion before and not after the intervention takes place, and the peoples do not have to see the atrocious experience of Iraq repeated in other countries.
End of Reflection.
______________________________
Notes:
NATO’s inevitable war (Part I)
Granma International, 3 March 2011
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/3marzo-nato.html
NATO’s inevitable war (Part I)
Granma International, 4 March 2011
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/4marzo-NATO-2.html
______________________________
Therefore it offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations. It has an enormous income and hard currency reserves deposited in the banks of rich countries, with which it acquires consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons, supplied by the very countries which now want to invade in the name of human rights.
The colossal campaign of lies unleashed by the mass media has created much confusion in world public opinion. Some time will pass before what really has happened in Libya is reconstructed, and real events are separated from the falsified ones which have been disseminated.
Serious and prestigious broadcasters such as Telesur have been obliged to send reporters and photographers to one group's activities and then to the opposite side's, in order to report what was really occurring.
Communications were blocked; honest diplomatic officials risked their lives touring neighborhoods, observing activities day and night to report what was transpiring. The empire and its principal allies employed the most sophisticated media to disseminate falsified information about the events, requiring one to infer traces of the truth.
No doubt, the faces of young people protesting in Benghazi, men and women, with veils and without, expressed real indignation.
The tribal component of this Arab country is noticeable, despite the Islamic faith sincerely shared by 95% of the population.
Imperialism and NATO – seriously concerned about the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which produces a large portion of the oil sustaining the consumer economies of the rich, developed countries – could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya's internal conflict to promote a military intervention. The statements formulated by the United States government from early on were clearly in this vein.
The circumstances could hardly be more propitious. The Republican right wing dealt President Obama, an expert in rhetoric, a severe blow during the November elections.
The fascist "mission accomplished" group, ideologically supported by the extremist Tea Party, has reduced the current president's options to a merely decorative role, with even his health program and the doubtful recuperation of the economy in danger, as a result of the budget deficit and the uncontrollable increase in the public debt, which has broken all historical records.
Despite the torrent of lies and the confusion created, the United States was unable to drag China or the Russian Federation into the UN Security Council's approval of military intervention in Libya, although it did achieve its current objectives within the Human Rights Council. As for a military intervention, the Secretary of State declared in words which did not leave the slightest doubt, "No option is off the table."
The fact is that Libya is involved in a civil war, as we had foreseen, and there is nothing the United Nations could have done to prevent it, except that its own Secretary General sprinkled a hefty dose of fuel on the fire.
The problem which these actors perhaps never imagined is that the very leaders of the rebellion have burst upon the complicated scene, declaring that they reject any foreign military intervention.
Various news agencies reported that Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, spokesperson for the Libyan National Council, stated on Monday 28th that "The rest of Libya will be liberated by the Libyan people."
"We can count on the army to liberate Tripoli," Ghoga assured, announcing the formation of a "National Council" to represent the country’s cities in the hands of the insurrection.
"What we want is intelligence information, but in no case that our air, land or sea sovereignty is affected," he added during a meeting with journalists in this city 1,000km east of Tripoli.
"The intransigence of opposition leaders over national sovereignty reflected opinions spontaneously expressed by many Libyan citizens to the international press in Benghazi," according to an AFP cable this past Monday.
That same day, Abeir Imneina, a professor of political sciences at the University of Benghazi, stated, "There is a very strong feeling of nationalism in Libya."
"Moreover, the Iraqi example scares everyone in the Arab world," she stressed, in reference to the 2003 U.S. invasion which was to have brought democracy to that country and then, by contagion, to the region as a whole, a hypothesis totally refuted by the facts.
The professor continues, "We know very well what happened in Iraq, which is in the throes of instability. Following in those footsteps is not appealing at all. We don't want the Americans to come and then to have to regret (the end of the rule of) Gaddafi." But according to Abeir Imneina, "There is also the feeling that this is our revolution and that it is up to us forge ahead."
Just a few hours after this cable was published, two of the major U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, hastened to provide new versions on the subject, as reported by the DPA news agency the following day, March 1, "The Libyan opposition could ask the West to undertake air strikes on the strategic positions of forces loyal to Muammar al Gaddafi, the U.S. press states today."
The issue is being discussed within the Libyan National Council, according to online editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The New York Times notes that these discussions reveal the growing frustration of the rebel leaders at the possibility of Gaddafi retaking power.
"In the case of air strikes being executed within the framework of the United Nations, they would not imply international intervention," explained the Council spokesperson, quoted by The New York Times.
"The Council is composed of lawyers, academics, judges and prominent members of Libyan society."
The cable states:
"The Washington Post quoted rebels who recognize that, without Western support, battles with forces loyal to Gaddafi could last a long time and cost a large number of human lives."
It is striking that the cable does not mention one single industrial, agricultural or construction worker, anyone linked to material production or the young students or combatants who can be seen in the demonstrations.
Why the effort to present the rebels as prominent members of society demanding U.S. and NATO air strikes to kill Libyans?
Some day the truth will be known, through people like the professor of political sciences at the University of Benghazi, who narrated with such eloquence the terrible experience which killed, destroyed homes and left millions of people in Iraq jobless or forced to emigrate.
Today, Wednesday, March 2, the EFE news agency presents the known rebel spokesperson making statements that, in my view, simultaneously affirm and contradict those of Monday: "Benghazi (Libya) March 2. The Libyan rebel leadership today asked the UN Security Council to launch an air strike ‘on mercenaries’ from the Muammar al-Gaddafi regime."
"Our army cannot launch attacks on the mercenaries, given its defensive role," stated rebel spokesperson Abdel Hafiz Ghoga at a press conference in Benghazi.
"A strategic air strike is not the same as an international intervention, which we reject," emphasized the spokesperson for the opposition forces, which have consistently expressed opposition to any foreign military intervention in the Libyan conflict.
Which of the many imperialist wars would this one resemble?
That of Spain in 1936, that of Mussolini against Ethiopia in 1935, that of George W. Bush against Iraq in 2003 or any one of the dozens of wars promoted by the United States against the peoples of the Americas, from the invasion of Mexico in 1846 to that of the Malvinas in 1982?
Without excluding, of course, the mercenary invasion of Girón, the dirty war and the blockade of our homeland during 50 years, the anniversary of which is next April 16.
In all of those wars, such as that of Vietnam, which cost millions of lives, justifications and the most cynical measures reigned supreme.
For those harboring any doubt as to the inevitable military intervention which is to take place in Libya, the AP news agency, which I consider well informed, led with a cable published today affirming, "Some NATO countries are drawing up contingency plans modeled on the no-fly zones over the Balkans in the 1990s in case the international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya, diplomats said."
It goes on to conclude, "The diplomats, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the options being looked into are modeled on the no-fly zone which the Western military alliance imposed over Bosnia in 1993 that had a U.N. mandate… and NATO's aerial offensive against Yugoslavia [via Kosovo] in 1999, WHICH DID NOT HAVE IT."
WHEN Gaddafi, aged just 28 and a colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he implemented important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil. The growing income was dedicated to economic and social development, particularly educational and health services for the small Libyan population located in a vast desert territory with very little arable land.
An extensive and deep sea of "fossil water" existed beneath that desert. When I heard about an experimental cultivation area I had the impression that, in the future, those aquifers would be more valuable than oil.
Religious faith, preached with the fervor that characterizes Muslim nations, in part helped to compensate for the strong tribal tendency which still survives in that Arab country.
Libyan revolutionaries devised and implemented their own ideas in relation to legal and political institutions, which Cuba, as a principle, respected.
We totally abstained from expressing any opinions concerning the concepts of the Libyan leadership.
We can clearly see that the fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.
It is an irrefutable fact that relations between the United States and its NATO allies in recent years were excellent until the rebellion in Egypt and in Tunisia arose.
In high-level meetings between Libya and NATO leaders, none of the latter had any problems with Gaddafi. The country was a secure source of high-quality oil, gas and even potassium supplies. The problems which arose between them in the early decades had been overcome.
Strategic sectors such as oil pumping and transportation were opened up to foreign investment.
Privatizations were extended to many public enterprises. The International Monetary Fund exercised its beatific role in the implementation of those operations.
Logically, Aznar was fulsome in his praise of Gaddafi and after him, Blair, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Zapatero and even my friend the King of Spain, paraded past the sardonic regard of the Libyan leader. They were happy.
Although it might seem that I am mocking that is not the case; I am simply asking myself why they now want to take Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
They are accusing him 24 hours a day of firing on unarmed citizens who were protesting. Why did they not explain to the world that the weapons and, above all, the sophisticated machinery of repression possessed by Libya, was supplied by the United States, Britain and other illustrious hosts of Gaddafi?
I strongly oppose the cynicism and lies currently being used to justify the invasion and occupation of Libya.
The last time that I visited Gaddafi was in May 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his very modest residence, where he took me to see what was left of it. It received a direct hit from the aircraft and was considerably destroyed; his little daughter three years of age died in the attack: she was murdered by Ronald Reagan. There was no prior agreement on the part of NATO, the Human Rights Committee, or the Security Council.
My previous visit had taken place in 1977, eight years after the beginning of the revolutionary process in Libya. I visited Tripoli; I took part in the General People’s Congress in Sebha; I toured the first agricultural experiments with water pumped from the vast sea of fossil waters; I visited Benghazi, I was the object of a warm reception. It was a legendary country which had been the scenario of historic battles in World War II. It did not as yet have six million inhabitants, nor were its enormous volumes of oil and fossil waters known. The former Portuguese colonies in Africa had already been liberated.
We had fought for 15 years in Angola against mercenary armies organized along tribal lines by the United States, the Mobutu government, and the well-equipped and trained racist apartheid army. This army, following U.S. instructions, as is now known, invaded Angola in 1975 in order to prevent its independence, reaching the outskirts of Luanda with its motorized forces. A number of Cuban instructors died in that brutal invasion. Resources were sent with all urgency.
Expelled from that country by Cuban internationalists and Angolan troops to the border of South African occupied Namibia, the racists were given the mission of eliminating the revolutionary process in Angola.
With the support of the United States and Israel they developed nuclear weapons. They already possessed them when the Cuban and Angolan troops defeated their land and air forces in Cuito Cuanavale and, defying the risk – using conventional tactics and means – advanced toward the border with Namibia, where the apartheid troops were attempting to resist. Twice in their history our forces have been at risk of attack by those kinds of weapons: in October of 1962 and in southern Angola, but on that second occasion, not even deploying those nuclear weapons that South Africa possessed could they have prevented the defeat which marked the end of the odious system. Those events took place under the government of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Piet Botha in South Africa.
There is no talk of that and the hundreds of thousands of lives which the imperialist adventure cost.
I regret having to recall those events when another great risk is hovering over the Arab peoples, because they are not resigned to continue being the victims of plunder and oppression.
The Revolution in the Arab world so much feared by the United States and NATO is that of those who lack all rights in the face of those who flaunt all privileges, and thus is destined to be more profound than the one unleashed in Europe in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille.
Not even Louis XIV, when he proclaimed that he was the state, possessed the privileges of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia and far less the vast wealth that lies below the surface of that almost desert country, where yankee transnationals determine the pumping and thus the price of oil in the world.
When the Libyan crisis began, extraction in Saudi Arabia rose to one million barrels a day at minimum cost and, in consequence, by that concept alone, the income of that country and those who control it has risen to one billon dollars a day.
No one should imagine that the Saudi people are swimming in money. There are moving accounts of the living conditions of many construction workers and those in other sectors obliged to work 13 to 14 hours a day for paltry wages.
Shocked by the revolutionary wave which is shaking the prevalent system of plunder, in the wake of what took place with workers in Egypt and Tunisia, but also unemployed youth in Jordan, the occupied territories of Palestine, Yemen and even Bahrain and the Arab Emirates with higher per capita income, the upper echelons of the Saudi hierarchy has been impacted by the events.
As opposed to other times, today the Arab peoples receive almost instantaneous information on events, albeit exceptionally manipulated.
The worst thing for the status quo of the privileged sectors is that those persistent events are coinciding with a considerable increase in food prices and the devastating impact of climate change, while the United States, the largest producer of corn in the world, is wasting 40% of that product and a significant part of soy production on biofuels to feed automobiles. Lester Brown, the best informed American ecologist in the world on agricultural products, can surely give us an idea of the current food situation.
The Bolivarian president, Hugo Chávez, is making a valiant effort to find a solution without NATO intervention in Libya. The chances of his attaining that objective would improve if he can achieve the feat of creating a broad movement of opinion before and not after the intervention takes place, and the peoples do not have to see the atrocious experience of Iraq repeated in other countries.
End of Reflection.
______________________________
Notes:
NATO’s inevitable war (Part I)
Granma International, 3 March 2011
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/3marzo-nato.html NATO’s inevitable war (Part I)
Granma International, 4 March 2011
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/4marzo-NATO-2.html ______________________________
