[Debate] Stratfor on the Neither-Liberal-nor-Democratic Arab Spring

Tue Aug 23 15:28:05 BST 2011

IMHO, the rebellion in Libya doesn't have anything to do with the
desire to uphold human rights.  If it did, the rebels wouldn't be seen
violating human rights themselves.

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Peter Waterman
<peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yoshie
>
> You have some rather iffy arguments below, although I guess there is some
> consistency if, as usual with you, your only axis of measurement is the core
> v. periphery contradiction.
>
> However, it does strike me that widespread Left concern about Libya seems to
> have begun with an uprising against a regime that has for 40 years been a
> one-man (one-family, one-clan) dictatorship, with a self-deifying and
> arbitrary leader, extremely unpredicatble in his international militaristic
> relations (within Africa and more widely).
>
> Here is Wikipedia on the Gaddafi regime:
>
> ..........................................................................................................................................
>
> Libya under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi 1969–2011
>
> Main article: History of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi
>
> On 1 September 1969, a small group of military officers led by the 27 year
> old army officer Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état against King Idris,
> launching the Libyan Revolution.[41] Gaddafi has since then been referred to
> as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" in government statements
> and the official Libyan press.[42]
>
> On the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad in 1973, Gaddafi delivered a
> "Five-Point Address".[43] He announced the suspension of all existing laws
> and the implementation of Sharia. He said that the country would be purged
> of the "politically sick". A "people's militia" would "protect the
> revolution". There would be an administrative revolution, and a cultural
> revolution.
>
> Gaddafi set up an extensive surveillance system. 10 to 20 percent of Libyans
> work in surveillance for the Revolutionary committees. The surveillance
> takes place in government, in factories, and in the education sector.[43]
> Gaddafi executed dissidents publicly and the executions were often
> rebroadcast on state television channels.[43][44] Gaddafi employed his
> network of diplomats and recruits to assassinate dozens of critical refugees
> around the world. Amnesty International listed at least 25 assassinations
> between 1980 and 1987.[43][45]
>
> In 1977, Libya officially became the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab
> Jamahiriya. Later that same year, Gaddafi ordered an artillery strike on
> Egypt in retaliation against Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's intent to sign
> a peace treaty with Israel. Sadat's forces triumphed easily in a four-day
> border war that came to be known as the Libyan-Egyptian War, leaving over
> 400 Libyans dead and Gaddafi's armored divisions in disarray.
>
> In February 1977, Libya started delivering military supplies to Goukouni
> Oueddei and the People's Armed Forces in Chad. The Chadian–Libyan conflict
> began in earnest when Libya's support of rebel forces in northern Chad
> escalated into an invasion. Hundreds of Libyans lost their lives in the war
> against Tanzania, when Gaddafi tried to save his friend Idi Amin. Gaddafi
> financed various other groups from anti-nuclear movements to Australian
> trade unions.[46]
>
> Much of the country’s income from oil, which soared in the 1970s, was spent
> on arms purchases and on sponsoring dozens of paramilitaries and terrorist
> groups around the world.[46][47][48][49] An airstrike failed to kill Gaddafi
> in 1986. Libya was finally put under United Nations sanctions after the
> bombing of a commercial flight killed hundreds of travelers.
>
> Gaddafi assumed the honorific title of "King of Kings of Africa" in 2008 as
> part of his campaign for a United States of Africa.[50] By the early 2010s,
> in addition to attempting to assume a leadership role in the African Union,
> Libya was also viewed as having formed closer ties with Italy, one of its
> former colonial rulers, than any other country in the European Union.[51]
>
> The eastern parts of the country have been 'ruined' due to Gaddafi's
> economic theories, according to the Economist.[52][53]
>
> ...................................................................................................................................................
>
> When I say widespread Left concern, I include, obviously, you but also
> myself. The only part of the global progressive movement that raised
> consistent concern about this regime seems to have been the human rights
> movement. I am obviously unhappy with my personal failure to concern myself
> with the sufferings of Libyans in this semi-feudal dictatorship. Nor am I in
> any way comfortable with being, even temporarily, identified - for the first
> time since World War 2 - with the British state (plus NATO, the imperialist
> powers and various Gaddafi-Variants in the Gulf). If and when the Gaddafi
> regime falls, I am, however, confident that this temporary coincidence will
> come to an end. And that I, like most of the international Left, will
> concern itself with a) exposing the imperial project here (your primary
> stock in trade) and b) supporting radical-democratic women's, trade unions,
> intellectual and street movements within the country.
>
> In the case that, as seems inevitable, this despicable militaristic and
> repressive government does fall, I don't suppose you are going to call for a
> restoration of the Gadaffi regime. Or even mourn its disappearance. So with
> what or with whom will you identify yourself?
>
> Or will you simply continue with what increasingly seems not like a Marxist
> or any kind of radical-democratic position but an imperialism-fixated
> analysis and rhetoric isolated from a holistic view of the multiplicity of
> human sufferings and struggles under a contemporary capitalist order?
>
> Pw
>
>
>
>
> On 22-8-2011 21:43, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Take a look at the NYT article "The Scramble for Access to Libya�s Oil
> Wealth Begins," which I just posted.  As you realize, what terms IOCs
> get from Libya's government have a major impact on the standard of
> living of the Libyan people.  So, the TNC's Libya will be to the right
> of the IRI not only on the foreign policy front (regarding the
> relations with the NATO and the United States) but also on the
> domestic policy front of social and economic development.
>
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Peter Waterman
> <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yoshie
>
> Your notion of Left and Right seems limited to For- or Anti- US+NATO.
>
> With this seriously limited understanding you put yourself in the
> position of those 'Leftists' (like Western Communists and the Soviet
> Bloc) that identified themselves with the authoritarian
> Radical-Nationalist regimes in the 1960s, such as those of Nasser, Sekou
> Toure and Nrumah. British Communists staffed the Party School of Nkrumah
> in Ghana. These were all authoritarian and corrupt regimes, prey to
> overthrow by their own militaries, or turning on their erstwhile
> Communist allies (as, tragically, in Sudan). Whilst the masses stayed on
> the sidelines hoping for the best.
>
> Was it not the Monthly Review Press that published the first critical
> Left account of Nkrumah's Ghana? Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer? I
> reviewed this favourably for the journal of the South African CP (under
> the pseudonym, I seem to recall, of Peter Alan) and they published it
> under their first editorial disclaimer!
>
> The original concept of Social Democracy was the extension of political
> democracy to the socio-economic sphere. You seem prepared, like the CPs
> of the 1960s, to abandon any notion or standard of
> democracy/democratisation on the altar of the anti-imperialism of the
> failed 1960s type, regardless of the authoritarianism, corruption and
> inefficiency of these regimes. Regimes of which, it should be
> remembered, the anti-imperialism was or is commonly of the rhetorical
> kind, carried out whilst deals are cut with the core capitalist world.
>
> And your impoverished Marxism is all you can operate with at a time in
> which radical-democratic global movements, Southern European demands for
> 'democracia real', and the autumn of the Arab/Muslim tyrants, is before
> your very eyes.
>
> Back to the Future?
>
> It is clearly going to be a major disappointment for you if the new
> regimes in the Arab/Muslim world *don't* turn out to be either 'failed
> states' or to 'the right of the IRI' - whatever this could possibly mean.
>
> I would advise you to take out some moral and theoretical insurance in
> case your awful hopes fail.
>
> Pw
>
>
> On 22-8-2011 18:10, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> I find it difficult to understand those leftists who hate the Islamic
> Republic of Iran and yet love the Libyan rebels. �By any standard,
> social or economic, domestic or foreign policy, "Free Libya" will be
> to the right of the IRI (i.e., if "Free Libya" gets lucky and won't
> descend into anarchy Somalia style).
>
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Doug Henwood<dhenwood at panix.com> �wrote:
>
> On Aug 19, 2011, at 8:55 AM, Peter Waterman wrote:
>
> My understanding has been that Iran is a authoritarian and largely
> theocratic state. It may not be so undemocratic as are elections under
> Communist regimes (from Russia via China to Cuba) because of certain liberal
> elements. But I can't imagine anyone from the left calling it 'democratic'.
>
> Feel free to clarify.
>
> Omigod, don't get her started. Don't you know that Ahmadinejad is the cat's
> pajamas, and very kissable too?
>
> Doug
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-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>