[Debate] (Fwd) Is Qaddafi's overthrow a blow or a boon? (Pham Binh)

[Peter Waterman]

I simply dunno, Yoshie. Provide us some figures so we can, with your 
permission, ourselves try to compare the number of people imprisoned, 
tortured or killed by Gadaffi, with those by the NATO-backed insurgency now.

And do not tell me how much public housing was provided by the Gadaffi 
regime. I  remember being disoriented, on first viewing the film, 
'Bicyle Thieves', based on post-WW2 Italy, by the evidence that the 
family concerned was living in a  modern Mussolini-constructed 
appartment. Mussolini also, it is said, got the trains to run on time. 
But, hey, he also imprisoned, tortured, exiled, repressed, carried out 
military adventures in Africa and neighbouring countries (Yugoslavia, 
Albania, Greece), sent Jews to the concentration camps, being allied 
with the Nazis in Germany and the Japanese imperial regime of Tojo.

Eventually, however, Mussolini, was captured and killed by 
imperialist-backed and militarised insurgents, who - to my regret - 
failed to put him on trial according to bourgeois liberal norms. What 
they did to him after they killed him was to hang him and his mistress 
upside down and display them to the public. I am hoping the present 
insurgents will do better with Gadaffi and his henchmen.

You also?



On 30-8-2011 17:54, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Why don't those leftists once sooooo concerned about the fate of
> denizens of Benghazi before the NATO intervention demonstrate any
> concern at all about the fate of denizens of Tripoli, Surt, Sebha, and
> so on?  Surely, the NATO + the rebels can wreak bigger havoc than the
> Gaddafi regime could alone.
>
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Neville Adams<nada01 at claranet.co.uk>  wrote:
>> This is not about being �right� and the issues raised by Yoshie �are ones
>> force fed through a particular preferred teleology which is not being
>> matched by reality, and which, in �certain cases, unfortunately, is being
>> presented in an unnecessary racialised and islamophobic manner.
>> ��Intervention or not, overthrowing the Gaddafi regime was always going to
>> present a multi-faceted scenario of how to move beyond that, which is where
>> the Libyan people are now.�� What are the naysayers and doom-mongers going
>> to do?� Continue to wag the finger from afar �extracting every ounce of
>> �politically correct� schadenfrude �as the changes that unfurl throw up ones
>> that are questionable?�� Zizek has a term for these symptoms, describing
>> this as the �comfortable position of resistance.�� There are some, on the
>> left, prone to dwelling on failures because doing so allows myths to be
>> generated about what would have happened if they succeeded.� These failures
>> allow� some on the left to maintain a �safe moralistic position� because
>> their failures mean that they are never in power, or truly tested by
>> action.
>>
>>
>>
>> Neville
>>
>>
>>
>> From: debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org [mailto:debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org]
>> On Behalf Of Riaz K Tayob
>> Sent: 29 August 2011 19:07
>>
>> To: Debate is a listserve that attempts to promote information and analyses
>> of interest to the independent left in South and Southern Africa
>> Subject: Re: [Debate] (Fwd) Is Qaddafi's overthrow a blow or a boon? (Pham
>> Binh)
>>
>>
>>
>> The case for non-intervention, barring hamstrung international law, is that
>> there is no 1) reason for compliance in other like cases (uniqueness is a
>> safe haven), 2) the nature of the democratic state is largely being defined
>> by those with the force to enforce it (a Darwinism of sorts).
>>
>>  From what is happening, I anticipate that sustaining the case for
>> intervention will be become harder and harder. Unless you are interested in
>> being "right", and in the absence of a counterfactual, the very issues that
>> Yoshie raises will HAVE to be dealt with.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2011/08/29 07:04 PM, Neville Adams wrote:
>>
>> My question was about the circumstances when such an intervention would be
>> unacceptable.� �You�ve mithered on quite a bit, throwing in a few red
>> herrings, some unccooked, about the lack of a case from what you label the
>> �interventionists�.�� I can see the common cause�� with Yoshie �who offers a
>> reductive analysis par excellence.� Apart from the lack of an adequate
>> evaluative and action guiding framework , what, exactly, is your case for
>> non-intervention?
>>
>>
>>
>> From: debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org [mailto:debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org]
>> On Behalf Of Riaz K Tayob
>> Sent: 29 August 2011 13:08
>> To: Debate is a listserve that attempts to promote information and analyses
>> of interest to the independent left in South and Southern Africa
>> Subject: Re: [Debate] (Fwd) Is Qaddafi's overthrow a blow or a boon? (Pham
>> Binh)
>>
>>
>>
>> To answer your question more directly... assuming that there are adequate
>> safeguards, intervention is acceptable when it makes common cause with a)
>> development aspirations of the people, 2) the
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Debate-list mailing list
>> Debate-list at fahamu.org
>> http://lists.fahamu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debate-list
>>
>>
>
>