Cuba’s Fidel Sees NATO Invading Libya
HAVANA TIMES, Feb. 22 — The US government plans to order the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to invade Libya, where strong riots have occurred in recent days, former Cuban President Fidel Castro predicted in a commentary on Monday. The historic leader of the Cuban Revolution said he doubts that President Muammar al-Gaddafi will abandon that African country, reported IPS.
The following is the complete text of the commentary by Fidel Castro on the volatile situation in Libya.
THE NATO PLAN IS TO OCCUPY LIBYA
by Fidel Castro
Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world. It was their main weapon when they decided to easily liquidate the Cuban Revolution as soon as the first just and sovereign laws were passed in our Homeland: depriving it of oil.
Upon this energy source today’s civilization was developed. Venezuela was the nation in this hemisphere that paid the highest price. The United States became the lord and master of the huge oil fields that Mother Nature had bestowed upon that sister country.
At the end of the last World War, it started to extract greater amounts of oil from the oil fields of Iran, as well as those in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Arab countries located around them. These became the main suppliers. World consumption progressively increased to the fabulous figure of approximately 80 million barrels a day, including those being extracted on United States territory, to which later gas, hydro and nuclear energies were added. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, coal had been the basic source of energy that made industrial development possible, before billions of automobiles and engines consuming the liquid fuel were produced.
The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.
When our Revolution arose, Algeria, Libya and Egypt were not yet oil producers and a great part of the abundant reserves of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and the United Arab Emirates were still to be discovered.
In December of 1951, Libya becomes the first African country to attain its independence after WW II, during which its territory was the stage for important battles between the troops of Germany and the United Kingdom, conferring fame and glory on Generals Erwin Rommel and Bernard L. Montgomery.
Ninety-five percent of its territory is completely made up of desert. Technology permitted the discovery of vital oilfields of excellent quality light oil that today reach one million 800 thousand barrels a day along with abundant deposits of natural gas. Such riches allowed it to reach life expectancy that is almost at 75 years of age and the highest per capita income in Africa. Its harsh desert is located over an enormous lake of fossil waters, equivalent to more than three times the land area of Cuba; this has made it possible to construct a broad network of pipelines of fresh water that stretch from one end of the country to the other.
Libya, which had a million inhabitants when it attained independence, today has somewhat more than 6 million.
The Libyan Revolution took place in the month of September of the year 1969. Its main leader was Muammar al-Gaddafi, a soldier of Bedouin origin who, in his early years, was inspired by the ideas of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Without any doubt, many of his decisions are associated with the changes that were produced when, as in Egypt, a weak and corrupt monarchy was overthrown in Libya.
The inhabitants of that country have age-old warrior traditions. It is said that ancient Libyans were a part of Hannibal’s army when he was at the point of destroying Ancient Rome with the troops that crossed the Alps.
One can agree with Gaddafi or not. The world has been invaded with all kinds of news, especially using the mass media. One has to wait the necessary length of time in order to learn precisely what is the truth and what are lies, or a mixture of events of every kind that, in the midst of chaos, were produced in Libya. For me, what is absolutely clear is that the government of the United States is not in the least worried about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate in giving NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a matter of hours or a few short days.
Those who with perfidious intentions invented the lie that Gaddafi was headed for Venezuela, just as they did yesterday afternoon on Sunday the 20th of February, today received an fitting response from Foreign Affairs Minister Nicolás Maduro when he literally stated that he was “wishing that the Libyan people would find, in the exercise of their sovereignty, a peaceful solution to their difficulties, that would preserve the integrity of the Libyan people and nation, without the interference of imperialism…”
As for me, I cannot imagine that the Libyan leader would abandon his country; escaping the responsibilities he is charged with, whether or not they are partially or totally false.
An honest person shall always be against any injustice being committed against any people in the world, and the worst of all, at this moment, would be to remain silent in the face of the crime that NATO is getting ready to commit against the Libyan people.
The leadership of that war-mongering organization has to do it. We must condemn it!
Libya! – Amid the Massacres and Machine-gun Fire: Questions and Answers
The Arab Revolution Spreads to Libya, Trigerring a Civil War and a Myriad Question Marks
How did the Gaddafi power structure, that used to be a long-standing progressive, anti-Imperialist and anti-colonialist political force with large significance for the Left regionally and globally, become an autocratic authoritarian regime and then ended up joining the “Western umbrella” in recent years transforming itself into an ally of Imperialism, oppressing the people with guns and tanks bought from the US and the UK, now bombing the cities in rebellion with aircraft supplied by the West?
And where is the revolution going? In some of the towns and cities being “liberated” by the armed insurgents, the new flag of the revolution is… the old flag of the pro-capitalist Monarchy, overthrown by Gaddafi long ago. Where is this conflict headed?
Please study this quarter of an hour video program with Professor Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University, exploring some of the history, the forces, and the questions involved in the Libyan uprising in dialogue with Paul Jay, of the Real News Network. The Real News Network is an independent news source that has evolved within the US Left (please use the link, or click on the picture):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AvfATCBmJg
Class Politics
…of course play a significant role in shaping current events in Libya, especially valuable when seen from the perspective of the old feudal class structures being replaced by pre-socialist formations in the transition from a pre-industrial to a modern industrial political economy.
Part of the reason why the uprising has quickly escalated to open armed insurrection and is now an open civil war is the nature of the administration that Gaddafi’s revolution had created when remaking the country decades ago. With Gaddafi’s help and under his initiative during his progressive and revolutionary phase, Libya…
…made a transition from a highly centralized feudal-capitalist authoritarian Monarchy to a system of administration based on popular participation and local power with many Leftist values embedded in the structure, utilizating the petroleum industry to fund some of these social changes and to benefit the people. In Libya there is a system of decentralized direct democracy founded on peoples’ power called the Jamahiriya, which does not rely on a web of central administration. Instead, power is vested in local and regional Committes that are the instruments of and the forums through which the population (at least in theory) exercices power.
Even after Gaddafi made peace with the Western Imperialist powers (in the middle of the last decade), the progressive system of local and regional social self-administration remained in place. It is this system that the population is now activating, arming itself and fighting against the oppressive regime.
The same thing had occured when the Soviet Union and its satellite countries underwent an uprising that did away with the Soviet system. Despite the Western media lies about the Soviet Union there was no “iron fist” to crush the opposition. The population utilized the local Committees and labour organizations to mobilize against the regime, and even though the Soviet Union had a much more centralized and hierarchical system of administration, the uprisings were mostly peaceful and very few people were killed in the process of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Unfortunately, instead of advancing forward to improve and deepen the socialist formations, they re-installed capitalism.
As the capitalist media apply themselves to try to explain what is going on in Libya, they try to fit the country’s decentralized administration model into their “explanations” of events, but do not succeed in making much sense:
“The system of rule created by Khadafy — the “Jamahiriya,” or “rule by masses” — is highly…
…decentralized, run by “popular committees” in a complicated hierarchy that effectively means there is no real center of decisionmaking except Khadafy, his sons and their top aides.”
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_17448006
“The country is nominally run as the “state of the masses,” a socialist, decentralized system of Mr. Gadhafi’s own devising known as a jamahiriya, where local committees have wide leeway.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/the-people-are-powerful-in-the-face-of-gadhafis-terror/article1915042/
“CNN — Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi is clinging to power despite a wave of opposition due in part to a legacy of decentralized authority and divided tribal politics that has been reinforced during the embattled strongman’s four-decade rule, analysts told CNN Tuesday.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/22/libya.gadhafi.support/
There Is a Great Danger
…now that the revolution in Libya might open the doors to Western Imperialism in a more complete and influential way than before. If Gaddafi’s alignment with the Western Capitalist powers in recent years was disastrous – and it was – enabling further incursions by the Empire into Libya to dominate and exploit its oil and population will be catastrophic.
So far there are no indications that the revolutionary forces have any undestanding of this, nor any political positions at all other than righteous and courageous opposition to the regime. We hope that this courage will be complemented with political knowledge and wisdom as to the dangers ahead and that the revolution will aim to preserve and deepen the gains of the Jamahiriya, rather than attempt to get rid of them.
All power to the people!
Cyprus IndyMedia Collective
http://Cyprus.IndyMedia.org