Vor zehn Jahren begann der westlich geförderte Krieg gegen die syrische Regierung im Rahmen des „Arabischen Frühlings“. In einem Interview mit Francesco Guadagni vom italienischen Medium „L’Antidiplomatico“ findet der französische Ex-Diplomat Michel Raimbaud deutliche Worte für diese Verbrechen. Von Redaktion.

 

 

Francesco Guadagni: Mr Raimbaud, 2021 will be the tenth anniversary of the so-called “Arab Spring”. What assessment can we make?

Michel Raimbaud: First of all, let us be clear that the protest movements, which erupted from December 2010 (in Tunisia) until spring of 2011, were obviously neither a political “spring” nor “peaceful and spontaneous revolutions” for democracy and human rights. Although they initially attracted gullible people fighting against corruption and authoritarian regimes, it soon became clear that the movements were monitored and manipulated by activists trained by Western NGOs in the West. They were using standardised techniques of mobilisation, propaganda and organisation which were learned at the site from the colour revolutions (Otpor movement)that led to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

 

 

By the dominant media corporations, they were described as “struggles for democracy and human rights”. What were they in reality?

What was demanded was the resignation of the heads of state, a change of government and reforms aimed at weakening or destroying the state, the institutions and the army (priority targets for the West and Israel as well as for the “revolutionaries”, always inspired by foreign countries). Invocations of democracy and human rights are lures to win the sympathy of the Western protectors and “friends”. These armed uprisings, organised, orchestrated, manipulated and soon heavily financed from abroad (Anglo-Saxon countries through NGOs) degenerated into conflicts and chaotic situations and spread from country to country from the Maghreb to the Mashriq.

  This cascade of tragedies is not a succession of isolated and spontaneous civil wars, as the false version spread in the West suggests in order to hide the gross interference of the Atlantic empire. Taken together as a whole, they form the components of a plan of destabilisation and destruction (we cannot repeat this often enough), which was concerted, elaborated and theorised by the USA, its Anglo-Saxon “parents” and its Israeli “branch”.  This enterprise obviously relies on relays, accomplices, allies in all the countries concerned: in the foreground, the Islamic extremist forces – often the Muslim Brotherhood, sponsored by Turkey and Qatar, or movements influenced by the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or other Gulf states.  Without this open and finally recognised alliance of interests between the West and Israel on the one hand, states and Islamist forces on the other, there would be no “revolutions”, which will take different turns and developments.

 

 

From Tunisia to Libya, it was a rapid escalation. The original plan to remove Gaddafi has been blown up, and it was necessary to intervene with a criminal war, the effects of which are still being felt today. Was it the resistance of the Syrian people that stopped Washington’s plan to completely destabilise the region?

The first results were seen in Tunisia, then in Egypt (with the ousting of Ben Aliand Mubarak after a few weeks). The electoral processes were able to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power. Then came political instability, insecurity, destabilisation. In Algeria and Mauritania in January 2011, a first “spring” was reported and nipped in the bud. Likewise, in Morocco, where the king quickly restored the situation and in Bahrain, where Saudi-Arabia intervened to “save” the Sunni dynasty from a Shiite population. The turmoil has never stopped. The “revolution” in Yemen has turned into a civil war: It continues to this moment. Libya and then Syria are hit. Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya is confronted with an illegal NATO-intervention, secession and chaos.  Gaddafi is being assassinated by “revolutionaries” assisted by Western “services”. The state is destroyed and never recovers.

  Syria experienced the war against jihadism, the West, the Islamists and terrorism, the “friends of the Syrian people” (114 states at the end of 2012, a number that then dissipated). The multi-layered war (“Les guerres de Syrie”, title of my latest work, which was published in June 2019) quickly took on the appearance of a war of aggression, even in its most violent and spectacular jihadist and terrorist aspects. These events, which during the last ten years have been sowing chaos and destruction in the most Arab countries, but also in the “expanded” Middle East (the “Greater Middle East” of George W. Bush) and create a climate of open warfare, have made obvious the global confrontation between the USA and its Israeli-Anglo-Saxon empire on the one hand and the two “emerging” or “reborn” Greats of Eurasia and their allies on the other. In this global political and economic, financial, military, strategic, ideological and geopolitical confrontation, the countries of the “Greater Middle East” are a stake, a battlefield and decisive actors (see my book “Tempête sur le Grand Moyen-Orient”, first published 2015).

I will come back to this later.

  Interestingly, almost all Arab republics are affected by this “epidemic”, from North Africa to the Middle East, as well as two monarchies, Morocco and Bahrain. The oil monarchies (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states) have strangely been spared, even though their regimes are the most backward, but are supported by the US and the West. As for the role of the media, it deserves a book of its own. Also I will come back to this later.

 

 

Let us take a step back. The Heads of State of Libya and Syria, Gaddafi and Assad, 2010 are visiting European countries like Italy and France, with relations that appear to be cordial. A year later, there are uprisings in Libya, that lead to the assassination of Gaddafi, and a war begins in Syria, with Assad resisting. Erdogan’s Turkey itself had very good relations with Syria. What caused this change of course?

Relations were undoubtedly of a deceptive cordiality in the two cases you pointed out; these two cases must be separated. It is more or less about the fact that the Europeans get political, strategic or economic concessions (on oil or gas) from heads of state who are known for their firmness of principle and loyalty to the alliance, without any counterpart on the side of Paris or Rome. As far as Libya is concerned, I think, the idea was to convince Gaddafi to abandon any nuclear project (he would have done so) and to give up continuing with his plans for independence and the economic, financial and monetary unity of Africa (he would not have done so and therefore had to be “punished”).

  The Syrian case is a bit different. France was obviously responsible for passing on the American pressure from George W. Bush and Colin Powell on Bashar al-Assad to convince the latter to renounce his alliance with Iran and his relations with Hezbollah in order to please Israel. The Syrian president did not give in and demanded compensation for the pipeline projects.  Bashar al Assad did not give in; he had to pay for it. Understand that these points probably represent only the obvious part of the case. In 2010/2011, it was clearly written in Washington that Syria must be destroyed. If there is no pretext, we will create one. Concession or not, it is written that there will be war, thanks to the epidemic of “revolutions” which make it possible for the conflict to break out a priori from within, without too much conspicuous interference.

 

 

Gaddafi had established fruitful relations with Italy during the Berlusconi government and made agreements on oil and infrastructure. In the war against Libya, Sarkozy’s France was one of the main sponsors: Do you think it is a mistake to say, that it was a war against Italy in order to get to the Libyan oil?

Yes, I think it is a gamble. In the case of Libya, it was not primarily the oil, that was targeted. It was mainly “Gaddafi’s billions”, i.e. Libyan funds (probably several hundred billion dollars), and they are frozen before they “disappear” … But the main objective of the armed intervention of NATO was to liquidate Gaddafi, in order to prevent him from financing an African monetary system independent of the dollar, the euro, and the West. So, they had to destroy the Libyan state, which is what happened.

 

 

How do you assess the role of information from the West and the Gulf states in the conflicts in Syria and Libya? How important was the propaganda?

The role of this media you refer to, was very damaging and the propaganda was associated with a real brainwashing. They all participated in the massive misinformation of opinions: from the lies of the intellectuals to the dishonesty of the politicians. Journalists and “reporters” on the ground have largely contributed to a huge intellectual deception and blind unanimity in favour of the aggressors and criminals, in Syria as in Libya. The Western media have contributed a great deal to destroying the moral authority that the West and its clientele have wrongly claimed.

 

 

What kind of country was Syria before the war?

“Beating heart of Arabism”, seat of the first caliphs, centre of influence of the enlightened Islam and cradle of Christianity. Syria – although deprived of 40% of its historical territory through colonisation and mandates – enjoyed great prestige among Arabs and Muslims. In this country with a rich archaeological and historical heritage, where tolerance in the customs and traditions of the religions and denominations is carved in marble, an art of living has been cultivated and is maintained to this day, which pleases the visitors. The quality of their diplomacy and the constancy of their commitments and alliances have always commanded respect, I would say, even in the adversity of the moment Syria is by nature a radiant country. A prosperous, independent, stable, self-sufficient country that produces most of what it consumes and consumes what it produces. A country with no foreign debt and without dependence on the IMF and the World Bank.

  A free, efficient school and education system, that produces large numbers of valuable graduates and leaders, many of whom, unfortunately migrated to the diaspora during the war.

  A remarkable, modern and free health and social care system, which is available throughout the whole Syrian territory and attracts the inhabitants of neighbouring countries. A self-sufficient country that produced all fields of medicine, also for export.

  More generally: a network of efficient social services, a modern economy in transition. We could add, “what has happened to Syria” by recalling some numbers and realities: 400,000 dead, one or two million wounded and maimed, six or seven million Syrians who have been “displaced”, i.e. forced to settle elsewhere on Syrian territory because of war and terrorism, at least five million Syrians who have moved to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and sometimes even Europe, most of them fleeing terrorists, armed opposition, occupiers, mistreatment, hunger, etc.  60% of the country devastated, another 20% occupied by Turks, American troops, Europeans, supported by Kurdish separatists…

 

 

What does the Syrian resistance represent, after ten years of war and sanctions, also with the help of Russia, Iran and the Hezbollah? This conflict has not been ended according to the ideas of the West, especially the United States and Israel. Has this war reshaped the geopolitical balance with new global actors such as China and Russia thwarting Western plans?

Partly, yes. Sure, Syria is devastated, but it has not been defeated and dismantled after ten years of ruthless warfare by a collective aggression in which more than a hundred members of the “international community”, i.e., more than half of the United Nations, were involved in one way or another, and an endlessly renewed stream of tens or hundreds of thousands of terrorists who claim to be part of the holy war. Syria has certainly benefited from the support of faithful allies (Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, Russia, China, even the Iraqi Shi'ite movements, which are gradually breaking free of the US stranglehold). But the fact remains, that the Syrian army withstood the aforementioned enemies for four and a half years – from March 2011 to September 2015, the time of the air intervention by the Russian army stationed alongside it. The geopolitical balance gradually shifted and Western and Israeli plans were thwarted. But the West does not see itself as defeated, it prohibits the return of refugees, reconstruction, normal life, by an (from the outside) invisible war hushed up by the Western media.

 

 

When President Assad was asked whether the politics in the United States under a Democrat will be different than under a Republican, he replied that nothing will change. Because it is the lobbies, the corporations, who set the course of American politics. Do you think that Biden will change anything?

President Bashar al Assad is not wrong, when he says that between Republicans and Democrats in general and between Trump and Biden in particular there is no difference, and that nothing will change under Biden. For the Arab world and Syria in particular, nothing will change. At least in principle, because a change in Tehran promised by Biden could indirectly affect the situation in Syria. Indeed, the US president may be the most powerful man in the world, but he is far from being the most powerful man of the United States. Just as the Congress is nowhere near as all-powerful as it sometimes gives the impression of being. It is the neoconservative “Deep State” that he leads, supported by the Zionist Jewish community and the powerful lobby of Protestant Zionist Christians (especially the Evangelical Church, which claims more than 60 million members in America and 600 million worldwide). The lobbies, the 17 US intelligence agencies, which undoubtedly have more than a million agents, the military hierarchy, the banks, the GAFAM [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft – translator’s note] – are all part of this “Deep State” – as Trump would probably put it.

 

 

To sum up, after the failures of the West in Latin America, in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the presence of a strong resistance in the Middle East, of new rising powers like Russia and China, a decline of Western imperialism and especially American imperialism is looming in the not-too-distant future?

This decline is underway, otherwise America would have already gone on the attack against Russia and China. China has become the world’s leading economic and trading power. It is the factory of the world. It is well on its way to becoming a leading military power. Russia has regained military parity with America without having a huge defense budget, it is a major energy power and is becoming a major agricultural power. It has finally become a political and diplomatic reference power again, which wants to guarantee the return to the international law that the West has despised and destroyed.

  It should be noted that Russia, but also China, are jointly developing powerful strategic cooperation and that they are both supporters of Syria in view of Western Islamist aggression. Militarily and diplomatically for Russia, diplomatically mainly (so far) for China.

  Finally, since you mention COVID-19, one will note the disastrous management of the pandemic in America and Western Europe compared to Chinese control and effective handling of the crisis by Russia. Russia and China have emerged victorious in the eyes of the world in the West’s fight against COVID-19.  •

 

 

First published: Amb. Raimbaud a l'AD: “In Libia e Siria, i media occidentali hanno favorito gli aggressori e i criminali”; https://www.lantidiplomatico.it/dettnews-amb_raimbaud_a_lad_in_libia_e_siria_i_media_/ of 22 February 2021

 

Source: https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=70743 of 15 March 2021

 

 

(Translation Current Concerns; last question and answer added)

 

 https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2021/no-8-13-april-2021/no-struggles-for-democracy-and-human-rights.html

 

 

assange2

The Middle East is reorganizing

 

 

by Thierry Meyssan  

The Middle Eastern states, divided not by themselves but by the powers that colonised the region, are reorganising themselves according to their own logic. Of course these new alliances are still fragile, but the West will have to deal with them.

 

This is what is happening now. In a few months, everything will have changed.

 1) First of all, we have to understand that some of the protagonists, who lived in desert regions, organised themselves into tribes by force of circumstances. Their survival depended on their obedience to the chief. They are alien to democracy and have communitarian reactions. This is the case, for example, of the Saudi and Yemeni tribes, the Iraqi Sunnis who come from the latter and the Kurds, the Israeli and Lebanese communities or the Libyan tribes. These people (except the Israelis) were the main victims of the US military project: the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy of destroying state structures. They did not understand what was at stake and now find themselves without a solid state to defend them.

 2) A second category of actors is driven by self-interest. They are only interested in making money and have no empathy for anyone. They adapt to all political situations and always manage to be on the winning side. It is this category that provides the contingent of die-hard allies of the imperialists of all stripes who have dominated the region (recently the Ottoman Empire, then the British and French Empires, now the United States).

 3) Finally, the third category acts to defend its nation. It has the same courage as the tribal populations, but is able to perceive things in a broader way. It is this group that, over the millennia, has created the notions of the city and then the state. Typically, this is the case of the Syrians, who were the first to form states and are now dying to keep one.

Seen from the West, we often think that these people are fighting for ideas: liberalism or communism, Arab unity or Islamic unity, etc. But this is always false in the case of the Syrians. But this is always wrong in practice. For example, the Yemeni communists have now become almost all members of al-Qaeda. Above all, we judge these people as if they were not capable of being on our level. The opposite is true: Westerners, who have lived in peace for three quarters of a century, have lost touch with simple realities. The world is full of dangers and we need alliances to survive. We choose to join a group (tribal or national) or to go it alone among our enemies, abandoning our friends and family. Ideologies exist, of course, but they are only to be considered after we have positioned ourselves against these three categories.

Since the end of the Second World War, the political landscape of the Middle East had become fixed around a few crises: The expulsion of the Palestinians from their land (1948), the weakening of the British and French empires in comparison to the USA and the USSR (Suez, 1956), the surveillance of Gulf oil by the USA (Carter, 1979), the disappearance of the USSR and the hegemony of the USA (Desert Storm, 1991), the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy (2001), and finally the return of Russia (2015).

All political and military events, including the Iranian revolution or the ’Arab Spring’, are only epiphenomena in this framework. None of them have created new alliances. On the contrary, all have strengthened existing alliances in a vain attempt to give one or the other a victory.

President Donald Trump, whose sole task in the Middle East was to stop the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski ’war without end’, did not have time to complete his project. He did, however, succeed in convincing the Pentagon to stop using jihadis as mercenaries in its service (although the Department of Defense is now going backwards). Above all, he turned the tables by questioning the validity of the Palestinian cause.

Contrary to what one might say at first glance, it was not a question of favouring Israel, but of acknowledging the lessons of the past: the Palestinians have lost five successive wars against Israel. During this time, they tried twice to move and to conquer by force new lands (Jordan and Lebanon). Finally, they signed an agreement with Israel (Oslo). Under these conditions, how can we still talk about their inalienable rights when they themselves have violated them?

Whether one agrees or not with this reasoning, it is clear that it is shared within the Arab world, although nobody admits it. Everyone can see that the powers that pay lip service to the Palestinian cause do absolutely nothing for it; that it is a legal posture to keep things as they are, to their benefit. It so happens that President Trump has managed to get the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel to sign the "Abraham Accords". Yesterday’s enemies have agreed to make peace. Contrary to popular belief, it was not easier for Israel than for its Arab partners. Indeed, peace forces Israel to stop being a colonial state inherited from the British Empire, but a nation like any other called to live in harmony with its environment.

These changes, if they can be sustained, will take time. However, the United Arab Emirates and Israel on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia and Iran on the other, are now facing a new question: should they not all be prepared for a new danger: the expansionism of Turkey and Qatar?

This is why the United Arab Emirates and Israel have formed an alliance with Greece and Cyprus, while Saudi Arabia and Iran have entered into secret talks. Egypt (representing the Arab League, of which some of these countries are members) and France (representing the European Union, of which the other participating countries are members or partners) were involved in a preparatory meeting, the Athens Philia Forum. This complete and brutal reversal of alliances is being done as quietly as possible. But it is happening.

The most important event is the military alliance between Greece and Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the other. The totality of the agreements is unknown, but it is known that the Israel Defense Forces will train the Greek military aviation for 1.65 billion dollars, while Greece will send Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates may hand over some of their fighter planes to Greece.

Relations between Israel and the UAE have been formalised since a so-called Israeli "representation" at a UN office in Abu Dhabi was opened, unofficially acting as an embassy. While those between Israel and Saudi Arabia date from their secret negotiations in 2014-15.

The negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran demonstrate once again that the Sunni/Shiite opposition is perfectly artificial. Let us remember that in 1992, far from hating each other, the two countries fought together under US command to support Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina against Orthodox Serbia.

 Thierry Meyssan Translation 
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NEW DOCUMENTARY “EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES” WAS 500 YEARS OF GENOCIDE IN THE MAKING

 

The fact that Raoul Peck’s new HBO film on white supremacy exists shows that something profound about the world is changing.

 

IN THE FINAL episode of Raoul Peck’s HBO documentary, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” Peck says in a voice-over, “The very existence of this film is a miracle.”

That is 100 percent true. Before this moment in history, it would have been impossible to imagine that one of the world’s largest corporations — AT&T, owner of HBO, with a current market cap of $220 billion — would have funded and broadcast a film like this. The fact that it somehow squeezed through the cracks and onto our TVs and laptop screens demonstrates that something profound about the world is changing. Decades, centuries of people fighting and dying were required both to widen the cracks and mold someone like Peck, the right human at the right time, to step through.

“Exterminate All the Brutes” is a sprawling disquisition — four episodes, each an hour long — into the invention and consequences of 500 years of “white” supremacy, presented via a high-gloss pastiche of old footage, newly filmed dramatizations, and clips from Hollywood movies. “White” needs scare quotes because the film makes clear that whiteness is not something that exists in reality — like, say, the moon — that is right there whether we believe in it or not. Instead, it’s something imaginary that we’ve somehow all agreed on, like pieces of paper having value.(note: in Australia, "paper money" is made of plastic flim....)

These two made-up concepts meet in the $100 bill via the man on its face, Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, Franklin wrote an essay that makes clear that anyone can be classified as “white” or read out of the white race, depending on the needs of the moment.

Franklin was desperate to keep the British colonies “white,” but by white, he didn’t mean European. For Franklin, only the English and Saxons counted. Germans, Swedes, Russians, and the French were hilariously “swarthy,” and thus “will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”

At the same time, as the miniseries illustrates, the English were colonizing Ireland and demoting its nearly translucent inhabitants to nonwhite. A famous British clergyman named Charles Kingsley, extremely liberal by the standards of the day, wrote home from a trip to Sligo that the people somehow had skin “as white as ours” but nevertheless were subhuman “chimpanzees.” In the U.S., the Irish were the standard by which nonwhiteness was measured, to the extent that African Americans were sometimes referred to as “smoked Irish.”

Of course, America eventually promoted the Irish to white, on the condition that they would be team players. Across the world in South Africa, the apartheid regime decided that Japanese immigrants were loyal enough to be “honorary whites.” The sorting process can even be seen in real time in a 1949 Atlantic article by a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt about his trip to the newly born Israel. The country, he explained, could be useful as “the best guarantee” for Western interests in the area. Jewish people, who had previously been “moth-eaten” and “grease-spotted,” now possessed “physical beauty, healthy vitality, politeness, good nature” and were comparable to Thomas Jefferson. Arab people were in the way but “about as dangerous as so many North American Indians,” and therefore nonwhite and “foul, diseased, smelling, rotting, and pullulating with vermin.”

Peck may be only the filmmaker who would want to take on this gigantic subject and then manage to present it as is, simultaneously terrifying and preposterous. Born in Haiti — i.e., the western half of Hispaniola, the island where Columbus landed in the “New” World — Peck has lived all over the planet and has a humanistic sympathy for all people, both at their best and their absolute worst. He’s made several dozen films, many documentaries, and was nominated for an Oscar in 2017 for “I Am Not Your Negro,” about James Baldwin.

At the outset, Peck says, “This is a story, not a contribution to historical research,” and he knows what he’s doing as a storyteller. Every minute of the mini-series has startling moments that examine the story of Europe’s colonization of the world from the other end of the gun — or, by this point, the other end of a Predator drone’s AN/AAS-52 Multi-Spectral Targeting System. Manifest Destiny, the White Man’s Burden, France’s Mission civilisatrice, Spain’s Misión civilizadora, Portugal’s Missão civilizadora — all are reframed so they can be seen as the code words they were.

Peck also does a masterful job excavating how this idea was birthed. It wasn’t that Europeans decided that they were superior to the rest of the world’s people and therefore had to conquer them. It was the other way around: The rest of the world had the land and gold that Europe coveted, and so, over hundreds of years, Europeans developed a jerry-rigged justification for how stealing it all was okay and indeed praiseworthy.

“Exterminate All the Brutes” borrows its title from a famous line in “Heart of Darkness,” the 1899 novel by Joseph Conrad about the colonizing of Congo. (Moviegoers may be more familiar with “Apocalypse Now,” an adaptation of the book with the location switched to Vietnam.) At one point, the narrator, Marlow, explains why there had to be some kind of reason for the rapine and plunder:

 

"It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale … the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea — something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to …"

 

A report by the upriver colonial agent and mass murderer Mr. Kurtz makes clear what this means in practice. Kurtz begins by declaring, “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,” and quickly degenerates into an exhortation to “exterminate all the brutes!”

This was not some oversimplification written to make a tendentious point but instead an exact depiction of reality, then and now. Trent Lott, the Senate minority leader at the start of the Iraq War in 2003, initially asked for prayers for the U.S. military “as they engage in an intense but noble battle … We went in there to free those people.” Six months later he mused, “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens.”

The series jumps around in time to examine a seemingly endless number of genocides — some that may be hazily remembered today, many that are totally forgotten. But Peck’s purpose is not just to make a list of atrocities. Rather, he is arguing a case that culminates in the film’s exceedingly disturbing last 20 minutes.

The Holocaust, Peck shows, was not an inexplicable outburst of madness, unconnected to the rest of history. It was instead the logical culmination of the ideology of European colonialism and white supremacy. “When what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe, no one wished to recognize what everyone knew,” he says. “Auschwitz is the modern industrial application of established extermination methods.”

That’s where “Exterminate All the Brutes” leaves us. It does not offer any solutions or false hope. In fact, after watching it, it’s hard not to consider that whiteness is a demonic whirlwind that may end by destroying everyone — starting with its traditional victims but eventually engulfing people who thought that their whiteness would protect them and are in for a big surprise.

On the other hand, there is the miracle of the documentary’s existence. That by itself means that deep tectonic plates are shifting in the world’s consciousness. It’s not impossible that this film will someday be considered a key part of a long, complex, messy reckoning that will see whiteness relegated to humanity’s Museum of Terrible Ideas. If people have a future, it will be one in which tourists come and gape in horror that anyone ever thought this awful concept made sense.

 

Read more:

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/02/exterminate-all-the-brutes-hbo/

 

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Free Julian Assange Today !!!!!

 

By Manlio Dinucci

 

Ten years ago, on March 19, 2011, U.S.-NATO forces began the air and sea bombardment of Libya. The war was directed by the United States, first through its Africa Command, then through NATO under U.S. command. In seven months, the U.S.-NATO air force carried out 30,000 sorties, 10,000 of which were bombing attacks, unleashing over 40,000 bombs and missiles.

 

Italy, with the multi-party consensus of the Parliament (its Democratic Party in the lead), participated in the war using seven air bases (Trapani, Gioia del Colle, Sigonella, Decimomannu, Aviano, Amendola and Pantelleria), with Tornado fighter-bombers, Eurofighters and others, plus the aircraft carrier Garibaldi and other warships.

Before the air-sea offensive began, U.S.-NATO agents and client states financed and armed ethnic groups and reactionary Islamic groups hostile to Libya’s government, and Qatar deployed special forces to instigate armed clashes within the country.

In this way, the African country was demolished. Libya, as the World Bank documented in 2010, had maintained “high levels of economic growth,” with its GDP increasing by 7.5 percent per year, and recorded “high human development indicators,” including universal access to primary and secondary education and, for over 40 percent of the youth, access to university education. Despite the disparities, the average standard of living in Libya was higher than in other African countries. About two million immigrants, mostly African, found work there.

The Libyan state, which possessed the largest oil reserves in Africa plus others of natural gas, had limited profit margins for foreign companies. Thanks to energy exports, the Libyan balance of trade showed a positive margin of $27 billion per year. With these resources, the Libyan state had invested around $150 billion abroad.

Libyan investments were crucial

Libyan investments in Africa were crucial to the African Union’s plan to create three financial bodies: the African Monetary Fund, with headquarters in Yaoundé, Cameroon; the African Central Bank, with headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria; and the African Investment Bank, with headquarters in Tripoli, Libya. These bodies would have served to create a common market and a single African currency.

It is no coincidence that the NATO war to demolish the Libyan state began less than two months after the African Union summit of Jan. 31, 2011. This summit gave the go-ahead for the creation of the African Monetary Fund by the end of 2011.

This is proven by emails of the Obama administration’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, later brought to light by WikiLeaks. The United States and France wanted to eliminate [Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi before he could use Libya’s gold reserves to create a pan-African currency as an alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc (the currency imposed by France on 14 of its former colonies).

The proof: Before the bombers went into action in 2011, the banks went into action and seized the $150 billion invested abroad by the Libyan government, most of which disappeared. Goldman Sachs, the most powerful U.S. investment bank, of which Mario Draghi has been vice-president, was prominent in the great robbery.

Today in Libya power groups and the transnational corporations hoard the revenues from energy exports, in a chaotic situation with regular armed clashes. The standard of living of the majority of the population has plummeted.

African immigrants, whom the armed bodies running Libya charged with being “Gaddafi’s mercenaries,” have even been imprisoned in zoo cages, tortured and murdered. Libya remains in the hands of human traffickers. It has become the main transit route of a chaotic migratory flow towards Europe that has caused many more victims than the war of 2011.

In the town of Tawergha near the city of Misurata, Libya, the NATO-backed reactionary Islamic militias of Misurata (those who murdered Gaddafi in October 2011) have carried out a real ethnic cleansing, forcing almost 50,000 Libyan citizens to flee and refusing to allow them to return.

The Italian Parliament also has responsibility for this. On March 18, 2011, it committed the government to “take any initiative” (i.e., Italy’s entry into war against Libya) “to ensure the protection of the people of the region.”

 

 

Dinucci’s article was first published in the Italian web daily newspaper Il Manifesto on March 16. Translation into English by John Catalinotto.

 

Read more:

https://www.workers.org/2021/03/55169/

 

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