US intervention aims to control Libya oil
PressTV
PressTV
“The objective of US intervention in Libya is to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the masses and have a forward base for introducing troops,” says political commentator Ralph Shoenman.
This also raises the question of whether the US and NATO are pushing for a civil war in Libya in order to justify a military intervention. Press TV seeks Mr. Shoenman's elaboration of his analysis.
Press TV: I'd like to ask you about an argument that is being made by the Libyan opposition movement saying that the US business lobby in fact helped prolong Gaddafi's reign?
Shoenman: Well of course everybody understands that for the past nearly a decade the Gaddafi regime has made a complete accommodation to US imperialism and indeed the major oil companies of western Europe and the US are once again in charge of Libyan oil production. Consequently, the previous anti-imperialist posture of Gaddafi, which gave rise to usual false flag provocations by the US as we've discussed before on Press TV: the false flag operation of the blowing up of the discotheque in Germany, the false flag operation of the blowing up of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, which was a CIA operation - these things were deployed to justify the US intervention in Libya. At the time, they bombed Libya, they killed Muammar Gaddafi's daughter. Subsequent to that Gaddafi made a complete accommodation and consequently this current posture of the US and with the UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon orchestrating it about major interventions on the part of NATO plan of establishing a blockade in Libya is a very very dangerous and sinister undertaking.
The revolution in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and in Bahrain, across the Arab east is a revolution against these puppet semi-colonial country-selling regimes that have imposed not merely poverty, but a torture apparatus upon these people of Egypt; the torture apparatus of Mubarak and Omar Suleiman was financed and prepared by the CIA and the Mossad for three decades.
This is the apparatus that is professing to be concerned about the fate of the Libyan people. Not on your life - the objective of the US intervention in Libya is to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the masses and have a forward base for introducing troops, again in Egypt and in other parts of the Arab east.
Wherever they go they never leave. Try to name one country where US or NATO troops have entered where they don't have permanent bases. They go and they stay to control resources, to establish puppet regimes, and to subjugate the people.
The people of Libya are not going to be aided by the US intervention or NATO intervention; on the contrary, their struggle to regain control over their sovereignty and their resources will be thwarted by these undertakings.
Press TV: I'd like to ask you about the arms industry's connection to Libya. Although the US companies are essentially banned by the US government from making military sales to Libya, British companies have actually been doing very well. A British company by the name of General Dynamics signed a 165 million dollar deal in early 2008 to equip Libya with arms. How does that work, as you've said, they're (UK) showing concern about the humanitarian situation and the fact that innocent civilians are being killed. How does it work if the arms industry wants to at the very least enter Libya and to sell there?
Shoenman: I have to point out to you that General Dynamics has a UK operation, but General Dynamics is a basic American company involved in what we call the military industrial complex. Virtually the entire US economy has been dominated by military production in the Pentagon since the mid 1930s. The US got out of the depression in the 1930s by putting people to work for the merchants of death. Four decades and ten trillion dollars was the official sum given to the Pentagon and the Military. Ten trillion dollars is more than the combined value of everything produced in the United States. The military industrial complex, which is to say the corporations and the banks, which are part of imperialism have as their objective not merely permanent arm sales but permanent profiteering. 74 billion dollars was given to the Egyptian military, and of that money 70 billion dollars is the personal fortune of Mubarak.
Not only that but the largest lobbying company in the United States was a Mubarak lobbying company for which all of the aids of Hilary Clinton worked and Frank Wisner the US former diplomat was sent to Egypt after the uprising of the masses. When they sent Frank Wisner he was on the payroll of Mubarak's lobby in Washington. Therefore, as you said these industrial military apparatuses that are selling arms now in Libya and profiteering in Libya with the collusion of Gaddafi have nothing to do with the aspirations of the Libyan masses, and everything to do with their exploitation and their subjugation.
Libya is a country of six and a half million people with oil production of a million and a half barrels a day. Huge fortunes derive from the sale of oil and none of that goes to the benefit of the Libyan people. All of it goes to the apparatus that you described; that military apparatus; that oil company apparatus, that exploits people and sustains repression. It's not an opponent of repression but is the instrument of it.
Press TV: Sir, a former lobbyist for Libya has argued that a greater US engagement might have actually helped tamp down this current wave of anti-Gaddafi unrest. I'm just going to quote what she said, “There is some argument that he was tamed by engaging with us and we mishandled our relationship. This was no marriage. If we had engaged more and not kept Libya like the secret Gulf hiding in the closet we would have been in a better position.” Do you agree with that sentiment?
Schoenman: You know it is a sentiment of such nauseating cynicism and hypocrisy. Where ever the United States and the imperialist powers, the capitalist states wish to usurp the sovereignty, and resources of people; they try to create a dictatorship that they can control by arms and money. In relation to Gaddafi, the embrace of Gaddafi was a measure of his capitulation to the dictates of capital and imperialism. By sustaining Gaddafi, it's out of the same playbook that brought Mubarak to power and brought the Egyptian military high command to power.
In Egypt 100 families own 90 percent of the wealth, and each Egyptian military and secret police have sustained a torture operation, which is the venue for the rendition. This is a euphemism for kidnapping of every intellectual and student and peasant leader, and trade unionist that the United States CIA has kidnapped around the world, and sent by rendition to Egyptian torture chambers. That is the same methodology that this woman is describing in relation to Gaddafi and Libya. The Gaddafi regime has been embraced by the US military, and by the oil company precisely, because it has transformed itself into an apparatus of their control. In addition, in measure of the corrupt nature of the Gaddafi regime that his family is enriched, and the senior members of his tribe who are incorporated within his financial kingdom are enriched, and the people are emaciated. That's the nature of a semi-colonial regime in a country that aspires to natural independence, sovereignty, control over its resources and self-determination.
Press TV: Gaddafi's son spoke earlier and he has blamed al-Qaeda for the uprisings and claims they are behind all this. He says they have supposedly put out a statement saying they support uprisings and they are behind all this. What is your reaction to that?
Schoenman: Well in the first place the military command in Libya is using its weaponry against the population, and because of its destruction of the civilian population by whole-sale slaughter that large sections of the Libyan army have defected not only in Eastern Libya, but Western Libya and on the outskirts of Tripoli and within Tripoli itself. As to Al-Qaida, point one there is no Al-Qaida. Osama Bin Laden from the beginning has declared in six different interviews that he had no relation to the events of September 11th, and he stated it in a very well publicized interview documented and confirmed by the BBC. “My Islam does not consider targeting civilians or women and children,” he said. “We don't have a problem or a quarrel with the population of the United States. My concern is with the military and intelligence that want to subjugate our countries.” It's not Osama that is involved in the events of September 11th, it is those who need a rationale for subjugating our people and desiring to siege their resources.
It was an extensive interview and there is no Al-Qaida. It is a CIA and Mossad contrivance to provide a rationale for the long standing plans to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course there are resistors among Islamic students against the imperialism, but the Al-Qaida, which was contrived by the US imperialism, is a fiction. I have spent a lot of time in Pakistan with the ISA, the intelligence services of Pakistan, and General Mahmud Ahmed and General Hamid Gul who were in charge of the ISA during that time. They are the first to give the lie to this CIA fabrication. The al-Qaeda invoked by Gaddafi's son is an appeal to the United States to sustain their regime by saying we support your fiction, we support your claim that the al-Qaeda is attacking the United States and other Western countries.
This is a ploy on the part of the Libyan regime opposed by its entire people to gain continued support from the United States. Everything that this man [Gaddafi's son] said in his speech is a lie... I would add one more thing about the sons of Muammar Gaddafi. They are notorious in Libya for spending millions of dollars by bringing starlets and superstars to sing before them and I will not say what else they have to do for millions of dollars. They are deeply corrupt, deeply oppressive and privileged. They are a disgrace to the Libyan nation and to its aspirations for self-determination and dignity.
Press TV: I would like to stick with Muammar Gaddafi's son if I may. He is a man who is educated as he studied at the London School of Economics, and has done his PhD. He wrote in his PhD thesis about democracy. Therefore, certainly, he is a man who understands the aspirations of his people, and he was once seen by many members of the Western media as somebody who was a certain reformist. Why would he then flip at this point?
Shoenman: The sons of Gaddafi are highly privileged young men. Yes, Saif did receive, and I was at the London School of Economics myself, but going to the London School of Economics doesn't necessarily translate into a political perspective that is in line with the aspirations of one's people. The fundamental point of the sons of Gaddafi is they are privileged and their power has led them to sustain a corrupt and a Bonapartist regime and become its beneficiaries. I don't doubt the man's intelligence and sophistication. However, the road to hell is paved with such qualifications. It has nothing to do with the education or intelligence of a person.
It's where you stand in relation to the people's aspirations and needs. How you line up against the continued generational struggle for self-determination on the part of the people's former colonial world who are still subject to the genocidal consequences of colonialism, imperialism and the neo-colonial format through which country selling and brutally corrupt governments do the bidding of imperialism in the name of national sovereignty. That is the fate of the Arab revolution and the anti-colonial revolution that country-selling regimes supported by imperialism and Zionism have betrayed these aspirations and have been the means to which the people have been held down. Saif Gaddafi is an instrument in that process regardless of his education or his advantages or intelligence.
Press TV: We always talk about the US role and the UN's role, but you know Libya is also a part of Africa so why isn't the African Union taking a stronger position. It's been said that Libya is an important member of the African Union and that many of the African leaders are very close to Muammar Gaddafi. Certainly, they could at this point in time be doing a lot more. They didn't do much in Egypt either, but certainly at this point with all this loss of life in Libya, they should be doing more shouldn't they?
Shoenman: Yes, but we had this discussion before regarding international organizations such as the United Nations. The same analysis we made about the United Nations applies to the African Union. The member states in the African Union govern with the same class structure as exists in Egypt or with Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The government in Kenya, the government in Tanzania, and the government of any part of sovereign Africa is a government of privileged people who facilitate the International Monterey Fund (IMF) and the World Bank by rendering these countries in permanent indebtedness. It is the privatization of all resources and the food monopoly, which means that these countries, which were once self-sufficient, are the arena of starvation. In Egypt as we have discussed, 60 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars per day. There is no peasant family that does not have a member who had to sell a kidney for money. That is characteristic of the condition of the masses in Africa too.
In West Africa, in East Africa, in Southern Africa and Central Africa there is starvation. Millions suffer from cholera. A dollar a day would eliminate the contaminated water that is the fate of every child in Africa. These are the regimes that are in collusion with Gaddafi, and finally let me make the point that Gaddafi by his intervention in Chad and in Niger and in Central Africa Republic aligning himself with one corrupt apparatus or another has acquired mercenaries. The mercenaries from these countries including Sudan are the Special Forces on who the Gaddafi regime is relying on right now in the subjugation of the population.
The rank and file soldiers in the Libyan army have turned their weapons the other way not only in Benghazi, but in Tripoli and outside of Tripoli as well. The fundamental problem about the African Union or the problem of the United Nations is not that they are international bodies, but the member states have governments with the same subordination to imperial and colonial dictate as we see in Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain or in Jordan, or in Saudi Arabia, or in Libya today.
Press TV: I'm glad you mentioned the situation of the people in these countries as you mentioned in Egypt as well such as poverty etc… These US sanctions, the United States said it will impose unilateral and multi-lateral sanctions. Will they just make life worse for those poor people and not affect Gaddafi at all?
Shoenman: You know sanctions are an act of war. The function of these sanctions whether directed against Libya or Iraq or for that matter against Iran. The same sanctions are being directed against Iran as we speak. Their purpose is to facilitate Western industrial control of the resources of the region by cutting off the population from access to needed exchange of goods and material. They impose a political agenda on people who are in revolt against those very same conditions. The intervention in Libya is a godsend for imperialism. Imperialism has been thrown on its heels by this mass uprising. It is the entering of the masses on this historic stage and country after country in the Arab regions and in North Africa. The intervention in Libya is their means of reestablishing colonial control by whatever name. We have to be very clear about this.
Press TV: So you say this is a godsend for US imperialism. Where do you see this ending up, and will Libya if Gaddafi were to step down not be a free country? Would they just replace him with another autocratic ruler?
Schoenman: Well of course they would. The reason I say the mobilization of public opinion against Gaddafi is a godsend for imperialism is because Gaddafi has the image in the minds of large number of peoples because of decades past of being an anti-imperial voice. Consequently, by virtue of the fact they are ascribing to Gaddafi a brutal suppression of his people it gives them a cover for an open colonial intervention. I put the question to you.
Do you believe that the regime in the United States, which has killed 2 million people in Iraq, and over a half a million people in Afghanistan, which is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of civilians in Pakistan gives a damn about the fate of the Libyan people? Do you think they are concerned about 15 million people being killed by Muammar Gaddafi? Is it plausible that as we speak genocidal operations of the United States with their drone attacks, with their CIA killings and their targeted assassinations across the entire region are suddenly hand on heart and morally upset about the Libyan people? Did they ever raise their voice about the fate of the Libyan people until they rebelled? Never.
Their intervention is not because of the Libyan people's aspirations for freedom and self-determination, and for social ownership of the means of production. That's what the oil workers in Libya are demanding. It's control over their oil for national well being. The United States, Great Britain, Germany and Italy--Berlusconi who uses the money he makes out of Libyan oil to create a national harem for himself is not interested in the well-being of the Libyan people. Like Gaddafi, his interests are below his waist.
Press TV: We will have to leave it there for now. That was Ralph Schoenman, Political Commentator joining us on the line from Los Angeles. Mr. Schoenman, as always, we do appreciate your insights here at Press TV.
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URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/02/27/us-intervention-aims-to-control-libya-oi
