Down with All U.S./Australian Diplomatic And Military Intervention in Libya And Syria!

Support the Libyan Resistance against NATO Imperialists And Their Puppets!

October 24 – Yesterday, the forces installed into power in Libya by their imperial puppet masters hailed the “Liberation” of the country. Yet their cold-blooded slaughter of former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, after he was captured alive only highlights that these new rulers are cut-throats whose claims to have fought for “democracy” are utter lies. Gaddafi was only one of hundreds and more likely thousands of supporters of the old order who have been executed by NATO’s “rebels.” Today, even the pro-Western Human Rights Watch was compelled to announce that the pro-NATO National Transitional Council (NTC) forces had massacred 52 Gaddafi supporters in the Libyan city of Sirte. The victims were found with their hands bound behind their backs and dumped on the lawn of the seaside Mahari Hotel.

In announcing “Liberation,” NTC head Mustafa Abdul Jalil wasted no time in declaring that the new Libyan regime  – unlike Gaddafi’s relatively secular government – would be based on religious Sharia law. All laws contradicting Sharia would be nullified, insisted Jalil. This underscores that the shaky new regime in Libya spells not “liberation” but heightened oppression, especially for women.

The mainstream Western media have gone out of their way to downplay Jalil’s Sharia Law proclamation and to minimize coverage of the brutal massacres by NATO’s puppets. Instead they have chillingly celebrated the slaying of Gaddafi. The truth is that while Gaddafi was a capitalist dictator, in his last few months he courageously fought against imperialism. He chose not to take many opportunities to flee the country but instead remained on the front lines in Sirte. In the end it was only his wounding in a NATO air strike on his convoy that allowed the NATO puppet forces to capture and then murder him.

The capitalist rulers that imposed regime change on Libya – principally Britain’s Cameron, France’s Sarkozy and the U.S.’s Obama – and those that backed them up like Australia’s Gillard and Rudd are hoping that Gaddafi’s killing will end resistance by Libyan people to the new NATO puppet “order.” However, that is wishful thinking on their part. When Saddam Hussein was killed, Washington and Canberra rejoiced that this would be the end of the Iraqi insurgency. Instead the resistance only intensified. This will likely be the case in Libya too and probably on a much greater scale.

We reprint below a 19 September 2011 Trotskyist Platform leaflet that called to “Support the Libyan Resistance Against the NATO imperialists and Their Puppets!” Since then, overwhelming NATO bombardment has allowed their allies to occupy the majority of cities they previously did not hold like Sabha, Sirte, Jufra and Bani Walid. This was only after the anti-NATO forces put up heroic resistance, especially in Bani Walid and Sirte, which the NTC forces could only capture after NATO barbarically turned much of these cities into rubble – killing thousands of civilians in the process. Yet already since the fall of Tripoli, the anti-NATO forces have skillfully turned to using hit and run guerilla tactics. On October 14, these resistance forces launched a spectacular series of coordinated attacks against the imperialist puppets in Tripoli and other cities.

Anyone who is opposed to imperialism, who is opposed to the big capitalists and their corporations must stand with those who are in Libya fighting against the militaries and puppet forces that serve these exploiters. Let us struggle to mobilize the working class here to oppose the Australian government’s financial and diplomatic support for the NATO-puppet regime in Libya.

September 19 2011 – Today marks six months since the start of NATO’s operation to impose regime change upon the Libyan people. The most powerful military in the world, the U.S., together with other military powers like France, Britain and Italy have waged a massive war on a nation of just six million people. By its own figures, NATO aircraft have flown over 23,200 sorties in this campaign! Then there are the ship and submarine-launched missile strikes. On the first day of the NATO attack, the U.S. and Britain launched over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Libya. Hundreds of British and French special forces as well as “ex”-special forces personnel acting as mercenaries are also playing a decisive role in this ongoing conflict. These NATO ground forces not only organized and trained the pro-NATO “rebels,” they not only helped to direct NATO airstrikes but they also led actual ground operations. British and French special forces were the shock troops for the pro-NATO forces’ assault on Tripoli late last month.

Yet despite all this, the anti-NATO fighters continue to put up fierce resistance. Although the cumulative effect of NATO’s onslaught allowed NATO’s local allies to occupy the capital Tripoli late last month, as we go to press, anti-NATO forces continue to control the cities of Sirte, Bani Walid, Jufra and Sabha as well as most of the South of Libya, chunks of the Western region and a strip on the Northern coastline. Despite being pounded from the air by NATO and blockaded from access to water and supplies, the people of Bani Walid and Sirte have over the past few days repeatedly repulsed onslaughts by the forces loyal to the pro-NATO National Transitional Council (NTC.) Even if NATO firepower should in the future make it impossible for anti-NATO forces to hold such cities, it is highly likely that the resistance to the imperialist conquerors will continue in the form of a determined guerilla-style insurgency. Already today in Tripoli and other areas occupied by NTC troops, anti-NATO forces are launching effective attacks. Although gathering in large numbers in the open makes them a target for NATO air strikes, they have been able to launch sniper attacks and raids by small mobile teams of fighters. As a result, NTC forces are reliant on the military backing of their NATO masters to hold on to the territory that they have occupied. And they depend on intense NATO bombardments to even have the possibility of making inroads in places like Sirte and Bani Walid. Indeed, NATO announced that yesterday alone it conducted 113 sorties, 42 of them strike sorties to hit targets.

NATO’s military assaults have been accompanied by a propaganda blitz by the Western media. The BBC, CNN, ABC and all the mainstream newspapers have told one lie after another to justify the NATO onslaught. These media outlets lie because they are either owned by the governments of the imperialist countries, as in the case of ABC or BBC, or because they are owned by big capitalists whose class interests lie with NATO as in the case of the commercial channels, the Fairfax family-owned Sydney Morning Herald and the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph and The Australian. However, perhaps the most pernicious role has been played by the Qatari-based Al Jazeera. Because this station took a slightly independent line on the Iraq War it has gained a lot of credibility among some Arab people who hold little trust for the Western mainstream media. Thus, Al Jazeera was able to fool many people, including not a few leftists, with their rantings that Muammar Gaddafi was about to exterminate the people of Benghazi unless NATO saved them. Yet one should not expect anything better from a media outlet owned by the pro-Washington, Emir of Qatar!

NATO’s Agenda

The story composed by Western imperialist regimes, pro-Western Arab governments and their media hound dogs is that the vast majority of the Libyan people have risen up against a tyrannical ruler, Gaddafi, and that NATO is merely helping the Libyan people to achieve their aspirations. According to this storyline, NATO intervention is aimed to protect the Libyan people from human rights abuses. Nothing could be further from the truth. To see just how little the capitalist powers bombing Libya actually care about protecting Arab civilians, we only have to look at their attitude to this year’s events in Bahrain. Earlier this year, the Western-backed Bahrain monarchy killed dozens of protesters. Things became worse when 1,000 Saudi troops, with the complicity of Washington, were sent to back up the Bahraini monarchy on March 14. The monarchy’s forces then barbarically started blocking the hospitals to stop injured protesters from being treated and held doctors, nurses and ambulance staff at gunpoint. So what stance did those attacking Libya take over these events? Well this is what Robert Cooper, one of the European Union’s highest ranking diplomats and the councilor to the EU’s foreign policy chief on the Middle East, said of this murderous crackdown in Bahrain during a formal statement:

“It’s not easy dealing with large demonstrations in which there may be violence. … It’s not something that we always get right in the best Western countries and accidents happen.

“One should understand the authorities were right to restore calm and order and that’s what they’ve done.”

This disgusting whitewash is what the Western imperialist rulers really think about protecting civilians. Indeed one of the reasons they attacked Libya was precisely to distract from the murderous terror that has been unleashed against protesters by their puppet regimes in Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Another reason for their attack is, obviously, that Washington and Co. want reliable henchmen in Libya who can ensure that Libya’s oil wealth flows smoothly into the pockets of the West’s corporate elite. Gaddafi was, indeed, their man for many years but he is too much of a maverick, ultimately too hard to control. They would prefer someone else. Something like the Bahraini monarchy, perhaps? Or maybe a new Mubarak-type figure? The NTC leaders are indeed already showing themselves to be slavish servants of Western imperialism. During a visit to Libya by French President Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron, NTC head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil made a point of saying of the powers that backed the NTC that “they will have priority” in the awarding of any future contracts.

Thirdly, NATO powers want the attack on Libya to be the intervention that restores “credibility” to the Western powers after their debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. What that means is that the peoples of other African, Middle Eastern, Asian and Latin American countries had better watch out. If the imperialists get away with imposing their will on Libya then any one of these ex-colonies could be next. Especially if they are resource rich!

Fourthly, the attempt at regime change in Libya is aimed at poisoning the so-called “Arab Spring” rebellions in the Arab world. The uprisings had previously targeted very strongly Western-backed regimes like the ones in Tunisia and Egypt. This had Washington, London and their ilk all worried. However, Libya to the rescue! The West wants Libya to be a model to show that the inevitable result of the Arab uprisings must be to produce pro-Western governments, completely subordinate to imperialism.

We cannot allow these imperialists, the main exploiters of the world’s poor peoples, to get away with trampling all over the bodies of Libyan people in their march for global domination. The international working class and the left must support Libyan anti-NATO forces in their fight to defend themselves from the NATO imperialists and their proxies in the NTC.  

In standing against NATO and its henchmen we must here especially oppose the Australian regime’s support for NATO’s war. All of NATO’s crimes against the Libyan people have been fully supported by the Gillard Labor government, the right-wing Liberal/National Opposition and the small-l liberal Greens. Indeed, Labor foreign minister Kevin Rudd was amongst the first to strongly push for military action against Libya. On June 9, Australia also became one of the first countries, alongside Britain and Italy, to recognize the NTC as the “legitimate” government of Libya. The Gillard Labor government also gives millions to the NTC under the guise of “humanitarian aid.”

NATO Intervention: Horror and Triumphalism

One of the things that has proven that NATO intervention has nothing to do with protecting Libyan people’s “human rights” is the horrific killing of Libyan civilians by NATO themselves. NATO’s fearsome bombing raids have killed thousands of civilians. And these attacks targeted civilians more and more the longer the war went on. The NATO powers bought into their own propaganda and really believed that their entry into the war would quickly see their NATO “rebel” allies take power within a few weeks if not days. When this quick regime change failed to materialize and many Libyan people who were otherwise opposed to the Gaddafi government rallied around it in order to stave off a colonial conquest, the NATO imperialists sought to demoralize the Libyan population by hitting civilian targets and destroying Libya’s civilian infrastructure. In particular, they targeted Libya’s water supply network which supplied water to 70% of the population of this desert-ridden country. On July 22, NATO destroyed Libya’s main water supply pipeline. The next day they bombed the water pipes factory in al-Brega that would have produced the pipes to repair the broken pipeline. Power plants, crucial for the operation of water pumps as well as for providing electricity to the general population were also destroyed. NATO has also tried to starve the Libyan people into submission. Prior to their puppets occupying Tripoli, NATO imposed a naval blockade of Libya that led to food shortages. It is thus the most vile hypocrisy for the Western media to now shed crocodile tears about the shortage of food and water in Tripoli.

 

With its allies now occupying many major cities like Tripoli, NATO has stopped destroying civilian infrastructure in these areas. Yet in other parts of the country, NATO’s terror has if anything intensified. Three nights ago, 354 residents of Sirte were killed in just one night of NATO bombardment. Among the “targets” hit by NATO rockets were the city’s main hotel and the Tamin building which consists of more than 90 residential flats. In all, NATO’s intervention has caused the deaths of over 50,000 Libyan people.

This has not stopped NATO leaders from gloating – rather prematurely one should add – at what they see as their success in imposing regime change upon Libya. Last Thursday saw the truly sickening spectacle of British prime minister Cameron and French president Sarkozy triumphantly touring selected parts of Libya as their puppets fawned upon them. The media presentation of this tour stunk of the old myths about the – imaginary – grandeur of colonialism when the imperial masters coming to inspect their possessions were supposedly revered by grateful colonial subjects.

So why are Cameron, Sarkozy, Obama and indeed Gillard and Rudd so triumphant about Libya? Because they have little else to be triumphant about! All these imperialist leaders are deeply unpopular at home. Their economies are in deep, deep trouble. And as the London riots demonstrated in such a vivid manner: their rule of exploitation backed up by the brute force of the cops is truly hated by the poor. Even their long imperialist war in Afghanistan is still stuck in a deep and bloody mire. There is a real crisis in confidence amongst the Western capitalist powers. Many see the power of the American empire and its European allies on the decline. So Libya is their one bright spot, the one project that is going well for them  … or so they think! After all the setbacks that they have suffered in conquering Iraq and Afghanistan, the imperial rulers think they have found a good model for grabbing hold of resource-rich parts of the globe. The project to re-colonise Libya is designed to provide a framework by which these imperialists can get out of their rut. And let us be clear: Libya is just the start of these filthy warmongers’ drive to extend Western exploitation over all of Africa.

Cameron, Sarkozy and co. are of course excited at all the profits that the corporate owners that they serve are set to make from reconstruction contracts in Libya – that is, contracts to rebuild what their bombs and missiles continue to blow up. And then there’s the oil, of course. A subservient regime in Libya will allow their corporations to reap ever greater oil profits. Moreover, the French and British rulers also now expect to grab extra profits at the expense of their Western rivals. Under Gaddafi it was the Italian oil giant, ENI, that enjoyed poll position when it came to stealing Libya’s oil profits. That’s why the Italian rulers weren’t at first all that impressed with the British and French drive for war – for the Italian imperialists the status quo was acceptable enough. Yet in the end the Italian rulers went along with it when they realised that the British, French and Americans were ready to go to war with or without them. The greedy Italian capitalists calculated that NATO firepower would win out in Libya and thus moved to ensure that they would be on, what they expected would be, the winning side.

This inter-imperialist rivalry has only intensified following the pro-NATO forces occupation of Tripoli. Even as thousands continue to die in the fighting, the last four weeks has seen the disgusting spectacle of the governments representing the interests of Italy’s ENI, France’s Total and Britain’s BP shamelessly jostling with each other to ensure that their own oil firms get the most favoured position to grab Libya’s oil riches. Thus after having gone out of their way to hide NATO’s decisive role in this conflict, in the days that immediately followed the pro-imperialist occupation of Tripoli, each of the jostling imperialists suddenly started playing up their own individual roles in the war.  Each of these capitalist powers wants to claim that they have the most right to plunder the biggest share of Libya’s high-grade oil wealth.

NATO’s “Rebels”

One of the biggest lies of the media campaign associated with NATO’s war on Libya is the notion that the pro-NATO “rebels” are freedom fighters with almost unanimous popular support in the country. Yet, especially after occupying Tripoli, these pro-NATO, so-called “rebel” forces have been showing how much of a fraud are their claims to be standing for any kind of “democracy.” These cutthroats have been rounding up thousands upon thousands of people whom they suspect of being sympathetic to Gaddafi – whether they’re armed or not. They then either lock these people up in horrific conditions – sometimes up to 25 to a tiny cell – or execute them in cold blood – especially if the prisoners happen to be black. For these pro-NATO henchmen any civilian who is sympathetic to the other side is a “legitimate” target. As we go to press, NATO “rebel” forces from Misrata are blasting the civilian population of Sirte with rockets and shells, “excusing” their acts by pointing to the sympathy that the Sirte population have for Gaddafi.

The racist crimes of the pro-NATO forces against both the black Libyan population and dark-skinned African migrant workers from Chad, Niger, Somalia, Nigeria and elsewhere have been especially horrific. African migrant workers holed up in a camp for fear of being abducted have told of how armed NATO forces come and take women away to be raped. A reporter for the British mainstream newspaper The Independent exposed one particularly gruesome massacre of black Libyans not long after the initial NATO “rebel” advance into Tripoli. He found 30 bodies of pro-Gaddafi supporters decomposing in the grass near two roundabouts near the Tripoli district of Abu Salim. Almost all the victims were black. The NATO “rebels” had executed them in cold blood when they found them at a makeshift hospital clearly marked with the symbols of the Islamic Crescent. Some of the victims had their hands tied behind their back and some had scarfs in their mouths. Others were executed while on stretchers and attached to intravenous drips. A doctor was found dead and dumped in a nearby ditch. Is this the supposed and much-vaunted “democracy” that NATO and its puppets are delivering to the people of Libya!

Now certainly there was good reason to oppose the capitalist Gaddafi government that for many years itself co-operated with Western imperialism. But these NATO “rebels” have eagerly accepted to be thoroughly slavish servants of Western capital and that is why NATO is trying to install them into power. Let us look at who these NATO “rebels” are. One lot are long-time, pro-Western upper middle class elements.  Another main component is made up of religious extremists – cutthroats who would enslave women if given half a chance. It is noteworthy that the top NATO “rebel” commander for Tripoli is none other than Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a founding member of the Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Now certainly many people with genuine grievances about unemployment and other problems would have got caught up in this opposition movement. But the decisive thing about this movement is that it chose to appeal to and subordinate its own interests to the most reactionary forces on this planet – the Western imperialist powers.

There is certainly a chunk of the Libyan population that does support the NATO Forces (especially in the East of the country) or rather would like anyone but Gaddafi. Yet the claim that the NTC forces have overwhelming popular support is fanciful at best. It was striking how few people came out to cheer them when these forces entered Tripoli. This did not, of course, stop the Western media from claiming that huge crowds were lining the streets to greet the pro-NATO forces as they entered the city. Except that when you saw the video footage there was hardly anyone on the streets at all! Just very small groups of people cheering the NATO forces every few kilometers or so. When you compare that with real revolutions like the huge reception that Mao’s Peoples Liberation Army received when it entered Beijing or Castro’s army entered Havana, it was nothing. Even now the NTC has not been able to get more than at most a few thousand people (and that mostly made up of the armed fighters and their families) to join rallies celebrating their occupation of the capital. When one considers the scale of the event being marked – regime change after 42 years – and the fact that Tripoli has a population of two million people this is hardly a sign of enthusiastic, overwhelming support. Contrast this with the hundreds of thousands that participated in anti-NATO, pro- Gaddafi rallies in the months that preceded the NTC’s occupation of Tripoli. As far as many Libyan people are concerned, the corruption and authoritarianism of the Gaddafi dictatorship pale in comparison with the savagery of the NATO predators and their Libyan allies.

“Human Rights” Imperialism?

Some liberal and soft-left supporters of the NATO intervention have argued that while the Western capitalist powers are predatory, they are at least “democratic” and can help bring democracy to countries like Libya. Well, for starters, the democracy we have here is really only a democracy for the rich where the capitalist tycoons own the media and the wealthy disproportionately have the resources to finance political parties, pay for political advertising, hire lobbyists and all the rest.

Furthermore, when the capitalist powers intervene in the ex-colonies of Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Pacific, they dispense with even the limited political freedoms that they currently allow back at home. Why? Simply because they exploit these poorer countries so much that they can only keep the impoverished masses in line by carrying out, or supporting, the most brutal violence. The history of U.S. and Australian supposedly democratic intervention in the ex-colonies includes dropping napalm on the people of Vietnam and torturing at Abu Ghraib Prison and Bagram Air Base. It includes supporting the recent massacres by the Bahraini monarchy and backing up the most oppressive regimes imaginable from the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile to the present day Saudi monarchy.

One of the reasons that there is confusion here over the NATO intervention in Libya is the political impact of the Australian left’s campaign to support the intervention of Australian troops into East Timor in 1999. Then in the wake of the killings of East Timorese by Jakarta-backed militias and an intense propaganda campaign by the Australian media, nearly all the Australian left groups built mass demonstrations calling for the Australian military to speed up its planned intervention to “Save East Timor.” Of course, far from “Saving East Timor”, capitalist Australia’s forces replaced the Indonesians as the colonial occupiers of East Timor and proceeded to steal East Timor’s oil wealth for themselves. The Australian military went on to commit terrible atrocities there like the 23 February 2007 massacre of East Timorese displaced persons protesting at Dili airport. Yet the effect of the left’s 1999 campaign to egg on John Howard’s takeover of East Timor was to breed lasting illusions among left-minded people that the capitalist powers can sometimes play a progressive role when intervening abroad.

Partly as a result, even while most far left groups nominally opposed the NATO military intervention in Libya, most were at best half hearted in mobilising against it. When the NATO attacks first began, some on the left cited “community support for the intervention” as a reason to “hold off” calling actions against the bloody NATO assault. However, a blow

was struck against this capitulatory thinking when on March 27 some 40 to 50 protesters rallied in Sydney’s Town Hall Square to demand “NATO War Criminals – Hands Off Libya!” In sometimes pouring rain, demonstrators chanted “De-feat, De-feat, De-feat the NATO thugs!” The protest was endorsed by the Supporters of the Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerillas, Trotskyist Platform and the Revolutionary Socialist Party. It was also addressed by a member of the Communist League (the group that sells the Militant newspaper.)

As well as standing against NATO in Libya, the call for the March 27 action addressed the situation throughout the Middle East, in the context of the upheavals there, by emphasizing the need to oppose all imperialist intervention in the region – whether it be direct military intervention, funding of political groups, backing for loyal puppets or attempts to co-opt opposition movements. On the conflict in Libya itself, the March 27 rally call unambiguously exposed how the “arrogant ruling elites in the West” are “turning the Libyan NATO “rebels” into foot soldiers for their sinister plans to reinforce their plunder of the world’s oil supplies.”

This March 27 anti-NATO demonstration was held in the face of incessant demands to call off the rally, in the days leading up to it, by supporters of the NATO bombing of Libya. These supporters of the imperialist intervention also staged a counter-rally (hailing French President Sarkozy) on the day and sought to undermine the anti-NATO protest. However, they were only one-third the size of the anti-imperialist action and hence were not able to sabotage it.

The Struggle for the Left to Take an Anti-Imperialist Position on the Libya Conflict

It is unfortunate that although the March 27 action was held some eight days after the bombing of Libya began, it was actually the first action in this country against the NATO assault. One of the reasons that we in Trotskyist Platform decided to initiate this demonstration is that we hoped that the call for the action itself would compel broader left forces who had hitherto been hesitating on supporting actions against the NATO intervention to call their own protests. This indeed happened, albeit in a distorted way. A rally was held on April 3 in Sydney that included among its endorsers one or two groups that had previously argued against calling actions against the NATO intervention at this time.

This second, April 3 protest demanded “No US-NATO war on Libya” and rightly called to “End the foreign military intervention in Libya.” However, while opposing military intervention, the rally call

promoted other forms of intervention by the capitalist powers. Thus the demonstration call asserted that, “Australian Government involvement in Libya should be diplomacy, negotiations and international pressure, not war.” Yet, as it is the administration presiding over the Australian capitalist state, any intervention by the Australian government, whether military or diplomatic, can only ever serve imperialist goals. In particular, any diplomatic or other political intervention would necessarily – just like military intervention – be aimed at strengthening the interests of Australia’s U.S. ally which Canberra incessantly backs up because it is the big power guarantor of Australian capitalist plundering of the South Pacific. And subsequent events have confirmed this truth! Gillard and Rudd actively intervened through “diplomacy” and “international pressure” to support the pro-NATO NTC.

This support for non-military forms of imperialist intervention reflected the politics of the groups that organised the April 3 rally: in particular the groups dominating the Stop the War Coalition (Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity) and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA.) Yet John Pilger, who has no pretensions of being a communist, took a better position on the Libyan situation than these socialist groups, when he addressed the April 3 rally. After asking rhetorically “What should the West do about Libya?” Pilger answered emphatically, “Absolutely nothing!”

The opposition to NATO military intervention of the left groups that led this later April 3 rally is further compromised by the fact that most of the organizations involved – most blatantly the Solidarity group and Socialist Alternative but also Socialist Alliance – have a position of siding with the pro-NATO Libyan opposition even while they oppose the NATO bombing itself. Thus an August 22 Socialist Alternative article titled, “Tyrant Gaddafi finally falls, but what now?” even welcomed the takeover of Tripoli by the pro-NATO “rebels” as a step forward: “Regardless of how significant the current battles in the opposition forces are, the fall of Gaddafi creates a democratic space in which students and workers will be able to organise. That’s what needs to happen.”  At the April 3 rally, even the CPA whose Guardian newspaper had up until then taken a stronger anti-imperialist position on the Libya issue than these other parties headed in the same direction as these “Trot” groups (as CPAers like to refer to such groups – although in truth all these groups openly state differences with key aspects of Trotskyism.) Thus the main CPA placard at the rally read: “No to Gaddafi! No to NATO! …..”  Such a slogan very wrongly posited the ruler of a semi-colonial, capitalist country to be as great an enemy as the predatory, big capitalist powers that are attacking his country. Furthermore, by putting “Down with Gaddafi” even before “Down with NATO!” it leant towards the “Trots” stance of backing the pro-NATO Libyan opposition. This was further underscored when the CPA leader who spoke at the rally called for a negotiated solution that would lead to not only “peace” but Gaddafi leaving power.

Fortunately, the CPA has partially pulled itself up from the opportunist dive it took at the April 3 rally by printing in the Guardian a series of recent articles strongly opposing the ascendancy of the pro-NATO “rebels.” Thus a CPA statement printed in the September 7 issue of the Guardian rightly noted that “the people of the world should harbour no illusions about the reactionary turn of events in Libya.” However, the statement shied away from calling for solidarity with the forces in Libya continuing to resist NATO and its NTC allies. Instead, it argued that a key lesson of the events in Libya was that “the people of the world must demand more of the United Nations in protecting the sovereignty of nations,” adding that “this may not happen until the UN’s structures are democratised to stop the globe’s military and economic giants calling the shots in international affairs.” Yet one of the things that the NATO attack on Libya proved is that the U.N. is not only useless as a force to oppose imperialism but is actually a key instrument for imposing imperialist diktats upon the world. Trying to change this reality by calling to democratize U.N. structures is futile because the U.N. necessarily reflects the current balance of military/political forces in the world, one where the imperialist rulers and their lackeys in the “Third World” are dominant. The road to defeating imperialism travels not through the U.N. but connects the working classes of the world with fighters resisting imperialism in the ex-colonies.

The contradictory stance on the Libya War of the groups that led the April 3 rally has led to their subsequent paralysis when it comes to actually campaigning against the NATO onslaught. Thus, since April 3 these groups who are the four biggest left groups in Sydney have not organized any more actions against the NATO assault on Libya. Now another left organisation, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), has on balance taken a slightly stronger position against NATO intervention than these other groups. Thus they endorsed the earlier March 27 action which among other things called to “Defeat the NATO air strikes on Libya” and which in contrast to the April 3 rally’s appeal for “peaceful” Australian diplomatic intervention called for “opposition to all political and military meddling in the Arab world by the Western imperial powers.” And following on from endorsing the March 27 action’s call to “Oppose All U.S. and Australian Government Intervention in the Middle East,” an RSP National Committee Statement on Libya of 9 April demanded “No to all forms of imperialist intervention.” Yet, while the RSP also criticised the NTC leadership for collaborating with the NATO imperialists, it continued to state its overall solidarity with the opposition movement even after this movement had become thoroughly subordinated to the goals of the Western imperialists. And while the RSP toned down this position in its speech at the March 27 anti-imperialist rally, it was emphasised in the April issue of its newspaper, Direct Action. This article even criticised Fidel Castro for his correct refusal to support the pro-imperialist, Libyan opposition uprising. Fortunately, like the CPA, the RSP has somewhat strengthened its position since the pro-NATO forces occupied Tripoli. Thus an article in the September issue of Direct Action titled, “NATO bombing campaign ensures Libyan NATO forces” victory moves away from support for the pro-imperialist Libyan “rebels.” Yet they too shy away from defending the forces that are resisting NATO and its NTC allies.

Nevertheless, with the RSP and CPA joining Trotskyist Platform as the only bona fide left groups in Sydney to consider the present ascendancy of the pro-NATO, NTC forces as a bad thing it is crucial that these groups organise united front actions to demand an end to the ongoing NATO intervention and to oppose Canberra’s diplomatic and financial support for the NTC. In the course of such actions Trotskyist Platform will fight to win leftists to openly taking a side in the military conflict with the Gaddafi forces against the NATO imperialists and their NTC puppets while avoiding feeding any illusions in Gaddafi’s bourgeois nationalist political program.

On September 10, at the height of imperialist triumphalism over Libya, a united front demonstration was held in Sydney under the slogans “Down with Canberra’s Diplomatic and Financial Support to Pro-NATO Forces Rampaging Through Libya! Smash NATO’s Drive to Conquer Libya!” A statement in solidarity with the protest from an anti-NATO Libyan student studying in Australia was read out to the rally. The demonstration was also addressed by representatives from Trotskyist Platform, the Lebanese Communist Party and the Supporters of the Iranian Peoples Fadaee Guerillas. However, other than the Trotskyist Platform initiators of the protest no other Australian-based left group participated. This suggests that even amongst some of those who oppose the ascendancy of pro-NATO forces there is still unwillingness to campaign around this issue and perhaps a degree of acceptance of the media lie that NATO’s triumph in Libya has been completed.

Yet if the spirited armed resistance by anti-NATO forces in Libya continues it is certain that more and more leftists in Australia and indeed the whole world will be driven to mobilize against NATO’s drive to conquer Libya. Trotskyist Platform will continue to look for opportunities to help build such mobilizations as part of fighting to win sections of the left in Australia to an anti-colonial stance on the Libya war. In many of the former colonial countries, especially in Africa, there have been spirited actions against NATO and their racist NTC puppets. Now the left and workers movement in the imperialist countries must do their part. If we can succeed in undermining imperialism’s plans for Libya then by damaging the authority of the predatory powers we will be bolstering the struggles of all those who are fighting against these imperialist rulers in their home countries. We will be strengthening workers fighting to win major strikes against the rulers of Greece, Spain and Portugal, standing behind the impoverished layers in Britain searching for a way to express their just grievances and emboldening trade unionists, refugee rights supporters and Aboriginal people struggling for justice in this country.

We reprint below some of the speeches from the two protests – on March 27 and September 10 – that have taken place in Sydney against imperialist military and diplomatic intervention in Libya.

“If one is serious about opposing the imperialist forces pounding Libya then one now also has to oppose their Libyan allies.”

Below we reprint the speech that Trotskyist Platform prepared for the anti-imperialist March 27 action. The first part of the reprinted speech, including the sections which call for the defence of the Libyan state forces against the NATO imperialists and their allies and which explains why one cannot be serious about opposing NATO if one does not also oppose its allies within Libya, was delivered word for word by our speaker on the day, Trotskyist Platform editor, Yuri Gromov. With our comrade conscious of the need to keep speeches a bit shorter in the context of rain falling on demonstrators, the second part of the speech (which included points on the broader Middle East upheaval, China and the Libya War and the intersection of the Libyan War and domestic politics) was delivered on the day in slightly abbreviated form.
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On March 2, the International Criminal Court formally opened an investigation into crimes against humanity by the Gaddafi government. The previous day nine innocent children were killed in an air strike while they were collecting firewood. Some may say: well, fair enough then that the Tripoli regime may be prosecuted– But hang on, those children were not killed in Libya! No, they were children in Afghanistan who were barbarically killed by the U.S.military. And that is the heart of the question here. You see Gaddafi is indeed an oppressive capitalist ruler but the damage he can do and the crimes he has committed dwarf in comparison with those who are today bombing Libya in the name of “human rights.” It is the imperialist rulers of the U.S, Britain and Australia who have together killed tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq.

There is a reason for their brutal violence. The multinational corporations from the rich Western capitalist powers make huge profits from exploiting the masses of the former colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They plunder a good chunk of Middle East oil wealth as well. This exploitation is enforced either through the imperialist violence of their own governments or through henchmen in the local ruling class – through the likes of Murbarak or the murdering monarchy in Bahrain.

Indeed one of the Gaddafi’s main crimes is that over the last decade he turned himself into a servant of the Western imperial powers. His government handed over intelligence to the CIA and the British Secret Service. It also reversed some of the achievements made through the 1969 overthrow of the monarchy in Libya by carrying out privatisations and allowing Italian and other Western corporations to takeover previously Libyan state-owned oil fields. These policies led to a fall in the standard of living of the poor and to massive unemployment. Yet the regime that Washington wants to install in Libya will necessarily be much more subordinate to them than even Gaddafi was. That means more theft of Libya’s oil wealth by Western business bosses and thus more suffering for Libya’s poor – and that means that the new rulers will only be able to keep the poor in line with still more cruel terror.

On the other hand if the colonial powers are defeated in their violent attempt at regime change in Libya, then everyone suffering under neocolonial domination will be encouraged to challenge it. They will say to themselves: “In Libya the imperialists were defeated. So let us now boot out their puppets too – from the death squad rulers of Colombia to the Bahraini monarchy – and let us kick out their one-time allies too, like Gaddafi himself.”

That is why we must take a clear side in this war going on now between the exploiting great powers and a semi-colonial country. We must stand for the defeat of the NATO imperialists and its allies and for defence of the Libyan forces being attacked by them.

So what of the anti-Gaddafi “rebels”. Now, certainly it was necessary to fight against Gaddafi’s brutal rule. From the start however, while the opposition included some progressive elements and many courageous youth, the organised political leadership of it included monarchists, religious fundamentalists, former long-time supporters of Gaddafi and pro-imperialist liberal groups. The latter include a long-time CIA-funded group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya. The Western imperialists also chose to politically back the NATO “rebels”, which does not speak well of the opposition movement. Thus neither side in the conflict were worthy of support. Things have now changed however. The U.S., British and French have now gone in with bombs and intelligence officers to militarily support the opposition insurgency. Regardless of what some in the opposition originally intended, the sad truth is that they have now been made into NATO’s ground forces just like how in Iraq some opposition movements against the dictator Saddam Hussein were turned into the allies of imperialism. Thus one cannot pretend to be at the same time for the defeat of NATO and for the victory of the NATO “rebels”. If one is serious about opposing the imperialist forces pounding Libya then one now also has to oppose their Libyan allies.

 

 

There is a hard lesson in this. In this age, where the imperial powers have perfected so many ways of shaping events, any opposition movement in the so-called “Third World,” must make clear that it is absolutely opposed to all forms of imperialist intervention. What is more, for an opposition movement to be progressive it must make clear that it is struggling for a government that will be more opposed to the imperial powers than the existing regime that it is opposing. This is doubly necessary for opposition movements fighting against governments that currently have frosty relations with the imperialists – like Syria and Iran.

Moreover if the courageous rebellions by the Arab masses are to go in a truly progressive direction, the idea of simply unity of all against whoever is the current ruler must be replaced by an agenda that is explicitly pro-working class, anti-imperialist and pro-women’s rights. And since all wings of the capitalist classes there are tied to and dependent on the corporate bosses of the imperial countries, the capitalist elements must be driven out of the opposition movements. In the end if political democracy and freedom from neocolonial subjugation is to be won throughout the Middle East, the toilers must seize state power. When they do make such workers revolutions, the toilers in power will naturally progress on to collectivise ownership of the oil fields, factories, land and banks. This will finally allow the masses to liberate themselves from poverty and unemployment.

It is leftists in the Arab world who will work out the best slogans to push forward this struggle. However we have a big role to play here too living in an imperialist country. It is imperialist intervention in all its forms that is the biggest obstacle to the liberation of the  Arab masses. That is why Trotskyist Platform insists that we must oppose all interventions by the Australian ruling class. Canberra is strongly supporting NATO’s terror bombing of Libya.

Furthermore the joint U.S./Australia spy base in Pine Gap in the Northern Territory is used for pinpointing missile strikes. We must thus demand the closure of Pine Gap and must oppose the government’s plans to open more yet more U.S. bases here. However we  must also understand that the Australian regime is not just Washington’s puppet. They support U.S. expeditions in the Middle East only because they rely on U.S. might to back their own marauding in the South Pacific including in Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The Australian rulers are imperialist bullies in their own right.

This is crucial to understand because some on the left while opposing the military intervention in Libya, are calling on the Australian government to intervene in Libya using negotiations and diplomatic pressure. However any diplomatic intervention by Canberra  will necessarily be for imperialist purposes. For the capitalist powers, military intervention and diplomatic intervention are just different tools used to achieve the same predatory goals. Neither can play a progressive role because imperialism that wields it is not just a bad policy choice by a bad person. It is something far more remorseless – it is a system. It is capitalism at its highest stage – a stage where capitalism in the richer countries can only make up for its economic crises at home by in the poorer countries devouring markets, natural resources and cheap labour. Asking the rich capitalist powers to intervene in a helpful way in a poorer country – whether militarily or diplomatically – is like asking a great white shark to be a vegetarian.

Unfortunately, this is not understood by much of the left in this country. Recently there were necessary demonstrations here in solidarity with the rebellions in the Arab world. However, one of the main slogans of the rallies was to “Call for the Australian government to support the movements in Egypt, Libya” and so on. Well Gillard and Rudd would claim that the Australia government is indeed intervening to “support the movement” in Libya – intervening that is by supporting the devastation of Tripoli by NATO missiles! Even if the imperialists were not launching military action and were instead purely supporting an opposition movement through political statements and funding, that would only be in order to co-opt the movement. Currently Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy is busy funding political groups within Egypt – including those that opposed Mubarak – in order to contain the stirrings there within boundaries acceptable to imperialism. That is why it is just as harmfulwhen the imperialists pretend to support you as when they oppose you.

So how we are then going to stand up to these predatory great powers – with their finely honed devious methods and their military might? After all even the rulers of most of the countries suffering from their plundering are under their thumb. Yes, but not all countries.

Notably, the world’s rising power the Peoples Republic of China is strongly criticising the NATO bombing. Socialistic China has a right to criticize. It is the world’s only  non-imperialist power and alone of the world’s powers has not fought a war in the last 20 years.

Unfortunately however the Chinese leadership made a harmful betrayal – it abstained rather than voted against the U.N. resolution. China’s compromising bureaucratic rulers have a policy of seeking to avoid annoying imperialism in the hope that imperialism will leave it alone. This is a suicidal policy. If imperialism is not defeated it will eventually gather the forces to destroy socialistic rule in China as it did in the former USSR. Not surprisingly those pushing hardest within China to appease imperialism are those factions within Chinese political layers that are also pushing to allow capitalism to make greater inroads into China’s economy. They must be defeated. We call on the PRC to strongly oppose the entire NATO intervention in Libya as part of the necessary struggle to both oppose imperialism and defend the Chinese workers state.

The greatest potential force for stopping the imperialists is the working classes in the imperialist centres themselves. In the NATO countries, Portugal, Spain, Greece and now Britain there have been huge workers struggles against the rulers who are trying to make workers pay for the capitalist economic crises. Here too there is much disgruntlement at deteriorating social services, a lack of affordable housing and workplace bullying by greedy bosses. In the end, the looting of the semi-colonies by the richer capitalist powers brings benefit only to the upper class elite of the imperial countries with a few crumbs flowing  also to the middle classes and a small layer of better paid workers. Most of the working class masses do not gain anything at all. Indeed, whenever the imperialist rulers get away withrunning roughshod over a country like Libya it makes them more pumped up to attackworkers rights and oppressed minorities in their own countries.

This understanding must be brought to politically aware workers. We must point out that the same rulers who are supporting the bombing of Libya are the ones who are attacking our trade unions, unleashing tear gas against asylum seekers and brutally oppressing Aboriginal people. If we can build up enough understanding of this, then there can begin to be workers political industrial action against the attack on Libya. Now that would really hurt NATO’s war! Such actions can indeed be built. A small taste of what is needed was seen on 1 May 2008, when dock workers in the West coast of the U.S held a stopwork against the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The obstacle to building such actions is the influence of the current parliamentary parties. And by that I not only mean the right-wing Coalition and the ALP sell-outs of the working class. I also mean the Greens. The Greens and Bob Brown are enthusiastic supporters of the murderous NATO attack on Libya. If any of you campaigned for votes to The Greens yesterday [ie at the NSW elections], I hope you reconsider. The Greens, as small-l liberals, may oppose some of the worst excesses of policies here but they are solidly supporters of the capitalist establishment and of Australian imperialism. What we need instead is a party that will truly serve the working class, a party that is consistently opposed to imperialism.

Sisters and brothers, in closing I would like to on behalf of Trotskyist Platform congratulate everyone who has supported today’s action. You have come here in the face of  overwhelming media propaganda and a lot of hesitation within the left on the question of actively opposing the imperialist attack on Libya. Today is a stepping stone for future action. I urge you to take what you have discussed here and get out there to the working class suburbs, especially the heavily migrant ones, and agitate for the defeat of the NATO attack on Libya. If we connect this campaign to the fight against racist capitalism at home I am sure we will make headway.

“We realise that the ongoing presence of NATO
will simply weaken Libya until we have no choice
but to accept the pathetic terms that the West via NATO delivers.”

The following is a statement to the September 10 rally, “Smash NATO’s Drive to Conquer Libya” that was sent by a Libyan student studying in Australia, Almagrahi. The statement was read out at the rally:

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I want to thank all friends and everyone for coming to support the Libyan people today. Over the last period we have seen significant conflict, violence and struggle happening in Libya, by the people of Libya. This struggle has been fought in the name of improving our lives in Libya, ending corruption and bringing more democracy by the people of Libya, to Libya. But now our struggle continues, and it is now fought against the presence and intervention by NATO.  The place of NATO is not in Libya.

Instead, we aim to show that only the Libyan people can solve the problems of Libya. Only the Libyan people can defend themselves against any forces or any attacks by any one. Only the Libyan people can make a better life and country for themselves. It is not the responsibility or the place of NATO to intervene in this struggle. We have not asked them for their assistance, this is an act of Western imperial interests pure and simple.

We demand an end to NATO bombing and causing more trouble in our country. We believe that all this is achieving is the further death of innocent people, civilians, women and children like what happened in many cities around Libya such as Tripoli, Sabah, Sirte, Mazda, Tajoura and others. This bombing campaign is also hurting the existing infrastructure of Libya, and turning back the clock to colonial times, weakening any economic development we have had, and causing more suffering across the nation.

This problem is an internal dispute, an internal struggle, and so can only be solved with internal struggle and campaigning. The people of Libya are active and awake to this; we are not asking for the help of NATO, we have the ability to develop our own alternative to any forces or any attacks, independently.  We had already started this process, and do not need the ‘assistance of NATO to complete this mission.

The primary motivations for NATO are to intervene in a way that is too similar to the path taken in Iraq. Do we need sectarian violence? No. Do we need complete destruction of existing national infrastructure, solidarity and pride? No. NATO represents a new form of colonial interest and activity in Libya, and this is something that will only hurt us, make us suffer, and take us further back into history.

Also, we are not naïve. We know that the real reason for the sudden ‘interest’ and empathy from Western powers is in the name of oil. It is for the Libyan people to determine what happens with their natural resources, with their oil and relationships with foreign companies and foreign investment. We realise that the ongoing presence of NATO will simply weaken Libya until we have no choice but to accept the pathetic terms that the West via NATO delivers.

Also, the bombs and missiles that are being shot in Libya are filled with dangerous and toxic materials that will cause ongoing health problems for generations to come. Uranium missiles will cripple the population, so much that we can not determine our future independently. This is not good enough. The only support we need is to end this strike and campaign of violence against Libya.

Where will NATO be when the long term health effects of uranium bombs weaken our population, destroy our environment, and ensure that our next generation will never stand on its own, independent feet? Will they pick up the pieces? Will they pay for the health bills? No!

This is a critical moment in Libyan history. Let the people of Libya write the next chapter. End the NATO presence in Libya now. Stop the bombing. End the biased media coverage that only reflects the interests of corporations and oil-power. Freedom for the people of Libya, according to the people of Libya.

“How are we to stop these powerful imperialists?  Their achilles heel actually lies right here at home where there is a force that can …
end the greedy ugly imperialist plunder of nations.
This is the force of the organized workers movement.”

The following speech was given by Trotskyist platform editor, Sarah Fitzenmeyer at the September 10 demonstration against NATO and its puppets within Libya. The speech has been lightly edited for publication.

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The UN has given NATO the authority to act… supposedly to protect civilians in Libya. But what has really happened? Over the last couple of weeks, NATO has ferociously bombed Sirte, a city where 100,000 civilians happen to live. Even before the pro-NATO forces entered Tripoli, NATO air strikes had murdered over 2,000 Libyan civilians. On August 9, NATO killed 85 civilians near the town of Zlitan. Among those massacred were 33 children.

And they have the audacity preach about “human rights”! What filthy liars! NATO and its allies are waging a heinous, bloody and endless war against Afghan peoples. In Afghanistan, the Australian SAS kill children by throwing hand grenades into civilian homes. Meanwhile, Western powers back the murdering monarchy in Bahrain, the women-hating Saudi regime and the racist Israeli state. In fact Australia’s capitalist rulers pushed the hardest for that UN resolution which gave cover to NATO’s savage Libya War. The capitalist Australian state is good at preaching human rights while in practice it imprisons innocent refugees and threatens them with forced transportation. The Australian state oversees and enforces a racist Intervention against Aboriginal people which strips them of basic rights and denies them dignity. Capitalist powers do not care about the rights of the masses: not here, not in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Bahrain and certainly not in Libya.

 

The real reason why the Western powers are in Libya is to create by any means necessary a more subservient regime there.  One that will allow greedy corporations to more easily loot Libya’s oil. It’s not that Gaddafi actually ever really liberated Libya from domination by Western companies. Indeed from the late 1990s, he increasingly allowed Western oil giants to rip off Libya’s oil. But the greedy bosses of these oil companies always want more and more. They found the taxes that the Libyan government imposed annoying.  Gaddafi started standing up more to those oil giants around the time that socialistic China’s state-owned oil producer, CNPC, became involved in Libya. Unlike the capitalist corporations, this Chinese state firm is not completely profit driven and thus was able to give Libyans a good deal for their oil. As a result, Gaddafi began to demand more concessions from the Western oil firms and this would not have made Gaddafi any friends in the West.  Now the new NATO-backed regime, despite having not yet actually really won the war, has promised Western corporations free reign over the Libyan people’s natural resources… they will be able to steal as they please…. and exploit whomever they can.

NATO’s war is not only about grabbing Libya’s resources. It is about grabbing everybody’s resources! Their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have not gone well. People are tiring of and cynical about such wars. This is a stage-managed war: one that attempts to erase the memory of Iraq. A war that proclaims that Western capitalist powers and their corporations can maraud anywhere in the world, setting up puppet governments at will and without impunity.

Until now, Libya was actually one of only two Arab countries that was not under NATO’s sphere of influence. The other one being Syria. And there’s no prizes for guessing who’s next for a NATO-style attempt at regime change. Western media are hailing the Libya model as a possible supposed solution to Syria.  Bomb the country to smitherines and don’t show the pictures… and when the West has won…. Take whatever you can get your hands on…If the imperialist powers’ attempt at regime change is successful in Libya they will eagerly and with all the more fervor move on to the left-nationalist governments in Latin America – like Bolivia and Venezuela. And the capitalist powers certainly won’t stop there. They forever have had their sights set on smashing socialistic rule in Cuba, North Korea and China.

So we had better not let them get too pumped up. Their attempt to impose regime change in Libya must be smashed. Gaddafi is no doubt a capitalist but his forces are at the moment waging a just war against the imperialists and their puppets. And despite the media’s best efforts, this heroic resistance against powerful imperialist states rages on. We must support this resistance! We call on Libyan leftists to organise toilers to resist pro-NATO forces and form anti-NATO militias.  Such militias need to remain politically independent from Gaddafi, all the while coordinating with his troops to fight the common enemy.  Once the imperialists are defeated then these militias can be the vanguard of the struggle for workers power in Libya.

We must oppose Canberra’s support for NATO and all of its puppets.  Australia’s rulers back NATO operations everywhere because they rely so heavily on the US to back them up as they themselves so shamelessly jackboot around the South Pacific. Australian capitalists like the owners of BHP, Woodside and Newcrest make huge profits looting natural resources and exploiting labour in Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and Fiji in exactly the same way as European and American corporations plan to do in Libya.  So we need to not only oppose Australia’s war in Afghanistan and its role in Libya, we need to also oppose Australian capitalist plunder in our own region.

But how are we to stop these powerful imperialists?  Their Achilles heel actually lies right here at home where there is a force that can stop these imperialist bloody wars and end the greedy ugly imperialist plunder of nations. This is the force of the organized workers movement.  In the USA millions are homeless. In Britain, justifiable riots erupted over a racist cop killing and the every growing gap between the haves and the have nots.  In the NATO countries Portugal, Spain and Greece the working classes are mobilizing, knowing that they need to take action.

And the crisis is coming here too as the NSW Liberal government slashes public sector jobs leaving thousands unemployed.  The Gillard ALP government’s budget has viciously cut benefits for the disabled, single mothers and the unemployed. The working class, refugee rights supporters and Aboriginal rights activists need to join together in struggle against Australian imperialist rulkers’ actions here and abroad.  Workers industrial action is desperately needed to demand an end to Australian financial and diplomatic support for the pro-NATO forces. The union movement also needs to organize medical and food supplies to be sent to areas in Libya still controlled by anti-NATO forces. This happened two decades ago in solidarity with the people of Bougainville when they were being attacked by Australian SAS and the PNG military acting at the behest of their Australian imperial masters. We need such actions now but on a much greater scale.

We must show the masses that those standing against imperialism in Libya are fighting against the same enemy that workers face at home. We also need to break the ties that back imperialism. That means not just breaking  away from the right-wing Liberals and the social democratic ALP but also from the bourgeois Greens who actively pushed hard for the NATO attack on Libya.

If we are to energise the struggle against the conquest of Libya we must be very clear about who we support.  It is completely meaningless to oppose NATO if at the same time you are supporting its allies – the NATO “rebel” forces that NATO is trying to catapult into power.  The NATO “rebels” in Libya are not freedom fighters battling for the Libyan masses – they are NATO’s ground troops working for the few western corporations who have sewn up very lucrative deals over Libya’s oil.  Now I’m not saying that there didn’t need to be a rebellion against Gaddafi. Like all capitalist governments his was corrupt.  But it did nationalize oil bringing many benefits in areas like health and education. Such gains were then undercut by privatisations over the last decade, policies that led to big unemployment. However, most of the present opposition and NATO “rebel” forces want even more neo-liberal policies. Rebel deputy leader, Mahmoud Jibril, was part of the Libyan government until earlier this year and was the one who pushed hardest for an embrace of Western companies. Others amongst the rebels are fundamentalists who think that in Gaddafi’s Libya, women have too much freedom. So the rebels were never at any stage worthy of our support.

The biggest left groups here are formally against NATO intervention yet they continue to support NATO’s puppets and virtual ground troops: the Libyan rebels. The left is paralysed on this issue. For the last five months there have been no actions at all in Sydney against the war on Libya. How can this be that the left knowingly closes its eyes to the horror NATO is inflicting upon the Libyan people. There’s a strange notion that imperialism can sometimes, without actually meaning to, play a progressive role and that therefore the fact that the rebels are being backed by the imperialists is not really so important in all this. It is such a notion that led to the terrible scenario in September 1999 when most of the left marched to demand that Australian troops invade East Timor. That is why it must be understood that every single overseas intervention, whether military or political, by an imperialist country must be opposed without exception. The big capitalist states can never play a progressive role. They are constructed to serve an exploiting class, a class whose only real goal when acting abroad is to seek out new lands and populations to prey upon. Whether they claim to be democratic or not, movements like the Libyan opposition are bound to hand over a greater chunk of their country’s wealth to their imperial backers in the West. This means impoverishing the masses through mass exploitation – something that can only be enforced with brutal repression.

All this has vital lessons for Syria. Currently most of the left here are backing the opposition in that country. But this opposition is marching with slogans calling for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria, in other words calling for a Libya-style NATO intervention. We should thus be against this opposition at least as much as we should be against the capitalist Assad dictatorship. What is needed throughout the Middle East are united-front movements that are at once anti-imperialist, pro-working class and pro-women’s rights. They will be the stepping stones to future struggles for workers power itself.

Sisters and brothers, we need to be absolutely clear about all this. Because we will likely soon see the threat of more Libya-style interventions cropping up.  For as capitalism wilts at home, the more feverishly the big capitalist classes must then grab wealth from the world’s ex-colonies. If this sounds grim consider this: The imperialist marauding of the capitalist powers is the wild thrashing of a dying beast. It is a sign that the socialist revolution that will topple capitalism is potentially closer at hand. Yet it is also a sign that capitalism’s descent into barbarism is also potentially closer. That is why we must oppose imperialist militarism with the greatest energy. Those who have come here to genuinely support today’s action have taken a step forward. As the resistance in Libya consolidates our forces will surely grow here too.

The people of Libya have been waging the most intense resistance against imperialism that Africa has witnessed in decades. They need our support as do all the masses of Africa now facing the threat of colonial re-conquest. Any setbacks that we can impose upon the imperialists in their Libyan expedition will weaken their authority and make them more vulnerable to working class struggles at home. The evils of imperialist capitalism can only be swept away by an organized workers movement in solidarity with all the other oppressed people in the world. NATO would have no bombs to drop on terrified children if the workers around the world halted production of these bombs or blockaded their transportation or better still sent them on to NATO’s enemies.  If what they are saying about China giving arms to Libya is true – that’s great news. The Peoples Republic of China, founded upon the communist-led worker and peasant revolution of 1949 should be standing by semi-colonial Libya against imperialism much more strongly! Stop the NATO killing machine. Support the brave fighters who are defending Libya from Western imperialist plunder. Thank you.