What might have been small and manageable in the past decade proved to be very different in the first major recession of the 21st century. After decades of police brutality, corruption, dictatorship and political repression the call to action struck with popular consciousness not just in Egypt but all around the world. Millions watched glued to their screens, the first major revolution of the 21st century. After decades of rule and with no previously obvious signs of collapse the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced from office in the space of two weeks and now faces the death penalty for his crimes against the Egyptian people.
Egypt’s revolution took the rulers of that region completely unaware – Israel today is absolutely terrified they will no longer have a partner to keep Gaza under siege and whose new Parliament may put it’s peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, and the US tried hopelessly to maintain Mubarak’s rule in Egypt even as it looked impossible to most observers.
This wave of popular protest wasn’t limited to Egypt either – it has now spread to every Arab country, both pro and anti-US but with the common goal of overthrowing dictatorship and corruption.
This meant the West took very different attitudes to different parts of the Arab Spring. In Bahrain, the USA turned a blind eye as one of it’s most important allies, Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of troops to crush a popular uprising in Bahrain and to preserve the sectarian monarchy that hosts a large US military base on the Island. However when it came to Libya, a bizarre dictatorship which shared many characteristics with other Arab regimes – with the exception that it wasn’t completely in the pockets of the West – a different attitude was taken, with military action conducted by NATO to overthrow the regime.

Not a good year for these guys

This made Libya the third Muslim country in 10 years bombed by the West, after Afghanistan and Iraq. While the campaign in Libya was, from the viewpoint of London, Paris and Washington, a quite easy affair there was one war that finally seems to have drawn to a close – at least for Washington. The 8 year nightmare of Iraq for the USA ended with a formal troop withdrawal from Iraq earlier last year, as Obama redeployed US soldiers from Iraq to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Iraq war, so critical in radicalizing millions of people across the world ended not with a bang but a whimper as the USA has been forced to leave with many of it’s desires – permanent military bases, proxy for strikes on Iran and Syria, dirt cheap oil – unfulfilled. If Iraq has been a disaster, Afghanistan hasn’t turned out much better as it’s Taliban guerillas continue to make the ISAF occupation of the country as pointless, ineffective and bloody as all the previous occupations of Afghanistan have been. The Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden even went as far as to say “The Taliban are not our enemy” – an admission that the USA will negotiate and involve the Taliban in Afghan politics at some point.

The solid decade of occupation and war in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved so costly for the USA that US President Barack Obama has carried out the biggest reform of the US military “since WW2″. Moving it’s forces away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific (hello China) it’s a massive climbdown from the previously almost invincible US military power in the 90′s. But what other choice does Obama have, particularly when in 2011 the US faced a historic first time downgrading of it’s credit rating. When the most powerful nation in human history hasn’t got the best possible record at debt management, it’s a damning indictment of the cost of occupation and war – and may fortunately dissuade the USA from any attack on Iran, at least for the time being.
Many of the historic events we saw in 2011 – such as the resignation of Mubarak – weren’t from our sofas or bedrooms, but with other activists in comrades in the longest running student occupation in UK history. From February to September, Hetherington House a former postgraduate club, was occupied by anti-cuts students at Glasgow University. For 6 months we were able to hold a non-commercial space on Glasgow Uni campus, open to a variety of campaigns – from the protests to stop cuts to nursing, modern languages and adult education at Glasgow University, to the campaign to save the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This occupation succeeded in acting as a focal point for the anti-cuts movement across the whole of the city, as well as attracting a variety of speakers like Ken O’Keefe and Owen Jones.

While the occupation of the Hetherington House ended, the networks and connections built up between different activists and groups hasn’t disappeared. There’s now a vibrant anti-cuts group for the whole of Glasgow that many of the former occupiers are involved in – the Coalition of Resistance. COR’s been in existence since May and has already become the largest and most active anti-cuts group in Glasgow, organising strike buses for J3O and N30, building the October 1st demonstration, the march to save the accord and providing a space for anyone from any political background who wants to fight the cuts to come to. COR will be an important part of anti-cuts activism in the next year, and a vital space for Socialists to operate in.
Another front that will be opening in the next few years is the Independence campaign in Scotland. After 4 years of SNP minority rule, alongside a Tory Government in Westminster many Labour Party members must have thought they were a shoe in for the Holyrood elections held in May of last year. What they actually faced was the biggest defeat for Labour and Unionism imaginable – central belt seats where the Labour party had majorities you’d normally find in one party states were seized by the SNP for the first time in it’s history, producing a revolutionary result in Scottish politics – a pro-independence majority in Holyrood for the first time ever.

This means after 300 years of unionist misrule, the Scottish population will finally have a choice over our constitutional future. And for Unionism, it couldn’t come at a worse time, where a Tory party that has less MP’s in Scotland than Pandas is trying to force through a brutal package of austerity. This is Scotland’s gain from the revolutionary year that was 2011 – the chance to take our nation out of the world’s oldest empire, and a possibility for the Radical Left to shape that debate and the Scotland that emerges. 2011 will be remembered as the year that saw arrogant, embedded and reactionary power crumble fall – from Cairo to Tunis to Pollok – lets organise to make sure 2012 continues in the same vein.

Colonel Gaddafi’s death comes as a massive relief to the Libyan rebel National Transitional Council. While it was impossible Gaddafi would ever be able to rule Libya again his continued survival could have provided inspiration and encouragement to Libyan’s opposed to the new council. Only a few days ago a gun battle erupted in Tripoli between the NTC and Gaddafi loyalists. And despite Tripoli falling months ago, Sirte and Bani Walid managed to hold out until today, against both the NTC and NATO bombardment. This suggests Gaddafi has – or at least had – a section of the population still willing to fight for him even when his rule was clearly finished. Neutralising that potential insurgency is probably the top priority of the NTC, especially given that the rebel council itself is not homogeneous and has former Gaddafi ministers and Islamists sitting around the same table.

For NATO the bombing campaign of Libya has been a success – especially when you consider the long weeks of apparent stalemate, and the fact that the bombing campaign was the most unpopular war fought by the United States in recent memory. The push for NATO involvement in Libya was led by the UK and France, who are showing that despite planned defence cuts, they can still wield a big stick to maintain their sphere of influence in North Africa – and at a cost of £1 Billion, can still find the money to do it in a time of austerity. The reality is that despite the language of human rights and democracy, NATO’s involvement in Libya has been motivated by far less noble and more complex factors.

The root cause of NATO intervention in Libya lies with the rebellion itself in early 2011. Following on from the wave of revolution that toppled Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Mubarak and Egypt Gaddafi’s regime was the next to face a popular uprising. This began in the eastern city of Benghazi – a stronghold of the opposition to the Colonel, and a Libya’s second largest city – where Libyan’s took to the streets to protest the pre-emptive arrests of human rights campaigners. What happened next is disputed – Gaddafi’s loyalists claim the rebels stormed the barracks and staged an armed uprising without provocation, while the protesters claim they were fired upon by soldiers first. This uprising therefore started in quite a different way from that of Tunisia or Egypt – instead of demonstrators occupying a square and demanding the resignation of a despot, this was more an armed insurrection with attacks on barracks and police stations to secure guns in cities and towns across the country.

The Libyan uprising took this form because the regime in the country is very different from that of Tunisia or Egypt. In Tunisia and Egypt the two strongmen dictators, Ben Ali and Mubarak, were dependent on their power from many other forces in their societies – that of the army, the business class, western imperialism etc. Ben Ali and Mubarak were the public faces of the regimes – but they were disposable once they became a liability to those forces. Hence why the Egyptian military was unwilling to risk it’s stake in Egyptian society (as a massive business empire) by shooting demonstrators in a Tienanmen Square-style massacre of the demonstrators to keep Mubarak in power. In these countries when the protest movement became unstoppable, the forces in control of Egyptian and Tunisian society had a quiet word with the strongmen leaders and told them to resign – so that the business interests of those countries could be preserved, and stability for western imperialism be consolidated.

Libya – or to give it it’s proper title under Gaddafi, “The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” – was a bit different from those countries as the official name might suggest. If you’ve not heard of the word “Jamahiriya” before it might be because it is a word Colonel Gaddafi made up that means “state of the masses”. Obviously what a country calls itself doesn’t reveal everything about how it is run – but the fact that the official name of the country was invented by Gaddafi himself suggests he had a much bigger role to play in that regime than Mubarak or Ben Ali did. You might also have noticed the different flags the rebels and Gaddafi supporters have used – the rebels use the Libyan independence flag, flown under the monarchy which is red, green and black with a crescent moon, while Gaddafi’s supporters use the official Libyan Jamahiriya flag, which is solid green. The flag was picked by Gaddafi to tie in with his book of mad things he wrote – “The Green Book”.

So when you have a society that’s official organs and symbols are named around the eccentricities of it’s mad ruler, you see how difficult it could be in trying to remove him peacefully. Gaddafi intentionally kept different parts of Libyan society – most importantly the military – weak so that they could not be used to remove him in a coup, or force him to stand down the way the Egyptian army did with Mubarak when his time was up. Instead, Gaddafi was able to use armed forces loyal to himself and the Libyan “Jamahiriya” he created to suppress the rebellion with lethal force.

Gaddafi was also able to stay in power thanks to an additional factor that Mubarak and Ben Ali did not have – a section of support amongst the population. Gaddafi took power in Libya in a bloodless military coup in 1969, with the same program as other Arab nationalist movements like Nasser in Egypt. Under Gaddafi’s rule the oil was nationalised and used to develop the country’s infrastructure, building roads, schools, hospitals – even a massive irrigation project called the Great Man-Made River – which transformed Libya from the poorest country in the world to the richest country in Africa, with a Human Development Index comparable to that of Eastern Europe and Portugal. Gaddafi’s success in these social projects shouldn’t be used to whitewash his regime as a socialist paradise – the unemployment rate in Libya in 2009 was over 20%, and hundreds of thousands still lived in poverty. But the fact that Libya did develop infrastructure and social programs better than most of Africa under Gaddafi allowed him to secure a base for his regime, particularly in the western part of Libya where the rebellion was weaker.

Gaddafi was able to pursue these social policies because despite being no socialist, he took a path independent of western capitalism for most of his reign, able to use oil funds that would have been privatised in other western puppet states to develop the country. While Gaddafi reached an accommodation with the West since dismantling his WMD program and handing over the alleged Lockerbie bomber – notably culimnating in getting off with Tony Blair in a tent in the desert – he still maintained policies independent of western imperialism. Jack Ferguson, formerly an SSY columnist here before he got too old outlines a few of these policies in his excellent blog post here.

Gaddafi maintained an independent state-controlled banking system, with the power to issue it’s own money – different from the other neo-colonies in Africa whose currencies are guaranteed by western powers like France. This meant that the Libyan economy – unlike so many other African countries – did not have massive levels of debt to western powers. As Libya was a country independent of western financial control, it was able to use it’s economic power to assist African development in the construction of telecommunication satellites and even more dangerously for western banks, propose an African currency guaranteed with Libya’s gold reserves. The use of a currency not in hoc to the western powers would undermine the financial enslavement of Africa by the European powers. The last person to try something similar was Saddam Hussein, who started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars before he was toppled by the United States. One of the first thing the rebels did was set up a new central bank, which raises questions about what kind of economic program they want to install in Libya now Gaddafi has been toppled.

Gaddafi also repeatedly used racist attitudes in Europe regarding immigration to his favour, warning western leaders that Europe would “turn black” unless he received the aid he demanded. Gaddafi played a cynical game with the lives of thousands of immigrants to Europe, selectively detaining them or letting them emigrate to Europe depending on what suited his interests. Gaddafi has also historically had a lot of influence in Africa – one of the reasons why the African Union vociferously opposed NATO’s program of regime change in Libya. The nationalized oil wealth has been used in a combination of military assistance and aid packages to bolster the African regimes the Colonel supported.

Libya's influence throughout Africa.

All of these policies – independent currency for Africa, state control of banks, refusal to play ball on immigration, regional power status in the African continent – made working with Gaddafi a grudging necessity for western powers. Despite their rapprochement with him, Gaddafi was never a western puppet in the same way Mubarak or Ben Ali was. This doesn’t make Gaddafi a hero – in fact his response to protests was more brutal than Mubarak or Ali, and his refusal to stand down has brought NATO bombing and civil war to his country – but it does explain why the West intervened in Libya but will not intervene in a variety of other African conflicts or assist other pro-democracy movements in the Arab world. Gaddafi was bombed by NATO because he pursued a path independent of the west to some degree, and because he refused to step down when his time was up. His refusal to resign like Mubarak made Libya an unstable country, unacceptable to the European countries who purchase Libyan oil.

Gaddafi’s already paid the personal price for his rule – his firing on demonstrators, repression of students, prison massacres – with grisly photos of his corpse circulating the internet. But there’s a potentially darker side to the fall of Sirte than just the death of this despot, that may go unreported – the fate of thousands of Black Libyan African men. In the opening days of the uprising in Benghazi there was footage circulated, alongside rumours, that Gaddafi was using foreign African mercenaries to crush the protesters. Whatever Gaddafi did during the opening days of the uprising, human rights organisations have investigated the claim of mercenaries and can find no evidence to support it. Unfortunately these rumours were circulated by tv stations like Al Jazeera and now as the rebels have taken control of most of Libya, Black Libyans are effectively being lynched by racist forces within the uprising.

The siege on the city of Misurata was widely reported, with a spotlight on Gaddafi’s forces shelling the civilian population. Whats not been reported as widely is the fate of a neighbouring town – Tawergha, which was accused by the rebels of being pro-Gaddafi and assisting the siege. When the siege of Misrata was lifted, the rebels advanced on Tawergha and to all intents and purposes cleansed it. As one rebel commander said “Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata”. A city of 10,000 Black Africans has effectively been ethnically cleansed, with racist graffiti declaring the rebels are “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” being daubed across the city. The rebels themselves say the Tawergha will return to their city “over their dead bodies”. Many of these refugees fled to Sirte, a city that may face a similar fate as Tawergha.

The ghost town of Tawergha, ethnically cleansed by the rebels.

This is not the only human rights abuse the rebels have committed. As the western media entered Tripoli after the fall of Gaddafi, they found corpses with their hands bound behind their back and bullets in their heads in Gaddafi’s Bab Al Azziya compound. Naturally the suspicion fell on a massacre committed by Gaddafi. But many of these victims were Black Africans with foreign passports – suggesting they were migrant workers who had been summarily executed by the rebels. These crimes against Black Libyans have been committed across the country as the Libyan civil war became a war not just between the East and West, but between African and Arab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cslPrRLaQDI

Racist lynching of Black Africans conducted by the rebels in Libya

Not all rebels are motivated by racism – the Libyan Youth Movement for example has been key in supporting the uprising and is inspired by the youth movements in the wider Arab world. Unfortunately, many of those opposing Gaddafi are not so clean cut. The chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil was Colonel Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister. Jalil was happy to act as one of Gaddafi’s lackeys when it suited him – including the torture and rigged trial of Bulgarian nurses accused of giving Libyans HIV. Alongside Jibril are many other former diplomatic and military staff who happily served under Gaddafi. The highest ranking defector was Abdel Fattah Younis, a Major General in the Libyan army. Despite being described as a defector, privately Younis was captured by the rebels when he tried to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Unsurprisingly many of the rebels were not to keen on receiving military commands from someone who was so pivotal in Gaddafi’s regime – particularly those who fought a long guerilla war against him.

Younis didn’t escape the attention of these people for long – he was killed after being arrested under mysterious circumstances, which the NTC has not clarified. Gaddafi’s long maintained that the forces fighting him are Al Qaeda – an accusation that’s ridiculous, as this blog has covered that Al Qaeda as an organisation is a fantasy. But there is no doubt that many leading figures in the rebellion, if not Al Qaeda, are certainly Islamist. One such figure is Abdelhakim Belhadj a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Belhaj is commander of the rebel forces in Tripoli and a former victim of CIA rendition. This is not surprising given that the east of Libya – like Benghazi and Darnah – have proportionately sent more Arabs to fight in Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other part of the Arab world. Alongside these former regime loyalists, ethnic cleansers and Islamist fundamentalists are CIA backed exile groups like the National Front for the Salvation of Libya.

Rebels lynch Black Africans in Libya

The uprising in Libya was not a CIA/Al Qaeda plot to remove an anti-imperialist, before anyone suggests that – it was a genuine popular social movement, taking it’s roots in the poorest cities and towns in Libya, and led by young revolutionaries inspired by the toppling of Arab dictators (that Gaddafi had supported). Who will come out on top is by no means certain. But what is certain is that NATO involvement means that the West now has a massive sway over Libya’s revolution, that they clearly do not have in Egypt or Tunisia, and they are already trying to put their own people in charge. Gaddafi might be dead, but as Iraq shows there is absolutely no guarantee that things will get better when a despot is removed. In fact, they can always get much, much worse.

US Attorney General Eric Holder

Unfortunately for the Iranians the Zeta’s contact in this (alleged) plot was in fact a DEA informant – presumably Jack Bauer on spring break getting MWI in Tijuana. As well as closely fitting the plot of a recent Tom Clancy novel, detailing Taliban collusion with the Juarez Cartel this cartel connection could ostensibly be used for deploying the US army into Mexico, to fight the increasingly brutal drug war going on there – as one Republican Presidential candidate has already suggested. This would give the United States two wars to fight, one in Mexico alongside Iran presumably. Attorney General Holder announced that in the next few hours, measures against Iran would be outlined – that could range from sanctions to bombing a fourth Muslim country in ten years.

There are two factors that may spare Iran war – one is that so far the US Government is accusing “factions” of the Iranian Government as being responsible for the plot, something quite different from saying the actual leadership of the country is behind the assassination attempt. After all it was only a few weeks ago the US accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Pakistan being a US ally. Here it’s specifically it’s the Revolutionary Guard of Iran who are being accused of funding and planning this plot. The Revolutionary Guard are a 125,000 strong armed wing of the Iranian military, whose specific remit is the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution – similar in respects to Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, in their role as the best equipped, most loyal defence of an autocratic regime. Naturally this position gives them significant influence in Iranian society, which means it is possible they could have independently organised a terrorist plot in the United States without the knowledge of  Iran’s President Ahmadinejahd or the real power in the country, the Guardian Council. That’s one reason Iran might not be a gigantic car park by the time I finish typing.

The second reason is that Iran is no Iraq – bombing, invading and occupying Iran will not be as easy as the invasion of Iraq. And as some of our more eagle eyed readers may have noticed, invading Iraq was not the greatest plan ever. Iran is a regional power in the Middle East with an army that has not been broken under the weight of sanctions and war, as Saddam Hussein’s was by 2003. Also Iran has significant influence outside it’s borders – namely in Iraq and Lebanon, where Iranian support is provided to the Shia parties of Iraq like SCIRI (The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and more famously, Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Any attack on Iran would result in attacks on US personnel in Iraq and Hezbollah – which proved it’s competence as a fighting force in the 2006 war on Lebanon – attacks on America’s ally Israel. Alongside this ability to exert force across the Arab world, Iran would also be able to halt shipping through the Straits of Hormuz – effectively halting a majority of the world’s oil supplies, potentially tipping the entire world into another recession.

Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi ambassador anyway? Israel seems an obvious enough target, but why target the Saudis? Alongside the well publicized Arab-Israeli conflict, there’s another less well known cold war in the Middle East – that between the regional powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It goes right back to Iran’s revolution itself, which overthrew the pro Western monarch of Iran, The Shah. The Gulf is chock a block full of similar pro Western monarchs – in Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and the biggest one of all, Saudi Arabia. All of these rulers are shit scared at the idea of being overthrown by the poor and dispossessed sections of their society, mobilised under the flag of Islamic revolution.  One most recent example of this was in Bahrain, where the monarchy (who are Sunni Muslims, and the minority of the population) faced an uprising from the population (who are mostly Shiite Muslims). Here the US sided with Bahraini government, who allow the US to station a naval base in the country and turned a blind eye to the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s deployment of armed forces to the Kingdom to suppress the rebels.

Bahrain's uprising, crushed by Saudi troops.

The movement in Bahrain was not Islamist in nature, and a far cry from the Islamic revolution in Iran during the late 70′s – instead taking it’s inspiration from the secular movement that brought down Mubarak in Egypt. But any mobilisation of Muslims against these Gulf monarchies – specifically those of the Shia – will always be linked to Iran by their ruling elites. That’s why there’s a Saudi Arabia/Iran hostility in the Arab world – a hostility that even sometimes breaks ranks with the traditional Arab/Israeli confrontation, like when Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister described the Shiite and Iranian supported Hezbollah millitia as a “bunch of adventurers” and blamed them, and not Israel for the 2006 war.  Saudia Arabia ‘s even shares Israeli and US hostility to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme – a wikileaks cable revealed the Saudi King Abdullah was encouraging the US to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Saudi Arabia have – alongside Israel – played the role of US ally in the Middle East for decades, and have been armed to the teeth by the West. The United States simply can’t allow the world’s largest oil producer to fall to an Arab nationalist or Islamic revolution. It’s why despite spending $39 billion on arms, the Saudi Arabian army is deliberately kept weak; the weapons are “pre-positioned” to be used by US forces to quash any uprising, and the army is kept weak to stop any coup against the monarchy.

Despite all the hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia there’s still no guarantee the US Government of all people are honest in this terror accusation – America has been chomping at the bit for years to attack Iran, and now they may have their pretext. The Iranians would have to have been spectacularly reckless to believe they could blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America’s capital – particularly through the alleged middlemen of the Zeta’s cartel, a non-political organisation whose only objective is to sell drugs and make money – without facing retaliation. The Zeta cartel themselves would have a lot to lose by signing up to such a scheme – almost guaranteed US military assistance to the beleaguered Mexican Government that’s desperately trying to crush them. These accusations against the Zeta’s only serve to make them sound even more like something out of a Bond movie – the Los Zeta’s Cartel were originally an elite special forces squad in Mexico, who decided that there was a lot more money in drugs so decided to defect to the side of the cartels they used to fight. Their special forces background means they’ve been able to run rings around the Mexican state, and many US government agencies too…

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Quality polis, aw the way.

Which brings us to scandal that’s gone unreported this side of the Atlantic, which has embroiled the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) bureau of the US Government and the Attorney General Eric Holder – who broke the story about the alleged terror plot. The scandal sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie – specifically the title – “Operation Fast and Furious”. This ATF operation didn’t involve Vin Diesel in charge of a carjacking ring though – instead it was an authorized US Government operation to force gun stores in the US to sell firearms to people with links to drug cartels. Here ATF officers ordered gun stores to sell firearms to criminals, ostensibly so they could be tracked to the leaders of the cartel and convicted on conspiracy charges. But the entire operation was blown when a US Border Patrol guard was shot dead by one of the “Fast and Furious” weapons and an ATF agent blew the whistle. It’s been described as Obama’s “potential Watergate” due to the national scandal of a US Government agency allowing the sale of thousands of firearms to be used to kill on both sides of the Mexican border. Some of the Right Wing in the USA have an easy answer as to why this gunrunning was allowed – to allow the Democrats to clamp down on gun sales in the States, in the wake of massive violence from the Cartels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvRzrSXota8

ATF Whistleblower exposes state sanctioned supply of arms to drug cartels

But there is another more convincing – and sinister- explanation; the US Government is deliberately facilitating the sale of arms to one side in the Mexican drug war – the Sinaloa Cartel – in exchange for that organisations assistance in destroying rival cartels. Rival cartels like Los Zetas. Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the US went further and claimed the Sinaloa Cartel were actually allowed to transport cocaine across the border without US Government interference. It may sound far fetched, but it’s happened before. The entire crack epidemic which took hold of the USA in the 80′s was orchestrated by the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with the CIA turning a blind eye to their shipments of cocaine to the US that were used to fund their war against the Socialist Sandinista Government.

There’s also been collaboration between US agencies and Latin American Governments with drug cartels in the past. In Colombia, during the hunt for Pablo Escobar the Billionaire drug lord, an organisation called Los Pepes sprung up. Los Pepes ostensibly stood for “People persecuted by Pablo Escobar” but was in reality a front for the Cali cartel who were in competition with Pablo’s Medellin organisation. Los Pepes were vital in helping the US bring Pablo down, as they could wage a war of terror against his family and business associates that the Colombian state was unable (openly) to do. Because Los Pepes were murdering his lawyers, cousins, business partners Pablo was unable to launch a full scale war against the Colombian wealthy for fear his wife and children may be killed (who were refused amnesty by the US).  Previously when Escobar was on the run from the Colombian state he deployed his private army to indiscriminately terrorize the wealthy in Colombia – with bombings, drive by shootings and kidnappings against the well heeled. This had the desired effect of Colombia’s elite feeling the heat of the drug war and demanding the Colombian Government give in to his demands – which were effectively to continue running his own business from a luxurious private “prison” he designed, built and staffed.

Coming soon to an ATF bureau near you.

Killing Escobar itself had no real effect on the drug trade. With Escobar removed the Cali cartel simply took over the gap in the market. And then when they were removed, the Mexican’s took over the trade. If Apple stopped producing computers tomorrow people would still buy computers – it’s just that they would buy them from Dell or Microsoft. The same principle works for cocaine. Remove one supplier and another takes their place. So why were the American’s desperate to destroy Escobar? Largely because he became a threat to the Colombian state and American security itself. Escobar did not keep his head down like the Cali cartel, and carry out business discreetly. Instead Escobar was elected as a Colombian Senator, funded welfare projects for the poor – and bombed an airline to try and assassinate a Colombian Presidential candidate who threatened him with extradition. This bombing killed US citizens, and was an unacceptable level of violence for a drug lord in the eyes of the US Government.

Given the accusations against Los Zetas – that they were approached by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to conduct terrorism - could the ATF be repeating the strategy used by previous US administrations to bring down Escobar? Perhaps Los Zetas have now become a threat to the national interests of the US in the same way Escobar was, and the US Government is willing to fund and assist a rival cartel to see their removal. There’s already been accusations that the Mexican Government has not prosecuted it’s war on drugs against the Sinaloa cartel to the same extent that it fight Los Zetas. It’s possible these accusations against Los Zetas to justify US military intervention against a well organised drug cartel manned by former special forces.

It might even be just the stimulus package the ailing Obama administration needs – invade Mexico and Iran, and kickstart your economy with World War 3.

Bin Laden may be dead, but authorities are still trying to track down Bert.

He was the Salafist Jihadist Terrorist Princess Queen of Hearts. We’ve spent almost 10 years growing up in his Bond-villain like shadow, but after nearly a decade of hiding from US intelligence they finally got round to finding the best hide and seek champion in the Islamic world – Osama Bin Laden is dead. Watching President Obama’s address to the nation (coming a couple of days after he released a document showing he himself wasn’t a mad Islamic terrorist) he outlined the unique care and rules of war America abides in dealing with terrorists – they found him, shot him in the head and then dumped his body in the sea, presumably whilst pished and chanting “USA, USA, USA”. Bin Laden’s death also follows the killing of Saif Al Arab Gaddaffi, one of Colonel Gaddafi’s younger sons who never made it into Italian Serie A football. It just shows you what the American’s can do when the PS3 network is down, and that America’s idea of what present you give to a newlywed Royal couple is somewhat tasteless.

But now Bin Laden is dead, Is Al Qaeda finished? is the War on Terror over? Will the occupation of Afghanistan end? The reality is that Bin Laden’s death will not significantly change the fortunes of the three. Al Qaeda as an organisation in Afghanistan was already effectively destroyed in the late Autumn of 2001 with the Western bombing and invasion of the country. It’s training facilities (which consisted of sinister looking jungle gyms)  and headquarters were overrun, and organising the most wanted terrorist group in the world was a bit more tricky in a country occupied by thousands of NATO soldiers with assistance from Afghan warlords to boot.

Al Qaeda as an organisation was also an illusion – the idea of a world wide terrorist organisation, with branches in hundreds of countries taking orders from Bin Laden was and still is a myth, as this excellent BBC series outlines. President Obama is continuing to promote that myth by declaring that Bin Laden was the “leader” of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda as it actually exists is completely different. Al Qaeda is not an organisation but more a means of conducting terrorism and an ideology that justifies that terrorism on the basis of an apocalyptic clash between Islam and unbelievers.

Al Qaeda came out of a small hardcore of Islamist militants in the late 80′s, who were Arabs who had travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. After their victory against the Soviets, they intended to form a network of Islamist militants to take the fight to their own Arab regimes (who they believed were too secular) and to the corrupt and morally bankrupt Western Christian countries who backed them. They organised Al Qaeda like a franchise, allowing Islamists from anywhere in the world to blow up people in the name of a cosmic struggle between the West and Islam and to do so in the name of Al Qaeda. There’s very rarely any direct link between Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda cells, let alone direct orders.

Some attacks attributed to Al Qaeda have shown considerable deviation from the “leadership” of the Al Qaeda idea as outlined by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri. The 2004 Madrid bombing for example, was conducted only a few days before the Spanish Elections, and resulted in the removal of the pro-Iraq War Popular Party government and it’s replacement with PSOE who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden and Zawahiri would never be motivated to bomb a country on the basis of changing it’s unbeliever Government – they see their struggle as a cosmic clash of Islam and Crusaders, in which changing one non-Muslim Government to another non-Muslim Government as having little point to their struggle. Zawahiri has also criticised the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Musab Al Zarqawi for carrying out a massive sectarian bombing campaign explicitly targeting Shia civilians. While Zawahiri agrees that Shiites are deviating from Islam he outlines in his statement how bombing civilians instead of occupying armies is bad for PR. These examples show Bin Laden simply never was the leader of a cohesive terrorist organisation. There is no equivalent of an Al Qaeda “Army Council” which directs it’s war like the Provisional IRA had.

The name Al Qaeda itself also shows that it is more of an ideology instead of an organisation. Al Qaeda is Arabic for “The Base”; meaning a base of ideas, a manual for how to conduct jihad and what should motivate Islamists. It was originally coined by Abdallah Azzam, Bin Laden’s mentor who wrote “Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and [to] put up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. This vanguard constitutes the strong foundation (al qaeda al-sulbah) for the expected society.” As Jason Burke points out Azzam was talking about a strategy, not an organisation. Al Qaeda only became an organisation at the insistence of the US judicial system when an Islamist militant Jamal Al Fadl turned informant after embezzling over $100,000 of Al Qaeda’s money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mztfFdpd1Rk

The US wanted to indict Bin Laden for the bombing of their embassies in Africa and used Al Fadl’s testimony to create a picture of Al Qaeda as an organisation with a leadership, branches and hierarchy – so that Bin Laden could be prosecuted for the crimes other Islamists committed because he was supposedly in the same organisation as them. Having this vision of Al Qaeda meant that the US Government could prosecute Bin Laden using the same laws that they use to arrest the heads of the Mafia and other organised crime families. In these cases it is crucial to have an organisation that someone is a member of in order to successfully obtain a prosecution – the problem is that this simply does not exist in Al Qaeda’s case.

Even Al Qaeda’s most famous atrocity, the 9/11 attacks was not Bin Laden’s idea, but that of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (who was arrested in 2003). Khalid obtained financial support from Osama for the 9/11 attacks, but it was he who organised it. This is how the 9/11 attacks were really organised – a network of Islamists worked together and were funded by Bin Laden’s considerable personal wealth. Bin Laden’s role in Islamist terrorism has not been primarily that of an organiser but a financier. Different terrorist cells and organisations can approach Bin Laden and request funds for operations against the West. This loose, network is what makes Al Qaeda amorphous and potentially dangerous. The death of Bin Laden will not do much to practically impede this network’s activities against the West – Bin Laden was already isolated and could not provide much practical assistance to Al Qaeda affiliates.

Bin Laden was useful as a symbol however, a charismatic figurehead for the Al Qaeda brand’s form of extreme Islamism. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri may become the new “face” of Al Qaeda but he does not have the same charm and charisma of Osama. The real danger from Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is still the same (and as overhyped) as it was before Bin Laden’s death. It’s based on angry, Muslim, predominantly middle class men operating loosely as cells without a central leadership. Bin Laden’s death may even spur some of these groups on to carry out attacks – possibly in a half-arsed manner, like the Glasgow Airport Attacks.

Bin Laden’s death is already being celebrated across the USA, but the reality is that the so-called “War on Terror” will go on regardless – because both the terror networks known as Al Qaeda will still exist, and because the War on Terror itself was never about fighting terrorism. It was a convenient label to cover up what wars have always been about, control of the world and it’s resources.

Bin Laden’s death may have the positive effect of putting more pressure on the USA/UK to end it’s occupation of Afghanistan, as the original reason for the NATO invasion – hunting down Bin Laden – has been resolved. In reality however the occupation of Afghanistan is motivated not by fighting Al Qaeda but on the control of a strategically important country in the middle of some of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The War on Terror didn’t just start using terrorism as a justification to control the world’s energy resources in Iraq – it was a motivation from the very start in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden died a prisoner of his own security, unable to effectively organise or finance terrorism personally, due to the worldwide manhunt for him. Despite this he goes to his death with his and Al Qaeda’s ideas immensely stronger. The 9/11 attacks did not only succeed in massacring thousands of casualties and damaging the pride of the USA, it has also embroiled the West in two bloody and expensive wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bin Laden may not have seen the invasion of Iraq coming (although he and Al Qaeda have benefited from it enormously) but it was inevitable the USA would invade Afghanistan after 9/11.

Two days before the September 11th attacks Al Qaeda members assassinated the anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most credible anti-Taliban figure in Afghanistan and a natural puppet leader for the US. In killing Massoud Al Qaeda knew that if Afghanistan was invaded once again, they could make the subsequent occupation much harder for NATO by removing a unifying figure. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are repeating the strategy they used in the 80′s against the Soviets – dragging a superpowers army into their backyard, and bleeding them. The ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan is Bin Laden’s victory in death.

Now that Osama Bin Laden has been killed it’s time for Socialists and the anti-war movement to call for a complete end to the so-called War on Terror. The very flimsy justification for this war is now gone, and the continuing war against Muslim and Arab countries – from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya – is the exact strategy Bin Laden has fought for all his life, a bloody clash between Muslims and Christians, a clash that will only result in increasing support for Al Qaeda type networks across the globe.

It’s also a clash which, contrary to the predictions of Al Qaeda supporters and anti-Muslim bigots is not inevitable. Al Qaeda may be stronger in some respects given the West has acted as a recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist Islam, due to it’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is also much, much weaker in another and far more important battlefield; Al Qaeda has been left behind by the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East. Across the entire Arab world a tidal wave of people power is challenging the established pro-western, corrupt dictators – and Al Qaeda and fundamentalist Islam is nowhere to be seen.

The wave of protest is almost entirely secular in it’s makeup and demands. Al Qaeda has spent 20 years bombing civilians across the middle east and the Islamic world to try and change their societies, all without any success whatsoever, with no real threat to the regimes they oppose. In contrast a secular, working class, non sectarian movement in Egypt brought the most powerful Arab regime to it’s knees within a month. Al Qaeda know how to react to Western bombing campaigns, Arab autocracies, and Israeli atrocities – but they have no idea how to respond to the mass movement of millions of Arabs fighting against dictatorship using their power primarily as a class of workers, and not as Muslims pitted against other religious groups.

It’s those ideas currently sweeping the Arab world that will defeat the ideas of Al Qaeda, not the abuses of Guantanamo Bay, Al Ghraib and the senseless bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya today.

Edited to include some political points at the bottom

The first shots were fired by the French air-force taking out Libyan armour on the road to Benghazi. This is a bit confusing given what the West was demanding in Libya was a “No Fly Zone” – unless Gaddafi has an army of Transformers, tanks usually cannot fly. In reality we do not have a “No Fly Zone” – we have a concerted bombing campaign against Libya, with plenty of flying being done by NATO aircraft.

These airstrikes are justified on the basis that they are all that remains between Gaddafi and the destruction of the Libyan uprising. After weeks of euphoria throughout the Arab world, with almost all of Libya bar Tripoli falling to the uprising it looked like Gaddafi would be the next despot to be overthrown. In the past week however, it appears that Gaddafi has consolidated his forces - paramilitaries, mercenaries and special forces led by his son Khamis – and is launching a devastating offensive against the rebels. The failure to take Tripoli allowed Gaddafi to regroup and now he has retaken the oil towns along the coast, and his army stands at the gates of Benghazi – the centre of the uprising.

After the UN Security Council supported a No Fly Zone over Libya, Gaddafi called a ceasefire in his offensive. For a while it appeared as if the threat of force alone had saved the uprising. But Gaddafi’s ceasefire was not genuine, he continued to attack Benghazi and the predictable response from the Western powers began.

Some have justified the airstrikes as the only way to save the uprising – and it’s clear from footage in Benghazi that there is support from the rebels for the airstrikes. However while Gaddafi was making considerable gains, the rebels still showed the ability to fight off Gaddafi’s forces in the city of Misurata (the last rebel stronghold in the west of Libya) and at Adjabiya (the last town before Libya’s second city, Benghazi). The rebellion is not a spent force yet, and taking Benghazi would have been a much harder task than the coastal oil towns – it’s where the rebellion would (and perhaps may still) make a bloody last stand, an urban battle in which Gaddafi’s tanks would have been of less use.

The reality is that stopping Gaddafi’s forces from overrunning the rebels could never be done just by stopping his airforce – his forces on the ground are the ones taking the towns and cities, and ultimately it’s the armour and infantry that Gaddafi has consolidated that the rebellion needs to defeat. The “No Fly Zone” has always been a pretext for a much wider bombing of Gaddafi’s army and Libyan towns and cities. The civilian casualties we have seen so far have already provoked the Arab League to call for an end to the bombing, with it’s General Secretary saying “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone. What we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb-X14nH9kw

The bombing of Libya has been pushed through the UN because the Western powers are desperate to coopt and control the Arab revolutions in their own interests. The USA/UK would have been quite happy to see Gaddafi crush the rebellion discreetly and decisively in it’s early days, and maintain stability in the region but Gaddafi’s brutality made him an unreliable ally. That’s what led to formerly close European allies of Gaddafi to burn their bridges with him, and even go as far as to recognise the rebels as Libya’s legitimate Government. Now that it looks like Gaddafi may remain in control of most of Libya – including the oil fields – the West is now intervening to remove him through their own military force.

While Gaddafi may be an eccentric figure, attacked as an lunatic in the press, Libya is not an irrelevant basket case. It is the richest country in Africa, with the highest standard of living on the continent, and it’s oil wealth makes it an important regional player. Libyan oil money has been used to fund a variety of African rebellions, and an alleged assassination attempt against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Gaddafi was also a major supporter of the IRA in the 80s, providing the group with an entire trawler of arms – The Eksund – which could have given the Provisionals victory over the British in Northern Ireland if it had not been intercepted by the French Navy. It’s the fear that Gaddafi will align himself with anti-western guerillas throughout Africa – like the brutal RUF in Sierra Leone – that is partially motivating the US/UK to remove him with air strikes. Having a “rogue state” awash with oil money on the Mediterranean cost is not something any of the Western powers are keen on if it can be avoided.

As well as playing an important role in Africa, Libya is also a major supplier of oil to Europe. It provides Spain and Italy with 22% of it’s crude oil – explaining why Gaddafi and Berlusconi got so pally with each other. The civil war in Libya endangers the economies of these European states as the price of oil skyrockets. Also Gaddafi’s brutality has led to Western powers to break links with him – if he stays in power and consolidates his hold over the oil fields in Libya, the West will be denied access to Libya’s natural resources due to sanctions they themselves have imposed. This would be disastrous for many Western oil companies – BP alone have a £900 million dollar deal with Libya. It’s these massive profits which make it clear why there is a bombing campaign in Libya, but not an intervention in the pro-Western state of Bahrain which has been occupied by Saudi troops.

The bombing in Libya marks the return of the discredited “humanitarian intervention” – the idea that NATO aircraft can police the world and bring democracy at the point of a Tomahawk. Many readers of this site may be too young to remember Tony Blair’s war against Serbia in 1999 – often touted as a success compared to the failure of Iraq and the ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan. The 73 day NATO bombing of the Serbs was justified as bringing to an end the racist ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars by the Milosevic regime. The reality was that

‘They ran out of military targets in the first couple of weeks,’ said James Bissell, the Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia. ‘It was common knowledge that NATO then went to Stage Three: civilian targets. Otherwise, they would not have been bombing bridges on Sunday afternoons and market places.’ Admiral Elmar Schmahling, head of German Military Intelligence, said, ‘The plan was to first put pressure on the civilian population and second to destroy the Yugoslav economy so deeply it would not recover.’

NATO spent most of it’s bombing campaign attacking Serb society – while the actual ground forces of Milosevic ran rampant in Kosova. NATO managed to destroy only 14 tanks in the bombing campaign – but did successfully attack state-run Serbian TV and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. If and when the West runs out of military targets to bomb in Libya, you can expect them to target soft civilian infrastructure to push Libyan society to breaking point, just as it did in Serbia.

During the bombing of Serbia there was one significant, brave section of opposition to the air strikes alongside the SSP – that of the Scottish National Party. Alex Salmond was condemned as the “Toast of Belgrade” by Robin Cook, who later transformed into an “anti-war” leader during the run up to the invasion of Iraq. This time round though it appears that the SSP is alone in opposing the bombing – SNP MP’s have went as far as to use the attacks on Libya as a justification to maintain British RAF bases in Scotland.

Every real Socialist supports the overthrow of Gaddafi and the establishment of a democracy in Libya – but we shouldn’t be tempted into believing that the same Western powers who sold Gaddafi arms in the past, and back every other Arab despot have the interests of the democracy movement at heart. The West will use it’s military force not only to remove Gaddafi but to back whichever faction of the Libyan opposition will be the most friendly to their interests. Imperialism has never been progressive, and the only people we should trust to bring democracy and freedom to Libya are the Libyan people themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

]]> http://ssy.org.uk/2011/02/weve-nuked-ourselves-2053-times/feed/ 0 http://ssy.org.uk/2010/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-leaky/ http://ssy.org.uk/2010/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-leaky/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:00:28 +0000 Sarah http://ssy.org.uk/?p=4717

Russians, shortarse Frenchmen, artistic pictures of horses and people who duet with Blue: Just some of the things that the US government HATES

The publication last week of the first few batches of leaked US embassy cables has brought whistleblower website WikiLeaks – as well as the fate of its founder and editor in chief Julian Assange – dramatically to the front pages and top bills of news media around the world. As this article was being drafted, Assange, the website’s principal spokesperson and main public figure, is reported to be have been taken into custody in London, in connection with alleged sex offences in Stockholm in August this year. Unlike some others, SSY prefers to take rape allegations seriously, at least until substantial evidence suggests we should do otherwise.

To deal with this issue first, first of all let’s say something – Wikileaks is not Julian Assange, and Julian Assange is not Wikileaks. Attempting to repress and punish Wikileaks for being inconvenient and worrying to the establishment is not the same as a man being arrested because he is suspected of the very serious crime of rape. Let’s not confuse Assange with Wikileaks. Wikileaks (with Assange as its public face), as we will go on to discuss, has made a brilliant contribution to anti-imperialist activism and we absolutely applaud it for that. Do not let the fact that Wikileaks has got the right ideas about freedom of information blind us to the fact that rape is one of the most reprehensible crimes someone can commit, and that violence (sexual, physical, psychological, emotional) against women (which the overwhelming majority of the time goes unpunished) should be opposed in all its forms – and perpetrators brought to justice where it has been committed.. We offer no opinion on whether Julian Assange is guilty of the crimes that he has now been charged with. It wouldn’t be appropriate. But neither is it appropriate for socialists to promote the position that the women who have made allegations against him should be disbelieved, simply because Assange’s organisation Wikileaks do good things, or because of what the women have said on the internet in the past, or because they are women – which is what a lot of the ‘Defend Assange’ stuff out there on the interwebs is boiling down to. Just because we consider someone to be a “good man” who promotes some of the same ideals that we do does not mean that, if they HAVE abused women, they should get away with it, sticking it to the man yeah? Many men, men who consider themselves to be left wing, are using this arrest as an excuse to propagate often repeated rape myths, and this is unacceptable. Rape myths should always be challenged, no matter how suspicious you find the timing of Assange’s arrest. It’s sad to see people we respect, like Naomi Wolf join in the reactionary smear campaign against the women who reported Assange to the Swedish authorities. This is a misguided approach to anti-imperialism. You have to be anti-patriarchy too, or sorry, you’re not a socialist. For a brilliant article on the meaning of the word ‘consent’, visit Feministe. No means no, and tricking someone in to consenting to sex is rape. That goes in all cases, not just the ones where there’s no left wing icons who might be involved. Now, on to the substantial issue of the leaked cables..

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, originally adopting a wiki-style of organisation (similar to Wikipedia, where users could freely upload, edit and discuss documents. However it has since taken on a far tighter editorial policy, as it became clear the wiki format wasn’t appropriate for the organisation’s aims.

The ongoing release of US embassy cables – taken from the US military internet system SIPRNet (insert Terminator joke here) and representing a database of some quarter of a million secret communications from US embassies around the world – is just the latest in a long line of high profile stories broken by the organisation.

These include the website’s role in releasing the membership lists of the British National Party (BNP) in November 2008 and October 2009, the release of US military footage of an airstrike in Baghdad that appeared to show the gunning down of civilians and journalists, their involvement in the controversial so-called “climategate” leak of emails from the University of East Anglia and the 2009 Trafigura scandal concerning the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, and this year’s release of many thousands of secret documents concerning the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What's an assange? A smelly orange?

As Assange told an audience of journalists and students in London earlier this year, the idea behind the website was to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the internet to “find a way to not be scared to publish…anything”. Unlike the journalism of mainstream media organisations, WikiLeaks perceives of its duties being primarily to its sources – to publish what they say they will publish, not to step back or take things down; to protect those sources as much as possible – as well as to what Assange refers to as “achieving just reform”.

It is perhaps unsurprising that such a project has inspired a vitriolic reaction in the seat of power. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned the most recent leaks as life-endangering, ‘illegal’ and a threat to US national security. Others have taken this much further, with former Vice-Presidential candidate (and likely future Presidential candidate) Sarah Palin describing Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands” and calling for him to be “pursued with the urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders”, while other political leaders have openly called for his assassination. As has been repeatedly pointed out by WikiLeaks’ spokespeople and supporters, no evidence of anyone’s life being endangered has been forthcoming, and the timing of the releases and the care taken in their publication makes the endangerment of individuals unlikely. Also of note is that US authorities were approached prior to publication to ensure anything they felt might have been explicitly dangerous to individuals could be redacted – the US however refused to cooperate.

The embassy cables released to date have contained so many revelatory details that stories that would otherwise have ran for days have been almost buried in an avalanche of new disclosures. So far we have discovered that the US has been spying on UN officials, that leaders of various Arab states have been calling for a US attack on Iran (as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, despite opinion polls showing the populations of those countries perceive the US and Israel as by far the greatest threats in the region), that the Labour government “put measures in place” to protect the US during the Iraq inquiry, and much more. It’s a lot to sift through, and according to Assange only 200-odd cables out of a staggering 25,000 have been released so far. You can browse the cables by which country you want to hear US diplomacy staff slag off using this handy Guardian guide.

Wank, wank, daft guy, wank

In this then sense WikiLeaks is very much a political project, both with respect to press freedom and independence, and with challenging US power. In an online Q&A session with Guardian readers, it would even seem that Assange is informed by something of an anti-capitalist perspective. In response to a question about press freedom and the west, he answered:

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.”

However it would be misleading – as some have attempted – to try and claim WikiLeaks and Assange to any particular political current or outlook. As Assange told the audience in London earlier this year:

“[…]we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say it’s all bankrupt. And the reason it’s all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt…is because actually we don’t know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions, how they operate in practice… until you know that, how can you possibly make a diagnosis?”

In contrast to this, some on the left have argued that the leaks have told us nothing we didn’t already know. Leaving aside that reports so far have only covered a fraction of the database, this is clearly a bit of an overstatement. As with the Pentagon Papers undermining the US case for war in Vietnam, the leaking of the embassy cables has opened up aspects of US power to a level of scrutiny previously unimagined. While it mostly confirms what many of us already knew about the role of the US empire in world politics, it would be foolish to dismiss such knowledge as of no use, or to pretend that the details don’t matter. While the contents of the cables might not substantially change our understanding of global power relations and US imperialism, they will be a valuable resource for activists, journalists and historians.

Assange and Wikileaks’ lack of ideology beyond a commitment to sharing information and protecting and supporting whistleblowers is appropriate in the project of trying to create a genuinely free news media – even while it might sometimes be counterproductive for those with progressive aims (witness for example the tremendous – and unjustified – ammunition given to climate change-deniers by the release of the University of East Anglia emails last year). In cases like this, those who fund mainstream news outlets have been able to use their money and power to criticise scientific consensus, and nearly trash the reputation of some of the most valuable climate scientists in the world at present.

Tellingly, as the whistleblower’s website hints at what a genuinely free and critical news media might look like and achieve, mainstream press commentary – as well as some mind boggling leftie websites – has echoed the US government and right-wing politicians attacks as irresponsible and dangerous. The weakness of the mainstream media and its subservient relationship to political and economic power is what makes WikiLeaks so vitally important. What the US government and politicians have failed to grasp in focusing so much on Julian Assange is that WikiLeaks can and will continue without him; and if one site is shut down another can appear to take its place.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell our state secrets to Wikileaks

The man who the US government have identified as the source of the leaks, Bradley Manning, is now languishing in solitary confinement in a US army prison in Kuwait, facing 52 years in jail. A huge injustice, THIS is what you call a political arrest. Manning is a young Welsh guy, who joined the US army and found himself putting his intelligence and technological skills and to use working for US intelligence gathering agencies in Iraq. Evidently he realised the extent of the deception, unfairness and murder being committed by the American government, and the ease with which he could access so much secret information. He was already having a shit time in the army, especially badly treated by the repressive Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy which forces LGBT people to live a depressing lie or be kicked out of the army. For an example of how homophobic the rhetoric around this issue can be, check out this lovely piece by the vile Ann Coulter (choice quote: “Let’s check our “Gay Profile at a Glance” and … let’s see … desperate for acceptance … delusions of grandeur … yep, they’re both on the gay subset list!”). It’s a separate discussion, but if readers are interested in the debate around the campaign to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a short while ago there was an open letter sent to vocal campaigner Lady Gaga from a gay Iraqi fan which is worth a read.

Clearly, Manning was fucked off with working for an oppressive murder machine like the American government. A lot of people are, but Manning, it’s alleged, chose to do something about it, and he’ll go down in history for it.

Manning is suspected mainly based on this discussion with a former hacker, who reported him to the authorities. Whistleblowers put themselves at great risk to expose the awful truth about war and corrupt governments. They do an incredibly important job for democracy. All socialists and progressive people should support the growing campaign to defend Bradley Manning. Don’t fall prey to the reactionary idea that Wikileaks are “putting lives at risk” by revealing the truth about the American and other capitalist, imperialist governments. They’re saving lives. There have been 108, 094 documented civilian deaths in Iraq since the war began in 2003, and who knows how many haven’t been counted. Up to 34, 240 documented deaths in Afghanistan. We deserve the truth, and those innocent people deserved to live.

(Co-authored by Neil B)

We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight the Taliban

Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day when we stop for a moment of silence, or watch veterans’ parades, or wear red poppies on our tops “to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts”.

It was originally named the Earl Haig Appeal after the man who caused tens of thousands of needless deaths in World War I. There is nothing to celebrate about the first World War. It was a completely unjustified war for colonies, wealth and markets.

Today, Remembrance Sunday is basically a state-enforced institution, where criticism and dissent of the principle of celebrating this is not on any level tolerated, and this year it has reached fever pitch. Virtually every UK citizen is subjected to a form of hysterical bullying to participate. No one is allowed to be featured on the BBC unless they are wearing a red poppy, all political leaders wear them – even if it deeply offends the people that they are visiting – and children are forced to buy and sell them in schools.

This year, it has arrived in a fanfare of glitz and glamour, with the commercialisation of Poppy Day more noticeable than ever before. The Saturdays opened the ‘celebrations’ in London this year, inexplicably. On The X Factor, that barometer of our society’s values, the judges wore £84.99 diamond encrusted poppies, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘conflict diamonds’. (This is of course unfair, we all know that Cheryl Cole has a deep sympathy and understanding for the sacrifices made at Ypres and the Somme, and is an avid fan of the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). Obviously you’ve got to spend more to remember more.

At the heart of the “celebrations” this year has been the commodification of wholesale slaughter and the monetization of mass murder. The poppy has become a fashion statement, one that’s supposed to display your commitment to Britain, to ‘our heroes’ and to the continued fetishisation of the ‘glory’ of war. Wearing a poppy for many people is genuinely about remembering those who were forcefully drafted against their will into a horrific world war, but you can now buy t-shirts that proclaim ‘I *poppy* our heroes”. In today’s world, the ‘heroes’ fixation is a direct endorsement of the imperialist and unjust wars Britain is still undertaking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earl Haig: how can he be a hero? He doesn't even have any superpowers. Get back to us when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider.

Another reason people buy poppies and the various new related merchandise is because the poppy fund is a charity which provides for veteran soldiers. It’s an indictment of our fucked up priorities that we expend so much energy talking about how much we value the heroism of fighting for Britain in wars, yet it’s left to a charity to provide for those who have survived them. One in eleven prisoners in the UK formerly served in the armed forces. Up to a quarter of homeless people are former servicemen and women. There are countless veterans suffering from mental health issues who aren’t receiving proper support (although at least we no longer execute returned soldiers for suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like we used to). The politicians that brandish their poppies are directly responsible for this – they don’t actually care about veterans – they prefer the idea of veterans to the reality of what life is like for those who have seen the horrors of war. The poppies they wear allow them to justify their inaction. It shouldn’t be left to charity donations to pay to look after veterans.

Here at SSY, we don’t agree with glorifying war and British imperialism. The actions of British troops today in Afghanistan and Iraq are far from heroic. For decades, the memory of the evils of fascism has been used to justify other imperialist conflicts which are in no way comparable, e.g. Kenya (even today, British forces based in Kenya for training continue to rape local women with impunity, which has been going on for three decades; these women are slandered by the British, and rejected by their own communities as well), Malaya, Yemen and Ireland. Remembrance Day, alongside the far more blatant Armed Forces Day, has been hijacked to promote and endorse the militarisation of British life and to encourage young people to sign up, for the “glory” of being remembered as a “hero” after you’ve been blown to bits fighting for the geopolitical and ideological aims of the elite who will never represent you.

We’re not the only ones who don’t appreciate every part of the message of the ideology of Remembrance Day. Legitimate dissent is not tolerated when it comes to Poppy Day – just look at the recent “ban sick bastards” style headlines when the Green Brigade, a left-wing Celtic fan group had a half time banner display in protest at the club’s decision to impose a poppy on the Celtic shirt, going against the wishes of the majority of fans. In Glasgow, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of people who don’t appreciate being forced to participate in a celebration of British troops who caused misery in the north of Ireland for so many years. Like SSY, the Green Brigade has no problem with the individual choice to wear a red poppy, but rather to the bullying nature of the political campaign which expects everyone to wear poppies and to support the cause without reservation.

On a state visit to China last week, David Cameron and pals caused offence by wearing the poppy, without thinking of the fact that in the 19th Century British forces went to war with China to force them to accept imports of our opium (which is of course derived from poppies). This is a clear example of why a little bit more historical memory about the role of British forces and the British Empire in the world is necessary. The peoples who were wronged by Britain haven’t forgotten, even if we have.

This is what our generation does to remember the war dead. Not in our name, we don't want it to happen again

An official alternative to the poppy cult is the White Poppy Campaign, advocated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The idea is to remember the deaths of all who have died in wars, not just soldiers, and to advocate peace, not militarisation. This campaign has not been without controversy. In 1986, Maggie Thatcher (gonny just die already?) expressed her “deep distaste” for the white poppy symbol, and their spread in Canada has proved contentious to the point of being banned from being sold at markets and has drawn public criticism from the Royal Canadian Legion. You’re unlikely to see a white poppy on tv, where red poppies are ubiquitous throughout November.

The above views might seem controversial to some, but this year, veterans (and even the Queen’s composer) have spoken out against the use of the red poppy as a “political tool”. Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin rightly stated that

“Calling our soldiers heroes is an attempt to stifle criticism of the wars we are fighting in.

It leads us to that most subtle piece of propaganda: You might not support the war but you must support our heroes, ergo you support the war.”

Remembrance Day should be about honouring those who died needlessly in needless wars. The best way to honour the dead, and the point of remembering, is to ensure it never happens again. Anti-militarism and dissent against war is the way to honour those people, not diamond encrusted poppies, military parades and the stifling of dissent. As a youth organisation, we are proud of our record of opposing military recruitment and the lies spread to young working class folk to persuade them to become cannon fodder for the imperialist war machine that is the British Army.

Last word goes to the late Harry Patch, the last surviving person to have served in World War I

“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88VPZ74zk6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uP5TkQfu5A

Check out the short film above, by Mexico based filmaker and activist Greg Berger, aka Gringoyo, who’s been travelling around Latin America for over 10 years making insightful and funny films about the exploitation of the continent by capitalism and US imperial interests. He’s now asking viewers to contribute directly, so he can make 100% viewer funded films challenging the lies of the corporate media.

As the film explains, in 2006 Mexican President Felipe Calderon decided that, faced with massive power of the drugs cartels who control the flows of cocaine and other drugs into the US, he would use the military to take them down. The reason they are so powerful is that keeping drugs illegal in Mexico and the US means that those who traffick them stand to make immense profits from a completely unregulated market. They can then use this vast wealth to corrupt police forces, politicians and anyone that threatens their ongoing bonanza. Recently in Ciudad Juarez, the local paper appealed to drug lords as the “de facto rulers of the city” to explain what they should and should not published, after several of their journalists were murdered. Drug cartels love prohibition.

But Calderon’s solution wasn’t to start thinking about a rational, sane drugs policy, which recognises that humans have always

Felipe Calderon and Obama: united in wanting maximum profits for US arms manufacturers

and will always take drugs, and that this should be something that is legally regulated instead of left in the hands of gangsters. Oh no, he had a much better idea: send in the army, and go to war with cartels that are so heavily armed that fighting them amounts to a civil war. Since then, violence has spread throughout the country to many previously peaceful regions, and by the government’s own estiamtes 28,000 people have been killed, many of them after being horrifically tortured.

Last week US secretary of state made clear the position of the Obama administration on the whole mess, when she called for an equivalent of Plan Colombia for Mexico. In 1999, faced with a CIA assessment that the left wing FARC rebels were capable of taking power within 5 years, the US decided to pour money into the Colombian armed forces, making it the second biggest recipient of US military aid after Israel. The results were predictable, with intensified conflict and many more civilian deaths. But I suppose pouring petrol on the fire makes sense when you’re selling the petrol: US arms manufactures are growing fat on the profits of drug wars in Colombia and Mexico.

Sensationalist media coverage has helped bolster support for these policies in the US. To be fair, a lot of the cartels sound like they have been made up by the guy that wrote The Expendables on crack. For example, there’s La Familia, the Christian fundamentalist methamphetamine manufacturers, who in June ambushed a federal police convoy in Mexico killing 12. Their leader, Nazario Moreno — aka El Mas Loco, or The Craziest One — has written his own bible, and holds prayer meetings before going out on attacks. Their also funding political candidates to try and take over the government of their home state of Michoacan.

As you can see, Los Zetas are not short of guns

Then there’s the real action movie characters, Los Zetas. They started out as a an elite Mexican military special forces unit, trained by the School of the Americas and Israeli commandos. But then they realised there was more money to be made running the drugs trade than fighting it, defected and set themselves up as a well armed, highly trained paramilitary drugs cartel.

Hearing about some of the grisly antics of these mad bastards, you’re mind maybe does jump to the solutions you’ve been trained to think of by the entertainment industry – crush them with loads of guns. But what the story of Los Zetas shows is that will never work. There is literally no level of government that can’t be corrupted by the huge profits resulting from an unregulated drug market. And those same huge profits mean that no matter how much money the Mexican and US governments spend on fighting them, they’ll always be able to employ, train and equip soldiers.

Ironically, when Clinton advocated Plan Colombia for Mexico, it was in response to a question asking about what the US government was going to do about “the flow of drugs coming north and guns going south” (cartels arm themselves mainly in the US due to its insanely lax gun laws). It’s time countries like the US and UK woke up and realised that our prohibitionist policies don’t only cause huge harm to communities here: they also fuel brutal wars in countries like Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan, and the only people happy about it are drug lords and western arms manufacturers.

Bonus: The single best news source on the Latin American drug wars is Narco News. Check it out all the time!

Liar: Bassett pretending he looks ill

Why is the Lockerbie bomber still alive? This week Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into why someone (or indeed everyone) isn’t dead yet announced plans to send a team of yankee investigators to Scotland.   This we can understand as it clear that protocol has been breached on this matter.  When someone in Scotland commits a crime like say theft or in the case of the accused, Bertybasset al-Megrahi being spotted buying a jumper (or another one the same colour) which was found on a plane, they are tried by a group of vote hungry senators in the run up to mid-term elections.  The only hope of clemency for those found guilty comes in the form of a Christmas pardon from our Lord and Saviour, Obama H. Christ.

Kenny McAskill chose to bypass the time honoured tradition of doing exactly what America wanted and instead exercised a strange form of indigenous justice.  Under this crazed system us savage Scots occasionally demonstrate that we have different values to those who seek to destroy us…or America…or is that the same thing?

Anyways understandably pissed off Menendez is sending a crack team to Scotland to investigate what’s wrong with this crazy country and what we can learn from our American brethren.  SSY meets the men who hope to save us.

Leading the group will be Frank “Freaky Sheik” McDeak (Dem.) Frank will investigate the disgraceful link between oil and political power in Scotland.  “This all came as a shock for me, I had to cut short my Saudi holiday…I was watching 50 virgins spray oil out their whatnots while I threw dollars at them…and now I hear these Scotch have been cutting deals in exchange for oil…America would never cut deals with those who tried to blow us up in exchange for oil and money.  The Sheik just wouldn’t have it.”

Perry: If you can't hang 'em - Shoot 'em!

Controversial Texas Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) is to investigate the woefully inhumane Scottish Justice system.  “Sure I’ve killed a few people….well a few hundred…and I’ve fired all those in the justice system who questioned my decision to execute a man who according to all my closest advisors and scientists was asleep at the time he is supposed to have murdered his kids…but these Scotch!  I tell you…letting someone go who allegedly bought a jumper, a strand of which was allegedly found on a plane that Iran Libya blew up…monsters I say…the lotta them!”

The final senator will be Hawky Pearson (Rep) well known international peace activist.  He is concerned by what he sees as a continuation of a trend.  “We should have seen the warning signs in Darien.  For centuries Scots have been dragging their junior partners in the US around on a series of imperial adventures.  They dragged us into their conflict with Libya then just like we sent our young men to die for Scottish oil companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I say no more American blood should be spilled for Scottish interests!”

We also understand that the Senators are to be accompanied by other progressive Americans concerned that Scotland is slipping into an authoritarian nightmare.

Pat “McGroin” Robertson, gay rights activist, is looking into allegations that crazy, Christian homophobes are funded the very same SNP government who freed the terrorist plotter.  “We believe some rightwing bus bandit may have influenced the Scottish regime with his insane ranting about the gays.  I’ve never been to Scotland but as I’ve always said there are definitely lots of homos there.  We can’t allow these people to influence the government.”

SSY preparing for the American Heroes

The group will be rounded off by asylum campaigner and renowned anti-racist Pat Buchanan.  He is expected to directly challenge the racism of the Scottish regime by visiting the controversial “Border Wall” constructed all the way along the border to prevent the flow of poor southerners crossing the border to Scotland to access free personal care for the elderly and lower tuition fees.  “I intend to deliver a message to the racists in Scotland.  I will invoke the spirit of Reagan and say ‘Mr Hadrien!  Tear down this wall!’”

In the US Mr al-Megrahi, convicted on, quite literally, a shred of evidence would have been taken out and shot thus saving the need for all these pesky investigations and all this pish chat about “the truth”  “justice” and “closure.” The SSY is ecstatic that these Americans want to visit our depraved nation and show us the light.

We shall greet them on the tarmac waving our Saltires and asking…Why isn’t Scotland more like America?