Turkey's Snub & The Decline of Israel

Israeli blunder: Turkish ship Mavi Marmara as it's being attacked by Israeli
commandos during attempt by flotilla to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip.

It was just over 20 years ago that I first became politically active around the first war against Iraq by Bush Sr. It was all so new and I felt like my eyes were being opened to history and politics in so many profound ways that I have many indelible memories from this time. One of them is just how outside of the mainstream it was to criticize Israel. Of course, even by then, Israel had suffered some blows to its previously unassailable - and self-promoted - image as the plucky little democracy, the only one amongst a sea of Arab dictatorships. The war against Lebanon with its attendant brutalities, particularly the massacre at the Sabra & Shatila refugee camp by Israeli allied Christian fascists against unarmed Palestinians as Israeli troops watched on, had given the world a hint at just how brutal a regime it was. But it was still the case that even wearing a "Free Palestine" pin - as I did - was controversial. I remember being in the men's room on campus and was cornered by a Zionist who demanded to know why I wanted to drive the Jews into the sea. Later that year the York Arab Student's Federation attempted to hold a day in celebration of Palestine liberation and it almost led to a riot as Zionists showed up with massive Israeli flags that they used to try and prevent students from seeing the pro-Palestinian displays.

Those days are gone and Israel has only itself to thank for its growing isolation and the increase in awareness of Israel's viciousness. The 2006 war in Lebanon - and their effective defeat. The war against a semi-starved Gaza population in 2008. The refusal to stop the illegal settlements or end the blockade of the Gaza Strip has undermined Israel's attempts to portray itself as a bastion of moderation in a sea of extremism. None of that would have been possible, of course, without the struggles of Palestinians themselves, who have refused to lie down and die or vacate their ancestral lands no matter the punishment and humiliations meted out by Israel. And the international allies of the Palestinians have admirably carried the struggle abroad, in particular building and promoting the cause of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] against Israel. At first BDS seemed like a hopeless cause - and I admit to having been skeptical about its potential, perhaps because of my memories of toilet harassments from university. But bit by bit the idea of BDS has taken hold as has the label of Apartheid, taken from the racist system of segregation maintained formerly in South Africa.

That isn't to say that Israel doesn't still have its supporters - particularly at the level of the US government. Israel is a key strategic partner and facilitator for American imperialism in the Middle East. It isn't for nothing that the US gives the largest share of its "foreign aid" budget to Israel, along with special access and deals on the most high tech military equipment. Israel is America's watchdog in the Middle East. But even in the face of bellicose pro-Israel propaganda and intimidation of pro-Palestinian activists, the arguments have gained ground to the point that Israel's supporters are increasingly forced to fight a rearguard action. It has become less about trying to prove that the Palestinians aren't terrorists by genetic or cultural disposition, as it once was, and more about proving that Israel is, in fact, a form of Apartheid regime. Witness the battle in Toronto about the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the Pride Parade. Of course this campaign against Pride by Mammoliti, Ford and every other bigot on council was as much about attacking gay & lesbian rights as Palestine. But they tried - and failed - to target it on the basis of the Israeli Apartheid label, giving the argument publicity. The city's discrimination officer found that labeling a country as racist was not discriminatory towards an ethnic group.

In the Middle East itself, the solidarity campaigns to bring aid to the Gaza Strip - in part as a means to expose the brutality and illegality of the blockade have also helped to isolate Israel. Last year's flotilla to Gaza, which was attacked in international waters by Israel commandos who shot first and asked questions later, has turned out to have been a significant breaking point in terms of its isolation. The international optics of Israel killing nine unarmed human rights activists was bad enough but their repeated refusals to apologize to Turkey for killing Turkish citizens has become a foreign policy disaster.

This has only added to the ideological crisis that was created by the vicious and hypocritical invasion of Gaza at the end of 2008. At the time I suggested that this war was a symbol of Israel's weakness, not its strength, particularly after the defeat in Lebanon in 2006. Israel was spoiling for a fight to prove that it could still be the neighbourhood bully - by picking on the weakest kid on the block. But the effect - aside from failing to destroy Hamas - was only to make it harder for regional allies like Egypt and Turkey to justify their continued ties when the whole world turned away from Israel in disgust. And, I argued in January 2009, this war's brutal and vicious character could lead to some major knock on effects throughout the region.

But even in the unlikely event that Israel is able to achieve a "total victory" there is still the growing danger that the Arab anger this present brutality has unleashed will destroy the American empire's already shaky hegemony in the Middle East...
If these regimes begin to collapse - and Egypt's is the one to watch - it will signal the collapse of four decades of work to create a compliant network of pro-American regimes, with Egypt as the jewel in the crown. America's rulers, already frustrated with Israel's failure in Lebanon to weaken Iran, may begin to raise graver doubts about the utility of Israel's Iron Wall strategy.

As it happens, Egypt's dictatorship did fall in rapid succession after revolution in Tunisia, leading to a season of upheaval throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Libya, while a mixed result because of the involvement of western imperialism, marks the fall of another dictator, which could inspire the movement in Syria. Upheaval seems to be returning to Bahrain after the Saudi monarchy tried to help the Bahraini monarchy crush the revolution. All of this upheaval, combined with the rapid economic growth of Turkey alongside a process of reform that has weakened the power of the Turkish military, has elevated that country's role in the Middle East. The immensely popular, moderate Islamism of the Justice & Development Party led by Tayyip Erdogan has sought increasingly to assert its own interests and authority as a leading Muslim power of significance.

Israel's political leadership is now paying the price for the inability of Israeli political institutions and political thinking to switch gears. With growing international isolation - and economic unrest at home - the Israeli leadership is a one note song: repress, expand the settlements, refuse responsibility, refuse negotiations, repress. It's clear that this strategy has reached the limits of its effectiveness. It was one thing for groups of activists to challenge Israel's policies but now a major regional power - Turkey - has all but broken diplomatic ties with Israel and has announced that it is taking Israel to the International Court of Justice to challenge the Gaza blockade. Besides being a major own goal for Israel, it marks a new stage in its decline.

Turkey no longer needs Israel as it once did and feels confident enough to suspend its military ties with the country. Erdogan will travel to Egypt later this month and, perhaps, even visit the Gaza Strip in a further slap in the face to Israel. Just as America and NATO have attempted to insert themselves into the Arab revolutionary process, in order to direct it towards neo-liberalism and western strategic advantage, primarily against China and Russia, so Turkey is also inserting itself into the process. But Turkey, as a Muslim democracy in the Middle East, has far more credibility amongst the regional population. After all, they weren't spending billions to prop up the recently overthrown dictators, unlike the NATO powers. This move by Turkey is a brilliant tactical move to raise its prestige yet further as a regional leader. One only wonders if Turkey will sideline Israel in importance for any empire that wants to have sway in the Middle East. If it does, if Israel's importance as a bagman for western imperialism becomes redundant, its decline will be accelerated. The voices in American ruling class circles who already have been raising doubts about the usefulness of Israel - like Walt & Mearsheimer - will become louder and more confident. Israel may soon discover that it is, in fact, the tail and not the dog, and a very expensive tail indeed.

Turkey to take Israel to ICJ - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Remember When The CAW Was A Militant Union?

Ah, it's nice to reminisce about the good old days sometimes, isn't it? Since we're on the verge of Labour Day Weekend, let's hop into the Way Back Machine for a few, shall we, and review some find old chestnuts from when the Canadian Auto Workers used to fight for workers with the kind of teeth-gritting fierceness that we associate with winning gains and stopping concessions.

Of course, we could go back to 1945 when a militant strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW), forged in the militant sit-down strikes of the 1930s, won recognition at Ford in Oshawa and helped lay the foundation of the modern Canadian industrial union movement by winning automatic dues deductions and the closed shop in what has become known as The Rand Formula, after the mediating judge, Justice Ivan Rand. It also won medical benefits for the Ford workers.

Fast forward to 1984 and the negotiations between GM and the United Auto Workers. From the point of view of Bob White, president of the Canadian region of the UAW, along with his assistance Buzz Hargrove and Bob Nickerson, the parent UAW was giving away the farm in concessions. As well, the UAW, under the leadership of Owen Bieber, were lobbying the US Congress to bring auto production back to the USA from Canada. This was the tail end of the Reagan Recession of the early 80s. Chrysler was about to go belly up ("the more things change, the more they stay the same...") and Canadian auto production - guaranteed under the terms of the Auto Pact - was able to undercut American production because of the low value of the US dollar and the fact that Canada has socialized medicine. The lower cost of production and Canadian workers also meant that there was less pressure on GM and the other Big Three to squeeze concessions out of Canadian workers. With Bieber refusing to take the differential situation in Canada seriously - and putting Canadian members' jobs at risk by campaigning against them - Bob White led the Canadian region out of the UAW. The CAW was born. And while the logic of the split was never as much about militancy as the CAW hagiographies would have it, it did lead to a popular slogan "no concessions" to define how the CAW was supposedly different than the UAW.

Buzz Hargrove took over from Bob White in 1992 and was president of the CAW until 2008. During the 1990s the CAW continued it's "no concessions" stand at a time when many other unions were facing rollbacks, particularly in the public sector. Perhaps it was this apparent militancy that made the CAW a natural ally of those public sector unions who felt betrayed by the Ontario NDP government of Bob Rae and, then, with the election of Mike Harris' Tories, spearheaded the Days of Action movement. Though, when push came to shove, the CAW and the public sector unions didn't break with the conservative Pink Paper unions to call a province-wide general strike. They allowed the right wing leadership to veto the movement and were thereby complicit in the defeat.

If anything this defeat strengthened the impression of the CAW as a militant union, along with Hargrove's tough talk and self-identification as a socialist. The existence of the CAW flying squads - groups of activists that would show up to support the picket lines of other unions or to anti-poverty struggles added to this perception - as did the CAW's support for extra-parliamentary activist groups like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. Even the CAW's support for raids on other unions in the private sector, notably the SEIU (a Pink Paper union), was justified by the CAW's supposedly greater militancy, expansive democracy and no concessions strategy. However, ultimately, the flying squads were wound up and the CAW's expulsion from the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress (which groups all the unions at the provincial and federal level) didn't lead to the foundation of a new, "radical" labour central as they predicted. And after a semi-riot at an OCAP rally at Queens Park, the CAW pulled funding from OCAP. Finally, the CAW under Hargrove used their left wing rhetoric to justify a right wing move - endorsing Liberal candidates in the Ontario provincial election. This led to their expulsion from the NDP. Of course, ultimately, this gallop rightwards under the influence of a set of politics that sees no real role for the rank and file, only the brilliance of great leaders, led to the CAW accepting concessions contracts in negotiations with the Big Three during the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed it. The differential advantage of a cheap dollar was now over and the Auto Pact was gone. The only way to defend past gains or win news ones is to fight and, "no concessions" rhetoric aside, the CAW hasn't actually done much fighting in recent years.

All of this brings us back to the present day and CAW president Ken Lewenza's call for a Liberal/NDP merger. They are now attempting to validate their move to the right by bringing along the entire labour movement into an unholy alliance with the other party of big business, the Liberals. It is like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And it is utterly stupid, tactically speaking, for the NDP to seek to dissolve itself just at the moment when it is on the rise and has the potential to eclipse the Liberals on the basis of winning their supporters to an open party of the Labour movement. And it would be an absolute disaster to surrender the hard fought existence of an independent party of the labour movement - for all its warts and weaknesses. One look at the state of working class politics in the United States should make that obvious enough. One of the few countries in the developed world that doesn't have a labour party, the United States also has seen the biggest retreats in workers' rights and levels of unionization in the developed world. The United States has the biggest economy on the planet and has the largest gap between the richest and the poorest on the planet - a gap that has grown exponentially since the 1970s. Even under the supposedly "union friendly" Democrats, workers' rights have not advanced, handouts have gone to the banks that caused the crisis and tax breaks for the rich have been continued. Do we really want to replicate that model? Do we really want another party like the Democrats in which the labour movement is the junior partner whose fundamental role is to get out the vote for representatives of the wealthy and then to shut up while the people they got elected screw them over?

It is indeed a sad and sorry day to see the depths to which the once mighty Auto Workers have fallen. It speaks to the desperate need to renew the House of Labour.

CAW chief Lewenza urges NDP to consider merger with Liberals - The Globe and Mail

Libya: France Gets Oil Contracts, Arab Dictatorships Get To Back Slap

Yesterday saw the "Friends of Libya" carve-up conference in Paris where everyone sought to get in on the reconstruction and oil contract action. Besides the announcement that $15 billion in frozen Gaddafi funds would be released to the National Transition Council, there was also the spectacle of speeches by all and sundry congratulating themselves on a job well done. This sort of grandstanding is, of course, de rigeur, at such international conferences but it takes on a particular irony here. For instance, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, that is, a member of the al-Sabah family monarchy that rules Kuwait with an iron fist, announced without a hint of irony:

"Libya will see a new era featuring security, stability, and respect for rights, freedoms and equality," the Kuwaiti official told participants at the meeting. "I would like to seize this opportunity to pay tribute to the sons of Libya who sacrificed themselves in defense of the liberty and dignity of their homeland," he added.

No doubt Kuwait will now introduce democracy, equality for women and the large immigrant workforce that have no civil rights. And since world leaders had shown up to pile the lies on the conference floor like horseshit outside a barn, French President Nikolas Sarkozy couldn't bear to miss the opportunity to throw his own excrement on the heap:

"We have aligned with the Arab people in their aspiration for freedom."

Aligned with the Arab people? Really? Sarkozy and the French government were loyal to the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali right up until the end. And, like the Americans, they denied that the Egyptians wanted to overthrow their own dictator - or, in the case of the US vice president, denied that Mubarak was even a dictator.

Then there is the great Arabian memory hole known as Bahrain and Yemen. It is as though the democracy movements in those countries don't exist - even as the Bahraini monarchy continues persecuting the Shia majority, arresting activists, and  killing children. In fact, there were major demonstrations and street battles with the Bahrain police force going on at the same time as the conference, which was attended by representatives of the Bahraini monarchy. The king even paid tribute "to the Libyan people":

"Our stance stems from Bahrain's commitment to Libya's independence, territorial integrity, regional security in addition to ensuring the security of its people so that it could assume its role as an active member of the international community and its Arab and regional environment," he said.

At least he didn't have the audacity to use words like freedom and liberty, unlike the Kuwaiti foreign minister. However, not a single world leader, including the leaders of the Libyan provisional government, the NTC, drew a connection between Libya and Bahrain. Perhaps that has something to do with the agreements and meetings that have already taken place between the NTC and the Gulf monarchies.

And Yemen only makes it on the radar of the US media these days when the US military celebrates another unmanned drone attack on "al Qaeda" rebels in the desert. In case you had any doubts about the reason for this blood-soaked hypocrisy, you just have to follow the money.

Hours before the Paris bash, French daily Liberation published on its website a letter written only 17 days after UN Resolution 1973. In the letter, the TNC ratifies an agreement ceding no less than 35% of Libya's total crude oil production to France in exchange of Sarko's "humanitarian" support.
The letter is addressed to the office of the emir of Qatar (the go-between for the TNC and France from the beginning) - with a copy to then-Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa. The letterhead is supplied by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.

On one level this isn't too surprising. The NTC has used bribery pretty much from the start to win military backing for the rebellion, stating that countries which supported them would win contracts. Those that didn't - not so much. Sorry, China, Russia and Africa.

Of course one hopes that the true aspirations of the Libyan people to overthrow an extremely repressive dictator are realized. But there is a difference between hope and delusion and attempts to paint political differences between the NTC and, for instance, the rebel commanders in Tripoli have proven to be empty. Evidence for this couldn't be clearer from the fluff piece in today's New York Times about the military commander of Tripoli, Abdulhekim Belhaj. Belhaj is a longstanding Islamist who led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and spent time in Gaddafi's jail - after being sent back to Libya under the USA's extraordinary rendition program. Here he suffered torture for years before finally signing a recantation. Belhaj is quoted as claiming that he never had any association with al Qaeda.

“We focused on Libya and Libya only,” he said. “Our goal was to help our people. We didn’t participate in or support any action outside of Libya. We never had any link with Al Qaeda, and that could never be. We had a different agenda; global fighting was not our goal.”

Except that his statements don't appear to square with the history of LIFG and his own role within it:

After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis. After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ...
Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels".

What's interesting about this isn't so much that Belhaj was an Islamist - a lot of government opponents in the Middle East and North Africa, fighting against secular nationalist regimes, were Islamist guerillas. What is interesting is the attempt to cover up his history, assert his fidelity to western-approved goals - "Now this man... is a grateful ally of the United States and NATO." - and to downplay his importance in the storming of Tripoli - "“He was nothing, nothing. He arrived at the last moment..." - even though he was elected by the rebel fighters themselves as the commander of Tripoli. Not likely if he just wandered into town the day before last.

Besides demonstrating the levels of dishonesty in the NTC, in the service of the propaganda needs of their NATO backers, it also suggests that even rank and file leaders like Belhaj accept the general program of the NTC. That doesn't necessarily mean there won't be resistance to the neo-liberal program of the NTC that is emerging - or to the fact that no elections for the presidency are planned for 20 months, with elections to a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution in eight months. But when pre-eminent rebel leaders like Belhaj are saying that their intention is to dissolve their rebel militas as soon as possible and submit to the command of the NTC, this begs the question of what mechanisms will exist to organize and mobilize any opposition.

Capitalism Is Killing The Advance Of Healthcare

The scientific advances of the last century - and even of that last ten years - have been dizzying. The ability to turn ordinary skin cells into stem cells that can become any type of cell in the body; organ, limb and face transplants; gene therapy - all these things have pushed us to a place that our great grandparents couldn't have dreamed possible. It has been this sense of accelerating change that has generated the enthusiasm amongst futurists like Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near for the idea that we will soon cure aging. And yet, while there are advances, there are also terrific obstacles that come from a healthcare system based upon profit. In the last blog post on cancer I discussed a treatment option - adoptive cell transfer - that is being ignored because it lacks a clear path to profitability for pharmaceutical companies. But the distortions that arise from a for-profit model of research in healthcare go deeper than simple neglect.

We have been led to believe that research is objective, driven by the "scientific method", which inherently resists bias and distortion. Most of us know or suspect that this isn't the case, at least not always, where research is carried out by private companies that have an interest in a certain outcome. But  the truth is more sinister than even that. Even where the research takes place in the public sector using public money, the drug must be submitted by a drug manufacturer to the regulatory bodies - FDA, Health Canada, etc.

Since all pharmaceutical manufacture takes place in the private sector, the only sponsorship for new treatments is going to come from the private, for-profit sector and they won't sponsor anything that doesn't have a clear path to profitability. This distortion of true research and development is exacerbated by the dynamic of neo-liberal ideology and cutbacks, which has seen more and more public sector research come to depend upon private-public partnerships; basically, money from pharmaceutical corporations. And this leads not only to distortions in the priorities of research, it often leads to outright corruption as researchers who release papers supporting this or that drug are also on the payroll as consultants and speakers for the pharmaceutical company that makes the drug. And researchers who dare to challenge the positive findings that big pharma expects of their sponsored studies are in for a rough ride. In the late 1990s Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a researcher at Sick Kids Hospital and a University of Toronto professor, dared to reveal potential side-effects from an experimental heart drug. She was fired, defamed and then sued by drug manufacturer Apotex. While she later won a lawsuit, the company reneged and refused to pay the settlement even after she won a second suit in 2008. However, Olivieri's courage and principle is all too rare, as the above linked article notes:

No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.

It is at our own peril if we forget that big pharma isn't in the business of saving lives or innovating healthcare - it's in the business of making profits. Yet, this dynamic never appears in the writings of tech boosters and singularitarians like Ray Kurzweil who are enamored of the power of the market to deliver the best tech at the quickest pace. One often reads complaints, for instance, that the FDA doesn't recognize aging as a disease and, therefore, there is no incentive for pharmaceutical corporations to put money into researching a cure. But this misses two key points. First off, the refusal to designate aging as a disease is actually meant to protect people from snake oil salesmen who would promise drugs that cure aging and which do nothing. There are, after all, already over the counter nutraceuticals, supplements and other expensive "treatments" that promise to stop aging - and which do nothing.  Secondly, this prohibition on aging cures doesn't prevent the development of treatments for the diseases of aging - arteriosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc.

And, finally and perhaps most importantly, where big pharma wants a disease designation it has the money and connections to effectively lobby for it. Obesity is an excellent example of exactly this dynamic. The rise in obesity from the mid-1970s or so until today is clearly a social phenomenon, rather than a "biological" or "medical" one. Changes in the North American diet, the end of post-war affluence and the slow decline in living standards, have all contributed to this. The rise in diabetes is a related phenomenon, resulting from a high carb, low nutrient diet - basically the rise in importance of cheap, processed foods in the North American diet. These health problems are not diseases, by and large, but the symptoms of broader social and economic changes, which require a social and economic, and not a medical, response; things like higher incomes and better services to reduce the financial burden on families as well as reduced working hours and access to quality childcare to free up more time. Even better urban planning to make walking and cycling viable forms of commuting would help. Yet suburbs continue to be built (and, these days, go bankrupt) and wages and public spending continue to decline as research into anti-obesity drugs and new medical treatments for diabetes, as well as various types of implantable medical devices & surgical interventions - insulin pumps, bariatric surgery, in vivo fat melting machines - is a massive industry.

According to research and markets, the global anti-obesity market was valued at $1.1 billion in 2009. It is forecast to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of seven percent for the next seven years to reach $2 billion by 2017.

The result is that the medical and pharmaceutical industry is chasing dollars to fix problems that are social, not medical. Meanwhile, the money spent on anti-obesity drugs, statins for cholesterol, drugs for the treatment of diabetes, could be used more effectively elsewhere. The sad truth is that the American government alone spends around a trillion dollars on the military - money that could be spent on providing quality, high nutrition meals to the American population and still have money left over to feed the rest of the world. It is a cascade effect of distorted priorities that lead to further distortions down the line. We keep attempting to treat the symptom when the cure is right in front of us. In the meantime, those conditions that truly are medical and truly can only be treated with various forms of medical intervention face neglect.

NEXT: Aging is a Social Disease

Did NATO Kill The Libyan Revolution?

What do you say when a dictator is overthrown and the news shows pictures of people celebrating? That's easy, right? You feel good that the world is a slightly better place. But, then, what do you say if the dictator wasn't fundamentally defeated by those people - at least not alone - for all of their courage they needed the help of outsiders? You'd still probably feel like the defeat of a dictator was a good thing. However, what if those outsiders had a long and odious history of propping up dictators, invading countries and setting up repressive regimes, exploiting weaker nations and even crushing calls for democracy in their own backyard? You'd probably start to raise questions about why such people would help the struggle for democracy since they haven't demonstrated much interest in it themselves. It might lead you to ask what their real intentions were. If you thought about it a little more, it might also lead you to ask the question of who asked such dubious characters to enter the fray in the first place. These would all be legitimate questions and the answers wouldn't always be easy or uncomplicated but they have to be asked.

 All of which brings us back to Libya. There is a wide array of opinions that exists on the left - from the NDP, which supported the NATO intervention to those, like the Centre for Research on Globalization, which view Gaddafi in a positive light, as a liberator and the insurgency as a NATO plot top to bottom. Then there are those who acknowledge that having NATO involved is not ideal but argue that the overthrow of Gaddafi still constitutes a progressive revolution and contend that the role of NATO was not as important as some would suggest. Lastly, there are those, like myself, who argue that indeed the insurgency that shook Libya beginning February 17 was a very real, very grassroots revolt against a dictatorship; that it was part of the broader Arab Spring, which had seen dictators fall on Libya's eastern and western borders, Egypt and Tunisia, respectively. That uprising spread rapidly:

This was a mass popular uprising involving millions of people. Areas liberated from the regime put under popular control all the functions of the state, including prisons, the police and courts. Councils organised the distribution of food according to need, opened TV and radio stations, and issued revolutionary newspapers. Popular committees took over key installations such as electricity stations, the ports and other utilities. All the major liberated cities and towns are run by these revolutionary councils

However, Gaddafi's regime was able to move quickly to push back against the revolt, purging dissident elements from the army and the state with brutal swiftness. What's more, the sheer brutality of the Gaddafi regime in suppressing dissent and preventing the formation of any independent civil society, unions, etc. meant that there were no pre-existing networks of resistance that existed. Everything had to be made up from scratch. Except those networks of former regime officials who had come over to the revolution along with some military commander with their troops.

In the face of the forward rush of the revolution, the grassroots revolutionaries could have the upper hand in energy and sheer numbers. But when the dash westwards by Benghazi's young and disorganized revolutionaries was halted and then pushed back, it was the organization of former regime officials and military officers who had the experience to hold things together. They gained the upper hand in the National Transitional Council (NTC), which brought together representatives from across the country. And while the initial political inclinations of the revolution were decidedly anti-imperialist - with a giant banner in liberated Benghazi demanding no foreign intervention - when the revolution was put on the back foot, the former regime officials, people like Mahmoud Jibril and Mustafa Jalil, looked not to spreading and deepening the revolution to accelerate the continuing disintegration of the Libyan state but to a no-fly zone and air strikes as well as international recognition. In one sense, one can hardly blame them, the revolution was truly under siege but calling in NATO and the Gulf monarchies would have it's own price, which became clear right away.

On March 10 France recognized the NTC. On the same day, the NTC announced that it would respect all of the oil contracts. The next day Cameron & Sarkozy released a joint statement calling for a no-fly zone. The day after that the Arab League - under pressure from Saudi Arabia, which had reached a deal with the US to back a no-fly zone in Libya in return for the US turning a blind eye to its counter-revolutionary invasion of Bahrain - made the same call. On March 17 a UN resolution passed, paving the way for intervention.  It's also worth noting that the Qatari monarchy - which bans political parties, unions, etc - recognized the NTC on March 27, the day after the NTC signed an oil contract with them.

Qatar's recognition of the rebel council comes just a day after a senior rebel official said that Qatar Petroleum had agreed to market crude oil produced from east Libyan oil fields no longer under the control of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader... Manouchehr Takin, from the Centre of Global Energy Studies, told Al Jazeera that the deal, if confirmed, would be "a landmine, legally speaking". "Is this council representing the Libyan people? Only two countries have accepted that. Whether we like it or not, the Tripoli government, by the United Nations, is [still] the legitimate and sovereign government," he said.

There was also infighting going on within NATO as countries fought over the potentially significant spoils of Libya's oil fields. Italy in particular was outraged when France tried to circumvent NATO entirely and itself lead the air war against Gaddafi. The reason was clear enough - ENI is a major Italian company and is the largest foreign presence in the Libyan oil fields. Italy thus accused France of wanting to get in on the action:

Meanwhile the head of the Italian Senate's defence affairs committee, Gianpiero Cantoni, said the original French anti-NATO stance was motivated by a desire to secure oil contracts with a future Libyan government.

Eventually, by mid-April NATO seemed to have gotten its act together and was stepping up air attacks, in particular around Misurata to break Gaddafi's siege and then to provide air support for the rebel advance out of the city. Meanwhile, in the Nafusa mountains, the French were air dropping weapons and the rebels were receiving intensive training.

The Tripoli Brigade, as they called themselves, had trained for four months in Libya’s western mountains with French, American and Qatari special forces for this moment.

The article continues with a detailed description of events leading up to Operation Mermaid Dawn, NATO's name for the assault on Tripoli.

With Nato drones overhead, beaming real-time images of the ground in front of them, rebels advanced in the wake of more bombing raids. Jets were called in by special forces, acting as forward air controllers, to attack Gadaffi’s tanks and command centres. Rebels fed back information using satellite phones supplied by Britain and France, bringing more bombs down on ammunition stores and communications facilities.
Members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, experts in covert intelligence gathering, were part of the 30-strong British special forces team. They linked with their French counterparts at Zuwaytinah, the command headquarters for the eastern front, 90 miles southwest of Benghazi.
The French troops are believed to be members of the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales (COS), which draws from the elite parachute regiments of the French army.
In the air Nato sharpened its information gathering by deploying RAF Sentinel aircraft which can use radar imagery to track the smallest vehicle from 100 miles away. They overflew the battle zones, mapping the positions of Gadaffi forces.

The article goes on to describe how rebels inside of Tripoli aided the assault by studiously targeting snipers on the tops of buildings and, on the day of the assault, sneaking up on them with butcher knives and meat cleavers. The overall picture that emerges is not one that fits neatly into a narrative that paints the rebels as NATO pawns - as those who support Gaddafi have suggested. But it is also clear that it was NATO that was setting the terms of the progress of the war and of the final assault on Tripoli. This hierarchy continues in the soon to be launched assault on Sirte - NATO planes are bombing Gaddafi installations, tanks and artillery pieces to "soften up" the enemy while rebel troops assemble ready to attack when the enemy is too weak to resist much. But NATO and the rebels are fighting for different things.

One of the interesting things about the rebel fighters on the ground and the NTC is the role of Islamists in the fighting forces. At present the military commander of Tripoli is a long standing jihadi named Abdelhakim Belhaj who was a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and who fought against the Soviets as a mujahideen in the 1980s. He was associated with al Qaeda though eventually broke with them. He was arrested by the Americans at one point and sent back to Libya under the extraordinary rendition program, jailed and tortured - reportedly under the supervision of the CIA. In 2010 Belhaj and his comrades signed a book length recantation of their beliefs in order to be released from prison by Saif al-Islam in a public relations exercise to demonstrate Libya's ability to rehabilitate Islamist terrorists. It is men like Belhaj with extensive experience and training in guerilla warfare who are now leading rebel fighters.

However, the dominant forces inside the rebel political leadership are the former regime elements. The president and prime minister of the provisional government are formerly high-ranking officials in the Gaddafi regime. Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister, was responsible for privatizing Libyan state assets as the head of the National Economic Development Board. Mustafa Jalil was the Minister of Justice.

Some of those who believe that the overthrow of Gaddafi constitutes a revolution against the Gaddafi regime and a continuation of the Arab Spring point to these sorts of disjunctures between the NTC and other factions within the rebels, whether between the military and political leadership, or between the Misurata leadership council and the NTC, to point out that the spirit of the revolution is still alive. That is undoubtedly true. People didn't fight and die because they wanted to help NATO countries strengthen their hold over Libyan oil, or to gain control of the Arab Spring or to strengthen their strategic position in Africa. But to say this is entirely to miss the bigger point that the forces at work and their agendas are more powerful than the relatively dispersed, guerilla type networks of rebels. What's more these are not large forces. The Tripoli Brigade that stormed the capital only has 1,300 soldiers. The actual fighting force of the rebels is unclear with different numbers on different Wikileaks pages but the fact that the storming of Tripoli involved perhaps as few as 4,000 rebel soldiers gives an indication of its size.

 To think that such a tiny force - even if we add untrained volunteers to boost the numbers - could stand against NATO, which had just decimated the trained and well armed military force of the Libyan government is sheer foolishness. But it wouldn't even have to come to this extreme solution. The tiny military force lacks the national political capabilities that are controlled by the NTC as a result of their alliance with NATO and, now the growing financial power of the provisional government. Already, the UN, UK, France, Spain, the US and some Gulf monarchies are releasing billions of dollars in previously frozen Gaddafi funds to the NTC. And in a powerful symbol of the nature of the relationship, the first tranche of money was flown to Libya in a British fighter jet. The Canadian government, which froze aid to Palestine after Hamas was democratically elected in the Gaza Strip, is also looking to release money to the NTC as soon as possible. Meanwhile, eager to help the NTC spend all their newfound money, a conference for "Friends of Libya" will be held today in Paris. What is the purpose of the conference?

While officials are adamant Thursday is about securing political stability in Libya and doing things differently than in Iraq, French companies are planning a trade mission to get a head start on reconstruction contracts.
As well as big prospects for developing oil drilling, the end of the six-month conflict will open up big opportunities for infrastructure, construction, electric power, telecoms, water and tourism companies who are keen to challenge the privileged position enjoyed by Italian firms under Gaddafi's long rule.
The NTC has said those who took a lead role in backing their revolt will be rewarded.

I have discussed previously how China might react to being shut out of Libya. China has been pushing very aggressively into Africa and its competitive investment model has sidelined older big powers like the USA. There is no doubt that NATO's intervention into Libya is about pushing back against China - and China has made clear that it too will push back to defend its interests. This holds the danger of militarizing the new scramble for Africa, leading to more wars and more dictators, not less.

What's more, perhaps one of the most important political impacts of NATO's involvement was the conservatizing influence it has had on the politics of the struggle. In the early days there were reports of rebels undermining the state by radicalizing it - reaching out to conscript soldiers to join the uprising, setting up revolutionary councils, engaging in mass action, etc. But with the retreat of the revolution and the growing power of conservative elements in the NTC, this changed opening the door to reactionary politics, like the anti-black African racist killings by rebels that have emerged.

The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses", and "solidarity". But masses can be addressed on many grounds – some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity – some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans ".
A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.

There is about to be a big scramble for contracts and Jibril, a professional neo-liberal, is likely to continue the process of privatizing state assets. If there is a rapid move to a shock doctrine model of "reconstruction" workers in Libya could see a precipitous drop in their living standards - up till now one of the highest on the continent. The exact nature of the political settlement is unclear as different factions jostle for power and influence. It's still early days. The influence of the Islamist militias has already been recognized in the draft constitution, which defines sharia as the principle source of legislation. Of course, that can mean almost anything depending on interpretation. What will be key is the balance of forces.

In Egypt, where the Mubarak military structure maintained its control, they have resisted all moves towards democratization beyond the most superficial. However, the revolution in Egypt was never derailed by the intervention of imperialism and was led from the bottom up, drawing upon a decade or more of growing activism in labour and civil society. In Libya, the more revolutionary elements were sidelined once NATO became involved. They now face not only their own version of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces - in the form of the NTC and NATO - they do so with a much weaker alternative source of leadership, a lack of civil society organizations, labour unions, etc. If the NTC feels confident to put a recent Gaddafi lackey in charge of Tripoli within hours of setting up shop and with the militias still armed, what will it do once they are disarmed and demobilized or integrated into a national army?

There is a reason why the touchstone for politicians about what not to repeat is Iraq. What bothers them is not the invasion and killing of hundreds of thousands. No, they realized what a mistake it was to dismantle the Ba'athist state. As much as possible the Gaddafi state structure will be preserved. NATO intervened in part precisely to prevent the Libyan revolution from radicalizing and establishing an organizational basis for that radicalization. They don't want any more Tunisias or Egypts were the labour insurgencies continuing to push forward the revolution after the dictator's face has been removed from billboards and airports. NATO - and the Gulf Cooperation Council - wants regimes it can do business with, regimes that are loyal and, if necessary, regimes that will put their own populations in place. In the coming days, the NTC will move as quickly as possible to achieve the goal of a stable, business friendly nation. And don't be surprised if that includes a western military presence.