The Meaning Of Face Tattoos & Penis Piercings

While summer isn't yet officially over, we know in our hearts that it's pretty much done. The kids are back at school - as are some of us - it's already getting cooler and Labour Day has come and gone. So, in the interest of easing you all into fall with something a little lighter, I thought I'd start with a review of the documentary film Modify about the phenomenon of body modification from plastic surgery, to radical piercings, full body tattoos, gender reassignment surgery and even body building.

I have to admit that I got the heebs every time some body part was sliced open or jammed with a metal object - including a dude who inserted beads into his own penis by cutting the skin.  Titillation aside, it was actually a bit unfortunate that the filmmakers used as much time and footage as they did to show us the gory details of plastic surgery, piercing and suspension (hanging from flesh-piercing hooks - see the trailer above). I get that the filmmakers are trying to normalize the less acceptable forms of piercing and modification by establishing that there are lots of commonalities between plastic surgery, tattooing, piercing, etc. Except that other than the fairly banal fact that in plastic surgery and piercing (though not suspension) the only real point of commonality is that both involve modifying the body. Even the role of surgery is different between the two types. With plastic surgery, the surgical procedure is an unwanted side effect, whereas for decorative body work the procedure, and the pain, is part of the ritual of the process. This attempt to merge different cultural phenomenon under the umbrella of modification is a general problem with the film.


It is certainly true that both cosmetic surgery and what I would call primitivist body decoration are related in the sense that people are altering their bodies as a means of asserting something about their identity. But the similarities end there. With run of the mill cosmetic surgery - breast augmentation, liposuction, botox, lip enhancement, et al - the patient is almost invariably trying to more closely approach the dominant ideas of what constitutes beauty. They are trying to more perfectly approximate the mainstream - other than those, like Stalking Cat, who are really at the extreme end of body decoration.
In trying to elide the differences between plastic surgery and body decoration, the filmmakers have missed the opportunity to look more deeply into the more relevant cultural phenomenon of primitivism/anti-modernism in North America. This is too bad because anti-modernism is a recurring theme in North American cultural expressions - from the more tame and acceptable forms such as wildflower gardens, which valorize native flowers and arrangements that look "natural" and un-landscaped, to the obviously more extreme versions such as body alteration. Both ends of the spectrum are motivated by a similar impulse that emerges organically from capitalism.

Perhaps the first coherent articulation of an anti-modernist ethic comes from Edmund Burke's conservative writings in opposition to the French Revolution. His original support for the American Revolution and the early days of the French turned to horror when he saw how profoundly the Revolution was transforming the old relations of France. To Burke's mind, the relations of the state were becoming merely the relations of commerce and thus shallow, devoid of tradition and meaning.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born.

Of course Burke's ultimate opposition was to democracy, which was "shameless" and led to leaders who were more interested in "popularity contests", like elections, and who would become "flatterers instead of legislators" and thus the "instruments, not the guides, of the people." However, behind his elitism he had a point, which was that ultimately a social contract based upon commerce was empty and devoid of soul. This theme would be picked up time and again over the centuries as capitalism encroached on tradition after tradition and industry after industry. Or as Marx described the capitalist dynamic: "Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

TOMORROW: Capitalist Alienation Made Me Hang From Hooks

Libya's Rebels: Yesterday We Tortured Them, Today We Arm Them

There's no doubt that NATO, primarily the UK, France and the US, inserted themselves into the Libyan uprising as a means of gaining control over the course of the Arab Spring. In the case of France, it's clear that expanding the control of Libya's oil - most notably at the expense of Italy - was also part of the reason for Sarkozy's newfound enthusiasm for democracy when only a few weeks earlier he was rather more enthusiastic for keeping the Tunisian dictator in power. Reasserting hegemony in Africa also played no small part in the Libyan adventure.

Nonetheless it is always important to keep in mind that when imperialist powers insert themselves into an insurgency - particularly against a recent ally like Gaddafi - they are at risk of not only unleashing forces that they cannot control but of being exposed for what they really are: double-dealing hypocrites.

To be honest, it doesn't appear to me likely that there will be open resistance to the overall imperial agenda as it is expressed through the new government that is coming into being, led by the NTC. The oil contracts have been signed, the backroom deals have been struck - and NATO's deeply penetrating role in the war against Gaddafi has ensured that the rebel soldiers are dependent upon them for military success of any sort. Over the coming weeks the most likely scenario is that the rebel volunteers will be demobilized or incorporated into the national military. That military and most of the governmental apparatus will remain essentially unchanged from the Gaddafi regime - the police who kept order in Tripoli under Gaddafi will be the same police who keep order under the NTC. The generals who ran the Gaddafi military will run the NTC military. And economic and social policy will be guided by people like Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the Gaddafi agency charged with the responsibility of selling off state assets, probably to mostly foreign buyers or other former-Gaddafi officials.

That said, I would be glad to be mistaken. There is a reason why one of the NTC's first acts is to demobilize the rebel soldiers and to clear them out of the capital. People fought for freedom and will be less likely to accept Gaddafi-ism without Gaddafi if they have guns and are organized into fighting units. And with the armed phase of Gaddafi's overthrow all but passed, it is still possible that the remnants of the revolutionary councils that dominated the early phase of the insurgency will re-emerge to challenge the NTC's policy of business-as-usual minus the Brother Leader and some of the more odious aspects of a police state.

But in the initial days it's good to see that, at the very least, some of the duplicity of the United States and Britain are being revealed. The discovery of documents in the Interior Ministry building that show the level of cooperation between the CIA and the Gaddafi regime are something of an embarrassment. As is the fact that the new commander of Tripoli was a victim of CIA torture and the extraordinary rendition program that sent him back to Libya for several years of brutal incarceration. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has been undergoing something of a renovation, with a fluff piece in the New York Times, which I covered the other day. He may be claiming that he is now grateful for the support of NATO and the USA - but he hasn't forgotten what was done to him and some reporters have cottoned on to this.

The result is that the British spy agency MI6 is now exposed as having cooperated - perhaps illegally - with the American rendition program and facilitated torture. In some ways nobody ought to be surprised by this but the fact that it is coming out in public at a moment when the UK is jockeying for fat reconstruction and oil contracts is sweet. These revelations are undermining one of the domestic goals of the intervention in Libya - to rehabilitate the idea of humanitarian intervention by demonstrating that the UK, USA and NATO really do have good intentions, even if sometimes they get the details wrong. Let's hope that the revelations keep on coming. There is a sweet irony in the possibility that the countries of NATO will be more fully exposed as having aided Gaddafi in crushing the revolt that they ended up opportunistically supporting.

MI6 knew I was tortured, says Libyan rebel | World news | The Guardian

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.