Remember what Imperialist USA Did to Socialist Yugoslavia in the 90's !

The Way I See It!

Don Currie

March 18, 2011

To expose the hypocrisy of US imperialism claiming to have a humanitarian interest in attacking Libya is not enough. If one is an internationalist one must take sides. That was the significance of the Mac Pap volunteers in 1936. They knew which side they were on, the Republican anti-fascist side.

Canadian volunteers went to Spain to defend an anti-fascist coalition government within which Communists played an important role. That republican government confronted the combined imperialist forces of Nazi Germany and its allies and the active collaboration via an arms embargo of the USA, Canada and Britain. All of the pro-Republican forces opposed western imperialism and Nazism.

Seventy five years later the situation in Libya is not much different. The same imperialist forces that supported Hitler and Franco are now mobilizing an invasion force to depose the Qaddafi government. The genuine revolutionaries of Libya are those that oppose that invasion.

Which side does the CPC and its leading spokesperson in Calgary call upon Canadian workers to support in the civil war in Libya ?

The Communist spokesperson in Calgary has coined the slogan No to Qaddafi!  No to Imperialism! thus evading taking any side, a splendid neutrality typical of Trotskyist evasion.  That is what centrism is in practice. That is exactly what the Canadian government said in 1936 to evade supporting the Republican side in Spain. McKenzie King ordered an embargo of arms to Republican Spain and enacted a Foreign Enlistment Act to prevent Canadian volunteers from joining the anti-fascist side. Jules Paivo a great Canadian Mac Pap hero, a comrade in arms of Bill Beeching, exposed that Liberal Government travesty. http://www.vapaasana.com/24-06-julespaivio.htm.

Today the analogy to Spain is revealed in the fact that the anti-Qaddafi forces are working in collusion with western imperialism just as Franco did with Nazi Germany. All of the so-called “revolutionaries” in Libya are welcoming imperialist intervention among them Monarchists and those Libyans who opposed Qaddafi’s opening to Africa and who are supported by the Arab League. Consider the membership of the Arab League. http://www.arab.de/arabinfo/league.htmhttp://www.arab.de/arabinfo/league.htm  . The Arab League has evolved from its origins in 1943 into a disparate group of states some monarchies, others US clients states dominated by Saudi Arabia. The latter is presently violently suppressing the people of Bahrain. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen are far from defeating the US backed stooges who uphold western imperialist tutelage of these countries and the struggle by the people of these states to assert their sovereignty continues.

To compare the pro-US monarchist led actions in eastern Libya where the largest oil fields are located, to mass uprisings of the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen is a travesty.

According to the such western imperialist shills as the CBC’s Anthony Germaine and the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York both imbedded with the so-called “ revolutionaries” that have taken over Benghazi, the people of western Libya who support Qaddafi are of no account. These scriveners wouldn’t last a day working for the pro-western mass media if they interviewed pro-Qaddafi supporters.

US-French-NATO-Canadian imperialism has intervened in Libya for the same reason Bush intervened in Iraq. To prevent the Libyan people from determining their own destiny. It is clear that without US-French-NATO-Canadian imperialist intervention the pro-Qaddafi government would win the civil war, just as the Republicans would have won in Spain in 1936-39.  

Those who support UN sanctioned intervention I Libya are simply anti-Qaddafi.  Twist and turn as they will, they must  uncritically accept the Mossad and CIA demonization of his leadership role. They cannot escape the fact that what is being said by the foreign minister of France, by Lawrence Cannon and Hillary Clinton about Qaddafi is also being said by these same people about Fidel and Chavez. And we might add, these are also the same people who authorize the secret planning at the Pentagon and at Brussels NATO headquarter of a similar type of military intervention against Cuba and Venezuela when the opportune moment arises. These are the humanitarians who keep the Cuban Five in captivity and continue to torment the prisoners in Guantanamo. These “humanitarians” seek to convince Canadian public opinion that they are genuinely concerned about the fate of the people of Libya.

The “duty to protect” means the imperialist duty to protect the oil profits of western investor classes and all those classes of wealth and privilege in the G7 that live parasitically from imperialist wars, foreign investments and stealing the energy resources and labour and wealth of other peoples.

In 1936-39 the defeat of the Republican forces opposed to Franco ushered in decades of Spanish fascism during which time the Spanish Communists were its special victims.  The defeat of Qaddafi will bring to power pro-western imperialist forces and lead to death and misery for Libyan workers and farmers, the same fate now suffered by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Libya will become the new US base for carrying forward its AFRICOM military strategy for the whole African continent.

To prevent that, Qaddafi enunciated his Green doctrine of African unity. That’s why Saudi Arabia hates Qaddafi. He was not a pliant Arab patsy for the US oil interests. Those who wag the finger at Qaddafi for having made concessions to foreign oil interests should look to our own country, where the ruling elites have handed over all of Canada’s energy resources to private interests and there isn’t a single publicly owned oil or gas interest serving the Canadian people. The entire energy policy of this country is based on the Alberta model of low export prices and lower royalty rates, to do what? Supply the USA with cheap energy, and now, increasingly,  the non-polluting hydro electric power developed and paid for by Canadian taxpayers now integrated into a North American grid.

The government of Libya is being attacked by a joint US-NATO-Canadian imperialist invasion force. Qaddafi is defending the sovereignty of Libya. Who else in Libya is defending Libyan sovereignty from western imperialism? When did western imperialism ever attack a government that does its will? When did imperialism ever support genuine revolutionaries?

Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism