The Rebellious Media Conference, London, October 8-9 – A Reflection.

Sirte

Who better to open a conference on “Rebellious Media” than Noam Chomsky? The arch-rebel of US academia and proponent of the ‘propaganda model’ of the media, at 82 years old he is now not only the best-known but probably also the longest-serving celebrity critic of US foreign policy in the world. And unlike many academics, he is not scared to ‘get his hands dirty’ by discussing – and critiquing – strategy with the resistance movements of which he most definitely considers himself to be a part.

            So it should perhaps be no surprise that his talk today focuses on the weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Whilst overall, of course, he considers the protest, and its rapid, ‘wildcat’ spread around the US, to be a good thing, he is not so enamoured with its public demands. “Here are some of the phrases that are missing from the Occupy Wall Street programme”, he explains: “Iraq. Afghanistan. War. Industry. Factory. Women. Healthcare.”

            But there was another word that was missing – not only from the protesters’ programme, but from Chomsky’s critique, the questions from his audience, and indeed from almost the entire conference. Libya.

            As the conference opened, the Libyan town of Sirte was experiencing its 30^th successive day of full scale bombardment and siege from NATO and their Libyan allies, leaving the population “dying from lack of water, medicine and electricity”, according to the Telegraph. Into the town’s housing blocks, “rebels were pouring rocket after rocket from launchers mounted on pickup trucks” it continued, whilst “gunmen assured reporters that there were few families left inside”. Indeed, 20,000 are reported to have fled the city. This leaves 80,000 to face the rockets and enforced malnutrition. 

            John Pilger does touch on this later in the proceedings, in response to a question from the audience: “As we speak”, he says, “Sirte is being blasted with iron fragmentation bombs and hellfire missiles in an attack comparable to that on Fallujah”. He has been vitriolic in his condemnation of NATO atrocities against Libya ever since his excellent article on the subject, published on April 6^th,, two weeks after NATO began their blitzkrieg and six weeks after the Libyan contras lynched their first group of fifty unarmed African migrant workers. But until then, he – and many others – had been silent. When it was most important to speak out was before the invasion, when the die was being cast, when “consent” was being “manufactured” (to use Chomsky’s phrase) with lies about ten thousand dead, mass rape, mercenaries and the aerial bombing of demonstrators. As it turned out, none of these were actions perpetrated by Gaddafi’s forces, but were the fantasies of NATO and their Libyan allies about what they themselves were about to unleash. But neither Pilger nor Chomsky warned of this nor exposed these lies during that crucial phase.

            So the question I want, urgently, to discuss at the conference is – what is the role of radical media during the demonization phase - the inevitable prelude to any war? I brought it up at every session I went to, and when I did, many people were eager to discuss it. But, sadly, it was never discussed on any of the panels. 

            Later in the day, Zahera Harb gave an excellent presentation on Hezbollah’s media tactics, most effective of which was their use of what they termed “media traps”. After the 1996 Israeli bombardment and occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah devised a new strategy aimed at appealing to the Israeli public. But to do this, they needed to gain credibility. They began by taking professional cameramen, with hi-tech equipment, with them on each of their operations. After an operation, they would then release a press release saying how many Israeli soldiers they had killed and injured. The Israeli government would inevitably issue their own statement denying the story. Hezbollah would then release some grainy, far off footage of the attack in support of their claims, which Israel would again rebuff. Then came the trap. The high quality footage would finally be released, proving that Hezbollah had been telling the truth – and the Israelis lying – all along. They successfully used this tactic no less than four separate times. Harb argued that it played an important role in undermining support for the occupation amongst the Israeli public, and thus in persuading Israel to eventually pull out almost all its forces in 2000.

            It occurs to me that we too have been caught in a media trap, albeit an unintentional one of our own making, borne of our own prejudices. Almost all of Gaddafi’s claims – of Al Qaeda involvement in the uprising, of systematic racist atrocities carried out by rebel forces, of the rebels being in the pay of foreign interests aiming to destabilise and conquer the country – have been proven correct. And we, including a huge number on the left, have been caught lying – that the uprising was essentially a liberal democratic one, that the rebels were a nonviolent protest movement, that Gaddafi was a genocidal rapist and on and on.

            An insight into why so many journalists were so ready to credulously repeat these lies was provided by Andy Williams’ presentation on the growing influence of Public Relations companies in the media. His research found that the amount of copy expected from journalists has tripled in recent years, with half of those interviewed reporting less time to properly check facts. As a result, they are becoming increasingly reliant on press releases, often from Public Relations firms working for private companies (and, we can safely assume, for governments, intelligence agencies, and military forces). Of the 2000 articles he analysed, 1 in 5 were wholly plagiarised from press releases, with no additional information whatsoever. A further 1 in 3 relied on press releases for more than half of the copy. Only 1 in 10 contained no obvious “pre-packaged” material. His conclusion was that mainstream journalism was increasingly being reduced to “cutting and pasting press releases” – and therefore increasingly manufactured by political and business elites. In the case of Libya this was absolutely clear, with even easily checkable (dis)information – such as Gaddafi’s supposed bombing of parts of Tripoli, easily disproved by a simple visit to the areas in question – being reported as ‘fact’.

            Elsewhere, Greg Philo summarised the findings of the Glasgow Media Group’s meticulous research into media presentation of the Palestine-Israel conflict. “There are a great range of positions [on the conflict] amongst journalists”, he explained, “but when you look at their output, this is not reflected”. The reasons are pretty clear; the power of the Israeli lobby, the prejudices of the Murdoch press, and the geostrategic interests of British ruling elites all dictate a heavily pro-Israeli bias.  So where does that leave mainstream journalists personally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause? Presenting the actual Palestinian point of view – documenting the daily reality of life under military occupation, explaining how the Israeli army broke the 2008 ceasefire, or, god forbid, talking about a genuine ‘national liberation struggle’ – is simply “too dangerous” for their careers. So, in place of this, journalists showed what one called an “endless procession of grief”. This effectively served as a proxy in place of the “Palestinian side of the argument” that was simply not allowed an airing. In other words, during the Gaza massacre of 2008-9, viewers were treated to pictures of Palestinian suffering – but the analysis was consistently pro-Israeli, emphasising the themes favoured by their spokesmen (rocket fire, the obligation to protect its citizens, Hamas breaking the ceasefire, etc). As a result, the focus groups used in Philo’s research, whilst horrified by the tragedy of the Palestinian situation, dutifully trotted out the Israeli propaganda that had been their staple diet from the news coverage – that the Palestinians had brought it all on themselves.

            Again, this seems to be true of the war on Libya – but this time, it is not only true of the mainstream media, but a substantial portion of the “radical” media and intelligentsia as well. Once the bombing is well underway, the liberal left – who had been either applauding or silent about the outbreak of the pro-NATO contra rebellion – were happy enough condemning the resulting atrocities. But the analysis (albeit often implicit on the left) remains – as with Palestine – that the pro-Gaddafi forces had “brought it on themselves” by being intolerably repressive, or using violence on peaceful protesters, etc etc. Where is the actual analysis from the other point of view? Where is the explanation of the serious material and financial contribution that Gaddafi was making to African unity, or to keeping the continent free of US bases? Where are the comments pointing out that all 700 imprisoned members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group involved in previous violent uprisings against the Libyan state had been freed in a process of reconciliation in the eighteen months preceding the rebellion - the last batch being released even as the early stages of the uprising was already underway? Where were the voices explaining that the neo-liberal credentials of all leading NTC members would surely sign the death knell for Libya’s four decades history of generous social provision, that had resulted in the highest life expectancy on the continent?

            Cameron has said the Libya intervention was the “model” for the coming colonial wars (he called them humanitarian interventions of course). Knowing this, radical media has a duty to learn the lessons. Will we be fooled into supporting contra rebellions in Syria, Iran, Algeria, China, too? Or will we reject the media’s duty to “keep people ignorant” and defend the sovereignty of independent nations threatened by imperial aggression?

An edited version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil and Mahmoud Jibril have been paving the way for NATO’s conquest since 2007

Mark Allen - BP's MI6 man in Libya. Did he arrange Jibril and Abdul-Jalil's positions in Gaddafi's government?

A violent rebellion broke out in Benghazi, Libya on February 15^th this year (1). Six days later, Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdul-Jalil resigned to set up an alternative government. On February 27^th, the Transitional National Council was established, and on March 5^th, this body had declared itself the “sole representative of all Libya”, with Abdul-Jalil at its head. France recognised the TNC as the legitimate Libyan government on March 10^th and Britain offered them a diplomatic office on UK soil the same day. Nine days later, the Council set up a new Libyan Central Bank and National Oil Company (2). In barely a month from the start of the rebellion, Abdul-Jalil had positioned himself as head not only of the rebels, but of the new government in waiting, with control of Libyan resources and monetary policy and the blessing of the West. On March 17^th, NATO began its mass slaughter of Libyan soldiers in order to install his regime.

Clearly, seasoned imperial powers such as Britain, France and the US, would not commit to the huge expenditure of a months-long air campaign to bring somebody to power in such a strategically important, oil rich state, unless they were already a tried and trusted asset. So who exactly is Abdul Jalil?

Abdul-Jalil gained his job in the Libyan government in January 2007, when he was named Secretary of the General People’s Committee for Justice (the equivalent of Justice Minister). He has been paving the way for NATO’s military and economic conquest of Libya ever since.  

First, as head of the judiciary, he oversaw the release from prison of the hundreds of anti-Gaddafi fighters who went on to form the core of the insurgency. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (Muamar’s son) was leading the prisoner release programme – a move he now publicly regrets as being naïve in the extreme – but faced stiff opposition from powerful elements within his own government. Having a sympathetic Justice Minister was therefore crucial to allowing the releases to go ahead smoothly. Hundreds of members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – including its founder Abdulhakim Belhadj, now military chief of Tripoli - were released in 2009 and 2010 (3), and went on to form the only trained and experienced indigenous fighting units of the rebellion. In January 2010, Abdul-Jalil threatened to resign unless the prisoner release programme was sped up (4). On the second day of the insurgency, the final batch of 110 members of the LIFG were released; his work done, Abdul-Jalil quit his role of Justice Minister soon after to set up the TNC.

Second, Abdul-Jalil was able to use his position to help prepare the legal framework for the corporate takeover of Libyan resources that was enacted so swiftly after the creation of the TNC. Although his official role was head of the judiciary, a large part of the dialogue between Abdul-Jalil and US officials recorded in leaked US diplomatic cables focused on privatisation of the economy. These reported Abdul-Jalil’s enthusiasm for “private sector involvement”, and revealed his belief that this would require regime change, or as the cables euphemistically put it, “international assistance”, to fully achieve. The cables also reported Abdul-Jalil’s ominous comment that, on the matter of creating a “sound commercial legal environment” and improving relations between Libya and the US, “less talk and more action was needed” (5).  

 

Thirdly, Abdul-Jalil was able to arrange ‘below-the-radar’ covert meetings between the pro-privatisation Libyans in the ‘Commercial Law Development Programme’ and US officials, both in the US and in Libya. The leaked US cables praised his “willingness to allow his staff to communicate with emboffs [Embassy officials] outside of official channels” and noted that “his organization seems to have a parallel track in securing visa approvals, bypassing Protocol and the MFA [Ministry for Foreign Affairs]” (6).

Shortly after Abdul-Jalil’s appointment in 2007, the other key player in today’s TNC – President Mahmoud Jibril – was also given a government job in Libya. Jibril was made Head of the National Planning Council and later Head of the National Economic Development Board where, according to the US cables, he too helped to “pave the way” for the privatisation of Libya’s economy and “welcomed American companies”. US officials were positively ecstatic about Jibril after their meeting in May 2009, concluding that “With a PhD in strategic planning from the University of Pittsburgh, Jibril is a serious interlocutor who "gets" the U.S. perspective.” Very revealing given the spate of ambassador defections that followed the Benghazi rebellion was the additional revelation that Jibril had been helping to facilitate six US training programmes for diplomats (7).

 2007 also turned out to be a crucial year for the other big player in today’s TNC, Head of Tripoli’s Military Council, Abdulhakim Belhadj. Belhadj was the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Al-Qaeda affiliate which launched an armed insurrection against the Libyan state in 1995 lasting for two years. His release from prison in Libya in March 2010, along with hundreds of other LIFG fighters, was the culmination of a process that began with an open letter published in November 2007 by Norman Benotman – one of the group’s many fighters who had been given a safe haven in the UK since the failed uprising. His letter renounced violence and, according to the London Times, “asked Al-Qaeda to give up all its operations in the Islamic world and in the West, adding that ordinary westerners were blameless and should not be attacked”. The letter led to a process of dialogue between the LIFG and the Libyan government, and was followed up two years later by an apology by the LIFG for their anti-government violence in the past, and a statement that “the reduction of jihad to fighting with the sword is an error and shortcoming” (8). Someone had obviously hinted to them that drones and B52 bombers would be far more effective.

So 2007 was the year that launched these three men on the path towards their current role as NATO’s proxy rulers in Libya. Benotman’s letter made NATO support for a violent Al-Qaeda affiliate politically possible, and helped to sucker Saif al-Islam into releasing the very people who would become the ground forces in the overthrow of his government. Abdul-Jalil’s appointment as Justice Minister smoothed over the fighters’ release, and prepared the legal framework for an economic takeover by Western corporations. Jibril’s appointment as Planning Minister prepared, at a micro-level, the detail of how this takeover would come about, and cultivated the relationships with the Western companies that would be invited in.

So why did all this come about? Who was pulling the strings?

In the case of Benotman’s letter, this would have been a fairly simple matter of MI6 contacting him in London, where he lived, and putting him in touch with a decent PR firm to help draft the letter that would make it politically possible for NATO to set itself up as the LIFG’s airforce.

As for the two government appointments, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was ultimately responsible, but he was clearly not intending the outcome that resulted. He was implementing political and economic reforms driven by both genuine belief, and a naïve desire to improve relations between his government and the West; he did not realise that he was unwittingly laying the ground for the political and economic destruction of his country. So the question is – was he acting on somebody else’s advice?

If he was, the most likely candidate is Mark Allen.

Mark Allen was the MI6 agent who had facilitated Libya’s ‘rapprochement’ with the West in 2003. Saif al-Islam had led the negotiations on the Libyan side, so by 2007, the two men knew each other quite well. But by then, Allen was no longer officially employed by MI6. In 2004, he had been fast tracked by the British Cabinet Office, bypassing the usual security procedures, to work for BP (9) and in 2007, he successfully concluded a massive £15billion oil deal between BP and the Libyan government. Could the appointment of Abdul-Jalil and Mahmoud Jibril have been part of this deal? In hindsight, given their subsequent roles, it seems highly likely that MI6 would have used whatever leverage it could to manoeuvre willing accomplices into positions inside the Libyan government.

According to the Daily Mail, Allen was also actively involved in pressuring the UK government to support the prisoner release programme (10). Of course, the tone of their article, as with the current media furore about MI6 complicitity in Belhadj’s torture, all fit in with the overall narrative that Gaddafi and the West had a great relationship until the rebellion started and forced NATO to conduct a humanitarian intervention. It is all designed to obscure the reality that Libya under Gaddafi’s leadership was an obstacle to Western domination and subordination of Africa, and that MI6 has been plotting his removal ever since he came to power.

NATO’S WAR ON LIBYA IS A WAR ON AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

“Africa the key to global economic growth”; this was a refreshingly honest recent headline from the Washington Post, but hardly one that qualifies as ‘news’. African labour and resources- as any decent economic historian will tell you - has been key to global economic growth for centuries.

When the Europeans discovered America five hundred years ago, their economic system went viral. Increasingly, European powers realised that the balance of power at home would be dictated by the strength they were able to draw from their colonies abroad. Imperialism (aka capitalism) has been the fundamental hallmark of the world’s economic structure ever since.

For Africa, this has meant nonstop subjection to an increasingly systematic plunder of people and resources that has been unrelenting to this day. First was the brutal kidnapping of tens of millions of Africans to replace the indigenous American workforce that had been wiped out by the Europeans. The slave trade was devastating for African economies, which were rarely able to withstand the population collapse; but the capital it created for plantation owners in the Caribbean laid the foundations for Europe’s industrial revolution (1). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as more and more precious materials were found in Africa (especially tin, rubber, gold and silver), the theft of land and resources ultimately resulted in the so-called “Scramble for Africa” of the 1870s, when, over the course of a few years, Europeans divided up the entire continent (with the exception of Ethiopia) amongst themselves. By this point, the world’s economy was increasingly becoming an integrated whole, with Africa continuing to provide the basis for European industrial development as Africans were stripped of their land and forced down gold mines and onto rubber plantations.

After the Second World War, the European powers - weakened by years of industrial scale slaughter of one another - contrived to adapt colonialism to fit the new conditions. As liberation movements grew in strength, the European powers confronted a new economic reality: the cost of subduing the 'restless natives' was approaching the value of the wealth that could be extracted from them. Their favoured solution was what Kwame Nkrumah termed ‘neo-colonialism’ – handing over the formal attributes of political sovereignty to a trusted bunch of hand-picked cronies who would allow the economic exploitation of their countries to continue unabated. In other words, adapting colonialism so that Africans themselves were forced to shoulder the burden and cost of policing their own populations.

In practice, it wasn’t that simple. All across Asia, Africa and Latin America, mass movements began to demand control of their own resources, and in many places, these movements managed to gain power – sometimes through guerrilla struggle, sometimes through the ballot box. This led to vicious wars by the European powers – now under the leadership of their upstart protege, the USA - to destroy such movements. This struggle, not the so-called “Cold War”, is what defined the history of post-war international relations.

So far, neo-colonialism has largely been a successful project for the Europeans and the US. Africa’s role as provider of cheap, often slave, labour and minerals has largely continued unabated. Poverty and disunity have been the essential ingredients that have allowed this exploitation to continue. However both are now under serious threat.

Chinese investment in Africa over the past ten years has been building up African industry and infrastructure in a way that may begin to seriously tackle the continent's poverty. In China, these policies have brought about unprecedented reductions in poverty (2) and are helping to lift the country into the position it will shortly hold as the world’s leading economic power (3). If Africa follows this model, or anything like it, the West’s five hundred year plunder of Africa’s wealth may be nearing an end.

To prevent this ‘threat of African development’, the Europeans and the USA have responded in the only way they know how – militarily. Four years ago, the US set up a new “command and control centre” for the military subjugation of Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US was that no African country wanted to host it; indeed, until very recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without a US military base. And this fact is in no small part thanks to the efforts of the Libyan government.

Before Gaddafi’s revolution deposed the British-backed King Idris in 1969, Libya had hosted one of the world’s biggest US airbases, the Wheelus Air Base; but within a year of the revolution, it had been closed down and all foreign military personnel expelled.

More recently, Gaddafi had been actively working to scupper AFRICOM. African governments that were offered money by the US to host a base were typically offered double by Gaddafi to refuse it, and in 2008 this ad-hoc opposition crystallised into a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union (4).

Perhaps even more worrying for US and European domination of the continent were the huge resources that Gaddafi was channelling into African development. The Libyan government was by far the largest investor in Africa’s first ever satellite, launched in 2007, which freed Africa from $500million per year in payments to European satellite companies. Even worse for the colonial powers, Libya had allocated $30billion for the African Union's three big financial projects (5), aimed at ending African dependence on Western finance. The African Investment Bank - with its headquarters in Libya - was to invest in African development at no interest, which would have seriously threatened the International Monetary Fund’s domination of Africa - a crucial pillar for keeping Africa in its impoverished position (6). And Gaddafi was leading the AU's development of a new gold-backed African currency, which would have cut yet another of the strings that keep Africa at the mercy of the West, with $42billion already allocated to this project - again, much of it by Libya.

NATO’s war is aimed at ending Libya’s trajectory as a socialist, anti-imperialist, pan-Africanist nation at the forefront of moves to strengthen African unity and independence. The rebels have made clear their virulent racism from the very start of their insurrection, rounding up or executing thousands of black African workers and students(7). All the African development funds for the projects described above have been ‘frozen’ by the NATO countries and are to be handed over to their hand-picked buddies in the National Tranistional Council (NTC) to spend instead on weapons to facilitate their war.

For Africa, the war is far from over. The African continent must recognise that NATO's lashing out is a sign of desperation, of impotence, of its inability to stop the inevitable rise of Africa on the world stage. Africa must learn the lessons from Libya, continue the drive towards pan-African unity, and continue to resist AFRICOM. Plenty of Libyans will still be with them when they do so.

By Rebel Griot
rebelgriot@hotmail.co.uk

PLEASE ALSO READ THESE TWO EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ARTICLES ON LIBYA'S ROLE IN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT AND INDEPENDENCE:

Gold, Oil, Africa and Why the West wants Gaddafi Dead

by Brian E Muhammed for the Final Call  

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_7886.shtml

Why the West wants Gaddafi Out

by Jean-Paul Pougala for the Southern Times

http://www.southerntimesafrica.com/article.php?title=Why_the_West_wants_Gaddafi_out__&id=6159

HOW DAVID STARKEY IS RIGHT

When the whites became black...The Specials circa 1980

 Speaking about the London riots last week, David Starkey told Newsnight that the big problem in today’s society “is that the chavs…have become black; the whites have become black.”

In a sense, he is right. One of the biggest problems for him and his fellow white supremacists*, is indeed the danger that English youth begin to side with the Third World liberation struggle, rather than with their own government’s colonial aggression. And through the white youth’s adoption of black cultural idioms, that process has already begun.

All major forms of popular dance music (from soul and funk to hiphop and jungle) are creations of Africans and their descendants. And, although many of these artforms have subsequently degenerated since coming under the control of giant corporations (1), at the heart of all of them there was originally a spirit of militant resistance. 

One the clearest examples of this is reggae music. Reggae took the iconography of Rastafarianism – perhaps the most accessible and visceral depiction of colonial relations yet articulated – and turned it into a universal language of resistance. Even across the oppressor nations in the West, people fell in love with the beat, and soon began to absorb the message as well. Soon after arriving on these shores, it became a massive inspiration and influence behind the punk movement - another historical moment when ‘the whites became black’ – which briefly appeared as a genuine threat to the class exploitation system.

So black culture does tend to embody a spirit of defiance and resistance against the exploiters, their state and its colonial system; white people are embracing this culture and it is a problem for David Starkey and folks like him.

But there are two sides to the ‘whites becoming black’ coin. Young impoverished whites in England are not only being drawn towards ‘being black’ – they are also being blocked from ‘being white’. To understand this, we need to get to grips with the political purpose behind the concept of ‘whiteness’ in the first place. Theodore Allen has argued convincingly that ‘whiteness’ as a distinct category was invented in the American colonies of Maryland and Virginia in order to prevent property-less Europeans allying with African Americans - by conferring certain privileges onto them. It worked very well – generally speaking, white workers did indeed begin to identify more with their own exploiters than with the black slaves; the edge was taken off their own exploitation by being granted access to a small share of the more extreme exploitation of the Africans. In the twentieth century a similar process has taken place across Europe through the combination of the welfare state and tough immigration laws. On the one hand, the welfare state for a long time enabled even the most disadvantaged citizens of the ‘white’ countries access to a relatively decent standard of living. On the other, tough immigration laws maintained full employment whilst preventing the vast majority of the global workforce any real access to the fruits of their labour. In return, English workers by and large gave their consent to the colonial (and neo-colonial) exploitation that underwrote the whole system.

Today, for property-less whites, those privileges are being obliterated. Since the 1980s, significant sections of ‘white’ society in the West have begun to lose, therefore, the very thing that makes them ‘white’ – their privileged status. Nell Painter put it clearly in her book The History of White People. For her, whiteness is “a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively”. For the white ‘underclass’ in England, it is a status that is rapidly being withdrawn.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the demonization of the so-called ‘chav’. The middle class stereotype of the ‘chav’ is much like the racist stereotype of the ‘n****r’ – lazy, stupid, violent etc. But in fact it also incorporates the more specific stereotype of the ‘uppity n****r’: a member of the underclass who ‘doesn’t know his place’; who gets ideas ‘above his station’; in other words, who refuses to accept his subordinate position in society. How else can we interpret the endless middle class mockery of the ‘bling’ worn by poor youth? Jewellery itself is not condemned – what is being condemned is the right of the poor to wear it.

So, losing their privileged ‘white’ status, being subjected to old, racist, stereotypes in a new form, and attracted to the oppositional pride and defiance of black music and culture, white youth in poor areas are ceasing to be ‘white’ and are instead ‘becoming black’. On a cultural level, they are joining the ‘fourth world’ – those in the West with ancestral homelands in the third world, who by and large constitute the dispossessed of the West, and as such form the most potentially revolutionary class.

This all came to a head in the riots last week, where poor white youth joined with black people in what was originally an outburst of anger against brutal and racist policing (2).(3) (4). The fact that many then subsequently took the opportunity to stock up on the goods they have been denied, or even that some went on to commit arson or murder, should not detract from this fact.**

So we should perhaps be thanking Starkey for bringing the issue of race into the debate from where it had been conspicuously absent hitherto. But the real problem – from our perspective – is not that the ‘whites think they’re black’. Inasmuch as ‘white’ is a symbol of privilege and the ‘right to rule’, the real problem is that people like David Starkey think they’re ‘white’. 

*By white supremacist, I mean here those who favour the continued domination of the globe by the European and European settler nations (the so-called ‘first world’).

** It is important to remember that gang violence and burglary were not something new, brought about by the riots – they were already taking place before the riots; in fact, gang violence may actually may have decreased during the riots (5).

With thanks to Sukant Chandan and Dr Lez Henry for making me think about these things...not that either of them necessarily agree with my views! 

WHY ARE WE LEAVING IT TO OUR CHILDREN TO BRING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE POLICE AND REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH?

                                                 Mark Duggan, murdered by police who then lied about the incident. 

Rioting and looting was not the only violent activity being carried out by Englishmen on Sunday night. Some hours  before Cameron appeared on our TV screens vowing to take revenge on the risen British youth, his bomber pilots carried out a raid which slaughtered 33 Libyan children, along with 32 women and 20 men in Zlitan, a village near Tripoli. He, along with the rulers of France and the USA, are desperately trying to stave off economic collapse in the same way they always have – through the slaughter of third world people and the theft of their resources.

That is the context in which these riots need to be seen. Our mode of living in the West is predicated on violence and looting. For those who do not understand this, you need to look into how Western military forces have turned Afghanistan into a giant heroin poppy plantation with the lowest life expectancy on the planet outside sub-Saharan Africa; how they have turned Iraq into a living hell to steal its oil, how they are setting up Syria for an invasion as a prelude to the ‘final solution’ of the Palestinian ‘problem’ and how they are already stealing Libyan oil wealth which Gaddafi had ploughed into African development but will now go straight into the coffers of arms companies to buy arms for the racist rebel army. This is before we even mention the debt-extortion under which third world countries pay 13 times as much in loan interest to the West (on loans they have already paid back many times over) than they receive in aid.

Our young people have grown up witnessing all of this. They are well aware that the West enriches itself by violent plunder. They are also aware that more than half of their so-called ‘representatives’ in parliament have been systematically stealing TVs, electronic goods, clothes and anything else they think they can get away with, by means of large-scale fraud. They know that the police murder people with impunity, and their communities are subject to harassment and humiliation by police on a mass scale. They know that the bankers who have destroyed the livelihoods of millions, are still paying themselves bonuses extorted from the public purse.

They also know that none of these people are ever likely to be bought to justice through legal mechanisms. Most of the MPs guilty of fraud either still have their jobs, or have moved on to lucrative directorships with the companies for whom they did favours whilst in office. The police investigate themselves and find themselves not guilty. Army officers investigate themselves and find themselves not guilty. Tony Blair investigates himself and finds himself not guilty. The rich and powerful are demonstrating to our young people daily that the way to succeed is through robbery, theft and violence. This is the world into which they were born. This is the morality which surrounds them. This is the air they breathe.

Compared to their role models, the vast majority of the rioters have behaved impeccably. Attacks on small businesses, houses and civilians have been the exception, not the rule; the main activity has been the looting of big chain stores and the besieging of police stations. In so doing, the youth have succeeded in achieving what everyone else has failed to achieve – holding the police and corporations to account. The message to the police has been clear – you cannot murder, beat and humiliate us with impunity. Several police stations have been burned to the ground and all London police have had their summer leave cancelled. When incidents like Mark Duggan's murder arise, it is never a case of one ‘bad apple’; the process of cover-up is a systematic one which requires large-scale collusion. Some officers may now think twice before getting entangled in such matters in the future.

As for the big corporations, the efficiency of their exploitation and enslavement of third world people has created such poverty across the globe that people are increasingly unable to afford to buy what they produce. This is the major systemic cause of the economic crisis. They may not know it, but the corporations our children are attacking are indeed the major cause of their own poverty. More than this, these companies employ advertising techniques that ruthlessly target our children with a cruel message that their social status depends on the acquisition of their goods; they should not then feign surprise when poor children also try to acquire them.

With their so-called "mindless looting", the dispossessed youth are in fact carrying out a primitive form of wealth redistribution. What they are doing in a disorganised and spontaneous way, is precisely what we should be doing in a systematic and disciplined way. We need to build organisations that are serious about creating ‘socialism from below’ - taking control of the factories, chain stores and land, and using them in a way that provides for the massive social needs for which capitalism is completely unable to provide. This is the real Big Society – the one Cameron and his ilk are terrified of.

I am not blaming Cameron, or the politicians, or the media, by the way. These are our enemies. They are being true to their class. They are exploiting us and lying to us efficiently and effectively. They are doing their jobs perfectly. I am blaming those of us who do care, who do want equality and an end to classism, racism and imperialism. We need to step up and provide leadership and organisation, and until we do that – our criticisms of the youth are hollow and deceitful. If we leave it to children to bring accountability to policing and to redistribute wealth, without any leadership or guidance, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do a messy job.

Timing of planned Franco-British war games suggests Libyan war has been long planned.

November 2010 War Games: "Southern Mistral" Air Attack against Dictatorship in a Fictitious Country called "Southland" by Rep. Dennis J Kucinich
Global Research, April 15, 2011
Email this article to a friend Print this article
On November 2, 2010 France and Great Britain signed a mutual defence treaty, which included joint participation in "Southern Mistral" (www.southern-mistral.cdaoa.fr), a series of war games outlined in the bilateral agreement. Southern Mistral involved a long-range conventional air attack, called Southern Storm, against a dictatorship in a fictitious southern country called Southland. The joint military air strike was authorised by a pretend United Nations Security Council Resolution. The "Composite Air Operations" were planned for the period of 21-25 March, 2011. On 20 March, 2011, the United States joined France and Great Britain in an air attack against Gaddafi's Libya, pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1973. Have the scheduled war games simply been postponed, or are they actually under way after months of planning, under the name of Operation Odyssey Dawn? Were opposition forces in Libya informed by the US, the UK or France about the existence of Southern Mistral/Southern Storm, which may have encouraged them to violence leading to greater repression and a humanitarian crisis? In short was this war against Gaddafi's Libya planned or a spontaneous response to the great suffering which Gaddafi was visiting upon his opposition? Members of the United States Congress are wondering how much planning time it took for our own government, in concert with the UK and France, to line up 10 votes in the Security Council and gain the support of the Arab League and Nato, and then launch an attack on Libya without observing the constitutional requirement of congressional authorisation. Libya was attacked, we have been told, because Gaddafi allegedly had killed 6,000 of his own people. But is this true? It should be remembered that in 2006, a full 18 years after the Lockerbie bombing, the US lifted sanctions against Libya, which was welcomed back into the international fold. Now, as Gaddafi faces armed internal opposition backed by a UN Security Council resolution and faces powerful external opposition backed by the military of the US, the UK and France, he is told he must give up power. But to whom? What is the end game? The US has been dancing around the regime change issue, (since that is not sanctioned by the UNSC Resolution) but as in most cases one has to watch where the bombs are falling to determine whether or not regime change is the policy. The newest argument for regime change is that if he is not ousted Gaddafi can be expected to attempt Lockerbie-type retaliation against the west in response to the attacks seeking to oust him. This bloody enterprise is beginning to sound a lot like Iraq: "Saddam was killing his own people, will kill his people, or will kill us if we don"t get him first." So did the Bush Administration pump up the fears of the American people that we were next, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had the intention and capability of attacking the United States. The Iraq war begins its ninth year at a long term cost to US taxpayers of in excess of $3 trillion.The intelligence making the case for the war was "sexed up". President Bush and Vice President Cheney made a false case for war. An expensive lie. In the name of saving the people of Iraq, we bombed the country, invaded, changed the regime and it is still a carnival of death. In the end it was China, not involved in the war, which received a multi-billion oil deal. The war in Afghanistan, with no end in sight, has already run a decade and will inevitably cost trillions. The war against Libya will cost the US $1 billion for the first week. But we in America are being assured that since Nato is taking over, our role will change. In addition to funding the Libyan war from our own Pentagon resources, the US provides 25% of the funding of Nato, the UK 9.1%, France 8.72%. For all intents and purposes the coalition is handing control of the war over – to itself. As the funding switches to Nato, we in the US will get the Libyan war at a 75% discount, and our allies in the UK and France will have to pay considerable sums from their own treasuries for a war which is sure to cost billions. Of the 28 members of Nato, I think of Iceland which provides 0.0450 of Nato's military budget. If member nations are assessed accordingly, poor Iceland, whose economy has imploded, will pay $45m for each billion spent on the war in Libya. Expensive membership dues. This sleight-of-hand-over to NATO is an attempt to quell popular dissent to the war by making it appear that no one nation is taking up the burden of saving Libya. But it will beg more questions such as who or what is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and how did they work their way from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Sidra, not to mention in Afghanistan on the Chinese border? This war is wrong on so many fronts. The initial stated purpose, protecting Libyan civilians, will soon evaporate as it becomes clear that the war has accelerated casualties and enlarged a humanitarian crisis. Debates over the morality of intervention will give way to a desperate search for answers as to how and when do we get out, and how and why did we get in. Dennis Kucinich is a Democrat congressman and former presidential candidate
Dennis J Kucinich is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Dennis J Kucinich