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Dat je pro-oorlog bent wisten we al langer. De mindset van Bakker,
lobbyist, mislukt politicus. En aan je tweets valt af te lezen
waarom.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 2-9-2011 9:51, Bert Bakker wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAMvjhmsHjzCKvnbJGQg00dd7szxcJdtr+dZ_G4yD3KSBVZ6Bsw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div>Wat een merkwaardige observatie, "Nato prepares bloodbath in
Sirte". </div>
<div>Als Ghadaffi zich nu gewonnen geeft, is de oorlog voorbij. </div>
<div>Of wordt hij door de internationale socialisten nog steeds
beschouwd als een held der arbeidersklasse? </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_quote">2011/9/2 Antid Oto <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:protocosmos66@gmail.com">protocosmos66@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex;
MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">NATO
prepares bloodbath in Sirte<br>
1 September 2011<br>
<br>
Nearly six months after securing a United Nations Security
Council resolution<br>
authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya and the use of “all
necessary measures… to<br>
protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of
attack,” the US<br>
and its NATO allies, former colonial powers, are mounting a
barbaric siege of a<br>
major population center that threatens to produce civilian
casualties on a mass<br>
scale.<br>
<br>
In their breathless promotion of the “final battle” to realize
the real US-NATO<br>
aim in Libya—regime-change—few in the Western media have
bothered to consider<br>
the fact that the major imperialist powers are carrying out
precisely the kind<br>
of act they claimed their war was designed to prevent.<br>
<br>
Gaddafi’s troops were marching on Benghazi, the world was
told, and only a<br>
“humanitarian” intervention by NATO could save the city’s
innocent population.<br>
Now the “rebels” are encircling Sirte, led by British and
Qatari special forces<br>
troops, intelligence operatives and mercenary military
contractors, while the<br>
city’s population is being pounded by NATO bombs and cut off
from food, fuel and<br>
all basic supplies.<br>
<br>
The sheer contempt shown by the US and the Western European
powers for legality<br>
and world public opinion is breathtaking. The pretense that
NATO is acting under<br>
the terms of the UN resolution that provided a fig leaf for
its intervention is<br>
more than absurd; it has become obscene.<br>
<br>
One has to go back to the crimes of the fascist powers in the
1930s and 1940s to<br>
search for parallels to such a siege: the bombing of Guernica
in the Spanish<br>
Civil War, the siege of Leningrad and the Warsaw Ghetto.<br>
<br>
NATO warplanes have over the past few days conducted scores of
air strikes<br>
against Sirte, the town of Bani Walid to its west and the
roads linking the two.<br>
While there have been no independent reports from Sirte, the
spokesman for the<br>
Gaddafi regime, Moussa Ibrahim, reported that the continuous
bomb and missile<br>
attacks have killed 1,000 people in the city and left many
more wounded.<br>
<br>
Part of this ferocious air assault is aimed at assassinating
Colonel Muammar<br>
Gaddafi, who is believed by some to have taken refuge in the
city or its<br>
surrounding area. Western special forces are reportedly on the
ground hunting<br>
for Gaddafi, while an array of US spy planes have been
deployed to pinpoint his<br>
whereabouts.<br>
<br>
The NATO-led rebels have taken up positions on the main
coastal highway both<br>
east and west of Sirte, with orders to stay in place until the
NATO blitzkrieg<br>
has sufficiently annihilated the city’s defenders.<br>
<br>
The National Transitional Council (NTC), the self-appointed
body of ex-Gaddafi<br>
ministers, Western intelligence assets, Islamists and tribal
functionaries that<br>
has been recognized by the major powers as the legitimate
government of Libya,<br>
has announced a surrender-or-die ultimatum to the city. If a
surrender is not<br>
forthcoming by Saturday, they say, the city will be subjected
to military assault.<br>
<br>
“We have been given no indication of a peaceful surrender,” an
NTC military<br>
spokesman, Col. Ahmed Omar Bani, told a press conference in
Benghazi. “We<br>
continue to seek a peaceful solution, but on Saturday we will
use different<br>
methods against these criminals.”<br>
<br>
“Sometimes to avoid bloodshed you must shed blood, and the
faster we do this the<br>
less blood we will shed,” said Ali Tarhouni, the deputy head
of the NTC.<br>
<br>
The Western media is justifying a bloodbath in advance,
reporting that the<br>
“rebels” have “unfinished business” or “scores to settle” with
Sirte’s<br>
defenders, which are said to include army units involved in
the attacks on<br>
Misrata and Benghazi. The city is also Gaddafi’s hometown and
a center of his<br>
tribe, the Gaddafifahs.<br>
<br>
The criminal methods employed by NATO and its “rebel”
proxies—the bombing of<br>
cities, attempted assassinations, massacres and the lynching
of black<br>
sub-Saharan African immigrant workers—are in sync with the aim
of the war:<br>
imperialist conquest.<br>
<br>
Having supported the Western-backed dictatorships of Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali in<br>
Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt against popular revolts
until the bitter end,<br>
the US and its NATO allies decided to intervene in Libya,
which lies<br>
strategically between these two countries. They set about
hijacking the<br>
anti-Gaddafi demonstrations that broke out last February and
fomenting a civil<br>
war as a vehicle for direct NATO intervention. To this end,
British and French<br>
special forces units were deployed on the ground in Libya well
before any UN<br>
resolution was ever discussed.<br>
<br>
This intervention was never about protecting the civilian
population. Tellingly,<br>
a spokesman for the NTC Wednesday estimated that the total
number of Libyans<br>
killed in the last six months—both civilians and
combatants—has risen to over<br>
50,000. If one were to accept as good coin the pretense that
NATO waged its war<br>
for the purpose of saving human lives, it would have to be
judged a colossal<br>
failure. This war has produced far more carnage than any
repression that<br>
preceded it.<br>
<br>
The goal of the NATO war is to install a puppet regime in
Tripoli that will be a<br>
more pliant tool of the Western governments and energy
conglomerates. Ruling<br>
circles in Washington, London, Paris and Rome are salivating
over the prospect<br>
of turning the clock back 42 years to the days when the
corrupt monarchy of King<br>
Idris let Standard Oil write Libya’s petroleum laws and
provided military bases<br>
to both the US and Britain.<br>
<br>
Consolidating such neocolonial aims will no doubt entail an
even greater amount<br>
of bloodshed in suppressing popular opposition within Libya.<br>
<br>
The crimes being carried out against the people of Libya and
the threat of a far<br>
wider conflagration that is inherent in the inter-imperialist
tensions over who<br>
will control the country’s oil wealth pose the urgent
necessity of a new antiwar<br>
movement, based on the working class and a socialist
perspective.<br>
<br>
The struggle against war must be joined with the fight against
the assault on<br>
jobs, living standards and basic social and democratic rights
taking place in<br>
virtually every country. It must be consciously directed
against the source of<br>
both militarism and the unfolding social counterrevolution—the
capitalist profit<br>
system.<br>
<br>
Bill Van Auken<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/pers-s01.shtml"
target="_blank">http://wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/pers-s01.shtml</a><br>
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