Tripoli?

Does anyone else feel suspicious of the apparent jubliant scenes in Tripoli yesterday? Stories about Libyans tearing down pictures of Gaddafi in his once stronghold reminded me of the jubliant scenes we were told about when Iraqis pulled down the Saddam stature, which we then found out was staged...

Yesterday when I listened to the news in the morning, I could sense the gradual change within an hour. When I put the radio on in the morning there was all this talk of jubilation, of the imminent capture of Gaddafi etc etc but between 8-9am reports were gradually coming in of many ambushes etc, etc.

Also, didn't they catch Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. I swear he was also reported dead about 2 months ago as well?

Saif al-Arab was killed in an airstrike a few months ago.

Yeah, as well as being arrested, Said al Islam G has also been killed a couple of times already. He's looking remarkably well on it...

The Tripoli situation is very hard to read (lack of real info) but the impression seems to be that the Western imp powers (US, France, UK) have been caught a little bit on the hop by the advance of Western Berber rebels only very loosely connected to the Benghazi Senussi clique around the TNC. The latter are now rushing to try and get troops involved (hence the somewhat ridiculous dispatch of a couple of dinghys from Misrata). Other than that the assault on Tripoli is unexpected and now the Western players and regional players like Turkey are panicking that the capital will end up in the hands of people who have nothing to do with Benghazi (hence the rash of "recognitions" of the TNC in the last 24 hours) it's hard to make out exactly WTF is going on. SNFU.

I hope that some of the Marxists on this forum will re-evaluate their (mistaken)
assumptions based on yesterday's news.

As in any violent conflict, there is the well known "fog of war." Contradictory
information, false reports.

There are also aspects that are covert, as in covert operations. Undoubtedly,
NATO forces (and special forces, commandos, SAE, etc.) would have been involved.

But no insurrection can be willed into being by NATO.

Ghaddafi was a tryant, and people will celebrate his downfall and/or execution.

You Marxists have no theory of state power, or how to smash it, and you will
be talking about "ground rent" and "oil grabs" (of course, there is a grab for
oil! Is that really a big secret?).

Good luck sorting out the Arab Spring with your Bordiguist theories.

Yours,

David

Well...that was a pretty off the cuff unwarranted attack wasn't it Dave. I don't think anyone has made any 'assumptioned based on yesterdays news'. All these posts on this forum suggest no assumptions were being made.... Still I guess it does your ego well to sign on the internet from time to time to castigate TEH MARXISTS for getting it wrong

I don't actually think the problem here is a theory of state power and how to smash it. it is more an issue of information with which to construct a viable theory with....

That is a good one, Mate. I have rarely posted anything on this forum
As for my ego, I will let it pass. I have rarely encountered Marxist theorists
with small egos. If you know of one, please let us know his name.

But since I am not a Marxist, I will leave you to draw your own conclusions
about Tripoli, my ego, or your Master himself. It is rather hard for today's
Marxists to admit they were (or are ever) wrong.

And that's all I wanted to point out. Along with a few holes in your theories
big enough to drive tanks through.

Cheers,

David

well, ok, firstly, I think it is worth pointing out (considering it seems to have slipped you by), that neither Marx nor any Marx related thinkers or theories have been mentioned on this thread. Secondly, I'm not sure anyone here goes under the bracket 'Marxist' that you seem to suggest they do.

What do these phantasmagoric marxists have to admit they are wrong about? I see no hypotheses being forwarded here? I think most people (contrary to your first very informative post) are fully aware that NATO are balls deep in Libya and any analysis of what is going on there is inevitably going to have to consider that fact.

All I am trying to say is this (and then I will shut up and go back to my well
deserved obscurity):

At a time when Marxists (and there are many who post at libcom who are far from phantasmagorical Marxists, but self-avowed ones) think
that the world is dancing to the tune of their theory--and let us admit, for the
sake of argument, that it is insofar as the financial meltdown situation goes),
there are huge aspects of contemporary social and political life that Marxism
is wholly unable or imperfectly able to explain or to aid us much in understanding. And why should any 19th century thinker continue to be
regarded as a prophet in the 21st? Ah, but that is a rude question, I know.

One lacuna in Marxism is its rather poor historical track record re: the nature of a emancipatory social project.
Dictatorship of the proletariat, any one?
All power to the soviets, and we really mean it this time?
A historical party and not a party state?
A statist detour that lasted a century?

Please. We are still supposed to hold our breaths and wait
for vindication of your revolutionary theory?

For an understanding of power, not merely in terms of the "executive
committee of the ruling class" argument, but in the sense of understanding
capital as power, you will have to look, among other places, to the other wing of the First International and those who identify with an explicitly anti-authoritarian perspective to begin to find some answers to those questions. And if Marxists refuse to accept that others might have equally valid and interesting ideas, then so be it.

No one is denying the importance of class, or material interests, or the
whole nine yards of political economy. But to think that explains everything under the social sun is delusional, I think.

But then again, I may be wrong, and since I don't believe in absolutes, or theoretical absolutism, that prospect does not exactly frighten me.

David

Thats all well and good (no really it is*) it is not relevant to this thread. I don't see anywhere anyone suggesting that what is needed in Tripoli is the dictatorship of the prolies... I could be wrong and that doesn't frighten me either .

Why don't you go make another thread and go mete out your beef with the first international there?

* Though may be a bit stale as far as debates on anarchism/marxism/the left go

On Libya itself: Originally part of a wider social movement against unemployment and repression events in Libya quickly degenerated into an imperialist battlefield with the local cliques, some of them based on elements coming directly out of the Gaddafi regime itself, were backed by various major imperialisms led largely by France and Britain under the guise of a "humanitarianism" for "democratic change". There is nothing positive for the working class in all this as, in this region, it threatens to be drowned in a democratic/nationalist circus that is largely influenced by the major powers. These are the same democracies that have backed and armed the Gaddafi regime in the past and continue to arm and back the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel (and British arms have flowed to Syria, Lebanon, etc.).
The Mediterranean has been turned into a battleground (the biggest in this area since World War II) dominated by some of the elements of Nato (Germany wasn't keen for example, seeing its rivals gaining such a foothold) and the Iranian warships that were let through the Suez Canal by the Egyptians at the beginning of the war quickly turned back.

It's speculation to say how things will turn out in the immediate but the perspective of nationalist cliques and wider imperialist interests only look negative from a working class point of view.

[doffs cap]

I am very distressed by how the imperialist powers seem to have so easily seduced much of the "Arab Spring" altho I must admit I am not very surprised. I do support the right of nations to self determination and saw the "Arab Spring" as largely rooted in the drive of the underclasses in the Arab world for freedom from their comprador bourgeois allies of the imperialists. The focus of at least the United Statesian imperialist press has been on those regimes it wanted to do away with anyway because they were too uppity in their attitude towards their masters and Khadafy was the primary example of this.

As against a neoliberal regime in Libya I would support Khadafy altho I am aware that many good people would be all over the place on this question.

As far as being a "Marxist" vs. and "anarchist" I would definitely fall on the side of the "Marxists" and would be curious as to what "mistaken assumptions" I should re-evaluate unless David Jacobs is talking about the dead horse of the right of nations to self determination.

as a marxist I think opposing "noeoliberal regime" or imperialism or anything is no excuse for supporting Khadafy.

and the right of nations to self determination is indeed really questionnable...

internationalists/revolutionnaries must oppose every state and every nationalist leaders (well, every leader in fact..). we must support the self detemination of the working class and that's all...

piter, ignore Alexander he's some boring old Maoist always droning on about national liberation and other bourgeois fantasies. Lots of people have argued with him about it to no avail.

Here is me trying to say not everyone here is a dickhead then someone comes along tooting G mans horn. geez.

ok, Peter, that's what I supposed. but as he was talking "as a marxist" I felt the need to oppose his views to make it clear that all marxists are not siding in support of Khadafy or "the rights of nations". but anyway you don't have to read much in Libcom to realise that...

People who still call me a "Maoist" because I persist in defending the right of nations to self determination just can't figure out why I find their "arguments" against it so lame brain.

Not too long ago I was dismissed from making an argument about religion not because the author disagreed with my opinion on religion but because my opinion on religion was "inconsistent" in his opinion from my position on "nationalism."

Should I even ask what "other bourgois fantasies" this "boring old Maoist" is guilty of ?

Sounds like classic maoist/trot anti-internationalist stuff, support the little capitalist nation state against the big one. Surely you should be fighting all nation states and not supporting them.

At risk of derailing this thread further

Well in the thread 'Irish unification (26+6=1) - what's wrong with it?' ( http://libcom.org/forums/ireland/irish-unification-2661-whats-wrong-it-31122010 ), you failed to explain what benefits a united Ireland would actually bring to the Catholic working class beyond some vague idea of having 'their land' 'back' and also how support for the Irish national liberation should be actively carried out; by supporting the parliamentary party Sinn Fein, who were at the time (and still are?) presiding over cuts in the NHS and public services as part of the northern ireland government, or by supporting the dissident splinter groups who according to -LIAM- are 'little more than apolitical sectarian bigots and offer nothing but a return to murder and division in our class'?

Perhaps you would like to do so (in that thread)?

I did.

Alexander R:

He's right - he should be called a "Wilsonist", after Woodrow Wilson, US President who argued after WW1 for the "the right of nations to self determination" - his aim being to undermine the world's biggest empire at the time (Great Britain) so the US could profit from its demise, which eventually it did. In the case of Libya, "the right of nations to self determination" really has no practical meaning whatsoever (and can't for any nation), since the right of Libya's rulers to determine their territorial property is totally dependent on how the larger capitalists powers organise their interests , so the only chance (too late) for Go-dafty would have been to submit to China's protection (which they didn't offer as far as I know) - hardly "self-determination". Still I don't think the arse-licking will be all one way - the US, France and UK will have to lick Libyan arse almost as much as vice versa: a kind of anal soixante-neuf for very flexible bourgeoises.

I guess your censor has now classified me as a "flaming" Maoist as what I wrote has been officially "dissappeared" from http://libcom.org/forums/ireland/irish-unification-2661-whats-wrong-it-31122010

Alexander R: why not post your endless Wilsonist evasions of the question (which you managed to repetitively do tediously on the Irish thread) here without any flaming? Then you won't need to whine "censored!" and can consequently transform yet another thread into yet another boring discussion on the wrongs and wrongs of so-called "self-determination" in which the masses of selves determine nothing.

I saw on the TV last night that somehow the end of Go-dafty will, after 27 years, result in an investigation into the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher, the cop killed during a demo - apparently by someone at the Libyan embassy in South Kensington. There's some ballistic evidence that in fact the shot that killed her was not fired from the Libyan embassy at all, but from a window in a building next door...Certainly MI5 - under Stella Rimington - used the demonisation of Libya to undermine the NUM during the strike that had started a bit over a month before the killing of the cop. Funnily enough, a leader in The Guardian on the 20th anniversary of the end of the miners strike (March 5th 2005) was followed, on the internet, by a list of links to relevant articles on the strike. Top of the list – no.1 - was a link to the report in April 1984 of the killing of Yvonne Fletcher. The report doesn't mention the strike. Was the webmaster trying to tell us something? – was this a subliminal message? Or maybe MI5 want to be thought of as invincible and connived with the Guardian to create this conspiratorial myth.

I know everytime someone says that there's something dubious about the official version of the facts, or that the rulers have an inordinate ability to control events and how they're presented, someone else will leap on it and caricature it as yet another "conspiracy theory" but it's obvious that conspiracies exist and that rulers throughout the centuries have obviously conspired and manipulated. But is there a secret ruling class use today that this "at last the perpetrator will be caught" story has? The media seem to be making a big thing about this, almost as much as their coverage of the fall of "crazy hair" himself. With the killing of 3 men by cops in 8 days, could it just be a way of turning attention on the fact that cops getting killed is far more important. Are they preparing for the possibility of another PC Blakelock-type killing, so as to once again intensify spectators' sympathy for the cops and intensify justifications for more repression? Or are they planning to do the killing themselves?
See next week's thrilling episode.

For those new posters who perhaps think that the rest of us are being a bit short tempered with Alexander Roxwell and his ideas on 'national liberation' and 'self determination', here are two threads in which we've all asked Alex reasonable questions, and he's refused to answer them.

Anyway, judge for yourselves:

http://libcom.org/forums/ireland/irish-unification-2661-whats-wrong-it-31122010

http://libcom.org/forums/history/right-nations-self-determination-27012011

I'd read them in that order, as the second is a continuation of the first thread.

I'd appreciate some feedback from anyone who's reading them for the first time - are we being harsh on Alex, in your opinion?

G4S spots great opportunities for security work in the new Libya
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/23/g4s-eyes-opportunities-in-new-libya?cat=business&type=article

Samotnaf:

I recall back in the 1980 election when Jimmy Carter called Ronald Reagan something like a dummy or stupid or something somilar and either Time magazine or Newsweek or U.S. News and World Report made a big deal out of what they called the "rudeness" issue.

The bourgeois media did not want to deal with a question as to whether or or not Ronald Reagan really and truly lacked the brains to be the President so they transformed the issue from the real question to a question of "rudeness."

It seems to me that they decided that Jimmy Carter was "flaming."

Was I wrong?

If you are Jimmy Carter then you have no place in these forums. I'm starting to like this analogy, actually.

Can't comment on the flaming issue because I don't know what you said Alex, but could you reply to my post again? Cheers

And are you still prepared to give your vocal support for the Gadaffi regime given that his fighters have been executing political prisoners?