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FOS Statement on Professor Davidson's Libyan
Analysis Circulated by Gary Keenan
Don Currie
Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Editor Focus on Socialism
March 19, 2011
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
Phone: 1 250 355 2669
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
Dear Comrades.
What Professor Lawrence Davidson said on March 19th (See below) CPS said on our website
on February 24th.
When an American PROFESSOR Lawrence Davidson says it is circulated by Gary Keenan and
when a Canadian worker says it he is accused of having a “warped ideology”.
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=620
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=618 .
The issue is not what is wrong with what Professor Davidson said it is what is wrong with
what Gary Keenan and Rafeh Hulays and the Canadian Arab Justice Committee (ADALA) and
those that agree with their analysis said at the outset of the events that have now evolved
into a US‐NATO‐French‐Canadian military attack on the government of Libya, a member
state of the United Nations.
The debate sparked by the ADALA statement has been duplicated in peace coalitions all
across the country. The peace movement is split on the issue of the UN resolution and the
impending US‐NATO‐French‐Canada military attack on the government of Libya.
One is called upon to take sides.
One member of the Communist Party in Calgary has coined the slogan: “No to Qaddafi! No
to Imperialism!
That is classic trotskyist centrist neutrality and has nothing to do with Communist
Internationalism.
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 2 of 8
Gary Keenan called for Qaddafi to be hung in the main square in Tripoli. He may just get his
wish and along with Qaddafi tens of thousands of Libyan patriots compelled to defend the
sovereignty of their country from US‐NATO‐French‐Canadian imperialist military aggression
with or without Qaddafi. The US‐NATO armada with a UN resolution to cover up their crimes
will stand by as monarchists and extremists egged on by Saudi Arabia do the dirty work.
What is missing in PROFESSOR Davidson’s statement, the ADALA statement and the slogan
coined by a spokesperson for the Communist Party in Calgary is the same. It ignores and
trivializes the issue of Libyan sovereignty.
An imperialist invasion force has been mobilized to interfere in the internal affairs of a
member state of the United Nations and has deployed its vast military power on the side of
the Libyan monarchists and their US supporters who oppose the Qaddafi government. The
defectors from Qaddafi have been given a warm welcome in Washington where they have
set up a government in waiting. Most of them have been educated in the USA. They do this
even as the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Bahrain are being suppressed the
latter murdered by Saudi troops, the same country that spearheaded the Arab League call
for a no‐fly‐zone over Libya.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon attempts to lend legitimacy to Canadian
CF 18’s being sent to attack the people by recalling what the Canadian government
sanctioned in 1999 when CF 18’s bombed Belgrade. Thousands died. I believe it was retired
General Lewis McKenzie or a former Canadian ambassador that let slip on CBC the other day
that Canadian CF 18 sorties in that aggression accounted for 18 to 20% of all of the NATO
destruction and casualties inflicted on Belgrade. The countryside surrounding Belgrade is
still littered with depleted uranium.
That crime was committed under the mantra of the duty to protect. Who was the author of
that contrived imperialist doctrine? Lloyd Axworthy former Liberal Foreign Minister. I
remember him well from our days in Winnipeg and he hasn’t changed. The imperialists have
a duty to protect the oil profits of the big foreign investors and they are fulfilling that duty to
the letter even if they have to kill tens of thousands of Libyans to fulfill that duty to global
finance capital.
Today’s foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon cites the endorsement of the Arab League as
moral justification for Canadian participation in aggression against the sovereign state of
Libya that has done no injury to Canada.
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 3 of 8
Has anyone taken the trouble to look at the composition of the Arab League (AL)?
http://www.arab.de/arabinfo/league.htm It is a composite of monarchies, US client states
and developing states most of which are weak and dominated by Saudi Arabia. The AL vote
has not been revealed. One news report says it was unanimous and another that Syria
opposed the resolution.
While the Arab League resolution sanctioning war has been given unlimited coverage in the
capitalist media, the attempts of the African Union uniting 53 African states offering to
broker a cease fire have been ignored. The Communist Party of Canada statement below
exposes that double standard.
Egypt that is supposed to now be free is one of the states that has called for a no‐fly‐zone
over Libya. What does that mean?
It means the people of Egypt are not yet free in spite of Lawrence Cannon’s spurious
statement to that effect. What it means is there is still a government in Egypt that promotes
a Mubarak pro‐US foreign policy without Mubarak. The people of Egypt and Tunisia still
confront governments that have simply changed the actors, not the class content of their
rule.
These states are not yet free of US domination and control. A struggle is under way in those
countries for the sovereign right of the people to decide their own affairs without US
imperialist intervention. They have made a step but have a long struggle ahead.
What the G7 states and their NATO gendarme are doing to Libya they are planning to do to
Cuba and Venezuela using the same set piece UN sanctioned canard of the “duty to protect”
when the opportune moment arrives.
Here is what the International Actions Centre (IAC) had to say. That is the website of the
organization founded by Ramsey Clark former US Attorney General of the USA regularly
attacked by Zionists and Miami Cuban reactionaries.
http://www.iacenter.org/nafricamideast/libya011711
The IAC site also carries the statement of the Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations.
Here is what he had to say. http://www.iacenter.org/nafricamideast/libya‐cuban‐statement .
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 4 of 8
I would recommend that these are the statements we should be circulating and asking Gary
Keenan why he isn’t.
When has US imperialism ever been on the side of the people? When has US imperialism
ever been on the side of genuine revolutionaries? When has US imperialism and its Canadian
state monopoly capitalist ally ever respected the sovereignty of any state they wished to
destroy?
The favorite parlance of the corporate controlled mass media and their media shills such as
the CBC’s Anthony Germaine, and the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York, imbedded with the so‐
called revolutionaries waving monarchist flags, is to speak of the G7 US‐NATO‐EU states as
“the international community.”
What is the international community? It is all those states that kneel and grovel before G7
imperialism. There are 203 countries at last count on this planet and the majority are
struggling against G7 imperialist, IMF, WTO, World Bank, NATO, NORTHCOM and now
AFRICOM aggression.
When Finance Minister Flaherty brings down his budget on Tuesday it will be a made‐at‐the‐
IMF budget with the same austerity for workers and tax cuts for corporations as the IMF has
imposed on many Arab and African states.
The term international community is an imperialist contrivance and anyone calling
themselves progressives should expose it for what it really is and strike it from their
vocabulary.
The impending brutal NATO led assault on Libya is another front in the imperialist war
underway in Iraq and Afghanistan and gradually being extended to Pakistan. The
abstentions on the UN resolution are deplorable. Those states like China and Russia that
claim to be concerned about world peace and could have cast a veto have not only raised
doubts about those claims but are now complicit in whatever tragedies will befall the people
of Libya resulting from the US‐NATO‐French‐Canadian assaults now underway. The stance of
the non‐permanent members of the Security Council, Brazil, India and Germany that
abstained, in spite of all of their tortured excuses are now also complicit in what is about to
happen to the sovereignty of Libya and its people.
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 5 of 8
The NATO assault on Libya has been undertaken to prevent the Qaddafi forces from winning
the civil war. It has been undertaken in clear violation of international law and the Charter of
the UN that does not sanction the overthrow by force the government of a member state of
the UN. The Libyan government is not in violation of the UN Charter. Hillary Clinton’s stance
is that a country may choose any form of government it wishes so long as it has the approval
of US Imperialism. That is what the Libyan government rejects and it has every right to do
so.
It is that imperialist arrogance as expressed by Hillary Clinton that the Libyan foreign
minister responded to when he said to western journalists and the US government and the
UN, “Libya is our country – not yours.”
Without NATO interference the Libyan government would have defeated the US backed
monarchists and counter‐revolutionaries and that is a certainty. Now the country may be
split and a desultory war will ensue during which all of the social gains of the Libyan people
derived from their nationalized oil resources will be lost. Libya enjoyed one of the higher
standards of living on the African continent and the common people were its beneficiaries.
Imperialism doesn’t like regimes that share anything with its people except exploitation and
the national debt.
Those Canadian voices, proclaiming themselves to be on the left, that wag their finger at
Qaddafi for having made concessions to imperialism by permitting Suncor, Shell, SNC Lavalin
and Bomardier to undertake joint ventures in Libya need to look to our own country, where
foreign oil investor interests are pillaging Canadian energy resources with the complete
approval of federal and provincial governments.
The entire left with few exceptions has been once again knocked senseless by imperialist
propaganda. As Bill Beeching was so fond of saying “once again we are being given the gold
plated bamboozle.”
There is a gradual return to a grasp by the Communist Party of the basic realities of the
imperialist assault on the people of Libya. The March 8th statement of the Communist Party
of Canada was weak and concessionary:
http://www.communist‐party.ca/pdf/CEC_Statement_on_Libya_March%208_2011.pdf
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 6 of 8
Since then the CPC has issued a stronger more forthright statement on March 19th which
may be found at: http://www.communist‐party.ca/pdf/Statement_on_Libya_2011_03_19.pdf
for your information for study and circulation.
Let an American professor say belatedly what every clear headed Communist has been
saying for weeks. The more voices against an imperialist attack on Libya the better.
Those who were swept off their feet by the torrent of imperialist propaganda that preceded
UN Resolution 1973 have some explaining to do. Which side are you on?
Events are answering all of the questions of principle at stake for those who are not willfully
blind.
Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Whether you believe that the United Nations resolution authorizing extensive intervention in the Libyan civil war is
justified or not, and whether you believe that the admittedly eccentric forty two year rule of Muammar Gadhafi over
a complex and fractious tribal society has been cruel or not, there is one thing that all objective observers should be
able to agree on. All should agree that the rationale put forth by the United States government for supporting the
impending NATO intervention, that this action is to be taken to bring about an immediate end to attacks on civilians,
is one of the biggest acts of hypocrisy in a modern era ridden with hypocrisy.
There is, of course, no arguing with the principle put forth. The protection of civilians in times of warfare, a moral
good in itself, is a requirement of international law. Yet it is a requirement that is almost always ignored. And no
great power has ignored it more than the United States. In Iraq the civilian death count due to the American invasion
may well have approached one million. In Afghanistan, again directly due to the war initiated by U.S. intervention,
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 7 of 8
civilian deaths between 2007 and 2010 are estimated at about 10,000. In Vietnam, United States military
intervention managed to reduce the civilian population by about two million.
And then there is United States protection of the Israeli process of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. America’s
hypocrisy as Washington consistently does nothting about the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the slow reduction of a
million and half Gazans to poverty and malnutrition. And, finally, the unforgettable hypocrisy inherent in U.S.
support for the 2009 Israeli invasion of that tiny and crowded enclave. The 2009 invasion was the most striking
example of an outright attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure since the World War II. And the American
government supported every single moment of it.
Thus, when President Obama gets up before the TV cameras and tells us that Libyan civilians have to be protected,
when UN ambassador Susan Rice tells us that the aim of the UN resolution is to safeguard Libya’s civilian
population and bring those who attack civilians, including Gadhafi, before the International Criminal Court, a
certain sense of nausea starts to gather in the pit of one’s stomach. If Washington wants regime change in Libya,
which is almost certainly the case, government spokespersons ought to just say it and spare us all a feeling of
spiritual despair worthy of Soren Kieregaard!
It was Oscar Wilde who once said that "the true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one
who lies with sincerity." I think that politicians learn, some easier than others, to live their lives like this. And, as I
have said before, the only way they can be successful in sharing their delusions with the rest of us is that the
majority do not have the contextual knowledge to analyze and make accurate judgments on their utterances. The
successful hypocrite and his or her ignorant audience go hand in hand.
ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca FOS Editor Exchange with Gary Keenan Page 8 of 8