Gaddafi using planes and helicopters to bomb protesters.

Gaddafi's regime in Libya is collapsing but like a match that fares brightly before it is extinguished, he is waging a violent war against the opposition in those who are protesting his regime.  The Libyan ambassador to the US has resigned and the ambassador to India is another important diplomat to jump ship and confirming that Libyan planes were used to bomb protesters.  Helicopter gunships were also used witnesses told Al Jazeera.

It is also becoming clearer that African mercenaries, some say as many as 30,000, have been brought in to the country to attack the opposition and protesters in the streets.

Foreigners are feeling the country.  Some 1.5 million Egyptions are in Libya and the Egyptian army has set up two field hospitals on the border to deal with the sick and injured. In Benghazi there are anti-Gaddafi slogans everywhere and the airport has been destroyed according to the BBC
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told the BBC  "We recommend to our citizens that you stay in your homes, stay off the streets, secure yourselves with water and food,". There are also 50,000 Bangladeshis, 18,000 Pakistanis, 18,000 Indians and 2,000 Nepalis, the BBC reports.

All of Royal Dutch Shell,'s "expatriate" employees have been relocated along with their dependents living in Libya.

Here's some video of what Benghazi looks like with commentary in Arabic.


And an image of Gaddafi drowning in blood posted by Carlos Latuff

There are more images from Latuff on Twitpic

The revolutions throughout the Arab world, including in Iran are an inspiration to workers everywhere.  The courage and determination of workers and youth to determine their future is a lesson for workers here in the US.  But both situations reveal the need for organization and leadership.  We can see all the opportunistic tendencies floating to the top to capture the leadership of the movement of workers and youth, like representatives of the Egyptian bourgeois and the Muslim brotherhood that didn't support the uprising in the first place.

 The Arab league is meeting in Quatar to discuss the situation but half of them are facing unrest and the possibility of regime change.  The entire situation shows the crisis that global capitalism is in and especially the weakness of the imperialist countries in the face of a mass uprising of the working class. US capitalism in particular is losing the thugs it has supported for years and from one day to the next it changes its public appraisal of events.  But both US and British imperialism have sent representatives to Egypt where those claiming to represent the opposition are asking the western governments to cancel debts. This is something the workers of Wisconsin might consider raising.  We can be sure the Union leaders won't.

As Trotsky wrote in the 1930's the crisis of the working class is the crisis of leadership and nothing confirms how correct this statement is better than the uprisings throughout North Africa and the Middle East. 

We repost here the statement from the Committee For the Defense of the Revolution in Egypt as an example of steps in the right direction that can betaken to defend the gains that have been made over the past period. They can be found here:

The revolution continues

The blood from the martyrs has not yet dried. It asks us to continue our uprising that has the goal to achieve our demands and not be ruled by criminals. The revolution has achieved something great by the fall of the tyrant and many of his supporters. But it has to be underlined that many of the aims of the revolution have not yet been achieved, because the current rulers in our country prevent it. This requires that we continue the revolution in many forms by among other things strikes, sit-ins and uprisings. Besides that a Committees for the Defence of the Revolution should be established in the neighbourhoods, cities and villages, so we can preserve the gains that the revolution has achieved, with the following demands:

1. The struggle for civilian rule is achieved by broader public and private liberty rights; such as the freedom to organise political parties, trade unions, trade union federations and freedom of the press, expression, opinions and believes.
2. The establishing of a national civilian government excluding the National Party, its officials and former presidential candidates. The council should consist of 5 judges from the Court of Cassation so that the army return to the barracks within one month.
3. The President's people, his current and former officials, ministers and presidents within the last thirty years to face trial for the crimes and corruption they committed. Furthermore their fortunes must be confiscated both at home and abroad so that they can be used to build factories and economic projects, with the purpose of helping solve the problem of unemployment.
4. The election of a constituent assembly to draft a democratic constitution for the new republic
5. Renationalisation of all state-owned land sold to thieves as businessmen and the corrupt regime over 30 years that should be directed to establish a fund to build homes for the youth.
6. Introduction of a progressive tax duty for all millionaires with the purpose of financing a minimum wage (1500 Egyptian pounds) for all workers and that the maximum wage does not exceed ten times the minimum.
7. Prosecution of the leaders of the Ministry of the Interior and those who participated in the killing of the protesters, innocents and the many thousands who were wounded, and the implementation of a system of appropriate compensation. This should give compensation to the families of both the dead and the wounded and those who need treatment should receive it at the expense of the state.
8. All political related prisoners to be released, both those arrested before and after January 25.
9. The dissolution of the state's Central Investigation and Central Security Units, a ban against the use of weapons in the repression of protest movements and a limitation of the role of the police in maintaining security under the peoples supervision.

Let us together support the establishment of Committee to Defend the Revolution in all neighbourhoods, cities and villages.
Long live the Peoples January 25 revolution
Eternal glory to our loyal martyrs

The Committee for the Defence of the Revolution – Maadi, Besatin and Dar el-Salam