The thugs at the CIA and M16 must be running around like chickens with their heads cut off right now. As the various forces that make up the Libyan rebels gain ground, more and more documents revealing the friendly and cooperative relationship between these two torture agencies and their junior partner, Muammar Gaddafi are surfacing.
It is now revealed that the CIA isn’t the only organization that goes around the world kidnapping whomever it deems a suspect but Britain’s M16 also has an independent program of its own. Just before the war criminal Blair’s visit to Libya a few years ago, the British secret service, working with Gaddafi’s security operations, kidnapped a Gaddafi foe in Hong Kong and handed him, his wife and four children over to the Libyan security forces. Both British and US intelligence were well aware of Gaddifi’s notorious torture centers.
Documents found in the office of Gaddafi’s intelligencechief in Tripoli show how the latest victim was living in China and tricked by M16 in flying to Hong Kong for a meeting supposedly to allow him to return to live in London where he had previously been living in exile. According to the Guardian UK, a previous kidnap victim who was held for 6 years was first tortured by the CIA before being handed over to Gaddafi where he “suffered abuse for several years being hung form walls and immersed in ice baths.” The victim is considering suing the British government who he claims knew about his situation but did nothing. Associates of the latest case cannot understand why the individual was taken as they didn’t consider him as having any “value” for British intelligence. They assume he was simply a “gift” from the British to Gaddafi to strengthen the new friendship.
Prior to the uprising that began in Benghazi, western business interests, the forces that the CIA and M16 represent, were building stronger links with Gaddafi as he was clearly moving to privatize more of the state’s assets, particularly oil. Anglo/Dutch Shell had signed a $550 million oil exploration contract with Gaddafi just days before the most recent rendition.
The British government’s response to these revelations is the usual stuff saying it has a “longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.” , and that M16 was complying with, “ministerially authorized government policy.” . The government is declining to say which “department’s ministers authorized the operations” You can see why they hate Wikileaks and why Bradley Manning is being treated the way he is.
No one can doubt the murderous history of British intelligence or any of the intelligence services of the capitalist state. It took 25 years for the truth to come out about the Derry “Bogside Massacre” in 1972 when 26 catholic civil rights marchers were assassinated by the British Parachute Regiment, an elite arm of the British ruling class. The soldiers had been given the authority to shoot to kill.
The CIA’s role in assassinations, kidnappings and other forms of torture and mayhem in the interests of US corporations is well documented and it includes the importation of cocaine in to US inner cities to undermine political developments and radicalization amongst the black youth. Guantanamo, the torture center that Obama pledged to shut down is just one example in a long history of abuse waged on the peoples of the world by the CIA. (see the movie, The Road to Guantanamo).
We can see why the frantic efforts to kill Gaddafi as an old partner in crime. Lke Sadaam Hussein, he goes back a long way in his dealings and thuggery with western intelligence. The western capitalist class are not afraid of Gaddafi, they were comfortably welcoming him back in to the fold and were pleased with his recent overtures to open up Libya’s oil wealth to western interests. The CIA and M16 as representatives of the US and British bourgeois have a lot of blood on their hands and any thinking worker must surely wonder why it is never a British or US politician or military figure that is taken to world court in The Hague as a “war criminal”. The only official “war criminals” are lesser stooges of these masters of mayhem; what we call “small potatoes”. Henry Kissinger, one of the most prolific killers in the modern era is the only US culprit that has to avoid some foreign travel as he is wanted in some countries for his role in the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected government in 1973 and the murder of its present, Salvadore Allende.
It is almost impossible when one has no one on the ground and limited resources to gauge exactly what is going on in Libya. The leadership of the National Transitional Council is clearly dominated by US, British, and French interests. We have pointed out in earlier blogs the composition of the leadership, privatizers and flunkies of western capital. So as we have stated before, we believe workers should oppose NATO’s invasion of Libya. The forces of French, US and British capitalism are not in Libya in the interests of the Libyan or international working class.
But despite the composition of the leadership of the NTC, there must be in the ranks of the thousands of people who are trying to caste off a ruthless dictatorial regime workers and middle class elements struggling for genuine democratic rights and reforms. People have died in the struggle for an end to the torture and repression, the lack of democratic rights. I have been informed this weekend that Unions and political formations are springing up in Libya. Under Gaddafi you could be put to death for trying to form a Union.
It is inevitable that among what are called “the rebels” are genuine working class fighters and youth who have expectations that either NATO or the stooges of western capitalism can or will fulfill. It is these forces workers must support. So in many ways, if and when the Gaddafi regime is finally crushed, the real struggle begins; the struggle against imperialism, its representatives, the Libyan bourgeois, many who have lived in exile and will return, and Islamic fundamentalism.
For more reading on this subject check the “Libya” and “Middle East” labels.
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