THE ROVING EYE
Disaster capitalism swoops over Libya
By Pepe Escobar
Think of the new Libya as the latest spectacular chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we had R2P ("responsibility to protect"). Instead of neo-conservatives, we had humanitarian imperialists.
But the target is the same: regime change. And the project is the same: to completely dismantle and privatize a nation that was not integrated into turbo-capitalism; to open another (profitable) land of opportunity for turbocharged neo-liberalism. The whole thing is especially handy because it is smack in the middle of a nearly global recession.
It will take some time; Libyan oil won't totally return to the market within 18 months. But there's the reconstruction of everything the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed (well, not much of what the Pentagon bombed in 2003 was reconstructed in Iraq ...)
Anyway - from oil to rebuilding - in thesis juicy business opportunities loom. France's neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David of Arabia Cameron believe they will be especially well positioned to profit from NATO's victory. Yet there's no guarantee the new Libyan bonanza will be enough to lift both former colonial powers (neo-colonials?) out of recession.
President Sarkozy in particular will milk the business opportunities for French companies for all they're worth - part of his ambitious agenda of "strategic redeployment" of France in the Arab world. A compliant French media are gloating that this was "his" war - spinning that he decided to arm the rebels on the ground with French weaponry, in close cooperation with Qatar, including a key rebel commando unit that went by sea from Misrata to Tripoli last Saturday, at the start of "Operation Siren".
Well, he certainly saw the opening when Muammar Gaddafi's chief of protocol defected to Paris in October 2010. That's when the whole regime change drama started to be incubated.
Bombs for oil
As previously noted (see Welcome to Libya's 'democracy', Asia Times Online, August 24) the vultures are already circling Tripoli to grab (and monopolize) the spoils. And yes - most of the action has to do with oil deals, as in this stark assertion by Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at the "rebel" Arabian Gulf Oil Company; "We don't have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil."
These three happen to be crucial members of the BRICS group of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which are actually growing while the Atlanticist, NATO-bombing economies are either stuck in stagnation or recession. The top four BRICs also happen to have abstained from approving UN Security Council resolution 1973, the no-fly zone scam that metamorphosed into NATO bringing regime change from above. They saw right through it from the beginning.
To make matters worse (for them), only three days before the Pentagon's Africom launched its first 150-plus Tomahawks over Libya, Colonel Gaddafi gave an interview to German TV stressing that if the country were attacked, all energy contracts would be transferred to Russian, Indian and Chinese companies.
So the winners in the oil bonanza are already designated: NATO members plus Arab monarchies. Among the companies involved, British Petroleum (BP), France's Total and the Qatar national oil company. For Qatar - which dispatched jet fighters and recruiters to the front lines, trained "rebels" in exhaustive combat techniques, and is already managing oil sales in eastern Libya - the war will reveal itself to be a very wise investment decision.
Prior to the months-long crisis that is in its end game now with the rebels in the capital, Tripoli, Libya was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. Once resumed, this could reap Tripoli's new rulers some US$50 billion annually. Most estimates place oil reserves at 46.4 billion barrels.
The "rebels" of new Libya better not mess with China. Five months ago, China's official policy was already to call for a ceasefire; if that had happened, Gaddafi would still control more than half of Libya. Yet Beijing - never a fan of violent regime change - for the moment is exercising extreme restraint.
Wen Zhongliang, the deputy head of the Ministry of Trade, willfully observed, "Libya will continue to protect the interests and rights of Chinese investors and we hope to continue investment and economic cooperation." Official statements are piling up emphasizing "mutual economic cooperation".
Last week, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), told Xinhua that all deals and contracts agreed with the Gaddafi regime would be honored - but Beijing is taking no chances.
Libya supplied no more than 3% of China's oil imports in 2010. Angola is a much more crucial supplier. But China is still Libya's top oil customer in Asia. Moreover, China could be very helpful in the infrastructure rebuilding front, or in the technology export - no less than 75 Chinese companies with 36,000 employees were already on the ground before the outbreak of the tribal/civil war, swiftly evacuated in less than three days.
The Russians - from Gazprom to Tafnet - had billions of dollars invested in Libyan projects; Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and the construction company Odebrecht also had intrests there. It's still unclear what will happen to them. The director general of the Russia-Libya Business Council, Aram Shegunts, is extremely worried: "Our companies will lose everything because NATO will prevent them from doing business in Libya."
Italy seems to have passed the "rebel" version of "you're either with us or without us". Energy giant ENI apparently won't be affected, as Premier Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi pragmatically dumped his previous very close pal Gaddafi at the start of the Africom/NATO bombing spree.
ENI's directors are confident Libya's oil and gas flows to southern Italy will resume before winter. And the Libyan ambassador in Italy, Hafed Gaddur, reassured Rome that all Gaddafi-era contracts will be honored. Just in case, Berlusconi will meet the TNC's prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, this Thursday in Milan.
Bin Laden to the rescue
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - of the famed "zero problems with our neighbors" policy - has also been gushing praise on the former "rebels" turned powers-that-be. Eyeing the post-Gaddafi business bonanza as well, Ankara - as NATO's eastern flank - ended up helping to impose a naval blockade on the Gaddafi regime, carefully cultivated the TNC, and in July formally recognized it as the government of Libya. Business "rewards" loom.
Then there's the crucial plot; how the House of Saud is going to profit from having been instrumental in setting up a friendly regime in Libya, possibly peppered with Salafi notables; one of the key reasons for the Saudi onslaught - which included a fabricated vote at the Arab League - was the extreme bad blood between Gaddafi and King Abdullah since the run-up towards the war on Iraq in 2002.
It's never enough to stress the cosmic hypocrisy of an ultra-regressive absolute monarchy/medieval theocracy - which invaded Bahrain and repressed its native Shi'ites - saluting what could be construed as a pro-democracy movement in Northern Africa.
Anyway, it's time to party. Expect the Saudi Bin Laden Group to reconstruct like mad all over Libya - eventually turning the (looted) Bab al-Aziziyah into a monster, luxury Mall of Tripolitania.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
Labels: LIBYA, NEOLIBERALISM, SHOCK DOCTRINE
Read more...
Asylum seekers harm Zimbabwe's image
by Wadzanai Mhombera
17/11/2010 00:00:00
FOR the last 10 or so years, many Zimbabweans have sought asylum in the United Kingdom.
Reasons put forward being that their lives were in danger, politically that is. That Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe were persecuting them. That if they return to Zimbabwe they will be maimed, tortured, raped, persecuted, killed and murdered by the Zanu-PF government.
Some have even appeared on international news agencies like CNN, BBC and Sky News claiming that Zimbabwe, their motherland where their relatives remained, was a no-go area for them.
I remember one former ZBC sports journalist who was quoted saying there was genocide in Zimbabwe. Some even went to the extent of engaging lawyers to ensure they got asylum status in the UK.
The right of asylum or political asylum, is an ancient judicial notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country or church sanctuaries.
The question I wish to put forward is: was it ever necessary for Zimbabweans to seek asylum? Was there ever genocide in Zimbabwe in the last 10 years? Was Zimbabwe ever on fire that it was uninhabitable?
If one says yes to these questions, why is that most of us remained here without seeking asylum and refugee status elsewhere? Why is that those who sought and got asylum in the UK left their parents, loved ones and relatives in Zimbabwe?
Why is it that they continued to communicate with them and some sent them money which indeed would arrive safely in a nation with ‘genocide’? Some even sent money which was used by those who remained to build houses. Would this had been possible in a country where there was chaos and people were being maimed as the asylum seekers portray in their applications for asylum in the UK?
I wish to put it forward that asylum seekers have to some extent destroyed this country through blatant lies. These people should not have the privilege of being called Zimbabweans. They lied against this country so as to get residence in the UK and other European countries.
Some of the bad publicity that this country has been fighting in the recent years was propagated by these asylum seekers who would appear on so called ‘international’ news agencies unashamedly lying about their motherland. The whole world became awash with clear lies that Zimbabwe was in turmoil.
What baffles the mind is that most of these asylum seekers left their parents in Zimbabwe. Why would they turn their backs on their parents and leave them to be ‘maimed’ by Zanu PF?
I have had the opportunity of meeting one asylum seeker and I discovered something very disturbing. When one gets asylum status in the UK, he or she is not allowed to visit or return to Zimbabwe. If he visits Zimbabwe, his status will be revoked with the UK Home Office arguing that such a visit would mean it is safe for the asylum seeker to return to Zimbabwe.
So what these brothers and sisters of us do when they visit Zimbabwe is they touch down in South Africa, say at OR Tambo International Airport where their passports will be stamped, they will then enter Zimbabwe illegally through bribing officials at ports of entry.
They do this so that their passports do not receive a Zimbabwe immigration stamp. This is so that when they return to UK their passports would only reflect that they have been to South Africa, not Zimbabwe. When they go back they go through the same process.
One wonders why they visit Zimbabwe if their lives were in danger when they left and sought asylum status in the UK? The guy that I met had actually come to see his parents, yet I discovered that when he applied for asylum he had lied that both parents were dead and there was no reason from him to return to Zimbabwe. Very disgusting indeed! How can someone declare his parents dead just to be allowed to stay in England?
This guy’s story only came to light when he wanted to renew his Zimbabwean passport which was about to expire. He could not explain why his passport had no Zimbabwean immigration stamp, yet he had entered Zimbabwe and his passport only had a stamp of departure from UK and arrival at OR Tambo International Airport in South Africa.
Vanhu ava vanofanira kusungwa, for they have indeed hurt the country by peddling lies. Their Zimbabwean status must been taken away. Like I said earlier, they do not deserve to be Zimbabweans.
I stand to be corrected but I am of the opinion that asylum seekers have done more harm than good to this beautiful and peaceful country which is one of the safest places in the whole world.
Zimbabwe was never a genocide case; neither were its people in any danger in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Unless of course, you are talking about the Nyadzonya and Chimoio brutal bombings by the Rhodesian Forces.
Wadzanai Mhombera is the ZBC's online assistant editor
Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, PROPAGANDA, SHOCK DOCTRINE
Read more...
MDC and the art of making impossible demands
Frank Chita
I NEVER quite understood the Movement for Democratic Change, as a party, from the day of its inception. The MDC likes to say that another world is possible, but is never quite sure of that world, or at least fails to articulate it properly.
No one really seems to know why they are where they are: in the inclusive Government. We know how they got there - through the back door. They just know they have to be doing something; but they don't get to do it. Infact, they do everything else and not that which they are supposed to be doing. Statecraft is not written in their political blueprint.
For instance, they join the government, and then spend time opposing the same government, asking for the ouster of some of the members of that government.
Kudos to the MDC though. They have mastered one form of art: opposing, but not initiating. They also know how to make impossible demands inorder to look important and busy, but doing nothing for the people.
Rather than debate issues, the MDC has mastered the "Cloward-Piven strategy".
According to David Horowitz, who coined the expression, Cloward-Piven is "the strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis." Named after sociologists and antipoverty and voting rights activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who first elucidated it, the Cloward-Piven strategy, "seeks to hasten the fall of (a government) by overloading the ... bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."
Like a fun-house-mirror version of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine theory, the Cloward-Piven strategy dictates that the opposition will exploit that crisis to push through alternative policies in an impossible manner.
For instance, they ask for liquidity in banks, but campaign against the printing of money and against the lifting of sanctions. They ask for the appointment of Roy Bennett to an agricultural portfolio, when Zimbabwe's liberation struggle against white settlerism was fought against the likes of Bennett - white landowners who moved blacks from their lands and pushed them to servitude and second-class citizenship.
They encourage lawlessness in the country, and then blame the police for using brute force. For instance, the beatings that Morgan Tsvangirai endured some years ago, though not justifiable, only occurred because the MDC-T party had disguised an illegal political rally as a prayer meeting. Ironically, the MDC-T party had never held a prayer meeting prior to that day, and have never held one since.
Tendai Biti illegally announced the "victory" of Morgan Tsvangirai in presidential elections and yet complained when he was arrested for causing despondency. One wonders whether any western country would have found Biti's behaviour acceptable.
Interestingly, these events have been taken up by a clutch of propagandists--from internet news reporters and radio hosts, e.g. SW Radio journalists and others, trying to question why events like that could have happened, here, in Zimbabwe, a country of milk and honey.
The madness is repeated in parliament, where heckling and booing has become the order of the day. The august House has become the theatre for such Scooby-Doo kind of comic politics; where every motion from a Zanu-PF or non-MDC-T legislator is opposed, without its merits tested.
All of this, of course, is a reactionary paranoid fantasy against anything Zanu-PF. MDC-T legislators are agents of imperial change and they are quite happy to do the bidding in an august House on the pretext of representing the masses. But the looniness of it has not stopped -- more demands keep cropping up to make the country ungovernable.
Rather than laughing off the MDC-T strategy of making the country ungovernable as a Scooby-Doo comic mystery, it is impossible to blunt its appeal or limit its impact.
It is this strategy that guides MDC-T's every move to this day; not the need to better the Zimbabwean people. Otherwise how does one explain how "a party of excellence" can fight for sanctions against its own people; and use deaths emanating therefrom, to try and gain power?
Labels: CLOWARD-PIVENT STRATEGY, COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, MDC, SHOCK DOCTRINE
Read more...
Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again
Journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.” [includes rush transcript]
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Naomi Klein. We’re going to try that tape again, her commenting on what is going on in Haiti right now and who is profiting already.
NAOMI KLEIN: But as I write about in The Shock Doctrine, crises are often used now as the pretext for pushing through policies that you cannot push through under times of stability. Countries in periods of extreme crisis are desperate for any kind of aid, any kind of money, and are not in a position to negotiate fairly the terms of that exchange.
And I just want to pause for a second and read you something, which is pretty extraordinary. I just put this up on my website. The headline is “Haiti: Stop Them Before They Shock Again.” This went up a few hours ago, three hours ago, I believe, on the Heritage Foundation website.
“Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in the region.” And then goes on.
Now, I don’t know whether things are improving or not, because it took the Heritage Foundation thirteen days before they issued thirty-two free market solutions for Hurricane Katrina. We put that document up on our website, as well. It was close down the housing projects, turn the Gulf Coast into a tax-free free enterprise zone, get rid of the labor laws that forces contractors to pay a living wage. Yeah, so it took them thirteen days before they did that in the case of Katrina. In the case of Haiti, they didn’t even wait twenty-four hours.
Now, why I say I don’t know whether it’s improving or not is that two hours ago they took this down. So somebody told them that it wasn’t couth. And then they put up something that was much more delicate. Fortunately, the investigative reporters at Democracy Now! managed to find that earlier document in a Google cache. But what you’ll find now is a much gentler “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti.” And buried down there, it says, “Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.”
But the point is, we need to make sure that the aid that goes to Haiti is, one, grants, not loans. This is absolutely crucial. This is an already heavily indebted country. This is a disaster that, as Amy said, on the one hand is nature, is, you know, an earthquake; on the other hand is the creation, is worsened by the poverty that our governments have been so complicit in deepening. Crises—natural disasters are so much worse in countries like Haiti, because you have soil erosion because the poverty means people are building in very, very precarious ways, so houses just slide down because they are built in places where they shouldn’t be built. All of this is interconnected. But we have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy, which is part natural, part unnatural, must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti, and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interests of our corporations. And this is not a conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein speaking last night at the Ethical Culture Society. She’s the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Labels: HAITI, NAOMI KLEIN, NEOLIBERALISM, SHOCK DOCTRINE
Read more...
Wafawarova has a point regarding 'shock doctrine'
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0000
DEAR EDITOR -- The article by Reason Wafawarova entitled, "Seeking green shoots in sanction" and published on Monday (see here) tells it like it is. This is a masterpiece, detailed, forensic and the analysis is incisive. It confirms the shock doctrine as propounded and tested by the US corporate fundamentalist and economist at the Chicago School of Economics, the late Milton Friedman.
Friedman was the advocate of the shock doctrine, which states that when disaster strikes whether man-made or natural, there are ideas lying around, which make the once politically impossible, become inevitable.
What we are seeing in Zimbabwe is a man-made disaster through sanctions, making the economy scream and inevitably according to the Western corporatist doctrine, unfettered market forces have to be deployed to sort out the problem.
Indeed this means giving the land back to the former white owners lock stock and barrel, handing over the central bank to private Western institutions, giving all mineral rights to foreign and mainly Western companies and totally exclude the indigenous Black Zimbabweans from participating in the mainstream economic activities.
Until this is done to the satisfaction of the West, the very obscure benchmarks will always remain unmet, put simply, the goal posts will be constantly moved.
Let us not forget that the theme which is ostensible whenever Zimbabwe is discussed is the protection of white minority rights. This was confirmed by Henry Kissinger in his memoirs, Years of Renewal. This was the focus point at the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference and all we have witnessed over the years is the unwillingness to support a meaningful land reform programme in Zimbabwe.
We are told that private property rights have to be protected. Contrast this with what Prof Mandivamba Rukuni who said ‘if Western democracy and development is predicated on property ownership, why is the same denied to Black Zimbabweans?’
As Reason rightly put it, this leitmotif is irritatingly pervasive in the Zimbabwean discourse by Western countries.
I personally think that some Zimbabweans have chosen to forget that the racially notorious statutes, the Land Apportionment Act and Land Tenure Act of the settler regime are still affecting the indigenous Black people even to this day.
This approach by the West makes one wonder if there is a general belief that Black people are of a certain genotype which precludes them from being successful farmers or business people in general.
What is surprising is that due to the psychological effect of colonialism, some of the Black folks do believe that Black means brawn and white equals brains.
In fact socio-economic conditions created by the forces of imperialism, make Black people fail not because they are inherently inept but they will never be allowed to encroach the ‘master’s’ domain.
It is high time the West recognizes our quest to self determination, sovereignty and empowerment otherwise our liberation efforts will be in vain.
ABJ.
Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, REASON WAFAROVA, SHOCK DOCTRINE
Read more...
