The Libyan government was not a mere puppet of the Empire before, and it will not be a mere puppet of the Empire afterwards.
The new government - if all goes according to NATO plans - will have better relations with the US, Britain, and France, etc., and oil companies based in these countries will probably get better deals than they had before. The New York Times has now stated this openly. The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/business/global/the-scramble-for-access-to-libyas-oil-wealth-begins.html However, the new government, under any plausible scenario, will not be a mere "puppet" of the U.S., Britain, and France. The rebel leadership has sworn that it will not allow NATO bases. It will almost surely support the Arab consensus on Israel/Palestine: Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border, an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Even in Iraq, the government is far from being a mere U.S. puppet. It never consented to handing over the country's oil reserves to foreign ownership, even though this was a goal of the U.S. invasion. It never consented to being a base of U.S. operations against Iran. It strongly condemned the U.S.-supported crackdown in Bahrain. Conversely, it's very critical of what the West is doing in Syria. It remains unclear whether the Iraqi government will consent to the stationing of 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq past December. On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Jim Devine <jdevin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Paul Cockshott wrote: >> I sent my Libyian students a 'Welcome back to the British Empire' message a >> couple of days back when I saw the footage of the rebels entering Tripoli. >> It was so reminiscent of the style of the Long Range Patrol group, the >> forerunners of the SAS that had operated in the same region in the 1940s. >> The came the press reports in the Independent and Guardian that the forces >> entering from the south were actually under control of SAS trainers. Same >> tactic as Britain used in 1917 to gain control of the middle east - send in >> intelligence officers to organise arm and train a highly mobile rebel force, >> then set up nominally independent but actually puppet governments.< > > whether or not Libya is joining the Empire -- not just the British > part of world imperialism, but the whole thing -- depends not only on > the role of the SAS, NATO bombing, etc. but also the internal strength > and cohesion of the anti-Q rebels. Do they have enough power to get > control over the country's oil revenues? > > In any event, Libya was part of the Empire during the last years of > the Q regime: the good colonel was perfectly willing to cooperate with > Berlusconi and similar knaves. So it's not "welcome back" as much as > "welcome to the new satraps within the Empire," i.e., the replacement > of Q by the rebel leadership. > -- > Jim Devine / "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they > are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to > reality." -- Albert Einstein > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org nai...@justforeignpolicy.org _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
