Tariq Ali: “the Libyan people have lost”

August 22, 2011 at 12:50 am (africa, apologists and collaborators, Guardian, Human rights, Jim D, Libya, Middle East, national liberation, Pabs)

Lest we forget (#2):

•  …”here one has to say that whatever the final outcome, the Libyan people have lost” Tariq  Ali, in the Guardian 29 April 2011

Here’s how the Libyan people, in Gaddafi’s supposed ‘stronghold’ of Tripoli,  feel about having “lost”:

…and here’s how a Libyan exile answered Ali immediately after that article appeared:

Tariq Ali is anything but consistent (Who will reshape the Arab world: its people or the US?, 30 April http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/29/arab-politics-democracy-intervention). On the one hand he declares, “It is too soon to predict the final outcome, except to say it is not over yet” and on the other he dismisses the Libyan uprising with “whatever the final outcome, the Libyan people have lost”. It is a combination of ignorance and arrogance that has afflicted the “left” ever since the revolution in Tunisia that leads Mr Ali to think that the Libyans, who have experienced colonial rule and imperialist exploitation first hand, are unaware of the machinations of the US, the UK and France. The Arab people need no lectures. They will take their own unique path to social and political change which need not follow the models of the past. – Fawzi Ibrahim, London