Leftist rulers who support Qaddafi?!

Update: Another supporter of Qaddafi (3/2/11 at 10:35 pm): Louis Farrakhan has just come out in support of Qaddafi, according to a press release from the ADL.

Included among his conspiratorial messages was the allegation that "Zionists" are goading the United States into "a military offensive against Libya," whose leader, Muammar Qaddafi, he praised as "my brother" and "my friend."

"President Obama, if you allow the Zionists to push you, to mount a military offensive against Qaddafi and you go in and kill him and his sons as you did with Saddam Hussein and his sons, I'm warning you this is a Libyan problem, let the Libyans solve their problem among themselves."

Further update on Chavez (3/1/11 at 7:02 pm): An Al Jazeera blog by Imran Garda has Chavez's latest comments on Libya:

As my colleague Gabriel Elizondo recently pointed out, tiny Nicaragua has rushed to show solidarity with the man who has given it over $300 million and who still claims, “they love me, all my people are with me” despite losing almost every town and city in his country barring the capital, to the protesters. Protesters - he claims - who are being drugged by “Osama bin Laden” who has put “things in their Nescafe.” Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega said Gaddafi is "waging a great battle" for his country.

Prior to February 28 there was still room for doubt as to the extent of Hugo Chavez’s support for Gaddafi. He had refused to openly weigh in on the issue, and the only evidence for his support had been a tweet of his saying “…viva Libya and its independence! Kadafi is facing a civil war!!”

Even that was open to interpretation. However, his latest take on the crisis has been unequivocal, "A campaign of lies is being spun together regarding Libya...I'm not going to condemn him. I'd be a coward to condemn someone who has been my friend."....

But the man who models himself on Latin America’s liberator Simon Bolivar, and projects himself as an heir to his legacy (and sometimes to Fidel Castro’s) - is finding himself in a changing world.

He may see himself as a leader of the global “Left” - but what left is he claiming to lead?

The enemy-of-my-enemy “Left”, of hollow, mud-slinging slogans, in support of anything or anyone who claims to oppose imperialism in all its forms in this Yankee-dominated world, no matter how monstrous his policies?

Or a principled “Left” based on respecting the values entrenched in the universal declaration of human rights, democracy and most importantly, the “Left” which places its support squarely on the part of the people tormented, rather than their tormentor.

Chavez’s open support for Gaddafi (who he presented with a replica of one of Bolivar’s swords in 2009) despite his outrageous disregard for his own people, disturbing intent to “open the arms depots” and let his country “burn,” rather than listen to the demands of Libyans, at this crucial point in the history of the region - sounds vacuous and adolescent.

In fact, it’s starting to sound like he’s been drinking some of that hallucinogenic Nescafe that Gaddafi was talking about...

Update (2/26/11 at 4:00 pm): Although I would hardly call him a leftist, Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who received Qaddafi's farcical human rights award in 2010) thinks it's all about Libya's oil, and that the UN should not impose sanctions.

"You cannot secure world peace by resorting to sanctions in each and every incident. We call on the international community to approach Libya not with concerns about oil but with conscience, justice and universal human values," Erdogan said. In an apparent reference to Western interests in oil-rich Libya, he said the region's people "are fed up with being used as pawns in oil wars".

Update (2/24/11 at 11:04 pm): Chavez has now come out in support of Qaddafi. The report is from Al Jazeera's live blog on Libya:

5:01am: Venezuela's top diplomat on Thursday echoed Fidel Castro's accusation that Washington is fomenting unrest in Libya to justify an invasion to seize North African nation's oil reserves.

Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister said:

They are creating conditions to justify an invasion of Libya.

4:27am: Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has backed Muammar Gaddafi on Twitter.  Chavez twitted:

Gaddafi is facing a civil war.
Long live Libya. Long live the independence of Libya

Original Post, 2/22/11 So, who is supporting Qaddafi these days?

The protests sweeping across Libya have created challenges for the Latin American allies of Moammar Gadhafi. Leftist governments in the Americas have long embraced him as a fellow fighter against U.S. influence in the world. Gadhafi has responded over the years by awarding the Moammar Gadhafi International Human Rights Prize [sic!] to Castro and Ortega, as well as to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, [and] Evo Morales of Bolivia.

1. Nicaragua president Daniel Ortega called Gaddafi to express support.

Nicaragua's leftist President Daniel Ortega says he has telephoned Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to express his solidarity. Ortega says he has called several times this week because Gadhafi "is again waging a great battle" to defend the unity of his nation.

To my embarrassment now, in the 1980s I was one of the defenders of Ortega and the Sandinistas when they ruled Nicaragua.

2. Fidel Castro, who says that "unrest in Libya may be a pretext for a NATO invasion."

European governments and U.S. leaders have denounced the crackdown, but Castro used a column published Tuesday by Cuban state news media to say it was too early to criticize Gadhafi. "You can agree or not with Gadhafi," Castro said. "The world has been invaded by all sorts of news ... We have to wait the necessary time to know with rigor how much is fact or lie."

But he did urge protests of something he says is planned: A U.S.-led invasion of the North African nation aimed at controlling its oil. "The government of the United States is not concerned at all about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate to give NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a question of hours or very short days," Castro wrote. "An honest person will always be against any injustice committed against any people in the world," Castro said. "And the worst of those at this instant would be to keep silent before the crime that NATO is preparing to commit against the Libyan people."

3. And what about Hugo Chavez?

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, on the other hand, has stayed mute. Bolivia came closest to criticizing the government in Tripoli, issuing a statement expressing concern over "the regrettable loss of many lives" and urging both sides to find a peaceful solution....

While Chavez has not commented publicly on the unrest in Libya, Venezuela's foreign minister issued a statement Monday saying he had phoned his Libyan counterpart to express hopes that Libya can find "a peaceful solution to its difficulties ... without the intervention of imperialism, whose interests in the region have been affected in recent times."....

Others [Venezuelan opponents of Chavez] said Chavez's silence suggests he might be trying to distance himself from his North African friend. The two leaders have had such warm ties that on Monday, rumors swept the world that Gadhafi was fleeing to Venezuela. Gadhafi took to television to deny them.

"Our garrulous president is keeping a thunderous silence," the director of the newspaper Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, wrote in an editorial. "Now that the democratic rebellion has reached Libya, Chavez is looking the other way and even abandoning his disgraced 'brother.'"

Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey

The New York Times has just published a good investigative report on the IHH - the Turkish charity behind the Gaza flotilla that included the Mavi Marmara - Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey.

Apparently the IHH and the ruling party in Turkey, the AK (Justice and Development Party) are very close, and the Turkish government was closely following events on the flotilla. The Turkish government could have ordered the flotilla not to go to Gaza, but did not.

ISTANBUL — The Turkish charity that led the flotilla involved in a deadly Israeli raid has extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite, and the group’s efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza received support at the top levels of the governing party, Turkish diplomats and government officials said.

The charity, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called I.H.H., has come under attack in Israel and the West for offering financial support to groups accused of terrorism. But in Turkey the group has helped Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shore up support from conservative Muslims ahead of critical elections next year and improve Turkey’s standing and influence in the Arab world.

According to a senior Turkish official close to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.

When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.

“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”

The raid has caused a rupture between Turkey and Israel, and heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a large Muslim country and a major NATO member, is shifting allegiance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its cooperative ties to Israel could be irreparably damaged unless the Israelis apologize and accept an international investigation, steps Israel has so far refused to take.

The charity’s mission, political analysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shifting Turkey’s focus to the Muslim east when its prospects for joining the European Union are dim.

The government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul....

“How can such a large country as Turkey, with interests in four continents, and with an export- and investment-driven economy requiring extra caution all around the globe, be dragged to the brink of war by a nongovernmental organization?” asked Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey, in a June 7 editorial. The answer, he added, is that the charity is a “GNGO” — a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”

Many of the 21 people listed on the charity’s board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the charity that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

A trustee of the charity, Ali Yandir, is a senior manager at the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation. The corporation controls Istanbul Fast Ferries, which sold the Mavi Marmara, with a capacity for 1,090 passengers, to the charity for about $1.8 million. In 2004, Mr. Yandir was an AK Party candidate for the mayor’s office in Istanbul’s Esenler District.

The charity’s board includes Zeyid Aslan, an AK Party member of Parliament and the acting head of the Turkey-Palestine Interparliamentary Friendship Group; Ahmet Faruk Unsal, an AK Party member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007; and Mehmet Emin Sen, a former AK Party mayor in the central Anatolian township of Mihalgazi.

Those ties partly reflect the common agenda of the party and the charity. Both are involved in relief work among the poor and are bound by a common Islamic ideology. Many of the 60,000 people the charity claims as members come from the religious merchant class that helped Mr. Erdogan sweep to power....