Dinner party  [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

The imposition of a no fly zone over Libya, backed primarily by France, Britain and the United States, and the invasion of Bahrain by Saudi Armed forces, mark a new stage in the tumultuous revolutionary events in the Arab world. The joyous revolutionary victories secured by mass protests on the streets and squares of Egypt and Tunisia have given way to bloody and ferocious conflict drawing in national and international military forces.

The Imperialist powers were happy to see dictators in power throughout the region, provided they appeared to serve the economic, political, military and strategic interests of European and US capitalist states. It was European powers that colonised, plundered and divided the peoples of the region; leaving a legacy of artificial lines from which nations were carved out of the sand.

After the Second World War the United States wove a complex web of intrigues in the region. This involved the staunch defence of its local allies through massive financial and military aid, but each adventure produced poisonous fruit.

In Saudi Arabia, the US supports the rule of a feudal theocracy composed of 7000 members of a Royal Family enriched by oil. This oil is used to back US economic policies throughout the world. This intimate Saudi-US relationship was behind the battle to expel Soviet forces from Afghanistan in the 1980s that created the foundations of Bin Laden's network which later attacked the USA. This in turn led to the continuing war in Afghanistan.

In Iran, the west supported the Shah's dictatorship until it was overthrown by revolution in 1979. This spawned the creation of the Islamic Republic, a theocratic reaction combining modern technologies of power, medieval barbarism and anti-western rhetoric.

In Iraq, US policy supported Saddam Hussein for decades, in the war against Iran and in the ferocious repression of the Iraqi people. Untold millions suffered due to this US policy and then due to two US led wars in which Saddam was recast as a "madman".

Since 1948, Israel has been backed by western powers despite the systematic abuse and repression of the rights of the Palestinian peoples. More recently the United States and European governments backed the Egyptian and Tunisian dictators to the hilt until their final hours.

Colonel Gaddafi was an untouchable pariah until a few years ago. He led an officer's coup in 1969 and proclaimed a path independent of Moscow or Washington during the Cold War. He engaged in all manner of peculiar zigzags in international and domestic policy much to the ire of the Western powers. He supported various rebellions and terrorist groups around the world, and created a peculiar eclectic fusion of socialistic and Islamic ideas, complied in the "Green Book".

In economic policy he nationalized oil and banking, this provided the material basis of the regime. Libya became a planned economy based on fossil fuels. This flow of wealth from the ground into public coffers enabled living standards to rise rapidly. To this day housing, education and healthcare are free and basic foodstuffs are subsidized. But power is also based on arbitrary and dictatorial methods developed by the entourage and police apparatus of Gaddafi's bureaucratic state, camouflaged in the garb of "rule by peoples" committees.